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Comment by jakelazaroff | Hacker News Reader

I mean, yeah? Who the heck wants to work? I love my job, but there are absolutely more fulfilling things I’d rather be doing with my thing than selling my labor to build someone else’s vision. It’s weird that that’s at all controversial.

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The phrase is usually trotted out in comparison to the Good Ol' Days, when people did want to work. The person complaining about it has a memory of Their Day, when people were eager to show up on time, do quality work, do it efficiently, and without a Sense of Entitlement (i.e. for shit pay).

I've caught myself thinking this a few times. This twitter thread is a great antidote.

Once you adjust for inflation it was actually good pay. Pay you could buy a house with and raise a family - in your 20’s!

Buy and own outright before long too. With a job that only required a diploma and two arms.

What are you going to do about that? Introduce a land value tax?

If you're building your own vision, that's working too.

I guess it depends on your definition of "work". Starting a company would be working on my own vision, in a sense, but my paycheck would still be beholden to market forces. I want to spend time on ideas that are important to me without worrying about monetizing them — programming experiments, games, music, etc.

Even then, Good on you that you actually love your job, most aren’t that lucky

Thank you! I don't take it for granted. Honestly, I had no idea that the things I was into as a kid would end up paying the bills; I feel like I was just a little nerd who unintentionally stumbled into a lucrative career.

I’m assuming you’re a dev - your love for programming / SW engineering hasn’t waned huh?

Been in the industry for more than a decade and am suffering from CRUD / new tech churn fatigue. Also have had a taste of having my own product business and schedule but can’t make that financially work yet, so slogging through…

There are fine days though, eg when investigating a tricky bug or being deep into a problem, but I’d cap it at “like” my job, rather than “love”

Oh, I also have CRUD and new tech churn fatigue. Plus a deep cynicism about the industry! That's why I've found my way into a job that doesn't involve building a CRUD app at a company that's not a giant VC-backed unicorn. I recently hit 10 years in the workforce, did some soul searching about what I wanted the next 10 years to look like, and made a career move (which is itself a big privilege) to try and get there.

That said, words are squishy. Maybe "like" would be a better descriptor. But either way, I feel pretty happy where I am!

(I still don't want to work though lol)

I want to not work so badly I have a whole fund just for retirement.

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