
I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013) - reikonomusha
http://web.archive.org/web/20140711171559/http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=1803
======
reikonomusha
It’s always a little bit risky to write something personal that will
inevitably come across as something other than humble. _Especially_ when it’s
also mixed with something that comes across very first-world-problemy. Mind
you that showing that one can do a little bit of calculus isn’t a testament to
being a genius or anything like that. The examples the story describes might
as well be equivalent to something more obviously creative in nature that
isn’t bound by the constraints of time, like amateur painting or music making
might be. (Professional mathematicians or physicists would agree that a
hypergeometric series doesn’t even scratch the surface of “difficult”
mathematics.) There are real geniuses in the world having extraordinary
intuition being extraordinarily productive and have something to show for it.
This is not that.

I posted this because I was reminded of it after reading pg’s Bus Ticket
essay—which to me was more about discovery than it was genius. When you have
10+ hours a day, 7 days a week, with no dependents and no job, there’s a lot
of room to follow interests, as petty/useless/insignificant as they may be,
and frequently if you spend _that_ much time, you’ll discover new things or
make new connections.

The conclusion of the story maybe is obvious in retrospect: that doesn’t
happen (as easily) if you have a job (or family or partner or ...), even if
your work is in an area you ostensibly love. You won’t have the same space to
dive deep in areas that you choose, and you may not reach the same level of
creative zen. It’s not something I realized going into the job market over a
decade ago, and I think it’s a worthwhile consideration for people who value
not being preoccupied with what time it is.

(For those expressing concern, don’t. Or those taking away that I’m not doing
something that I like or following my passions, I am. I still do the things I
like to do, but I don’t sacrifice everything else in life to focus on them
exclusively. It remains to this day that that has its costs and benefits.)

~~~
bluetwo
Thanks for sharing.

I stared in horror at the following:

"Here in Silicon Valley, it’s even worse. I have an aesthetically nicer place,
but I now don’t even have a desk or desktop machine. I type from a small
laptop on my couch, being held up by a pillow. I have no room for a chalkboard
or whiteboard, unless I wanted to cover up half of my mirrored closet."

I am an east-coast developer and am totally spoiled with my home office. I
never had an urge to move to silicon valley and this makes me even happier I'm
not there.

Five computers spread out over three desks, two large bookshelves, a couch,
and a fireplace.

~~~
neuronic
I am a German developer with a German developer salary (between 60k€ and 70k€
to provide a ballpark estimate) and I live in the center of a large, well-
known German city.

The area is extremely nice except for parking and I live in a ~70sqm
modernized apartment with my own home office and enough room for tech gadgets,
a large couch, a large bed and a balcony... etc.

In the evening, restaurants, bars, cinema and nice parks are < 15mins walk
away. Grocery store from cheap to luxurious are in the same range. I have
access to good healthcare (aside from getting an appointment for specialists
it's fine), insured the most important aspects of my life and if I want to go
to another large capital I need 20mins to go to Central Station and take a
train or 20mins to the airport and take a flight.

Aside from Apple and depending on what you want, all major Silicon Valley
firms provide jobs in at least one of the larger German cities, notably Munich
though.

I honestly do not understand why people are drawn to Silicon Valley so much -
unless it's simply about the "environment of minds" if you are willing to
sacrifice all other aspects of life to it to some degree (worse living
situation, worse working conditions...). For innovation and startup life, I
suppose it makes sense. But for a normal software engineer?

Can somebody explain this to me?

~~~
i_am_new_here
Salary at FAANG starts at 120.000USD (when you 'just' graduated from Stanford
or Berkeley) and will go up to about 300.000 over time.

~~~
neuronic
I understand that. I earn less but don't push half my salary to rent or
breaking my bone.

------
desc
My advice would be: rigorously eliminate everything from your life which
doesn't fit inside your top X critical priorities.

Where X is as small as possible, and seek to cull it further by combining
equivalents and trying to identify why some 'important' things might actually
be utter wastes of time in the first place.

The world generally uses a ratchet approach to conquer your attention. Use a
ratchet to take it back.

~~~
calderarrow
This is excellent advice which has even been echoed by Warren Buffet [0]. Time
is a finite resource and therefore everything we do is a trade-off between
depth and breadth. In a given day, you could spend 1 hour learning 24
subjects, or 24 hours learning 1 subject. One isn't necessarily better than
the other, but it's a constraint we all operate around. Learning 24 subjects
may be interesting and fulfilling to some, but from a professional standpoint
those that tend to be most influential in their respective fields are those
that devote the most time towards their subjects. There are exceptions of
course, but this is the general advice for the general population.

Recently, I've started to adopt a similar perspective by rigorously evaluating
everything with a simple question: "20 years from now, will my kids be proud
that I did this?" If the answer is no, I stop it. So far, I've stopped playing
video games and using social media, and I've noticed that I've gotten an extra
10-15 hours per week to spend on things that will make me a better person in
the long term, like reading, working out, and spending time with my friends
and family.

The same approach could be used with any endeavor: "In X years, will I be
better at <subject> if I continue to do Y?"

[0] [https://jamesclear.com/buffett-focus](https://jamesclear.com/buffett-
focus)

