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Comment by serverholic | Hacker News Reader

Don’t high road him. Do you really think most engineers truly enjoy their jobs?

Imagine a world where their needs are taken care of outside of work. Do you really think they’d stick around?

I definitely think many do, and a lot more compared to any other industry. Many of us are fortunate to be able to have our hobby (programming) be our day job.

Do all of us enjoy it? Of course not. Do more than any other industry? I would honestly highly suspect so, yeah.

Of all the colleagues I have worked with, the ones that I enjoy to work with are the ones that enjoy their work and are curious and passionate about their craft.

EDIT: There's actually a pretty big generational shift in how work is perceived. Newer generations both bring more of themselves into work, but also expect much more from it. These days, work being a simple 9-17 is simply not good enough anymore, given the alternatives. If you find no enjoyment in any type of work at all, I feel bad for you, because we spend such an enormous portion of our waking hours in the work at work :(

Go over to r/cscareerquestions and see how many are interested in CS because they “get paid for their hobby” and how many are willing to “grind leetCode” for months on end to “get into a FAANG” because of compensation.

Not all programming is the same. You may love working on automation and Python... but your day to day job is CRUD web apps using Django. Same tools, but totally different stuff.

I don’t know what the percentages are. All I know is there are many people who can enjoy some aspect of work, and I would much rather work with them than with someone who can’t enjoy anything about the work.

People who are completely apathetic and find no enjoyment in any aspect of work probably are also best off working together.

They didn't say they have no fun at work. They're simply saying that work is not a source of fun in their life--perhaps they find true joy from their family, hobbies, outdoors, etc. If their work suddenly implodes and goes away they will have no sense of loss or concern, it was simply a place to trade labor for capitol and nothing more.

In fact you are right. My wife and I are going to be doing the digital nomad thing starting later this year and fly around the country staying in hotels. My job working for $BigTech remotely affords us that privilege. It’s going to be much more “fun” exploring the US than anything I’m doing at work.

Hey as long as you enjoy some aspect of work that is fine. If you find things you enjoy more outside of work and derive true meaning from things outside of work, then that's amazing. All I was saying was _IF_ there is absolutely nothing you enjoy about work, then I imagine it would be quite difficult to enjoy working with you.

Why do I need to “enjoy” my work to do a good job? I don’t hate my job. It’s a means to an end.

You don't have to view your work as a source of fun or fulfillment to be enjoyable to work with. And I also don't think you need to enjoy anything to complete tasks well, but if you don't take any joy at all in anything you work on, it's probably not very fun to work with you.

I agree that many do. But I also think that if many of them won $50 million (or whatever) in the lottery tomorrow, they would, at a minimum, immediately renegotiate the terms of their job.

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