Honestly, I do feel somewhat similar. I work a normal 8-hour day and I am not obsessed with productivity nor I am some kind of anti-work activist, but it just feels like such a waste of time. The only reason I go to work is for money. I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?), nor the technologies used (each of which brings its own challenges and frustrations). If I didn't need to go to work, I could dedicate more time to reading, writing, learning new skills, working on my own side projects, getting enough sleep, exercising, cooking, etc. Work just sucks the very soul out of me, and at the end of the day, I don't really want to do anything. Only on weekends and holidays do I feel much more energetic and motivated to do the things I listed previously, which evaporates by Monday.
The main reason we all work for someone else is for money but there is something to be said about the things we build at work and not caring about them. This is something that took me a long time to realize but you need to stop thinking about software as a field and start thinking of it as a skill set. From there figure out what interests you. Wildlife, economics, vehicles, etc. or whatever, and then use your skill set to work on what field of your choosing.
Working on something that doesn't interest you just for the sake of technology is not something that will ever make you happy. If you truly have no interest in anything then that's another problem on itself.
I think what you've laid out here is invaluable. My skill-set is mostly geared towards sysadmin work, and I loathed working for corporate places, being on-call, dealing with immediate emergencies (which were all superficial), stressed over attending bullshit meetings.
I saw my local library was looking for a sysadmin, it did come with a pay cut, but damn if it isn't a quarter of the responsibilities, fulfilling work, no direct manager, pension, decent healthcare, and I write my own schedule.
No one questions what I do and I have full freedom to come and go without needing to "check-in" with a c-suite.
Will I get rich working this gig, absolutely not but the sense of accomplishment knowing my skill-set is helping the community directly, and those less fortunate fills the pay gap I never thought it could.
It doesn't hurt that it shortened my commute and I do so by bicycle now.
I traded private for public service over a decade ago and I will never go back regardless of much more pay there is. My product is now the service to my community and pay is straight up compensation for my time and effort. No demands of loyalty, no dangling stock options, no C levels idiots with bright ideas ... just bureaucracy and a semi clear mandate. Its still work and id cut way back if I became wealthy but profits are the farthest thing from our organizations goals.
In the end, money is just a means of exchange by which we try to buy happiness. Well, food and shelter first, but once you've got those covered, it might be more efficient to work for happiness directly instead of trying to buy it with money made on a soul-sucking job.
> it might be more efficient to work for happiness directly instead of trying to buy it with money made on a soul-sucking job
I stuck with a stressful job I didn't enjoy because the pay was too good to ignore, with my sights set on achieving financial independence. After all was said and done, the money wasn't worth it; all I got was a bitter taste in my mouth from years of grinding myself down.
A better plan would have been to spend time figuring out what sorts of jobs would be better aligned with my life goals.
Very romantic, until you realize that nowadays working on what you like won't even pay your rent + utilities + food.
I am beginning to think we need HN for non-privileged people. A lot of "insights" on this forum come off as extremely deluded and living in a very positive bubble.
Now tell me, how do I get a huge break from programming while never losing a penny from my income? "Live within my means" would be your response perhaps? I still want to buy a house though.
Like come on. Sometimes I also wonder if people didn't start using ChatGPT for commenting on HN for clout.
Some people never watched Dirty Jobs and you can see it in posts like the grandparent.
Having a job you clock into, giving your best effort at that job, stopping work at 5 PM, and then going home and do the things you're passionate about that don't pay the bills is the way that the vast majority of people live. It's only the rich and deluded that think that this isn't the reality for most people, and that's because they're so disconnected from what it's like as an actual member of the working class.
Big petite bourgeoisie masquerading as a worker going on here.
Honestly this is something I find working as a software developer in offices... Many of my peers have never worked shitty jobs.
I've worked fast food, I've worked retail (during the launch of the Wii, even, which was an insane time), I've detailed cars, I've worked in a call center.
That's just what I had to do to avoid being buried under student debt.
I think a lot of people working in offices never had this experience. If they worked at all during high school or university it was cushy office jobs wherever their parents worked.
This doesn't generally apply to immigrants, though. That's a whole other thing.
I agree wholeheartedly, and maybe a bit to the extreme. Worked in pizza shops and factory jobs in and out of HS until I figured out I really didn't want to do that type of stuff the rest of my life. So I enlisted in the 2000s and carried a rifle for five years, one of those for a year in the ME. It was terrible, but it paid for a CS Bachelor/Masters and gave me a perspective on how shitty things really can be.
