
Charles Bukowski: The Slavery of the 9 to 5 - DiabloD3
https://medium.com/personal-growth/charles-bukowski-the-slavery-of-the-9-to-5-ae6778ce3731
======
nitwit005
I strongly suspect that while Bukowski might have been depressed at his job,
he probably had some cheerful as fuck coworkers annoying the crap out of him.

I have a friend who became a barista out of university. For most people that
would be a depressing failure to get a "real job", but she got enthused,
became hugely knowledgable about coffee, and seems to enjoy it. Her company
keeps shipping her out to various coffee related events, so they clearly like
her.

Sometimes people fit snugly into a crack in the world that fits their shape,
and sometimes no such crack exists.

~~~
MisterKent
It's not slavery if you'd do it for free.

~~~
jondubois
We'll see how you feel about that after doing more or less the same thing for
10 years straight.

------
jstewartmobile
Bukowski is absolutely right here, and Taleb also hits this topic pretty hard
in his drafts.

The worst years I've had working for myself have still been better than the
best years I've had as an employee, and that was justice! It's like with all
of the problems in the world, I'm going to spend my days being a lackey to
make more money for someone who already has plenty so I can ride the
status/consumption bandwagon even harder.

My slave mentality deserved slave results. Praise God I accidentally broke
free!

~~~
willbw
Could you point me in the direction of where Taleb has written on this topic?

~~~
jstewartmobile
Here's the relevant draft from SITG:
[http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/employee.pdf](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/employee.pdf)

He also has the same idea peppered throughout _Antifragile_.

~~~
wslh
And here [1] (Reddit AMA) "The point is that if you want to be a writer, an
artist, or a researcher in something solitary, better have a job that is
steady and not taxing intellectually. Think of Spinoza, Einstein, Bayes..." It
is not what initiated this thread but it is related in the sense that you can
find a job to cover your basic expenses but not being demanding intelectually
to pursue other interests.

I read the same from the artist Leon Ferrari [2] [3] he was an engineer and
the son of an artist. His father told him to have a career and just then be an
artist. This was an anti-fragile advice.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/38onec/i_am_nassim...](https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/38onec/i_am_nassim_nicholas_taleb_ask_me_anything_on/crwki2o/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3n_Ferrari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3n_Ferrari)

[3] [https://www.amazon.com/Ferrari-Leon-Prologo-Andrea-
Giunta/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Ferrari-Leon-Prologo-Andrea-
Giunta/dp/9873754091/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485223620&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3Awain+andrea%2Cp_n_condition-
type%3A1294423011)

~~~
riprowan
I've long told my recording clients, "real musicians have a day job" because
it described so much of the best talent to come through the studio.

------
pw
It hardly seems accurate to say the average software development job is in any
way analogous to what Bukowski describes. We're well compensated professionals
who, relative to the other professions, tend to have reasonable hours and a
lot of latitude in what we work on and when. Yet, we have a supremely weird
tendency to identify as some sort of labor slaves.

~~~
pjmlp
> Yet, we have a supremely weird tendency to identify as some sort of labor
> slaves.

Depends where on earth you live.

I can assure you that while some of my Asian friends doing offshore consulting
do have a much better life than many of their country fellows, the way they
are seen by the western companies hiring them is not much different from the
old colonial days.

Also those of us that are lucky to live in countries that have working IT
unions, e.g. in Germany, do see the difference.

~~~
Godel_unicode
What benefits do you get from your union, and what are the
fees/responsibilities that go with it? I've heard this before, never really
heard what the details are though.

~~~
pjmlp
In addition to what soperj has answered.

Any overtime gets paid either in money or free time.

Working beyond 10 hours on a day requires authorization and is extra paid.

If doing crushes over lengthy time periods happens due to bad management, it
can be reported to the government activities overseeing labor laws.

Any expat temporarily working in local projects gets the same work rights as
anyone else, regardless of what international companies "think" about labor
laws. Failure to comply can be reported to respective authorities.

Working over weekends requires special approvals and is properly compensated.

Support for fighting against management, when they "think" they know better
than what labor laws state about worker rights.

~~~
pricechild
> Any overtime gets paid either in money or free time.

> Working beyond 10 hours on a day requires authorization and is extra paid.

> Working over weekends requires special approvals and is properly
> compensated.

I'm amazed that you believe you require a union to ensure proper compensation
in a country like Germany?

