> “When I’m on my deathbed, I won’t look back at my life and wish I had worked harder. I’ll look back and wish I spent more time with the people I loved.”
I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends. Had this person already seen the world and its many sights and wonders? Had they already experienced everything good there is to experience in this one lifetime that they were so bored of it that they would prefer to work instead? Had they already swam with whales, explored dense Amazonian jungles, climbed snowy mountains, explored the countless alleys and backstreets of Tokyo, etc.
I completely get the drive to create; I have various side projects I make for fun and to learn. But I would never want to work for the rest of my life. Life is too short and the world is too big.
> "America is amazing, you could get two hotdogs for $1 at 7-11. That's all I needed to survive."
The same for housing. I know folks that are making mid 6-figures who live in shared houses because housing is not something that they value; it's a place for them to sleep at night.
It's about what you value and then how you exchange your time on Earth.
That sounds like a pretty grim way to live. As a tech worker, I’d rather “live” than survive. Each to their own.
> It's about what you value and then how you exchange your time on Earth.
I think you should take a look at this thread with this comment in mind - not everyone else values the same things as you and that’s ok.
For those who can't afford that like the sister comment you can explore your own city (or suburbia or countryside). Everywhere is exotic to someone. In all 3 cases a bicycle does a good job!
I'm in my early 30's, I have a job that I get to "create" in (I make video games).
> I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends. Had this person already seen the world and its many sights and wonders? Had they already experienced everything good there is to experience in this one lifetime that they were so bored of it that they would prefer to work instead? Had they already swam with whales, explored dense Amazonian jungles, climbed snowy mountains, explored the countless alleys and backstreets of Tokyo, etc.
Lots of these things are best done when you're younger, healthy, and able to do these things. I would _much_ rather live in a nice house in a nice area with exciting things to do from my mid 20's onwards and enjoy those things for years and years and years, rather than live in a smaller/cheaper/farther out place so that I can retire 10 years earlier and start living. I'd rather have 1-2 of those things to look forward to every year than say "I can't wait until I'm 50 and I can finally start doing all those things".
My dad counted down the days until he could retire, talked about how he would finally get to do X Y and Z. About 2 years before that, health conditions caught up and now he's not fit to do so many of those things that he was so excited and happy to do. If the tradeoff for me is working until I'm a little older while getting to enjoy the journey, rather than minmaxing the time that i can work and retire, then I'll choose to enjoy the ride.
> "I can't wait until I'm 50 and I can finally start doing all those things".
When he passed, the family asked me to put together a montage video and shared their photos with me spanning his lifetime. The moments when he was the happiest seemed to be when they were traveling together. As students, as parents, as a couple after my cousins had graduated and started their own lives.
In those last years, he was "waiting" for my aunt to be ready and it felt sad that he didn't get to travel more because my aunt thought more about the money than the short lifetime they had left. His passing was like a wake up call of sorts; a reminder that life is shorter than anyone can expect. It's very hard to convey this in words until one experiences this first hand and feels the shock.
More recently in my own travels, I've realized the same as you: that traveling in your youth makes much more sense than traveling in your "golden" years. You have greater mobility, more energy, less ailments. 20's and 30's are prime for exploring the world. Work will always be there!
> I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends.
Here in the Netherlands it’s common to see retired people do volunteering work, as it can bring great pleasure and satisfaction to help people. There’s of course also the communal aspect of it.
It’s also common to see business owners for example in family businesses to keep working at the company after the official retirement age.
So I’d argue work does not have to be a chore and can be a source of meaning and purpose. But if it is just a means to an end, it makes sense to not want to work your entire life and good labor and retirement laws should protect people from having to work their entire life.
Volunteering is not work.
For me personally, I make a distinction between "working" and "creating". I will always want to create (a very broad term), but I will not always want to work. In fact, I don't want to work now; I only want to create. The best is when I can exchange my creation for money -- then it is no longer work.
