I've been finding myself more and more dissatisfied with my work as I get older and regretting that I didn't do something crazy when I was younger instead. Its not too late for me to do some of those things luckily, but its very difficult to drop everything to do so (and its not clear that, for example, a years travelling will make me any less dissatisfied with my work, although at least it would help me refocus my life).
> and its not clear that, for example, a years traveling will make me any less dissatisfied with my work, although at least it would help me refocus my life
I think this is the crux of the matter. I know a few people who spent their 20s traveling abroad and having great life experiences, and now that they're in their 30s, they're like "Shit, I have no career, I'm working at Whole Foods / living off my parents / flat broke and I'll never be able to afford the life milestones that I took for granted like getting married, having kids, or owning a house."
I think the root of the problem is that evolutionarily, our happiness emotion didn't evolve to make us happy. Rather, it evolved to force us to take actions which increase our chance of passing on our genes. There's pretty ample evidence for this (Google [hedonic treadmill], for example), and yet we keep wishing we were happier. I guess we're fated to do this, because people who didn't wish they were happier wouldn't be driven to take actions to pass on their genes.
FWIW, I don't regret working hard (at some startups, and also one big corp) during my 20s at all. It was what I wanted to do at the time, and it's given me some cushion to do other things I want to do. Plus I got to work on some really cool projects with some great other people, and had a lot of fun doing so.
Although I don't hate my job, this is pretty much me right now. (26 years old)
I've got a cool job as a software developer, and it pays well. Flexible hours. Good colleagues. But I don't give a flying fuck about the software that I'm paid to develop. I'd much rather be working on open source software.
Why don't I do it in my free time? Well I'm still studying part time, so I can't really. But this is my last semester, and maybe things will be better once I finish my studies.
It really sucks that time is limited, and you can never get it back. [0]
"Refocus on a personal project". How about we stop grinding out 40+ hour mentally and physically strenuous weeks. Programming hours on end is difficult, as is sitting at a desk and staring into a monitor. I could be happy programming for the rest of my life if I'm only doing 15 hours per week but unfortunately there's extremely little work that pays well per hour and is part-time. I'm willing to work at a discounted rate, but the offers I'm finding are either full time, or embarrassingly low hourly rates.
And this is in Canada where we have single payer government healthcare, so employers don't even have an excuse.
I believe the tech sector is extremely prone to this: If you cannot climb out of a technical role, over time, you realize just how clueless most people are, especially those who imagine themselves of being "in control". Not just a bit uninformed, no: absolutely positively clueless[1].
If you go the management route, you often give up, what got you started with all this is the first place: curiosity and exploration, creation and progress. It becomes: handling paperwork, keeping the clients' bad ideas in check, motivating those on the payroll, who wait for your instructions to act. It must be nightmare.
Where is the exit?
[1] Update: I believe this is what is called the nerd/nerd-exploiter dilemma.
I think that is cynical, but people have to realize "Intelligence" itself is not enough. You can either work on your soft-skills or you can put together a well rounded team working for you. For a small up-start relying on a friend or family with good soft-skills is a good start.
I'm 40 and I've found out the hard way that 90% people under 35 adopt absolute statements for everything, as if they think they already know how the life, the world and the universe work. Good luck.
If you meant 90% of successful people's way is paved by those things, I don't agree: It is very easy to discount hard work and forgive our own laziness by zeroing in on 'bad' stuff.
If you meant 90% of the successful people got there by those things - then I would want to understand your definition of success. The folks I consider successful have always used their opportunities well, not just rode out the luck.
We all have low points in life where everything feels unfair. I am not going to tell you to shake it off because you have to find your way out yourself. I can indeed tell you that doesn't last long - It's a cycle. If you find a way to cherish the happier moments and remind yourself of them often enough, the bad ones don't feel long either. Keep that chin up!
I think it depends a lot on the field and where you work, and how you define "success".
I used to think the way you're describing until I got where I am and saw just how dysfunctional the system is in my field--the corruption and sheer luck. It gets worse the higher up you go.
I think there's also problem with these types of discussions because of survivorship bias, which is rampant in contemporary society. That is, the experience of individuals who either benefit from, or who are shielded from, these types of problems, aren't aware of them, and therefore have a different view. This isn't to imply that if you don't agree, you're corrupt, but I think some individuals by virtue of certain attributes aren't aware of the problems that ensue--notice that the OP included charisma in the list, which isn't an ethical problem among the charismatic necessarily but is one that creates ethical problems for those who are not.