Is it because you're a contractor rather than an employee or some similar
sillyness?

Why isn't being paid for your time the default?

~~~
pjmlp
Because what the law says and what many employers think that they can get away
with, isn't the same thing.

~~~
pricechild
I thought unions were a form of collective bargaining to benefit the employee.

Surely they're not required to get an employer to follow the law. Isn't there
a better way?

~~~
pjmlp
> Isn't there a better way?

Sadly not that I am aware of.

Either you go alone with a lawyer, or get some muscle beyond you.

For example, even for simple matters like vacations, many people are actually
unaware what are their rights, benefits, obligations and how much control the
employer has over them.

Many just take the simple route and believe whatever their boss tells them,
instead of checking what the law actually says.

------
jondubois
I definitely feel like a slave. I have very little freedom of thought (I'm
always thinking about work), very little freedom of speech (the range of
topics that I can discuss while at work is very limited). No means of making a
difference; all software companies these days are huge corporations that treat
you like a number - They don't even bother looking at your past work to
understand your potential; they just care about labels. Also, there are no
means of escape; I can't even start my own business in this industry unless I
win the VC lottery (and I've tried).

Software workers are among lowest class of people in society. Those few
engineers who happen to have any business leverage tend to be the most
compliant ones and don't use that leverage for the benefit of their own kind;
instead they are fully subservient to their corporate masters.

The corporates made sure that only the most docile engineers rose to the top.
The problem is that as engineers we spend too much time working on our IQ and
not enough on our EQ (which is unlike most other professions where some degree
of hustling and social scheming is the norm) - As a result, others take
advantage of us.

As I'm writing this, I understand that there will be repercussions some day
for making inflammatory comments like this online. As big data get more
effective, this comment will probably come up next to my profile picture
somewhere with a big red cross next to it.

Nonetheless, I feel compelled to write this because this point of view needs
to be expressed more often even if it sounds a bit extreme.

~~~
BjoernKW
I find this somewhat widespread lazy, defeatist attitude among engineers both
sad and disturbing. It shows quite a lack of empathy and perspective.

In general, software workers are in an extremely fortunate position:

Their services are in high demand and this will continue to be the case for
the foreseeable future. Even when taking AI into account software creation
will probably be among the very last jobs to be automated.

Software workers can create value out of thin air. Founding a business in the
software industry is ridiculously easy. In almost any other industry high up-
front investment is required. If you fail in any other industry you likely
have to pay off a huge amount of debt. In the software industry the default
worst case scenario is you've learned something along the way and just start
over.

The idea that one can't found a business if one doesn't score in the VC
lottery just seems like the feeling of being entitled to having everything
handed to you for free. Not every software company has to be a unique
snowflake. Not every software company has to be Facebook or Google. There's
plenty of exciting software work to be done by bootstrapped software companies
in down-to-earth industries (which are often often terribly underserved by the
software development community at large).

This feeling of entitlement in my opinion is the root cause of the problem. As
a software developer you can't expect business people to respect you and
provide you with business leverage if all you want to do is sit at a desk all
day and write code.

Communication is key. You need to present your work in terms non-developers
can both understand and relate to, i.e. talk about the business value you
provide.

If you don't want to be commoditised first of all don't commoditise yourself!
You're not a bunch of TLAs. I find it offensive that people are commonly hired
based on a set of acronyms as well as that people often identify with these
acronyms. If you're a Java / PHP / JavaScript / whatever developer you're
essentially a fungible commodity. If you present yourself as a skillful
business problem solver that's an entirely different matter and more business-
minded, less tech-savvy people will much more readily pay you the respect you
deserve.

~~~
blub
Is it so hard to imagine that _many_ software engineers are taken advantage
of? And that they can't leave due to life circumstances?

I guess your post makes some sense if you add a big fat asterisk: in some
parts of the US and Europe.

------
chris_7
Really, I just want a 9-to-5, instead of a 9-to-8 + "oh hey quick question"
notification from Slack at 11.