I am completely aware of my viewpoint being extreme and keep myself in check when someone presents something that I would consider a first world problem. But make no mistake, many people in the US and Western world should be counting their blessings much more often.
I think you are overlooking how in this modern economy many people do in fact go and work their next job at 17:30 rather than going home to relax.
Dirty Jobs may show some some clocking in and out of only one job and then going home to relax but as a television show that is highly selective of what it decides to show it is not a representative window into how the mass amount of people on this planet live (just like HN is not such a window either).
Simply reading the local news tells me more about the economic hardships of the common worker than a reality tv and internet forums ever could. And those hardships are harsh in many cases.
I agree. I find it highly pointless to spend one's leisure time learning new tech stacks, working on hobby projects just so that you can show them to an employer. Finding actual real-world problems that you care about to solve, that's way more satisfying. Intrinsic motivation beats extrinsic motivation.
I loathe the process of grinding some questions or stacks for interviewing. At some points in my life, I decided to learn what I love and pick a suitable company instead. Not every has the desire to work at a certain company for the quote status.
That's all fine and dandy, but more often than not you get into the field and you discover your whole interest that got you into the field isn't really how the field works in practice. There's an old saying about not making a job out of something you love, because having to do it for money versus out of your own interest will make you grow to hate it before long.
> There's an old saying about not making a job out of something you love, because having to do it for money versus out of your own interest will make you grow to hate it before long
I hadn't heard the saying you describe literally, though I've heard many variants of "find your passion" such as "find a job you enjoy doing and you will never have to work a day in your life." (Attributed to Mark Twain, Confucius, and others though the true origin seems to be obscure.) Which makes little sense to me since being paid to do something tends to destroy intrinsic motivation.
Perhaps there's a crystallized version of your saying such as "the fastest way to turn your passion into drudgery is to get paid for it."
Fortunately my passions are things I'm unlikely to get paid for - watching netflix, eating snacks, etc..
Big +1, work on something that bothers you in your personal life or something that interests you in your personal life. It will always undoubtedly be more fulfilling compared to simply "working for the man."
One risk I've heard of second hand. If you work on your personal-interests or hobbies ... then that might cease to be fun and just become "work." I've not had that experience (I've always found the projects in my career interesting even if they have non-fun overhead at times) but it is something my wife and others have reported.
Finding the perfect balance is the tricky part. I do I.T. consulting on the side, but I am not stringing myself out for a customer. Its one of the expectations when I offer my services.
No I will not be on call, no your computer turning on isn't a emergency and I will not drop everything to hit the power button.
If they don't like the terms, they're more than welcome to pay double my asking and pay a monthly retainer.
Surely it's a risk, I think with all things balance is critical. However, I've personally found the grind that can come and go with delivery dates and peculiar debugging are far more satisfying and easy to commit to when the medium is a personal passion/interest.
> From there figure out what interests you. Wildlife, economics, vehicles, etc. or whatever, and then use your skill set to work on what field of your choosing.
Unfortunately the wildlife, economics and vehicle companies won’t hire
me because I’m not an established domain expert in wildlife, economics or vehicles.
To be a bit more concrete I’ve actually applied to jobs in some of the industries you’ve noted recently, particularly wildlife. I applied for a job that seemed pretty cut and dry: Doing mostly .NET CRUD work for an application supporting [wildlife domain]. It didn’t pay well but it genuinely seemed like a domain I would like and Delma technical view the job was a perfect match for my resume. The application had several binary yes/no questions I had to fill Out mostly along the lines of “Do you have experience in X”. For 90% of the questions my answer was yes. But there was one question basically asking “Do you have experience writing software for our hyper specific domain”. I suppose I could have lied and said yes, though that just meant I’d be rejected after wasting my time and the organization’s time, so I answered truthfully “no”. I was rejected not long later and while it’s impossible to know the exact reason I have my suspicions.
Not true for everyone, I’ve worked in fields that are very interesting to me and felt bored, then worked in fields that are not at all interesting to me and I really enjoyed it. I’ve found my day to day happiness has less to do with the actual thing I’m making with software and more to do with who I’m making it with and if I feel I’m growing somehow through it.
>>From there figure out what interests you. Wildlife, economics, vehicles, etc. or whatever, and then use your skill set to work on what field of your choosing.
