Unemployment Beats Having A Lousy Job | Hacker News Reader

Unemployment Beats Having A Lousy Job

fyiliving.com

76 pointsjkuria47 comments

An old farmer on his deathbed called for his two sons+. He told them that while his farm did not produce much, there was a valuable treasure buried in it which they would discover as they plowed the fields. He then left them each half his farm, and his blessing.

When the old man had passed on, the two sons began working in the fields. They worked hard, from morning to night, but never found a brass farthing. Then, when the harvest came, it was bountiful. Their old father had told them the truth - the treasure buried in the land was its fertility, and their hard work had uncovered it!

But everyone wants to believe a get-rich-quick scheme, and the two sons were no exception. They worked twice as hard as before, still hoping to find the treasure. When they found nothing, they began borrowing money to buy the land from each other. They started importing expensive tools to help them dig faster. Eventually, the clamor of creditors made them face the hard truth - they had been wasting their time. And so they fell into a great depression.

+ I'm tempted to say it was three, and give the youngest a cat, a pair of boots, and a sack; but that's really another story.

I think you should've ended it at "...and their hard work had uncovered it!"

His version is a bit more realistic analogy of what people do.

I thought you were going to end it with something else ... the two sons got massive reverse mortgages on their land. Commodity prices collapsed after the bountiful harvest and the bank ended up foreclosing.

Either way, it works.

The point is, real productivity can increase in a bubble. And it slumps when the bubble ends, because this productivity was caused by people working harder for phantom rewards. When those non-existent carrots disappear, people tend to lose motivation.

I'm with you. This article sheds light on a terrible fact of American society today. When "unemployment beats a lousy job" that means that incentives are GROSSLY misaligned. Run that fact through the categorical imperative[1]- you have a country full of people doing nothing, which obviously does not work. I guess this is what happens when you get 99 full weeks of unemployment benefits, when you have a generation of millennials that think they're entitled to everything, and when you have a society that's willing to provide it no matter how much debt it involves.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

Also, this is my main inspiration for the fable: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/therovingcaval...

Just to clarify this research study is defining "lousy job" as one with "low job control, high job demands and complexity, job insecurity, and the perception of unfair pay."

Some other things to note: This is based on data from "a nationally representative sample survey" conducted in Australia. It had a response rate of 66%.

I quickly reviewed the article and just wanted to share some of the basic facts behind the study. I was particularly curious about how they defined "lousy job."

A couple more interesting snippets:

> Unemployed people who had obtained optimal jobs between the surveys showed better improvement in mental health when compared to those who remained unemployed. However, moving from unemployment to poor quality employment showed greater negative effects than staying unemployed.

That sounds consistent with my experience.

>Not all aspects of psychosocial job quality, like social support at work, were assessed in this study. A few of the results could have been biased, so the study cannot be generalized.

Ha.

Edit: I pulled those quotes from the link "recent study" in the first paragraph: http://www.fyiliving.com/research/unemployment-and-job-satis...

This looks like a synopsis of the study results. Not to be confused with the PDF of the actual study, at the bottom of the synopsis.

IMHO - There is a ring of truth to this, but it does not seem so profound. When I was unemployed (2008) it was depressing because the market was awful. But... I was able to work full time at improving my health (no "I'm working too hard to go the gym" excuse!) and finding new work. The fear of poverty is depressing, but not as bad as working awful hours without the time to improve one's situation.

It is very easy to say, "Better to go hungry and wait for the perfect job." I think it is more realistic to say, "Don't take the first job that comes along. Be sure whatever you do is at least moving you in the right direction."

Ahem, How the hell are you supposed to feed yourself ? Not everyone has enough savings, some have family responsibilities as well.

Yeah, agreed. It's all very well pontificating about the unjustness of having a crappy job, being "under-paid", not doing anything "worthwhile" or apparently bettering mankind. But I know from personal experience that having any job, any job at all, and earning a crust is a damn sight better than earning nothing at all.

Depression beats starvation any day of the week.

I get the point, but nobody has to go hungry in America. There's food for you if you just ask.

My old Minister used to say "A person can have all the morals they can afford". Applies to out-of-work folks, and to America as well - we need not let anyone go hungry.

Spoken like someone who doesn't have a family to feed, clothe, and/or shelter.

Huh? 51 years old, putting 3 through college. Been out of work for 6 months at a time. Currently dissolved my consulting business to go back to work for "the man" (though truthfully am vesting equity, not all bad).

I understand sheltering the family can be a burden, yes.

But hungry? Never. Lets use some other euphemism for hardship. Your family, church, community, government will not let you go hungry if you have the wit to stand in line.

But when you have those obligations is being unemployed REALLY better than having a crappy job? Waiting in a dole line, living on the edge, and not being able to support a family just because being unemployed is better than a bad job? I think the reality is that many people can't make these sorts of decisions - many people have to take jobs because they have obligations. And to simply not take a job because it's better to be unemployed while supporting a family doesn't make sense.

