Digital hippies want to integrate life and work, but not in a good way | Hacker News Reader

Digital hippies want to integrate life and work, but not in a good way

theguardian.com

70 pointsFuturebot24 comments

I wonder how much of this movement towards work/life integration depends on the exuberance around startups that has existed for the past several years.

In other words, is a big part of what made the whole thing attractive in the first place the promise that you were going to be rich one day because of you equity? If you take that away, and people are facing the prospect of merely working their entire life for a salary, will they still want to spend their life at work?

Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life.

The whole thing is to get paid enough for it.

Or you'll fall out of love and go through a messy and painful divorce.

Do what you love, and you’ve turned an enjoyable hobby into work.

I get that sentiment but Ive personally experienced both sides with two hobbies turned career.

First was as a magician, I loved it as a hobby but as a profession is sucked the fun right out of it.

Then I started working dping security assessments of software (hacking stuff) it was also a hobby now I'm paid to do it. Turning it into a profession did not suck the fun out.

I'm not sure why one worked amd the other didn't but my experience is that turning a hobby into a profession is not always a bad experience.

I suspect it has more to do with trying to find community.

The modern workforce is usually not working where they grew up, not interested in religion, and not getting married young.

This seems to lead to most of your friends/community being derived from work. When that’s true what’s the point of separation? When you’re separate from your work community you’re alone.

I don’t think this is necessarily a problem since if you’re working on something you think is important with people you like that can be a rewarding experience.

There is a risk though that if you get fired or have to quit for some reason it’s a more serious crisis since now you’ve lost your community too.

I agree with you, but I find the whole vision to be pretty sad and fighting against what we intrinsically value as humans: deep connection.

How does this work when some people have families and don't want to live and be friends with work people? Are they ostracized? What if I have hobbies, friends from HS or college, siblings, etc. and want to spend time with them instead of increasingly with my workmates. This sounds like it's going to increase cliquey-ness, not improve culture.

There is already an old model out there that sort of already lives this way: IT or management consultants who travel every week. I did this for 10 years. You become great friends with your colleagues - until the project ends or some other break occurs. Then...nothing, unless keeping in touch on each other's birthdays on Facebook is enough for you.

In retrospect it all felt very vapid and superficial - just people trying desperately to make connections to get them by, but not much "built to last."

I think you have cause and effect backwards. It's not fighting against that. It's not like these people are opposed up deep connections any more than I'm opposed to having a million dollars in my bank account. They just don't happen to have any, so they take what they can get.

People need to find ways to exercise their autonomy and will to power, both of which are heavily restricted by modern society. Accordingly, people tend to find surrogate activities that society accepts, one of which is work.

Yeah considering how few companies go public compared to the 90s this is largely a scam to normalize unpaid overtime. When you have to work 100 hours to get paid for 40 how is the economy supposed to grow? Back when most jobs were unionized overtime meant prosperity it was a way for him to get the extra means to go from being a bus driver to a professional investor. Without paid overtime you have a serious transfer of wealth as your real wages are in fact around 1/2 to even 1/3 of actual hours worked. The movement for extreme unpaid overtime is a big factor in social inequality when there is no meaningful equity to balance out the sacrifice.

I think it is the opposite. Millenials don't necessarily want the big company grind. They want something with less overhead that they can't control. They can create a startup, join one, or be a freelancer. This adds a more enjoyable work environment when going this path.

WeWork is a strange company. They lease office space, but have somehow hyped that into a much larger valuation than other companies which lease office space.

The extra valuation comes from their positioning: aside from office space, they are selling the “startup lifestyle” for those that find that kind of thing important or need it to feel like they are doing something exciting and sexy.

With the seed funding squeeze I can see wework getting a nasty wake-up call in 6 months or so.

What does the seed funding squeeze have to do with WeWork? They're not seed-stage . . .

He means there won’t be enough new seed funded startups that can justify paying for WeWork’s space, leading to a nasty drop in revenue growth.

Their revenue stream is just rent. They're not acting as a VC taking equity in the startups that use their space.

I didn’t say it was justified.

They should change their name to wework.com to increase their valuation further.

They do have better margins due to their tenants signing short term leases at a higher price point.

But all this seems fueled by the easy money in VC/Angel lalaland, and if WeWork can't get to an exit event before that dance stops, their vacancy rates will soar and they will come crashing down as fast as they have risen.

"Look at La Casemate, a fablab in Grenoble in France, which was vandalised and burnt on last month. Anarchists claimed responsibility and issued a statement, decrying city managers who cared only about attracting “money-hungry startups” and geeks."

Anyone got any more details on this one? Seems a strange thing to do given the range of targets that could be available for direct action.

Ah a certain element of the hardline left in Europe take the view that the internet is a CIA plot.

I consider myself a reasonably educated guy, and this article feels like a lot of gibberish and gobbledygook. I admit I read through this article three times and can’t make sense of it.

WeWork ia a coworking space where you can rent an office on the cheap. Meetup is basically the SIG/user group model writ large.

I ask this in all sincerity: what am I missing here?

We work is a tempory office accommodation firm not a "data" firm FFS

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