Nonsense. The lack of passion arises from resentment and by being treated unfairly. While things like communism where everyone is treated equally is demoralising to the key contributors, extreme inequality in compensation is equally demoralising. You need some middle ground.
Without stake(financially), no one is going to spend their whole lives to make other people rich. It doesn't even make logical sense if you think about it carefully.
This is an enlightening point, to distinguish between our skill set and field of work. And each field brings certain types of people, some of whom you'll find it better to work with.
I struggled to find meaning in my work for the first few years of my career. I used to lie (unknowingly) to myself "I love my job", "I am passionate about my job", "It's my passion" and I was always disappointed.
That is until one day, after many years and barring many details, I decided to tell myself that "I push buttons on a company laptop in exchange for money and I happen to somewhat like it from time to time". I immediately became better at my job as it improved my mental health. I started seeing my work for what it was.
As for "passion", I started looking elsewhere for it and eventually found it. I can't make living from it, but that's another story.
That sounds like being in the wrong career, doesn't it? I'm not a fan of the 'if you work on what you love, then you're not working at all' philosophy, but surely people can find something they at least enjoy doing (or the rewards) a little.
Nope, nothing like that is on the horizon. Not one bit. Nothing pays even close to 30% of my programming salary.
We're seriously and indisputably talking about losing at least 2/3rd of my income if I get the next best offer in another profession.
And no, I still love programming but the commercial one I now hate. Not sure how can that be remedied. I am taking a hiatus currently but let's be real, that won't solve anything; it's a way to just hate it little less for the first 3-4 months after you're back.
I know it also STRONGLY depends on who you're working for (and the colleagues) but I've sucked at networking all my life and when I finally woke up about it I have nearly zero possibilities to get hired after an informal chat because somebody else already knows me. I got like 3-4 of these bullets and will shoot them soon enough but my faith in the result is low.
So no, I am fairly doubtful that I'll find "something I at least enjoy doing", sadly. Anything I enjoy wouldn't even pay my rent, let alone everything else after it.
Good luck with the search. A lot of good jobs come from networking, but you can still find something great out of shooting cold applications, I know several people who did. It takes a ton of work and perseverance but is achievable.
On the advice of a commenter in a different HN thread I recently read Cal Newport’s book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” The main premise is that passion results from valuable skills built via hard work over years of deliberate practice. Only after you have those valuable skills, the book argues, do you have the leverage to dictate your life in a way many people find necessary for satisfaction. Passion follows from there.
The book is a fun read, but that’s basically the entire takeaway. And I find it to be a compelling argument.
Passion does need to be found, but it seems logical that your skills will lead you to the passion, rather than the other way around.
That seems like a load of crap, I have a few passions ever since 13 year old and 30 years later they're still in me even though I barely ever practiced them.
If that's the core idea of the entire book then I'm glad I'll save my money and time not to read it. Generalizations are dumb.
What do you drink in the morning for working years for a skill only to hope passion shows up. Imo, if you actually listen to yourself(if you can hear) its easy to find out if you are passionate about certain things. No need to spend 10 years hating woodworking only to find no passion for it lol.Self help authors these days.
Mathematics. Learning and doing pure (proof based) Mathematics. I was really good at it in high school and college, and it was the only thing I truly enjoyed.
So I got curious, picked up a book from undergrad curriculum and started learning myself. Got more curious, and I enrolled in a Masters program and got a Masters.
I don't have much time these days, but eventually I will get back to it and continue learning more. Perhaps one day, after I have retired or scaled down in my current job, I will pursue a PhD in it.
If you are curious about how I was able to accurately pinpoint "Mathematics" as my passion, then read on...
I was very disappointed by the lack of "scienciness" in software engineering. It wasn't even true engineering in my eyes as in, there were no calculations I needed to do, no statistics to keep in mind. It was just pure coding until something works. That wasn't intelecutally satisfying to me.
So I signed up for Andrew Ng's "Machine Learning" course. I really enjoyed it because he is an excellent teacher. But during the course I noticed something peculiar. I would skim through the reading material about AI/ML but would SLOW DOWN during the Math part of it. I would obsess about the PDEs, think deeply about them, even try to prove/derive them which was totally unnecessary for the purpose of the course and learning AI/ML's applications.