When someone contemplates the wisdom of an entrepreneur who says he’s going to work until he dies, they’re not worried he might volunteer too much.
"I worked on my yard today"
Your definition is arbitrary and goes against the established use of the word. Work can be many things. When people say they don't want to stop working, they are just saying they want to keep changing the world in big or small ways until they die.
You’re projecting what you think makes life worth living onto someone else.
Can you really not imagine that for another person working is what they love as much as you seem to love climbing snowy mountains?
> Life is too short
I agree with this. It’s too short to think about how someone else is spending theirs.
You have one lifetime on this Earth and it is a big place with many experiences and sights. Do not regret in the end that you exchanged too much of that one lifetime for money rather than enriching it with many experiences be it with family, friends, or even by oneself.
Is someone who climbs snowy mountains for a living (but who loves working on spreadsheets) trading too much of their one lifetime for money?
Different things enrich different people’s lives.
Can you not imagine that “work” is the experience that gives this person enrichment?
To be honest from what I can see it seems like you are the person with a narrow worldview.
Travel lightly, get a feel for different environments and cultures, then take that perspective to your hometown.
Travel is frosting. The cake can be building a meaningful life that involves community, maybe family, and possibly meaningful work.
The saddest thing I ever witnessed in a FANG was a participant of one of those workplace empowerment events. Even though her interview was focused on her bending over backwards to praise their employer's health insurance, the devil was in the details.
The interviewee was praising her employer for providing a nice health insurance, but she mentioned as side-notes that throughout her career she felt so much pressure to perform that she postponed having children until a point where her fertility doctor warned her that she might risk not be able to have children. When she finally felt her job was secured, she decided to not focus on her career anymore and finally went ahead with having children. Except that she was already in her 40s. She had to undergo a couple of years worth of fertility treatments until she finally managed to get pregnant, which was supposedly the focus of her intervention because her employer was so awesome for allowing her to seek medical treatments.
Everyone decides what's best for themselves, but being robbed of having children because you want to bend over backwards for your employer sounds like an awful tradeoff.
Rationally you can agree it is a purely transactional state. Working hours for compensation. Emotionally in tech many love the work itself, or the nerdy glamour of the industry, or the inherent intelectual bravadory and oneupmanship, and so are ripe for exploitation.
HR will draw you in, infecting your social life with company perks, values and "we are a family" messaging only to turn all process when it comes to an end.
But as the systemics are clear, each new generation will get drawn in. And tbh, often it can still be a good deal.
I don't think offering perks is necessarily supposed to engender loyalty. It's still a transactional relationship ("ok, google might pay less than the startup but I do get free lunches at google...").
In most companies I have more often seen not even a shred of expectation of loyalty. It's pretty normal to see critical employees quit at an inconvenient time on a critical project and the only person who expresses any bad feelings is the employee in question feeling a bit guilty.
Any gaslighting or bullshit past that will be fucked off instantly.
I'm going to wherever they value my loyalty the most.
When it comes to my job, I believe in doing your best possible work, being professional and acting in good faith. I expect to be paid fairly and treated with respect. If this relationship is mutually beneficial, it can go on for a long while. But it's important to remember that, as soon as it stops being beneficial to one party, it will be unilaterally rescinded.
I don't disagree with what you're getting at, just understand that loyalty is a necessity to a lot of folks, and I don't think it is because their values are misplaced.
What you're talking about is necessity. If you don't have the possibility to simply walk away from a job, then you're sticking around because you must, not because you're loyal.
Just don't be an asshole. Some loyalty is fine... or not! It depends!
Whatever happened to dignity?
To me, that feels like a failure of the deeper social system. I want to be loyal to the people I work for/with, not treat our relationship like a transaction that is socially acceptable to end at any minute. And in a bigger sense, I don't think it results in organizations that do truly good work over longer timescales.
Maybe the solution isn't Japanese-style one megacorporation for life employment...but a few steps toward incentivizing loyalty probably wouldn't hurt.
