Comment by visakanv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by visakanv | Hacker News Reader

TL;DR:

Football manager: Be careful about your information diet. Stop bringing everything home. And... alcohol? =\

Headteacher: Policy of being calm and non-confrontational. (But how?) Runs, which is therapeutic. Spends 5 minutes reflecting every day.

Concilator (?): Represent the best side of both sides of the conflict. Seek common ground. If there's anger in the room, it's not me: "people are angry because they're not in control. I'm in control." Also, gardening.

Diver: 1 month work, 2 months off. Watches Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. Swims and surfs on his time off.

TV Guest Booker: Be organized, treat it like a game. Always another show tomorrow, don't get too precious about it.

A&E consultant: Yikes, his life is the toughest. Have people around you who can share the burden. Focus on what you love, rather than the burden. Changed hospital to something that's a 12 minute walk away, allowing him to play with his son more. Cites it as hugely beneficial.

What popped out for me was different:

- A cool trick by the headteacher is to be available: to be at the school gate at the start and end of every day.

- Wisdom by the conciliator: stress is created when people aren't in control.

- Diver: reads; and being tired helps restore calm.

- TV guest booker: people have their own demons, which have a habit of appearing when they're faced with going on live TV. And then... experience teaches you that taking a philosophical approach is best.

- If you were to read only one story, don't miss the A&E consultant's: I'm having conversations with people that they will probably never have with any other human being, and that's a great privilege.

There's also a striking parallel in something he said: the stress in A&E is about me not having control. So I think it's important to have a hobby where you do have complete control. If programming is a hobby where you do have complete control, what does it say about the people it attracts?

As a hobby you have complete control, as a professional in a large team, you have very little control.

I think that more mirrors why so many people who program professionally get so much satisfaction by hobby projects or taking time off to work on their own project.

>There's also a striking parallel in something he said: the stress in A&E is about me not having control. So I think it's important to have a hobby where you do have complete control. If programming is a hobby where you do have complete control, what does it say about the people it attracts?

I'm a firefighter/paramedic. He's exactly right that the most stress you'll ever feel is taking care of a critically ill or injured person and feeling like you're "behind" the call.

I'm also a full time developer (and part-time sysadmin). The two disciplines have a lot more in common than you might think. Debugging is debugging, it's just that the stakes are a bit higher in the back of the rig.

Financial reality means I get paid to use vim and save lives for free (well, less than free, I paid ~$6k in tuition to get my paramedic certification). I love my day job (I work for Silent Circle with some of the coolest and smartest people I've ever met), but I do hope that someday I get to flip which skill I get paid for full-time.

> stress is created when people aren't in control.

I think the "Serenity Prayer" is spot on, even though it reads like a 3-part joke with a punchline (paraphrased):

  Don't try to change what you can't change
  Try to change what you can change
  Learn which is which

Because if you get them mixed up, it's either frustrating or immobilizing. Of course, you often can't know til you try, the very process of learning. Learning isn't intrinsically stressful... it's when you insist that things should be how you expect them to be that has that peculiarly frustrating quality. It's closing your eyes to reality - delusional.

Suggestion: if you find yourself saying things like "Why isn't this working!?", "What's wrong with this thing!?", take the rhetorical question literally... because there is something you don't know. Focus on finding out what it is (i.e. seeing reality), and that peculiar stress will disappear.

The version of it I've always heard is:

    God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
    The courage to change the things I can,
    And the wisdom to always know the difference.

Ah yes, the Diver philosophy. Let me get right on that. Anyone else want to work a fourth of the year?

"A CDC report in 1998 estimated that the occupational fatality rate for commercial divers was forty times the national average for all workers, at an annual rate of 180 deaths per 100,000 employed divers."

Yeah, I'll keep the desk job, thanks.

40 x a very low number is still a very low number.

0.18% annually is not a very low number.

Especially over the 20 years mentioned in the article.

It's 3.54% over 20 years, assuming a 0.18% annually. I think that's actually quite a lot, but it's smaller than I initially expected.

And you have forgotten the possibility of long term health issues you cant do this sort of work until you are 65.

Plus the habit of the choppers servicing the rigs/north see crashing at an alarming rate.

Oh and there is the black swan type events like piper alpha.

Surprisingly, logging is way more dangerous than that here in NZ. 334 deaths per 100,000. This is a scandal here which is slowing rising to prominence. http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=...

I'd love to. I'd have so much time for personal projects and otherwise enjoying the life I'm working for.

It sounds great until you get to the part where the 1 month of work is spent living in a 2.5x7m box with 11 other dudes. I'm pretty sure that's smaller than my living room.

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