Stories like this make you question whether it's worth being paid all this money to spend your life staring at a screen in a climate-controlled cube solving abstract problems that provide approximately zero benefit to your family, friends, and neighbors.
This. I was just reading some messages on the gofundme for his vacation (mentioned in thread) and one of the families on his route said that he remembers every childs names, even after they have left the house, which to me is something you would only expect of a good friend.
It seems like he is just a genuinely good guy who cares about these people and as you said, has the ability to connect with them on a level that most people don't.
Or maybe he didn’t have to go thru daily stand-ups and have to say how many letters will be delivered today.
Just kidding, kudos for him and some people are indeed gifted to make friends and connections intuitively.
On the other hand, there are jobs that make connecting to other people harder if not impossible. I used to work for Microsoft during the poignant stack rank time and it was utterly hard to build trust with anyone. I never played that game but competition was part of the culture and it ruined genuine relationships at any level.
Absolutely. I am all for making the best of things, but the conditions have to support it as well. Today more and more things are temporary, from doctors and workplace to where you live. Of course it is hard to make those connections. Especially since it also gets even harder as less people have them. That is why it always annoyed me when people say things like "just move", "just quit" or "it isn't a right to ...".
Even though I cancel and unsubscribe from everything I can, 95% of what I receive in the mail is paper spam. If I didn't still receive paper paychecks, it'd be even higher.
I recognize there's value in having a postal system, but in practice almost everything I receive goes straight in the shredder. It's been taken over by spammers. It's another system that provides real value to a lot of people, but seems to only be financially sustainable because of advertising.
(US resident). I haven't gotten one piece of junk mail in nearly 15 years (except for a few generics addressed to "resident", but even they are uncommon). Before that it was weekly shiny newspaper type ads and letter spam by the pound with a tiny bit of real mail.
It was an accident but here is how I did it.
I had a temporary job back in early 2000's so I got a short term lease in a different city and opened a PO box at post office. Then I unexpectedly got called back and was slated to return but didn't and neglected to close the PO box and forward mail. I was a road warrior for next 5 or 6 years and seldom at permanent address, so I didn't bother putting in address change back to permanent residence. Instead I got an online mail service (I don't know if was this, but something like this https://www.postscanmail.com/) that opened and scanned mail and I'd read it in browser, download scans, and have important stuff physically forwarded to wherever I was at the time.
Finally that all ended and I got a real address and stopped the online mail receiving. For whatever reason something in that process completely stopped the junk mail to this day and it's wonderful.
It's actually the other way around. The junk mail is paying for your mailman to come by every day. The $.50 for a stamp doesn't cover the cost of delivering a letter.
And a large portion of those spam are malicious scams. Mail that say "confidential" , "open immediately" in red ink, fake credit cards, fake checks ect.
When I was a residence hall advisor in college, one of my roles was sorting the mail, which has been useful experience years later: basically, you can ignore anything sent as “PRESORTED STANDARD”: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-spot-junk-mail-with...
Agreed. Sometimes I feel like I am wasting my life solving business problems I don’t really care about and nobody close to me understands even remotely.
There was a local reporter who went undercover to do an expose on the temp-agency market and worked a few days on the factory line at a food supplier. Her verdict: It wasn't very fun.
Grass is always greener.
People also tend to want their jobs to provide meaning to their lives. That is a luxury. For most people, a job is something you do to enable the rest of your life.
I've worked in factories and greenhouses (they tie for first place in awfulness, in factories it was 12 hour shifts in full PPE dipping steel ladders into hot degreaser - in greenhouses it was 10-12 hour shifts in 50C+ heat).
Neither was fun but they are very different to a 9 hour stint programming, when I worked physical jobs I could go home, have a shower and still had the energy to go out socialising where now when I get in I just want to veg with a book as I'm mentally spent.
Some of it might be to do with age but I switched careers in my mid-20's and it was the same at the start of my programming career.
"now when I get in I just want to veg with a book as I'm mentally spent."
That's me. I think it's age but a job where I am more active and/or outside would help for sure. When I worked as mechanical engineer I often had to go to the workshop which already was a nice break from the desk. There were also physical things to handle which is good for the soul. Now I am always at the desk or meeting rooms and everything is abstract.
You’re lucky, I pretty much have energy for books only in the weekend (unless it’s something really easy and interesting), on weekdays books are usually too taxing for my post-coding mental state.
> People also tend to want their jobs to provide meaning to their lives. That is a luxury. For most people, a job is something you do to enable the rest of your life.
This desire is a coping mechanism. Because the latter view, that the job is just to pay for your life, makes you discover that it also robs you out of all of it. Even the 9-5 job is way more than 50% of your wake time, after accounting for commute and energy drain.
You need to separate your work from your purpose. Think of work as merely collecting resources to maintain life. Get a hobby or volunteer at a charity and find purpose there. I've been much happier with putting my "self" into designing and testing board games. I forget about the dumpster fire after I leave and focus my energy on something I enjoy creating.
