[HN Gopher] Don't Become the Machine
___________________________________________________________________
Don't Become the Machine
Author : armeet
Score : 209 points
Date : 2025-12-24 03:34 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (armeet.bearblog.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (armeet.bearblog.dev)
| Terr_ wrote:
| > I think hustle-culture and the vision being pushed on my
| timeline is a corrupted one.
|
| A satirical video which I think captures some of the frustration:
| "The Hustle" by Krazam -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
|
| > Machine Head - Derek Hobbs 1995
|
| For anyone else a little nerd-sniped, the ASCII art head is
| 54,505 bytes, <=300 chars wide, 182 lines tall, using 20 distinct
| characters... But then I get hung up on what an equivalent
| picture could be, since the characters aren't just levels of
| greyscale intensity, but also contain internal detail that would
| then take more pixels to describe.
|
| My original motive was something like: "If this were a PNG it
| would have only taken a much smaller X bytes."
| rzzzt wrote:
| A very un-scientific screen grab and saving as a GIF gives me
| 604kB at 990x1000 pixels, but this does include color fringing
| at the edges of each letter and I'd be inclined to treat this
| as a 1 BPP image.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I bet somebody in the biz has a pipeline for running
| different algorithms/formats/compressions, and applying
| different metrics for "would these look about the same to a
| human on a certain screen at a certain distance."
|
| > 1 BPP
|
| Yeah, the different ASCII characters might be best
| modeled/analogized as local dithering.
| rzzzt wrote:
| AA-lib is alive and kicking (I think): https://aa-
| project.sourceforge.net/
| ffuxlpff wrote:
| The most important thing is not to have a purpose. Machines will
| always outdo you in optimizing for a goal function.
|
| Don't follow rules and if you really need to, make your own and
| never tell them to anyone. Keep people guessing and change your
| mind often. Never ask opinions. They are useless and if you never
| ask people think you know better.
|
| What you know you think and feel are not what you think and feel
| but dead remnants of your past thoughts and hunches. You have no
| personality but an ever evolving process that changes instantly
| to fill the areas you think are not you or your interest.
| esperent wrote:
| > make your own and never tell them to anyone. Keep people
| guessing and change your mind often. Never ask opinions. They
| are useless and if you never ask people think you know better.
|
| What an incredibly lonely and antagonist life philosophy.
| atoav wrote:
| Not only lonely, this feels downright anxiety-driven.
|
| A secure person who has their shit together knows that some
| people do in fact have valuable opinions and they won't be
| afraid to ask in public. And they know that too: two thirds
| of their HN submissions are questions for advice after all.
|
| So this isn't about actual value of opinions, this is about a
| certain fright of how you _appear_ to others and strategies
| to control that.
| mxkopy wrote:
| You should understand what this is in response to, though.
| The commenter advocates opacity for _the sake of not being
| treated like a machine._ The ideal solution is for people
| to not treat you like a machine, but things aren't always
| ideal.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| But what's a better way to be seen as machine than to
| become an opaque black box? And _unpredictable_ black box
| isn 't seen as somehow not a machine; it's seen as a
| _broken_ machine.
| safety1st wrote:
| It's an attempt to escape the control of the system but
| it's a reactionary approach, which at the end of the day,
| is just letting the system dictate how your life unfolds in
| a different way.
|
| To live well and accomplish OP's goal in the modern era you
| have to understand that the attention economy has won,
| completely and totally. You can choose to live your life in
| a proactive manner: motivating force arises internally,
| through contemplation, meditation, deliberate study, and
| intention.
|
| Or you can choose to live it reactively: you look at what
| just popped up in your feed and you write a blog post about
| it.
|
| We're living more reactively than ever now. It's stifling
| creativity and individuality, it's creating depression and
| anxiety. The answer is to unplug and let the motive force
| for your actions start coming from your internal world
| again. It's okay to be influenced by the outside but we're
| more possessed now by derivative slop (see how all brand
| logos have essentially become the same) than we probably
| ever have been. It's time to unplug from the hive mind and
| wait in the resulting stillness for the next step.
| pprotas wrote:
| But why? What value does living like this add to your life?
| Nevermark wrote:
| I would describe this as giving up on any serious agency, and
| retreating into a game of time killing tactics oriented around
| other people's confused reactions.
|
| A way to offload the challenging search for purpose, to a
| shallow controllable process, consistent with the described
| disillusionment.
|
| But people are idiosyncratic. Maybe for someone, a life of
| inscrutable eccentric rebellion against the Gods of practical
| reality, might actually be deeply meaningful to them - even if
| they don't admit it.
|
| There are people who are genuinely happy doing the same thing
| every day. Every day. That is just as strange to me!
