

Unemployment Beats Having A Lousy Job - jkuria
http://www.fyiliving.com/mental-health/depression/jobless-better-than-hatting-your-job/

======
wisty
An old farmer on his deathbed called for his two sons+. He told them that
while his farm did not produce much, there was a valuable treasure buried in
it which they would discover as they plowed the fields. He then left them each
half his farm, and his blessing.

When the old man had passed on, the two sons began working in the fields. They
worked hard, from morning to night, but never found a brass farthing. Then,
when the harvest came, it was bountiful. Their old father had told them the
truth - the treasure buried in the land was its fertility, and their hard work
had uncovered it!

But everyone wants to believe a get-rich-quick scheme, and the two sons were
no exception. They worked twice as hard as before, still hoping to find the
treasure. When they found nothing, they began borrowing money to buy the land
from each other. They started importing expensive tools to help them dig
faster. Eventually, the clamor of creditors made them face the hard truth -
they had been wasting their time. And so they fell into a great depression.

\+ I'm tempted to say it was three, and give the youngest a cat, a pair of
boots, and a sack; but that's really another story.

~~~
iqster
I thought you were going to end it with something else ... the two sons got
massive reverse mortgages on their land. Commodity prices collapsed after the
bountiful harvest and the bank ended up foreclosing.

~~~
wisty
Either way, it works.

The point is, real productivity can increase in a bubble. And it slumps when
the bubble ends, because this productivity was caused by people working harder
for phantom rewards. When those non-existent carrots disappear, people tend to
lose motivation.

------
tryitnow
Just to clarify this research study is defining "lousy job" as one with "low
job control, high job demands and complexity, job insecurity, and the
perception of unfair pay."

Some other things to note: This is based on data from "a nationally
representative sample survey" conducted in Australia. It had a response rate
of 66%.

I quickly reviewed the article and just wanted to share some of the basic
facts behind the study. I was particularly curious about how they defined
"lousy job."

~~~
eric-hu
A couple more interesting snippets:

> Unemployed people who had obtained optimal jobs between the surveys showed
> better improvement in mental health when compared to those who remained
> unemployed. However, moving from unemployment to poor quality employment
> showed greater negative effects than staying unemployed.

That sounds consistent with my experience.

>Not all aspects of psychosocial job quality, like social support at work,
were assessed in this study. A few of the results could have been biased, so
the study cannot be generalized.

Ha.

Edit: I pulled those quotes from the link "recent study" in the first
paragraph: [http://www.fyiliving.com/research/unemployment-and-job-
satis...](http://www.fyiliving.com/research/unemployment-and-job-satisfaction-
impact-mental-health/)

This looks like a synopsis of the study results. Not to be confused with the
PDF of the actual study, at the bottom of the synopsis.

------
mathattack
IMHO - There is a ring of truth to this, but it does not seem so profound.
When I was unemployed (2008) it was depressing because the market was awful.
But... I was able to work full time at improving my health (no "I'm working
too hard to go the gym" excuse!) and finding new work. The fear of poverty is
depressing, but not as bad as working awful hours without the time to improve
one's situation.

It is very easy to say, "Better to go hungry and wait for the perfect job." I
think it is more realistic to say, "Don't take the first job that comes along.
Be sure whatever you do is at least moving you in the right direction."

------
codelion
Ahem, How the hell are you supposed to feed yourself ? Not everyone has enough
savings, some have family responsibilities as well.

~~~
retube
Yeah, agreed. It's all very well pontificating about the unjustness of having
a crappy job, being "under-paid", not doing anything "worthwhile" or
apparently bettering mankind. But I know from personal experience that having
any job, any job at all, and earning a crust is a damn sight better than
earning nothing at all.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Depression beats starvation any day of the week.

