For me, working alone remotely and Zoom calling all day has totally killed my passion for the field.
I’ve always had a percentage of remote work, but with no in person work, events, travel, socialising, it’s just not enough to hold my attention and passion.
I’ve drifted into taking a year out of the industry and thoroughly enjoying stepping back for a while.
I’m mentally waiting for things to “return to normal” but feeling like I might be waiting for a long time.
That's really interesting. My feelings are exactly the opposite. Chats with coworkers are a "/zoom meeting" command away. Everyone's name shows up on the screen so I don't awkwardly forget them. My desk setup is exactly how I like it. I can listen to whatever music I want to all day. I can do chores to get away from the screen for a few minutes. No lines at the bathroom.
I don't think I could ever work at a non-fully-remote company again. There are challenges, and you have to force yourself to socialize at all, but it's working for me. I always enjoyed working in the office (was never really bothered by noise, I can focus through it), but remote is much better. The time that you get back by not commuting and the ability to start work without being "fully ready" is great. (I have an incremental morning routine now, rather than rushing to shower, eat, caffeinate before sitting bored on a train for a half hour.)
Remote work has given me almost two more hours of life a day (that I'd otherwise spend commuting), it made me realize how sleep deprived I used to be, and substantially improved my health - through home cooking, being less stuck to the chair, and having more time for sports.
Additionally, it has greatly improved my career, since the advent of somewhat commonplace remote work means that I have access to jobs in areas where the pay is substantially better (up to 3x my current salary). If I end up quitting it will be either to capitalize on those new opportunities or to set in stone my ability to work remotely.
In Australia we had been barely touched by Covid until recently. My work generally involves a lot of rural road travel and talking to farmers and I really do miss that. Can't say I miss the air travel too much, it's the random stuff that happens when you are on the road that I miss more than anything. Listening to truckies on the UHF, blasting music or just motoring with purpose, listening to the FM Radio with a schedule to keep and sometimes not knowing exactly where you will be sleeping is damn fun sometimes. Talking to random people in pubs in small towns, sometimes digging through their cast offs in op-shops. Sleeping in a swag in the tray of my ute if I had to or nothing else was available. Small town, rural Australia is always an adventure.
Now - at home in a make-shift lab and coding. I still talk to people but Zoom just isn't the same. Supply chain issues are giving me headaches and relying on transport and post to get my gear out to people is frustrating and time consuming in a way that throwing it in the ute and driving isn't.
I had high hopes we would basically be back to normal this year but Delta has killed that for the moment.
I felt the same way, I was tired of it all for months, burned out working 14-18 hour days trying to keep up with demand as traffic on the site I work for grew 200% from Covid19 lock downs (people had more time to spend online).
I was in lockdown and just worked, stayed home, slept a bit and worked out, probably lived a prison lifestyle.
I've moved out of the city and have taken up some more outdoor hobbies which has been good, but more importantly, I just stepped back, now working 4-8 hours a day max.
I saved some cash and I've decided that if I lose my job for taking it easy, then so be it. Funnily enough, I seem to be more productive now.
My experience is the exact opposite. Having to be around people all day has been slowly draining the will to live from my soul for years. I dread the return to ‘normal’.
Another thing that I hear a lot is people complaining about a lack of work/life balance due to work from home and again here I feel the exact opposite. It has always felt really strange to me to confine work and the rest of my life into separate blocks of time and space. Going to an office, and spending an 8 hour block of time just on work, then going home and spending another 8 hour block on personal things before sleeping seems really unnatural and unhealthy to me.
With WfH I can blur the lines between them. When I’m stuck on something work related, I can just do some mindless chore around the house and that usually ets my mind unstuck. There is nothing more stressful than sitting at my desk in the office while beings stuck with nothing to do to take my mind off it for a while other than browsing the internet.
It just feels more natural and way less stressful to me to naturally flow from work to personal stuff and back.
Same with me dude, I'm getting burnt out just waking up, sleeping, and playing in the same place again and again. Used to have a lot of fun with other people in the office too
I think that is a very self defeating attitude by someone who didn't even bother to try and improve their situation.