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| You don't seem to realize that you are undermining what you
| have written by sharing it with us here. That gives me hope for
| you. Of course, you can counter my objection by leaving it open
| in retrospect whether the text was meant seriously or not. Mind
| ninja! Always one step ahead! In any case, you won't be able to
| live a good life as a living gradient in a game-theoretical
| hell, denying your own goal orientation but strangely still
| interacting strategically with the world.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Jesus Christ, was this written by LLM trained on 69 laws of
| power something or some other psychopath bullshit aimed at
| angsty coming of age?
| Animats wrote:
| Genius does what it must.
|
| Talent does what it can.
|
| You do what you're told.
|
| Now get back to work.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| Why cant Talent also do what it must?
| rzzzt wrote:
| We do what we must, because we can / For the good of all of
| us
| wiseowise wrote:
| Hotel does trivago.
| dzink wrote:
| If you are only useful, you will be used until you not useful
| anymore. Make relationships that care about you even after you've
| become worn out. Make things that pay off even after you're done
| making.
| avaer wrote:
| Around 2019 it became clear to me how much I was underestimating
| how quickly AI would "take over" and "take credit" for the parts
| of my identity I wanted to keep (engineering, design taste,
| invention for example).
|
| But it also made me realize that because I was always at the tip
| of my chosen curve of tech adoption, I was also the first to be
| feeling the existential dread that would soon permeate the lives
| of everyone living a life even tangentially touched by tech.
|
| (I think the author is ahead of the curve too).
|
| But I feel this post identifies the problem and then compounds it
| with this line:
|
| > This messaging works. Look at me. I feel the need to write a
| post about it. But it is completely wrong.
|
| I would counter that (intentional) "ignorance is bliss". If you
| want to play the VC grind hustle game, do it, but be intentional
| about checking in and checking out, and don't let it into your
| identity. And don't write posts like this.
|
| It might "feel" dishonest to operate like this, but the
| alternative is doom, because you are fighting against demons that
| don't actually exist. I think more and more people will realize
| this over the coming years -- we are only now starting to react
| to the personal problems caused by immersion in social media.
|
| This also reminds me of a good piece by PG:
| https://paulgraham.com/identity.html
| roncesvalles wrote:
| I think AI is completely optional for software development.
|
| There seems to be a new kind of anxiety wherein devs feel that
| they aren't leveraging AI to the fullest in order to make them
| more productive at developing software, and that since they
| aren't doing so, they should just give up writing software
| completely.
|
| This anxiety is unfounded. The difference between using AI vs
| not using AI is not like using a physical spreadsheet vs
| Microsoft Excel. It's more like using a text editor versus an
| IDE. If you're happy producing software the way that you always
| were sans AI, you should just keep doing it that way and don't
| even pay mind to AI tooling.
|
| Those guys who have super sophisticated MCP/tool use setups,
| and a roster of agents, and testdrive all the latest tools and
| plugins, and curate a personal library of carefully tuned
| prompts that make them the "LLM Whisperer" -- they're not
| actually doing that much better than you at producing software.
| Or at least not to the extent that you are totally obsolete.
| askafriend wrote:
| I think it's exactly like going from paper spreadsheet to
| Excel in some very important aspects of engineering (but not
| all).
|
| I really encourage you to update your priors since
| capabilities are very different than even 6 months ago.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| I like to think I'm very much abreast of the bleeding edge
| because I feel this anxiety myself. At this point I can't
| code without LLMs because I just notice things that I could
| hand off to LLMs and they will do it faster and there's no
| reason for me to do it myself (although I still could).
|
| But the overall gain in efficiency is still a low single
| digit speedup. It's not a multi-OOM speedup as if e.g.
| doing 1000 long divisions by hand over many days versus
| letting a computer program do them in a split second. The
| "wall" that is irreducible complexity was never OOMs away
| from how modern pre-AI software development was done.
| Kerrick wrote:
| For me the speed-up has not been in doing things I was
| already an expert at doing quickly with high quality. It
| has been in skipping the learning curve for adjacent
| things.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Does it make the curve easier or do you skip learning it
| entirely and just trust the LLM? I wouldn't do the
| latter.
| nottorp wrote:
| Will you remember it if you don't "break your teeth" on
| it though? At the same level as the things you're already
| an expert on?
| Kerrick wrote:
| I'm a big believer in desirable difficulty for learning.
| But I'm a big believer in reduced difficulty for non-
| learning-oriented getting-things-done.
| Kerrick wrote:
| So far I've skipped learning it entirely. For things I
| want to learn, I learn the old school way--maybe with an
| LLM as an unreliable thesaurus and/or second search
| engine (where I distrust its output, but read its links).
| For things I want to just get done, I use an LLM. It's
| something close to blind trust, but not completely.
|
| For example, I've used LLMs to write ~1600 lines of Rust
| in the past few days. I'm having it make Ratatui bindings
| for Ruby. I haven't ever learned Rust, but I can read
| C-like languages so I _kinda_ understand what 's
| happening. I could tell when it needed to be modularized.
| I have a sneaking suspicion most of the Rust tests it's
| written are testing Ratatui, rather than testing its own
| bindings. But I've had the LLM cover the functionality in
| Ruby tests, a language I do know. So I've felt
| comfortable enough to ship it.
| yeasku wrote:
| The 6 months ago is a meme at this point.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Don't worry, these ,,LLM Whisperers" are too busy on social
| media to get anything done.
| ge96 wrote:
| It seems so silly to say but I too have a dream of not wanting to
| work. Then I can just exist. I came across this YT video about
| enjoying boredom. It slows down time and you do things you really
| want to do. I'm currently the type of person that is always
| plugged into noise (music, podcast, YT). It is rare that I sit in
| silence. But yeah I'm hoping I can save, exit working, I'll still
| be making stuff that I enjoy at a good pace. I have this problem
| where I want to share things that aren't done yet, it's early ego
| reward. That's the problem with YT too and attention span, things
| take time to do and it's about the immediate reward. I get it
| too, attention is a currency and people spend it where they
| want/deem important.
