
An Honest Living - severine
https://stevesalaita.com/an-honest-living/
======
keiferski
During and after college, I spent about four years working in a bakery. I
pretty much ran the whole place - making the dough, creating the extra
ingredients for pastries, running the cash register, talking to customers, and
so on.

At the time, it didn't seem like a great job. But now, looking back after 5+
years of staring at a screen for 8 hours a day, I miss the physicality of
being a baker. I hope the next computer revolution will untether computers
from a sedentary work environment.

~~~
Waterluvian
I will never get bored of the intellectual stimulace of my job, but yes, I did
start to yearn for something more physical. Having kids pretty much solved
that desire for me. I'm now a full time roboticist and a part time cook,
people mover, negotiator, lab manager, construction foreman, fitness coach,
gym spotter, goalie, wanderer, professional wrestler, cleaner, etc.

I'm surprised every week by what it's like to be a parent. I never expected it
to round my life out in such a healthy way, both mentally and physically. Not
just because I have offspring but because I'm doing a ton of things I haven't
done in years, decades.

~~~
shandor
> Not just because I have offspring but because I'm doing a ton of things I
> haven't done in years, decades.

One of the great things in being a parent is that I can once more forget
myself for hours when building snow castles or burrowing tunnels into a snow
mountain at the end of the street, and no one bats an eye 'because kids'.
Having kids also changes you in a way that you once more remember how awesome
that was in the first place.

~~~
Waterluvian
Right now I'm lounging in a tent filled with pillows and blankets, in the
basement, snuggling with my son as we watch cartoons (StoryBots is a
masterpiece).

There are effects of this morning routine, which I cannot directly explain,
that make my upcoming work day so easy and productive.

------
yardie
Honestly, I have no idea why anyone posts anything on Twitter beyond cat and
dog pics. It's simply impossible to tweet any nuanced position. Yet people
continue to try. It's possible to support Israel, Palestine, 2-state
solutions, etc. and not be an antisemite. It's damn hard to say that in less
than 200 characters.

From what I know of Salaita he was convicted of free-thought. Labeled an anti-
semite. And the rest is history.

~~~
SUr3na
Antisemite means "opposing people of Semitic ethnicity". Surprisingly Arabs
are also Semitic people. Therefore whichever side you pick you can't be
antisemitic by definition.You can be anti Zionist and oppose people based on
thier actions and ideas, not their ethnicity. I saw many people using this
nonsense argument that according to a paper written by some people the
definition of anti Semitism is opposing Israel. This is falsely accusing
people who criticize Israel and labeling them as racist.

~~~
bdauer
That's the etymology of the two roots of the word, but it's not the English
definition which specifically refers to discrimination against Jews. The word
is from a German term which was created by an antisemite in order to make his
hate speech sound more reasonable.

I say this in no way to discredit your argument against the conflation of
anti-Zionism with antisemitism. It's possible to be critical of Zionism
without being antisemitic.

------
MrGilbert
I know, the quintessence of this article isn't about "quitting your job and do
sth. totally different", but...

From time to time, I feel like that. Just leave software dev behind, and
become a truck driver.

~~~
jaaames
Can anyone that has been in the industry for a significant period of time
comment on this feeling?

I'm 5 years deep professionally, 15 years as a hobby, and no longer enjoying
software, at least in it's form consumed by a customer.

Similar to a sibling poster, I'm envious of the landscaper, school teacher, or
electrician.

Has anyone left software and felt better off for it, or regretted it?

Interested to hear any anecdotes or insight.

~~~
pkaye
One of my hobby is doing small improvements around the house. I really enjoy
the work that a electrician or carpenter or landscaper does. I fancy myself
running one of those businesses but in reality I know the job can be grueling
as you get older and the pay is not always great. Also due to major health
issues, I think a desk job is the best for me. I think in reality as a
developer if you get bored you should change employers and work on different
problems.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Same, or possibly more extreme. I've renovated most of the rooms in my house
which were in a bad state of repair. I've installed a new kitchen. Just got to
finish the bathrooms.

I do find that spending a weekend putting up plasterboard or tearing out a
fireplace gives one a new appreciation for the mental challenges of coding.

------
jorgesborges
This story is becoming too familiar. The extent to which our freedom of speech
is being limited today is frightening. It's clear to me that universities are
no longer a place for intellectuals and free-thinkers to question the
rationality of society. People are being fired for writing emotional tweets.
Are we that sensitive, scared, and close-minded? Is this sustainable?