I guess what I'm saying is that I appreciate your encouragement, but you have to keep in mind that things worked out for you. If they didn't, you might be offering a different explanation.
I think we tell ourselves that meritocracy works because the alternative is much darker and harder for us to wrestle with, because it invokes a feeling of moral obligation to do something to fix it.
In my field as I go up, what I see are people succeeding on the basis of popularity, which is not necessarily the same as contributions. For some, this is because of outright corruption. For others it's because of something many would consider ethically problematic, even if unintentional. In still other cases I think there's just basically luck, in the sense that they applied for jobs at the right time and where they ended up just happened to be exactly the right fit, which was not what happened to others who then languished.
I have very close friends who I would consider as successful as they possibly could be in their field, but not once would I ever say they are really deserving of that success more than many others. My convictions over time have only hardened, because I've seen their reversals switch due to natural experiments of sorts, where they are repositioned for reasons outside their control.
Maybe someday I will end up seeing things as you're suggesting, and I'm just in a dark period of my life, but the way it seems to me, it's like a curtain was lifted and there is a very sinister wizard behind it.
What do you think about the idea of just actualizing your own potential one step at a time, rather than comparing to other "successful" people and what they do?
Very possible and true in general that successful people attribute success to hard work (who wouldn't). I have had trust fund folks defend their situation similarly as well.
But my point is to take the focus away from them and their life and point it at self. It has always helped me to assume that the world is a place where hard work wins against all odds because then my search is for hard work rather than luck.
I don't have much other than internet encouragement :), So good luck. I really hope you turn it around!
I was recently tapped for a VP position at a bank and out of curiosity I checked it out. An initial meeting later I could see I wasn't a good fit.
I think there is a fundamental difference between myself and the people who are successful in such environments and I've been trying to figure it out. They all seem very confident, polished, with expensive clothes, but is there something deeper there involving people handling and politics that I just seem incapable of understanding or emulating?
20 years on, working mostly for startups and basically avoiding politics for the most part, I wonder if I've actually neglected a key component of my on the job learning by not exercising the soft skills more.
Really recommend Peter Drucker's books. It's not about Alpha at all, it's about effectiveness which also doesn't come naturally but can be habitually trained.
I don't think it's that bad. Most of the successful people I've meant were actually brilliant and deserved their success. There are exceptions of course.
Only bad managers forego creativity and progress. Don't blame the role for the mediocrity of some people who play it.
Strangely, people don't hold the same view of conductors, even if they don't play the instruments. Or directors, even though they don't do the acting. Or football coaches, even if they aren't the playing game.
Hell, there's management simulator games out there that people love.
But software management? Well that must be exactly like Office Space.
Consider the following: maybe some management sucks and gets away with it because pop culture has taught us to expect it to.
I don't think you know what that fallacy is, or alternatively didn't actually read my comment.
That fallacy would apply if I was claiming bad managers aren't managers.
I'm not claiming that.
I'm saying not all managers are bad and the job does not inherently mean a lack of creativity or skill.
As for you cynical follow up question: Shareholders benefit from low turnover and high productivity in an environment that rewards creativity and risk taking. Building that kind of environment requires substantial management talent. Again, the coach metaphor is very apt, here.
As an aside: cynicism and nihilism might be fashionable but it's shallow and lazy.
When I was younger, I was learning non-stop. I kept changing companies/industries every year because I was relentless and very curious.
This actually kept me going for maybe 12 years - It's fun so long as you keep learning new stuff... But eventually there comes a point when the day-job doesn't teach you anything new anymore (at least anything non-tedious) - At that point, your only remaining avenues for learning are open source work or going back to university.
But even if you start doing challenging open source work (in order to keep satisfying your craving for learning), you still have to go back to your tedious job every day. Unfortunately, there aren't enough challenging jobs for engineers these days - It's like a lottery; if you don't happen to have the right social connections, you will be limited to tedious jobs regardless of how skilled you are.
If you're the kind of person who has an insatiable passion for solving difficult problems but you are forced to solve tedious problems every day; it's mental torture.
Glad to hear jumping ship every year did not impede your progress. Someone at a BigCorp once told me that it's good to stay in one place for 5 years - otherwise you'll be seen as a 'leaver'.
One person's job hopper is another person's seasoned veteran of many battles. Who I want to hire depends on what job I need filled. The job hopper might be the perfect hire for someone who has learned from job hopping.
It's true, some companies (particularly big ones) will label you as a leaver if you behave like I did (so they know that they can't really exploit you) but those are not the kind of companies I would want to work for anyway.
