I Work Best Under Stress (and My Family Pays for It) | Hacker News Reader

I Work Best Under Stress (and My Family Pays for It)

codecabin.dev

This whole post is written in LinkedIn broetry style[0] and ends, unsurprisingly, with an invitation to connect with the author on LinkedIn.

[0] All single line paragraphs of 1-3 short sentences, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/why-are-these-p...

Hi ,

Author here, first time hearing this broetry. Get it!

I talk to llm with my genuine story, it adapts to a format what it thinks people wanna read.

Still my story, just suck at formatting as English is not my native language.

Ill try and iterate on the next one.

Cheers

I recommend not using an LLM to write your posts for you. It makes your writing sound bland and similar to the infinite other LLM-generated posts polluting the web.

On tech-oriented sites like HN, Lobsters, and reddit, readers are going to notice the style, and it will turn them off. Generally, people on HN find it rude to share AI-generated blog posts here.[0]

You can use an LLM to get feedback on your writing, but you should be the one making decisions about the actual words you write, not just blindly delegating the whole job to an LLM.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722069

Thanks for that feedback, ill try to follow that practice.

Always feel like then my words feel like a scramble and haters are gonna complain “you can’t even write English“

I had the same issue and now I have a much calmer job I can actually be a stabilising force home.

I crave for my side projects and as soon as I get invested and want to pump code and deliver I notice myself being irritable and a piece of crap person. Since I became aware of it I just stop my side projects as soon as I notice it. I am sadly resigned that I am unable to accomplish everything I want. I am relaxed and happy in everything else though.

There is no trick, but a choice: one’s family or ideas of accomplishment. I wish I could do better but I feel much happier when my family is happy then when I accomplish my technical goals mostly small things in the big picture.

Another important point is that obsessive energy was profitable and now I can live slower without much financial limitation for all our family.

That’s quite satisfying to read actually, thank you for sharing this perspective.

I share some similarities in my previous post about balance and who’s kid your raising basically a ceo’s one or your own

What was the nature of the change of job that brought you more stability?

I changed mostly to an engineering support role and less of a development role, in an area I find myself very proficient at, maybe even slightly overqualified.

The company has someone who can rely on when a customer needs help (although I never had to be on-call, I am flexible with timezones), and I often can deliver as it is inside my experience. When it does not work out my company has my back and is respectful of family life.

Thanks amazing! So nice to read this worked out for you

Woah, describes me quite accurately.

It actually took me quite a long time to learn this about myself. I do need a base-line of pressure to get the juices flowing. If pressure falls below base-line, my productivity tanks.

I'm also just starting to learn how to deal with the downside for my family. It's hard. I can very much relate to the yo-yo.

Hi!

Glad im not alone, might not sound healthy on paper, but i personally feel i can manage it.

still always want to improve this

Sounds like ADHD. Perhaps talk to a therapist before you tear your family apart from this disordered thinking. No job is worth it. None. Zero.

I was thinking the exact same thing. This is textbook untreated ADHD.

Yep. Insufficiently stimulated by normal life, a crisis brings your dopamine levels back up to normal and you hyperfocus. Get tested and medicated, for you and your family

Honestly you might be right, never got tested, this wasnt so profound in the 90’s. We where just odd ones.

Might take you up on that

was going to post the exact same stuff.

“Don’t let your work self, be your best self.” Is a turn of phrase my boss said to me one time. He was describing his own father’s total inability to be present at home while over achieving at work. That really stuck with me. And is a mantra I repeat to myself quite often.

The struggle is real. Therapy helps. Meds might be worth checking out too as this sounds like ADHD.

Classic ADHD symptoms. Talk to a professional.

Source: have medically diagnosed ADHD and it’s exactly as described.

Might have to do that, multiple people mentioned it now.

Im a 90’s kid, feel we just never got diagnosed but might be yeah

How do you deal with this yourself?

Regular exercise and medication. Ruthless self imposed deadlines on everything both personal and work related to help keep focus. Even then, accepting there’s no silver bullet and sometimes I’ll have to deal with the consequences of having this stupid monkey brain constantly throwing random things at me.

