
The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work) - AlexeyBrin
http://simpleprogrammer.com/2013/08/12/hard-work/?
======
Smudge
Somehow this article manages to be both wise and presumptuous.

The points he makes speak from experience. It's a perspective that is too
often ignored by younger generations: You can't always quit a job when the
work gets boring -- sometimes you just have to push through the tedium if you
want to be the best at what you do. This is a widely applicable bit of advice.

But the way this message is presented -- to chastise loren, the 20-something
who quit AirBnB because he "got bored" \-- is just plain arrogant.

In his post, loren went on to describe an environment where he was slowly
pushed-out of the decision-making process. Where he went from being a
passionately engaged team member to being a comfortably-paid code monkey. This
was not just about getting bored -- his role in the company was changing, and
his attempts to reverse the changes had little effect.

Sure, he could suck it up and adapt to the new role, becoming the best code
monkey he could be. But maybe that didn't line up with his personal goals.
Maybe loren quit because he wasn't being fulfilled.

Seems like a pretty smart reason to leave, if you ask me.

Lastly:

> "Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early."

No, no it's not. This is a very dangerous line of thinking. If burn out to you
means getting tired of mind-numbing tedium, you haven't experienced burn out.
Actual burn out can be a very valid reason to "give up", or at the very least
take an extended vacation. You can't just push through the physical symptoms
of extreme stress and exhaustion, at least not without causing even more harm.

~~~
jsonmez
My point is only that if you quit a thing, don't do it without something else
lined up, it is just foolish. Doesn't matter if it is your own business or
another job, but you don't just say, "I don't like this, so I'm not going to
do it anymore."

~~~
nostrademons
I'd argue that assuming you must always know what you're doing next is another
kind of foolish.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Someone who values creating things and making an
impact will find a way to create things and make an impact, even if that way
is not immediately apparent at first. What else are they going to do, sit at
home and watch TV?

I have both gaps and overlaps on my resume. I find that the gaps - where I
said to myself "I have no idea what I want to do, I'm going to play around
with things and keep an eye out for opportunities" \- are far more valuable
than the overlaps, where a side project became a startup immediately after I
quit. I think that's really common for a lot of folks. PayPal was Max Levchin
4th idea (he got out of college and said "I don't want to work for anyone
else, I'll play around with stuff until I figure out something to do"), Parse
came out of the wreckage of Gamador and Etacts, Paul Buchheit quit Google
without something lined up before founding FriendFeed, getting acquired by
Facebook, and then ending up at YCombinator, etc.

A lot of people take it to be a sign of confidence and an embrace of
vulnerability when you're willing to accept that you don't know what you want
to do. Maybe you have something to learn from Loren, too.

------
RyanZAG
I feel sorry for the author of this post - he actually believes hard, boring
work is the only way to accomplish anything. I've done both hard, boring work,
and easy, efficient and enjoyable work. The easy work was both more enjoyable,
more profitable and far better for my life as a whole.

Life is not fair, there are no points awarded for working harder or being more
diligent - there are only 'points' awarded for accomplishing things. Make sure
you accomplish the right things in the right way. Nobody is interesting that
you slaved away coding for 6 months to develop something when someone launches
something with 6 hours of work that solves the right problem.

~~~
calinet6
Seriously. This article is just useless flamebait, unworthy even of the
slightest praise.

It fails to comprehend any of the complexities of circumstance, time, or
humanity, yet claims to have a point above them all. This is the mark of a
single-minded spoiled child without worldly experience, who has fallen into
some success after a short stint of hard work and doesn't understand his place
in the stochastic processes which led to his creation, upbringing, and
situation.

This bullshit is to be shredded; not lightly but intently and with prejudice.
It should be put down for its failure as a perspective. For its disservice to
the betterment of our profession.

~~~
BadassFractal
Love your phrasing and clarity. If you ever decide to write a blog, I'll be
your first subscriber.

------
Arjuna
Phrases like, _" The myth of burn out"_ and _" Burn out is just a
rationalization for giving up early"_ give me great pause.

Burn out is _real_. It is dangerous, and even an overwhelming, driving passion
for your work, your creation, can lead to disaster.

Ed Catmull recounted this story about the production of Toy Story 2 [1]:

"So we came back, John [Lasseter] told the story crew to take a good rest over
the holidays, and come back on January 2nd... we were re-boarding the movie.

We had 8 months left.

We then started this incredibly intense effort to get this movie out. It was
boarded quickly, it was pitched to the company, it was an electrifying pitch.

We had a lot of over-achieving people working for over-achieving managers to
get the movie out.

We worked brutal hours with this. When I say "brutal", we had a number of
people that were injured with RSI [2], one of them _permanently left the
field._

We had, actually, a married couple that worked there. This was in June, so
it's summer, and the father was supposed to drop the baby off at daycare, but
forgot; don't know why... but came and left the baby in the car, and came into
work. Again, as the heat was rising, the mother asked... they realized and
they rushed out: the baby was unconscious. The right thing was done, they put
ice-water on the baby. The baby ended up being fine in the end, but it was one
of those traumatic things, like, 'Why did this happen, are they working too
hard?'

So when I say it was intense, it really was intense."

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc&t=1064](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc&t=1064)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury)

~~~
Amadou
_This was in June, so it 's summer, and the father was supposed to drop the
baby off at daycare, but forgot; don't know why... but came and left the baby
in the car, and came into work._

As an aside...

There was a Pulitzer Prize winning article about the phenomenon of parents
forgetting their children in the backseat and leaving them to die in the heat.
The main take-away is that it can happen to anyone. It isn't a matter of
malicious or inattentive parents, it usually happens when there is a variation
in routine that distracts the parent and pulls focus from the kid.

[http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2010-Feature-
Writing](http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2010-Feature-Writing)

~~~
georgemcbay
That's pretty terrifying.

Seems like a good candidate for an "internet of things" solution in the
future, eg. a baby seat with a weight sensor, thermometer and 3G data
connection (or optionally, some tie in to OnStar, Sync or just the alarm
system on a modern bluetooth-capable car) that could alert you and/or
automatically pull down the electric windows in a panic mode.

Granted, you'd have to be careful to ensure you don't create a solution people
form a false sense of security around since the communications or electronics
could fail, but it seems like overall this might save some babies.

~~~
ludicast
I like this a lot. Seems genuinely useful.

A simple version might be something that beeps like a seatbelt-detector if
there is weight in back seat but not in front.