Your comment made me think of a book that I read recently, Developer Hegemony[1]. It explores how the modern corporate forces us into three roles: pragmatists who opt out of the game and find their identity elsewhere ("I'd rather be fishing"), idealist middle management who sacrifice perspective and work twice as long for 10% more plus the illusion that one day they'll be recognised for their hard work (they won't), and opportunists who realise that the game is about perception management and are willing to sacrifice ethics for their place in the upper echelons.
I found myself pretty depressed after the first few chapters. The author even takes shots at the software development as a craft narrative, which is fascinating because my bubble is filled with people who devote their lives to this idea. Ultimately he outlines a vision where software people take advantage of the huge gains that a business can make through automation to carve out a comfortable niche outside of the corporate rat race. But it requires understanding business and marketing and not "being paid to practice your hobby" (which he reckons is the reality of most software jobs).
I started to notice this in my late 20s. It felt kind of like a "the emperor has no clothes" moment when I was working at a tech startup that pushed long hours/weekend work in order to fulfill some "mission" and "greater purpose" and that I should feel a part of this for the greater good. It kind of hit me that this was mostly just a fantastic way to extract more work out of young, impressionable 20somethings who didn't know any better without paying them for this extra effort, but that, at the end of the journey it will pay off!
With that in mind, I realized that I much prefer being a hired gun, where I typically can add benefit for about 1-2 years, then it's onto the next thing. I have very little interest in the corporate grind working my way up from new employee to VP or whatever, repeating the corporate mission like some sort of indoctrination, trying to keep myself sane.
I would be interested in a workplace that just kind of accepted this, but I'm afraid optically, no company wants to present its relationship with its workforce as entirely trasnactional. I'd be a huge fan.
Thanks for this story. I believe a lot of people would love to work on some greater good. I, for one, would love to work for a aggressive non-profit, if there is such a thing. Software and automation is the way to the future - why let just a few profit from it?
I have hope that some companies are starting to understand this and we'll have –hopefully– a course correction. What has become common is unsustainable.
A few companies are starting to understand this, I think what DHH and Basecamp are doing is more the future. Giving people's lives outside of work as seemingly a first class priority, which sounds weird to say as a new notion, but yet here we are - https://basecamp.com/about/jobs
Yeah this is great - I think a course correction is going to be necessary to keep people sane. Most people aren't wired to work 12 hour days 6 days a week.
More than anything, I just think it's kind of gross that if I don't go to the after work happy hour, or don't send emails on the weekend, that I'm not perceived as being on-board. Can't stand that line of thinking.
That's only possible if your business model doesn't depend on extracting "more work out of young, impressionable 20somethings who didn't know any better without paying them for this extra effort".
I doubt very few of them depend on it, but that was just a way to get a higher profit margin. It's the reverse when developers try to negotiate higher salaries for themselves. Some portion of the population is not going to be good at negotiating and so will be underpaid.
Given how few startups actually make it to IPO, and with the way equity for the workers gets watered down heavily, it's naive at best to mistake that equity as anything meaningful.
The Soul of a New Machine gives a very good depiction of the moral ambiguities of that crusading spirit in the context of (most) computer-industry work.
I recently sat through one of those company/product mission presentations at work. It was one of those "am I the only sane person working here?" moments. I like our product, I want to see it succeed, but I really can't stand the religious fervor marketing departments and managers give off. And the amazing part is that my co-workers seem to completely buy into it. Everyone talks like what we're doing is going to change the world and yadda yadda yadda, like there's some kind of prophesy about our social media app.
How about lets make the thing and see if it's successful before we start singing its praises, okay?
I think deep down, a lot of people have a low hum of awareness that they don't believe what is being said, but it's a survival mechanism to repress this in order to maintain a sense of worth in the work being done/not get fired for not being a team player.
My personal perspective is cynical like yours - that it's generally a scam to try and extract more "value" out of workers - but my wife works at a large corporation where they seem to genuinely try to make it an enjoyable place to work and the people involved, all the way up the ladder, are committed to that ideal.
Praise flows freely, they do a ton of charity work, and it's not a thin veneer over a corporate machine. Perhaps the difference is that it's over 100 years old in a very established worldwide business, so there's room in the budget and schedule to be a lot more flexible and provide home/work balance.
All I know is I'm kind of jealous - I've only ever worked in the soul-sucking companies.
Why is it a scam to try and extract more value out of workers?
They're going to spend that time on earth somehow, and if they're not actually working when they're at work, it'll just be Facebook or Zynga or YCombinator or Reddit that's extracting value out of them. Actually caring about the work just means that they'll actually learn some skills and develop a good professional reputation, which'll set them up for a better next job.
