Work/Life balance is bullshit | Hacker News Reader

Work/Life balance is bullshit

medium.com

12 pointsMarlonPro7 comments

> And this either means changing your job (yes you can) or simply looking at your job from a different perspective. Maybe you don’t like your job because society tells you it’s cool to hate what you do from Monday to Friday.

I applaud you for having a career where you never worked in a dehumanizing, humiliating bureaucracy, but knowledge workers are some of the most economically insulated people on the planet. Looking at your career in tech and extrapolating it to "Gee, why don't poor people get a new 'tude" is a simplistic as it is noxious.

It's also grossly dismissive of employment abuse (like not paying wages, making illegal demands, etc), of underemployment, of market forces regarding employment, and more.

This is just the most head-up-my-own-ass article I've ever seen. He's challenging Trump for most egotistical statements uttered this month.

> Maybe you don’t like your job because society tells you it’s cool to hate what you do from Monday to Friday.

That has nothing to do with work/life balance. No one is saying work is evil. If anything society says the opposite is true, that work is necessary and noble.

You can hate your job and have great work/life balance.

You can love your job and have poor work/life balance.

For most people the proper balance means they can stop thinking about work on the weekend, or after their shift is over. They don't have to take support calls or talk with customers all the time. Work/life balance means they don't have to be online and connected to the office 24/7.

Of course there's exceptions. When starting a business your work/life balance will be skewed towards work. If you're working towards a deadline sometimes you have to push late at night and through the weekend.

"The fact that we call it work/life balance automatically implies that one of the two is negative..."

2nd paragraph and already a made up claim. Saying "work/life" does not imply that one is good and the other bad. It just says that these are 2 different concerns to be balanced.

Bingo. Nobody is going to say you have a well balanced diet if you eat nothing but Kale. It's one thing to embrace work as a healthy part of your life, it's another to let it destroy friendships and end marriages by letting it completely monopolize your time.

"Every person can make a living doing something they love" is the "Let them eat cake" of the 21st century.

Looks like the writer wrote the article just for himself. It's so specific

Reply on news.ycombinator.com