Combine this with my conversations with my colleague about AI/ML. He is really passionate about AI/ML and its applications and how to use it to solve real world problems. As far as I am concerned, I don't care about that at all. I ONLY care about the underlying mathematical objects used in it. He would talk about using an prebuilt library or a model and to just apply it to solve something and it would make him happy. Not me. I want to talk about what degree of the PDEs being used. What theorem is used to prove a certain equation.
This is when I realized that I didn't care about applications all that much. This was further validated when I got curious about the undergrad curriculum and picked up the book "The book of proof", and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I LOVED proving theorem and staring at the mathematical symbols on my notepad/whiteboard/chalkboard (yes, eventually I got a HUGE chalkboard installed in my study).
> I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?)
I mean, this obviously depends on the kind of product - is it some biotech to make someone's life better, or is it a gambling website tuned to suck the most out of whales? As engineers we're much better placed than most people to do something meaningful with our work, and sticking with a job where you don't see that value is a pity. But if you just don't care about building something for someone else... maybe you should change that? As you say, there's little choice in whether you have to do it (unless you win the lottery or something), why not make a goal out of it and get some enjoyment out.
Frugality is an understatement on that timeline. To retire in 10 years you're going to have to be able to live comfortably on something like 1/3rd of your take home pay.
No employer is going to pay you 3x what your nearest peer is willing to live on.
Can confirm. Have done this for the last several years. Wife stopped working a few years back due to an injury (but no disability or other income for better or worse), so I've been the sole breadwinner the last few years. I've typically been bringing in between $150k and $220k (gross), and we've spent most of the last ... 7-8 years not doing or buying much. Min obligations each month are now around $3000/month (mortgage, utilities, food, insurance), so there's been a bunch of savings.
I can't retire and never have to work again, but I'm slowing down a bit, and spending more time not earning money (gym, reading, travel, etc).
On second though, if I absolutely needed to, we could probably 'retire' tomorrow, and do a bit more belt-tightening - savings/investments would last probably another 10-12 years without any major changes to lifestyle, then could collect social security. But that's... not something I want to do. I like doing most of what I'm doing, and am just being a bit choosier about what I do now.
EDIT: no kids, semi-rural southern US.
EDIT 2: Moderately high, but irregular, income from consulting/contract dev/tech work. Not W2.
Selling time (hourly), I can't keep it up forever, and 10 years ago it was more like $100-$120k. I already see this year slowing down some, but it might be back to more like $120k, but on a part time effort, which will be nice in its own way. I was regularly putting in 50+ hours/week, and it's just not something I could maintain long term.
Here in the UK, after tax, $50K/yr doesn't even cover my mortgage, and I live in a house that over 100 years ago, according to the 1911 census, supported a family of 5 on a carriage drivers single income.
I earn a top 1% salary as a dev and retirement will still be 20-25 years away for me under ideal conditions - i.e. a 40% savings rate.
I'm guessing a bus driver in 1911 was kind of a high skill job, sort of like software development is now. How many people could drive a car back then, let alone a bus?
$120k is also an underestimate given that the top tax bracket in the UK is only 45%. If you apply that, you get $132k (Still an underestimate). $132k is roughly in the same ballpark as $155k.
It's not like the difference between the same income in the US and UK is 50%, and even if you were on $120k USD net that's the same as the median gross income of a SWE in the US.
I don't understand where "not that much" is coming from.
It's coming from housing prices in London and SF. Also energy prices in the UK the last few years grew considerably. I agree it's a lot of money, but given how much it costs to buy a house or an apartment in London and SF I'd say it's not that much if you want to retire early. I used London and SF in these examples because it's hard to find jobs with that much compensation outside them. And this is all without considering kids. You'll probably want them to have a good education and not struggle all their life from student loan debt so you better save some of your income for them.
It's amusing to watch you bash around numbers and percentages and yet not understand cost of living differences especially with the energy crisis currently in the UK
I don't get what you mean. SF CoL is definitely higher than UK CoL (Even London).
At that kind of income CoL also doesn't mean that much unless your lifestyle matches your income (I.e. lifestyle inflation). The energy crisis should not significantly affect people with top 1% income.
> To retire in 10 years you're going to have to be able to live comfortably on something like 1/3rd of your take home pay.
That's very easy if you don't have kids - just don't get on a hedonic threadmill (and, if you're already on it, start gradually getting off). I'm not a parent myself, so won't speak about the "with kids" situation.
Rent isnt a "hedonic treadmill". Neither is food or energy. These are the 3 areas seeing the most inflation right now. Rents in London are up 20% in a year, food almost the same, and energy ...well, everyone knows what has happened to energy.