As long as the employer is not solving world hunger or finding a cure for disease, the relationship is strictly transactional, and will remain as such.
A bit of trust and loyalty makes working together a lot more enjoyable. And not every CEO is a narcissist. Just stay away from the really big companies, and you might be fine.
And repeating the trope that employees should be loyal to employers only benefit corporations and those that profit from them, to the detriment of labour.
Many low quality engineers have accidently stumbled upon this lucrative truth, simply because they had low optionality to move elsewhere and therefore also rank ethical considerations very low as a motivating criterion.
If you've ever joined an org where key people have been there for decades then you'll know of the immense amount of interior knowledge that these folks have. At best, they become instituional memories of the org, at worst, a cabal. The worst case is obvious: you can't get anything done barring their approval, and as a newbie you aren't in the club. But the best case is more insidious: because of the long timers, no one has documented processes, recorded the special tricks needed for the job, or done a simulation of what would happen if one of these key people were to evaporate. (And it does happen, because after 20+ years on the job, they are at the age where sudden death strikes happen, eg heart attacks.)
If you become one of these people, great, but you may find that you have expert knowledge in a very small domain, which is difficult if you get laid off. Which brings me on to my next point.
If you stay at a place for a long time, you are going to build a network of work friends, who, naturally, also stayed at the same place for your tenure. This is great, but also dangerous, because the network of people who can help you find a new job are not dispersed and at the same risk of layoffs as you.
If you work in the widget industry, and you and all your buddies work for WidgetCorp, what happens when WidgetCorp lays you off? Who do you call to start finding work in widgets? You need a diaspora of people in your industry who you knew from WidgetCo but who moved on to WidgetInc or whatever, and likewise, you yourself can be that person by moving on from your company after a few years.
Loyalty is personal. You can be loyal to a boss because that boss has earned it over time by demonstrating that they are also loyal to you and will have your back.
turtleyacht•2h ago
You have pretty much a minute or two (if that) to bye a sentence to a couple chats, and it's over. Done.
Oh, and swing by to return equipment. Thanks.
Not that it's worse by any previous measure. Just the process folks will go through: bloodless, swift, smooth. (They have a list to get through.)
You can always wish it never happens, convince yourself every dawn or dusk commit proves something, but only the present reality ever mattered.
Every student of computer science should experience a simulated firing. At least to consider beyond the "system under test" and reflect on business and capital, to think on the end of things along with its beginning.
closewith•1h ago
That said, he's a recruiter and there's nothing of value to be found in the blog post.
objclxt•1h ago
You can absolutely be dismissed without cause in the UK, protections against this only kick in after two years of employment.
dcminter•51m ago
jessekv•37m ago
Apocryphon•39m ago
> * Do not sacrifice your relationship with family and friends to appease your employer.
* Do not sacrifice your mental wellbeing to appease your employer.
* Do not sacrifice your dignity, values, and ethics to appease your employer.
* Do not buy into the bullshit hype of “hustle” to appease your employer.
Propelloni•31m ago
In the EU many protections -- depending on the member state -- only apply under certain conditions. For example, employees in companies with less than 10.25 FTE do not enjoy any termination protection beyond very short notice periods (between 1 and 7 month) in Germany.
mytailorisrich•6m ago
Not sure if that's a typo because several months of notice sounds long to me!
mattlondon•27m ago
I think there is some expectation for gardening leave to be available for the odd call or meeting for doing handovers etc, but realistically I don't think anyone would expect a disgruntled suddenly-made-redundant employee to really do that with any gusto or enthusiasm.
mytailorisrich•19m ago
gedy•45m ago
When remote in this situation, I've shut off wifi and hard powered down right after meeting before they try and remote wipe.
I enjoyed making them squirm while I take a few weeks to mail back equipment, while receiving increasingly urgent emails.
Pointless I know, but was fun.
mattlondon•25m ago