~~~
mjfl
Seriously, 9-5 is the dream. This article is so filled with naive melodrama.
Does this person realize how much effort it takes to kill, pluck, and dress a
single chicken? to grow a single ear of corn? Things you might eat in a single
meal? Someone has to "slave" themselves away to grow that for you. They can't
just quit and become a poet, if they did the author would starve. That
attitude is the definition of childish because it always assumes that someone
is going to be there to provide for you, whether it is the state, some rich
patron, or your actual parents.

~~~
chillwaves
You do realize that efficiencies in agriculture means our country alone has
more than the capacity to feed the entire world?

Second consideration, no one opts in to capitalism. You are simply born into a
situation with scarce access to natural resources (fenced off by the rich and
powerful). Now, it only seems fair to me that a person has to ability to opt
out, if we wanted to level the playing field between workers and owners. That
is the price of civilization.

~~~
pjlegato
You _can_ absolutely opt out of capitalism, and many have: you can get some
likeminded people together and start a commune, or you can go sleep on a park
bench and panhandle, or you can just leave and move to Cuba or North Korea.
Nobody will stop you or hinder you in any way.

However, you _cannot_ opt out of socialism. "Not having a job" is illegal in
socialist countries. Don't like the job that was assigned to you by some
bureaucrat? Want to start a mini-free market with your friends? Too bad, the
alternative is the labor camps.

The border guards in capitalist countries are there to prevent illegal
immigration _into_ the country. The border guards in socialist countries are
there to keep people from _escaping_.

~~~
legulere
> start a commune,

That does not mean you are not part of the capitalist society anymore. You
have to get enough capital to get land and you will have to continue paying
taxes.

~~~
chillwaves
I would say the most offensive/dishonest aspect of this loaded statement is
basically the implied isolation of "you guys go over there, leave the world to
us" \-- as if only the capitalists can claim the inherited knowledge of
humanity (fenced off with copyright laws etc). As if only the capitalists, who
have taken so many (all) natural resources, have a right to the land we are
born on and we must slave to pay for small parcel of land just to exist. How
exactly is that "opting out" of capitalism again?

It's more akin to playing socialism than actually living in it.

------
thyselius
I'm making enough money to live on from apps I released last year. I don't
know what to do with my time. Freedom is of course wonderful but I don't
_feel_ it, I often long for the office context of a good Swedish workplace.
You need to feel you accomplish something every day, and (good) work does
that.

~~~
paulcole
> You need to feel you accomplish something every day, and (good) work does
> that.

Work (good or bad) is a crutch many people rely on to feel as though they're
accomplishing something.

I didn't work for 2 years (by choice) and never felt as if I lacked purpose
and never felt the need to "accomplish something everyday."

Instead I exercised, read, watched TV, relaxed. I was constantly amazed by the
number of people who said they'd hate that sort of routine.

~~~
ryandrake
> I didn't work for 2 years (by choice)

I'd love to know how you managed that. Somehow built up an enormous savings
and then blew it over 2 years? You are very fortunate to have been able to do
that!

~~~
brianwawok
You don't need an enormous savings.Just live on less.

Make 100k for 2 years, spending 25k to live per year. So you have 150k in
savings - taxes, lets round down to 100k.

You can now go 4 years without working.

I know people that do similar things... can use it to fund an indy game, or
just play videogames for a few years.

~~~
hadfgdasf
I guess you don't plan on retiring early in that case.

~~~
paulcole
2 years off in my 20s felt pretty much like retirement. Loved it.

~~~
wingworks
Yep, I worked for 4 years at ~$45k/y, spending nothing, and just had a year
off, started by travelling for a few months and chilling for the last few, had
the best time of my life, even started doing some side projects which I hadn't
done since Uni, and really missed. Sadly I've run out of $$$ now and looking
for some work.

I know it can be risky taking such a break from a career but I think it was
worth it, I gained some great travel experience and better understand what I
want out of life.

------
bambax
Bukowski the postal worker was offered a basic income and he took it, and in
the process became Bukowski the writer.

Currently in France there is a big debate about a universal, unconditional
basic income, that one of the candidates to the left primaries defends,
against the mockery and outrage of everyone else, right, left and center. (He
arrived first at the first round with 35% of the vote, and looks like he will
win next week, so all is not lost).

Still, it's surprising that so many people are against this idea. They're not
just saying it's impractical, impossible, too expensive, etc. (although they
are saying that as well) -- they're opposed to it on principle. But what
principle?

For lack of a better explanation and at the risk of being polemical, I think
the reason is, people hate other people's freedom.