~~~
DennisP
You'd have to calibrate it to ignore the weight of the car seat, since people
leave them in place. Seems like great idea though.

~~~
jasonlotito
Put it in the padding of the car seat, so even if it's moved, it's not
forgotten.

------
jmduke
Uh, the Nietzsche quote has a slightly different connotation when you give it
a wider context:

 _When seeking work for the sake of the pay, almost all men are alike at
present in civilized countries. To all of them work is a means, and not itself
the end; on which account they are not very select in the choice of the work,
provided it yields an abundant profit. But there are rarer men who would
rather die than work without enjoyment in their work: the fastidious people,
difficult to satisfy, whose object is not served by an abundant profit, unless
the work itself be the reward of all rewards._

~~~
gboudrias
This is priceless.

And then: _It doesn’t matter how brilliant you started out or how much faster
you exited the gates than everyone else, those who consistently get up every
morning and direct their energies along a single path, no matter how boring it
may be, will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly
travel._

That's not how life works. You can direct all your efforts to bending cutlery,
but you're not going to make a good living out of it. You're just not. And
some people have it easy. Sorry, life is unfair.

But then I read that: _Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up
early._

The author may be a great programmer (I suspect him of being a robot), but he
doesn't understand psychology. Not worth a read.

~~~
aaronem
> The author may be a great programmer

Really? He reads like a motivational speaker. What's he shipped? Where's his
repo?

~~~
sz4kerto
> What's he shipped? Where's his repo?

If you have not noticed, most (90%) of programmers do not work on open-source
projects or toy projects hosted on Github. There are great programmers who
have never published a single line of code.

~~~
aaronem
Of course I've noticed. One need not be an open-source hacker to have shipped
a product, nor, perhaps, need one have shipped a product in order to be
worthwhile as a teacher of programmers. One does, however, need to have done
_something_.

His website presents him as a teacher and a motivational speaker. It also
includes his claim to be a programmer, substantiation of which is rather thin
on the ground. I haven't watched his videos, but if they're anything like his
articles, they rarely include code, talk in bland generalities without
offering much in implementation detail, and overall read as if written by
someone with neither the experience he implicitly claims as a working
programmer, nor anything like the level of intellectual capability and
flexibility to which he aspires.

Contrast, for example, the whip-smart Steve Yegge on Agile consultants [1] --
which, not coincidentally, is how this Sonmez item appears to make his living,
in collaboration with some kind of software-engineering equivalent of Kaplan,
Inc. [2]. Pick whatever example you like of Sonmez's writing, and place it
alongside whatever example you like of Yegge's, and perhaps you'll find it
easier to see why Sonmez forces to my mind the old cliche contrasting do-ers
and teachers.

His claim to be a programmer underlies his supposed authority, and his failure
to demonstrate any accomplishment in the field undermines his claim; more to
the point, if he were any good at it, he'd probably be earning a living by
some means less distantly related to the field than selling snake oil to
people who don't know any better.

[1] [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/10/egomania-
itself.html](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/10/egomania-itself.html)

[2] [http://www.pluralsight.com](http://www.pluralsight.com)

------
skrebbel
There might be a point here, but the whole "just suck it up and keep going for
years and years" attitude that I'm getting from this post feels, well,
misguided.

If you think you can improve your life, work better, with more fun, with more
meaning, with better challenges, then by all means go for it. There's no need
to stay put at a place that sucks for you and that slowly boils your brain to
pulp just because some old guy on HN did his time, too. Sure, there are plenty
places where you're valued based on the amount of years to "put in for the
business", but thank god there are also plenty places that got past that.

The other side is, of course, that if you give up too soon, you'll never get
anywhere. But my impression is that most programmers stick around places too
long, rather than too short. They just don't blog about it as much.

~~~
return0
> If you think you can improve your life, work better, with more fun, with
> more meaning, with better challenges, then by all means go for it.

Sure, but what if that is to the expense of others? The widening wealth gap
seems to suggest so.

~~~
BWStearns
Taking advantage of an opportunity while somewhere someone doesn't have as
many opportunities as yesterday does not necessarily translate to "you took
their opportunity". In what sense is getting yours "at the expense of others"
unless you have achieved it by deceit, fraud, or force? If you're referring to
general technologically driven unemployment, then yes in a _very_ broad sense
programmers do profit at the expense of others. Should companies ease off
increasing market share if a competitor is on the verge of collapse in order
to save the jobs of those at whom's expense they were profiting?

~~~
fleitz
They'd be doing everyone in the other company a favor by killing it, the other
company is inefficient and the population as a whole suffers for it wasting
the resources it does instead of those resources being freed up to do
something more productive.

~~~
BWStearns
Well yes. I agree with you. That last question was supposed to come across as
exasperated and irritated, not as an endorsement of preserving failing
companies out of short sighted compassion. There are serious questions that
need to be solved regarding the likelihood that double-digit percentages of
the US workforce will be economically unviable, but those are separate from
issues of even aggregate microeconomic competitive questions.

------
jbail
I grow weary of people telling other people that they don't know what hard
work is...especially as it contributes to the constant putting down of my
generation. If you want to make a condescending, sweeping generalization about
an entire generation of people, I have some advice: Don't.

As an aside...I watched the author's "Why You Need People Skills" video on his
website. At 3 minutes in he talks about how rubbing people the wrong way won't
get you good results. He has another video titled, "The Power of
Positivity"...which I'm guessing would be the opposite of the disparaging post
he just wrote? I don't know what my point is other than you really look like a
jerk when you try to act like you're positive and good with people..and then
act the complete opposite.

~~~
aylons
I was once freelancing reporting in a convention about "Y Generation"[1] and
the best presentation I attended as themed on how much bullshit is said about
this generation.

The grand finale of this presentation was a quote just like this, saying
something in the lines of "this generation is lazy, and arrogant, and think
life is easy".

Everything people say about Millenials, except this was taken from a 60's
newspaper, focused on the baby-boomers. Moreover, it clearly was a reinforcing
piece, not a proposing one, and there were other smaller excerpts to confirm
this was the standard thinking at the time.

[1] Funny thing, I take "Generation Y" as the way people who doesn't really
care about generational studies talk about Millenials. I can't stop thinking
they heard "Generation X", called this way at their time because they were
unknown, and extrapolated the meaning without further thinking.