------
FiddlerClamp
I really disagree -- with unemployment any sense of additional worth you get
from being able to hold down a job evaporates. Not to mention that having to
keep to a schedule for a job is much healthier than the wacky hours you can
end up with when you're unemployed and wake/sleep according to your natural
schedule.

~~~
Jach
Not to mention your sense of self-image if you get turned down for positions
again and again. I disagree with you though on waking and sleeping on your
natural schedule--it seems like that should be the healthier option.

Though I think the issue here is one of immediate happiness vs. reflective
happiness. If you have a bad job, at least 8 hours of your day are spent not
liking your current situation. (But at least you have a job, can feed the
family, etc.) If you're unemployed, your day-to-day life may be less stressful
without those 8 hours of teeth-grinding and you get to hang out with your cat
a lot more. (But you can't get a job, your kids are going hungry, whatever.)
Going from depressed unemployment to a crappy job is worse though, I think
because it makes you miserable day-to-day and reflectively too for a while,
since you still haven't gotten over your unemployment depression.

Happiness is strongly correlated with income up until $60k or so, then it
levels off. If the crappy job is also low-income that just makes things worse.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I do wonder about that figure, is that for people in the US because it is just
above the mean US salary. In some parts of the world you would be very
comfortable on that salary, in other parts you will struggle to find
accommodation.

~~~
Jach
Yeah, it's from US data. In some places even $200/mo lets you live like a
member of the upper class... I originally remember hearing the figure from a
TED talk ( here it is, highly recommended
[http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html)
), and since then there have been a few other sources I can't remember right
now.

------
latch
I'm betting on this being true, my last day is September 2nd.

I'm lucky that I have enough money saved up to last 3-5 years, but still...I
don't feel like like I'm only partially exaggerating to say that my job is
killing me.

------
Luyt
What a superficial article. Is it only meant to attract page views? Stuff
like:

 _"there have been links to extended Internet use and a rise in depression"_

How about some references? "It is said..." "everybody knows..." "literature
exists about..." Sure!

~~~
forgotAgain
Took a look at a few other articles on the site. They're all of the same
quality. Great example of a mill throwing out lots of useless articles geared
for SEO.

------
sidman
if anyone knows this i guess its me. I put my resignation in one month ago and
have been unemployed for about 2 days so far and I am loving it.

My old job was in a large bank, paid well and i only had to work 4 days a
week. The only issue is i wasn't following my passion and it made me feel well
and truly down EVERY SINGLE DAY (was there for about 2 years).

For about 3 months prior to putting in my resignation i was also already
working on a side project that started getting legs and had started to bring
in ramen profitable google ads profit so that It allowed me to quit work and
still be able to eat whilst not touching to much of savings along with also
paying for some small amazon servers to keep the service running. I thought
what the hey, lets give it a go so i quit. Shocked everyone, including parents
but i just couldn't go on any longer. It hurt to much... and IT in banks just
totally suck.

Also like the article says planned an exercise regime, my work hours for my
currently little side project and hanging to start on Peter Norvig and Andrew
Ng's classes when they start. Never felt this excited in a while.

I think the caveat though is that while being unemployed (currently like I am)
is better then having a lousy job , not being able to put food on the table is
lousier then a lousy job. I guess this article applies to people who aren't
financially struggling cause i know some people who would take ANY job that
came their way right now.

~~~
nhaehnle
_if anyone knows this i guess its me. I put my resignation in one month ago
and have been unemployed for about 2 days so far and I am loving it._

I'm sorry, but being unemployed for _two days_ is nothing. It is obvious that
the simple fact of changing your life, especially since it was you who took
the initiative, is what's dominating your mood right now.

Try being unemployed against your own preferences (i.e. after being fired and
unable to find new work) for half a year or a year - as in the current
climate, long-term unemployment is becoming increasingly a problem - and we
can talk again.