People want other people to be not free, even at the cost of their own
freedom. Thinking that we could actually be able to choose a life without work
or bosses or a schedule drives many people mad.

~~~
woldendans
I am living in France and here are the arguments I heard against the Universal
income so far that has nothing to do with cost or impossibility to set up.

Some say this is a patch to hide misery. The idea is that they think we should
not give people charity, keeping them alive but still poor, and instead focus
on the real problem: the lack of jobs and the disparity of incomes. I even
heard from some that the Universal Income is a Silicon Valley idea to keep
getting richer while giving the poor just enough to keep consuming, thus
maintaining the capitalistic economy alive.

An other argument I have heard beside cost is that it encourages/rewards
laziness and inactivity.

~~~
coldtea
> _Some say this is a patch to hide misery. The idea is that they think we
> should not give people charity, keeping them alive in misery, but instead
> focus on the real problem: the lack of jobs and the disparity of incomes._

The "lack of jobs" would be the real problem is jobs were premised to be
available. But jobs are there to accomplish things (and a number of them could
be enough for doing those things) not to give people a paycheck.

~~~
rubber_duck
>But jobs are there to accomplish things (and a number of them could be enough
for doing those things) not to give people a paycheck.

I agree with this view but you also need to realize that if you follow that
logic the only reason society exists is because cooperation worked better than
alternatives, specialization and jobs came out of that. Now if that's no
longer true the core premise of the society disappears, and all the arguments
against that is essentially people feeling uncomfortable with this outcome -
that a huge part of people will have no role in society and will be dead
weight at the mercy of those in power - it's not hard to see why this view
makes them uncomfortable.

------
baby
I might have read a bunch of books and articles about work, but the biggest
lessons I've learned are from Bukowski.

The Post Office and Factotum are two of my favorite books. Here are a few
quotes from Factotum that I really liked:

~~

“Look,” I said, “these books aren’t worth reading let alone arguing about.”

“All right,” one of the women said, “we know you think you’re too good for
this job.”

“Too good?”

“Yes, your attitude. You think we didn’t notice it?”

That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had
to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.

~~

“You knew we were going to let you go?”

“Bosses are never hard to fathom.”

“Chinaski, you haven’t been pulling your weight for a month and you know it.”

“A guy busts his damned ass and you don’t appreciate it.”

“You haven’t been busting your ass, Chinaski.”

I stared down at my shoes for some time. I didn’t know what to say. Then I
looked at him. “I’ve given you my time. It’s all I’ve got to give—it’s all any
man has. And for a pitiful buck and a quarter an hour.”

“Remember you begged for this job. You said your job was your second home.”

“…my time so that you can live in your big house on the hill and have all the
things that go with it. If anybody has lost anything on this deal, on this
arrangement…I’ve been the loser. Do you understand?”

“All right, Chinaski.”

“All right?”

“Yes. Just go.”

~~

It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place
for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually
reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an
alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and
hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of
money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to
do so?

~~~

I always started a job with the feeling that I’d soon quit or be fired, and
this gave me a relaxed manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some
secret power.

~~~

Here are the one I liked from Women: [http://www.p1x3l.com/story/171/bukovsky-
women](http://www.p1x3l.com/story/171/bukovsky-women)

~~~
badsock
To oversimplify, there's two ways of pricing things: what the market will pay,
or taking the cost to produce and adding a markup.

We price hours of work by the first method, but I started wondering what it
would look like if we used the second.

For both a CEO and a janitor the cost of one hour of employment is one hour of
their life. So from that perspective, we should be paying everyone the same.

I can't think of how to make an economic system work based on that, but it was
a curious thought.

~~~
riprowan
The answer to al your questions is: in a perfectly competitive market, the two
pricing strategies lead to the same price.

However an hour of one person's life does not have the same market value as an
hour of another person's life.

~~~
baby
What do you do with overqualified people =)

------
trengrj
Working without a calling, especially in an unskilled job, is horrifying. It's
main use is to convince yourself that you never want to be in that position
again and motivate studying or a career change.

~~~
scarface74
I don't know if you consider factory work "unskilled work" or not, but as I
mentioned above, my dad was a factory worker for 30 years before he retired at
55, my mom was a high school math teacher, before she retired.

My mom came home, graded papers, took phone calls from parents and teachers
(these days teachers do the same and respond to emails after hours), had to
attend after school functions, and had to deal with politics, paper work,
parents of spoiled children etc. and never got paid extra for it.

My dad went to work at 8, came home at 5 and left the job at work. If he did
have to work extra he got paid for it. He has a degree in accounting but said
he couldn't imagine sitting behind a desk all day.

I on the other hand, besides a few stints at contracting, have mostly been in
the same boat - not getting paid overtime. I'm not complaining, I also get
paid well, can work from home when needed/wanted and get paid to do work I
would be doing as a hobby any way.

------
kriro
I find it a bit tasteless to use the term slavery or wage slavery for
essentially a job that you don't like but feel compelled to do to survive when
there's still real slavery going on in the world. The outcome of disobedience
is (assumed) unemployment which in most countries where this term is used
doesn't even mean you starve or suffer severely. The outcome for real slaves
is a bit more dramatic.

