As someone who has worked hard for years (at some point I had three con-concurrent jobs), I’m not sure working hard is the variable that causes burnout :thinking_face:
I will say tho, it gave me persistent back problems and RSI for two years :). But that again is not just “working hard”. It was bad posture, lack of stretching, breaks and exercise, I think.
Edit: Perhaps it’s the nature of the work or working hard unhealthily (physical and mental?) or the person’s characteristics.
I see. I guess different strokes for different folks.
For me, if my job or project is doomed, and my employer knows, I will rather they tell me immediately so I can start figuring out solutions ASAP.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the holidays. The last thing I will want is to come back from a holiday in Portugal, spirits high, year plans made, but only to be told I am fired.
I think it depends on the amount of severance you receive. A layoff happening in November/December with enough severance to cover what would've been the employee's wages/salary through February or beyond is kind of ideal; that way I'd get to spend the holidays as, well, holidays. Otherwise, I'd prefer it to be after the holidays, when businesses are ramping back up into normal operations and therefore I can reasonably hope for a faster turnaround time (and thus less of my own savings drained).
This time I got laid off it was the latter (last week), and while it's still stressful, I vastly prefer it over the last time I lost my job (right after Thanksgiving, with no severance).
The amount of time you have after you are fired is the same. If you are fired later, you get paid for a month or two AND are stress free with your family during the holidays.
Of course. However, the amount of time spent thinking consciously or subconsciously on a doomed project is minimized. The amount of time spent making decisions predicated on having the same job also. I can also savage any expensive holiday plans I made.
The keyword for me is the employer should let me know ASAP when something is doomed.
Again, this stress-free holiday with family is not a problem for me. I will rather be real about the situation than have my employer hide it for a month. They could give me an extra month of severance instead :).
Edit: I might be a minority on the earlier take.
I think the other argument that would affect other people is: these things always leak through gossip. When you hear of an imminent layoff and you don’t know if you will be included, it’s the worst type of stress.
I find it funny that you are discussing how to block YouTube ads —- when you can just get YouTube premium. Makes me ask the age old question: how can creators supposed to eat?
Do you worry how the actors eat in the shows you watch? If at any point a "content creator" can't sustain their video production, they can do what every other failed entrepreneur does and move on to another job, or re-assess the business model and adapt.
So far, nothing's been put on the table for me to feel compelled to buy video access, or videos themselves, for. If Youtube paywalls tomorrow, I'll go somewhere else. I got by on the Web before Youtube and I'll get by after them, too.
> Our culture needs to confront the fact that people are tired of their attention being diverted from their goals every day just so some dumb companies can remind us they exist.
This seems like an argument against non-targeted/contextual ads only? Because goals and ads can align.
I have had back pain and RSI for almost two years. My situation only got better after I started doing my physio exercises consistently.
I also learned things from physios on YouTube (e.g. Bob and Brad) that made a difference especially with the RSI in my hands.
My anecdotal experience doesn’t scaling with your claim. Of course, each pain is different and some just require good ol rest like you said. But that’s why you should spend the money to hire the professionals at the top of their game to tell you what is what.
Bob and Brad ("the two most famous physical therapists on the internet") are an absolute treasure. Always good to see them get some appreciation online.
Of course, if you, as a dictator, ban the word "sad" and the adjacent synonyms, people won't stop feeling sad. However, it's likely that they won't be able to reflect on what they feel, which in turn will change the way they think. And it's likely that the psychologists of this country will have a much harder time healing their patients or writing papers about depression.
Every time this topic comes up on HN, I see many anecdotes on why WFO is bad.
My anecdote: I work from the office everyday (unforced). 20-30 minutes commute. I come in at 6am/7am and leave at 2pm/3pm. I do a 30 minutes calisthenics session and then head home and usually leave my laptop in the office (as a forcing function to disconnect).
The result: I have built strong bonds with colleagues outside my team. A few of them have become close friends.
I'm also generally as productive and sometimes even more than my colleagues that WFH.
I feel the ideal environment is *contextual* and it’s probably a hybrid work environment where people who want to work remote can but have to touch base in-person a few times every month. I wish both sides on the debate can see this.
Edit: The point of my comment is neither option is bad or good. Certain people benefit from each option and it’s unfair to paint either one as bad.
E.g: As an immigrant, the office has been useful in seeding my social circle and learning useful things about Berlin that I probably wouldn’t have know. Just the other day a colleague outside my team informed me how I can get an extra 10 days off .
Someone in a different situation probably have different priorities.