You don't have to be the sad lonely remote worker if that bothers you so much. Remote work has definitely HUGE advantages allowing people to find a much healthier work life balance and has undeniably a net positive effect in comparison to what we had before, but I agree, 100% remote and never stepping out of your house again and meeting other people is NOT healthy at all. Good news is, nobody forces you to live like this though. I have signed up for a co-working space where I live. WeWork offices are littered around the world. It costs only $199 or something like this to get a flexi hot desk where you can go to any WeWork in your country. I go into a co-working space at least once or twice a week. I sit next to other people who also work and we chat, socialise, we still play ping pong during our breaks and we stroll out to a pub afterwards. Most co-working spaces even organise weekly/monthly social events which makes it even easier to connect with other people.
If you feel isolated because of remote work, then it's not because of remote work, it's because of your own choice to not help yourself. It's like a child crying that their trousers are wet after repeatedly pissing themselves instead of going to the bathroom.
We are never going back to normal. I don't know how to make people understand that. It seems they keep believing that if they just go along and do what they are told, things will be normal again.
You will see more variants of covid, more restrictions. If you go along with vaccinating and wearing health passes, you will be left alone for now. But you will have to continue to accept whatever they say. You no longer have any right to say no.
I've worked remote for over a decade but this past year has been harder because you had so many more chores around the house plus less options to go outside plus school closures.
So, I am basically quite tired. I am kinda considering just taking a sabbatical year.
I still like the work, but the non-stop stress from corona, the non-stop news and the barely functioning society makes work a bit futile.
I've discovered the only thing I enjoyed to buy were books. And I need more time and quiet to read them.
Might just be a bit of burnout. I've been a professional programmer for almost 50 years. I love it. But every 10 years or so, I fantasize about throwing all the computers out the window and doing something totally non-tech. Usually lasts about 6 months, then some new tech grabs my interest and I start all over again :-)
No matter how much you love something, you need the occasional break..I think that's just human nature.
> I still like the work, but the non-stop stress from corona, the non-stop news and the barely functioning society makes work a bit futile.
I don't know how the breakdown of society makes itself felt for you, but if it's through news: take a sabbatical from news. The important stuff ("the sky is falling") will still reach you, but all the stuff that's not immediately relevant to you (i.e. everything not happening in a 30m radius around your home) isn't, and can't stress you out.
I'm one of these people. Changed to a 40% contract, work Mon-Tue. I am in a privileged position where I'm able to live with my wage comfortably, albeit frugally. Living in Nordics helps too.
I was expecting that I'd be dwelling deep with all of those side projects that I was craving to do on work days instead of solving semi to not-at-all exciting problems for a company. Found out that those were mostly escapistic fantasies to regain my creative mind under the time and stress pressures.
Now I enjoy living simply. I feel better mentally and physically. Interesting to see where this will go. Maybe I'll eat the hustle fruit some day and start grinding - this idea that dictated my adult life seems very alien for me now.
How does a 40% contract work for the company? Is what you are doing just rather small/not urgent (I mean this respectfully) for the company? I have asked a couple managers why companies do not offer this option and their answer is usually deadline/project size.
An aside, though I think a worthy one; my favorite casual rebuttal to the pretentious phrase "knowledge worker" exists here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yDXPkor-Wxk
On topic though, I think that to the extent the New Yorker is describing the subset of technical work that many HN participants are engaged in, burn out was already a big problem pre-pandemic. So it's not a complete surprise for burnout to be on the rise during a such a global level catastrophe, even though many in tech have done well for themselves with steady high salary throughout the duration of the pandemic
Nice article and thanks for sharing. I can relate to the article in that I’ve been a consultant for four years now. I, like many, am now remote with no foreseeable return to an office. I feel like Ive gone through so many phases of feelings since Ive been home and it’s wearing me down badly. I am ready to turn in my notice with no prospect on the horizon simply so I can go back to being normal, or as near to it as can be. I used to love my job. Now it’s this beast hiding in another room of my house and I fight with it every day.
I don't know if I'm going to quit 'knowledge work', but its sadly telling that the most satisfying project I've had all year is refurbing my mower deck with some paint and new blades and bearings.