|
| But I feel it though, the urge to grind. When I have free time I
| think, shouldn't I be doing/achieving something. If you quantify
| value by money then yeah there are dumb ways to make money like
| me driving Uber Eats and donating plasma (an extra 17 hrs of my
| life per week). I can instead spend less money and enjoy life
| more.
|
| I almost think social media is the worst thing that I ran into,
| the points/likes aspect. Going back to sharing things that aren't
| real yet for the kudos. Anyway ranting. I'm thankful I became
| self-aware as when Facebook was new I was posting like everything
| about my life like "omg look at me...". Which is a double-edged
| sword you know, something like Instagram is how women scope you
| out and if you don't have a good one...
|
| Tangent, there is also this fetishizing of productivity where you
| see this clean desk and a little notepad. Or some kind of setup
| like a minimalist laptop. The whole video is about that but not
| actually working ha.
| mstank wrote:
| Have you ever tried meditation? Does a great job scratching
| that 'boredom' itch...
| ge96 wrote:
| I'm trying to. I don't know how you know it's working. Maybe,
| sometimes I do feel present like I am in this building, this
| town right now.
|
| It is funny, I bought an old phone of mine from the 2010s, I
| had a different mindset back then (try to make a shit ton of
| money through ads on a website). That did not happen but I
| had this ambition/tried to make a lot of dumb apps. I'm
| trying to get back to that mental state as now I can make
| like anything, back then I didn't even know how to generate a
| CSR like come on you amateur!
|
| I use the phone as a grounding tool for meditation/try to go
| back in time what I was thinking back then. I also loaded it
| with old cloud photos from that time. It doesn't have
| internet.
|
| Oh yeah, what does work for grounding you to reality is when
| you lose internet. Then you're grounded in reality, bored.
| What do I do with myself now.
| arvid-lind wrote:
| > I don't know how you know it's working.
|
| after a while it should feel like a refreshing nap. during
| the meditation itself, you're just doing a simple task and
| going along with it without resistance, like when sleeping.
| eventually the idea of "non-doing" will make more sense.
|
| another way to look at it: upon waking each morning, you
| start with an empty glass. from this point, everything that
| enters your realm of awareness accumulates in this glass
| and at some point it will start overflowing if you don't
| manage what you're accumulating. meaning you can only
| effectively work with a certain amount of "stuff on your
| mind". So you shouldn't make a habit of carrying stress
| from the morning commute all day into affecting your
| afternoon meetings, for example.
|
| take a few deep breaths and let the morning commute pass,
| and your glass is empty again. allow the glass to fill up
| with morning work, noticing and managing points of friction
| so they don't linger more than necessary. if you notice
| yourself getting overwhelmed or stressed about everything
| that comes up, you're overflowing and would likely benefit
| from some meditation. as you meditate more, it becomes more
| effortless so you won't be reliant on "doing meditation" as
| much.
|
| the Plum Village app has a meditation bell that rings on a
| schedule (default is every 15 minutes). they recommend you
| take a few deep breaths to re-center and state your
| intention(s) for the moment. I started using it earlier
| this year and it has a noticeable effect over time, would
| highly recommend trying it out all day if possible. or at
| least during times where you're trying to do focused work
| but have a tendency to get distracted.
| Loughla wrote:
| Honest to God, the best meditation for me is Focus 1 from
| The Gateway Tapes. I'm not sure the woo of astral
| projection and energy control are for me at all. But when
| it comes to blanking my mind and existing purely in the
| exact right now, that does it for me.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Have you ever tried meditation? Does a great job scratching
| that 'boredom' itch...
|
| No, but I _am_ considering getting a working Amiga, a CRT and
| just writing some games for it.
|
| All I had growing up was a C64, and I remember how peaceful I
| felt when I was designing and writing my (simple) games for
| it. I hankered all through my childhood for an Amiga; _any_
| Amiga.
|
| TBH, I might even settle for a C128; just the thrill of
| writing software with some paper manuals next to me, no
| internet and no distractions.
| vitorfblima wrote:
| Ironically Amiga means "female friend" in portuguese.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| And Spanish. And probably French, since if it's in two
| Romance languages the odds are decent it's in others lol.
| dmbche wrote:
| Would be Amie in french, sadly
| butlike wrote:
| Why is that sad? lol
| dmbche wrote:
| Would've been neat, no?
| pests wrote:
| > I'm currently the type of person that is always plugged into
| noise (music, podcast, YT). It is rare that I sit in silence.
|
| Not directed towards you, but this brings up a thought I often
| ponder. I have friends and people around me who are plugged in
| 24/7. I don't really think they spend any time, what so ever,
| on internal thought or introspection / reflection. I think it
| really affects them. The "default mode network" as its
| neuroscience has coined it. No time to analyze the past or
| correlate cause with effect. Lives surrendered to notifications
| and scrolling the same 3 feeds, day in and day out. I don't
| even know what to say to them sometimes.