~~~
stronglikedan
> our freedom of speech is being limited

We have the same freedom of speech that we've always had.

> Are we that sensitive, scared, and close-minded?

The online community seems to be. Good thing it's just a very vocal minority.

> Is this sustainable?

Online: yes. IRL: it wouldn't be, but that's why it doesn't spill out into
real life that often, and when it does, it's discouraged.

~~~
colpabar
> Good thing it's just a vocal minority.

Are you being sarcastic? The "very vocal minority" has seemingly limitless
power to ruin people's lives over words they don't like. Businesses are forced
to close, professors are forced to resign. We're passed the point of being
able to say "it's just the internet," and it's time we all acknowledged that.

~~~
Pharmakon
The four highest officials in Virginia just brazened out being in blackface,
Steve King still has a job, and the president is... well I won’t go into it. I
think you might need to recalibrate your sense of these things.

~~~
colpabar
It's interesting that you only mentioned politicians and not any of the
businesses or professors who have been ruined, like I said in my comment. When
an internet mob comes for a politician, a political mob fights back. Most
people don't have that luxury.

------
eecc
Uh oh, I remember the story of this guy, it’s also linked in the blog article
itself:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/professo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/professors-
angry-tweets-on-gaza-cost-him-a-job.html)

------
GarvielLoken
Well I havn't changed career but after graduation I did start doing my hobby
half-time so to speak and it atleast filled the physical world need I believe.
Rampt up my BJJ, and to a lesser extend Judo, from 1-2 times a week to 4-6
times a week training so that the club was basically my second home, also
started competing actively during three-four years.

These days I'm dialing down on it, back to around three times a week. Started
doing Cuban Salsa a year ago because of my current girlfriend, who also goes
to BJJ with me. Changed job from an e-commerce which I worked for the first
four years to an IT-consultant firm where I'm currently at my third
assignment, changing things up. Negotiated to have two months service leave
during the summer the last two years where I try to travel.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't need to change occupation,
you do hobbies and try to renegotiate your conditions.

------
Jun8
This is a combination of thoughtful takes on being a school bus driver, quite
an interesting topic in itself (how do you deal with the kids, traffic, etc.)
and reinventing yourself in middle age in a job far afield.

It also contains reminiscence and opinions of Salaita on the controversy that
cost him his promised job.

This second topic is a complicated one, I suggest before being quick to to
decide that he was booted off wrongly for a "thought crime" or rightly because
he's an ardent anti-semite one should get familiar with the controversy. At a
high-level you can read:

    
    
      * The Wikipedia article on the controversy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salaita_controversy
      * The NYT article from 2014: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/professors-angry-tweets-on-gaza-cost-him-a-job.html
      * Chicago Tribune article from 2017: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-steve-salaita-academia-exit-perspec-0728-jm-20170727-story.html
    

From there on, if the general topic piques your interest, you can branch off
on one or many of the following topics, among others:

    
    
      * Role of Hamas and other organizations in Middle East
      * What is free speech - start with pg's essay : http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
      * Role of twitter (and other social media in polarization of contemporary societies): E.g. is this a new thing or does it have analogues in history, e.g. French revolutionary pamphlets (if you're in Chicago, you can see the collection in Newberry https://www.newberry.org/french-pamphlets)
      * Jews and the Civil Right Movement in the US, how these two got disconnected, you can start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American%E2%80%93Jewish_relations, then check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_teachers%27_strike_of_1968 and the book *Ungovernable City* which covers the strike in detail
      * The relationship between the Left and Jewish Community: Whoa, this is a huge topic, New Yorker just recently covered it https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/looking-at-anti-semitism-on-the-left-and-the-right-an-interview-with-deborah-e-lipstadt
      * Is it all about the Benjamins? Just this month US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar had to publicly apologize for *her* tweets https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/11/ilhan-omar-antisemitic-tweets-house-democrats-apology

------
nickpsecurity
This is a great piece. I'll highlight this as the reason I didn't go into
government and corporate R&D:

"there’s something profoundly liberating about leaving academe, whereupon you
are no longer obliged to give a shit about fashionable thinkers, network at
the planet’s most boring parties, or quantify self-worth for scurrilous
committees (and whereupon you are free to ignore the latest same-old
controversy), for even when you know at the time that the place is toxic, only
after you exit (spiritually, not physically) and write an essay or read a
novel or complete some other task without considering its relevance to the
fascist gods of assessment, or its irrelevance to a gang of cynical senior
colleagues, do you realize exactly how insidious and pervasive is the
industry’s culture of social control."

I already saw it from the outside. Being an independent researcher's main
drawback is you might not make any money. We usually do it as a hobby on top
of a full-time job. Having less attention, both for help and promotion, is
next one. The wins are that you can do whatever you want, however you want,
write it the way you like, and enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed. I'm
probably about to transition into paid research and/or product development
soon. I did thoroughly enjoy throwing my mind at hard problems for years
without feeling the pressure to think and do things I didn't want to. And the
parties I threw or attended weren't boring. :)