> I feel the ideal environment is contextual and it’s probably a hybrid work environment where people who want to work remote can but have to touch base in-person a few times every month
This necessitates living near the office/only hiring people that live near the office. I will not let my employer dictate where I live and I will not live in some of the most expensive real-estate markets in the world
That’s why I said it’s contextual :) There is always a good enough balance (I think).
Some of my colleagues live outside Berlin and I think they are only required to come to the office a few times a month and they haven’t complained so far.
I would never work somewhere that required me to be in office a few times a month. You still have to live within driving distance to the office (or take a plane a few times a month which is even worse).
I think over time we'll see that the "balance" is actually 100% WFH unless physical presence is absolutely required (like you're making and selling sandwiches). It's just going to take a while for the new fully remote companies to replace those who refuse to adapt.
I didn’t see the option to reply to your last response, so posting this here.
Just curious, Do you live in a cycling friendly city? And how is the public transport?
Also, your response confirms what I said earlier. Not factoring in people that prefer an office will mean you replace the office with another form of an office.
> I've managed around a dozen teams in my career and 100% of the time the fully remote teams have produced better results than the in-office teams.
The worst performers in my career has usually been the remote folks. But we can post all the anecdotes we have, but guess time will tell.
> Just curious, Do you live in a cycling friendly city? And how is the public transport?
I do, but I work remote and I honestly don't even think there are any tech companies in my city even if I wanted to work locally (which I don't).
> Also, your response confirms what I said earlier. Not factoring in people that prefer an office will mean you replace the office with another form of an office.
If you count zoom/discord/slack/github... as "another form of an office", then sure. I really do mean that successful companies in the future will not have a physical presence if they don't need to.
> The worst performers in my career has usually been the remote folks. But we can post all the anecdotes we have, but guess time will tell.
I think it's pretty easy to see how being pure remote is superior from a talent market perspective. How can "people who live within commuting distance to the office" ever compete with "the best people on the planet I can hire"?
>My prediction is that we might get rid of the office and replace it with the office in another form — most likely better.
You'll have to explain what you mean by "most likely better" and then make the case that your "better" is enough to draw workers to an office that a bunch of them don't want to be in for all of the reasons HN has listed.
> You'll have to explain what you mean by "most likely better"
If I knew, I would have started a startup with the idea :).
My high-level point is that there are some pros to periodic physical meetups with colleagues (in an office?). And my prediction is predicated on two things: 1. Those needs still need to be solved 2. There are folks that prefer working from something like an office.
In no way do I want to draw “workers to an office that a bunch of them don't want to be in for all of the reasons HN has listed.”. Tho I think there is some balance for most folks.
I’m pro options. I’m anti black and white. What HN lists on this topic are usually one sided takes.
Actually my last paragraph is about efficiency, talent access and cost savings. As a leader, I have no reason to incur the massive cost of having an office because it's only going to limit the talent pool I have access too, cost the company a bunch of money and increase team friction.
I've managed around a dozen teams in my career and 100% of the time the fully remote teams have produced better results than the in-office teams. You're literally paying for worse performance and over time it's not going to be sustainable.
>E.g: As an immigrant, the office has been useful in seeding my social circle and learning useful things about Berlin that I probably wouldn’t have know.
HN will tell you that you should make friends outside of work and that they shouldn't be forced to come to the office just to socialize with you. /s
I'm in the middle on this: I have a very good office at the moment, and am content to be there and chat with my coworkers, but that doesn't make the commuting any less of a deadweight loss.
It also makes it far easier to organize e.g. work on the house or dental appointments.
If you are doing something that has inherent value — extracting gold from a mine, performing music, working a factory line — you are the top of funnel for value creation. Unfortunately for you, the only way for society to run is to have your would-be profits extracted to the maximum extent by other parties. Therefore the rich are the ones who actually don’t tend to produce as much and those who do are taken advantage of. The father away you are from value production, generally the better off you are.
> The father away you are from value production, generally the better off you are.
you are only counting the human labour involved in the creation of value.
what about the capital?
Would you, as a hired gold miner, be able to accept zero pay for your work, until the gold is sold (then you got the full price of the sold gold)? What if you starved between the time you mined it, and the time it takes to sell? And how would you have gotten the equipment to do the mining in the first place, let alone the ownership of the mine.
I'm not sure what you're arguing for/against with this line of reasoning.