(I'm assuming a company with reasonable working hours but a strong mission alignment, not one that works their employees 24/7 for dubious returns.)
Went through this exactly. My guess is because founders select for overconfidence (necessary for pitching investors maybe?) It also ties into founder worship which seems really common (people always dropping reasons founder is some uberhuman).
I just felt like my intelligence was insulted. I also found out a lot of the other people who "bought into" the "mission" were really just playing along.
We also did a lot of "agile" that wasn't agile at all. Make "MVPs" that weren't shippable, do work in 2 week "sprints" but never talk to customers for months etc
Like you said, I'm much happier at a place that takes a critical eye at its own projects, is actually willing to change the plan according to feedback rather than assume we're building the founder's "vision", actually dont' take ourselves too seriously, etc
If you don't have "strong" - i.e. skilled and disciplined - people, or you can't allow things to happen outside "just because ok?"-rules, it's flaccid agile.
Like jelly in a glove, it's flexible but not in a useful way.
It's likely your co-workers are just covering their butts.
At most companies it is more useful to your long-term employment prospects to outwardly support your company's mission than to be neutral or a critic. Whether that behavior is sane or in the best interest of the company is different.
This rings so true! Those all-hands meetings are typically a bunch of business people getting excited telling us about the trips they were on and some milestones they reached and how excited we should be and I'm just sitting there trying to stay awake thinking about how it really doesn't affect my life and I really don't care beyond what I need to meet my contractual obligations.
Usually, I feel those meetings have the opposite effect on me. They talk about how exciting it is and I leave the meeting wondering if maybe I should become a farmer or something instead and feel disillusioned and deflated. Sigh.
Although, I think part of it for me is that I've done some startups in the past and would much rather work hard soul crushing hours on something that 1) I actually care about and 2) something where the pay off is mine and not some rich guy who I've never even met and really don't care if he gets richer or not.
I'm quite interested in fully worker-owned cooperatives, with necessary management hired in by and accountable to the collective (think: CFOs). I'm thinking of the kind of structure of the Martian cooperatives that Kim Stanley Robinson writes about.
These organizations are likely extremely hard to get off the ground and certainly would be virtually impossible to grow beyond a certain small size, but the software industry has unique aspects allowing it to deliver enormous returns on the efforts of a handful of specialists.
I had certainly heard of those (they're referenced in the books, by name and fleetingly, directly), but I had no idea of the scale. Very interesting, thank you.
Edit: how could I have forgotten John Lewis, a solidly middle class British department store and supermarket chain not a million miles away from Mondragon in structure.
This is me. May I suggested contracting. You provide your value then you get the hell out of there, no need to deal with the workplace politics, its great.
I've always loved the technical parts of my job (and still do), but since day 1 of my career I've gotten nothing but scheming and toxicity when dealing with my superiors and my various counterparts.
I'm not entirely sure if I've simply been unlucky, or if the majority of workplaces really are this high strung. The existence of Dilbert suggests the latter.
It sucks that this can't be freely admitted in today's culture.
It's possibly true for those who love control and find themselves in a position over others, but it's definitely not true for those who like working with their hands and minds.
I think we call those people "psychopaths." I suppose they may enjoy it. Duly noted.
Sort of related: Way back when, I did manual labor. Later, I'd get my doctorate and start my own business. I was more exhausted from the mental labor than I was from the manual labor.
I completely agree, I used to paint in the summers. As soon as work was done, I was having fun and full of energy. Now, as a developer, I can barely hold a conversation with my girlfriend I have so little energy left after a day of work.
I'm a mathematician, and haven't any idea why it is this way. I suppose there's a name for it, a reason for it, and a bunch of people with varied opinions on it.
But, it does seem true. It does seem that I'm much more exhausted after mental labor (for wont of a better term). I'm retired, today. I do all sorts of manual labor, even though I don't really need to. It doesn't really tire me out that much. Yet, the mental work is still relatively exhausting.
I believe that our bodies weren't designed to handle intense mental processing for such long bouts. It's no wonder mathematicians, developers and other knowledge workers require immense volumes of caffeine to get anything done.
The use of caffeine results in a light activation of the fight or flight response. I'm sure it plays a role in the exhaustion. Especially when the "threats" are ever present unrealistic deadlines.
You may find it interesting, so I figured I'd share it. I offer no opinions, other than to say it is interesting and that the study was done with a very small sample size. (I'm unqualified to opine beyond that.)
