Comment by Osmium | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Osmium | Hacker News Reader

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> A lot of hard work, very little financial certainty.

Yes. It's exhausting. I'm several years past post-grad, have had a succession of one-year contracts, doing work I love and believe in and I genuinely believe has a lasting value, but the lack of any kind of security sucks. I'm rapidly approaching a wall where by I have to either go for tenure track/something more managerial/teaching or leave for something hopefully more lucrative in the private sector.

Sadly continuing with my present (rewarding, interesting) work is not an option even though after I leave, the work will still exist and will still have to be done by someone. But the academic system, such that it is, is a conveyor belt, and you gotta move on or get off.

And I got lucky too. My postgrad experience was short, went relatively well, and I'm well paid by academic standards now. I'm constantly surprised I made it out ok given the amount of stress it generated. I know many people who had much more miserable experiences in postgrad.

Not excusing the system, but for 99% of the population rewarding, interesting work is an oxymoron

Yes, to be clear, I'm certainly grateful I find (some aspects) rewarding -- if I didn't, it would be very irrational to continue, because it has very little else going for it.

Academia is so dysfunctional right now. It's parasitic off the drive of young people who just want to make the world a little better. It's very unfortunate it's ended up this way.

Startups can be the same way.

> Not excusing the system, but for 99% of the population rewarding, interesting work is an oxymoron

This is one of the reasons why I often ask myself why the suicide rate is so low in society.

It might feel that way, but it's really not true. Plenty of people work jobs they'd rather not do, but for most there's at least something they like in it. Even menial labour can be satisfying when the impact of the work is immediate and obvious. When people really hate working somewhere, there's often some specific piece making them miserable, like the hours, their boss or their commute.

Life is a mixture of good and bad, and it's easy to fixate on the bad, but don't forget about the good. It matters too.

I think a lot of it is context. For example when I lived in Russia, I didn't know kids could be nice to each other. It was a doggy-dog world where I grew up. When I came to Canada, it took me 4-5 years to stop mad-dogging people and relax.

Had I stayed there, being on alert your whole life and dropping dead at 55 would've been very normal indeed.

This is why people who get someplace and then lose it, are the ones who tend to kill themselves, or folks who have a hard time fitting in from the get-go. For most people, they don't know things could be different, so they're fine with what is.

Yes. Personal mental state is a poor indicator of how well things are actually going, because people seem to mentally get used to whatever it was they grew up with.

It goes another way: having some awareness of the situation is actively harmful for the same reason, because it makes it less acceptable mentally.

Dog eat dog

> It was a doggy-dog world

You misheard that phrase or learned it from someone who did. The correct version would be, "It was a dog-eat-dog world." The idiom makes a lot more sense in its correct form as it describes an environment of brutal competition.

I'm glad you find Canada to be a kinder place. I like it here too.

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