~~~
Aaargh20318
> The outcome of disobedience is (assumed) unemployment which in most
> countries where this term is used doesn't even mean you starve or suffer
> severely.

Yes it does. I live in the Netherlands, one of the most developed countries in
the world and one with what is considered excellent social security.

If I would 'disobey' and decide to stop working, I would get nothing at all.
Zero Euros. I would be out on the streets in no time flat. If I quit my job, I
would be 'at fault' for being unemployed and would not qualify for
unemployment. Even if I get fired, I couldn't decide to stay unemployed.
Pretty much every type of social security benefit comes with the requirement
to apply for jobs (which as a Software engineer means that I'd be back in the
9-to-5 grind within days), failure to apply for jobs means no money.

It has come to the point that even if you are disabled you get no social
security if you have 'the capacity to work', which means that if some civil
servant can dream up a job you could possibly do (regardless of if that job
actually exist or if someone is hiring people for such a position), you get
nothing. No arms and no legs ? Your tongue works so you could be a stamp-
licker, no social security for you.

Of course, if you _do_ have a job they take a huge chunk out of your monthly
salary to pay for 'social security'.

------
osrec
Bukowski, a truly insightful individual. Sometimes reading his thoughts and
ideas can bring a tear to my eye, simply because of their pithy practicality
and clarity (and possibly because I'm reminded of my grandfather, who was
similarly gifted in the art of brevity and honest observation).

------
SEJeff
Reminds me of F.I.R.E. (financial independence and retire early) from:

www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence

Really interesting stuff on that sub.

------
galfarragem
Putting it with other words:

Society doesn't allow most to be a genius and most of these potential geniuses
will fade eventually.

 _' I think we have an ideology about talent that says that talent is a
tangible, resilient, hardened, shiny thing. It will always rise to the top. To
find and encourage talent, all you have to do as a society, is to make sure
the right doors are open. Free campus visits, free tuition, letters to the
kids with high score. You raise your hand and say, «over here!» and the talent
will come running, but that's not true. It’s not resilient and shiny, talent
is really, really fragile.'_ \-- Malcolm Gladwell

------
diyseguy
I have this notion that they invented work to keep adolescent boys from
getting up to trouble. Then work turned into this thing that became
respectable. Then they pasted capitalism on top of it. After a while, women
felt left out and wanted in on it. Now we're all working and stressed out and
it feels awful and absurd. Yet we gotta do it or left to our own devices might
get up to trouble.

------
girum
Am I the only person here who thinks his "slavery" analogy is written in poor
taste?

~~~
Clubber
Actual slavery was worse because of beatings, and being torn from your family
at a whim, and being raped, forced to breed, and a bunch of other things.

Having said all that, the main tenant of slavery is being forced to work. It's
not the same, but it's similar. Slaves that were treated relatively well were
still slaves. Now, you can quit, but you can't stop working.

~~~
loafa
You're not "forced" to work by other people though, you're forced to work by
thermodynamics.

Our cousins the plants can photosynthesise, but we poor sods in Kingdom
Animalia have to work for our food one way or another. While my
hunter/gatherer and subsistence farmer ancestors had to work all day every day
to get enough food to eat, I'm sure they'd be pretty envious of the fact that
I could reliably eat for a week on the back of one hour's work in an air-
conditioned office.

------
rmason
One of my all time entrepreneurial quotes:

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly
salary."

— Nassim Taleb

------
Heraclite
After failing at taking my startup off the ground, I just started working for
a "normal" company (read: startup that actually raised serious series A, has
nice and lofty offices, a good tech team etc). I always have this feeling in
my gut that I want to escape from it, even if everything is going great. I
wonder if this will leave eventually.

------
achairapart
Read also: The Lucky Ones[1]

Everytime I read it I can't stop myself to compare it with the popular _The
Crazy Ones_ Apple ad.