~~~
ldd
> _For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more
> intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New
> York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in
> the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always
> believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same
> reasons._

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

~~~
neuronic
This resonates well with me. I honestly do not understand the benefit of
dropping video games in favor of <random hobby>, for example reading.
Alternate / do both if you enjoy it!

Before you recoil in disgust, let me note that I have read many many books and
love reading. I value literature a lot but when it comes down to what I do in
life and what things REALLY REALLY give me in the end, then books don't
perform better than a range of selected video games (to my own gusto). In then
end, a book doesn't propel to new positions more than a game does, unless
it'sa book meant to teach me new technology or so.

It's simply another form of media, another form of story telling and conveying
experiences. And while I enjoyed "Marc Aurel's Meditations" and took a lot of
benefit out of it, Persona 5 also provided me with some good, memorable
experiences that make me rethink life. Even just the "Take your time" loading
screen spinner... If I put them on a scale it's simply even for me in value.

~~~
ldd
I'm with you on Persona 5. I haven't finished it, but it has already
influenced my life in a positive way.

You should consider playing "Tales of Berseria". It poses an interesting
question: "Why do bird fly?", and gives interesting answers.

------
MaximumYComb
I read this article and while it's sad the author doesn't pursue passions
anymore, I also can't help think that maybe they just aren't as hungry as they
once were. I was diagnosed with cancer 4 years ago and it changed my
perspective on life. I'm mid 30's now and more productive than ever. I also
work full time and am a single father to two little kids. The way I describe
it is that I am hungry. I didn't expect it to last this long but it's been
years and I'm still regarded as a very motivated and determined person by
others.

~~~
noir_lord
Similar situation (though not Cancer, in my case a life a potentially life
altering spinal condition and a separate unrelated but equality serious
stomach condition) and similar response, I suddenly started going for jobs I
wouldn't have dared before and both getting them and doing them well.

I also bought a motorbike and will be upgrading that to a faster one next
year, both medical conditions are under control and the medication works but
now I'm determined to _live_ my life on my terms for as long as I can rather
than just drift.

I also ramped up the exercise and I'm now lighter and fitter than I was in my
late 20's (I'm approach 40) - I think sometimes you have two choices, cave or
say "fuck you" to the universe and carry on, I'm glad you picked the latter
but I understand why someone would pick the former.

~~~
jacquesm
> cave or say "fuck you" to the universe and carry on

Props to you! That's a great attitude to have.

------
tempsolution
I am curious to why you think working at Google is reserved only for the very
best of the field? I don't have good visibility into normal companies, but
honestly all FAANG companies essentially employ armies of average developers,
although they might have a higher density of exceptional developers than other
companies. Mostly they are distinguished by two things:

* They work with economies of scale. What may be viable for a startup might be useless for Google. What might be viable for Google might be absolutely disastrous for a startup.

* They use a management style that fosters innovation and learning.

The interviews can be tough, yeah, but all it takes is practice and given that
you seem to have good mathematical skills, hiding a few weeks or months in the
basement with an algorithms book and a laptop, should make it easy for you to
pass a Google interview.

~~~
topkai22
Having spent a good deal with my of my career in the wilds of technical
consulting, I can say with confidence that the product group and engineers at
places like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon really are better than average.
That's not to say they have a lock on all good engineers, because but they
have very few bad ones.

You are right though, getting into one of the bigs isn't impossible with a
reasonable amount of work studying for the interviews and aggressively seeking
connections It's just that the people willing and able to do that work are
already showing they have the right mindset to be a good dev a anywhere

~~~
turk73
But with these "better than average" types, what is the culture like other
than constant, non-stop work?

