I managed to completely stop using Twitter by removing all my follows. Then when I'd mindlessly open twitter I'd be presented with a blank screen. After a few days I just stopped opening it.
This is a very smart strategy. You effectively trained yourself that there was no reward to be had from the behaviour and so broke the habit. Someone should make a browser extension that does this for other sites, essentially allows the masthead and other boring trim to load but removes all of the content.
I put Twitter on my router's domain blacklist. The only way for me to read Twitter is through nitter.net, which is not much fun and readonly, so there is no risk to get addicted.
I see that Rolf Dobelli has a book on avoiding news now. But he made his point crystal clear in an article he wrote in 2010 already, and put as a freely downloadable PDF on his website. I can't find it there now, but here's a link to that PDF on some other site: https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf
Given the junk food analogy, things with much higher information density would be like drinking neat olive oil.
I think a more useful thing is to filter news down to only that news which is important rather than merely engaging, and leave engagement for either friends or hobbies with a ratio depending on your personal level of introversion/extroversion.
I just checked front side of CNN, first 6 titles are about some unofficial trip. They do not know if it will happen, what will happen, where it may happen, what that means...
There is no value for me there. Even if I invest time into filtering, there is no value to gain from that. Maybe it is important, but I am not policy maker or investor, it is not important right now for me!
I can find out about that visit week later, after it actually happened. Without all the speculations and opinions. And since it will be podcast I can listen while running or exercising, and with much lower investment from my side.
I think you've underestimated what I mean by filtering in this case: unless you're a politician, almost literally all political news is pointless; unless you are a game developer or unsatisfied with your VR headset, literally all news about VR headsets is pointless; there's no point watching a weather forecast for any place you are not going to be in; unless you're an investor or looking to invest or borrow, financial news is pointless; unless you're in the royal family or selling memorabilia, gossip about any royal family is worthless; …
Does CNN have any content that's genuinely important to you?
But the argument also applies to podcasts: no value in any fact-based podcast if you don't act on the information it gives you, just as there's no point in fiction-based podcasts if they don't entertain you.
My distraction is from all the family stuff I have to deal with. My lack of concentration is because I lack motivation - I don't see any reason to try hard at work since it's all politics and BS.
What money? There's no way to get a raise at my company without a promotion and they won't promote me. I have no motivation to work hard if it won't be rewarded. I do the minimum to get paid my shitty salary.
I don't have the skills to switch to a different company, tech jobs are limited in my area, I don't perform well remotely, and my wife won't consider relocating. My current shitty job is the best job I can get.
They might not be. I'm hesitant to admit that because 1) They used to be and I was a high performer at a mediocre non-tech company 2) There's nothing else I can do to earn enough to support my family.
>There's nothing else I can do to earn enough to support my family.
Honest question that I know won't be well-received on HN: I don't know your personal details, but do you think there is not anyone else in a lower paid job who has figured out a way to support their family?
Frustration stems from when reality doesn't meet our expectations. You can choose to try and bend reality to your will or change your expectations. One is significantly easier than the other.
Sure, I can take a lower paying job. We would likely have to sell our house and move to an apartment and give up hope of retirement. The thing is, many of these people in lower paying job still make decent money, but those are skilled jobs. I would have to go to a trade school or apprentice for many of those, but likely couldn't due to needing an income. Because I would be unskilled labor, I would probably be looking at jobs around $20/hr with benefits (if I'm lucky). Without benefits, we'll be bankrupt quickly.
Most of my frustration is because my bosses are assholes. I now expect bosses to be assholes, but it's still frustrating.
Sure, but learning takes time, which I have little of. It's also much easier for some than others (getting significantly more difficult as I age).
The main remote issue is that my wife interrupts me to do stuff or answer questions throughout the day. I also feel I'm slower to learn remotely. I think that if I'm an expert in the tech already, then remote could work.
I get it, but you already have a job. I assume you are be pretty busy, but at least you already have a secure source of money and you're not against the clock or anything like that.
You don't need to spend all day in a class like a university student. An hour a day dedicated to lectures, practice and taking some notes with pencil and paper* can do wonders on the long term.
As for your wife, maybe you can talk to her and ask her to leave you alone for some specific times, unless it's urgent. Or ask her to send you a message instead of talking so it doesn't interrupt your focus so much.
* Some research on learning has proven that taking notes like that is way more effective than typing on a keyboard.
Thanks. I have tried talking to her, but the results weren't great. I do try to learn things outside of work. The main problem is if you don't use it, you lose it. Without constant practice it's hard to build and retain skills. I don't even have an hour a day free for that due to work and home responsibilities.
You don't lose it completely, though. And it's easier to relearn and get back on track than to learn it the first time.
I learned C like ten years ago and then I moved on to PHP and then to JavaScript. I'm sure I forgot most of it. But thanks to that, I'm now learning Golang and when it came to pointers it clicked almost instantly.
True, the concepts transfer. But for me the concepts are always easy. The implementation/syntax/libraries are harder for me. I know at least I can go back and use prior projects as a guide... if I ever return to that tech. That's probably a big one for me, that I feel like the work ends up being thrown away if i never use it again. Although things like Android development has changed significantly with things like apk to aab, Java in Eclipse to Kotlin in Studio (Jet Brains), etc.
Based on your comment history, you seem to be very aggressive and derogatory. I would almost say you're trolling. It's quite pedantic to claim you never said someone is wrong even after you've said several things which effectively say that.
I'm not the person who is causing your anger and frustration, but the fact that you choose to berate me instead of do anything about your situation speaks volumes.
If your current job can't motivate you, work on a side project or look for another job.
And don't be the weakest link in the (faulty) chain. It's leaves a better impression by notifying external inefficiency and quitting because lack of change, rather than being fired because your motivation and productiveness withered in silence.
I have an Angular site, a Python project, and a couple of Android apps. I don't think it matters. The Android apps helped me get a job out of college. But I feel like now that I've been in the industry, nobody cares about dev portfolios. It's all about the current/prior job.
My experience is that the more politics and BS and organization has, the more you can coast. Individual performance can get lost in the noise.
Even in orgs that have their stuff together, I see a preference for internal transfer over termination. I think it's some sort of HR sunk cost fallacy.
My experience is that the politics and BS lead to BS ratings that go against the written policies because there are contradictory backroom policies.
In this market, we can't seem to hire anyone (we aren't competitive on salary). So I guess it makes sense that they want to keep the low performers since they wouldn't be able to backfill. This still sucks since there's a lot of stress dealing with poor ratings and not know if you will get fired. And then even if you do work hard and perform well, there'd no guarantee that will increase your rating or comp.
I'm kind of coasting myself (not being a leader/taking anything big on). What I like it about it is, I can leave work at work after work and focus on my own things that are more challenging.
At the moment I burned money/got into a lot of debt trying to get a start up going. When that failed I just grabbed the first job/company that gave me an offer. I'm not that pumped about what I do but I can deal with it for now. Pay is still good for my level (low six figs) and it's 100% remote.
While I think it's healthy to not tie your identity and well-being to your job, I think it might be a bad habit to view everything through the lens of a financial transaction.
We've all probably worked with people who will only lift a finger if it benefits them. Create an organization of people with this mindset and much of the necessary but un-glorious work never gets done. I suppose you could say people can play the long game and do that stuff in hopes of getting noticed, but if it doesn't and you have a transactional mindset, it's a recipe to be miserable. (We've probably all worked with those people too - the ones who feel slighted because they believe they've done all the hard work without getting rewarded).
But I'm assuming this means hiring people without the same transactional mindset? Otherwise, there will just be endless employee churn as they realize there's nothing in it for them.
It's hard for me to get on-board with a management approach that effectively says, "I don't want to do this stuff because I want to get paid but it's okay for you to do it because I don't care whether you get paid or not." Either you think the work is worth doing or you don't, but it's a weak leadership style to say it's only worth doing if someone else is doing it. (That's different that strategically assigning duties to get the most out of the team.)
I don't think it's fair: it's absolutely possible to be motivated by the recognized fact that you provide for your family, and still have healthy friendly relations with colleagues, and be interested in a long-term success of your employer.
It's also absolutely possible to create an ugly monster of organization while cheering up your team with whatever we-change-the-world mission.
I agree with you that it's possible. It's just been my experience that the people who take that mindset tend to slack off once they realize they can get the same paycheck to provide for their family while also doing less work. If your internal utility function is to maximize money and minimize effort, that's going to occur more often than not. To buffer that, management needs to hold them accountable, but that's easier said than done, especially in large organizations.
"It's just been my experience that the people who take that mindset tend to slack off once they realize they can get the same paycheck to provide for their family while also doing less work."
I think it's mostly the people who realized the company has deceived them, either in the company values/mission or the "pay for performance" scheme being BS.
There shouldn't be anything wrong with someone just doing their job for the salary. If their performance falls below what's expected (and clearly defined) for their level, then that's a problem. They shouldn't be penalized for not doing extra work when they aren't being rewarded.
Employers need to have compensation models that make sense too. I was once told I could get a promotion if I consistently worked 1 hour longer everyday. That's a 13% increase in hours for a 7% pay raise, for a position with more responsibility and expectations. These managers are either idiots or predators - anyone with an MBA should understand that's a shitty value proposition. Either way, they lost my respect.
I think you hit on some very important points, but there's a couple issues. For one, not every singular duty can clearly defined. That's why many job descriptions will have a clause like "and other duties as assigned." Ultimately, we're hiring teammates in order to solve problems. I want to work with people who try to solve those problems irrespective if it adds to their personal identity or was meticulously defined in their job posting. If people are actively seeking out and solving problems, that's not the same as the transactional mindset I'm talking about. That mindset tends to actively avoid problems because they are work or "not their job". That's also not the same as framing the issue of "if you work X more, you'll get paid Y more".