I used to go to work with my dad and we'd bust out torches and welders and saws and compressors. Neither of my kids had anything beyond a passing interest in computers and my job (infosec) is completely invisible to them. There are definitely rewarding parts of the vocation and I'm still glad I'm in it, but visceral satisfaction can be difficult to find.
I don't know what this has to do with anything lol.
Working with your hands is so satisfying. As is seeing the results with your eyes after a day of work. That being said, I am not good enough at that stuff to actually live of it. Plus, doing these jobs at scale still needs a ton of knowledge work.
Unless you were on cusp of retirement, I too believe that people will return back to work.
I also think that there will be some price to pay in terms of inflated pay packages and promotions people are getting these days. Some are warranted, some not.
While I've pay disequilibrium and imbalance before, never to this extent. When business cycle shifts and economy turns, the extent of layoff will be far greater.
Anyone else pushing their sabbatical for when the world finally opens up?
I'd like to take some time off and decompress. Travel a little, learn a few things and eventually work on my side projects but the world being closed is a big mental blocker as that doesn't permit free travel.
Waiting for the world to open up so that I can sell everything and buy a 1 way ticket to Bali. Don't see it happening anytime soon though.
The world isn't closed. I've been traveling for most of 2021, and when I started, I was "shocked" to find fellow travelers who've been traveling throughout 2020 as well.
Asia is fully closed. That's due to their culture. Latin America is fully open, due to the same reason. The Covid restrictions map is the new map of the world. Pick a green spot and go.
I left my lucrative cybersecurity startup job to pursue full time independent research in AGI. Several months in and it's been great progress wise, and I have to live more frugally.
Being on the cyber startup was like being on a cruise ship headed to some destination that was "just okay", all the while seeing an island off in the distance that we were slowly passing by, which is where I wanted to be. I jumped off the bow and started swimming towards the most meaningful goal I could hope to apply my skills toward. Will I advance the field of artificial consciousness? I hope to. There's so much I don't know, and even more no one really knows. COVID was a gift. Political and economic turmoil is a gift. I was already focusing on the goal of AGI, but the strife of the world gave me the will to leap for it.
I'm in a similar situation; worked in a lucrative salary startup job with same "heading towards profitability and okay" and felt like that's not the destination I wanted to be; and now I'm working as a researcher in research-oriented startup toward consciousness research, with more freedom (but less than half the original salary).
While it's not related to COVID and remote work that much, not being able to spend the earned money on fun activities for sure put an extra question-mark in the "why am I doing this again?"
I'm a software architect and really want to transition to AGI work. I feel like it's the most meaningful area of advancement I can work in. Any advice on how to get involved without being a software developer? I refuse to go back to programming lines of code.
"He wanted to establish a hard accounting of how much money was required, at a minimum, to achieve reasonable shelter, warmth, and food. This was the cost of survival. Work beyond this point was voluntary."
I would rather go a bit meta and quote Byung-Chul Han, that we live in a 'society of tiredness'. The German Korean philosopher, describes this quite interestingly in his book — Burnout society [1] (some parts are also in the youtube documentary here [2]). He intriguing describes the transition of modern worker from conditions of Foucauldian Disciplinary Society [3] into what he calls an 'Achievement society'.
In an achievement society, a subject is kinda like in a self-feedback loop. She/He are constantly reinventing their personality, profession, and beliefs. There is no solid self-image formed due to constant updates. He says this is largely because we live in an over-positivized world. Where there is no room for negativity and hence anything that is negative ceases to exist due to the way it is presented [4]. So, if your job is not working it is not anybody's problem but yours. So go do a masterclass in reactjs and stop being a philosopher. Then you do some personal branding, then hustle on twitter posting threads like "5 cool react plugins" or "Javascript or Typescript?". But we essentially tend to be stuck in that solitary, "I can do it". He says:
> “The modal verb that determines achievement society is not the Freudian Should, but Can”
Hence, we seem to be always in this Can state, without rest, even in our states of rest we are presenting our rest as images on social media to achieve. That philosophically is not rest. Modern human never rest. He is constantly producing. But, there is a kind of gratification crisis this leads to and one never achieves anything. He says :
> “Instead, the feeling of having achieved a goal never occurs. It is not that the narcissistic subject does not want to achieve closure. Rather, it is incapable of getting there.”
and eventually people get depressed due to this constant 'need of initiative'.