EDIT: too many "about"s.

~~~
tesseractive
> Funny thing, I take "Generation Y" as the way people who doesn't really care
> about generational studies talk about Millenials. I can't stop thinking they
> heard about the "Generation X", called this way at their time because they
> were unknown, and extrapolated the meaning without further thinking.

Indeed. Before the term "Generation X" stuck, lazy commentators who wanted to
make sweeping generational statements often referred to "Baby Busters."

------
dexen
If I'm unhappy with work conditions -- be it bad management, burden of
unmanageable technical debt, incompatible culture or the mundane problem of
low pay -- I am expected to `vote with my feet'. It's market self-regulation,
it's feedback for the organization and it _just works_. If I refrain, for any
misguided reason, it only makes market suboptimal. Does OP really advocate
skewing the job market for some fuzzy reasons?

 _> (...) others are hard at work ever so humbly providing real value through
their—at times—loveless toil._

Hard work alone is not enough for humanity to benefit; it must also be well-
focused, well-tooled and well-managed. If the clueless middle-management
wastes 90% of your effort, there's more benefit to humanity when you move.
Similarily, if 100h workweek and 24/7 stress wreck your family / relationship
/ friendships and derails your life for several years to come, there's more
benefit to humanity if you move.

~~~
StandardFuture
>If the clueless middle-management wastes 90% of your effort, there's more
benefit to humanity when you move

Yes, thank you for this statement. I don't think many people yet realize how
much more detrimental to society so much bureaucratic bullshit in everything
we do(are) is over a few hackers getting fed up with that same bureaucratic
bullshit and moving on.

In fact, put that way it really does not seem logical to get mad at a few
young programmers choices to change course. Maybe it's societies framework you
should be getting mad at.

------
Havoc
I'm rarely massively critical of HN posters, because on the whole they seem
pretty solid. So when in doubt I ere on the side of caution & assume I'm
missing something instead of them missing something. On this particular
article I can't help myself though - the author seems utterly oblivious to the
real world.

>The big problem is that “kids today” don’t understand the value of hard,
boring work.

Hard work & kids...yeah...remember the news article 3 weeks ago about an
intern in London _dying_ from working 3 days straight. An intern for fck
sake...not even an employee. Dead. Now tell me again that kids today don't
know about hard work. I dare you.

------
dclusin
I agree with what the author is saying, however, I think that the overall
message of sticking with something, and not leaving when you encounter the
first sign of monotony is applicable to software engineering more specifically
than the author describes. I will provide an anecdote from my career to
illustrate what I mean.

I have been working at the same company for almost 4 years. During those 4
years I have worked on the same project and haven't really switched teams.
I've seen employees come and go, architecture decisions made and debated ad
nauseam, and so forth. I am currently in the processing of re-implementing
some functionality and architecture decisions that I made when I first started
(~4 years ago).

When I made these implementation decisions I thought they were the best
approach based on my experience at the time. However, having stuck around all
these years and seen the product and business evolve, these decisions have
turned out to be either poor choices or not the most optimal. As a consequence
I've derived a lot of experience and wisdom from revisiting these past
decisions, as I am now able to go back with production data and performance
characteristics and see how they work or do not work. This software that I
wrote way back when functioned in production and worked flawlessly without
ceremony for approximately 3.5 years. Only recently and under a changing
production environment has this code started to become a pain point.

Had I been part of the new every two crowd I would have never been able to see
how my designs and solutions would hold up, or fall down, over the years of
their life span. Furthermore, I never would have gained the wisdom and
experience that comes from implementing something and having to come back and
re-visit it years later.

This is really the takeaway message I understand from the author. Basically,
when you only do what strikes your fancy and change your priorities with the
weather, you lose out on the sort of experience and opportunity for growth
that I have had in the past few weeks.

~~~
smellf
Agreed. The guy is railing against the emerging twitterati culture of folks
who bounce from one gig to the next, blurting about the trendiest new
Javascript library and spewing garbage code that someone else then gets to
maintain.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
I don't know. I've had a "new every two" experience over the last decade, and
I still use "old" languages (C, C++, Fortran, even some Ada).

I'm in my mid-30s, and my view is that the kind of person you're talking about
isn't restricted to any "emerging twitterati" culture. "Fad followers" exist
in every age demographic.

Also, my "new every two" experiences give me a lot more breadth of experience
than some poor "lifer's" years slogging away maintaining his project. It also
gives me more depth in each area--because I haven't been fossilizing over the
same code, in the same language, for the same project, day in and day out.

As an edit, I'll add: the (relative) ease with which (some) of the "youth" in
our profession are able to switch things up so regularly ought to be viewed as
a virtue. I can't stand the culture of sharing all the intimate personal
details of their lives on the internet, but this is one thing which in my view
they do right.

~~~
smellf
That's a good point. Newer isn't always better, but sometimes it is.

------
snorkel
_" ... others are hard at work ever so humbly providing real value through
their—at times—loveless toil."_

... and those people are suckers. Honestly. If you are working long hours,
jeopardizing your personal relationships, and devoting most of your mental
attention to achieving _someone else 's success_ over your own -- and you are
doing this because your are told it is noble to work hard, and there might
even be a slightly bigger piece of cheese waiting for you at the far end of
the maze -- then you are a sucker. There is no end to the maze, and the cheese
is a mirage.

If you enjoy your job out of passion for the art, you are paid fair,
respected, and you enjoy the company of your coworkers then great, enjoy it,
stick with it. Otherwise you've been hoodwinked.

------
menssen
Hard work. Boring work. Unfulfilling work.

There is no relationship between these three things, but the author keeps
saying "hard, boring work."

I don't feel particularly bad about insisting that hard work doesn't have to
be boring, and that boring, easy work is not hard.

"The HN Generation doesn't want to put in their time doing boring,
unfulfilling work" doesn't sound nearly as damning as "The HN Generation
doesn't want to put in their time doing hard work."

Anecdotally, programmers tend to work pretty damn hard.

------
lelandbatey
The author really hasn't said what's actually wrong. He's hating against
something he's not even done us the courtesy of defining (in any kind of a
substantive way). Once again, we've got a classic "kids these days are so
lazy" post without any real content.

    
    
        "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority;
        they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.
        Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer
        rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before
        company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize
        their teachers."
    