A lot of research around Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is pointing toward mitochondria as being a prime culprit. As the most energy consuming organ in our body, I would expect the brain to quickly use up our easy-to-access / quick release energy so it's really not so surprising to me.
I have no biology degree, but I find it interesting and have no problems opining about :p
I've often found a smoothie made with fresh fruit to work well against mental fatigue. Often it's as or more effective than a cup of coffee.
I used to be married to a lady who was quite proud of me. Well, so to speak. She used to take me to these fancy parties where people dress funny and eat crap I can't pronounce - they also use utensils for certain dishes and all sorts of fancy stuff.
Well, she'd introduce me as, "Dr. KGIII."
Now, I don't want to say people are stupid - but this frequently resulted in me being asked medical questions. I, being drunk more often than not, would give absurd medical advice.
I've since learned to not opine on anything medically related, as it seems to result in people coming back to me with very angry moods. So, certain subjects I try just let the links speak for themselves. It works.
Also, my method was to remain in a fairly constant state of inebriation. It was surprisingly effective, though I'm not sure I'd recommend other people try it.
Once a recession hits, people will start feeling how lucky they are to still have a job. Then after a few years of continued growth in the economy, they will go back to hating their job.
This "news" is an advertisement for a report from Robert Half that was released last year entitled: "It’s time we all work happy™: The secrets of the happiest companies and employees.[1]"
It was simply rehashed and presented as "new", by Robert Half[2], and is now hitting the press again.
The full report appears to be available for free on the web[3].
I'm like the opposite of this. By my mid-to-late 20s I was disillusioned with my job and career choice. I also felt trapped in my situation because there weren't a lot of choices for developers where I used to live.
It took me a few years and one big (geographic) move, but I did manage to steer my career in a better direction. Through hard work and a big ol' dose of luck, I was in a job I enjoyed when I was 35. And I'm in an even better one now!
You don't have to be 35 to start hating your job, I did at 25. It begins with the realization that you're a loser in the corporate hierarchy, and do as little work as you can possibly do without getting fired.
Software developers tend to complain that their job is tedious, repetitive, and that they aren't learning anything. Most jobs are like that. I believe that a large portion of repetitive software development can be automated, and this is a largely unexplored area.
The 'little work as you can possibly do' is a trap. It's a toxic frame that unconsciously poisons a company culture(others notice and emulate). And it happens, often, as a completely understandable defense mechanism.
This is made worse every time a manager gives an unrealistic deadline. Exemplified by rushing towards ANY deadlines. Moreover, it happens as a result of forcing the worker to sit in a chair for 8 hours staring at a monitor.
A huge amount of work can be done by communicating vision, thinking for N hours, then hacking something together in 1-2 hours. I think companies should rethink the outdated assembly line factory worker schema for thought workers.
As long as your employers are not acting in good faith, then I don't think they are worth any extra effort. When most employees are doing just enough work to get by, it says more about the employer than employee.
For an alternative take on the job satisfaction - age relationship (as well as inclusion of the moderator variable of job tenure) in the United States, using a large (12k+) sample:
Dobrow Riza, S., Ganzach, Y., & Liu, Y. (2016). Time and job satisfaction: a longitudinal study of the differential roles of age and tenure. Journal of Management. doi: 10.1177/0149206315624962
I agree 100% on the last statement, refocus your efforts on a personal project. I think more people in a corporate job should consider doing this sooner in life. It is a great way to build additional skills, especially in situations where no training is offered.
Made an account for this: I just wanted to point out this thread has been one of the most thought-provoking I've read in a while. Really grateful to all of the users posting such great reads in these comments (I think I've read most or all of them).
I wonder if that is roughly the age where it usually becomes apparent that further career advancement is going to be much harder. I'm 29 and I'm pretty sure one more promotion will be fairly easy to get, but after that it looks much harder and will require developing some skills that I haven't needed much in my earlier career.
I've always hated my jobs, but I keep doing them because I'm good at what I do, and I get paid well for it (at least I do now anyway). For me, work is just a means to an end - I earn money so I can spend it on the stuff I actually like.
When you do something you love as a job you'll (probably) either quickly stop loving it or you won't make any money doing it. I used to be fairly heavily involved in my local "freelancer" scene and I've seen countless young and enthusiastic creatives turn into stressed, angry, bitter, and cynical baristas.
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[ 6.7 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadI've been finding myself more and more dissatisfied with my work as I get older and regretting that I didn't do something crazy when I was younger instead. Its not too late for me to do some of those things luckily, but its very difficult to drop everything to do so (and its not clear that, for example, a years travelling will make me any less dissatisfied with my work, although at least it would help me refocus my life).
