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> Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously. Be professional — but that’s as far as it goes.

People spend 8 hours + lunch and commuting every weekday on their job. It's almost 50% of the time you spend conscious during a week. Most people want more out of that than just a chore that needs to be done.

Embrace distributed WFH and you can spend 4 hours in the morning, have a nice picnic, play some basketball, have a couple beers, then retire to your room to do another 4hrs. Or just fuck off some days and counterbalance it by doing hyper focused 12hrs days some other time.

Also: unless you're genuinely curing cancer or flying food to starving African villages or something, 95% of software companies are pretty damn useless and any impact a SWE imagines is basically just a mental fantasy that helps one keep working. No one is genuinely happier because another API is created or some rich person has a better way of managing which products he's selling to other rich people. It's all basically useless and just a way to make money.

That wasn’t an option until a few years ago, and it being an option coincided with the crescendo of a 14 year bull market. Having a few beers before your afternoon shift isn’t likely to viable for long.

Exactly. They wonder why there are layoffs and they are one of them. Or like in the article, they think they’ll land another gig in 3 months or less.

Harsh words, but likely unfounded. You don't know their reason for being laid off, it could be that their company didn't product a profit (since in a bull run they don't need to), it could be that a competitor caught up to them, it could be that their division was no longer needed, and so on. Poor performance attributable to WFH necessarily is not very high on the list of why people are laid off, generally speaking.

Heh TBH in most cases I doubt an individual has much if any control over a) if there are layoffs, and b) if they are part of one. I've had the "privilege" of seeing the internals of a few large layoffs, and being caught in one, and from my experience they are usually tied to business decisions outside of the control of your average IC (currently interests rates are putting a major pinch on companies that hold a lot of debt for example) and performance is rarely an actual factor in who goes. In most the large layoffs I've seen the list of who is going is handed down from C or VP level execs with none of management below having any say (which explains why so many take out key resources). Only in one case have I actually seen managers select who to keep.

The whole "layoffs happen because employees are lazy, and affect lazy employees" is a nice narrative of your a business owner to keep the rank and file "motivated", but it's rarely an accurate portrayal of the situation.

Haven't missed a deadline in more than a year, which is more than I can say for most of my coworkers. It turns out that work with a fresh morning brain for 4 hours, a long break, and then later on more work with a refreshed brain is much more efficient than sitting for 8 hrs in an office for no reason.

If I choose to refresh myself via mid-day beer, so what? The code doesn't care how long I sit inside an office. It cares how well my brain works.

(..yes, too much beer and it won't work anymore. Everything in moderation.)

Counter opinion: You're going to be one of many applicant because everyone else is embracing WFH trend too, so you are competing with everyone, especially with some much experience to show, or a portfolio of trending technologies.

It might be that a dev that has a money cushion and is willing and able to relocate can compete on a level others can't because competition would only be localized.

OP was unemployed a year. Time adds up, that's a lot of money.

> OP was unemployed a year. Time adds up, that's a lot of money.

Luckily my government gives me a full year of unemployment benefits at 2/3rds of my salary besides my savings. Obviously, I don't wish to test my luck regardless, but not everywhere is as cutthroat as the US.

More accurately: your government takes your money and then, maybe, gives it back to you in the form of unemployment benefits and the like, minus significant processing fees.

The alternative is to use the money the government doesn't take and save it for your future "unemployment benefit".

The government would give me more than I would be able to save myself in a year. Over multiple years, I would be able to save more efficiently than the government, true. That's assuming everything goes perfectly however, so I view it as a form of insurance: I make less in order to have less anxiety that I will not be able to provide for myself and my dependents if the overlords decide I am no longer worthy of my job. It's a tradeoff, but one that I will gladly make. As a social good, that money also goes into helping those that were not as lucky as me to be able to make good easy money. And perhaps one day I might be like them too, who knows?

I think the OP is saying that there’s no expectation that the company provide more than what they seek from you. Keeping it professional allows you to compartmentalize the fact that you are there because you add value and nothing more. You can form friendships. You can form guilds/clans/clubs/practices within. You can provide culture and mentorship beyond the duty of the role. At the end of the day though, it’s not a day care and you are there to provide value to the business objectives. My professional colleagues I deeply respect. My friends are sometimes idiots. That’s how I see it.

Work is exclusively a method for me to exchange labor for money to support my addiction to food and shelter.

I think there's a benefit for some people in letting go a bit. Even if you love your job, you need to understand that the system we work in is purpose-built to exploit workers. It's great to be focused on your work when you're working, but once you're done for the day you should unplug as much as you can. Taking PTO? Don't check slack or emails.