Agreed. All that is harder to bear than hunger. To give up a job, willing to go on the dole instead, is selfish. Some folks have morals that won't permit taking a handout when you are able-bodied and the job is there.

As a programmer/architect and sometimes-startup-founder, I have always been in a position to be unemployed for a year or two at a time without any money problems. Not everyone has that buffer.

I really disagree -- with unemployment any sense of additional worth you get from being able to hold down a job evaporates. Not to mention that having to keep to a schedule for a job is much healthier than the wacky hours you can end up with when you're unemployed and wake/sleep according to your natural schedule.

Not to mention your sense of self-image if you get turned down for positions again and again. I disagree with you though on waking and sleeping on your natural schedule--it seems like that should be the healthier option.

Though I think the issue here is one of immediate happiness vs. reflective happiness. If you have a bad job, at least 8 hours of your day are spent not liking your current situation. (But at least you have a job, can feed the family, etc.) If you're unemployed, your day-to-day life may be less stressful without those 8 hours of teeth-grinding and you get to hang out with your cat a lot more. (But you can't get a job, your kids are going hungry, whatever.) Going from depressed unemployment to a crappy job is worse though, I think because it makes you miserable day-to-day and reflectively too for a while, since you still haven't gotten over your unemployment depression.

Happiness is strongly correlated with income up until $60k or so, then it levels off. If the crappy job is also low-income that just makes things worse.

I do wonder about that figure, is that for people in the US because it is just above the mean US salary. In some parts of the world you would be very comfortable on that salary, in other parts you will struggle to find accommodation.

Yeah, it's from US data. In some places even $200/mo lets you live like a member of the upper class... I originally remember hearing the figure from a TED talk ( here it is, highly recommended http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper... ), and since then there have been a few other sources I can't remember right now.

I agree with your point about sense of worth evaporating.

But despite the title, the article said that while one is depressed if unemployed, one is more depressed than that with a lousy job.

The article does not paint as rosy a picture of unemployment as the headline.

The article's about a study finding these changed rates of depression, not really a subjective opinion about the value of employment/unemployment to agree or disagree with (though you can disagree with the study's methodology, or how generalizable its results are, or its way of defining 'poor-quality job', 'depression', etc.).

If the job is really lousy, then the sense of relief is tremendous. I recall working with a paranoid psychopath founder for a year and a half, having had enough when they fired our top manager/architect because he dared doubt her sanity, handing a letter of resignation to my long-suffering co-manager (who was in no way responsible for the situation) and walking out the door into the bright sunshine on a perfect summer day.

Fired up my festiva, turned the radio on loud - it was playing Taking Care of Business! Really! Putting it in 2nd gear and cruising through town slowly with the windows down and so happy.

Spent months unemployed, ended up starting a consulting partnership. One of the best career moves I ever made. Never depressed for a millisecond.

I'm betting on this being true, my last day is September 2nd.

I'm lucky that I have enough money saved up to last 3-5 years, but still...I don't feel like like I'm only partially exaggerating to say that my job is killing me.

What a superficial article. Is it only meant to attract page views? Stuff like:

"there have been links to extended Internet use and a rise in depression"

How about some references? "It is said..." "everybody knows..." "literature exists about..." Sure!

There is a link down the bottom to the abstract which links to the full thing: http://press.psprings.co.uk/oem/march/oem59030.pdf

Edit: Agreed though, the article itself is a waste.

Took a look at a few other articles on the site. They're all of the same quality. Great example of a mill throwing out lots of useless articles geared for SEO.

if anyone knows this i guess its me. I put my resignation in one month ago and have been unemployed for about 2 days so far and I am loving it.

My old job was in a large bank, paid well and i only had to work 4 days a week. The only issue is i wasn't following my passion and it made me feel well and truly down EVERY SINGLE DAY (was there for about 2 years).

For about 3 months prior to putting in my resignation i was also already working on a side project that started getting legs and had started to bring in ramen profitable google ads profit so that It allowed me to quit work and still be able to eat whilst not touching to much of savings along with also paying for some small amazon servers to keep the service running. I thought what the hey, lets give it a go so i quit. Shocked everyone, including parents but i just couldn't go on any longer. It hurt to much... and IT in banks just totally suck.

Also like the article says planned an exercise regime, my work hours for my currently little side project and hanging to start on Peter Norvig and Andrew Ng's classes when they start. Never felt this excited in a while.

I think the caveat though is that while being unemployed (currently like I am) is better then having a lousy job , not being able to put food on the table is lousier then a lousy job. I guess this article applies to people who aren't financially struggling cause i know some people who would take ANY job that came their way right now.

How are you going to deal with employers that will only hire people that are already employed if / when you have to look for a job?

Just pass on them - these 'employers' are not worth working for anyway.

Hopefully thats not an issue, i plan to train myself more during this period of down time. Just cause im not going to the office doesn't mean im going to loose my skills. If anything im going to be learning a lot more things then i did at work.

If they care whether i am currently employed or not if i do need to join the work force again then i guess screw'em, they aren't looking for the right kinds of things.

if anyone knows this i guess its me. I put my resignation in one month ago and have been unemployed for about 2 days so far and I am loving it.