I think this is the crux of the matter. I know a few people who spent their 20s traveling abroad and having great life experiences, and now that they're in their 30s, they're like "Shit, I have no career, I'm working at Whole Foods / living off my parents / flat broke and I'll never be able to afford the life milestones that I took for granted like getting married, having kids, or owning a house."
I think the root of the problem is that evolutionarily, our happiness emotion didn't evolve to make us happy. Rather, it evolved to force us to take actions which increase our chance of passing on our genes. There's pretty ample evidence for this (Google [hedonic treadmill], for example), and yet we keep wishing we were happier. I guess we're fated to do this, because people who didn't wish they were happier wouldn't be driven to take actions to pass on their genes.
FWIW, I don't regret working hard (at some startups, and also one big corp) during my 20s at all. It was what I wanted to do at the time, and it's given me some cushion to do other things I want to do. Plus I got to work on some really cool projects with some great other people, and had a lot of fun doing so.
I've got a cool job as a software developer, and it pays well. Flexible hours. Good colleagues. But I don't give a flying fuck about the software that I'm paid to develop. I'd much rather be working on open source software.
Why don't I do it in my free time? Well I'm still studying part time, so I can't really. But this is my last semester, and maybe things will be better once I finish my studies.
It really sucks that time is limited, and you can never get it back. [0]
[0] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
And this is in Canada where we have single payer government healthcare, so employers don't even have an excuse.
If you go the management route, you often give up, what got you started with all this is the first place: curiosity and exploration, creation and progress. It becomes: handling paperwork, keeping the clients' bad ideas in check, motivating those on the payroll, who wait for your instructions to act. It must be nightmare.
Where is the exit?
[1] Update: I believe this is what is called the nerd/nerd-exploiter dilemma.
If you meant 90% of the successful people got there by those things - then I would want to understand your definition of success. The folks I consider successful have always used their opportunities well, not just rode out the luck.
We all have low points in life where everything feels unfair. I am not going to tell you to shake it off because you have to find your way out yourself. I can indeed tell you that doesn't last long - It's a cycle. If you find a way to cherish the happier moments and remind yourself of them often enough, the bad ones don't feel long either. Keep that chin up!
I used to think the way you're describing until I got where I am and saw just how dysfunctional the system is in my field--the corruption and sheer luck. It gets worse the higher up you go.
I think there's also problem with these types of discussions because of survivorship bias, which is rampant in contemporary society. That is, the experience of individuals who either benefit from, or who are shielded from, these types of problems, aren't aware of them, and therefore have a different view. This isn't to imply that if you don't agree, you're corrupt, but I think some individuals by virtue of certain attributes aren't aware of the problems that ensue--notice that the OP included charisma in the list, which isn't an ethical problem among the charismatic necessarily but is one that creates ethical problems for those who are not.
I guess what I'm saying is that I appreciate your encouragement, but you have to keep in mind that things worked out for you. If they didn't, you might be offering a different explanation.
I think we tell ourselves that meritocracy works because the alternative is much darker and harder for us to wrestle with, because it invokes a feeling of moral obligation to do something to fix it.
In my field as I go up, what I see are people succeeding on the basis of popularity, which is not necessarily the same as contributions. For some, this is because of outright corruption. For others it's because of something many would consider ethically problematic, even if unintentional. In still other cases I think there's just basically luck, in the sense that they applied for jobs at the right time and where they ended up just happened to be exactly the right fit, which was not what happened to others who then languished.
I have very close friends who I would consider as successful as they possibly could be in their field, but not once would I ever say they are really deserving of that success more than many others. My convictions over time have only hardened, because I've seen their reversals switch due to natural experiments of sorts, where they are repositioned for reasons outside their control.
Maybe someday I will end up seeing things as you're suggesting, and I'm just in a dark period of my life, but the way it seems to me, it's like a curtain was lifted and there is a very sinister wizard behind it.
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just curious.
But my point is to take the focus away from them and their life and point it at self. It has always helped me to assume that the world is a place where hard work wins against all odds because then my search is for hard work rather than luck.
I don't have much other than internet encouragement :), So good luck. I really hope you turn it around!
I think there is a fundamental difference between myself and the people who are successful in such environments and I've been trying to figure it out. They all seem very confident, polished, with expensive clothes, but is there something deeper there involving people handling and politics that I just seem incapable of understanding or emulating?
20 years on, working mostly for startups and basically avoiding politics for the most part, I wonder if I've actually neglected a key component of my on the job learning by not exercising the soft skills more.