That time-transaction mindset leads to exactly what you alluded to. "If I spend 13% more time here, I should get 13% more pay." What that doesn't say is if those 13% more hours were spend solving previously unsolved issues for the organization.
"If people are actively seeking out and solving problems, that's not the same as the transactional mindset I'm talking about."
At least at my company, there's no differentiation. I do look for problems to solve. I have volunteered for extra roles and responsibilities that others didn't want. So why do the the people that are too smart to take on the role of application security champion for the team get promoted, while those security champions are passed over?
It seems you're describing that engagement is better than transactional mindset. That's true from the employer's perspective. That's only true from the employee's perspective if the employer is rewarding that.
The promotion I was talking about was brought up because I was already performing at the next level and was engaged- filling the lead role for the team the prior year and volunteering for additional projects. So yeah, the problems and work that I did would have gone undone or the team's work would be uncoordinated.
'That time-transaction mindset leads to exactly what you alluded to. "If I spend 13% more time here, I should get 13% more pay."'
To be real, that's the company's mindset that they should require you to work an extra 13% for a 7% raise, a rate decrease. The defined expectations for that next level are demonstratably higher. Arguably those higher expectations should be matched with a higher rate not a lower one. This concept is critical to understand
>So why do the the people that are too smart to take on the role of application security champion for the team get promoted, while those security champions are passed over?
To put it bluntly, it's likely because the company doesn't value solving security as much as you may think they should. Solving problems is the same as solving valuable problems. If your goal is to be promotable, the problems you should solve should be as close as possible to the items your company values the most. Unfortunately, things like quality and security are not often valued until after things go wrong.
>The defined expectations for that next level are demonstratably higher.
Maybe I'm misreading this, but it sure seems like you're saying the performance for the higher pay is above and beyond what you're currently doing. Now whether those expectations are above what you're willing to do for the pay is a personal decision.
>That's only true from the employee's perspective if the employer is rewarding that.
This is probably where we fundamentally disagree. I think employees also benefit from being engaged. I've worked with people on assembly lines who were engaged with work that most would find monotonous. Instead of finding the work some tedium to be put up with, they actually found ways of getting personal fulfillment out of it. Same goes for low-status jobs elsewhere I've worked. I think your sentiment here is really what underlies unhappiness with work and you'd eventually find the same regardless of how handsomely you'd get paid.
Everything you've outlined at this point seems to indicate you work at a company that has a culture that is misaligned with what you're after. But you also aren't willing to take a risk of changing that. I doubt there are any silver bullets here that will make some magic happen without professional or personal risk.
"Create an organization of people with this mindset and much of the necessary but un-glorious work never gets done."
I've done a lot of the work that nobody else wants to do. It wasn't any harder than the work others do. So it's not like I want to be rewarded more than them, but just not penalized for it. People who joined the company around the same time as me are managers and leads. I'm a midlevel. I've even filled the role of a lead for a year, but politics made it so my manager couldn't give me a high rating. After 10 years you'd think I'd at least be a senior and have a salary of $100k. I don't think I'm asking for the world here, and certainly many of the other 10 year employees are farther along because they're better than me.
My family stuff is what keeps me going though. My work is a basket case at the moment, 12-month contract ends in 4 weeks, and it's almost a full time job applying for jobs.
I've had three managers in my not-quite 12 months, none that I've worked with very closely, one that thinks I'm no good because I unwittingly stepped on the toes of a couple of institutionalized colleagues by "doing my job", who complained to this guy who'd been my boss a total of less than a week at the time.
"Just do what you're told" was his advice. So, what you're saying is coast until the contract is over? Done and done.
Makes it hard to get a good recent reference though, lucky the market is thirsting for warm bodies.
I had 7 or 8 managers over the past 2.5 years. I picked up and completed several extra stories over the previous couple sprints only to recieve negative feedback that it wasn't what they wanted me to work on, even though I asked them if there was anything specific they wanted me to do next and had recieved no response. Oh, and my company will not allow managers to give employees recommendations/references at all.
> My family stuff is what keeps me going though. My work is a basket case at the moment, 12-month contract ends in 4 weeks, and it's almost a full time job applying for jobs.
Unsolicited advice: if you can, wait for September to really start looking for employment. August is slow season in recruitment because people are still on vacation while September is the last month of the quarter, so recruiters have targets to reach for the projects scheduled to start in Q4.
Thanks for the advice, but I'm not in the US - I'm somewhat across the August slow-down though due to keeping up with overall macro markets etc.
P.S. Australia's Reserve Bank is a couple of hours away from raising interest rates again. Currently it's sitting at 1.35%, expectation is for a 50 basis point increase.
Also not in the US - Eastern EU. Switching jobs on an almost annual basis I've found that large organizations all over the world think in quarters, so smaller ones are compelled to as well.
As someone with serious concentration issues (unless I'm hyperfocused, I may have undiagnosed ADHD) I found the biggest help for me was cutting out caffeine.
You might be able to get away with a cup of tea every once in a while, but I tend to be an "in for a penny in for a pound" type of person, so it's complete elimination or 4-5 cups of coffee for me.
To me green tea had a similar effect as coffee. Both feels great and gives huge energy and motivation boost, but at the costs of calmness, clarity and sustainability over the day.
On a much smaller time scale, I have noticed that when I skip my usual morning coffee (say, running out of coffee, going for a run with an accountability buddy, or traveling and staying in a "coffee desert"), I feel remarkably clear-minded and calm, even though I crave the smell, taste, experience of coffee. When I let it last, this mental calmness lasts until early afternoon, when I'd usually get coffee #2 of 2, as the dull withdrawal headache sets in and I chemotactically writhe my way toward increasingly desperate sources of caffeine.
I've been drinking at least 2 cups of coffee ("cups" is a fuzzy measure) for maybe 15 years. Maybe I should power through the withdrawal and discover for myself if I've accidentally been undermining my mental clarity and life quality this whole time, instead of giving myself energy and helping concentration as I'd been assuming.
I kinda feel the same. I wake up very calm (most days), and in a few minutes, not sure if its only the caffeine, or the mind worrying about the day... I start to "rush" and worry.
Maybe I just got used to the feeling and have to feel it to start working.
hmm... caffeine actually helps for ADHD as it's a stimulant. I can only take my meds on weekdays and I've pretty much had life long addiction to either coke, pepsi or red-bull. When I started taking effective medication I basically stopped drinking caffeinated drinks. Just don't need it. I can't take my meds on the weekends, and virtually always I go get something with caffeine in it to help.
it depends - caffeine uses different receptors than are helpful for many people with ADHD, and since it isn’t managed by someone outside, it’s easy to get big swings of usage or other problems due to, well ADHD.
It’s common that folks with ADHD will use Caffeine, it just doesn’t work as well as other stimulants for many people.
As I said, I may have ADHD as I have a lot of the classic symptoms, but I have a daughter with diagnosed ADHD and I do not have nearly as significant symptoms as she does. All I know is cutting caffeine improved my general concentration and significantly decreased my anxiety as a bonus.
As a person completely unqualified to diagnose anything but with similar problems, I suspect the real root of your issue might just be the anxiety. If you could address the roots of that, caffeine would probably become irrelevant.
ADHD travels with friends and anxiety definitely tends to be one of them! When you get a proper diagnosis they try to rule out if it's not simply just anxiety, and or something like obstructive sleep apnea. Both of these can have ADHD-like symptoms. Luckily for me I have all three of these things, so it's been fun teasing apart what's what, but that's why a formal diagnosis is an important process.
Same here. Caffeine helps me getting into the first hyperfocused session, but after that the rest of the day is usually just me floating around. Quitting caffeine has an overall positive effect for my base dopamine level.
Ironically this page is a great example of why it’s hard to focus. Unnecessary images, stylization and colors. Unnecessary links to other distracting websites. Flashy flash.
Unfortunately, it is a mistake to think that just because you are only presented with high quality facts (statements that are very likely to be true), that you are getting an objective view of the story. You would be surprised how unrepresentative a story can be made purely through omission or selective emphasis, and Wikipedia is very guilty especially of the latter. The talk pages are usually very revealing of what the articles fails to mention, if you happen to catch them before the discussion gets archived.
This is something a lot of people don't understand.
It is impossible to have an objective and bias-free source of information, simply because the amount of information that exists is unimaginably enormous. It's impossible for any single human mind to absorb everything that's happening, so we have to rely on services whose job is filtering that information into a small set of important bits.
By selectively choosing which bits of information you share or emphasize, multiple different sources can all technically be telling the gods honest truth, while also all pushing completely contradictory narratives.
Everyone is pushing a narrative, and it's critical that we all try to understand the incentives of the pushers of information we ingest.
I learned this when I dated a law student while in college. They teach an entire class to the first year students dedicated to presenting the facts of the case, the way lawyers do in their opening statements. They actually had to create the set of facts for each side. It was really interesting how you could totally bias it by what you emphasized or left out and the different words used (i.e. word connotations).
I liked the way Howard Zinn (who had his own rather strong biases, of course) made that point in the afterword to A People's History of the United States:
>But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.
But this an exaggeration. Some people are truly equivocal on a question, yet still able to muster the effort to write about it.
One way this happens is that some specific issue puts the author's internal values in tension. An example would be recall/impeachment of some corrupt official, where the tension is between the two goods of removing the bad actor from power, and maintaining the norm of orderly transition of government power.
