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Comment by time_invarient | Hacker News Reader

I’m stuck in a dead end job right now. I will never be granted a shred of decision making capacity or autonomy.

It is a waiting game. Waiting for more assignments. Waiting until 5PM. Waiting for my paycheck. Waiting to get fired. Waiting to retire. Waiting to die.

(n * (Commute. Sit. Wait. Commute. Eat. Sleep.)) Die. Where n == the days I have left in this world.

The things I work on feel like absurd, meaningless boondoggles with no head and no tail. So here I am spinning my wheels as I hurtle toward a grave.

That I know this is my reality forces me to deeply question the society I participate in. If I am so bound, restricted, constrained in my actions and daily routines, why not just cut to the chase as die already. The repetitive script for how my invarient pattern of living shall progress is obvious. Do I really need to live through it 10,000 more times?

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I had similar thoughts about the meaning of it all. But I didn't question life per se, I questioned the rat race. "Why am I working all day?", "Why do I spend the best parts of the day in an office?", "Why can't I still afford a house even though I make good money?" and questions of that nature.

I wasn't as unhappy as you sound, I just didn't see the purpose of it (working) anymore.

And so I decided not to do it anymore. Instead, I've decided to buy a small amount of land, live sustainibly, start a market garden, and spend much more time with my family and integrate with nature more.

Life isn't bad, but it sounds like you're stuck in a rut. Perhaps you just need to find your passion, and make a plan to transition from where you are now, to where you want to be?

I'd like to add onto this point.

Started cheffing at 17, always wanted to code, self taught enough to be qualified as a chef and get a job programming for a fairly large company by 22.

It sucked. As you said, waiting for assignments, no decision making and just another cog in a very large wheel.

Went back to cheffing, I've now travelled all over Australia, lived in Japan for 6 years, met a woman who became my wife and is currently pregnant with our first.

I may work 70+ hours some weeks, but it's fun. I have ran 3 restaurant successfully as an executive chef, now I'm helping a family member with a take away and loving it(haute cuisine food from a take away? Can't plate as I useto but damn it tastes good at an affordable price).

Long story short I'm enjoying life now, seems you need to broaden your horizons work wise more than how life just is.

P.s when I get the urge, I still have a massive side project I work on, so that training in coding, definitely not wasted :-)

I hope you find a better fit for you mate.

Makes me think of observations I've made about cooking in better restaurants. It doesn't pay well and the work requires skill/experience and long hours, and demand (at least here) is extremely high.

High demand, high skill... why doesn't it pay better? The only answer is that there must be some other benefits to the field. They have to pay people better to work in an office because office work sucks a lot more.

I certainly don't make as much doing this as I would coding.

The best I've gotten so far was 2k Au a week while running three restaurants as an exec.

Hospitality in general isn't the best industry for making money, although I am planning on my own place in a few years :-)

At the risk of sounding banal, I believe it's worth checking to see if you have a severe depression. Because that's how depression feels. There are people out there who derive great pleasure from writing uninspired code. Not only doesn't work need to be the main source of meaning in your live (in addition to providing income), its perceived value is heavily dependent on your psychological and physiologial condition. In fact, I'm afraid that, thae way you are now, you might not be able to enjoy yourself even if your situation changed for the better.

This is a bleak message, yet it's true: most people do not like their jobs very much. They can just deal with it because they're not totally depressed. And the reason is, surprisingly often, simple brain chemistry. At least try some more roads before talking of suicide.

I think those who "derive great pleasure from writing uninspired code" are mostly enjoying their well paying job.

Very few people actively enjoy laboring for others. That's why they need to pay you to do it.

I enjoy building my own projects, but I have never found work stimulating unless I maneuvered myself into a position where I could learn something new. Unfortunately once you learn that new thing, and then refactor it as far as you can, you're back to boring uninspired work again.

Not to mention the parts of work which are actively terrible. Like hunting down a bug in a dependency.

Well I know people who are perfectly fine with hinting bugs while laboring for another, who find some obscure pleasure in repetitive work that is normally considered boring. It's not incomprehensible. But yes, they are rewarded handsomely. It's a rate trait, after all.

As long as you are physically capable of trying to make changes to your context, activities and expectations, there's a way out of that routine. Your "ideal life" may be way out of reach, but it is about as far away, from your current situation, as the opposite end of giving up. If you can consider walking in one direction, please consider the opposite as well.

The inertia of your current situation probably drains your energy and motivation to even experiment with making changes, but it is worth to find a trained professional that can help break that cycle. There's no shame in seeking therapy or support of some kind.