I'm sorry, but being unemployed for two days is nothing. It is obvious that the simple fact of changing your life, especially since it was you who took the initiative, is what's dominating your mood right now.

Try being unemployed against your own preferences (i.e. after being fired and unable to find new work) for half a year or a year - as in the current climate, long-term unemployment is becoming increasingly a problem - and we can talk again.

Also, the typical HN reader is probably quite different from the majority of the population as it is part of the hacker mentality to keep oneself occupied with interesting personal projects. There are many people out there who wouldn't really know what to do with their time.

Absolutely correct. Hell I was unemployed for 2 days, 3 days ago (and will be again in 2 days...).

Oh i totally understand that but i think if you read between the lines this article is more target to an audience like us. ie Hackers, who might hate their job but are still at it, moving pay-check to pay-check not happy with what we are doing with our time, able to do other things but just not stepping out to do it, not for people who have a family, a mortgage and need to put food on the table.

Plus its been 2 days because thats when i found this article, if i found it 3-4-5 weeks later then i would have put there 5 weeks since i have been unemployed. Regardless of the time its been since i left work the choice has been made to step away from a stable income job that felt completely draining to being unemployed but enjoying what things i can now do (which is the jist of this article)

>Try being unemployed against your own preferences (i.e. after being fired and unable to find new work) for half a year or a year - as in the current climate, long-term unemployment is becoming increasingly a problem - and we can talk again.

Wanna know something, i have a friend who i have offered my garage too for a couple of months cause at the moment he is at risk of loosing his house. He is forced to rent it out and cant afford another place to live. He wants to keep the house for his family and doesnt want the bank to take it away and turn all those years of hard work in interest payments to vanish into thin air just cause of a few months of missed payments due to being layed of.

Now he works 2 jobs 18 hours a day for 7 days to get what he used to be paid before he lost his job and needs to do that until he can get back on track so that his missed payments for the last few months have been made up. I know full well what unemployment means, not first hand but close enough ..... and its sad

HOWEVER ... i dont think this article is directed at people in this situation - hence my caveat :)

Makes sense. When you don't have a job, it's because you haven't lowered yourself to taking bad jobs, and because those idiots haven't discovered you yet. You still have your pride.

When you take a lousy job, you're admitting defeat, and diving into failure head first. You weren't discovered because you have nothing to offer, and now you don't even have your pride.

^ read in a satirical tone

I quit my job in the middle of June, I have to agree being "unemployed" definitely beats having a lousy job. In fact I haven't been this happy since the last time I was unemployed. I learned so much, worked on so many projects... The most amazing thing is that time slows down again, the weeks and months don't race by in a blur.

I am currently learning Objective-C, openGL and how to develop iPhone applications. Sure I figured, why not write a game and see how it goes; writing the code will be the easy part. I look forward to learning about the apple release process, marketing, doing user studies, reviewing the feedback...

I give myself til the end of 2012, if the game or game(s) are successful I will continue. Otherwise maybe I will consider moving from software engineering into product management. The thrill and challenge of writing code is gone, the isolation one feels developing code has become too much; while I can understand other developers I've learned that I am not really like them. I enjoy working with various team players, executives, customers. I like going to meetings where I am an active participant, I like being thrown into the deep end of the pool where I have to figure things out on the fly. I love making decisions and taking full responsibility for them.

Unemployed? Yeah, it's the happiest time of my life. Stress completely vanished. Not even looking for a job, haven't even updated LinkedIn so very few people even know I'm not "working".

Especially in Germany.

Now I disagree with excessive socialism, and sure, refusing unemployment benefit would be one way of making a statement against it, but I think living it up on the generous unemployment benefit, and lording it in front of hard-working, voting taxpayers is also a useful method of encouraging positive social change.

Take the title of this article as a warning for the lack of worthwhile content contained within.

If I got laid off, I wouldn't rush to get another job. Where I live the unemployment benefits for recently laid off are decent which means I would just take a couple of years off with less money and instead spend the working hours in coding whatever I want and contributing to open source projects! That's work, too, albeit the current society doesn't really count such volunteering as "work". But it still is: you only need some other means to live off while doing that.

suře, until the bills come in...

Comments to this post seem largely divided between people who identify heavily with their employment and people who identify heavily with their activity. For the former, unemployment is terrible. For the latter, it's merely a financial issue.

Any part time job even a lousy one is better than to be unemployed. It increases your self-esteem and motivates you. I just wouldn't go for full time because you won't have time to improve your situation, find a better job, networking etc.

Some of the comments on the article are really sad. People justifying the "I can't find a high paying job, so I'll just mooch off society" mentality.

hmmm... could this new found onset of depression be from today's self-entitlement culture. We work for something beyond ourselves...

in Bay Area not much unemployment per.se. to provide enough material to talk about. Wrt. the lousy jobs - some of the youngsters what bust their chops at the local Starbucks also carry a full time load at 4 year colleges (though not Stanford/Berkeley) - somehow i can't imagine them whining "unemployment or a lousy job"

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