I am sorry, I explained it pretty bad. It seems written like an absolute thing but there are complications. Please do read the book (just 72 pages) and watch the documentary. It is not a supreme explanation but some bits kind a ring bell to be as I have been living in a kind of perpetual tiredness lately. Cheers and have a good day!
I quit my ridiculously well paying cybersecurity job in January. Went traveling for most of the time since. Most of Latin America was/is consistently open, if you're wondering. So is some of eastern Europe and the neighboring Asian ex-soviet countries. Africa has potential too, I think (haven't been). If you're vaccinated (which I was, pretty early on) most of Europe opens up too (but probably not for long now).
You've read the cliche reasons for doing this kind of thing many times before, and honestly I don't think this newyorker article is saying anything very different.
My additional, edgy, uncensored reason: I couldn't shake the feeling that I was picking up the check for everybody else. I was paying very high taxes to essentially finance crazy government overreach, only to later lose the value of what's remaining to inflation due to all the money printing.
Maybe the people working in hospitality, those that lost their already bad-paying jobs and are now struggling to make ends meet, are better candidates for "picking up the check for everybody else", or healthcare workers.
> I couldn't shake the feeling that I was picking up the check for everybody else. I was paying very high taxes to essentially finance crazy government overreach, only to later lose the value of what's remaining to inflation due to all the money printing.
But you just said that the job you had overpaid you anyway so I don't really understand your point here.
The author should change Walden for David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" and he would probably get a better explanation of the phenomenon.
"After being in the industry for 15 years, I still do not have a good short answer for what environmental consultants do."
That quote alone says it all. These people are not satisfied because they don't have a real job, they have a bullshit job, and they know it.
The others are more of the same, you have a "coach" of the obvious that even him doesn't practice what he preaches and a member of "multiple projects and committees" that complains about wasting time all day talking with no focus or clear purpose.
They get pay to pretend to work all day by pushing papers, write endless jargon-ridden nonsense and, of course, attending endless meetings.
"In his book, Mr Graeber relied heavily on surveys of British and Dutch workers that asked participants whether their job made a meaningful contribution to the world. This seems a high bar to clear; it is unsurprising that 37-40% of respondents thought their job didn’t qualify. By contrast, the academics used the European Working Conditions Surveys, which by 2015 had talked to 44,000 workers across 35 countries. They focused on those respondents who thought that the statement “I have the feeling of doing useful work” applied to them “rarely” or “never”.
In contrast to the high share of bullshit jobs reported by Mr Graeber, in 2015 only 4.8% of respondents in the eu felt their work was useless. And this proportion had fallen, not risen, in recent years, from 5.5% in 2010 and 7.8% in 2005."
[edit] Link to the paper discussed by the article:
Eh, I think the Walden aspect is spot on. I downscaled my career, but five years ago - however for precisely the reasons the author cites. I was burned out from needing to be available 24/7 for a decade - spending your life waiting for the sky to fall really takes its toll. My job wasn’t bullshit - it was my business, and I had real responsibilities to my employees, my customers, and my shareholders.
As to the “back to basics” movement, I followed this path, bought myself a laughably cheap home (<€50k) in a laughably cheap country (<€20 tax per year), and while I no longer have access to some of the services I once had, I couldn’t be happier. I do what the hell I want to, whenever the hell I want to. Agency is worth anything.
Over the past year, I have been contacted by a stampede of acquaintances, friends, their friends and acquaintances, who all want to do what we’ve done. Most work in tech, in meaningful senior roles. Rural property prices have suddenly rocketed both here and in my country of origin.
Yeah, it’s mostly apocryphal, anecdotal, idiosyncratic, but I think people are just realising that they are miserable, and spending time doing crafts and outdoorsy stuff has made them realise that these things feed the soul.
