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Comment by realPubkey | Hacker News Reader

'But what do these people actually do?' Awesome. Thats exactly what is in my head for so long. I myself go to one of these offices, and yes I do sh1t which produces no value, only money for my company. We get paid by another company doing sh1t.

I spend half my live learning to code. And now I code shitty forms and buttons which will get thrown away and replaced in 5 years by the next guy doing the same.

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That's pretty negative. If someone is willing to pay you money, by definition your work has value for someone. Keep in mind that value is subjective. Creating anti AIDS medicine would probably be considered work of value by you? But it's not to me, at least not now.

I don't know. If you pay Sisyphos to roll a stone uphill once a day, does he create value just because you pay him doing it?

My definition of value may be opinionated, but recreating the same software again and again, based on an outdated stack and thrown into garbage has no value for me. Maybe it's different somewhere else. But where I live most coders do exactly this.

The central concern of The Myth of Sisyphus is what Camus calls "the absurd." Camus claims that there is a fundamental conflict between what we want from the universe (whether it be meaning, order, or reasons) and what we find in the universe (formless chaos).

> If you pay Sisyphus to

Why would you? This example isn't realistic. It just shows value isn't precise to any single example, but an expected outcome over time; individual value judgments aggregate over the population to give a "true" metric of value.

What value isn't created directly by Sisyphus, could be created in the fact that Sisyphus is willing to provide a service without finding any personal value in it. The freedom to do things without demonstrating its value, itself has value.

> has no value for me

Inefficiencies are opportunities. Can you sell the same stack over and over again?

> If you pay Sisyphos to roll a stone uphill once a day, does he create value just because you pay him doing it?

If he's not creating any value for you, why are you paying him to do it?

If you pay him to do work that creates no value for you, you're the irrational one, not him.

Who pays Sisyphos? Another Sisyphos who is just doing his job or following societal norms once created by Sisyphoses who are now long dead. Every individual Sisyphos is rational, but the whole system is not. I am not saying that such a system is objectively bad or anything, but it's an interesting observation and worth keeping in mind when making decisions or arguing.

Sisyphos is our PCI compliance auditor.

>why are you paying him to do it?

Because I want to demonstrate "growth" to investors by hiring as many employees as I can afford, whether or not I actually have something for them to do.

Why does someone pay them to rewrite the same software again and again?

Sure sometimes it makes sense, but I assure you, many time is just in hope that the rock will go higher this time (it won't).... nothing more.

It's negative, but it's true. The fact that you get paid is a poor way to assess the value of your work. In my opinion, the real question is, what positive societal impact does your work bring about? Are you forgoing the opportunity to make a better contribution to society for the comfort of a steady salary (albeit with little personal satisfaction)?

My priorities are to ensure the health and comfort of myself and my family. If "the comfort of a steady salary" appears to be the best way to achieve that, then I will be happy "forgoing the opportunity to make a better contribution to society".

If my work can help society at the same time then that's fantastic, but as long as it allows me to provide for those closest to me then, for me and my family, my work is the most valuable use of my time possible.

FWIW, keeping you family happy and healthy is a pretty big contribution to society ;)

The nominal value of your contribution is high (my original comment was not meant as an insult), but imagine a world where it can be higher still. And you get personal satisfaction, and you contribute towards a higher goal, rather than just ever growing cycles of consumption. Surely you would prefer that option if it was made available to you, no?

Absolutely and I do see the value of anti AIDS drugs, that was not the point. I'm saying value is a subjective thing. Something does not have intrinsic value, things have value to people, and sometimes something is valued so broadly that it is of value to society at large indeed.

It is of course nice to have work of which you personally value the output. But in your case, someone else values your output and pays you to produce it. Calling your work "without value" is thus a bit strange to me.

Are you saying no one will have to build houses? No one will need to build roads? No one to drive the trucks? No janitors or waiters/waitresses? Arguably these things just fuel the cycles of consumption. They are actually just as societally impactful as say Elon Musk. Without these things society breaks down. You may not feel like you are contributing as much as you can, but if you look at it you might be contributing more than you think. I feel that way sometimes, but I know insurance is necessary for society and without it who knows what would happen.

How do you determine what "value" is? It's all subjective isn't it? What metric do you use for "positive societal impact"? Perhaps someone devoutly religious would consider religiosity as "positive", for example.

If someone is paying you, you might be contributing to their definition of value. The money you earned are stored tokens of recognition of that fact, that can be traded to persuade others to contribute to your definition of value.

my definition of value isn't hopelessly myopic

I must say I find it very hard to wrap my head around that you would say that the creation of a medicine to cure a real disease is not a work of value.

Not what he said though... He said it has no value for him - presumably since he doesn't have AIDS.

But there is value for him as he would have quick access to medicine if he ever gets AIDS. Of course someone who as AIDS values the medicine more but saying there is no value for him seems very short sighted.

The point is, everyone cannot be working on creating AIDS medicine. Someone has to be working on things that, say, cheer up the person working on aids medicine when she hits a wall.

Sure but these all have values then. His point was to show that AIDS medicine has no value for him, but it actually does. He can't use that argument to prove that value is subjective considering that it actually does have value for everyone.

> I myself go to one of these offices, and yes I do sh1t which produces no value, only money for my company.

Don't you notice the contradiction?

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