|
| On the flip side, I do accept people for who they are. If this
| is what they want, and they enjoy it, then whatever. But it can
| be frustrating trying to communicate or interact with them.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's an orthogonal aspect to it: control. I know I need
| _some_ amount of noise to stay grounded and look outwards
| instead of collapsing into infinite reflection regression -
| but I also need _control_ over that noise. That is, it needs
| to be _my_ noise. Living in noise introduced by people around
| me is not reinvigorating, it 's draining and depressing.
| pests wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. Especially noise introduced by
| people around me. Drains me.
|
| I'm not on a high horse either, I do succumb to modern
| temptations. I have a YouTube addiction, but its all
| educational / a topic I'm learning / a hobby / etc. I just
| got my Recap and somehow I have watched 4500 different
| channels this year, that's saying nothing of # of videos or
| watchtime. I was pretty shocked.
|
| Still though, I purposefully make time to be alone and just
| daydream or relax and ponder. I don't use my phone while
| driving (besides maps etc). I try to put my phone away when
| others are around (unless we're sharing memes or photos or
| you know, actively using our phones together). I'm not a
| snob, go ahead and reply to your significant other while
| we're eating dinner - that's understandable. When I watch
| movies or TV (that I care about, I do keep old scifi on in
| the background while on the PC or doing stuff around the
| house) I am actively watching and do not touch my phone,
| and if I do need to I pause first.
|
| The worst part? When you know someone is on their phone
| 24/7, phone in hand at all times, and you can't get them to
| respond to your calls or texts.
|
| I feel like I'm bragging or showing off or something but
| I'm really not, just interested in how people interact with
| their devices, and their life.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| haha this is so true about ppl not able to respond to
| calls while they are literally on the phone ALL the time
| kibwen wrote:
| _> I do accept people for who they are. If this is what they
| want, and they enjoy it, then whatever._
|
| You do you, but you're not obliged to accept someone for who
| they are if who they are is a brainless wastoid. I recommend
| minimizing the time wasted on zombies in favor of seeking out
| people who still value their brains.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| The terminally online don't seem to like being reminded
| that they're the terminally online.
|
| Unfortunately the infestation only seems to grow.
| sidrag22 wrote:
| Depending on how you categorize people into being a
| "brainless wastoid", that could potentially shrink some
| people's interactions with other humans to literal 0...
|
| I see this type of sentiment reflected all over the
| internet as well, avoiding people because they don't fit
| whatever type of mold, I think this type of mentality is
| terrible. Not saying you gotta go out and find someone who
| has 14 hours of screen on time a day and hang out with
| them, but even just lumping people into the category of
| "brainless wastoid" feels to me very much like bordering on
| dehumanization.
| unsungNovelty wrote:
| Wrote about this -
| https://www.unsungnovelty.org/posts/04/2025/you-dont-need-
| ai...
| anal_reactor wrote:
| This is exactly why my dream is to save enough money so that I
| can retire and fuck off and just smoke weed and play vidya
| until I die. People speak of "hedonistic treadmill" but there's
| also "achievement treadmill" where you want to achieve more and
| more and more and it never ends. The biggest perk of my current
| job is that the company is completely dysfunctional, so it's
| normal for me to spend entire day doing nothing and I don't
| even need to be at the office. At first my body reacted with
| panic because I was used to being a slave, but I'm slowly
| adapting to think "wait, I'm actually winning"
| ge96 wrote:
| I'm lucky to have a similar job where for an entire day I
| just watch YouTube then I say at scrum "it's in progress".
| Although it's not great, it's procrastinating then I have to
| do even more work in less time.
|
| As long as you get it done.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> I too have a dream of not wanting to work._
|
| The OP isn't about not wanting to work. To labor in pursuit of
| your own personal purpose is a virtue and a privilege. But
| labor for the sake of labor is not a virtue, nor is labor for
| the sake of watching that bank account go up, and least of all
| labor for the sake of watching your billionaire CEO's bank
| account go up.
| ge96 wrote:
| Yeah I thought about clarifying that earlier, it's not
| responding to the post. I was saying it as a joke as in most
| people say "I wish I didn't have a job" (but somehow have
| money). Like I'm special thinking that way.
| sidrag22 wrote:
| I can't imagine NOT working, just 100% pure leisure does not
| feel like a dream i have. If you can lump passion projects
| into leisure? then sure, i guess its my dream as well,
| because working on what I would prefer instead of having to
| stress about finances IS my dream.
|
| But not working at all? sounds so boring, and not boring in
| the way that frees you up that others in this thread has
| mentioned as a good thing.
|
| For example, I had two project ideas i kinda wanna pursue and
| was picking which to do first, one was very much almost no
| path to revenue, but way more fun and would be usable daily
| for me personally, the other? market aggregation stuff that
| i've done already and i know the exact structure, there is no
| mystery to it, its nothing special, just a helpful tool that
| might make me some money, and sadly THAT is the project i
| chose to pursue, over the personal project with no clear path
| to revenue.
|
| I'll still enjoy making it, but I am positive if money wasn't
| a factor, i am deep into the other project instead.
| giorgioz wrote:
| Often there is a bell shaped curve where productivity peeks at a
| point and bigger efforts after that make you actually less
| productive overall. In my personal experience most projects are a
| marathon not a sprint. Always sleep the 8-9 hours necessary to
| feel full-rested. I'm most productive in the morning so I try to
| work every day during mornings but since in the afternoon I'm a
| lot less productive I've decided I can allocate that time to
| entertainment and social activities. My entertainment and social
| activity tend also to be along learning new things.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Regular morning stand-ups really fuck my morning momentum.