I've never had a bullshit job, but I have had a lot of rather pointless meetings through my career... If you do take a bs job, isn't that exactly to pass the time while you make money? Or are there also bs demands put on you that you cannot get away from? So you're forced to do pointless stuff through-out the day, that makes little or no impact on the business as a whole? I think I'd become really, really cynical if I had to work like that. Chances are also that I'd become "creative" in such a job, but not in a good way. Or perhaps there are ways to macro such jobs? I'm really curious about these things... :p The only way I can relate to jobs like these are really through movies such as Office Space or Fight Club.
[+] [-] benjaminwootton|4 years ago|reply
I’ve always had a percentage of remote work, but with no in person work, events, travel, socialising, it’s just not enough to hold my attention and passion.
I’ve drifted into taking a year out of the industry and thoroughly enjoying stepping back for a while.
I’m mentally waiting for things to “return to normal” but feeling like I might be waiting for a long time.
[+] [-] jrockway|4 years ago|reply
I don't think I could ever work at a non-fully-remote company again. There are challenges, and you have to force yourself to socialize at all, but it's working for me. I always enjoyed working in the office (was never really bothered by noise, I can focus through it), but remote is much better. The time that you get back by not commuting and the ability to start work without being "fully ready" is great. (I have an incremental morning routine now, rather than rushing to shower, eat, caffeinate before sitting bored on a train for a half hour.)
[+] [-] kace91|4 years ago|reply
Remote work has given me almost two more hours of life a day (that I'd otherwise spend commuting), it made me realize how sleep deprived I used to be, and substantially improved my health - through home cooking, being less stuck to the chair, and having more time for sports.
Additionally, it has greatly improved my career, since the advent of somewhat commonplace remote work means that I have access to jobs in areas where the pay is substantially better (up to 3x my current salary). If I end up quitting it will be either to capitalize on those new opportunities or to set in stone my ability to work remotely.
[+] [-] smackeyacky|4 years ago|reply
Now - at home in a make-shift lab and coding. I still talk to people but Zoom just isn't the same. Supply chain issues are giving me headaches and relying on transport and post to get my gear out to people is frustrating and time consuming in a way that throwing it in the ute and driving isn't.
I had high hopes we would basically be back to normal this year but Delta has killed that for the moment.
[+] [-] bamboozled|4 years ago|reply
I was in lockdown and just worked, stayed home, slept a bit and worked out, probably lived a prison lifestyle.
I've moved out of the city and have taken up some more outdoor hobbies which has been good, but more importantly, I just stepped back, now working 4-8 hours a day max.
I saved some cash and I've decided that if I lose my job for taking it easy, then so be it. Funnily enough, I seem to be more productive now.
[+] [-] Aaargh20318|4 years ago|reply
Another thing that I hear a lot is people complaining about a lack of work/life balance due to work from home and again here I feel the exact opposite. It has always felt really strange to me to confine work and the rest of my life into separate blocks of time and space. Going to an office, and spending an 8 hour block of time just on work, then going home and spending another 8 hour block on personal things before sleeping seems really unnatural and unhealthy to me.
With WfH I can blur the lines between them. When I’m stuck on something work related, I can just do some mindless chore around the house and that usually ets my mind unstuck. There is nothing more stressful than sitting at my desk in the office while beings stuck with nothing to do to take my mind off it for a while other than browsing the internet.
It just feels more natural and way less stressful to me to naturally flow from work to personal stuff and back.
[+] [-] robertwt7|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrScruff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustinmoris|4 years ago|reply
You don't have to be the sad lonely remote worker if that bothers you so much. Remote work has definitely HUGE advantages allowing people to find a much healthier work life balance and has undeniably a net positive effect in comparison to what we had before, but I agree, 100% remote and never stepping out of your house again and meeting other people is NOT healthy at all. Good news is, nobody forces you to live like this though. I have signed up for a co-working space where I live. WeWork offices are littered around the world. It costs only $199 or something like this to get a flexi hot desk where you can go to any WeWork in your country. I go into a co-working space at least once or twice a week. I sit next to other people who also work and we chat, socialise, we still play ping pong during our breaks and we stroll out to a pub afterwards. Most co-working spaces even organise weekly/monthly social events which makes it even easier to connect with other people.