The average Londoner is paying almost 40% of their take home pay on rent, so saving 2/3rds is already impossible.
Even as one of the lucky ones earning a top 1% salary, I _still_ pay 40% of my take home pay on a mortgage with a 33 year mortgage term!
Your idea of getting off the treadmill must be living in the countryside and taking a 80% pay cut, I suppose?
Before coming to London I was doing an equally demanding role on 20% of my current pay.
Or how about raising a family in a 1 bedroom flat? - i see loads of people doing that these days. My old neighbours both had full time well paid jobs and were still in a 1 bed with a newborn.
There's no real escape. The economy is a dog, and we are all underpaid.
Wife is from UK, but we're in the US now. She's got some friends/family there, and we keep up with some news/sports/TV from the UK regularly. Have watched some recent reports about how dire some things have gotten over the last year or two. Things are 'bad' all over, but the UK seems to have been hit doubly/triply hard compared to some neighbors, esp with energy prices. Unsure how much brexit is a root cause, but between brexit/covid/ukraine, UK seems to be in a bad spot. Sorry you're dealing with so much that's beyond your control. I completely get this is well beyond "don't eat out as much" territory.
The problem isn’t as much the pay - I’d pay increases then so will rent (or housing costs)
The problem in the U.K and especially london is that demand for housing outstrips supply. This denies opportunities to most of the country as the only way for young green people to live in london is to live rent free with parents who paid two years worth of wages for a 3 bed semi 40 years ago, for a house now 10 times wage
Yeah. London is great when young and going out to do things all the time, sucks later on though. In London I definitely felt like I was living paycheck to paycheck, but moving to a European city with better services (but probably less culture), rent for our 3br flat in the city center was cheaper than our 1 bed in zone 6 - and taxes are much lower.
Now 9% of my takehome goes on rent, and I have no idea how I could ever go back to the UK. The energy bills alone are mind boggling, and every time I visit it just feels like it slips further and further behind the times.
You do have to live somewhere with a housing policy that doesn't suck. But that's doable. Believe it or not it's possible to find jobs that aren't in London that pay more than 20% of a London salary. (If you don't want to deal with moving internationally, often the easiest way is a remote job for a company based in London). UK planning laws are awful and are crippling the country. That's a fact about UK politics, not a law of nature.
I agree. Living in London is for people who don't mind to work till they're old. I lived there for nearly a year and concluded that, while it's obviously an awesome city, it's not worth spending an extra decade (or more) working just to pay off mortgage to live there. I chose to live in an less awesome city, and thus am already retired at 42 years old.
The average ${global_alpha_city_dweller} is paying almost 40% of their take home pay on rent
There is nothing particular about London in this context. What about New York City or Sydney or Hongkong or Singapore? Pretty much the same. (Tokyo is an odd duck.)
Also, this:
Even as one of the lucky ones earning a top 1% salary, I _still_ pay 40% of my take home pay on a mortgage
The alternative to "overborrowing" was paying the same amount, or more for a similar property, in rent, or for both me and my partner to commute in from much further out. The latter would still not comd off any better due to the ludicrous cost of public commuter transport.
Yeah, it's not like we pursue our passions more than Americans, but the hole we fall into if we lose our jobs, or when anything bad happens to us, is a lot less deep than in the US.
I've seen this argument over and over again, as if "more expensive to employ" directly causes "lower salaries". I don't think the two are directly tied. If it costs you $150k to pay $90k employee salary, for example, that doesn't explain why there are $300k+ employees in the Valley (while that amount of money is kind of preposterous in Europe, though I'm sure some have it as well).
In my mind, it's rather a combination of:
1) European employees not willing to work much more than 8h a day (whereas US folks tend to work themselves to the bone)
2) European employees living in cheaper countries (so the HR has a ready-made BS answer to "why do I earn less than my US counterparts)
3) What I believe is a bit of disrespect towards non-US employees. If the company's based in the US, the upper management's going to be US, and I often feel like the attitude is somewhat "your education must have been worse than the US one, so you'll probably be worse than US engineers" kind of a deal. This is, of course, very subtle; I've personally never felt that from my immediate co-workers, but the salary policies seem to be geared this way.
Of course, being more expensive to employ doesn't help. I'm sure it's one of the contributing factors too. But, as a European, I feel like it's far from being in the top 5 reasons for the salary discrepancies.
