Comment by patates | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patates | Hacker News Reader

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> Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from.

I used to tell myself the same thing. Then one day, a customer misconfigured their NetScaler, and all hell broke loose. We had half-delivered CSS files, misfiring form handlers, random blank screens of death, and a buggy front-end library that would bombard the backend with requests if it received the wrong status code with no back-off logic! There were hundreds of bug reports. You name it, we had it.

Debugging everything was just wild, especially with the constant tension of "What if it's our fault?" In the end, it wasn't! We got paid for our time, and we were able to close a massive number of tickets. It was one of the best weeks of my professional life.

There's a huge difference though between short bursts of intense activity – which are thrilling, and in my experience can forge longlasting team bonds – and an ongoing, constant sense of pressure. The latter you can't maintain excitement about indefinitely, and inevitably the continual stress just leads to burnout. Or apathy: after all, if everything's urgent then nothing feels urgent or special after a while.

i too strive in such a situation, but it still makes a difference whether the work is meaningful or not. especially when you get to sleepless nights. it makes difference if that customer is a hospital or some other meaningful industry, or it is something meaningless like an online game, other entertainment or worse, gambling. i wouldn't work overtime for the latter (unless the pay is worth it or the team is good)

i can definitely confirm that meaningless work is more boring.

So it is essentially all about money, and meaningfulness of the job is just another bonus, along with medical insurance, prolonged vacation period and anything else that might make you choose less paying job.

That said, I can imagine people taking pride and joy in building an online game and making sure it works reliable even as audience grows way past anticipated level.

Hell yes, sometimes fighting a figurative wildfire successfully is what carries you for a year

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