~~~
zerogvt
```whereupon you are no longer obliged to give a shit about fashionable
thinkers, network at the planet’s most boring parties, or quantify self-worth
for scurrilous committees (and whereupon you are free to ignore the latest
same-old controversy), for even when you know at the time that the place is
toxic ``` Same goes for most SW-dev houses/companies.

What's your field of research btw? And how do you manage to muster energy for
it _on_top_ of a full time job?

~~~
nickpsecurity
High-assurance security:

[https://dwheeler.com/essays/high-assurance-
floss.html](https://dwheeler.com/essays/high-assurance-floss.html)

The INFOSEC field was invented by people doing such things, they solved many
root issues back in 1970's-1990's, were ignored, mainstream reinvents stuff at
a trickle, and niche in CompSci and government doing high-assurance are
gettimg more results than ever. I stay promoting it since our critical systems
and infrastructure being bulletproof is unserved need. I also design ways to
approximate it at lower cost and talent required.

And it's really draining. I just do it since it's both an interesting subject
that's also a social need. Seemed like right thing to do.

------
jstewartmobile
Give HN an article about a guy being squeezed out of his job for thought-
crime, and what do we do with that?

Bitch about our own gilded cages for not giving us enough exercise, of course.

That's how we roll baby!

~~~
cheesymuffin
I like your post. Let me shoulder some of your downvotes.

~~~
jstewartmobile
Ha! Love it!

------
thorwasdfasdf
I've always thought that it was almost impossible to be fired if you were
tenured. But, after reading this article, I got the impression that a tenured
position is a precarious one at best, that requires slavish devotion to
politics to avoid getting fired. Am I missing something here?

~~~
sahinabi
They hired him to be a tenured professor, but fired him before he started his
job and argued that he wasn't hired yet in the first place. The lawsuit &
settlement was about that.

------
pault
> About halfway to the lot, a ribbon of cobalt rises on the horizon; when it’s
> cloudy, a common occurrence in the mid-Atlantic, the darkness stays pure.
> The spectrum of color will change with the seasons, but now it is winter and
> the sun comes slowly, if it appears at all.

Ugh, I'm so sick of these flowery long form articles. I had to scan through
ten long paragraphs just to find what the article is about.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I think it would be reasonable to include a note in the HN guidelines about
not complaining about "magazine-style" writing like this. I see it over and
over here, and it's really boring and trite at this point. Many people don't
like more expressive forms of writing, especially the HN crowd, but it's a
legitimate style which many people enjoy. Why can't people just ignore (or
even flag) and move on?

Actually, maybe the guidelines do eschew this complaint:

 _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something._

------
nimbius
This article reminds me of the first time I had to get a class C (commercial)
truck license. I work as a diesel engine mechanic, and in order to test our
work, or diagnose problems, sometimes we drive the trucks themselves. Ive
driven school buses before.

School buses are the black sheep of heavy duty trucks. they need a pretty good
duty cycle on the engine, and cant cost much because cash strapped states
rarely chip in for stuff like tinted windows or turbos. Durability takes
precedence over performance, so you have a 26,000lb vehicle up to 45ft long
built on a lowest-bidder chassis. Brakes are commonly "whatever" and its
somewhat rare to see jake style engine braking provided. there are no luxuries
like low air alarms, TPMS, or over-angle alarms for hills so you need to be a
damn good driver considering youve got up to 90 screaming kids as your cargo.

they are miserable in corners, and because the rear axle is fixed the offset
considerably affects your turning radius. Id rather park a 53' commercial
diesel than try to back a schoolbus into a spot.

TL;DR: Steve picked easily the hardest truck to drive in my opinion, other
than a tanker.

------
theshadowknows
I worked retail, later I worked in factories. I almost had my hand torn off in
a machine once. I dislocated my shoulder keeping a pallet from landing on a
coworker. I passed out due to exhaustion and heat unloading trucks. I had
customers punch me and spit on me working at a gas station. I mopped up piss
and blood and tamped down dumpsters with my own feet.

Blue collar work is brutal beyond belief and I don’t plan to go back if I can
do anything to keep from doing so.

------
ericmcer
One thing not noted in the article is the psychological toll working a job
like bus driver takes if its the peak of your professional life.

Its slightly demeaning for people with well respected jobs that are
intellectually demanding to step down from their position and enjoy the
simplicity and directness of a job like bus driver. They will not have the
weight of inadequacy that most people in low skill occupations carry.

------
coleifer
The line that expressed the author's opinion most clearly to me was this:

> Public discourse doesn’t exist in a free market.

I read the article as an indictment of capitalist forces, which pressure
people into conformity as a path towards, ironically, (economic) freedom.

The author is fighting and is in conflict. I wonder, though, if there is
another way, so that freedom doesn't have to come through either blind
conformity or "me against the world" conflict. There are a lot of things in
our world and our culture which I don't like, yet isn't recognizing my
powerless to change the world to my liking an equally valid path to freedom?

------
linkmotif
"Zionists: transforming anti-semitism from something horrible into something
honorable since 1948."

From:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salaita_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salaita_controversy)