        -- Socrates

~~~
001sky
This is an apochryphal quote. Just FYI.

------
smoyer
I going to float an idea out there that might not be too popular ... I think
companies caused the workforce to adopt this attitude, and I think the healthy
spot is in the middle. We tend to oscillate around the optimums right?

Companies used to offer a good worker life-time employment and a pension, and
they supported the idea of a reasonable workload as it would lead to longevity
in their workforce. The combination of excess workers and the menialization of
many jobs prompted the companies to minimize their commitment to the worker,
both in salary and relationship.

Once the relationship was gone and it was obvious to the worker that they were
valued for their effort on the hamster-wheel, is it any wonder so many of them
were lacksidasical about how fast they spun that wheel? And when work because
rote, is it any wonder that creative types that were in those positions were
disenchanted?

The other interesting thing I've noticed is that you end up having both types
of people in any given environment ... some of the people work hard because
they don't want to get yelled at, want a step up the ladder, etc, but when you
watch closely, you'll often see that the "lazier" employees (the ones the hard
workers keep expecting to get laid off) actually garner about the same rewards
for dramatically less effort.

Of course, these are my observations and your mileage may vary ... I've spent
the majority of my working life doing work I enjoy, but I no longer identify
my worth by what I accomplish on-the-job.

------
avenger123
John is really good at getting eyeballs to his blog. His also the author of
'The demise of Javascript'.

Apparently, since he actually started using it, he thinks its not so bad now
and will be around for a while.

John also likes to make very broad and just downright swiping generalizations
like this below:

'We’ve sort of reached the place in the C# and Java space where just about
everyone is doing “cargo cult programming.” What I mean by this is that a
majority of developers are writing unit tests and using IoC containers without
understanding what value those practices bring or even if those practices are
actually bringing any value.'

I find this article along the same lines. I applaud him for his ability to
generate views but I don't put too much weight in his "insights".

------
trustfundbaby
I really wanted to like this article ... but it seems to come from a place of
emotion and it shows. The arguments are unsubstantiated and as a commenter
below pointed out even the quote he used from Nietzsche is out of context

Its hard to read something like this ...

"It is really easy to sit at your desk when you are supposed to be working and
browse hacker news, injecting in your sarcastic wit and sly comments,
believing them to be of value, believing that somehow that in this false self-
affirming reality that you are actually creating something of value, when
indeed all you are doing is destroying and marring the work of others to your
own detriment"

And not feel like this is a rant, but plenty of rants have a lot of hard
truths in them, this one does not.

I take issue with this ...

"The big problem is that “kids today” don’t understand the value of hard,
boring work"

This idea that you should be able to go to a job that bores you to tears, or
even worse, actually hate just because it pays you money and thats just what
people have to do really really upsets me. I've been a developer for 10 years
now, and I can categorically tell you that your work can be challenging, your
work can be tough but it should never be boring. Because I find that when I
had autonomy at my job, whenever my opinion was respected by decision makers,
and when I was surrounded by a team that I loved, I never had any boring
moments.

And I think that goes for a lot of people too, because you see, it turns out
that work is only really boring when you don't care. And if you don't care,
you shouldn't be there.

PS: The part about burn out is abysmally wrong and doesn't even warrant
comment.

------
guynamedloren
Hi, I'm the one who wrote the 'saddest most uninformed blog post on hacker
news' [1] that inspired this post.

Just want to chime in with a quick update: two months in, still 'funemployed'.
Currently working harder than I ever did at my job, on so many different
levels. Possibly working harder than I ever have _in my life_. To stay at the
job I was at would have been a huge cop out. I'd basically be showing up and
collecting a check without pushing myself forward, stunting my growth as a
developer and as a person.

[1] [http://madebyloren.com/i-quit-my-job](http://madebyloren.com/i-quit-my-
job)

------
rubyn00bie
I am part of the generation, but actually agree with what he's saying. The
article on HN he was critiquing, I also read, and felt "really, mate, you're
complaining about this?"

Hard work sucks, it often involves things you don't want to do, but you must
push on... I don't like paying back technical debt, but I have to. It's the
most boring work, unglamorous work I can do, but among the most necessary.

As well, often times in start ups, in the beginning you're forced to do work
outside of your "role" for better or worse. As a business matures, the need
for this reduces and you're left with what you were hired for... this is part
of growing a business. It can be viewed as boring, but is sort of the goal.
Being over worked, and forced to do tasks outside of your description isn't
something people should be fighting for...

------
vectorpush
_What we haven’t told them is that nothing of any worth is obtained by any
means except for good old honest hard work._

This is just false. Dishonest corner-cutters do pretty well on average. I bet
the author believes "crime never pays" as well. Get real.

------
VladRussian2
They are afraid of droning, not work. Fine with me as the droning pays my
mortgage.

edit: and it is pretty applicable to any generation - Gates or Zuckerberg
(saying with all my distaste for FB or its creator) could have continue
droning in Harvard and beyond, yet they declined, and as far as i know they
are very far from being slackers.

------
websitescenes
Sounds like this author has some angst against those that are willing to go
above and beyond in pursuit of a goal or accomplishment. This generation has
been forced to be very entrepreneurial because of a lack of jobs. We learn
fast, test our assumptions and make adjustments. This is a big contrast to the
way AlexeyBrin thinks the world works. From his cushy and comfortable desk
job, he thinks the same avenues available to him are available to everyone
now. Not true. We have to be smarter, faster and willing to work for less.
It's hard for the generation of plenty to realize how the world has changed
around them. I suggest you stop hating and catch up.

~~~
leephillips
It doesn't seem as if AlexeyBrin is the author of the article, just the
submitter.

~~~
sliverstorm
I like how you have to point that out. Has it become so strange for an article
to be posted by someone other than the author?

------
zokier
> The myth of burn out

> Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early

I wonder what this guy thinks about the "myth of depression". Is it just
rationalization for laziness?

------
tptacek
_The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?_

Not a helpful post.

~~~
jbigelow76
Strong men also cry...

------
MortenK
It's rare I've been so ticked of at an article.

First off, this guy has no conception of burn out.

I work as a consultant. Just the last 12 months in my tiny part of the woods,
I've seen several people break down at work and go home crying, two under-30
founders getting hospitalized for heart conditions(!) and the worst: A 40
year-old managing director falling dead from a simple flu infection. Family
said the doctors explanation was a severely compromised immune system, most
likely due to overwork.

This is not isolated cases, I'd bet most people with just a modicum of
perception and commercial experience, will have seen this time and time again.