Strangely, people don't hold the same view of conductors, even if they don't play the instruments. Or directors, even though they don't do the acting. Or football coaches, even if they aren't the playing game.
Hell, there's management simulator games out there that people love.
But software management? Well that must be exactly like Office Space.
Consider the following: maybe some management sucks and gets away with it because pop culture has taught us to expect it to.
Now define a good manager from a shareholder view.
That fallacy would apply if I was claiming bad managers aren't managers.
I'm not claiming that.
I'm saying not all managers are bad and the job does not inherently mean a lack of creativity or skill.
As for you cynical follow up question: Shareholders benefit from low turnover and high productivity in an environment that rewards creativity and risk taking. Building that kind of environment requires substantial management talent. Again, the coach metaphor is very apt, here.
As an aside: cynicism and nihilism might be fashionable but it's shallow and lazy.
This actually kept me going for maybe 12 years - It's fun so long as you keep learning new stuff... But eventually there comes a point when the day-job doesn't teach you anything new anymore (at least anything non-tedious) - At that point, your only remaining avenues for learning are open source work or going back to university.
But even if you start doing challenging open source work (in order to keep satisfying your craving for learning), you still have to go back to your tedious job every day. Unfortunately, there aren't enough challenging jobs for engineers these days - It's like a lottery; if you don't happen to have the right social connections, you will be limited to tedious jobs regardless of how skilled you are.
If you're the kind of person who has an insatiable passion for solving difficult problems but you are forced to solve tedious problems every day; it's mental torture.
I found myself pretty depressed after the first few chapters. The author even takes shots at the software development as a craft narrative, which is fascinating because my bubble is filled with people who devote their lives to this idea. Ultimately he outlines a vision where software people take advantage of the huge gains that a business can make through automation to carve out a comfortable niche outside of the corporate rat race. But it requires understanding business and marketing and not "being paid to practice your hobby" (which he reckons is the reality of most software jobs).
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Developer-Hegemony-Erik-Dietrich/dp/0...
With that in mind, I realized that I much prefer being a hired gun, where I typically can add benefit for about 1-2 years, then it's onto the next thing. I have very little interest in the corporate grind working my way up from new employee to VP or whatever, repeating the corporate mission like some sort of indoctrination, trying to keep myself sane.
I would be interested in a workplace that just kind of accepted this, but I'm afraid optically, no company wants to present its relationship with its workforce as entirely trasnactional. I'd be a huge fan.
A few companies are starting to understand this, I think what DHH and Basecamp are doing is more the future. Giving people's lives outside of work as seemingly a first class priority, which sounds weird to say as a new notion, but yet here we are - https://basecamp.com/about/jobs
More than anything, I just think it's kind of gross that if I don't go to the after work happy hour, or don't send emails on the weekend, that I'm not perceived as being on-board. Can't stand that line of thinking.
You may like working for big consulting firms then, where it's up or out.
How about lets make the thing and see if it's successful before we start singing its praises, okay?
Praise flows freely, they do a ton of charity work, and it's not a thin veneer over a corporate machine. Perhaps the difference is that it's over 100 years old in a very established worldwide business, so there's room in the budget and schedule to be a lot more flexible and provide home/work balance.
All I know is I'm kind of jealous - I've only ever worked in the soul-sucking companies.
They're going to spend that time on earth somehow, and if they're not actually working when they're at work, it'll just be Facebook or Zynga or YCombinator or Reddit that's extracting value out of them. Actually caring about the work just means that they'll actually learn some skills and develop a good professional reputation, which'll set them up for a better next job.
(I'm assuming a company with reasonable working hours but a strong mission alignment, not one that works their employees 24/7 for dubious returns.)
I just felt like my intelligence was insulted. I also found out a lot of the other people who "bought into" the "mission" were really just playing along.
We also did a lot of "agile" that wasn't agile at all. Make "MVPs" that weren't shippable, do work in 2 week "sprints" but never talk to customers for months etc
Like you said, I'm much happier at a place that takes a critical eye at its own projects, is actually willing to change the plan according to feedback rather than assume we're building the founder's "vision", actually dont' take ourselves too seriously, etc
If you don't have "strong" - i.e. skilled and disciplined - people, or you can't allow things to happen outside "just because ok?"-rules, it's flaccid agile.
Like jelly in a glove, it's flexible but not in a useful way.
At most companies it is more useful to your long-term employment prospects to outwardly support your company's mission than to be neutral or a critic. Whether that behavior is sane or in the best interest of the company is different.