I'll go ya one better and say maybe forget your purpose entirely. Not in a negative, nihilistic way, but in kind of a Zenny way. You think Floyd here thinks about his purpose? Well actually it seems like he has decided "my purpose is to care for these people on my route," so maybe that's a bad example for my point. Although it's worth noticing, HE decided that. Which proves, it's totally arbitrary. Meaning is wherever you ascribe it (and probably nowhere else).
Mainly the idea is not to let "purpose" be a logjam that stops you. Life will happen to you regardless. Lately I've been trying to free myself from the endless quest for (please use whiny voice, knit brow earnestly, hold upturned fists close in front of you, and wiggle them slightly while saying) meeeaning. It stymied me for a long time. But it has to be seen for the ego trip it is. It's a "get over yourself" moment. Rein in that fanciful and conceited ego that's always wondering what great and high purpose your magnificent and important soul was cut out for. All that pressure! Letting go of it is a bit of a death (ego death). But jeez what a relief. It frees you to do whatever you want, which ironically is the only way you might actually end up going on to do something worthwhile. (Worthwhile according to you.)
How is being anxious at discovering an objective value for oneself (“meaning”) egotistical? If anything, it is an external reach out of the ego and away from doing whatever you want.
My thought process is a bit circular and paradoxical, I admit it. I also tried to be brief, which led to a long list at one point being truncated to the phrase "whatever you want" which might be misleading. My intent was more like "anything at all." In other words, meaning is everywhere. Even the post office. (Or it's nowhere, and that's ok too.)
Wanting your life to be meaningful is still you, caring about your life, that's the ego part. You can skip the whole meaning thing if you want, and just start doing things. I dunno, it helped me unblock myself.
I understand the anxiety and the relief from abandoning a possibly unending and self-destructive task for "purpose", but it is exactly that energy which propels humans to do great things. But I agree, meaning can be everywhere.
How many coders can have such jobs? 5%? 10%? Probably not more... For the rest of us, you either find satisfaction in the craft itself, or outside work.
I agree with the sentiment somewhat, but when we're spending the majority of our waking days at the "dumpster fire" and just a few hours doing what we love, it feels wrong and depressing.
If you'd started 35 years ago you could have had a decent quality of life earning a living as a mailman. If you're starting out now you'll probably need a second job to make ends meet if you're in an expensive part of the country..
Entry level mail carrier makes an average of $35k. It goes up to $55k after 20 years. That's around $17.50 to $27.50 per hour. That's not wealth, but it isn't poverty either.
My grandfather raised a family of eight kids on a mail carrier salary in Walla Walla after he got back from WW2. He sent them to private catholic school as well, I really don’t get how he did that.
Most people don't really chose consciously. We just follow what we're told until it seems too late to deviate from the course.
I personally ended up in IT because "why not it pays well and I like computers", I wasn't the same person when I chose that path and now I'm actively trying to figure a reasonable way out.
> There are only a few who control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose; the rest do not proceed; they are merely swept along, like objects afloat in a river. And of these objects, some are held back by sluggish waters and are transported gently; others are torn along by a more violent current; some, which are nearest the bank, are left there as the current slackens; and others are carried out to sea by the onrush of the stream. Therefore, we should decide what we wish, and abide by the decision. - Seneca
> I personally ended up in IT because "why not it pays well and I like computers",
I liked computers too, ever since my (divorced) dad showed me one. But why did I find them so interesting? Probably because I mostly played / occupied myself alone as a child, I read books while other children preferred "stupid" outdoor activities. We don't do what we're told, we follow whatever suits our personalities, at least if we have a choice.
> There are only a few who control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose;
This forum is very hard science, measurement, real-world - but I've extracted great joy and peace in some of the more eastern, buddhist-type teachings. Building compassion towards other people needs to start by being compassionate towards yourself.
You don't need to buy into the dogma, but some of the buddhist authors have developed great mental practices of dealing with fear, for instance. As an example author, I thoroughly recommend Thich Nhat Hanh.
Self-compassion also has great benefits in the business world, as you learn to understand and listen to your counterparts better, instead of being driven by a selfish agenda. This is, of course, just a by-product and not the main dish.
If your job is to sit in a dark closet & stare at a wall, is that job a waste of your life if you LOVE it? It's up to you to decide. Personally, I would hate being a mail carrier for many reasons, one of which would be thinking of myself as a 90% junk mail flinger. I love writing code, and I spend almost no time questioning the value of reimplementing a certain type of feature for the bajillionth time if that is what the job requires.
I have worked with people in tech who have this guys personality/attitude. They are friendly and personable with everyone they meet in the office.
It's lazy/wrong to think that it's the jobs fault that you don't have rich connections with those around you. If we want this we need to help be like this. We need to be the change we want to see :)
Reading the replies to this is really disheartening.
I assume many of you are software engineers. The job market is _great_ for us. Please take the time to find a job that you think matters for more than just acquiring money. There are plenty out there and they're probably struggling to hire too.
