R/Antiwork
old.reddit.com
old.reddit.com
I created a post about making time for side projects some time ago (link: https://old.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/piioin/how...)
Some of the top rated comments as of 2021-11-02:
- "I don't do side projects. Once I started working professionally, they stopped"
- "I don't. I code enough during work hours."
- "I try to support anti work activism so that someday people can spend their life on the things they feel are important in the world and not forced to sell most of their best years."
Lots of posts there had this sort of vibe.
Part of me feels bad that so many people hate their jobs (or work in places that treat their employees like dirt). It's really hard to talk about work (even when going through a rough patch) amongst others since I really like what I do.
But another part of me isn't okay with a world in which the vast majority of people do nothing (or do something that doesn't really produce value) while forcing higher-income people (like many of us, myself included) to fund that lifestyle.
But I feel it is the other way around really. Low income people support the lifestyle of all us "highly educated".
I feel the biggest amount of us programmers / managers are really creating little value, but are nonetheless rewarded by a vast institution of governments and corporations.
You're talking about the owner class here, right? Not the working class?
You fundamentally misunderstand the subreddit if you think this is about weflare.
This is about being paid your value, being treated fairly and upholding your rights. The subreddit is more capitalist than most American companies these days that instead of actually paying higher wages to find labor, are actively trying to undermine it instead.
But in this hypothetical welfare future, nobody forces you. You're free to collect your check and do nothing, like everyone else. Your reward for contributing value is, as you say, higher income. That seems perfectly fair to me.
I’m all for the nobody-needs-to-work future, but we’re not going to get there without Star Trek style energy and replicators.
Agreed, which is why a lot of us minimum wage workers criticize people like Elon Musk who spend 40 hrs on Twitter and going to fancy dinners or SNL or whatever while claiming he works 80 hrs a week.
It would be great if we weren't all forced to work to subsidize their hedonistic lifestyles.
I'm only on there because I have an addiction, but I can't remember the last time it has had a meaningful impact on my life. I don't use facebook, but I honestly think Reddit is more toxic, overall. I can't remember the last time I felt reading it had some sort of value. Probably when r/athiesm was on the front page, back when the site as a whole was trying to have meaning. Now it's just a den of teenagers screaming at themselves and their parents.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125159/reddit-us-app-us...
There several subreddits with huge value, the Linux gaming, Linux hardware, Linux help, the rust programming etc etc. Local communities I'm involved in such as helping folks with shelter and food.
To be honest I find these comments which way X is fully of children or teens oddly offensive. It's dismissive of not only the reality but people's efforts.
Is not a positive effect on the world superior to no effect on the world?
> if I don’t like those terms… I go elsewhere
This is basically the whole point of the subreddit, people quitting their jobs when companies do very shitty things. It is about people taking action.
...did you visit the sub? That's exactly what the people in that sub are doing.
> Maybe instead of complaining about things they should work to fix the underlying issue.
The "underlying issue" is that low-wage jobs frequently have abusive managers. But since the jobs are unskilled, it's easy to find replacements when someone gets sick of the abuse and quits.
Because they're easily replaced, they have zero leverage of fixing the abuse. At best, they'll quit, get replaced, and the new employee will be treated just as poorly as the old one.
What the sub should be: Critiquing the current model of capitalism that's oppressive to the working class and supporting career moves away from toxic work industries/companies.
Not only that, software engineering isn't the only path to financial success (though it is fairly stable and future-proof).
Being a code-monkey is trivial, being able to design the optimal solution for any given problem is a talent. University programs are increasingly shifting towards a bootcamp style curriculum rather than focusing on the science of CS.
Derailing a bit here, but I don't think this is true, and I think it's an example of a part of Dunning-Kruger that is often forgotten - Highly competent people underestimate their competence and incorrectly presume others find a task just as easy as they do.
There are a lot of people that struggle with algebra. They could never learn calculus without putting in a ridiculous amount of time into studying it.
What makes software engineering different is that it requires abstract thinking, something not everyone has. You have to be able to understand how to break a problem down into tiny steps and be able to express those steps in a language that a compiler or interpreter will understand. And even with training, we get people that can't FizzBuzz.
Yeah, if I was a gambling man, I'd wager that at least 50% of the posts are fake, with the most upvoted posts the ones most likely to be fake, because they're too perfect.
> a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism
No, they understand capitalism. And because they understand it, they hate it.
Capitalism prioritizes absolutely one thing and one thing only: Profit. Corporations will typically only do the "right thing" as much as they have to in order to preserve profits.
It is easy to find replacements for workers in the service industry, so it is more profitable to treat them like shit and replace them when they get sick of it and quit than to treat them well with a living wage and paid sick days.
> failing to understand value generation
By "value generation", do you mean the utterly wrong belief that your wage is in any way determined by the revenue you generate?