|
| I'm getting my shit done, then I gotta stop and listen to a
| whole bunch of crap that I either already know or doesn't
| affect me at all.
|
| Sometimes, in fact often, the level of momentum I had before
| the meeting is never reached again the rest of day.
|
| All meetings should be post lunch. All meetings I organize are
| post lunch.
| dansmith1919 wrote:
| The very basic (but incorrect) assumption that the "grind never
| stops" people rely on is
|
| more hours == more productivity
|
| It's not. If you're sleep deprived you'll produce shit, which
| you'll probably have to redo later. Sleep properly, produce more
| in less hours.
|
| But hey, at least your colleagues think you're busy because
| you're last to leave redoing your shitty work!
|
| Edit: read The Brain at Rest by Jebelli, don't work yourself to
| death
| tetha wrote:
| This is something that hit me during my master thesis the first
| time: I was entirely free to choose my work time, work mode.
| Since the prof was very hands-off too, only the result after 6
| months mattered. That was quite the weird time. But it taught me
| some pieces about work-life balance and choosing what is 'enough
| work', as well as giving your brain time off, or time on
| something else to work through more complex topics and to
| recharge.
|
| This is also why I honestly enjoy being a salaried employee. My
| employer buys 40 hours a week from me. Right, some weeks it's 50
| and the next week only 30. Some weeks need a machine just
| executing, some weeks need more careful thought.
|
| I could optimize it for more monetary output, but at the moment
| it is a predictable, usually not-painful thing with decent
| monetary output for personally more interesting subjects. I've
| found appreciation of this.
| rzzzt wrote:
| I totally failed on the balancing part, was working on the
| thesis like a runaway diesel engine. I could sleep and step
| away from the word processor window but it kind of consumed my
| thoughts at all times. Towards the end stress started to spill
| over to the physical domain and it took about 4 months after
| the submission and thesis defense (no snakes fortunately) for
| symptoms to subside.
| asaiacai wrote:
| echoing this sentiment. I really do believe at some level there
| is strength/wisdom in being able to step away from a problem and
| return to it from a new perspective despite of what narratives
| are being pushed online by hustle
| joelthelion wrote:
| I recommend reading the Happiness Files, by Arthur Brooks.
|
| It contain great advice, including on how to handle your
| professional life. But even more importantly, I feel the world
| would be a better place if more people followed its advice. A
| world full of happy people would be a world that runs far better.
| samuraijack wrote:
| The constant anti work agenda that is thrown in your face if you
| use almost any social media is so annoying.
|
| Have these anti work people ever considered that maybe some
| people actually like work and labelling them as slaves is
| insulting?
| antfarm wrote:
| The majority of people don't have that luxury, and very few
| have it throughout their whole career. The lucky ones should be
| grateful this label does not apply to them and not feel
| insulted by the less fortunate.
| noduerme wrote:
| Or you should realize that it's called _work_ because it 's
| not _fun_ and you can still enjoy and appreciate it. You
| think only people with rare amazing unicorn jobs enjoy work?
| Go drive a cab. Bartend. Work long hours for a startup you
| care about. Yes you can complain it sucks, but _that 's why
| it's called work_. Learning how to enjoy it is the same as
| learning how to be good at it - and better at life.
|
| This luxury you speak of as if it exists in some jobs is
| completely in your own mind.
|
| Put another way, the only thing preventing you from enjoying
| that luxury right now, whatever you do, is a shitty attitude.
| orionspelt wrote:
| Those things you describe are jobs
|
| Work is a term of physics; breathing is work. Eating is
| work.
|
| Jobs exist because people are too lazy to do work for
| themselves.
|
| What I want is no job and to work on my house, work in my
| food prep, work on interesting projects. Work on making the
| last mile stuff I need.
|
| Work is great. Jobs are dumb.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Sometimes jobs are great streams of interesting work to
| do that also switch off at five.
| azangru wrote:
| You want to work on your house and prep your food? I am
| the complete opposite. I would rather work on building a
| website, and eat in a canteen, than work on my house or
| my food.
| orionspelt wrote:
| Reread...
|
| > ...work on interesting projects.
|
| Been building websites for 20 years, and writing code,
| studying math, building electronics since the 80s. Along
| with building homes from foundation up, rebuilding
| cars... Hedonic treadmill; individually, none of those
| things are enough anymore.
|
| For me having to put so much time into riding a tightly
| focused job escalator is hell.
| Scarblac wrote:
| I think it's called work because it _accomplishes
| something_, in a way that play or idleness doesn't.
|
| Something can be a work of love, your life work, et cetera
| and it doesn't imply anything about it being fun or for
| money or not.
|
| I want to learn more skills so I can do more types of work.
| yeasku wrote:
| I would like to see you working in construction.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > The constant anti work agenda that is thrown in your face if
| you use almost any social media is so annoying.
|
| I've got several friends who are doctors. They did study a
| shitload. And one of them, once his day is over, loves to read
| about investments, how to manage his finance, etc. Another one
| has a passion for Ferrari cars and owns one (but it's already
| its fourth one). He'll tell you all about the life of Enzo
| Ferrari and he'll never miss the Monaco F1 grand prix.