I love what I do, but I've found that even still if I let that fact convince me to work more than what is required of me I will eventually feel burnt out and eventually depressed. Maybe this isn't the case for everyone, but it's life outside of work that brings true meaning and purpose to my life. Time with friends and loved ones, going outside into nature and having new experiences, these are all things that make me actually happy. Loving my work just means I'm not sad when I'm at work.

> Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously. Be professional — but that’s as far as it goes.

+1 on this. His #1 is exactly why you should not let work, and especially work social events, become the "primary shaper of your life" - they can and will get rid of you anytime they think it might be convenient for them. It may not have anything to do with your skills or productivity, it may be just what someone high above you felt like doing for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

Being spoiled for choice with offers is great if you can manage it, but not very useful if you're OP who couldn't find something for a year.

Also, having a job gives you a basic social identity to use to interact with people, and positive cash flow lets you be expansive and outgoing. It's very easy to take this for granted, or assume focusing on work is ultra-materialist, if you don't have a lot of experience going without. I agree that it's healthy to not worry so much about the day-to-day minutiae of a specific job, but this is a lot different from the inevitable decline that comes with not having any job at all.

>a job gives you a basic social identity

Just because this is a norm doesn't make it healthy. When your identity is rooted in something that can easily go away, it makes for a weak foundation. Lot of examples of jobs that are relatively short-lived (athletes, military, etc.) can show how difficult transitioning is when your identity is tied to your job.

We need to distinguish between being at some particular job and being in a profession or similarly in any job at all.

I think it's unhealthy to have your identity tied to your specific employer, job title and tasks that you do for them. You as a person should not be defined by the tickets in your current sprint.

However not having a profession or any job is much different and worse. Unless you're older and retired, or independently wealthy, then it means you're going to cut back on everything. You won't socialize with other people society deems successful, you won't date, you won't grow a family, you won't travel or do anything other than continue to exist. All parts of your situation will shrink and decline. You are running out the clock toward total destitution.

I'm making this point because it's easy for people who are having a successful career to say, oh, of course I'm not my job, while missing entirely that they see themselves as a person who has a good job and will likely get another good job if their current job ends. They don't mean that they see themselves equally as a software developer or a dishwasher or on the street and it's all the same to them, so sharing the perspective that you are not your job in a discussion about extended unemployment is maybe not very appropriate.

Whether this latter reality is healthy or not, I don't know, but people have identified themselves as successful based on their trade or other social categorization for thousands of years, so at least we can say it's not new.

Part of the distinction I was trying to make is that it's dangerous to have one's identity tied primarily to any singular thing. In western culture, it just seems like a job/profession is the easiest identifier.

Will Storr writes about this much better than I can explain it here. But his point is essentially that the healthiest approach is to have your identity tied to many disparate parts of your life so that if one falters, the way you view your status doesn't hinge on that one failure. Just like you stated that "people identified themselves as successful", is a measure of status. If your esteem/status is based on that one domain, you're putting yourself at greater risk. It doesn't matter if a buggy-whip maker was the best tradesman around, he's status is still at risk when cars become popular.

The other part is that I believe research shows it's typically unhealthy to have one's social circle centered around work because those aren't very tight bonds. Again, it's a point to spread your social circle across shared interests and values rather than a job.

What I'm really talking about when I'm talking about the threat of extended unemployment is the threat of losing socioeconomic class. So much depends on class: where you live, what you eat, where you worship if anywhere, where your kids go to school, who your friends are. Almost everything. It's very difficult to diversify your social and professional network outside of your class.

In most cases switching from one tech job to another will keep you in the same middle-to-upper-middle class even if you have to take a relatively large pay cut. You can even lose your job without something else lined up and it's not a big problem as long as you're confident you'll find something similar soon.

All of that is at risk with extended unemployment or being forced to indefinitely work for lower pay in a different field. Consider all the life changes someone might have to make if they have to change from being a software developer making $150k to being a rideshare driver making $40k, after six months, a year, or five years. I don't know about buggy-whip makers but probably they'd be okay with losing their jobs if they were guaranteed equal work in the new car factories. What they really dreaded was having to work for less pay in the new factories, or becoming day laborers or similar. This is what motivated the original Luddites.

I don't think we disagree on much here. When you say "socioeconomic class", that is largely valuable because of the status it confers. When your status changes to a lower rung, it hurts. Will Storr is saying having your entire status/esteem wrapped in a single measure like socioeconomic class is unhealthy. It is much healthier to have your status spread across multiple domains so that if you lose your position in socioeconomic class, your entire identity isn't shaken.