This guy says that when he wastes 2-3 hours on surfing the net, he feels more
burnt out. And it's really just a mental attitude. Your little ups and downs
during the working day/week, has nothing what so ever to do with stress and
burn out.

If it weren't for his extremely condescending tone and know-it-all attitude,
I'd have given him a pass as some young, social media wannabe.

But to go out and exclaim "just power through, it's all in your head" is not
just uninformed or stupid advice. It's downright dangerous, and it has to be
addressed. I hope anybody, especially young, reading this piece of garbage,
thinks twice before they adapt the "rah rah" attitude of this strongly
opinionated but completely narrow minded programmer.

For his other point about the "hard workers" toiling away at the same things
for years on end, always surpassing more fickle personalities in the end.
Well, I think anybody who's worked at big corp will know a whole bunch of
lifers, soon-to-be-retired greybeards / middle managers who, despite 40 years
at the helm, still only have a third of the influence, autonomy and income of
the young and driven business consultant.

Yeah hard work is a requirement to go somewhere. But unless you just want to
climb a ladder that others have put in front of you, don't let anybody call
you a lazy, entitled brat for not buckling down for 5-10 years at a time.

------
fleitz
"What we haven’t told them is that nothing of any worth is obtained by any
means except for good old honest hard work."

This is such crap when the real estate market was good I made more money per
year watching my apartment appreciate than by working my ass off. Perhaps in
some existential sense of 'worth' this is true, but in terms of making piles
of cash, definitely not.

------
ChuckMcM
Sometimes people conflate passion with interest, and they miss out on the
notion of agenda.

Basically, if you are passionate about something you can set goals based on
that, and the hard and boring work that is part of getting to the goal is
overcome by the passion of getting to the goal. As an interesting example,
look at people who play storyline video games to the end, versus ones that
stop before finishing. People who are invested (a form of passion) in how the
game ends, slog through the boring parts to get there. People who aren't
invested get turned off by the boring part and stop. The same thing is true
with movies and books. If you care about how they are going to turn out, you
sit through the 'slow' parts, if you don't care, you don't.

I found the call to action at the end "Sign up for info on my super secret
project that will turn you from Lazy Bum to Execution Machine!" really jarring
as well. If you conflate passion and lazyness and rationalization then how can
you make something effective?

When people tell me they can't stick to a project they just wander off into
other things. I try to figure out if there are things where that doesn't
occur. You know, the kind of person who says "I've got ADHD that is why I just
played this video game for 4 hours straight." And you ask the obvious
question, "Were you giving it your full attention?"

I don't doubt for a moment that folks will rationalize their drop in
productivity as burn out sometimes, but it is dangerous to go from there to
saying something like "burn out is a myth." One does not imply the other.

------
scotch_drinker
That guy put a lot of hard, boring work into bolding random pieces of text and
interspersing tangentially related pictures throughout his article. It's
ironic that he disparages the "sly and witty comments" on Hacker News while
going out of his way to doll up a fluff piece about fluff comments on HN.

------
buckbova
Nearly everyone I've ever spoke with thinks:

\- they are a hard worker

\- they deserve more money than they are making

\- they are stronger and/or smarter than the majority of their peers

\- they are a good driver

It takes quite a bit to convince someone of the opposite. Once you have
someone's back against the wall with a pile of evidence that they are dumb or
lazy, they will start at you with every excuse in the book, mostly I think
they are trying to convince themselves.

Of course I believe I am a hard worker, deserve more money, am
smarter/stronger than my peers and am a good driver too. Someboday has to be.

------
6d0debc071
Oh please, change the record. Your generation has a money money money
aesthetic (no, I don't actually think this, but if we're caricaturing each
other...) a boundless greed. But I don't really care that much if I earn more
than £30k a year for the rest of my life. I've got _enough_. Heck, I'm
considering taking a couple of years off to read books and build a house.

There's a limit to how greedy I can be.

It's fine to work hard if it's a work of passion, something that you really
want to accomplish. And there's certainly something to be said for working
through downspots, we all have bad days and quitting just because of some
minor irritant that may well pass will scupper your chances of greater
happiness in the long run. But working hard just to get money to buy stuff you
don't need, or even draw a commensurate pleasure from? Spend less and save
more, don't fritter your life away suffering to make someone else's dream.

I'm _happy_ living a life that entertains me, I've sufficient money to provide
security - beyond that what benefit am I going to get by doing things that
bore me?

You think that it's a race? That we won't get as far? I honestly have to
wonder: So what?

You don't get points for finishing life before the other person.

------
BjoernKW
"The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and
Hubris." \- Larry Wall, not exactly a member of 'The Hacker News Generation'
...

------
vichu
Previous discussion on this article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199446)

------
nileshtrivedi
Every generation (and employers who want to hire young people for cheap)
considers the next one "lazy and arrogant" while the fact is that life really
is becoming easier across the board. In my opinion, the author is confusing
"boring work".

There is two kinds of boring work. One is where you are still committed to the
end goal but some things just have to be done in order to achieve it. There's
no arguing about this and I think even the new generation recognizes the value
of it and the value of going through the "dip" and finishing things.

The other is when you become disinterested in the end goal itself. Leaving
this kind of boring work is a good thing. It's a shame to continue working on
uninspiring projects especially when there are so many other opportunities.
Life is too short for that. Adding some whitespace to one's life is how you
move on to better opportunities.

This article comes out as attacking the second category as well. For example,
he compares this to "the vapid life of a vagabond merrily traveling from
pleasure to pleasure in life ever thirsting, but never being quenched, every
tasting, but never consuming.".

Vagabonds have vapid lives? That's a bit presumptuous. "Not all who wander are
lost."

------
PhasmaFelis
TL;DR: In the society we live in, you are expected to spend a good chunk of
your waking hours wading in shit. We have gotten together and decided that
wading in shit is virtuous and builds character, and if you don't like wading
through shit and try to avoid it or do less of it, you are objectively a bad
person. Wanting to spend more time with your family and friends or pursuing
hobbies and interests (other than wading in shit) is a sign of laziness and
malformed character; so are outlandish malingerer's claims like "burnout" or
"clinical depression". Your entire educational curriculum is designed by
people who enjoy wading in shit and expect that you will too. If, upon
graduation into the real world, you find that you do not enjoy wading in shit,
we will shake our heads sadly and wonder how we failed to inculcate you with a
seemly affection for shit-wading. If you are lucky enough to enjoy wading in
shit, you are a superior species of human and deserve to be smug about it.