People died to get us a 40 hour work week and here we have all these brilliant
folks putting us right back in chains. They think they're getting rich, but it
is all a lie. A few are getting rich, the rest are being tricked.

~~~
topkai22
At Microsoft its pretty good, I can't speak well for others. Work-life
flexibility is something we take pretty seriously in the groups I've worked
in, and the workload is pretty manageable. It's a little >40h/week on average,
but not dramatically so, and most people take their full vacation and holiday
packages (3-5 weeks vacation, 12 holidays). There are bad weeks or a bad
month, but its not the norm. I'd say almost everyone spends more time then
that doing other technical things, but that's because we get joy out of it.
Last time I tried to measure it, I'm typically doing about 5-10h/week on top
of work reading technical books, researching something, or playing with some
new technology on my own time.

There are also a number of true workaholics spending 60 hours + a week
strictly working, but that's typically because they want to and not because
the organization is running in permanent crunch mode.

------
justboxing
> How has this affected me? I’ve mentally atrophied. I now feel like I can’t
> talk about any subject with more than a centimeter of depth. A half a decade
> ago, I could dive with you to the penetralia of convergence theorems of
> hypergeometric series, but now I cannot. Even my programming has taken a
> toll even though I do it every day. I find myself abstaining from studying
> advanced topics in programming and computer science, and instead sticking to
> this comfort zone of what I know.

How does one go about overcoming mental atrophy? Especially after spending a
decade or more programming, I think most (if not all) developers battle with
this problem...

If any one of you has successfully done this, please share.

~~~
Hermitian909
I've seen many engineers manage this by simply finding ways to work less.

Programming is sufficiently difficult that time it takes to complete tasks can
vary by more than order of magnitude. I've given a junior engineer a task that
would take me 2 hours, had them come back with a solution in a week, and been
happy with the result.

So if you achieve a certain level of skill you can take jobs that are "beneath
you" and claim the tasks that took you 10-20 hours actually took you 40. It's
not particularly honest, but most employers aren't willing to engage in fair
market rates at 20 hours a week so people find ways to get what they want
outside of the system.

~~~
pkaye
Yeah that is kind of how I'm approaching it after I was diagnosed with serious
health issues. I just take it easy on my job where I can do in 20 hours what
others take 40 hours. I still get paid well above what I need to live. My
travel times to work are good. I rarely have to work on weekends.

------
knzhou
The author says he's clever, and I believe him. It's easy to believe, because
I've heard this story a hundred times before.

I grew up with lots of clever people, met through math and science
competitions and camps. Easily 80% of them, maybe 90%, have gone off to FAANG,
investment banks, or consulting firms, and had the exact same fate. Nothing
was stopping them from continuing to tinker with ideas. None of them would
have gone hungry that way. They made a choice -- a perfectly fine, rational
one -- but let no one say the result was surprising.

------
ausbah
The guy sounds like Stephen Wolfram with how casually he strokes his ego by
going on and on about all his wonderful intellectual pursuits.

His account does bring up the awful-but-rarely-discussed issue how to keep
even somewhat "mentally sharp" amidst all the demands of life.

~~~
Aeolun
It was kind of funny. I recall people talking about what they did like that
before. At least here I could skip ahead instead of wait for them to get to
the point.

------
cryptonector
Dude, never accept a four hour a day commute. Go somewhere else. Take less
pay. Go to "flyover" country. Anything but a 4 hour commute.

When you regain 3+ of those hours, your mental atrophy will subside.

Also, if you are (or were) as brilliant as you say, then just go to grad
school. You don't really need an undergrad degree!

------
buzzkillington
>Even my programming has taken a toll even though I do it every day. I find
myself abstaining from studying advanced topics in programming and computer
science, and instead sticking to this comfort zone of what I know. I
contemplate blaming this last issue on the fact that Silicon Valley is quietly
cutthroat; you need to be the best at what you do in order to land jobs at
e.g. Google. If I stay in my comfort zone, I am able to keep small unimportant
details of a particular language, tool, or implementation in L1 brain cache,
which proves useful during interviews.

The way I deal with this is getting the most highly paying job I can and then
having three months off where I do what I please.

I've just finished a contract with an Evil Inc that's paid me enough that I
can buy a lab to do synthetic biology in. While waiting for the machines to
arrive I'm doing some really fun C.S. stuff I have not done before.

When the money runs out I will go back to doing what I was doing before. This
is the 4th time I've taken time off. It hasn't hurt my career progression at
all.

~~~
vageli
From your post it sounds like you do consulting or freelancing. If I may, how
long do these engagements typically last? I've flirted with the idea of short
periods off in between jobs (FTE though) but have typically kept up ~2 year
engagements.

~~~
buzzkillington
I'm somewhere between consulting and contracting. Ideally between 6 months and
1 year. My last gig lasted 18 months which was too long, I've also had 8 week
stints but those drain you with all the hustling you need to do between jobs.

My partner and I own our own company and optimizing taxes is the main reason
why we can afford buying $50k in equipment. That we have similar interests
also helps.