What is great about Wikipedia's "Current events" portal is that you don't have to sift through tweets that are selected by the news feed algorithm to make you angry, or a stream of op-eds that are selected by an editor to do the same, in order to get to the facts. Much healthier psychologically while still staying reasonably informed.
Wikipedia is incredibly biased in terms of what news it cherry picks though. Just read through the debates of what gets proposed for inclusion, and then think about the stuff that's outright deleted.
There was a great article posted here a few years back I’d love to find again, that discusses how to use Wikipedia to reinforce a position without lying. Splitting your side into a bunch of mutually reinforcing pages, careful choose of when to include or exclude adjectives, and so on. I found it pretty eye-opening.
I would recommend people use sites like allsides.com or ground.news to read from a wide variety of sources across the political spectrum. Any one site (even one edited by a variety of people) will have its own set of biases, so I find it best to visit Web sites that contain links to coverage of the same event from a few different sources with different biases.
I think it's better to manually assess bias and think critically about how news articles report information. The sites you linked are interesting, but had some major flaws.
For example, AllSides includes Breitbart as a source. While it identifies it with the maximum value to the right, it doesn't give a barometer of credibility. For a reader deciding whether Breitbart is worth reading, one should closely examine credibility, not just political leaning. PolitiFact and Media Bias/Fact Check discussed the credibility of Breitbart at length [0] [1].
Then for ground.news, the way it portrays bias is also relatively simplistic. The most prominent indicator is left/center/right, but biases have a lot more nuance. It's more useful to account for how certain publications take certain policy stances. Leanings can be anti-establishment, pro-establishment, socialist, neoliberal, pro-consumption (e.g. Wired), or anti-consumption, and this information is lost when relying on left-center-right categorizations.
The best way to do this is to manually select a few publications that are high on factual credibility, write down their specific biases or leanings, and compare stories across the personally-curated selection of publications. You then personally have more control and understanding of the articles you are presented.
Both of those sites are useful and I'd like to add one more: I've been using TheDailyEdit[0] app (it was on the front page here not too long ago). It doesn't tell you what political spectrum the publisher is on, but it does help you identify when the article is using manipulative language. The coolest thing though is that when you're in an article it shows you what was missing but reported by other sources. So I can read news I like but be sure that I'm not missing something because of 'bias by omission' by the publisher.
I think routers should have more fine grained settings, so I can block social media during weekdays, HN on weekdays except lunchtime and evening, and allow my children only to access their 5 websites that they need for homework/study during a few hours in the afternoon. This would help me a lot.
A more extreme measure some users here used to take was not access the internet at all during their downtime. When you come home from work simply not use the internet. I guess exceptions can be made for streaming movies/music. Ideally you should download and stock up on these.
I remember some users deliberately not connecting internet to their homes to stick with this. There were also some users who switched to "dumb" phones to reduce distractions. I guess these could work.
even with your router's domain blacklist, it may not be so easy to block all social media (specifically, apps[0]). I don't imagine cigarette manufacturers are keen on making it easier for people to quit smoking either.
Sometimes there really is - for people who want to focus but find it frustratingly difficult because of their brain chemistry (ADHD or whatever).
For me, it's sleeping enough, nicotine patches, green tea, L-Tyrosine, Avmacol, and no coffee. This regimen has helped me improve my work performance significantly. It doesn't "fix" everything, but it sure makes it so much easier to function and to focus what I want to focus on.
That sounds great, I've certainly too gone through a better sleep period where I focused on better sleep - no coffee for two years and lots of other measures like that. And it works. That's not a silver bullet, that's hard work. :)
For the last couple of years my sleep pattern has been crazy. Sometimes I would stay up two days in a row to rest my sleep pattern back to 9-5 schedule. I preferred to be sleep deprived as it made my job more interesting.
But lately (since a month ago) I have been thankfully able to maintain a 12/1-8:30 range sleep pattern.
I do a 15 min workout 5 days a week. I have been fasting so I eat a big meal a couple hours before sleeping. Read a book half an hour before sleep.
So far it's been working. Fasting is weight loss reasons. Also helps me personally focus since if I eat too much I get lazy/tired.
Other thing I'll comment on is regarding personal projects. I lay out a plan, when the day begins (weekend) I don't open anything (social media) I just immediately work on this project. Thankfully I can dump the most of the weekend days toward the project.
This line implies that willpower can overcome all of the distractions. However, there are studies that show it's not the case.
Our brain is primordially designed to react to distractions - because it was a matter of survival or death. Media has adapted itself to harness this feature of our brains. To counter it, we have to take out much of the possible avenues to distractions out of our extrapersonal space or sight range (because we're visual creatures, out of sight = out of mind).
For more details, Andrew Huberman has a whole episode on focus and concentration that talks about this.
I'm in the same boat! I feel better because my twitchy fingers always lead to learning or discussing something new and interesting, but they're still twitchy fingers.
If you want to get your life back, read Stolen Focus. It has all these tips and tricks but it does a lot more - it explains why our focus is shot, and dissects the forces behind it.
I was spending hours per day on Twitter, and then I learned that overusing social media rewires your brain, and you essentially unlearn to digest information in bigger chunks. This book will horrify you, and that's exactly what needs to be done.
This book grabbed my eye too, but then I saw Matthew Sweet on Twitter (@DrMatthewSweet) kept questioning the studies used and suggesting that Hari has cherry picked results to support his point. I've no idea if this was the case but some interesting stuff to look at I think.
Sure, it's not perfect. The author's flaunting of his privileged lifestyle - taking months off a year to just chill - really ground my gears, but he seemed genuine in his quest to find the reason why he could no longer think clearly.
Does that make him biased - of course, but whether or not the study of how topics get covered faster across decades was peer reviewed is rather unimportant. What I know is that I was able to read half a book in one session, and now I am struggling with a single page.
To me, mindfulness meditation helped me a lot with concentration because it was like learning mental aikido, in the sense of not trying to remove invasive information, but redirect it in a way that doesn't affect my focus. Everything stops being so important by default
I disagree with that statement. I know it's fashionable on HN to spit on Reddit, but for all its flaws, Reddit also birthed fantastic communities that are hard to replicate somewhere else due to the network effect, e.g. /r/WarCollege, /r/hoggit, /r/AskHistorians, /r/Rust, /r/LinguisticsHumor, etc. – come for the dumb memes, stay for the niche communities.
But surely these are just commercialized versions of forums, the latter being a far more versatile medium to have discussions on? Reddit has monopolized the entire forum industry and ruined online communities.
If you are talking about default subreddits then sure but there are some great communities on reddit that I think are great pieces of the internet. A lot of which I'm sure exist because people don't need 100 different forum accounts to access them. Also generally, I see no difference between reddit and Hacker News except Hacker News drips with a unique brand of elitist smarm you can't get elsewhere.
another "threat" is when you have a few kids, your daily life is cut into pieces with random and sometimes strong background noises 24x7x365, not much you can do there.
personally, that impacts my focus the most and there is no cure, and it usually lasts for about 20 years when kids are finally into colleges.
obviously there are many good stuff out of raising kids, and I enjoyed it, but focus-on-tech-advancement is not one of them.
Anecdotally all but one of the parents I know (including myself) prefer working remotely. I tried to find if there were any survey results and found a survey by Harris Poll on behalf of Zapier that said that "56 percent of parents want the option to work remotely" [1].
I have a private office in our home and know that's not a luxury for many others, but the quality of life as a parent working from home vs being in the office is dramatic. With the kids home during the summer the noise and distraction levels do go up, but honestly are still less bothersome then the open office floor plan I was in previously. I think it really depends on your home situation as well as how your office was setup, but my guess is that a majority of parents would prefer remote positions if available.
I've WFH for the past 8+ years, my kids are now 18 and 15 (so they were 10 and 7 when I started WFH).
They can definitely be a distraction, but I was able to minimize it by having an office with a door + setting reasonable boundaries. Also, they're out of the house at school for many hours (except for COVID -- that was a bit tougher, but that was the case for everyone).
I have no regrets. One of the reasons I WFH is to have less time on the road and more time w/ family. My oldest has said that he's glad I WFH, and that he didn't like me being away when he was younger.
Of course, every person/family is different. But for me & my family, I think minimizing the distractions in other ways while WFH + accepting the remaining distractions was worth it in the end.
Having kids in the house is like being in a damn WWI trench with shells exploding over your head constantly. Ok, maybe not that bad, but it's horrible for your ability to get anything meaningful done. And then by the time they hit the sack and you finally have a few moments peace, you are worn out and ready to hit the sack yourself. My ability to burn the midnight oil has gone to zero basically.
I find that when I regularly exercise and don’t drink at dinner I can put kid to bed and have a few more hours available. But - big but - spending that evening time working has become anathema to me.
The best rule I’ve put in place is work happens during the day or it doesn’t happen.
Sometimes I only want to price compare something online and order it, which should be a 5-10 minute process. It’ll take me 30 minutes spread over 10 3-minute bursts.
In between I need to end fights, clean faces, fetch out of reach toys, lift them out of a chair, lift them into a chair, no the other chair, hand them a stuffed animal, pick the stuffed animal up from the ground, clean food from the floor…
By which time I just order on Amazon. Yes maybe I pay more but at least I can order in one click and be done with it…
It definitely put many things in perspective for me. As a young single guy you look at suburbia, minivans, one click ordering, children's museums, etc. with a bit of skepticism or incredulity. Then once I got married and had kids I could instantly understand those things, even if I didn’t necessarily like them.
I’m curious because I’ve had kids early. Will I ever be able to catch up with peers who’ve decided their focus would be on their job and forego having children later in life?