If you feel isolated because of remote work, then it's not because of remote work, it's because of your own choice to not help yourself. It's like a child crying that their trousers are wet after repeatedly pissing themselves instead of going to the bathroom.
[+] [-] drewcoo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peakaboo|4 years ago|reply
You will see more variants of covid, more restrictions. If you go along with vaccinating and wearing health passes, you will be left alone for now. But you will have to continue to accept whatever they say. You no longer have any right to say no.
[+] [-] xunn0026|4 years ago|reply
So, I am basically quite tired. I am kinda considering just taking a sabbatical year.
I still like the work, but the non-stop stress from corona, the non-stop news and the barely functioning society makes work a bit futile.
I've discovered the only thing I enjoyed to buy were books. And I need more time and quiet to read them.
Maybe it's a form of weird midlife crisis.
[+] [-] mech422|4 years ago|reply
No matter how much you love something, you need the occasional break..I think that's just human nature.
[+] [-] luckylion|4 years ago|reply
I don't know how the breakdown of society makes itself felt for you, but if it's through news: take a sabbatical from news. The important stuff ("the sky is falling") will still reach you, but all the stuff that's not immediately relevant to you (i.e. everything not happening in a 30m radius around your home) isn't, and can't stress you out.
[+] [-] rauhallinen|4 years ago|reply
I was expecting that I'd be dwelling deep with all of those side projects that I was craving to do on work days instead of solving semi to not-at-all exciting problems for a company. Found out that those were mostly escapistic fantasies to regain my creative mind under the time and stress pressures.
Now I enjoy living simply. I feel better mentally and physically. Interesting to see where this will go. Maybe I'll eat the hustle fruit some day and start grinding - this idea that dictated my adult life seems very alien for me now.
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyleee|4 years ago|reply
On topic though, I think that to the extent the New Yorker is describing the subset of technical work that many HN participants are engaged in, burn out was already a big problem pre-pandemic. So it's not a complete surprise for burnout to be on the rise during a such a global level catastrophe, even though many in tech have done well for themselves with steady high salary throughout the duration of the pandemic
[+] [-] jc01480|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcims|4 years ago|reply
I used to go to work with my dad and we'd bust out torches and welders and saws and compressors. Neither of my kids had anything beyond a passing interest in computers and my job (infosec) is completely invisible to them. There are definitely rewarding parts of the vocation and I'm still glad I'm in it, but visceral satisfaction can be difficult to find.
I don't know what this has to do with anything lol.
[+] [-] hef19898|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcurve|4 years ago|reply
I also think that there will be some price to pay in terms of inflated pay packages and promotions people are getting these days. Some are warranted, some not.
While I've pay disequilibrium and imbalance before, never to this extent. When business cycle shifts and economy turns, the extent of layoff will be far greater.
[+] [-] redisman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] break_the_bank|4 years ago|reply
I'd like to take some time off and decompress. Travel a little, learn a few things and eventually work on my side projects but the world being closed is a big mental blocker as that doesn't permit free travel.
Waiting for the world to open up so that I can sell everything and buy a 1 way ticket to Bali. Don't see it happening anytime soon though.
[+] [-] keyme|4 years ago|reply
Asia is fully closed. That's due to their culture. Latin America is fully open, due to the same reason. The Covid restrictions map is the new map of the world. Pick a green spot and go.
[+] [-] phy6|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NalNezumi|4 years ago|reply
While it's not related to COVID and remote work that much, not being able to spend the earned money on fun activities for sure put an extra question-mark in the "why am I doing this again?"
[+] [-] beeboop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RickJWagner|4 years ago|reply
Wow. That last sentence really resonates.
