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Comment by hcrean | Hacker News Reader

This article assumes a lot more self-determinism than is available in practice to most people.

Beyond that many of us have been running on fumes for years, I can't lose ten extra hours every week away from seeing my family, so I can up-skill for a new variation on the same career with ultimately the same bull.

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If your goal is to get a cushy high paying job you will need to make sacrifices, otherwise that job would no longer be cushy and high paying. Some sacrifice their 20s and grind an education, career, and have no kids or spouse. Others put a large burden on their spouse to retrain, you have to weigh the short term toil versus the amortized improvements over your career. And it is important to remember that luck plays a part as well. Some get lucky on their first go around and others never get luck in life. The only thing you can do is maximize the number chances you have for good luck.

It is important to live well within your means. Having an extra margin makes job and life changes much easier and lower risk. Many people’s expenses grow to their income and they paint themself into a financial corner. Unfortunately once you are in that spot it becomes much more difficult to get out, and larger sacrifices need to be made.

There are always options, and we have more opportunities and “stuff” than any other generation which has lived. Our stuff and jobs should serve us and not the other way around.

I have sacrificed my relationships with my friends and family for two decades and it hasn't helped advance my career beyond a normal, lowly IC.

I don't want to manage people. I would be the exact kind of manager that destroys my own will to live. A senior role would be nice, but because I don't have any social skills (all that time I spent learning all of the technical knowledge I have now had unforeseen consequences, specifically, my social skills and emotional restraint are significantly stunted.)

Stop using the argument that people need to make sacrifices. It's not true.

Well that’s just assuming alternative paths would have been much better than current situation. Looking at how life played out for many of my classmates even my lowly IC job looks quite good.

This is the point I was going to make as well. I think the article is written for high-agency people, which are rare in my experience, even in tech.

Also related: The Peter Principle: people get promoted to their level of incompetence. We think we want something but then realize the job is actually harder than we thought, so we do a bad job (or burn out).

So to the excellent points in the article I would add an introspection about the level we want to achieve and how to continue working at that level, assuming we don't hate the job.

    > I think the article is written for high-agency people, which are rare in my experience, even in tech.

While your assessment about the article may be true, high-agency people are common in niche careers. Anything that is extremely high performing (emergency medicine, Wall Street trading floor, elite law firms, entrepreneurs of any kind (especially non-tech!), etc.) will have plenty of high-agency people. Plus, this board is full of high-agency people. At this point in 2024, "tech" is a pretty much meaningless term, similar to "Europe". What does it even mean? The landscape is much too wide and diverse at this point.

What kind of advice would have been better?

What if it’s an article for self-determined people ?

Or meant to plant a seed of thought in someone’s mind ?

> I can’t lose ten extra hours every week away from seeing my family

I hope you find the time to make it work for you.

And , I don’t want to assume but so have found “I can’t” attitudes don’t work for effecting change in life.

Maybe work on that aspect of your personality.

"Here, drink this Flavor Aid. If you don't like it, it's a personality defect in you."

> And , I don’t want to assume but so have found “I can’t” attitudes don’t work for effecting change in life.

I personally subscribe to framing “I can’t” as “I will not”. Then you can view such things as the conscious choices they are. You can also avoid feeling forced to do things just because they are expected of you.

E.g. “I can’t give up time with my kids” vs “I will not give up time with my kids”.

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