|
| I won't write here what I think of people hating on these
| persons because they're successful. I especially won't write
| what I think of them when they go to visit the doctor. I know
| HN won't ban people easily but if I really wrote what I thought
| of these people it'd get me close to being banned.
|
| 12 years of studies. A very hard work: though on the mental and
| usually with incredibly long hours.
|
| I don't consider them slaves. But I'd rather be remembered as a
| slave than as a parasite.
| tock wrote:
| Thats interesting because my social media is filled with
| constant hustle culture content. Wonder how the algorithm
| classifies us.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The algorithm is just amplifying what gets the kick out of
| you. For some it's more of things they like or they are like;
| for others, it's more of things they hate or disagree with.
| Social media is approximating an infinite hall of mirrors.
| runarberg wrote:
| Some work is exploited, in fact in this economy most work is
| exploited. If most people could work without being forced to
| work unreasonable hours, under stressful conditions, with ample
| free time, and without their bosses, or worse, their
| shareholder talking almost all of the profit they generate,
| most people would probably choose to work.
|
| Most people like working, hardly anybody likes being exploited.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I think it's a lot more complicated than anti-work vs. pro-
| work. The author is cautioning people against defining
| themselves by their level of productivity.
| horns4lyfe wrote:
| If you read the article that's not at all what they're saying.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| > almost any social media is so annoying.
|
| Never a truer word spoken. And yet you go back?
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| The article is about the temptation to define yourself through
| your productivity. It isn't anti-work.
|
| With all due respect, this reads like you had an axe to grind
| about social media's anti work slant and this just reminded you
| of that.
| Froztnova wrote:
| It's super weird to me because none of the jobs I've had as a
| programmer have been super demanding of my time or effort? I
| have to work, sure, but generally not as hard as I had to work
| at college. I rarely get called to do things outside of work
| hours, but generally when I do it's because there's a serious
| problem that I'm the subject matter expert for so it's
| understandable.
|
| I absolutely do just "switch off" at 5pm. I sometimes work on
| programming things in my free time if I feel like it
| regardless.
|
| I feel like, if your job is demanding more of you than a nine
| to five, and you don't thrive in that environment, you
| certainly have a right to complain or look for different work.
| I'm just surprised that it seems to be so common when all the
| work I've stumbled into in this field has been very reasonable.
|
| And yes, obviously there's a difference between software dev
| and blue collar, or even other types of white collar work. I'm
| not blind to the fact that this is a particularly comfortable
| career, even if it's not as extravagant as it seems to have be
| a decade or so ago.
|
| I guess I'm just surprised that there are so many apparently
| ground-down people in a place like this which you would imagine
| would be primarily populated with people in the software
| industry.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > I was recently recommended a YouTube video with the following
| title:
|
| > "Ligma balls"
|
| I don't know what I've expected from the article, this is your
| typical run of the mill tech/linked-in bro fart in the wind. How
| to write a page and not say anything at all.
| darepublic wrote:
| "Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is
| to be a slave."
| gaigalas wrote:
| Anthony Jackson interview from 1992:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS-xDsic84Q
|
| Please listen to it.
|
| > The machines are here.
|
| > We have to live with that. Things are different.
|
| > Hopefully, if one has done his homework, one can continue to
| pick and choose what to do.
|
| > If you keep your skills up, there is a place for you. If you
| don't, then there isn't. Very simple equation.
|
| > I will not permit myself to be outplayed by someone using the
| machine.
|
| ---
|
| Anthony Jackson is regarded as one of the most talented bassists
| that ever lived. He did, in fact, outplayed the machine, re-
| invented his own tone and technique, and proved over and over
| again that synthesizers could not do what he did. Synthetisers
| could replace thousands of pop musicians (they still do), but not
| him.
|
| So yeah, do the grind. Don't break the machines, don't bow to
| them. Instead, outplay them. Keep your skills up, so you are free
| to pick and choose.
| rglover wrote:
| Just do the work at your body's natural pace. Your body will tell
| you when it's tired, when it's ready to focus, and when it's
| excited to work.
|
| As with everything, the problem is hubris and impatience. So
| eager to prove god-like status, you stumble and fall, posting
| ephemeral think pieces about your "journey" on social media.
| Reading LinkedIn is the closest I've ever got to thinking "maybe
| asylums would be okay with a few reforms..."
|
| My favorite (which I think/hope was a joke) was the guy cooking
| chicken breast in his hotel coffee maker to "show his commitment
| to the company" and how hard he was willing to grind.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| Cooking with hotel coffee makers during a grind is a long
| standing tradition. Usually it's ramen or canned food, though.
|
| For better or worse, this is becoming more difficult as the
| standard coffee maker in rooms these days is a one-cup-at-a-
| time model. So you need your own container, or you'll have to
| use the ice bucket (if they have one).
|
| A chicken breast is a bit far fetched, but I could see it
| happening with someone who was craving chicken at an odd hour.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I know many people who are full on into hustle culture and they
| don't care to optimize their productivity.
|
| the hustle is being strategic, work smart not hard, fake till you
| make it, lie and be ruthless and amoral
|
| It's kind of disgusting...