The previous statement was in regards to the extraction of value - modern markets are such that the best(/fastest/easiest/etc) way to make money is to be at the top of the value chain and let your capital do the work. This is a self-reinforcing feedback loop, enabling you to use your increasing gains to find other forms of leverage (in your example - buying the mine and the equipment, setting up commodity trading positions, etc) and keep on ratcheting up the leverage. One inevitable outcome is for you to have the opportunity to use this leverage against the people doing the actual digging up of the gold.
No, but also that wouldn’t be possible because you can’t give 100% of the value to the miner or else the mining operation will cease due to the lack of overhead (supervisors, salesmen, equipment). The starvation argument is pointless, a lot of people get paid with commission and they survive. Also I’m not even saying there’s an alternative to the current system so what are you on about?
The equipment was constructed by workers. The mine was constructed by workers. The food to feed the workers was produced by workers. The gold was sold by workers.
If value was derived from capital itself, then a pile of tools or machines would spontaneously generate wealth without the application of human labor, and idle money in a bank would somehow enrich society.
This is thinking about it inside out — from the teleology of society needing to run.
If no one promoted musicians, organized tours, etc, then buskers would be the extent of what’s possible.
If one person had to mine, refine, transport, and sell gold that person would do each of those things more poorly than a group of people who specialized.
You are getting at something, but it’s still unarticulated at least from my perspective: large systems of specialized workers produce the opportunity for people to construct and/or capture and maintain chokepoints. With undue control of these chokepoints a person can profit inordinately.
This is part of why anti-trust regulations exist: when the entirety of a class of production is under one coordinated control, that is the ultimate chokepoint. But what you are talking about is a smaller version of that.
> If you are doing something that has inherent value — extracting gold from a mine, performing music, working a factory line — you are the top of funnel for value creation.
The standard "how come patrons at a bar pay $10 for a drink but I only make $15 / hour when I serve twenty drinks an hour" argument.
The answer of course is because you didn't create the bar, you didn't secure all the necessary supplies and amenities to run it and ultimately you're not liable for what happens to it. In essence if the bar loses money each month you're still owed a paycheck.
And ultimately that's why raw materials and content DON'T have inherent value (e.g. dug up gold sitting in a mine shaft, the best song ever buried in your notebook).
What they have is POTENTIAL value if the infrastructure exists to get them processed and to the locations where people want them and if people are willing to put skin in the game to bet it will pay off.
And that need for infrastructure is the reason that argument always falls apart.
Co-opts are about the best feasible answer we have now, but it always seems to be the case that suddenly people have far more capitalistic notions about running a business when THEY become the majority risk holder for a new venture.
> if the bar loses money each month you're still owed a paycheck
Only until the bar stops existing. You're on the hook for business continuity whether you're the employer or the employee. Lex Fridman and Richard Wolff discussed this: https://youtu.be/o0Bi-q89j5Y?t=2984
Co-ops are indeed the closest thing we have to escaping capitalism in America. However they don't grow very quickly if at all, for the very reason that they aren't efficient at extracting value to fuel growth.
> you are STILL not responsible for any liability [...] you don't lose your home, car, etc
Uh, you lose your car and home when you can't pay for it due to the bar stopping existing. So you are liable in the sense that your entire income disappears due to this event. It takes a certain kind of boneheadedness to not see this.
> without the infrastructure you can't extract any value at all
I'm not sure what your point here is, all you've done is point out the obvious reason this system can even exist in the first place. Congratulations? If it weren't the case, people would just work and get the money directly and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I'll just ignore your baseless/citationless assertion at the end there.
You may be unable to pay bills - except as I mentioned, you'll have unemployment - but that's not NEARLY the same thing as being sued and having to sell your home because your business failed on top of not having any income.
It's always painfully obvious when someone has never had to run even the microist of businesses.
They literally can't perceive the idea that most business owners are taking a huge risk and putting in far more hours and effort than their employees who are free to just walk away any time a better offer comes along.
> It's always kinda obvious who has and hasn't actually had to put personal risk in a business
If you're doing it right, you don't do that. That's why corporations exist, to separate personal and business assets. If your corporate veil gets pierced, that's because you don't know what you're doing.
> far more hours
I mean, if you've ever been at a startup it should be patently obvious that the owners (the board) are not working anywhere nearly as much as people in the office who stay late and many times sleep there.
> free to just walk away any time a better offer comes along
You're absolutely able to do this as a business owner. Businesses get sold and liquidated all the time.
I will say tho, it gave me persistent back problems and RSI for two years :). But that again is not just “working hard”. It was bad posture, lack of stretching, breaks and exercise, I think.
Edit: Perhaps it’s the nature of the work or working hard unhealthily (physical and mental?) or the person’s characteristics.