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Comment by Eilene | Hacker News Reader

Any chance you can explain why? Not enough hours in the day kind of thing? Is the only route to success in software engineering to work 24/7?

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I think a human being is really only capable of like 6 hours of solid mental work throughout the day. And even that is tough, with all the distractions of modern life. When you take something like Adderall, that doubles to, say 12 hours and enables you to get hyper-focused on the task at hand. Sure, you can still get hyper-focused on the wrong thing, but if you can reign that in you're golden.

Not only that, the amount of things you accomplish in that time span is far greater. So it really does turn you into a 10x engineer. If you're already very strong, experienced, pragmatic, etc.. then the stimulants will truly make you feel invincible.

So if you see a software engineer at a big company who is making 200k a year while simultaneously putting out dozens of open source projects a year, maintaining them, speaking at conferences, managing complex hobbies, etc... chances are that is due to a stimulant drug. I know very few people who are capable of that naturally.

As someone who has been on stimulants since they were thirteen, you still only have 6 hours of productive time. You just also have 6 hours of flailing about like a headless chicken. Sure it'll help you with mundane and routine tasks, but not with stuff that requires a ton of brain power.

Edit: What I see a lot of is people who think they are super productive while churning out lines and lines of garbage.

This is very true. I didn’t realize I had ADHD until after a year of college, but basically the first few days of taking stims are basically borderline hypo manic - you havw (seemingly) limitless enrgy, enthusiasm, confidence, drive. Work is intrinsically fun (although it’s actually extrinsic since it’s drug induced).

Then tolerance rears its head and it becomes exactly like you said. For me it takes till I get close to t_max (peak blood concentration) that my day really starts, which is from 1-3 hrs after dosing (closer to 3 for the drugs I take)

If it feels more like flailing now than super productivity, have you stopped taking stimulants (or do you have to because of an attention issue)?

I have to. For me stimulants help me put my six hours of productivity to work. I have pretty severe ADHD.

Very insightful, I think, about the exec at a big company. A therapist who treats tech people in Sil Val said she has been told there is coke being done openly at some exec committee/board meetings, etc. and pressure to do it. Like Wall Street in the 1980s. Do you think there's any validity to this?

I'm not so sure about that (never seen it myself)... but cocaine is a LOT more prevalent than people realize.

There is a funny meme I saw recently that rings true:

    Two biggest shocks of adult life. 

    1. everyone does cocaine

    2. cheese is fucking expensive

Man, I really wouldn't. My understanding is that of the people who present to the emergency department with chest pain, something like a third of them have been using cocaine. It causes Real Problems.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/drug-relate...

Manchego on the other hand, worth every penny and a great source of butyrate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304454916_The_neuro...

This is a little disingenuous, without further elucidation. As far as the statistic you have quoted is concerned, it tells us nothing about how dangerous cocaine is. We need to know how many out of the total population of cocaine users experience chest pain, how many of them go to an ER, and then how many of those (who in total make up 1/3 of ER presentations with chest pain) are further diagnosed with some actual serious problem...

if we don't know what the outcome of these ER visits are, then it could well be that for some tiny percentage of cocaine users there is a side effect that causes the perception of chest pain, which disappears with no ill effects after a few hours. or, maybe, this represents almost all cocaine users - 90% of them experience severe enough chest pain to warrant an ER visit, all of whom are pronounced dead withing minutes of arrival.

annoyingly, the website you linked to which details this singular datum, does nothing to clarify as to what the truth of the matter is. it certainly doesn't appear to be "advancing addiction science" in any useful way...

That could also mean a third of the population uses cocaine.

thanks for the link. I need to find updated stats on that. I wonder if the number of those in the ER because of cocaine has risen....

I don't think this is actually true. I've certainly been in places where there have been people on cocaine (and sneaking off the bathroom to "top up" mid-party), but in my experience that's rare, and even rarer for it to be an in-your-face, obvious thing. There are certain social/professional groups where it _is_ the norm, but more so in the sense of being a "vocal minority".

While I'd give you the point, my personal experience is that its only prevalent in certain circles, and in those circles its EXTREMELY prevalent.

Out of curiosity, did the stuff you learned during that time also increase 10x? Did it all stick with you, or did it just temporarily increase your ability to hold it all in your head?

It's great for long-term memory, but short-term memory loss is a side effect of amphetamines. You can read a textbook and retain all of it, but you may not remember where you put it when you finished.

Yes, absolutely. It's still here, thankfully :)

This is an addict's (unreliable) perception, not reality. In reality, software engineers are so valuable and highly sought after that you can have basically any lifestyle you want and still be successful.

That's the perception, and you're likely to find that perception in this thread, but I don't believe it.

Work smart or go home.

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