That is not an easy post to write since it likely doesn’t feel good to feel like you’re failing your family in this way. The author says “the people I care about most”, but what is caring for people if not giving them your full attention and best self? I recognize some of this behavior in myself and improving the situation required recognizing that (in my case) the work stress was largely self-created as a way to satisfy my ego. My advice to the author is to seek out a therapist to work through whatever underlying issues are causing them to prioritize work over the rest of life.

Author here, having a job and thriving there is also part of maintaining the family (and make sure they thrive)

I do have a therapist as well i think one part of me decided to open this, is a healing part

Thanks so much for the comment though, truly appreciate that

I used to think I work best under stress. Start of last year I moved from a 10-year high stress job to one that has very little. I found out I _don’t_ work well under stress, I had merely normalized it and settled into a pattern where I was so torched that when things aren’t on fire I dragged my feet as much as possible to compensate.

Thanks for sharing, what did you switch too, and what was the thing that made you go shit, i clearly didn't?

I’m still in software, but I left the toxic combination of health information technology and a troubled mid-sized EHR company that was being further ruined by PE and bad leadership.

My new job is a start-up, very small team with a pretty run of the mill stack. I expected to come in hot and heavy to get them up to speed in a flurry of shock and awe. There was no pressure, no red tape, no standups or scrum ceremony, I didn’t have hours and hours of meetings every day anymore, just a set of priorities and some rough expectations on timelines. I had no fucking idea what to do. Not because the requirements were bad or the code was difficult or the expectations were unreasonable, but because I had been jumping from one dumpster fire after another for honestly two decades and thus had no idea how to prioritize or manage time outside of an emergency or urgent deadline. I absolutely collapsed and struggled for a few months to really get much done. Fortunately, my boss is an old friend who had been through the same thing and expected my transition to be difficult, not because the new job is hard but because I would need to unlearn so much bad behavior and process my trauma/stress. At the same time, I realized how that constant sense of urgency hamstrung the way I approached problems as an engineer. It was clear I didn’t work “best” under stress, I had merely learned how to survive in that environment. That was my great re-awakening.

This was me before talking to a therapist about ADHD. It explained...so much.

Did it change anything after diagnosing?

Wondering what you did differently after that

Yes. I started taking medication, which helped pretty much everywhere in my life.

It also helped me take a step back and realize that sometimes I unconsciously stayed at jobs due to the continually changing (typically stressful) environment.

Oh that's very comforting to hear. I might need to go see someone if I can get diagnosed on this.

This was also me (literally with dog leashing bit). I didn’t use a therapist, but ultimately finding validation outside of work helped a lot.

As the father of the family, you’re the leader. Your wife and kids are going to suffer a lot more from you losing control, while work might not even remember you next year.

An interesting post about a sympathetic problem, but one that could have benefitted from not being written in LinkedIn house style.

Im sorry, i use claude for formatting and it seems to think this is best

Ill try and adjust a next one. Generally just talk my story, maybe a podcast would benefit me more

Just run a second LLM pass on it and adjust the writing style by feeding it examples. Then run a final manual pass on it and remove the unnecessary parts.

Write shorter. Half the words would have worked.

Besides that, it’s embarrassing for me to read, because our spot on describes me.

I have one coping strategy: when I’m taking care of my kid, or it’s a day off work where I’m grumpy because I left my dopamines at the office: I tell myself, I don’t get to enjoy computers all day. Knowing that resets my expectations and I can better enjoy family time.

Took my entire 6 month paternity leave and 3 months of work before I finally “got it”. Still a struggle. But just being not cranky is a gigantic life improvement, my wife says.

Thanks, i still like the voice to text, but will try to keep it more my own words next time.

And glad some people share this feeling, maybe that was needed to be written about and opened up.

Glad you found some coping form yourself

You can use voice to text and let the LLM come up with the article form. But feed it examples of good form.

That's a good tip, I fed it my previous blog basically which was fully self written, but maybe you have some better tips?

Your work friends are used to it and encouraging the behavior so you will be less competition for mates.

Why is every sentence a new paragraph?

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