throwaway2333's comments

A long time ago, I had the mindset that I really didn't care about money: I wanted to live my "ideal" life, no matter what. So I frittered away my early twenties being a bum, trying to materialize what I felt was the "dream."

Then I got kicked out of my home and had to work back-breaking jobs, commute 2-4 hours either walking or biking, and at the end of the day barely earn enough money to make any progress (I was lucky that a family member let me sleep in their house, otherwise I would've been living paycheck to paycheck).

During that time I felt like my mind forced me to "withdraw inside myself," so my spirit wouldn't be completely broken. It had seemed that all of my thoughts, feelings, and emotions had been stripped away from me, and the only things left were those needed to "survive."

A little bit later I was lucky enough to get my first software job, making a very good salary, and lift myself out of poverty (and start "financially progressing"); but even though my life had been the best it ever was, I never regained the feelings that I lost.

I think what I lost was my naive worldview: one that was modeled by two decades worth of living upper middle class; where I survived by virtue of my birth, and not because I personally did anything -- detached from reality.

It was a very self-centered existence. I was only concerned about my own pleasure, and escaping from any displeasure ("fat FIRE" was an escape from the perceived displeasure of having to work, and not being able to partake in idle leisure). Other than this, I had no values, nor real "ideals" (but I did have an "ideal" life I wanted to build).

I think that's where my early "dreams" came from: a self-centered pursuit of personal gain and maximization of pleasure. I didn't really care about anything or anyone, nor was my existence driven by deeply-ingrained values that could serve as a bottomless well of direction and energy. I was simply living an animalistic life.

Being thrust into the "real world" destroyed all these notions; or rather, living in reality forced me to restrain myself: my emotions had no structure, and so I was fluttering about to wherever they took me. Having to "box" them in to do something useful and purposeful finally wrangled them in, and "molded" my personality to something other than "do the things I like, and get away from the things I don't like."

I would later have to rebuild my worldview and wrestle with the void in my soul that could no longer be filled with material distractions (a life-long process).

During this process, I realized putting financial considerations as my number one priority would not lead me to anywhere fulfilled (neither would idle retirement). The only thought that rang "true" at the time was that I needed to cultivate values, and those would dictate my purpose.

It's a never-ending process. And it always keeps me busy, but unlike focusing on material things, the fulfillment and sense of goodness I feel is not transient -- it lasts, and has built up through the years.

This is how I went from trying to live an ideal life, to one where I live by ideals.

My intuition agrees with the quoted statement. I cannot make a coherent logical argument for it, but I agree with the author: other languages have a richer, more nuanced vocabulary for emotions.

There are emotional-labels that only exist in other languages (e.g. German, Japanese, Russian, Ancient Greek, etc.) that simply have no equal in English (and in that case, we simply steal the word and pump up our total word count).

I feel like English's main purpose is to get people to do things, by making them feel a certain way, or by being so vague and unspecific it can be interpreted in an endless amount of ways. Whereas with German it might be to be exact, and to have every single thing accounted for and labeled.

Sales funnels.

You can only nudge conversions to each successive "step" so much. Once you've reached diminishing returns, the only thing left to do is get more leads into the funnel -- grind the process out/pick up the phone and dial.

Feast or famine jobs also don't lend themselves well to "long-term thinking." If something is working, don't break it, just keep on going and make that paper. If something isn't working, you don't have the time/soundness of mind to figure it out, just keep on going (or else you won't be able to pay your bills).

Jobs are a commodity and the only selling point is price/pay -- making it one of the worst things to "sell" (the "best"/easiest things to sell are the antithesis of this).

A persistent sense of fulfilment -- one that makes you feel like everything is going to be alright.

There's no need to keep on searching. You have everything you'll ever need right here.

If you can make it into a FAANG/MAMAA/whatever flavor of the year acronym, you can make it into most tech companies (and still make a salary that's more than enough to live a dignified life and support yourself, and family if you have any).

Working at Facebook as a software engineer is a choice; just like working at a bulge bracket investment bank is a choice.

The type of people that choose to work at either of these two are (more likely than not) people who do not have morals or a sense of character and values.

In my experience, being a good person only works when you're interacting with good people. If you're a good person interacting with a "bad" person, you tend to get a worse deal -- and if not alert, will unconsciously "sink" to their level, and start mirroring their behaviors in order to not get a bad deal.

Sooner or later, you're surrounded by "bad" people and have become a "bad" person yourself, simply by moral "osmosis," all because a few "bad" eggs spoiled the quiche.

I have been the type of person that naturally gravitated towards the "money money money" professions, because I did not have any strong role models to build a value system. Now that I'm out of that moral rut, I do not wish to go back. Just like an ex-addict who decides not to associate with other ex-addicts, because the chance of relapsing increases exponentially: I do not want people without any moral compass dragging me back down to their level.

I like the way things are. Things are good. Associating with Facebookers will make things bad. I don't want things to be bad.

I've tried very hard to express this viewpoint, without making value judgements, but it's moot: I have standards for what it means to be a good person, and Facebookers do not meet my standards -- so I won't associate with them. I won't hire them. And I will avoid collaborating with them.