Hacker News Reader

Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

Hear hear re: not letting work consume your life. Seeing someone else say that was very refreshing. It’s so true that when you’re gone, the company hardly notices. Being let go with no severance and zero days notice was the last straw for me to ever put my soul into a soulless company again.

Luckily there are cool ones out there worth putting yourself into. I managed to find one. Weirdly I now seem to enjoy staying up till crazy o’clock hacking away or doing stuff over the weekend. But only because it’s so much fun; it’s still a selfish motive. Lots of devs really believe that they have a duty to the company or whatever, which is a huge mistake —- one I made too many times.

View on HN

> Lots of devs really believe that they have a duty to the company

I don't think it's just devs, it seems like a broader "tech culture" or "startup culture" thing, where everyone acting like they're in some weird cult, fully devoted to their company is their entire personality.

I did an internship at a place like that in university. It was generally a fine place but it was weird how I added some people I worked with on social media (something I rarely do now) and ALL of their posts were about the company. I don't know if it was ass-kissing for promotions or something but it always felt weird and alien to me. It wasn't even a particularly small company where everyone knew each other, it was like 300 people across multiple floors of a building.

I think it's probably runoff from everyone trying to be 2009 Google. Would you believe there was a foosball table, and an open work area? Wacky!

What you’re seeing is actually a remnant of pre-startup culture. In late 20th century corporate America, there was no social media, but it was 100% expected that someone serious about their career would passionately describe how they’re working at the best company ever and they’re so lucky to have a chance to be there. If anything, the innovation of tech culture is the idea that being mercenary is even an option for getting ahead in your career.

> I don't think it's just devs, it seems like a broader "tech culture" or "startup culture" thing, where everyone acting like they're in some weird cult, fully devoted to their company is their entire personality.

For me, a Big Red Flag in job interviews is when a potential employer says "this place is a family."

I already have a family - I don't want to work somewhere where they expect that my entire life will be consumed by my employer because "we're family."

Families do not hire and fire.

It sounds like what you're experiencing is a sense of freely-chosen duty to the company, rather than that duty being taken for granted. It's perfectly okay to choose to feel duty to your employer. A company can earn your respect and sense of obligation, and then instead of resenting the demands it makes on your time, you can feel a genuine sense of shared purpose that drives additional levels of commitment.

Second you on this one. I’ve taken to calling that kind of fun time “wizarding” so my friends and partner understand.

The kind of company I'm on the lookout for has definitely shifted over the years. When I was younger, the thought of working at Google and Amazon was very enticing. Then Amazon adopted some fairly regressive HR and business strategies and lost its luster in my eyes; or maybe my view of their existing practices just shifted as I grew older. Now Google is trending in the same direction. At this point in my career I'm on the lookout for smaller companies that are oases and have somehow managed to avoid the HR and business trends that have been adopted by the tech industry on the model of people like Jack Welch, the consulting firms and private equity.

it's amazing how you contradict yourself in two paragraphs

> Hear hear re: not letting work consume your life

> Weirdly I now seem to enjoy staying up till crazy o’clock hacking away or doing stuff over the weekend.

> But only because it’s so much fun; it’s still a selfish motive.

This implies that the overtime work isn't necessarily the most beneficial to the employer.

Overtime work is like an afterburner in a jet engine: it does allow you to get somewhere faster, but at a disproportionately higher cost than normal.

Yup. My employer benefits, but the fact is, I’ve waited basically my whole life to be in the position I am now. If I don’t make a significant research contribution over the next decade, I likely never will.

Three years ago, I was a peasant, scratching out a living (metaphorically as a researcher) using google colab GPUs to experiment. Today I find myself a king, in command of a cluster of GPUs with so much memory and power that they could host GPT-3 four times over. Today that cluster comes online, and you better believe I haven’t felt this excited since I was 10 and my parents got me a playstation 1 for Christmas. I’m gonna final fantasy 7 the heck out of these gpus.

I have literally everything a researcher could possibly dream of. Or at least me. Every single one of the ideas I’ve been brewing over the last few years can now be tested, analyzed, and discarded — and it’s only a matter of time till I find the gold among them.

My daughter’s on the way in T-minus 7 months. I’ll be keeping my life balanced. But damn it feels good to finally have a research target plus resources plus skill. I’ve been playing a game of “choose two” till now.

Happy to see you’re doing well and will be a father soon. That will certainly change perspective on things in a positive way

Thank you :) It was such a long road (5 years, 2 of IVF).

...or colleagues. it's quite easy to start thinking that if you enjoy what you do so much so that you stay up late, then everyone else should feel and do the same.

> Hear hear re: not letting work consume your life

This isn’t what the comment you’re replying to said. They just said don’t let work slowly kill you. I think there are plenty of people whose work consumes their lives whose work isn’t also slowly killing them. And if you disagree with that I guess I’d say that everything is slowly killing everyone.

Yep, that works until the founders hand the keys of the truck to a random CEO who sends the whole company (and yourself) into what all companies look like.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com