Maybe. Maybe not. But no matter what those other people do, they’ll never ever be able to get more youthful, energetic years with their children and (hopefully) grandchildren. All that money and even Elon can’t buy time.
I had kids relatively young for a yuppie male (27) and while that was 100% the “right time” I would have done it earlier if I had known how great they are.
I’m turning 33 next month and really want children. I have endless memories of my dad and grandfathers teaching me amazing lessons and being best/strongest men I have ever been around. I want to fulfill that role that for someone! We didn’t have much money but camping or diy building is something fondly reminisce on and made me who I am.
My partner is 25 and is not decided on children yet due to also growing up poor and and having a rougher realationship with their fam. We’ve lived together a year now but she recently got an IUD and was happy about the ‘10 years of freedom’.
To her kids is a ‘probably after I finish all my goals/traveling’.
We were recently vacationing in Barcelona and met 3 young boys at the hotel and played a game of uno with them in the lobby. They lived in the Bay Area and I imagine their parents were techies, they were indian, 6-12yrs, long hair, well spoken, had skateboards, and wearing tie dye.
I CANNOT stop thinking about them.
I’m considering an ultimatum but I love her so much.
Sorry for the rant HN, I just needed somewhere to say it.
> I’m considering an ultimatum but I love her so much.
Dictating, forcing things is not the way to go for such things. You cant force children onto an unwilling mother. Its best if such things are handled amicably and with consensus.
Surely an ultimatum is not force but choice, you are asking what the other person's final choice is?
I want chips for tea (deep fried julienned potatoes for your evening meal), you don't want chips, I say "I'll go out for tea then", you decide how important it is for you; you're literally in control.
Clearly the stakes are very different but it couldn't be further from dictatorship.
I don't think avoiding hard choices helps either party in the long run.
It's a binary choice. Either who you're with will want kids, or not, and if you're determined to have them but they simply refuse despite all appeals of any kind then what consensus are you talking about? In other words, there has to be a point where you say you're leaving someone unless they also want kids. This is an ultimatum whether you want to call it that or not. Beating around the bush politely about it doesn't change or resolve anything.
I know the feeling. I think your best bet would be sharing with her gently and honestly, and if that doesn't go like you hope then looking into some couples' counseling/therapy to resolve this if she's agreeable.
Family baggage is tough and there may be stuff she needs to work on within herself too before she's ready. Encouraging that is a good way to be supportive and work towards the goal of kids together.
The worst thing you can do for yourself, your partner, and your future kids would be to pressure your partner into having children when she’s not ready or doesn’t want to. Her path is her own, and it’s completely valid.
My advice is to have an honest conversation where you try to understand where she’s at on this and why, without trying to change it.
And then if you determine that she really doesn’t want kids, or may not ever, you might have to make a very hard choice to either accept that and let go of your dream of having kids, or to follow another path without her.
But own it as your choice, without resentment. She doesn’t owe you a child.
I met a guy who was ~ 45 or so. He had been with his (then ex-) partner for 15+ years. She had wanted kids, and he kept saying "next year", "not ready yet", etc. Finally, at the age of 43 she gave him an ultimatum to make up his mind, and he replied "nah... don't want kids". She dumped him right away.
I met her too a little bit later, and boy, the resentment was strong with her. I couldn't blame her.
With things like kids, please don't be wishy-washy; make up your mind and set specific goals, timelines, etc. Kids are an expensive investment of both money and time.
The biggest concern is that there doesn't seem to be a concrete end goal for when you can have children. From what you've written, your partner is 25, has an IUD, and communicated that she doesn't want children for the next 10 years. The endpoint of "probably after I finish all my goals/traveling" is so vaguely defined, that it could never happen. One can spend a lifetime pursuing goals and traveling.
You likely already considered the fertility odds, but to add context, according to a resource approved by the department of health for Victoria, Australia [0], the odds of having a child increasingly drop from age 35 onwards. There are also likely risks for men trying to have children after the age of 40, according to a balanced article on WebMD [1].
Negotiation is an option besides an ultimatum, and I actually think most opinions on the internet about relationships go for breakups far too soon. You have valid concerns that you can address with negotiation; in specific:
1) There is no clarity for the timeline of having kids (10 years plus after a vague goal of reaching all other goals of your partner).
2) From the tone of your partner, it's possible she doesn't seem to be taking your valid concern with seriousness, though perhaps serious conversations may just didn't come to mind at the time you wrote your comment.
3) Your partner hasn't seriously discussed the fertility implications of having children that late, at least from the contents of your comment.
To compromise, consider the red lines. Would you be willing to stay in the relationship without kids? If the answer is "no," it's almost inevitable you will be resentful and the relationship is likely to have a very negative effect on your life.
Would your partner be willing to have kids? If the answer is "no," it's also almost inevitable she will be resentful if she reluctantly goes into it; if the answer legitimately is "yes, but after a certain point of time," then you have room to work it out. The compromise solution is to have a specific endpoint when you will try for kids (with a clear "yes" for trying for children at that point). If there is none, moving on may be a hard decision but the right one for personal happiness for both people in the long-term.
As with any online advice, please take this comment with a huge grain of salt because there is an enormous amount of information and nuance lost when communicating a situation over text (or even over a conversation in person). However, the main principles of compromise—knowing each others' red lines, and account for possible long-term resentment due to agreements favoring one side disproportionately—may hopefully still be helpful. Best of luck to you.
Not necessarily. There is almost always room to have a discussion and to see if there can be compromise acceptable to both sides first.
In this case, it may be acceptable to have kids at a later age; in addition, there could be other related concerns not mentioned in the comment (a lot of information is lost when writing about something online), which could make having kids acceptable.
Then if it's truly a red line issue (one partner absolutely does not want to have kids, while the other does), both people will know that they at least tried very hard to work it out, and reached an understanding that there could be long-term unhappiness or resentment if the relationship persisted. Then there can be few to no regrets with moving on, which is difficult after being in a relationship for a long period of time.
There is no compromise on children. Some people want them, some don't. This is one of the biggest sources of relationship strife and needs compatibility quickly or folks should agree to part and stop wasting time.
It's not a black-and-white issue. There is compromise if a person doesn't want children right now, but is genuinely open to it when there is more career stability. Some people may also be open to children, but not at the expense of giving up one's career (some couples have worked it out by having the man de-prioritize his career for a while).
I do agree that people can waste time if a person says they "don't want children right now," but really mean that they "don't want children ever." In either case, there is no harm to clarify this before going right to breaking up over hesitations.
I'm 32 and my wife is 33, we've been together for 12 years. I started having the itch to have kids when I turned 30, but my wife 100% doesn't want them. Choosing between a life without children or leaving the person I've shared my whole adult life with is intolerable.
All I can say is you're not alone and I wish you the best.
Let's say you stay together now, and 10 years from now she still doesn't want children (which, for the record, is very much her prerogative). What will you do?
If you don't split up at that point, this difference is likely to become a source of resentment. You may also regret not having split up earlier so that you could meet someone who is a better match for you sooner.
This is the kind of thing that people really need to be on the same page about for the relationship to be viable long-term. Attitudes towards money (how much to spend, save, etc) is another.
But let me still respond to this, as freedom of speech:
Leave a message for the top female executive at the company she most admires. Ask your wife then leave the message. Just tell them leave this message. I've heard of similar messages. That executive will talk to your wife and will try to give her the message you want to give her.
Apparently for women once you realize you're a fertility-dead-end your body takes its toll on your failure. Not for men as much because a man is fertile much longer, and more uncertainly, and it's more reasonable for him to be a fertility-dead-end because men are better and worse than women, they are a gamble by their very nature.
Stop waiting. This may not be popular with the hive mind, but if you want kids and she doesn’t: move on.
I love my wife more than anything outside my family, but the kids are on another level. In 20 years you may not remember your current partner’s face. But you won’t pass a moment without thinking about your children, if you choose to have them.
Are there statistics for this type of thing (average age when first child arrives)? I knew I was an outlier (I had my first kid at 20, and yes it was a conscious decision), but 27 being relatively young makes me feel like an even greater outlier than I had predicted.
Do you feel like there is really anything to "catch up" on?
I'm in my mid 30s with no kids - while I can see that my career happens to be more advanced than close friends who had kids early, the signal to noise ratio is pretty high.
I'd think about it this way: enjoy the path you've set yourself on and savour the years where you have both your kids and your health. When they become less dependent on you, the option to lean in to a career is still available, and with a few more grey hairs you probably won't have to work so hard to prove yourself to begin with.
This reads as somewhat mean spirited, which I hope you didn’t intend. I thought his advice was supportive – they very clearly acknowledged not being a parent but then pointed out that there isn’t a clear cut productivity gap. That kind of reassurance seems useful since people can easily tell themselves they’re irrecoverably behind and worry far more than is helpful.
Nothing about their advice is specific to the role of parenting itself, but more about perspective on life choices in general. If they were telling you how to be a parent, sure, but there's nothing wrong with trying to learn from each other's experiences.
Not having kids may afford some advantages in some circumstances, but in my experience, the decision is often made for reasons that most people don't see, and not just because of career goals. I know plenty of parents and non-parents, and if there's one thing I can say about non-parents, rarely is career progression a sufficient form of purpose / satisfaction in life. Most parents I know would never trade their decision to have kids for a slightly faster trip up a career ladder, but that faster trip isn't necessarily real either.
I'm in my mid 30s, and I personally will never have kids. I made this choice partially because of the environment I grew up in, where I was a defacto parent for younger siblings for most of my formative years. I love my siblings, but simply put, I'm done parenting, and have enough of my own baggage I'm still dealing with after that experience. This baggage is heavy enough that work is still a struggle. I may appear unencumbered to those around me, but that doesn't automatically equate to more bandwidth to advance my career.