[1]:
[https://bukowski.net/poems/the_lucky_ones.php](https://bukowski.net/poems/the_lucky_ones.php)

------
Mendenhall
Depends who you are and what fits I suppose. I worked from a super young age
and got to a point in my 20s where the idea of working for someone would drive
me crazy. I also hated the concept of someone being able to fire me or make a
bad decision above me. I like having no one to blame but me, it allows me to
sleep well at night.

Some people love their 9-5 and I find nothing wrong with that at all, Its not
a one size fits all solution. What I will say though is you learn a heck of a
lot about yourself when you are responsible for "everything". I love the
challenge of it.

------
SZJX
The top comment on Medium is hilarious. It contains "Get off the plantation
and build your own." I remember quite well what Taleb said, that to be truly
free, you need to be neither a slave nor a slave owner. What good is "building
your own plantation"? That literally makes you nowhere better than a slave/the
people who originally kept you in the first place.

------
xchaotic
Not sure why people expect a lifetime of gratitude for a menial job. You enter
a contract the be paid right now and if the terms of the contract grossly
differ from what has been agreed either side can (and should) break it.

------
baursak
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4VzhIuKCQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4VzhIuKCQ)

------
harrydry
this thread is dope.

kanye said it.

"we are the new slaves."

we all started out as gardeners. but pretty soon gardening is too much effort.
they sit on their ass to long and before they know it they become part of the
garden. we are all shrubbery. but we are happy. shrubs don't know that there
shrubs. Once in a while the gardener swings by, feeds us, waters us, tells us
we are doing a good job, then he goes to jerk off.

------
bogomipz
But yet it was also Bukowskis tenure as a 9-5 proletariat that gave him fodder
for his first novel "Post Office" and his nom de gare "Chinaski" the mail
carrier. It's hard for me to imagine Bukowski producing the work he did
without having experienced the tension expressed in that medium blog post.

The story I heard is that John Martin agreed to pay Bukowski his Post Office
salary for the rest of his life if he would quit and write full time.

------
jksmith
"Better ten dead men than one live slave." Don Juan, GB Shaw's Man and
Superman

------
EleventhSun
Even Egyptian slaves weren't at the bottom of the ladder (eg. they had
subservient wives). Not advocating "sexism" here but it's worth mentioning
subservience. Software engineers often really are at the bottom of the ladder,
however. Food for thought.

~~~
SturgeonsLaw
You're kidding me if you think software engineers are at the bottom of the
ladder.

They are highly respected, well compensated, and get paid to work on
interesting and challenging problems. In certain labour markets, money and
perks are thrown at them.

I live very far from SV, and my job is certainly not as enjoyable as software
development, and I can tell you with 100% conviction that there are much, much
worse options out there.

I'm struggling to understand your viewpoint. You must have led a very
[charmed/sheltered] life if you honestly believe that software engineers are
lower than Egyptian slaves on the totem pole. I don't mean that as a personal
dig at you, but comments like that rub me the wrong way when I would drag
myself through broken glass and barbed wire to have the life of a Silicon
Valley software dev.

------
z3t4
It's hard to feel free if you have never been non-free.

------
scarface74
To say that work is like "slavery" shows little understanding of what slavery
was. If I don't go to work, I'm not going to have my feet cut off, be chased
down by dogs or hung.

I've quit plenty of jobs over the years. My livelihood is not based on my job.
My livelihood is based on my having marketable skills so if I do get laid off,
I can walk to my car, call a bunch of recruiters and have another job in two
weeks tops. It's been that way for 20 years.

Also, a factory job only "enslaves" you for 35 years if you don't live below
your means and make life choices that allows you to save and get out of the
rat race. My dad knew he couldn't work in a factory until he was 65 or 70. He
saved, and lived below his means for 20 years and both of my parents retired
at 55, young and healthy enough to enjoy life.

I won't be able to retire that young because of stupid mistakes I made in the
past, but that's okay. I can honestly say that I enjoy my job and have enjoyed
my jobs for 20 years. Once I don't enjoy my job any more, I find another one.
I could easily do this for another 20 years.

~~~
Aaargh20318
> My dad knew he couldn't work in a factory until he was 65 or 70. He saved,
> and lived below his means for 20 years and both of my parents retired at 55,
> young and healthy enough to enjoy life.

That's nice for him, but that doesn't apply to the younger generations.