Usually, I feel those meetings have the opposite effect on me. They talk about how exciting it is and I leave the meeting wondering if maybe I should become a farmer or something instead and feel disillusioned and deflated. Sigh.
Although, I think part of it for me is that I've done some startups in the past and would much rather work hard soul crushing hours on something that 1) I actually care about and 2) something where the pay off is mine and not some rich guy who I've never even met and really don't care if he gets richer or not.
These organizations are likely extremely hard to get off the ground and certainly would be virtually impossible to grow beyond a certain small size, but the software industry has unique aspects allowing it to deliver enormous returns on the efforts of a handful of specialists.
Edit: how could I have forgotten John Lewis, a solidly middle class British department store and supermarket chain not a million miles away from Mondragon in structure.
I've always loved the technical parts of my job (and still do), but since day 1 of my career I've gotten nothing but scheming and toxicity when dealing with my superiors and my various counterparts.
I'm not entirely sure if I've simply been unlucky, or if the majority of workplaces really are this high strung. The existence of Dilbert suggests the latter.
Lest you think self-employed is a better option, you'll never work harder than you work for yourself.
It's possibly true for those who love control and find themselves in a position over others, but it's definitely not true for those who like working with their hands and minds.
Sort of related: Way back when, I did manual labor. Later, I'd get my doctorate and start my own business. I was more exhausted from the mental labor than I was from the manual labor.
But, it does seem true. It does seem that I'm much more exhausted after mental labor (for wont of a better term). I'm retired, today. I do all sorts of manual labor, even though I don't really need to. It doesn't really tire me out that much. Yet, the mental work is still relatively exhausting.
I have no idea why.
The use of caffeine results in a light activation of the fight or flight response. I'm sure it plays a role in the exhaustion. Especially when the "threats" are ever present unrealistic deadlines.
https://www.livescience.com/5325-mental-fatigue-perceived-ph...
You may find it interesting, so I figured I'd share it. I offer no opinions, other than to say it is interesting and that the study was done with a very small sample size. (I'm unqualified to opine beyond that.)
I have no biology degree, but I find it interesting and have no problems opining about :p
I've often found a smoothie made with fresh fruit to work well against mental fatigue. Often it's as or more effective than a cup of coffee.
I used to be married to a lady who was quite proud of me. Well, so to speak. She used to take me to these fancy parties where people dress funny and eat crap I can't pronounce - they also use utensils for certain dishes and all sorts of fancy stuff.
Well, she'd introduce me as, "Dr. KGIII."
Now, I don't want to say people are stupid - but this frequently resulted in me being asked medical questions. I, being drunk more often than not, would give absurd medical advice.
I've since learned to not opine on anything medically related, as it seems to result in people coming back to me with very angry moods. So, certain subjects I try just let the links speak for themselves. It works.
Also, my method was to remain in a fairly constant state of inebriation. It was surprisingly effective, though I'm not sure I'd recommend other people try it.
It was simply rehashed and presented as "new", by Robert Half[2], and is now hitting the press again.
The full report appears to be available for free on the web[3].
[1] - https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/its-time-we-all-work-happy/repo...
[2] - https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/press/research-finds-age-discon...
[3] - http://heart4happiness.nl/wp-content/upload_folders/heart4ha...
It took me a few years and one big (geographic) move, but I did manage to steer my career in a better direction. Through hard work and a big ol' dose of luck, I was in a job I enjoyed when I was 35. And I'm in an even better one now!
Software developers tend to complain that their job is tedious, repetitive, and that they aren't learning anything. Most jobs are like that. I believe that a large portion of repetitive software development can be automated, and this is a largely unexplored area.
This is made worse every time a manager gives an unrealistic deadline. Exemplified by rushing towards ANY deadlines. Moreover, it happens as a result of forcing the worker to sit in a chair for 8 hours staring at a monitor.
A huge amount of work can be done by communicating vision, thinking for N hours, then hacking something together in 1-2 hours. I think companies should rethink the outdated assembly line factory worker schema for thought workers.
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/job...
Dobrow Riza, S., Ganzach, Y., & Liu, Y. (2016). Time and job satisfaction: a longitudinal study of the differential roles of age and tenure. Journal of Management. doi: 10.1177/0149206315624962
Maybe I'll enjoy the next thing. Maybe.
Wow, there is suddenly all this money; don't have to live in the parents' basement, weeee!
When you do something you love as a job you'll (probably) either quickly stop loving it or you won't make any money doing it. I used to be fairly heavily involved in my local "freelancer" scene and I've seen countless young and enthusiastic creatives turn into stressed, angry, bitter, and cynical baristas.