You ought to watch "Zero Theorem" for some comic reflection...

That aside, I think work has been debased because the values of currencies have been debased by central banks. The 1% fully and significantly invested in the stock market may be feeling somewhat differently, though.

Also, I think to some extent that the tech dreams promised by my childhood have largely been replaced by corporate simulacra that are in no way as satisfying.

Are there helpless people who depend directly on you to avoid suffering if you miss 2 or 3 paychecks? If not, then what are you going to do about this situation you're in?

Your dissatisfaction comes from looking to work for meaning. There is no implicit meaning—only that which you create for yourself.

The dissatisfaction comes from makework that displaces meaning. Without it, meaningful work could happen.

Yet we spend about half or more of our waking hours at it.

So rise up and fight. Worst case you're already dead.

what do you mean stuck? what do you do after 5 that is so meaningless?

not OP, but can relate:

The less meaningful work I get done during the day, the less energy I have after 5. Most days, I'll make quick dinner, turn on YouTube, watch videos for 10 minutes, and suddenly it's 11pm.

You just described my life for the past 3 months. It's winter though, so I just attributed it to that. Also I'll be quitting my job soon and then go somewhere where I don't have to deal with dark, cold winters anymore.

I guess there's an upside to being a long-time single with no attachments.

If you're contemplating leaving this world, that would be considered a crisis in most places. Look up crisis hotlines in your area and please get help...

I'm as confident that the person you are responding to is aware of this service as I am that it will not help them.

I don't know how you can possibly know that. They're there for a reason. This is that reason.

Only the person you are replying to would know, but my own experience informs my confidence. A phone call fixes nothing.

Why not emigrate to country where you will have high purchasing power and wont have to work? Trap is only in your head.

You always have a choice. It's up to you if stay in the same place or if you accept your "fate" (which isn't fixed) and just complain and cry about it.

I suggest reading "Man's search for meaning".

What makes you stuck? You sound like you've accepted your fate. If you want to change things, just do it.

If your reality is so bad that you want to die, then how is taking action to potentially change things worse? A big part of this discussion is people want meaningful work and a meaningful life, but they want other people to give it to them. Why is that expected?

Some people get caught in situations where furthering their career and eating next week are mutually exclusive propositions.

If actual slaves were able to escape and make their way to freedom and satisfying lives, then surely office workers can do the same.

While the chances were always slim for survival in this case, if you have accepted death as equally good to life, you can risk everything.

Ah yes "if your life sucks, just be one of the small percentage of people who succeed in overcoming the massive challenges stacked against you, there's nothing unreasonable about expecting that out of every individual".

Unless, of course, you're saying we need to start a civil war to free all the office workers...

If your life sucks so bad that you're sitting on Friday morning posting to a place called Hacker News, then your life really doesn't suck that much. You've already got more than most ever had, so leverage that.

Not a fan of learned helplessness or woe is me. If you want to change, you can. It might not be easy but if you feel like waiting until you die, there's not much to lose, anyway.

What does saying "my life sucks" solve? The world isn't kind to most people, you have to make the most out of it.

They're sharing their situation. Indicating to others that there's a problem is a part of getting it solved, and if that problem is systemic it's probably one we're all going to need to work together on.

The world isn't kind. But there's no reason we can't work to make it less so.

> If you want to change things, just do it.

If only that was as easy as saying it. People have responsibilites and stomachs that don't like (naturally) staying empty. Sometimes you just can't do it.

easy

who said easy? change is difficult. life is hard and then you die, so you might as well go down fighting.

Meaningful work doesn't grow on trees.

On the contrary, there's plenty of meaningful work - cleaning is one for example. It is just not very appealing.

It actually kind of does. It just tends to come with starvation in the present society.

Anything can be meaningful. You might not think making sushi for 60 years is meaningful, but a guy named Jiro does.

Even if you have to have an "interesting" job, most people aren't but a few years of schooling out. Hell, we're in tech where you're a few years of study and practice from being world class and/or making hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah, you've got to work at it, but that's really meaningful work.

Honestly, retail or food services is probably more meaningful than the sort of "bullshit jobs" [1] that people are complaining about here.

[1]:https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs

Free time will turn to violence. I don't see a system of robots doing the work --- since it will be destroyed by the masses of media controlled unemployed workers. In the middle ages religion was used to tame the masses -- robots will need something similar.

Normal people are horrible! Back in my tech glass tower to write a tracker to target advertising for loans, away from this filth.

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