You are implying a causal relationship where I was not. My point wasn't that socialized health care would be bad or that we shouldn't adopt it in the U.S. (I support the idea). Just that for many Americans working in tech (who don't have rare conditions) the cost of health insurance is not a huge factor relative to their salary or billable rate. As an anecdote in my 30s working as a consultant I paid $300/mo per person in my household.
That's with an effective tax rate of like 12% for middle class which is absurdly low. On top of which tech workers can probably afford to shove in the max contribution to an HSA every year completely tax free and then use it for healthcare expenses and/or invest it for retirement otherwise (that's what my wife & I do).
None of your listed reasons make a dent in explaining the massive salary differences between the US and EU.
There's a much simpler explanation: The EU simply doesn't have the capital. There are no pools of venture capitalists clustering hundreds of billions of dollars they can piss away on half-ass ideas.
It's as simple as that. They funding money simply doesn't exist.
That doesn't explain salary discrepancies between the US and the UK at the same company
A Facebook engineer in London is probably earning 70% of what a Facebook engineer in the US is earning, even after taking in to account taxes, benefits and any cost of living discrepancies.
This is driven by salary sharing companies, such that companies benchmark to each other, which tends to be lower.
For the specific case of London (and more specifically Facebook), this is driven by the fact that FB/Goog don't count tech people in finance as appropriate comparators. I suspect that this is not true in NY/USA.
I tend to agree, but then I wonder if people in places like Canada (which has universal healthcare) tend to pursue their passions more than those of us in the US?
Canada is kind of slowly imploding. It's going through a lot of crisis currently. Housing is one of the biggest ones, for example I am a housing activist and trying to do something actively about the housing crisis happening in Canada.
Much of the world seems to have a housing crisis right now. I recall a few weeks ago there was discussion here about the housing crisis in Ireland. I'd say we have something of a housing crisis in many parts of the US as well. Not enough housing was built during and in the aftermath of the great recession - that seems to be how we've arrived at this problem. Housing is hugely expensive both to buy and to rent. It's taking a large bite out of budgets - that's the crisis. Something's gotta give.
Can you give an example of what actually happened up there? And what you are doing? I hear rumors (China!) but you seem much more knowledgeable on the topic. I live down in Seattle so I'm curious how similar the situations are.
The North American development pattern is unsustainable. It costs more money than to maintain than could possibly be paid for by property taxes. It's wildly inefficient in basically every way.
We've been okay for a while since we use the influx of cash from new developments to support our existing maintenance obligations, but that adds new maintenance in the future.
It's functionally a Ponzi scheme, and now it's starting to unravel. It'll happen in the U.S. too, just slower since the U.S. is bigger.
I don't live in Canada, but Toronto has an average housing cost of $1.1 million dollars (USD)[1], which is almost as much as San Francisco (at $1.3 million dollars)[2].
Meanwhile the average salary in Toronto is $52k USD per year[3], versus San Francisco's average salary of $109k[4].
Out of control immigration. 10x per capita what's allowed in the US, all going to three major cities.
Not only that, but when filing out immigration petitions, most firms will actually file in Canada and the US. Workers who can't meet the higher bar for US immigration will be sent to Canada.
Immigration is actually an interesting one. There is a large amount of immigration for sure, but my understanding is that our economy will be in huge trouble without it.
We don't have sufficient birth rates to maintain things and so both economic productivity but also the tax base will be significantly harmed without this immigration.
That's not to disagree with your comment, the large amounts of immigration do cause problems and as you say, much of it flows into certain cities.
> We don't have sufficient birth rates to maintain things and so both economic productivity but also the tax base will be significantly harmed without this immigration.
With family reunification, it's not uncommon to see aging parents and relatives be sponsored. They add very little to the tax base but are a huge burden long term.
Fair point. I have no data, but assume that's a minority of immigrants.
Also, there are some requirements to support those family members:
"You will also sign a Sponsorship Agreement, obligating you to financially support your sponsored relatives if they cant provide for their own needs. The new permanent resident will not qualify for government assistance, even after the sponsored person becomes a permanent resident, separates from you, or leaves the country."
"To sponsor a parent or grandparent, you must obligate yourself for 20 years of financial support."
You need that immigration since the birth rate is below replacement. Without it the Canadian economy would be in worse shape - and there would be higher inflation. Countries with low birthrates that can attract immigrants will be in better shape than countries that restrict immigration.