Also, the typical HN reader is probably quite different from the majority of
the population as it is part of the hacker mentality to keep oneself occupied
with interesting personal projects. There are many people out there who
wouldn't really know what to do with their time.

~~~
sidman
Oh i totally understand that but i think if you read between the lines this
article is more target to an audience like us. ie Hackers, who might hate
their job but are still at it, moving pay-check to pay-check not happy with
what we are doing with our time, able to do other things but just not stepping
out to do it, not for people who have a family, a mortgage and need to put
food on the table.

Plus its been 2 days because thats when i found this article, if i found it
3-4-5 weeks later then i would have put there 5 weeks since i have been
unemployed. Regardless of the time its been since i left work the choice has
been made to step away from a stable income job that felt completely draining
to being unemployed but enjoying what things i can now do (which is the jist
of this article)

>Try being unemployed against your own preferences (i.e. after being fired and
unable to find new work) for half a year or a year - as in the current
climate, long-term unemployment is becoming increasingly a problem - and we
can talk again.

Wanna know something, i have a friend who i have offered my garage too for a
couple of months cause at the moment he is at risk of loosing his house. He is
forced to rent it out and cant afford another place to live. He wants to keep
the house for his family and doesnt want the bank to take it away and turn all
those years of hard work in interest payments to vanish into thin air just
cause of a few months of missed payments due to being layed of.

Now he works 2 jobs 18 hours a day for 7 days to get what he used to be paid
before he lost his job and needs to do that until he can get back on track so
that his missed payments for the last few months have been made up. I know
full well what unemployment means, not first hand but close enough ..... and
its sad

HOWEVER ... i dont think this article is directed at people in this situation
- hence my caveat :)

------
Shenglong
Makes sense. When you don't have a job, it's because you haven't lowered
yourself to taking bad jobs, and because those idiots haven't discovered you
yet. You still have your pride.

When you take a lousy job, you're admitting defeat, and diving into failure
head first. You weren't discovered because you have nothing to offer, and now
you don't even have your pride.

^ read in a satirical tone

------
ChristopherM
I quit my job in the middle of June, I have to agree being "unemployed"
definitely beats having a lousy job. In fact I haven't been this happy since
the last time I was unemployed. I learned so much, worked on so many
projects... The most amazing thing is that time slows down again, the weeks
and months don't race by in a blur.

I am currently learning Objective-C, openGL and how to develop iPhone
applications. Sure I figured, why not write a game and see how it goes;
writing the code will be the easy part. I look forward to learning about the
apple release process, marketing, doing user studies, reviewing the
feedback...

I give myself til the end of 2012, if the game or game(s) are successful I
will continue. Otherwise maybe I will consider moving from software
engineering into product management. The thrill and challenge of writing code
is gone, the isolation one feels developing code has become too much; while I
can understand other developers I've learned that I am not really like them. I
enjoy working with various team players, executives, customers. I like going
to meetings where I am an active participant, I like being thrown into the
deep end of the pool where I have to figure things out on the fly. I love
making decisions and taking full responsibility for them.

Unemployed? Yeah, it's the happiest time of my life. Stress completely
vanished. Not even looking for a job, haven't even updated LinkedIn so very
few people even know I'm not "working".

------
MrKurtHaeusler
Especially in Germany.

Now I disagree with excessive socialism, and sure, refusing unemployment
benefit would be one way of making a statement against it, but I think living
it up on the generous unemployment benefit, and lording it in front of hard-
working, voting taxpayers is also a useful method of encouraging positive
social change.

------
joshuabutner
Take the title of this article as a warning for the lack of worthwhile content
contained within.

------
yason
If I got laid off, I wouldn't rush to get another job. Where I live the
unemployment benefits for recently laid off are decent which means I would
just take a couple of years off with less money and instead spend the working
hours in coding whatever I want and contributing to open source projects!
That's work, too, albeit the current society doesn't really count such
volunteering as "work". But it still is: you only need some other means to
live off while doing that.

------
Maven911
suře, until the bills come in...

------
Hyena
Comments to this post seem largely divided between people who identify heavily
with their employment and people who identify heavily with their activity. For
the former, unemployment is terrible. For the latter, it's merely a financial
issue.

------
uladzislau
Any part time job even a lousy one is better than to be unemployed. It
increases your self-esteem and motivates you. I just wouldn't go for full time
because you won't have time to improve your situation, find a better job,
networking etc.

------
krobertson
Some of the comments on the article are really sad. People justifying the "I
can't find a high paying job, so I'll just mooch off society" mentality.

------
Kopion
hmmm... could this new found onset of depression be from today's self-
entitlement culture. We work for something beyond ourselves...

------
VladRussian
in Bay Area not much unemployment per.se. to provide enough material to talk
about. Wrt. the lousy jobs - some of the youngsters what bust their chops at
the local Starbucks also carry a full time load at 4 year colleges (though not
Stanford/Berkeley) - somehow i can't imagine them whining "unemployment or a
lousy job"