(Not addressed: The unthinkably heretical notion that we, in the first
stirrings of post-scarcity, might perhaps look to and work toward a future
where people don't have to wade in shit if they don't want to.)

------
adventured
If this were a post worthy of the front page of Hacker News, it wouldn't read
like this:

"Unfortunately this kind of thinking and mentality seems to accurately embody
much of the general ignorance and blatant stupidity of the next generation of
software developers."

It's trash if it has to make its point by going to such great and obvious
lengths to insult the topic audience, rather than just explaining why without
relying on said insult as an introduction.

------
frozenport
Rertrand Russell acknowledged that only a fraction of people need to do real
work. As we move towards a more efficient society we will see this manifested,
in that the only people working will be doing it `for the fun of it`. I'd take
a burnt out hacker over the business major whose only interest is playing xbox
any day. I think we forget how lazy 90% of our generation really is.

------
mscarborough
Yeah, at the start of the article I was already in disagreement after the
equating of "grinding it out", "boring work", and "working hard". Sounds a
little too self-justifying.

I'm in my 30s but quit the startup and bigcorp stuff to work less and be
happier. I put in plenty of time busting ass for people way over my pay grade
for 8 years. Honestly, a lot of the higher-ups in technology really don't care
about those extra hours you put in, because often it's basically free to them.

Now I can work in a billable hours business and do pretty well with respect
all around. I enjoy it, can explore new technologies, without being a full
time drone.

Sorry to the author, but I don't think that makes me someone who needs to be
talked down to. He doesn't seem to understand the concept that you can love
what you do for a paycheck but placing more importance in other things is not
a personality defect.

~~~
scott_s
Hey, Mike. Whatcha up to these days? (Also: guess who I'm visiting at the
moment.)

------
emiljbs
>Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early.

No. Fuck that noise.

Has the author ever seen someone who's burnt out? It is not a pretty sight, it
is though the person is but an empty shell of what he once was (I know this
sounds incredibly corny, but it really is the shortest way in which I can
describe "being burnt out").

------
yeahbutbut
"There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes
that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself."

\--Alan Turing

------
brianmcconnell
I agree 100% with the author about the spoiled brat mentality of this
generation of developers. I personally prefer to hire older developers because
a) they tend to be steady producers, and b) they have the maturity to
understand that sometimes work sucks and c) provided managers don't treat them
like shit, they tend to stick around. The flip side of the deal is I am not
going to work them to death or make unreasonable demands unless we're in a do
or die situation.

Guess what kids. Work can be boring. If you're writing reporting software for
a utility grid monitoring company, it's probably not your "passion", but it'll
pay for your mortgage, your kids school, and time off.

~~~
nostrademons
It's perfectly fine for you to hire older developers, particularly if you're
writing reporting software for a utility grid monitoring company. A younger
developer probably isn't going to want to do that job anyway. The reason we
have a market economy in the first place is so that people can find the work
the matches their interests and abilities best, and then get paid well for
doing it to the best of their abilities.

~~~
swah
Why a younger developer wouldn't want to write reporting software for a grid
monitoring company? Sounds more interesting than webapps.

~~~
nostrademons
I don't think there's anything stopping them if they really do. The
grandparent poster is talking about people who think they "above" the work.
Someone who really wants to do the work isn't going to act like they're above
it, and is probably going to do just fine at it. That's the system working as
intended.

------
craigyk
I am one of the people this article talks about, and I agree heartily.
Fortunately I've long since identified this personal issue and have been
working to improve myself. In all those years I spent watching peers working
hard and struggling with things I did not, I had a nagging suspicion there
were hidden benefits to their struggle.

Now I know. Today they are better at getting shit done. They can grind through
the menial day to day minutiae real world projects are burdened with whereas I
tend to obsess over the pockets that are "interesting". Working on it
though...

------
dinkumthinkum
I have to say, I agree with real moderate amount of this. There is sort of an
echo chamber and a bit of a crazy echo chamber where people are cheered living
in their cars like crazy people and think that says something about their
entrepreneurial spirit.

But there's another side to this post that is a bit unfair to HN and
generalizes us too much and the "these kids today" language ... I don't know,
it's like he has a very good point and I agree with to such a large degree but
he almost goes too far with the insults.

However, I do agree the initial blog post he is referencing raises so many
flags for me. The first paragraph is like "I worked their two months" and then
he got bored.

If I was the simpleprogrammer.com author, I would probably would have written
this very same blog post in reaction to the other one. It is just outlandish
crazy-talk ... But then I would have tried to calm down and not quite go after
all of HN with such vitriol.

But I agree, the crazy he is responding to does kind of come out of an echo
chamber in our community; down the whole "I'm going to make a publicity ploy
by making a website dedicated to company X hiring me" stuff.

I think the language could be toned down a little but I think we can all learn
from this as well. Perhaps if the language had been less acidic, we wouldn't
have paid attention though.

------
joyeuse6701
Whenever I read something like this, about the virtue of work ethic, and the
vice of laziness I always think back to the phrase on those Auschwitz gates:

Arbeit macht frei

Working hard on something you're passionate is good. Working hard on an
important far out goal is good (whether you enjoy it or not). Simply working
hard in and of itself is not something I'd consider a virtue. In fact it may
be a sign of stupidity.

------
kemofo
I'm just finishing up a web based ordering and accounting system. Me and one
other guy wrote it. It runs a $100,000,000 company, it keeps all the orders
and books, day in and day out. It took two years of my life to write, I slept
fitfully for most of that time. I doubted myself and my team mate (but he
stuck through it and my doubt made me ashamed). Now that the system is up and
running I'm extremely proud. But I know that 90% of the programmers I'll meet
for the rest of my life won't even believe I did this. Very few people I've
met can conceptualize the work effort required to complete a feat like this.
This idea is lost on my generation of peers, it's gone and it's not coming
back. The "me" generation is fundamentally lacking in this way. I mourn this a
little every day b/c I can't relate my achievements to them, they just don't
understand. They think I'm the one who needs to change...

------
Aloisius
_> Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early._

That kind of talk is not only monumentally ignorant, but it is downright
dangerous. _If anything, it shows that you haven 't ever really worked hard in
your entire life._

Anyone who thinks burn out is some sort of myth should just go check the major
universities' suicide rates among their overachieving students.