Japan has been permanently doomed by economists for the same reason since... the 80's and has yet to collapse. Greater productivity and innovation can offset a shrinking population.
Canada is facing a huge brain drain to the US, for highly paid and in demand professions like in healthcare and tech. It remains to be seen whether or not they can replace the lost productivity of their native expats with mass immigration.
Could be. Though I see lot of Canadians coming in US for employment or even just for weekly shopping in border states. Seems nothing like quality groceries, winter clothing and Gas etc on Canada side.
Canadians have much lower purchasing power than Americans. We earn less than Americans for the same work, we earn CAD which makes it even lower, and on average everything costs more here too. It is shocking to me how cheap things like gas and groceries are in the USA, even after factoring exchange rate.
Tell that to the tons of working people out there without workplace sponsored group health insurance. But it's "only" on the order of $200-300/mo for a basic individual plan, and depending on tax income you can get some or all of that back when you file your returns. If you're interested in reasoning from horror stories, might as well ignore FTE group insurance plans too since those don't necessarily protect against life ruining expenses either. If anything, employers should be more on board with sponsoring trips to Mexico/India/other places with quality no-waiting healthcare on the cheaper side of things.
As for people pursuing their passions if only X... there are many people who for various reasons do not have to work and who don't work, it's not a hard sell to extrapolate that the behavior of more people joining that class would be much the same as people already in it. For most of them, most of their time is not spent on Star Trek-ish ideals of bettering humanity/themselves or on passion projects.
> I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?)
This mindset is how you kneecap your career. You’ve pigeonholed yourself into the foot soldier category when it becomes immediately obvious to managers that you aren’t thinking about what’s actually good for the company.
You may already know this, but it needs to be explicitly called out that taking that approach to your business relationship with your employer defines the relationship.
Caring about the product is not good for your career. You should care about your career, and most of the time, that means that progressing the product should be your goal.
However, when the interests of yourself and your company diverge, don't get stuck holding the bag.
If you care about your work-product, and can find a way to be passionate about it, then everything else comes very easy. That includes being noticed, promoted, etc.
Passionate does not necessarily imply loving absolutely every aspect of the job, it just means you've found some aspect you really enjoy and are excited to spend some time on.
People who work solely to advance their careers are generally not awesome to work with, in my experience. The people who work passionately tend to have their careers advanced for them. YMMV...
When the interests of the company and yourself are aligned, absolutely!
It is easy though to fall into the trap of making improvements for the sake of improvements, without any real visibility of why that matters to the business. That’s when you can work hard and stagnate at the same time
My spin would be: "This is how companies kneecap employees, by forcing them to think this way."
"But how could this ever be possible, in a field with high salaries and a permanent shortage of skilled workers?", you ask.
By constantly punishing us for caring. By continually providing shitty office space, and bullshit-driven work cultures and interview rituals. And just plain lying, toxic managers and co-workers to deal with.
And then asking us to invest the best years of our livesin all of the above, and then to "care" ... in exchange for not-so-great compensation, a joke vacation allowance - and zero job security.
I’m telling you from experience as a manager that this is wrong.
People who take ownership and initiative for the things they work on get quickly promoted. If they don’t, there is usually some other issue (difficultly to work with) explicitly holding them back.
I have seen many otherwise great engineers take the mindset of “I’m paid to do X so I don’t care about making sure X is the right thing” and they just sit at the senior level their whole career. It’s not bad with current comp levels by any means, but they never move beyond it because they constantly telegraph that they aren’t interested with that attitude.
Keep a clock puncher mindset and you’ll get treated like one.
In my opinion the problem is this: company wants you to "show you are performing at an higher level" before giving you higher pay or a promotion, but this can take years in a mid to big sized company, and even performing at 200% your peers doesn't guarantee you get what you deserve, since most of the promotions in structured companies are not tied to performance whatsoever, but to networking and being supporters of your superiors (scientifically proven), only for salespeople performance in sale has been shown to be directly tied to promotion, but then they are also shown to be bad managers when they actually get promoted (too tied to pursuing their own agenda).
So companies want you to have faith in them to recognize your value sooner or later, but they don't give you any faith back in return, it's never the case that some HR manager says "oh let's give this guy a quick promotion, let's have faith in him!".
Another point, if one is a professional is supposed to do his job for the agreed rate and nothing more, nothing less so i should be evaluated in what my regular 8 hours of work are, and within the boundaries of my job description, nothing more, nothing less.