I've found career success, yes, but not because I don't have kids. If anything, my career focus impeded my personal growth, so I'm working on that in my 30s.
Ultimately it's a tradeoff, and while some people may occasionally find themselves at an advantage in some way, it's unclear if this is an advantage to aspire to, or if it leads to any improvement in life satisfaction.
If there's one thing I can say, it's that work and career progression isn't really what it's cracked up to be, and isn't "enough" for long.
If you continued reading, you'd see the context behind why I made that decision. At this point, you are not making any attempt at a good faith conversation here, and that's unfortunate.
But since I'm curious, is it the age that made you stop listening?
I see. It's really unclear why you're engaging in such a hostile way throughout this thread, but it's really not in the intended spirit of discussion here.
Apparently you did continue reading, but in case it wasn't clear, it was an abusive environment, and sharing my personal decision not to be a parent again is just my attempt to share one perspective on what it means to have or not have kids when working through one's career.
Based on what you've written elsewhere in this thread, I hope you find some peace.
Coincidentally, you are seemingly the least mature person in this discussion right now. Speaks somewhat to your “anyone who doesn’t have kids isn’t an adult yet” comment holding little weight. One would expect a parent to have more empathy, not less, but here we are.
This is a bit crude way to put it, but maybe you're right.
At least for me, becoming a father changed my perspective on everything so much that it's almost like I'm not even the same species anymore as I was before having them. Sometimes people without children feel like they're not even proper adults even if they are older and/or more senior at work or whatever.
FWIW, This doesn't sound like a healthy place for you to be.
Childless people giving parenting advice to people with children is on average going to be just as off target as most times where humans try to give advice without any personal lived experience. It doesn't indicate anything else though, prima facie.
> Spot on, I’m so different now than I was then I disregard anything anyone without kids says.
I would posit this is universally correct. Us not-parents can "believe" we can accurately imagine what you go through or what we would do in your place. Theoretically speaking, the theory matches reality :)
Yet imagining is literally not enough! People without children do not viscerally know what it is to parent, 24/7 for the rest of your days for the foreseeable future. How the accumulated indescribable-joy and the mounting exhaustion that you simultaneously carry influences slash impacts your decision-making and relentlessly molds the options you'll choose to make for the rest of your life.
Good luck explaining how different this parenting experience can be for every person and child, even within the same family in the same environment two children can be polar opposites with no obvious reason other than "life finds a way".
> I feel like they’re not real adults too.
I say this with all my empathy: the fact that for you parenting is such a core part of the adult experience is not only correct but beautiful, and anybody who tries to invalidate that is extremely wrong.
That said, there is another layer of unkindness in your position that you must unpack yourself, if you wish to have adult-level relationships with people with a different set of adult-core concepts.
You will get out of your career what you put into it. I had kids at 24/26 and have found success relative to my peers in the field.
Sure there are sacrifices to be made with respect to career options. You can't (or shouldn't) just move cities every three years when a new job comes up, but working remotely can level that playing field quite a bit.
The "mid" positions often require a grind. For example to get a skill.
The "top" positions often are a new set of hoops that you need to jump. First you need to actually get the position: what sometimes is about who you know, sometimes about what you do, sometimes sheer luck (e.g. those above you quit) or by just grinding and applying everywhere. Also at some point a new hoop are sales. Nobody cares that you cant do your job if you can bring in new customers worth millions.
In many ways life is pure luck. If you choose the right company you can get options and become a millionaire while someone better will rot in a failed startup (If you are in Europe you are out of luck - generally no options).
Maybe you start a company while you are still relatively young? Many did. Many failed. There are also those motivational lists who show billionaires who started a company after a certain age.
I was thinking of writing a book about this, but I am not sure if there is a market for that. Since what I wrote above sounds a lot like those sharlatan self help books.
You can write a longform blog post and submit it to HN, I would read it. Ribbonfarm's "The Gervais Principle" (2009) [0] is a top example of a very long blog post split over multiple parts, yet insightful enough to be shared widely on HN and still provoke thought, long after a first read.
It's really up to you and depends on what you want your career to look like.
Also, be careful of playing games where people are willing to give up more than you are. For me, I don't derive as much meaning from a career as I thought I would, probably because I put too much expectation that it would provide that.
> "For me, I don't derive as much meaning from a career as I thought I would, probably because I put too much expectation that it would provide that."
"Designing Your Life" is a book based on a Stanford course on career planning that explored this idea very well. A summary is at [0], and a relevant idea is that focusing on one area of your life is likely not sufficient for a good life. For example, over the course of a week, it can be useful to make sure you are hitting goals in "work, play, love, and health." It can sound like common sense, but it's useful to consciously do this, especially for people inclined to optimize for just work, at the expense of physical health and relationships.
An anecdote that stuck out to me was a positive example about a person who rose to a high level at a large company, then kept refusing promotions because he finally struck a good balance between career and having time for family. I'm sure this may not always be the best idea, but I liked the idea behind inclusion of the anecdote, which is that continuously climbing the career ladder may not actually be helpful for one's personal goals.
Thank you for your reply. I will try this out soon.
I'm already at the point where I'm uncertain if I want to progress on the career ladder. Advancement in my career at this point mostly means striking out on my own more through product-based businesses.
I'd like to question the premise that you have to "catch up" with peers, and that comparisons make sense. Especially in the private sector, career growth isn't solely dependent on technical skills.
Some peers can get big career boosts due to nepotism or networking and switching companies. Others leave a large company, giving up the chance of promotions to senior management, and create their own startup or join another at a senior level for advancement. Other people change industries and start at a junior position. Yet others decide to work a stable job for lesser pay, maybe at certain departments or agencies in the public sector.
I honestly don't see where competition with peers becomes a factor, so long as you're working enough to maintain valuable skills that hiring managers and organizations are looking for.
I had my first kid at 15; are you that early? It was a rough start. Mom and I are still together 24 years later. We played life on hard mode and I don't recommend it. I got a near full academic ride to a university but had trouble getting books and supplies. My wife worked mostly as a waitress at first. After several attempts at different jobs, I landed as a software developer. I was in my 30s before we could save a penny. I make a couple hundred grand a year now and can buy my (now three) kids what they need and want and my retirement account is healthy
You won’t beat them by absolute number of hours. However, you can surpass your peers by having more focus, being more organized, and thinking outside the box.
Anecdotal evidence: PhDs with children often are just as productive if not more than those without. Most PhD students are inefficient due to not focusing and thinking they infinite time.
I've looked recently at a study of academics based on papers they authored that showed parents are more productive. IIRC, fathers were most productive, mothers less productive during early years of child-rearing but ultimately beat-out non-parents.
In that limited study, if you're female you'd be expected to catch and over-take your peers -- presumably early child-rearing gives you more time after you've overtaken your peers. Again, from the study, if you're male then your output would be expected to be "better" from just after your kids come. Mother's were more productive before they became pregnant, if you follow; perhaps trying to get ahead before pregnancy.
If anyone asks I'll dig out the link. My work shared it, it showed the opposite of what they said it did ...
Did he regain concentration and focus? It's more like he just reduced distractions. That's not the same.
What if being distracted is not a bug but a feature and his mind doesn't want to continue the path of constantly writing books? Instead of eliminating distractions, it could be more helpful to find the activities that don't create the desire for distractions.
my mind doesn't want to continue the path of constantly working. I've done a lot of kinds of work and am not young, coding is my third career, and I've never found "the activities" that pay rent and don't create the desire for distractions. Want it or not (I don't want it) that's a problem it's on me to solve.
He also says the pandemic didn't affect him, but honestly, whether it was Long COVID or an indirect psych effect of isolation, I've had extreme issues concentrating ever since 2020 that have been absolutely bullshit to manage.
Re: wide-scale reports of cognitive decline since lockdowns:
> In lab animals, isolation has been shown to cause brain shrinkage and the kind of brain changes you'd see in Alzheimer's disease — reduced brain cell connections and reduced levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is important for the formation, connection, and repair of brain cells.
"...I cancelled my subscription to my formerly favourite online news portal (the German “Spiegel-Online”)..."
Very good. Spiegel Online - unfortunately - became terribly bad over the last years, with click-bait headlines, sensational reporting as well as pushing fear & anxiety throughout their articles.
It is said that Napoleon did not open his mail for 3 weeks after it arrived. His belief was that most issues would resolve themselves and were therefore unimportant for him to attend to.
If you go back and watch the news from 2-3 weeks ago it is amazing how much of it is just nonsense. It's especially hard to go back and watch covid discussions from a year ago and hear just how wrong most information was.
Sounds like a great way to get a bench warrant for avoiding a legal summons in today's day and age.
Knuth has a secretary which prioritizes his snail mail. I think filters are a great way to go. I have tried to pre-bin my mail but my tray organizer has just been covered over with assorted cruft, which kinda makes the system untenable until I stop procrastinating...
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 335 ms ] threadgo https://hckrnews.com/ -> set "top 10%"
That is a news equivalent of junk food. Clickbait partisan outrage generator.
I would suggest some independent podcast with daily or weekly summaries. Much higher information density.
I think a more useful thing is to filter news down to only that news which is important rather than merely engaging, and leave engagement for either friends or hobbies with a ratio depending on your personal level of introversion/extroversion.
There is no value for me there. Even if I invest time into filtering, there is no value to gain from that. Maybe it is important, but I am not policy maker or investor, it is not important right now for me!