------
goshx
This is a complicated topic, in which I think there must be some kind of
balance.

There are the lazy ones from the perspective that they are too lazy to put
their heads down and do the hard/boring work, and there are the lazy ones from
the perspective that they are too lazy to get out of their comfort zone, even
though the work is hard/boring.

------
mikekij
"...will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly
travel."

This post assumes that there is a single criterion for success that is
universal to all people, and that those who move "haphazardly" between
pursuits will fail to meet this criterion.

The truth is that some people are maximizers who define success through things
like financial achievement, and some people are satisficers for whom success
is truly getting to work on things you love every day.

I do agree that this generation (myself included?) is much too willing to give
up on something that is getting boring / tiresome in favor of something new,
when continuing on the original path would have in fact made them successful
shortly. The only project I've stuck with for > 4 years in my entire life is
paying off, largely because of my team's dogged pursuit of the same goal, even
when things got tiresome.

------
ianstallings
I'm not really one to talk about "kids these days" given that my longest job
at one place was a little over 3 years. It's part of my personality. I get
bored, what can I say. I'm looking for _completion_ of my soul. It's out here
I know it.. I saw it at the Porsche dealership I think.

------
princess3000
Does writing yet another article about those darn kids these days count as
hard, boring work or easy, enjoyable work?

~~~
mscarborough
It's hard work to determine the answer. The author seems to think it's an
obvious life lesson. So it's easy for him to understand, and probably
enjoyable to write. Maybe boring to keep clicking on the 'bold html' button?

I'm so confused!

------
aragot
Hi John Snmez, I am one of those you talk about: I've left my job at the most
awesomest start up in the world to create my company. I believe I've failed,
failed to stay in those companies, failed to get value out of my employments,
even if my 6-years carrer got me into world class places, even though I was
the last guy in the office every day and I never look at HN at work. I admit
working hard isn't even enough, one need to work hard and good. But hey, who
should guide me into working "good"? I've left, because I didn't learn that
where I was.

Hence my question: Could you please provide the criteria to distinguish
between slackness/"leaving to pursue an opportunity that you love" and the
right thing to do/"leaving to spend the right time to learn more and avoid
productivity pressure"?

~~~
jsonmez
Pick a direction, ride it out to see where it goes. If it doesn't work out,
start again. All I am saying is don't get in the cab and pay the fair and them
jump out of the window when the ride gets bumpy. Hang on a bit, ride through
the bumps and get to your destination. Perhaps this takes a year or 2, but
don't give up before you get there because you are bored or the work is hard.

~~~
aragot
Ok, I did stay more than a year or two in every job, and I want to be in
control of my work, and I was no way near of achieving this simple goal when I
left. Job done, I move on.

------
tenpoundhammer
I think the definition of value is important, and I believe there is a large
disconnect between generations and even individuals on this. Many in the
younger generations value experience far more highly than tangible assets and
career trajectory. That is why they are so fickle and likely to move from one
thing to the next. While older generations say 34 years older, are interested
in career trajectories, legacy building, and building a family home/unit.

The method in which you choose to carry out your professional duties is much
more closely tied to the type value you wish to create, than some vacant
concept of lazyness or not understanding hard-work.

I think a more pertinent argument is whether the younger generation is
mistaken in their goal to gain experiences as opposed to building longterm
tangible capital and careers.

------
barbs
I don't really understand what he's trying to say. He says:

> _Your passion may at first carry you further than your peers. But, overtime
> you’ll find those peers of yours that were willing to put in the hard work
> and stick to one thing, as boring as it might have been for them, will
> overtake you._

and

> _It doesn’t matter how brilliant you started out or how much faster you
> exited the gates than everyone else, those who consistently get up every
> morning and direct their energies along a single path, no matter how boring
> it may be, will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you
> haphazardly travel._

What does he mean by "overtake you"? In wealth? Specialised experience?

It sounds like he's just butthurt about having worked hard at things he didn't
enjoy.

------
resu
"I wish I worked harder" said nobody on their deathbed ever.

There's a difference between working hard as a corporate slave and working
hard on something you personally believe in. A big difference the author
doesn't seem to understand...

------
001sky
There is a sort of Irony in this post, which I think most people intuitively
feel. That is of the leader complaining that his followers are no good at
following. This is of course, a classic sign of weak leaderhsip. Not poor
follower-ship.

------
dallasrpi
I had a project manager we were interviewing decline a 2nd interview because
he read some reviews on glassdoor that indicated he might have to work hard.
Just the idea that there was a chance he might have to put in time on a night
or weekend scared him off. Now granted this was the culture years ago and
maybe in other groups but he didnt even bother to ask about it just took the
reviews from ex bitter employees (does anyone else but bitter people leave
feedback on that site?) as gospel. I guess its better he took himself out of
the running. He has also been unemployed for several months.

------
xradionut
I disagree with the OP.

It's never been widely claimed that "Work should be fun." There's a reason
work is called work. :)

And there's a lot of "hard, boring work". In my lifetime, I've worked on the
farm, in fast food, in factories, in the military, in wafer fabs, at desks, in
school and at work benches in all sorts of crazy roles enduring all sorts of
physical and mental strains.

Creating the same damn CRUD application over and over for years is just as
dull as chopping weeds in a oats field. It pays more, but at a certain point a
creative mind wants difference, a challenge, something to accomplish.

------
kybernetyk
Sorry, but this post reeks a little too much of "I spent my youth in a boring
shit job and so should everybody else".

Where's the problem if someone decides that he doesn't want to keep working in
a boring job?

------
tetatet
It does matter what passion you pursue. The right passion will drive you to
get better. The passion for just getting along with people who don't give a
toss will leave you utterly dissatisfied, physically tense, and miserable.

It takes some experience in experiencing how poorly dispassionate and,
inevitably, disappointed, people can be to be sunk in this.

You may want to read this - [http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-
jobs/](http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/).

If you have more time, read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.

~~~
zokier
> If you have more time, read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.