|
| Edit: Actually, I don't know many such people. Just 2-3 maybe.
| But it feels like many
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| And unfortunately being demonstrated by a role model right now
| to a whole lot of impressionable US school children who will
| grow up lying through their teeth who will eventually occupy
| jobs they're woefully unqualified for, to the detriment of
| their entire sphere of influence.
|
| A friend of mine recently pointed me to the song "Lie, Cheat,
| Steal" by Run The Jewels. Seems like the strategy of choice for
| a while yet.
| conqrr wrote:
| Very relevant talk by Osho:
| https://youtu.be/OGM7VFeLRyQ?si=ecB_6L8IRgIT4LD1 Efficiency is a
| quality of machines.
| posix86 wrote:
| > Hustle-culture optimizes for work input because it's sexy. It's
| easy to post the inputs. It's hard to face the output.
|
| Hustling is sexy insofar as the output is sexy imo. What hustlers
| miss is that working hard is only cool if the work you do makes
| sense - work for its own sake is one of the most uncool things
| there is. And I also think that willingness to work hard comes on
| its own if you find something meaningful; reading on how to work
| hard is like treating symptoms (you don't work hard) rather than
| actual cause (you don't have anything to work hard on). Getting
| up at 5am to go to the gym then manage.your 500 dollars of crypto
| portfolio you don't understand anything about is the epitome of
| finance bro that everyone cringes about.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I play tennis twice a week and I inline skate twice a week
| (weather pending) and yesterday I commuted to and from work on
| inlines (first time I've done it, won't be the last, but won't be
| often).
|
| Having such hobbies plus a couple of kids (now teenagers so
| they're somewhat less demanding of my time) means I just don't
| have the time to do extra hours if I'm going to get enough sleep.
|
| And if I don't get enough sleep then the hours I _do_ work are
| nowhere near as productive as those when I have had enough sleep.
|
| Work fits around my personality. If that doesn't suit my
| employer, I find a new employer.
|
| Caveats: I don't hunt the highest paying job. I'm never going to
| be enthusiastic enough to be chosen to lead - I've had minor
| management roles in the past, and they lead to, basically, being
| paid to either sleep less or spend less time as "not work me".
| Both of those options result in lower productivity.
|
| I'm good enough at what I do to earn a living for the foreseeable
| future. That's good enough for me career-wise. For my physical
| and mental health, both of which are indicators of and
| contributory to happiness and longevity, I will continue to spend
| much of my non-working time playing tennis and inline skating and
| lifting weights so I can continue to do those things, that make
| me happy with life and the world, for as long as physically
| possible.
|
| I tend not to the machine that consumes humanity, I tend to the
| machine that gives me my humanity.
|
| Edited to add: I'll never be a rich man. But I will lead a rich
| life.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Here's the other thing: people who spend their time playing
| tennis, raising kids, hanging out with their dog by the grill,
| etc. aren't constantly marketing their lifestyles to social
| media.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > first time I've done it, won't be the last, but won't be
| often
|
| I used to live close enough to bike to work, but I had nowhere
| to wash off the sweat. We (work) recently moved to a new
| building with a fitness center with showers, but it's too far
| to ride a bike. FML
| trillic wrote:
| > too far to ride a bike
|
| Skill issue.
| butlike wrote:
| Nicer way: new goal
| seemaze wrote:
| Puts the 'daily grind' in a different light. Don't be the
| machine at work, so you have the time to become the
| (endurance cycling) machine!
|
| While I'm sure the cycling angle brings more tangible
| benefits, I suspect they (work and cycling) suffer from the
| same drawbacks of committing to an unending display of
| exertion and suffering.
| seemaze wrote:
| On a serious note, I do wish many places had much better
| bicycle infrastructure. My town has come a long way, but
| still has a long way to go..
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| It wasn't until I started outdoor skating that I realized
| just how much of suburbia can be reached by footpaths
| that are almost entirely shielded from roads.
|
| There are inevitable road crossings, but at a certain
| basic level of competency that doesn't pose a problem
| (except if you slip and slightly tear an adductor, for
| those of us over-forties).
|
| I'm fairly paranoid about putting my bodily integrity at
| the mercy of device-distracted operators of two-tonne
| missiles flying past a metre off my right shoulder with
| no curb or other barrier between.
|
| I might be crazy, but I'm not suicidal.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I actually drove to a convenient location from which to
| skate. It's a route I've done quite a few times on weekends
| as both an activity in and of itself, but also reconnaissance
| for the potential commute.
|
| (A lot of 'doing' is dual purpose, both doing and preparation
| for some future 'next time')
|
| It's about a 12km skate from there to work / the city.
|
| Would a compromise such as that be a possibility?
| Zambyte wrote:
| E-bike?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > I'll never be a rich man. But I will lead a rich life.
|
| This is the way. I want to earn enough money to live on (and
| I'm _extremely_ lucky that I get to earn a living doing
| something I love), but past that point I care much more about
| doing things I enjoy or spending time with people I care about.
| More money is fine, I wouldn 't necessarily turn it down if
| someone gave me a raise out of nowhere... but it's not
| important either.
| ai-christianson wrote:
| Having a hobby kind of like going shallow into one or more
| topics.
|
| Wouldn't the best way to spend a life be to go all in on one
| thing?