I can find out about that visit week later, after it actually happened. Without all the speculations and opinions. And since it will be podcast I can listen while running or exercising, and with much lower investment from my side.
Does CNN have any content that's genuinely important to you?
But the argument also applies to podcasts: no value in any fact-based podcast if you don't act on the information it gives you, just as there's no point in fiction-based podcasts if they don't entertain you.
Honest question that I know won't be well-received on HN: I don't know your personal details, but do you think there is not anyone else in a lower paid job who has figured out a way to support their family?
Frustration stems from when reality doesn't meet our expectations. You can choose to try and bend reality to your will or change your expectations. One is significantly easier than the other.
Most of my frustration is because my bosses are assholes. I now expect bosses to be assholes, but it's still frustrating.
Go and learn. Skills are not set in stone.
> I don't perform well remotely, and my wife won't consider relocating
I understand that. I don't know you, but maybe a nicer setup with more (not too direct) sunlight can make it better?
Sure, but learning takes time, which I have little of. It's also much easier for some than others (getting significantly more difficult as I age).
The main remote issue is that my wife interrupts me to do stuff or answer questions throughout the day. I also feel I'm slower to learn remotely. I think that if I'm an expert in the tech already, then remote could work.
You don't need to spend all day in a class like a university student. An hour a day dedicated to lectures, practice and taking some notes with pencil and paper* can do wonders on the long term.
As for your wife, maybe you can talk to her and ask her to leave you alone for some specific times, unless it's urgent. Or ask her to send you a message instead of talking so it doesn't interrupt your focus so much.
* Some research on learning has proven that taking notes like that is way more effective than typing on a keyboard.
I learned C like ten years ago and then I moved on to PHP and then to JavaScript. I'm sure I forgot most of it. But thanks to that, I'm now learning Golang and when it came to pointers it clicked almost instantly.
You are in complete control over your life, but you have to accept that responsibility. Stop blaming externalities and start owning your choices.
No ego, just facts, and your attitude here is crap, your headspace is so negative I’m not at all surprised you’re suffering such as you are.
And don't be the weakest link in the (faulty) chain. It's leaves a better impression by notifying external inefficiency and quitting because lack of change, rather than being fired because your motivation and productiveness withered in silence.
I have a few years of experience as a Web Dev, but sadly my GitHub is barren from code.
Even in orgs that have their stuff together, I see a preference for internal transfer over termination. I think it's some sort of HR sunk cost fallacy.
In this market, we can't seem to hire anyone (we aren't competitive on salary). So I guess it makes sense that they want to keep the low performers since they wouldn't be able to backfill. This still sucks since there's a lot of stress dealing with poor ratings and not know if you will get fired. And then even if you do work hard and perform well, there'd no guarantee that will increase your rating or comp.
At the moment I burned money/got into a lot of debt trying to get a start up going. When that failed I just grabbed the first job/company that gave me an offer. I'm not that pumped about what I do but I can deal with it for now. Pay is still good for my level (low six figs) and it's 100% remote.
We've all probably worked with people who will only lift a finger if it benefits them. Create an organization of people with this mindset and much of the necessary but un-glorious work never gets done. I suppose you could say people can play the long game and do that stuff in hopes of getting noticed, but if it doesn't and you have a transactional mindset, it's a recipe to be miserable. (We've probably all worked with those people too - the ones who feel slighted because they believe they've done all the hard work without getting rewarded).
Unless you want to get promoted into management...
Hire new people to do the inglourious work.
But I'm assuming this means hiring people without the same transactional mindset? Otherwise, there will just be endless employee churn as they realize there's nothing in it for them.
It's hard for me to get on-board with a management approach that effectively says, "I don't want to do this stuff because I want to get paid but it's okay for you to do it because I don't care whether you get paid or not." Either you think the work is worth doing or you don't, but it's a weak leadership style to say it's only worth doing if someone else is doing it. (That's different that strategically assigning duties to get the most out of the team.)
Our company tries to outsource the more boring/routine stuff to overseas contractors. The results vary.
It's also absolutely possible to create an ugly monster of organization while cheering up your team with whatever we-change-the-world mission.
I think it's mostly the people who realized the company has deceived them, either in the company values/mission or the "pay for performance" scheme being BS.
There shouldn't be anything wrong with someone just doing their job for the salary. If their performance falls below what's expected (and clearly defined) for their level, then that's a problem. They shouldn't be penalized for not doing extra work when they aren't being rewarded.
Employers need to have compensation models that make sense too. I was once told I could get a promotion if I consistently worked 1 hour longer everyday. That's a 13% increase in hours for a 7% pay raise, for a position with more responsibility and expectations. These managers are either idiots or predators - anyone with an MBA should understand that's a shitty value proposition. Either way, they lost my respect.
That time-transaction mindset leads to exactly what you alluded to. "If I spend 13% more time here, I should get 13% more pay." What that doesn't say is if those 13% more hours were spend solving previously unsolved issues for the organization.
At least at my company, there's no differentiation. I do look for problems to solve. I have volunteered for extra roles and responsibilities that others didn't want. So why do the the people that are too smart to take on the role of application security champion for the team get promoted, while those security champions are passed over?
It seems you're describing that engagement is better than transactional mindset. That's true from the employer's perspective. That's only true from the employee's perspective if the employer is rewarding that.
The promotion I was talking about was brought up because I was already performing at the next level and was engaged- filling the lead role for the team the prior year and volunteering for additional projects. So yeah, the problems and work that I did would have gone undone or the team's work would be uncoordinated.
'That time-transaction mindset leads to exactly what you alluded to. "If I spend 13% more time here, I should get 13% more pay."'
To be real, that's the company's mindset that they should require you to work an extra 13% for a 7% raise, a rate decrease. The defined expectations for that next level are demonstratably higher. Arguably those higher expectations should be matched with a higher rate not a lower one. This concept is critical to understand
To put it bluntly, it's likely because the company doesn't value solving security as much as you may think they should. Solving problems is the same as solving valuable problems. If your goal is to be promotable, the problems you should solve should be as close as possible to the items your company values the most. Unfortunately, things like quality and security are not often valued until after things go wrong.
>The defined expectations for that next level are demonstratably higher.
Maybe I'm misreading this, but it sure seems like you're saying the performance for the higher pay is above and beyond what you're currently doing. Now whether those expectations are above what you're willing to do for the pay is a personal decision.
>That's only true from the employee's perspective if the employer is rewarding that.
This is probably where we fundamentally disagree. I think employees also benefit from being engaged. I've worked with people on assembly lines who were engaged with work that most would find monotonous. Instead of finding the work some tedium to be put up with, they actually found ways of getting personal fulfillment out of it. Same goes for low-status jobs elsewhere I've worked. I think your sentiment here is really what underlies unhappiness with work and you'd eventually find the same regardless of how handsomely you'd get paid.
Everything you've outlined at this point seems to indicate you work at a company that has a culture that is misaligned with what you're after. But you also aren't willing to take a risk of changing that. I doubt there are any silver bullets here that will make some magic happen without professional or personal risk.
I've done a lot of the work that nobody else wants to do. It wasn't any harder than the work others do. So it's not like I want to be rewarded more than them, but just not penalized for it. People who joined the company around the same time as me are managers and leads. I'm a midlevel. I've even filled the role of a lead for a year, but politics made it so my manager couldn't give me a high rating. After 10 years you'd think I'd at least be a senior and have a salary of $100k. I don't think I'm asking for the world here, and certainly many of the other 10 year employees are farther along because they're better than me.
My family stuff is what keeps me going though. My work is a basket case at the moment, 12-month contract ends in 4 weeks, and it's almost a full time job applying for jobs.
I've had three managers in my not-quite 12 months, none that I've worked with very closely, one that thinks I'm no good because I unwittingly stepped on the toes of a couple of institutionalized colleagues by "doing my job", who complained to this guy who'd been my boss a total of less than a week at the time.
"Just do what you're told" was his advice. So, what you're saying is coast until the contract is over? Done and done.
Makes it hard to get a good recent reference though, lucky the market is thirsting for warm bodies.
I had 7 or 8 managers over the past 2.5 years. I picked up and completed several extra stories over the previous couple sprints only to recieve negative feedback that it wasn't what they wanted me to work on, even though I asked them if there was anything specific they wanted me to do next and had recieved no response. Oh, and my company will not allow managers to give employees recommendations/references at all.
Unsolicited advice: if you can, wait for September to really start looking for employment. August is slow season in recruitment because people are still on vacation while September is the last month of the quarter, so recruiters have targets to reach for the projects scheduled to start in Q4.
P.S. Australia's Reserve Bank is a couple of hours away from raising interest rates again. Currently it's sitting at 1.35%, expectation is for a 50 basis point increase.
Ad PS Thanks, this is important info.
I've been drinking at least 2 cups of coffee ("cups" is a fuzzy measure) for maybe 15 years. Maybe I should power through the withdrawal and discover for myself if I've accidentally been undermining my mental clarity and life quality this whole time, instead of giving myself energy and helping concentration as I'd been assuming.
Maybe I just got used to the feeling and have to feel it to start working.
It’s common that folks with ADHD will use Caffeine, it just doesn’t work as well as other stimulants for many people.
(RSS feed available)
It is impossible to have an objective and bias-free source of information, simply because the amount of information that exists is unimaginably enormous. It's impossible for any single human mind to absorb everything that's happening, so we have to rely on services whose job is filtering that information into a small set of important bits.
By selectively choosing which bits of information you share or emphasize, multiple different sources can all technically be telling the gods honest truth, while also all pushing completely contradictory narratives.