~~~
sangnoir
A charitable interpretation of that quotation is that Zionists have
transformed the definition of anti-semitism from something truly horrible
(bigotry) to something the author finds honorable (criticism of Israeli
government policies).

------
bronco21016
Lots of mentions of quitting to become a truck driver. Perhaps some people
should research becoming an airline pilot. The hours and travel are similar to
that of a truck driver but you’re staying in hotels, have access to healthier
food, and work in a generally more comfortable environment.

Upfront investment and low starting pay are the main hurtles. The job itself
is very rewarding in my opinion but you will need to spend 3-5 years at the
bottom rungs before you start seeing financial upside. Having been in this
career for some time now I know I would never even think to look back at life
in a cubicle.

~~~
eternalny1
For every positive story about being an airline pilot you can find one warning
to stay far away.

I have a CPMEL/IA and graduated Riddle (and even did a stint as ATC) but have
switched to software engineering.

The grass is not always greener.

~~~
bronco21016
I truly believe some people just aren’t cut out for it. 99% of people I’ve
worked with that had a ‘horrific’ career complained mostly of the time away
from home and schedule. It leads them to hopping around airlines trying to
find the best setup and never really gaining any kind of seniority so they can
get that sweet schedule. It’s fine that some people aren’t up for it but they
definitely should not be in this career if they can’t handle being on the
road.

I would imagine trucking is similar in that regard. Don’t make the jump if you
don’t truly want to live on the road.

The other 1% were truly unlucky from mergers, bankruptcies, or furloughs. I
imagine that happens in nearly any industry given enough time.

------
draw_down
I’ve never seen our intrepid free speech crusaders bring up Mr. Salaita.

------
Ice_cream_suit
Interesting. Good to know that he supports some minorities.

Shame that he continues to be anti-Semitic in his tweets.

~~~
PedroBatista
Is he against all Jews or just opposes Israel policy?

I ask this because pretty much anyone who criticizes Israel is now labeled
anti-Semitic

~~~
torrance
From reading the NYTimes article [1] it seems clear he’s anti
Israel/occupation/bombing and not anti semitic. The pro Israel groups that
sought to oppose him getting the job didn’t try to argue that he was anti
semitic either, just that he wasn’t ‘civil’ on his Twitter feed.

[1]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/professo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/professors-
angry-tweets-on-gaza-cost-him-a-job.html)

~~~
linkmotif
That’s not true and that’s not what he did.

1) you can criticize Israel all day on campus, no one will stop you.

2) you shouldn’t promote mass murder on campus, which is what SS did. Saying
the population deserves mass murder because they’re evil is what he did.
Fortunately that was deemed beyond the pale.