My retirement age is currently set at 70.7 (it will go up before I reach that
age). I have to pay into a pension plan, but if I were to quit before my
pension age that would mean a HUGE penalty on my pension payout, and I'm not
talking about quitting at 55, I'm talking about quitting at 68.

Furthermore, many older generations had really nice pension plans, a common
one was 70% of your last salary. If you stop at 55 and spend 10 years living
off savings and then can get a pension at 70% of your last income, that would
be amazing. Doesn't work like that anymore. The 70% of last income changed to
70% of your median income and then was replaced by a system where you
basically save up for for your pension with no guarantees as to the payout.

When I turn 70 I have to buy a pension from the money i've saved (minus the
fees for the pension fund and devalued by inflation, so maybe 70% of what I
put in). The money can only be used for buying a pension from an insurance
company who will base the monthly payout I can buy based on the life
expectancy figures they have at that time (and of course, I have to spend my
money with them so I'm sure to get screwed anyway). Right now, I don't expect
every to be able to stop working, the pension I'm saving for is just a way of
getting more money in the hands of the finance industry.

Your parents were born at the exact right time, pensions never were about
enjoying yourself in your later years, they were an insurance just in case you
didn't die before you were too old to work. We're returning to that attitude
towards pensions.

~~~
scarface74
My mom has a pension - she is a teacher. But my dad doesn't. True enough he
had profit sharing but in reality that's no different than a 401K plan. He had
a vesting schedule similar to a traditional retirement plan

------
draw_down
It is true, there is no real freedom except for the independently wealthy.
(And if you "work for yourself" you trade having 1 boss for having n bosses.)
This is the world we live in. There is a saying, "life sucks and then you
die"\- it is certainly always possible to be more specific than that, but
that's pretty much what it boils down to. Our challenge is to be happy despite
it.

What really bugs me is that we can't just admit to each other that having a
job is shitty, even if it's a good one. We all have to be "doing what we love"
and so forth.

~~~
Clubber
I haven't done it in a while, but when working for yourself exclusively, you
feel more in control of your destiny. Even if you have n bosses and 1 fires
you, you still have n-1 paychecks. If you have 1 boss and he fires you, you
have 0 paychecks until you find another boss.

------
ebbv
I like having a predictable schedule and not having to manage people. All the
money in the world isn't worth the stress and misery that comes from running
your own company.

------
paganel
Kafka wrote many of his works by night, while by day he was an employee of the
insurance company Assicurazioni Generali (and a good one at that, judging by
the latest studies written about his life). If Bukowski wasn't capable of
being a good writer while also holding a busy job that does not mean that it's
not doable, it just means that the task was too much for Bukowski.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Kafka wasn't that capable of being a good writer in that situation either. He
finished a handful of short stories, never finished a novel, and most of his
writing lay unfinished and unpublished at his death.

~~~
voidhorse
You're being unfair to Kafka here by reducing literary accomplishment to mere
quantity. Yes, his works were all short, but all of them far surpass the
majority of "novels" pumped out daily by the modern publishing industry and
all its hacks, idiots who compose at a 6th grade level, for the indisputably
puerile audiences they pander to.

The metamorphosis is apparently 20k words or so, and hell, it could be less.
But those are 20k words of tight, well crafted prose and artistic execution.
Far better than the 50-100k plus words of complete and utter doggerel the
majority of us consume on a daily basis.

This is another issue of capitalism--reduction of human experience to mere
quantity. You begin to ignore quality and humanity fades. You become content
consuming the most infantile garbage so long as the industry keeps it flowing,
so long as the magnitude of crap is great and undisrupted. Few are those
possessing the willingness or mental fortitude to devote a few hours to care
about humanity and its progression, we'd rather spend our hours playing video
games or watching movies or tv to "relax" or "unwind"; surprise, surprise,
this constant availability of mindless entertainment is another one of
capitalism's traps designed to keep you content with a life unlived.

I realize I sort of got off topic from what you stated about Kafka, and none
of this is aimed at you specifically boomboomsubban, you just got me on a
roooolllll.

I understand your point about Kafka was probably more so that he could've
produced more as a writer had his situation been different, not that what he
didn't manage to produce wasn't necessarily good, but we don't know that -- we
can't argue counterfactuals. It may well have been the case that Kafka simply
spent more time on a given piece than most authors, and thus even had he more
time to write his output may not have increased too significantly.