------
reikonomusha
Previous discussion (2013):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5806132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5806132)

------
rustybolt
Thanks for writing and sharing. This articulates a lot of the feelings I have
about work as well, and it's put more eloquently than I am able to. It's only
now that I appreciate my time at university, where I would actually learn
things that interest me, and have a lot of free time as well. If I wanted to
try something new, e.g. reverse engineering, I could pick up a solid basis in
some weeks (or months). I now have an ever-growing list of projects that I
just don't have the time for. The scary thing is that the longer I wait, the
more I lose motivation to work on these things.

It also seems related to mathematics and computer science as a hobby. If I
want to go running, I can do so in an hour and be done with it. With
mathematics or programming, I need a couple of hours before I start being
productive. Most people who don't do math or programming don't understand
this. They frown when I don't make any noteworthy progress in one or two
hours, and when I try to work on something I keep getting interrupted which is
detrimental to my productivity. I talked to my girlfriend about the long list
of projects I still wanted to do (work on programming languages, operating
systems, compilers, assemblers, FPGA's, memory controllers, reading/learning
math stuff, and writing). A weekend later she asked me something along the
lines of "Well, you've had the whole sunday morning to work on these things;
Did you manage to cross some things of your list?". I mentioned that these are
not one-day projects, but I won't be surprised if she'll ask again after
christmas.

------
JohnBooty
I'd hesitate to call the solution to his problems "obvious" but it seems _one_
obvious thing he should do is look for remote work, or at least work someplace
with a lesser commute so that he can get 4 hours a day back from his commute.

He should take a less-challenging job, perhaps, and get his work done quickly
so that he can have lots of time left over for his own pursuits. I've had jobs
in the past where I was able to do this with some success.

The idea that your job should challenge you is, perhaps, BS.

For so many jobs, the "challenges" consist mainly of dealing with political
forces and/or forcing yourself to do other things you may not necessarily care
about.

I would guess only a tiny percentage of us have jobs that are truly
fulfilling. And maybe that's fine. Maybe we should go back to the days where
we just punched the clock, figuratively speaking, and ditch the idea of
getting fulfillment from our jobs. It's hurting our ability to find
fulfillment elsewhere.

------
segmondy
Time management, mental and physical energy management, planning and
organizing are very underrated skills in tech. No matter how clever you are if
you don't have the above, you are going to hit the ceiling fast in a demanding
environment.

The dreaded word! Processes and systems, better figure out systems and
processes that work for you fast.

You must figure out what works for you, here's a few for me.

I use a trello board to manage home tasks and personal tasks. I schedule
things I need to do in my calendar. I use checklist to keep track of things I
need to do. I even schedule fun activities so I don't burn out. When I can
tell I'm running low on sleep, I schedule sleep alarms to remind me to go to
bed. To dive deep into something when you don't have the time is tough, but
you can do so by scheduling smaller times and keep detailed notes which you
can reference to remember what you have done and where you were.

------
Merrill
Best bet would be to find a corporate job that best matched his interests.
Back in the day, major corporate labs could manage a limited number of
"sheltered workshop" situations for particularly talented people. Academia
wouldn't work because of academic politics and the funding mechanisms. Both
academia and government are also too "credential" oriented to hire him.

------
Animats
This predates the machine learning boom. Now there's much more demand for
people who are into that kind of math.

------
sdiq
I would love to read the article because, based on the comments here, it seems
interesting. However, regardless of what I do, I can't seem to have the math
load for me. I have tried Firefox, Chrome and Edge with no luck.

------
mirimir
> I don't like to work too often, unless it's for something groovy...

"Even Dwarves Start Small", by Younger Brother

------
itronitron
well, I hope the author is doing well

------
fishingisfun
saved

------
Kenji
_But the environment matters a lot less than the fact that when I get home
from work—which is a two hour commute each way (sorry, I can’t afford to live
in downtown San Francisco)—I just feel like being mentally incapacitated._

This person spends 4 hours commuting each day. I would suffer from mental
atrophy as well. If you work full-time, that's at least 8 additional hours per
day down the drain, and that doesn't even include groceries, cooking, eating,
taking a shower, etc. Barely any time is left if you want to get 7-8 hours of
sleep. I think the soul-crushing reality here is that a commute like this is
very unhealthy, and that he should change this by moving or getting another
job.

~~~
mcv
Either the commute, or the long working day. The commute might be less soul
crushing on a 6 hour work day.

In any case, I generally refuse jobs outside Amsterdam (where I live) unless
it's Utrecht right next to the station. Otherwise the commute just gets too
long. Sometimes a recruiter asks if there's really no way around that, and I
tell them counting the commute as hours worked, meaning I'd be present at the
office less, would work fine for me. I don't want to be forced to sacrifice
private time for work.

------
santoshalper
Very cringey stuff.

~~~
ShteiLoups
why do you say that?