I read them couple of times when I was a teenager, but I can't make the
connection here.

~~~
tetatet
tBlind, religious following. Your daemon dying... You being disconnected from
your daemon. Yes, tenuous, but existing... OP is a man without a daemon.
Tenuous, but existing. Read it again...

------
gurvinder
"It doesn’t matter how brilliant you started out or how much faster you exited
the gates than everyone else, those who consistently get up every morning and
direct their energies along a single path, no matter how boring it may be,
will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly travel."

So what if they will pass ? I prefer to be left behind and do something I
like. Life is not about getting ahead of others, some take joy in getting
ahead of others, while some enjoy being left behind but doing their thing.

------
ruethewhirled
I find this article a terrible sweeping generalization and opinionated based
on the authors perception of success and what it takes to be successful.How
about working smarter and not harder

------
tomjen3
Why is this article HN worthy? It is just some person who _still_ hasn't
realized that it doesn't matter how hard you work, if what you work at isn't
worth working at.

------
uladzislau
If you can see beyond provocative part without getting offended you'll see
that the post main point is how persistence and grit beat passion and being
smart. Hardly anyone can argue with that.

"It doesn’t matter how brilliant you started out or how much faster you exited
the gates than everyone else, those who consistently get up every morning and
direct their energies along a single path, no matter how boring it may be,
will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly travel."

------
dredwerker
For a different view on working hard, take a look at In Praise of Idleness By
Bertrand Russell " I think that there is far too much work done in the world,
that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what
needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from
what always has been preached."

[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

------
justinhj
Every generation since the dawn of humanity has claimed that the one before it
is lazy. And what's more what is that noise they call music these days?

------
md224
> nothing of any worth is obtained by any means except for good old honest
> hard work

This sounds nice as a slogan on a motivational poster, but is it actually
true? On the one hand, I sort of understand what he's trying to say: many
things in life require significant effort. But the phrase "nothing of any
worth" is a little extreme... worth is pretty subjective, after all.

------
mrpoptart
Anyone who has lived through their 20s understands that 20-somethings are not
yet adults and don't quite get how the world works. They'll be forced to live
in it with responsibility soon enough. Don't shame them for trying to explore
the boundaries and make mistakes along the way. Your path is not the only one.

------
e13tra
The Nietzsche quote is not only out of (very meaningful) context, but also
from a poor prewar translation, as far as I can tell. Even so, anyone even
slightly familiar with Nietzsche's tone should see the irony of appropriating
this in the article's reasoning.

------
neur0mancer
I don't think i want to work that hard.. i lived and worked in the U.S for a
short time and i tasted what is to work very hard.

I discoverd that i prefer to work a little less hard doing things at my own
speed, even if i don't develop my "full potential".

------
wglb
Wow: _saddest most uninformed blog post on hacker news yesterday_. Personal
story is "uninformed"? Sounds a little totalitarian. I think this blog post is
uninformed and quite out of line.

------
spoiler
This article states so many hypotheses the are unproven, and the author is
making absolutely no attempts to prove them.

Also, I know that I am addressing the "tone" of the article[1], but there is
simply so much of that _self acclaimed witty know it all attitude_ that he
claims is dominating HN.

What he fails to understand (which I believe is the core reason responsible
for his post) is that life, is a very personal experience. So is work (any
type of work, not just job-work).

Secondly, he is having a rant (call it what you want, but this is effectively
a damn rant) about people (these are all people he is talking about) he knows
nothing about.

I've known people (I did it myself too) who did things and lied about their
_motivation_ , because they were embarrassed, wanted support, etc. An example
is my friend who lost her father at a very young age (15) and her life was
upside down for a while, but she was better and everything was fine for a year
or two, but it wasn't. She claimed she got "bored of physics" (which was her
high school degree), but she was too embarrassed to admit that it was because
it reminded her of her late dad every day, who was also a (retired)
physicists.

A more personal example: I was ruining my life, I was perfectly aware of what
I was doing, too. I didn't care, though. I had no power, no will, no
motivation to do anything about it. My life was literally out of my control. I
just didn't. I was driving my mum crazy with my "care free" facade, which was
to protect her from something I couldn't explain, and I simply knew she'd
blame it on herself (she is an overprotective single mum, just to draw a
picture): On the inside I felt worthless, I wanted to drop out of university.
I considered suicide many times, I even went as far as planning one that would
look like an accident (thankfully a great friend saved my life without
realising it). I'd go to "classes," but I was really just sitting in a park, I
felt too tired to move. The sunlight felt like it was pushing me down, the
shadows felt heavy (shadows one is not even a metaphot) . I had a friend for a
very long time who realised it wasn't just a phase and forced me to seek help:
turns out I was depressed since early childhood. Nobody realised it because
child depression symptoms are different than adolescent or adult ones.
Everyone thinks depression just makes you sad. Well, it's a way bigger
clusterfuck that most, unless they've been through it, can even _fathom_. You
can't be bothered to do things you are passionate about, doing something you
don't like? Hello Purgatory.

Anyway, I'm a lot better now.

I also know that some people do fall into the HASHTAGIDGAFYOLO category the
author is describing, but I sincerely doubt that (I might be biased about the
following statement) someone of our intellect can plummet to such levels of
stupid.

Yes, these people are running away, but he doesn't know why or what they are
running away from, and it's fucking unjust to make such claims with no
evidence to prove them.

Someone once said to me that "lazy" is more often a symptom than the cause
itself. They also used a clever analogy: "Diagnosing someone with laziness is
the same as diagnosing someone with a cough." You need to look deeper before
you can make assumptions.

I was making up "cool" excuses rather than admitting that I am depressed.
Internet gives me a thin cloak of anonymity, so I don't mind sharing my
thoughts.

[1]:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

P. S: Sorry if the post is a bit incoherent, but I have a bit of a temper when
I see insensitive swines saying bullshit. Sorry for the previous sentence,
too. And yes: I might have taken the post a bit too personally because I was
hurt by some of the things that were said. Anyway, this was longer than I
intended it to be.

------
mratzloff
So why exactly am I not allowed to down-vote this link bait garbage?

------
spoiler
That last sentence didn't turn out quite right...

EDIT: Hollow words from people part of one of the biggest misconceptions on
this planet about a stigmatised disease.

------
hawkharris
Whenever I read an article accusing my generation of selfishness, I can't wait
to disprove it by posting comments all about me and my situation.

------
weames
Thank you for being candid, and really trying to make a difference by posting
and writing something meaningful.

------
j2d3
This article is a just a huge HN troll.

------
elwell
Great read; inspiring. Alright, now let me see if my hn karma changed while I
was reading.

------
j2d3
Arbeit macht frei

------
badman_ting
Terrible, terrible.

------
radley
Ironic.

------
wnevets
get off my lawn!