Everyone is pushing a narrative, and it's critical that we all try to understand the incentives of the pushers of information we ingest.
>But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
But this an exaggeration. Some people are truly equivocal on a question, yet still able to muster the effort to write about it.
One way this happens is that some specific issue puts the author's internal values in tension. An example would be recall/impeachment of some corrupt official, where the tension is between the two goods of removing the bad actor from power, and maintaining the norm of orderly transition of government power.
What is great about Wikipedia's "Current events" portal is that you don't have to sift through tweets that are selected by the news feed algorithm to make you angry, or a stream of op-eds that are selected by an editor to do the same, in order to get to the facts. Much healthier psychologically while still staying reasonably informed.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massavorming
For example, AllSides includes Breitbart as a source. While it identifies it with the maximum value to the right, it doesn't give a barometer of credibility. For a reader deciding whether Breitbart is worth reading, one should closely examine credibility, not just political leaning. PolitiFact and Media Bias/Fact Check discussed the credibility of Breitbart at length [0] [1].
Then for ground.news, the way it portrays bias is also relatively simplistic. The most prominent indicator is left/center/right, but biases have a lot more nuance. It's more useful to account for how certain publications take certain policy stances. Leanings can be anti-establishment, pro-establishment, socialist, neoliberal, pro-consumption (e.g. Wired), or anti-consumption, and this information is lost when relying on left-center-right categorizations.
The best way to do this is to manually select a few publications that are high on factual credibility, write down their specific biases or leanings, and compare stories across the personally-curated selection of publications. You then personally have more control and understanding of the articles you are presented.
[0] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/28/stella-imm...
[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/breitbart/
[0] https://dailyedit.com/
I remember some users deliberately not connecting internet to their homes to stick with this. There were also some users who switched to "dumb" phones to reduce distractions. I guess these could work.
[0] https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/tech/facebook-app-and-un...
We are what we read: https://tinygem.org/about#stopnews
Entire TinyGem service was created with the purpose of collecting content worth reading.
For me, it's sleeping enough, nicotine patches, green tea, L-Tyrosine, Avmacol, and no coffee. This regimen has helped me improve my work performance significantly. It doesn't "fix" everything, but it sure makes it so much easier to function and to focus what I want to focus on.
But lately (since a month ago) I have been thankfully able to maintain a 12/1-8:30 range sleep pattern.
I do a 15 min workout 5 days a week. I have been fasting so I eat a big meal a couple hours before sleeping. Read a book half an hour before sleep.
So far it's been working. Fasting is weight loss reasons. Also helps me personally focus since if I eat too much I get lazy/tired.
Other thing I'll comment on is regarding personal projects. I lay out a plan, when the day begins (weekend) I don't open anything (social media) I just immediately work on this project. Thankfully I can dump the most of the weekend days toward the project.
Our brain is primordially designed to react to distractions - because it was a matter of survival or death. Media has adapted itself to harness this feature of our brains. To counter it, we have to take out much of the possible avenues to distractions out of our extrapersonal space or sight range (because we're visual creatures, out of sight = out of mind).
For more details, Andrew Huberman has a whole episode on focus and concentration that talks about this.
[1] Text mostly (90+%). Those few occasions I want to see images as part of a web page it's possible to turn that on.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Permissions.default.image
It's much more sinister than most people suspect.
https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Focus-Attention-Think-Deeply/d...
I was spending hours per day on Twitter, and then I learned that overusing social media rewires your brain, and you essentially unlearn to digest information in bigger chunks. This book will horrify you, and that's exactly what needs to be done.
And if a book (to listen to) is too much for you to focus on - listen to Ezra Klein's interview with the author, at least: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/its-not-your-fault-you...
A good summary thread is here : https://twitter.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/147912591089697587...
Does that make him biased - of course, but whether or not the study of how topics get covered faster across decades was peer reviewed is rather unimportant. What I know is that I was able to read half a book in one session, and now I am struggling with a single page.
I disagree with that statement. I know it's fashionable on HN to spit on Reddit, but for all its flaws, Reddit also birthed fantastic communities that are hard to replicate somewhere else due to the network effect, e.g. /r/WarCollege, /r/hoggit, /r/AskHistorians, /r/Rust, /r/LinguisticsHumor, etc. – come for the dumb memes, stay for the niche communities.
another "threat" is when you have a few kids, your daily life is cut into pieces with random and sometimes strong background noises 24x7x365, not much you can do there.
personally, that impacts my focus the most and there is no cure, and it usually lasts for about 20 years when kids are finally into colleges.
obviously there are many good stuff out of raising kids, and I enjoyed it, but focus-on-tech-advancement is not one of them.
I have a private office in our home and know that's not a luxury for many others, but the quality of life as a parent working from home vs being in the office is dramatic. With the kids home during the summer the noise and distraction levels do go up, but honestly are still less bothersome then the open office floor plan I was in previously. I think it really depends on your home situation as well as how your office was setup, but my guess is that a majority of parents would prefer remote positions if available.
[1] https://zapier.com/blog/remote-work-report-by-zapier/
They can definitely be a distraction, but I was able to minimize it by having an office with a door + setting reasonable boundaries. Also, they're out of the house at school for many hours (except for COVID -- that was a bit tougher, but that was the case for everyone).
I have no regrets. One of the reasons I WFH is to have less time on the road and more time w/ family. My oldest has said that he's glad I WFH, and that he didn't like me being away when he was younger.
Of course, every person/family is different. But for me & my family, I think minimizing the distractions in other ways while WFH + accepting the remaining distractions was worth it in the end.
The best rule I’ve put in place is work happens during the day or it doesn’t happen.
Sometimes I only want to price compare something online and order it, which should be a 5-10 minute process. It’ll take me 30 minutes spread over 10 3-minute bursts.
In between I need to end fights, clean faces, fetch out of reach toys, lift them out of a chair, lift them into a chair, no the other chair, hand them a stuffed animal, pick the stuffed animal up from the ground, clean food from the floor…
By which time I just order on Amazon. Yes maybe I pay more but at least I can order in one click and be done with it…
I had kids relatively young for a yuppie male (27) and while that was 100% the “right time” I would have done it earlier if I had known how great they are.
I’m turning 33 next month and really want children. I have endless memories of my dad and grandfathers teaching me amazing lessons and being best/strongest men I have ever been around. I want to fulfill that role that for someone! We didn’t have much money but camping or diy building is something fondly reminisce on and made me who I am.
My partner is 25 and is not decided on children yet due to also growing up poor and and having a rougher realationship with their fam. We’ve lived together a year now but she recently got an IUD and was happy about the ‘10 years of freedom’.
To her kids is a ‘probably after I finish all my goals/traveling’.
We were recently vacationing in Barcelona and met 3 young boys at the hotel and played a game of uno with them in the lobby. They lived in the Bay Area and I imagine their parents were techies, they were indian, 6-12yrs, long hair, well spoken, had skateboards, and wearing tie dye.
I CANNOT stop thinking about them.
I’m considering an ultimatum but I love her so much.
Sorry for the rant HN, I just needed somewhere to say it.
Dictating, forcing things is not the way to go for such things. You cant force children onto an unwilling mother. Its best if such things are handled amicably and with consensus.
I want chips for tea (deep fried julienned potatoes for your evening meal), you don't want chips, I say "I'll go out for tea then", you decide how important it is for you; you're literally in control.
Clearly the stakes are very different but it couldn't be further from dictatorship.
I don't think avoiding hard choices helps either party in the long run.
Family baggage is tough and there may be stuff she needs to work on within herself too before she's ready. Encouraging that is a good way to be supportive and work towards the goal of kids together.
Strongly advise against ultimatums
My advice is to have an honest conversation where you try to understand where she’s at on this and why, without trying to change it.
And then if you determine that she really doesn’t want kids, or may not ever, you might have to make a very hard choice to either accept that and let go of your dream of having kids, or to follow another path without her.
But own it as your choice, without resentment. She doesn’t owe you a child.
I met her too a little bit later, and boy, the resentment was strong with her. I couldn't blame her.
With things like kids, please don't be wishy-washy; make up your mind and set specific goals, timelines, etc. Kids are an expensive investment of both money and time.
You likely already considered the fertility odds, but to add context, according to a resource approved by the department of health for Victoria, Australia [0], the odds of having a child increasingly drop from age 35 onwards. There are also likely risks for men trying to have children after the age of 40, according to a balanced article on WebMD [1].
Negotiation is an option besides an ultimatum, and I actually think most opinions on the internet about relationships go for breakups far too soon. You have valid concerns that you can address with negotiation; in specific:
1) There is no clarity for the timeline of having kids (10 years plus after a vague goal of reaching all other goals of your partner).
2) From the tone of your partner, it's possible she doesn't seem to be taking your valid concern with seriousness, though perhaps serious conversations may just didn't come to mind at the time you wrote your comment.
3) Your partner hasn't seriously discussed the fertility implications of having children that late, at least from the contents of your comment.
To compromise, consider the red lines. Would you be willing to stay in the relationship without kids? If the answer is "no," it's almost inevitable you will be resentful and the relationship is likely to have a very negative effect on your life.
Would your partner be willing to have kids? If the answer is "no," it's also almost inevitable she will be resentful if she reluctantly goes into it; if the answer legitimately is "yes, but after a certain point of time," then you have room to work it out. The compromise solution is to have a specific endpoint when you will try for kids (with a clear "yes" for trying for children at that point). If there is none, moving on may be a hard decision but the right one for personal happiness for both people in the long-term.