|
| It's not like a video game where we can just try again. If the
| main quest isn't right, better find a new one, not just add
| distracting side quests.
| mrwrong wrote:
| > Wouldn't the best way to spend a life be to go all in on
| one thing?
|
| no
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Dealers choice.
|
| The world is too interesting for me to be happy to limit
| myself to one thing.
|
| Additionally, I listen to a wide variety of music, read not a
| very wide variety of books (mainly hard sci-fi), consider
| myself a connoisseur of film and television, take an interest
| in at least two other sports (have season tickets to the
| local teams games), run a slightly more than simple homelab
| (in a room I built myself in the shed, complete with backup
| battery power and rudimentary climate control), including
| hosting my own email server, amongst other parental and
| husbandly duties.
|
| One of the reasons I'm awake at 3am on Christmas Day.
|
| Everything is interesting. Limiting oneself to one thing is
| exceedingly boring.
|
| Disclaimer: personal opinion. I see and live off the benefits
| to the world provided by the single minded. But I'll never
| pretend I could live like that.
| convolvatron wrote:
| its really possible to top out on some of these things. once
| you're at the point where you're like 'I could try to do this
| professionally, but that would ruin the fun of it and its a
| really tough market'
|
| plus, dont forget about the substantial benefits from cross-
| training
|
| if you find something thats really your thing, thats great,
| but the goal is to interest and engage yourself. why is it
| that important to demand the time to to eek out that last 5%
|
| its also possible to actually blow through a field. the scope
| of coding projects I can just spit out as rote are well past
| what anyone is willing to adopt. what would be the point of
| training any further. there's really a lot more to learn
| about machining.
| butlike wrote:
| There's no such thing as going all in on one thing. At some
| point you know how to find food and eat, so no matter how
| much you've devoted your time to one thing, it won't be the
| maximum possible amount of time
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| It's entirely possible to spread yourself too thin across too
| many interests, but the solution to that isn't to "go all in
| on one thing".
| callc wrote:
| Very well written, thank you.
|
| I recently was very sick and was thinking about the people
| whose employers put their work output over their health.
| butlike wrote:
| There's no such thing as productivity. Productivity is
| concocted solutions to manufactured problems.
| slickdork wrote:
| >I'll never be a rich man. But I will lead a rich life.
|
| it's interesting how relative this statement is. For a lot of
| people, being able to lead a rich life means you're already
| rich; if you're not worrying about money every day (and i mean
| literally checking your bank account before going to the
| grocery store), you are rich.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| This is, unfortunately, accurate.
| rityvkjivfgj wrote:
| > I'll never be a rich man. But I will lead a rich life.
|
| > I'm good enough at what I do to earn a living for the
| foreseeable future.
|
| You are rich, then. You may not be a billionaire, but the
| simple fact that you don't have to worry about money and
| employment makes you a rich person by default.
|
| Having the work/life balance you so proudly proclaim to have is
| a result of owning wealth. Good on you.
| haskellandrust wrote:
| This post is essentially the premise of the Adam Curtis series
| "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace."
| Balgair wrote:
| https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/bbc-all-watched-over-by...
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I have trouble figuring what this is about. You could read it as
| ,,don't fall for hustle culture" or ,,don't work hard, work
| smart" which is just a different version of hustle culture. May
| also be a warning on AI and the cost of trying to stay afloat.
| uoaei wrote:
| It's mostly about "don't let the structure of your cognition
| mirror the simplistic machines you create; they are meant to be
| augmentations so you can offload that kind of rote cognition
| and focus on the creative synthetic methods that humans are
| uniquely suited for."
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Now if you could explain it to a 5 year old..
| Terr_ wrote:
| "It's okay to scrape crayons into stubs when making a
| picture, but don't scrape _yourself_ away. "
| maxverse wrote:
| This feels like a good second draft. There's definitely a message
| in here, but it shifts through the piece. To me, the most
| poignant sentence was " If I can just keep chugging forward, I
| will end up somewhere that is not here." I think the message is
| "Why are you working this hard? What do you hope to get out of
| participating in hustle culture; to what end?
| alecwindmill wrote:
| > "Hustle-culture optimizes for work input because it's sexy.
| It's easy to post the inputs. It's hard to face the output"
|
| Amazing
| renewiltord wrote:
| Remember that on the Internet the majority of people are telling
| you:
|
| - dating is hard
|
| - loneliness is an epidemic
|
| - they've got untreated trauma
|
| - society is the cause of all this
|
| Do you want to select your advice from a population the majority
| of whose life sucks? Getting self-help advice out of a population
| which can't help itself is a prima-facie idiotic idea.
| arscan wrote:
| > Try to find the most rewarding solution.
|
| This sentence gave me pause and I'll be chewing it over in my
| mind for awhile, I think.
| akomtu wrote:
| > Only a slave quantifies its existence through productivity
|
| > If I can turn myself into a mechanism that takes input and
| consistently works towards some goal...
|
| This is, in fact, a quasi-religion, if you think about it. Its
| central dogma is that humans are no different from machines, so
| we can be reduced to automatas with well-defined inputs, outputs,
| productivity and other measurable _metrics_.
| *Productivity is your heart, Corporation is your body
| and GDP is your god*
|
| would be its motto.
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