We probably do disagree on the buggy-whip/factory point. Being a craftsman carries more status than being a cog in a factory. The reason why Henry Ford made $5/day a thing was workers were leaving in droves because the work was miserable and monotonous. High pay compensated for miserable work and lower status. I've known people who go from being "somebody" in a particular field (like the military) to being a "nobody" in a different field (like a factory). Even though they got paid better in the latter, they yearned for the former because of the lost status.

What your replies seem to confirm is how much we as a society base our identities on work, sometimes to the exclusion of so much else.

I'm referring to class as a person's conception of themselves, and others' conception of them, as someone who can live the life they're living and can expect to continue living that life. Losing this doesn't just mean the loss of some sort of social authority, of having an impressive job title at parties, but also and more importantly it can mean almost everything in that person's life changing for the worse, indefinitely: worse neighborhood, worse housing, worse medical care, worse food, worse schools and college funds, worse retirement, worse jobs, worse hobbies, worse transportation, worse life expectancy. That would devastate anyone, and it's not so much about how a person self-identifies but about how much they can afford.

By that same measure, anyone who lives in a lower socio-economic class would have a lower sense of well-being. This is true for people with extrinsic work orientation, but not to those with intrinsic orientation. Again, a lot of it comes down to one's relationship with work.

People who are forced to receive worse medical care, for example because they can't afford necessary medicine anymore, are tangibly worse off than they were before. It's not a sign of an unhealthy relationship with work if someone is upset at not being able to buy medicine. Framing it that way is unhelpful.

Also, if you can't find a job in a year then maybe you need to lower your standards somewhere. Even as a self-taught, very junior (at the time) engineer it only took me 4 months to receive (competitive) competing offers.

> Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously. Be professional — but that’s as far as it goes.

I think that’s the wrong message to take away from this. The author’s problems wouldn’t have been solved by remaining more distant from his job and coworkers - he’d just be lonely all of the time!

The real answer is that you need to cultivate relationships and a life outside of work, too. By all means, become friendly with and get to know your coworkers, but don’t let work be your only source of relationships.

> Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously.

This can be more difficult when you have been part of transforming a company for 20 years instead of job-hopping every few years. When you have advocated for changes and they have been implemented, there are parts of "you" in the company.

Also the CV looks very empty in this case, even when having implemented many interesting things.

> This is an area where I have to give tptacek lots of credit.

Any specific thread that might be particularly enlightening/interesting?

it was merely a 37% reduction. I’m very happy with it.

You took 37% paycut and you’re happy with it? Why?

OP didn't take a pay cut. OP's pay was zero.

OP took a job that would provide an income that happened to be 37% less than the one OP had before.

By that argument he could have taken a job at McDonald's flipping burgers and would be better off than 'zero'.

He did take a pay cut. 37% can be felt by anyone earning an income. It's often the decider if you have money left over after living expenses or not.

Let's say you earn 200K. 100k goes away for taxes et al (I am simplifying here), leaving you 100K for expenses. If your living expenses are 60K for rent, food, transportation, fun, family, you can save 40K a year for retirement. Let's say you earn 37% less. That's 126K. 60k goes away for taxes et al (I am simplifying here), leaving you 66K for expenses. If your living expenses are 60K for rent, food, transportation, fun, family, you can save 6K a year for retirement. Your savings just dropped by 85%, putting your retirement in danger.

Not saying OP shouldn't have accepted the offer. But let's not pretend this wasn't a significant pay cut.

It was $400k to $250k. Significant, but given the recession, it’s a nice position to be in.

There’s a fella on TikTok named Frank Niu. He made $500k at Netflix, and his job was basically to run around fixing things when they broke. It was a nice reminder that the good times can be very good, and the bad times are worth scaling back one’s expectations appropriately. I doubt he’d still be in the $500k bracket if he were still working, but you never know.

Also, don’t scale your living expenses! It’s tempting, but my current employer almost didn’t make me an offer because they assumed I was living at a $400k lifestyle. In reality we were just paying off our house and driving the same old car.

But you took the offer within one week from being laid off. You don’t feel like you could’ve gotten a better offer if you waited?

I'm not the person you're asking, but the answer seems to be quite obvious (unless you think they're lying about being happy about the situation)— they were making more money than they need by at least 37%.

They seem to have their loss-aversion in check.

The last 5-10 years have seen crazy money. I think most of us will see pay cuts sooner or later. Definitely when you get in your 40s+ you're likely to get a pay cut for each new job, unless you're management or architect or similar.