As with any online advice, please take this comment with a huge grain of salt because there is an enormous amount of information and nuance lost when communicating a situation over text (or even over a conversation in person). However, the main principles of compromise—knowing each others' red lines, and account for possible long-term resentment due to agreements favoring one side disproportionately—may hopefully still be helpful. Best of luck to you.
[0] https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtrea...
[1] https://www.webmd.com/men/news/20141202/older-dads-health
In this case, it may be acceptable to have kids at a later age; in addition, there could be other related concerns not mentioned in the comment (a lot of information is lost when writing about something online), which could make having kids acceptable.
Then if it's truly a red line issue (one partner absolutely does not want to have kids, while the other does), both people will know that they at least tried very hard to work it out, and reached an understanding that there could be long-term unhappiness or resentment if the relationship persisted. Then there can be few to no regrets with moving on, which is difficult after being in a relationship for a long period of time.
I do agree that people can waste time if a person says they "don't want children right now," but really mean that they "don't want children ever." In either case, there is no harm to clarify this before going right to breaking up over hesitations.
I'm 32 and my wife is 33, we've been together for 12 years. I started having the itch to have kids when I turned 30, but my wife 100% doesn't want them. Choosing between a life without children or leaving the person I've shared my whole adult life with is intolerable.
All I can say is you're not alone and I wish you the best.
If you don't split up at that point, this difference is likely to become a source of resentment. You may also regret not having split up earlier so that you could meet someone who is a better match for you sooner.
This is the kind of thing that people really need to be on the same page about for the relationship to be viable long-term. Attitudes towards money (how much to spend, save, etc) is another.
But let me still respond to this, as freedom of speech:
Leave a message for the top female executive at the company she most admires. Ask your wife then leave the message. Just tell them leave this message. I've heard of similar messages. That executive will talk to your wife and will try to give her the message you want to give her.
Apparently for women once you realize you're a fertility-dead-end your body takes its toll on your failure. Not for men as much because a man is fertile much longer, and more uncertainly, and it's more reasonable for him to be a fertility-dead-end because men are better and worse than women, they are a gamble by their very nature.
I love my wife more than anything outside my family, but the kids are on another level. In 20 years you may not remember your current partner’s face. But you won’t pass a moment without thinking about your children, if you choose to have them.
I'm in my mid 30s with no kids - while I can see that my career happens to be more advanced than close friends who had kids early, the signal to noise ratio is pretty high.
I'd think about it this way: enjoy the path you've set yourself on and savour the years where you have both your kids and your health. When they become less dependent on you, the option to lean in to a career is still available, and with a few more grey hairs you probably won't have to work so hard to prove yourself to begin with.
This reads harsh, so apologies if that wasn't intended. Just... I feel this is more of a disservice than anything
Not having kids may afford some advantages in some circumstances, but in my experience, the decision is often made for reasons that most people don't see, and not just because of career goals. I know plenty of parents and non-parents, and if there's one thing I can say about non-parents, rarely is career progression a sufficient form of purpose / satisfaction in life. Most parents I know would never trade their decision to have kids for a slightly faster trip up a career ladder, but that faster trip isn't necessarily real either.
I'm in my mid 30s, and I personally will never have kids. I made this choice partially because of the environment I grew up in, where I was a defacto parent for younger siblings for most of my formative years. I love my siblings, but simply put, I'm done parenting, and have enough of my own baggage I'm still dealing with after that experience. This baggage is heavy enough that work is still a struggle. I may appear unencumbered to those around me, but that doesn't automatically equate to more bandwidth to advance my career.
I've found career success, yes, but not because I don't have kids. If anything, my career focus impeded my personal growth, so I'm working on that in my 30s.
Ultimately it's a tradeoff, and while some people may occasionally find themselves at an advantage in some way, it's unclear if this is an advantage to aspire to, or if it leads to any improvement in life satisfaction.
If there's one thing I can say, it's that work and career progression isn't really what it's cracked up to be, and isn't "enough" for long.
But since I'm curious, is it the age that made you stop listening?
Apparently you did continue reading, but in case it wasn't clear, it was an abusive environment, and sharing my personal decision not to be a parent again is just my attempt to share one perspective on what it means to have or not have kids when working through one's career.
Based on what you've written elsewhere in this thread, I hope you find some peace.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The depression that I previously mentioned.
At least for me, becoming a father changed my perspective on everything so much that it's almost like I'm not even the same species anymore as I was before having them. Sometimes people without children feel like they're not even proper adults even if they are older and/or more senior at work or whatever.
> Sometimes people without children feel like they're not even proper adults
I feel like they’re not real adults too.
FWIW, This doesn't sound like a healthy place for you to be.
Childless people giving parenting advice to people with children is on average going to be just as off target as most times where humans try to give advice without any personal lived experience. It doesn't indicate anything else though, prima facie.
I would posit this is universally correct. Us not-parents can "believe" we can accurately imagine what you go through or what we would do in your place. Theoretically speaking, the theory matches reality :)
Yet imagining is literally not enough! People without children do not viscerally know what it is to parent, 24/7 for the rest of your days for the foreseeable future. How the accumulated indescribable-joy and the mounting exhaustion that you simultaneously carry influences slash impacts your decision-making and relentlessly molds the options you'll choose to make for the rest of your life.
Good luck explaining how different this parenting experience can be for every person and child, even within the same family in the same environment two children can be polar opposites with no obvious reason other than "life finds a way".
> I feel like they’re not real adults too.
I say this with all my empathy: the fact that for you parenting is such a core part of the adult experience is not only correct but beautiful, and anybody who tries to invalidate that is extremely wrong.
That said, there is another layer of unkindness in your position that you must unpack yourself, if you wish to have adult-level relationships with people with a different set of adult-core concepts.
Sure there are sacrifices to be made with respect to career options. You can't (or shouldn't) just move cities every three years when a new job comes up, but working remotely can level that playing field quite a bit.
The "mid" positions often require a grind. For example to get a skill.
The "top" positions often are a new set of hoops that you need to jump. First you need to actually get the position: what sometimes is about who you know, sometimes about what you do, sometimes sheer luck (e.g. those above you quit) or by just grinding and applying everywhere. Also at some point a new hoop are sales. Nobody cares that you cant do your job if you can bring in new customers worth millions.
In many ways life is pure luck. If you choose the right company you can get options and become a millionaire while someone better will rot in a failed startup (If you are in Europe you are out of luck - generally no options).
Maybe you start a company while you are still relatively young? Many did. Many failed. There are also those motivational lists who show billionaires who started a company after a certain age.
I was thinking of writing a book about this, but I am not sure if there is a market for that. Since what I wrote above sounds a lot like those sharlatan self help books.
[0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Also, be careful of playing games where people are willing to give up more than you are. For me, I don't derive as much meaning from a career as I thought I would, probably because I put too much expectation that it would provide that.
"Designing Your Life" is a book based on a Stanford course on career planning that explored this idea very well. A summary is at [0], and a relevant idea is that focusing on one area of your life is likely not sufficient for a good life. For example, over the course of a week, it can be useful to make sure you are hitting goals in "work, play, love, and health." It can sound like common sense, but it's useful to consciously do this, especially for people inclined to optimize for just work, at the expense of physical health and relationships.
An anecdote that stuck out to me was a positive example about a person who rose to a high level at a large company, then kept refusing promotions because he finally struck a good balance between career and having time for family. I'm sure this may not always be the best idea, but I liked the idea behind inclusion of the anecdote, which is that continuously climbing the career ladder may not actually be helpful for one's personal goals.
[0] https://dansilvestre.com/designing-your-life-summary/
I'm already at the point where I'm uncertain if I want to progress on the career ladder. Advancement in my career at this point mostly means striking out on my own more through product-based businesses.
Competing with single people is incredibly depressing. (I have to find a way out of this hell hole, I hate tech)
Some peers can get big career boosts due to nepotism or networking and switching companies. Others leave a large company, giving up the chance of promotions to senior management, and create their own startup or join another at a senior level for advancement. Other people change industries and start at a junior position. Yet others decide to work a stable job for lesser pay, maybe at certain departments or agencies in the public sector.
I honestly don't see where competition with peers becomes a factor, so long as you're working enough to maintain valuable skills that hiring managers and organizations are looking for.
Anecdotal evidence: PhDs with children often are just as productive if not more than those without. Most PhD students are inefficient due to not focusing and thinking they infinite time.
In that limited study, if you're female you'd be expected to catch and over-take your peers -- presumably early child-rearing gives you more time after you've overtaken your peers. Again, from the study, if you're male then your output would be expected to be "better" from just after your kids come. Mother's were more productive before they became pregnant, if you follow; perhaps trying to get ahead before pregnancy.
If anyone asks I'll dig out the link. My work shared it, it showed the opposite of what they said it did ...
What if being distracted is not a bug but a feature and his mind doesn't want to continue the path of constantly writing books? Instead of eliminating distractions, it could be more helpful to find the activities that don't create the desire for distractions.
> In lab animals, isolation has been shown to cause brain shrinkage and the kind of brain changes you'd see in Alzheimer's disease — reduced brain cell connections and reduced levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is important for the formation, connection, and repair of brain cells.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/how-isolation-a...
Very good. Spiegel Online - unfortunately - became terribly bad over the last years, with click-bait headlines, sensational reporting as well as pushing fear & anxiety throughout their articles.
If you go back and watch the news from 2-3 weeks ago it is amazing how much of it is just nonsense. It's especially hard to go back and watch covid discussions from a year ago and hear just how wrong most information was.
Knuth has a secretary which prioritizes his snail mail. I think filters are a great way to go. I have tried to pre-bin my mail but my tray organizer has just been covered over with assorted cruft, which kinda makes the system untenable until I stop procrastinating...