[+] [-] indiantinker|4 years ago|reply
In an achievement society, a subject is kinda like in a self-feedback loop. She/He are constantly reinventing their personality, profession, and beliefs. There is no solid self-image formed due to constant updates. He says this is largely because we live in an over-positivized world. Where there is no room for negativity and hence anything that is negative ceases to exist due to the way it is presented [4]. So, if your job is not working it is not anybody's problem but yours. So go do a masterclass in reactjs and stop being a philosopher. Then you do some personal branding, then hustle on twitter posting threads like "5 cool react plugins" or "Javascript or Typescript?". But we essentially tend to be stuck in that solitary, "I can do it". He says:
> “The modal verb that determines achievement society is not the Freudian Should, but Can”
Hence, we seem to be always in this Can state, without rest, even in our states of rest we are presenting our rest as images on social media to achieve. That philosophically is not rest. Modern human never rest. He is constantly producing. But, there is a kind of gratification crisis this leads to and one never achieves anything. He says :
> “Instead, the feeling of having achieved a goal never occurs. It is not that the narcissistic subject does not want to achieve closure. Rather, it is incapable of getting there.”
and eventually people get depressed due to this constant 'need of initiative'.
I am sorry, I explained it pretty bad. It seems written like an absolute thing but there are complications. Please do read the book (just 72 pages) and watch the documentary. It is not a supreme explanation but some bits kind a ring bell to be as I have been living in a kind of perpetual tiredness lately. Cheers and have a good day!
[1] https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25725
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNkDeUApreo
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVFtc9_AB2k
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2YeJpkrTOQ
[+] [-] ur-whale|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keyme|4 years ago|reply
You've read the cliche reasons for doing this kind of thing many times before, and honestly I don't think this newyorker article is saying anything very different.
My additional, edgy, uncensored reason: I couldn't shake the feeling that I was picking up the check for everybody else. I was paying very high taxes to essentially finance crazy government overreach, only to later lose the value of what's remaining to inflation due to all the money printing.
[+] [-] ManuelKiessling|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HourglassFR|4 years ago|reply
But you just said that the job you had overpaid you anyway so I don't really understand your point here.
[+] [-] crmrc114|4 years ago|reply
The Author says that like its a bad thing. My open office can shove it, not going back.
[+] [-] justbored123|4 years ago|reply
"After being in the industry for 15 years, I still do not have a good short answer for what environmental consultants do."
That quote alone says it all. These people are not satisfied because they don't have a real job, they have a bullshit job, and they know it.
The others are more of the same, you have a "coach" of the obvious that even him doesn't practice what he preaches and a member of "multiple projects and committees" that complains about wasting time all day talking with no focus or clear purpose.
They get pay to pretend to work all day by pushing papers, write endless jargon-ridden nonsense and, of course, attending endless meetings.
[+] [-] sien|4 years ago|reply
https://www.economist.com/business/2021/06/05/why-the-bullsh...
"In his book, Mr Graeber relied heavily on surveys of British and Dutch workers that asked participants whether their job made a meaningful contribution to the world. This seems a high bar to clear; it is unsurprising that 37-40% of respondents thought their job didn’t qualify. By contrast, the academics used the European Working Conditions Surveys, which by 2015 had talked to 44,000 workers across 35 countries. They focused on those respondents who thought that the statement “I have the feeling of doing useful work” applied to them “rarely” or “never”.
In contrast to the high share of bullshit jobs reported by Mr Graeber, in 2015 only 4.8% of respondents in the eu felt their work was useless. And this proportion had fallen, not risen, in recent years, from 5.5% in 2010 and 7.8% in 2005."
[edit] Link to the paper discussed by the article:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015...
[+] [-] madaxe_again|4 years ago|reply
As to the “back to basics” movement, I followed this path, bought myself a laughably cheap home (<€50k) in a laughably cheap country (<€20 tax per year), and while I no longer have access to some of the services I once had, I couldn’t be happier. I do what the hell I want to, whenever the hell I want to. Agency is worth anything.
Over the past year, I have been contacted by a stampede of acquaintances, friends, their friends and acquaintances, who all want to do what we’ve done. Most work in tech, in meaningful senior roles. Rural property prices have suddenly rocketed both here and in my country of origin.
Yeah, it’s mostly apocryphal, anecdotal, idiosyncratic, but I think people are just realising that they are miserable, and spending time doing crafts and outdoorsy stuff has made them realise that these things feed the soul.
[+] [-] kebman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barrenko|4 years ago|reply
I've been out of a job most of the pandemic and am now working at a marketing company that did just that.
We are required to be present in the office but people do everything (even HR issues) over Slack and e-mail. It's mindnumbingly dumb.
[+] [-] hack-news|4 years ago|reply