When you go to the butcher and order a 1kg steak, you pay precisely it's weight, not more, not less.
Let's stop normalizing this "go above and beyond thing", it's not working (most managers suck at their job, scientifically proven), just be fair with the employees and respect everybody's time.
What if I were to tell you performing at 200% is not a good way to get a promotion?
I will promote the person with regular output and an eye for outcomes, doing the right thing, improving process, etc over the one who just blindly runs at full steam all of the time.
If you think you’re at 200% and not getting recognized, step back and evaluate how much it’s really helping.
If you think it is, write out the argument you would make to get a 100% raise and try to negotiate it. You will likely receive candid feedback about how your grinding is not actually important for the team or the company. At that point you can cut back your push on doing X as fast as possible and start to focus on how and why you do X in the first place.
> I will promote the person with regular output and an eye for outcomes, doing the right thing, improving process, etc over the one who just blindly runs at full steam all of the time.
I would consider that to be impactful and part of performing at 200%, yet it still won't necessarily lead to promotions. Most managers don't care about the team or company, and definitely don't promote based on stuff like "improve process"
> Most managers don't care about the team or company, and definitely don't promote based on stuff like "improve process"
This does not match my experience at literally any software company (including multiple failing startups, a successful startup, and huge corporations).
I suspect your issue is that you’re not actually aware of what was providing value to the company you worked for and your managers were caring about seemingly inexplicable things.
Let's not be too picky about wording now, "performing at 200%" can easily incorporate what you are saying, and by the way all are still some valid points.
But still i can do all of what you are saying and not even being considered for promotion in 20 years, everybody knows this and there is no point in being delusional or forcing narratives, just strive to be the "best possible version of yourself" if you really want it, or just do what you're paid for and that's still ok!
Agreed - this idea that one gets "quickly" promoted, if it all; or even that management wants you to perform "at a higher level" (that is, to be sticking your nose in their beeswax) -- is at odds with widely observable reality.
And also many times one doesn't even want to get promoted, we just want more money
and less hassle!
Managers don't fear, we don't want to steal your jobs, just make us get what we want and everybody will live an happy and long life XD. It's that simple.
People who take ownership and initiative for the things they work on get quickly promoted.
I can tell you from experience as a human being -- and having given many, many friends a shoulder to cry on over the years, in regard to this very issue: that this is of course what management always says in regard to how things work. But the reality on the ground (beneath the confident pronouncements, and fake glassdoor reviews) is often starkly different. And is ultimately what pushes people into the clock puncher mindset.
If they don’t, there is usually some other issue
Right, and it's always, always, always on the employee side -- is what you're basically saying.
What Kortilla said matches my experience at a few companies. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there are different/worse ecosystems out there. Also just working harder doesn’t guarantee anything, which some employees misunderstand—communicate with your manager! You need to work on the right things and understand leveling expectations and promo cadences, and of course your manager is hugely important.
"leveling expectations" are mostly pure nonsense, you should know that.
People are promoted for visibility in the eyes of management and delivering the final product, but not real ownership of the actual work that goes into advocating for and building the correct solution (which management is often clueless about, since it involves details which may seem minute but are essential to producing real value).
> but not real ownership of the actual work that goes into advocating for and building the correct solution
What you think is the correct solution is often not the correct appropriation of engineering resources for the business.
> which management is often clueless about
It is your job as an engineer to communicate this to management. If you are not capable of doing do so, you are incompetent as an engineer. Being an engineer isn’t being paid to just build whatever you want. That’s how you end up with Juicero.
I don’t doubt that can be the case. But I’ve been promoted multiple times with work in my package that was purely maintenance and scalability work. Maybe I got lucky having management who appreciates these things. I’ve also seen people rejected from promo because they only focused on building and not on other leveling expectations like broader impact, anticipating problems, etc.
>Right, and it's always, always, always on the employee side -- is what you're basically saying.
No it’s not. Jumping to negative conclusions and engaging in bad faith definitely is a way to get passed over though.
There are lots of reasons, both managerial issues and employee issues, for someone to get passed over despite having the right mindset. My point wasn’t that it’s a guaranteed path to getting promotions. My point is that “not giving a shit” is nearly a guaranteed path to being passed over.
I’m not, you’re suffering from the inability to logically reason about what I’m saying because of your “us vs them” mentality.
Managerial issues are “explicitly” holding someone back. I didn’t say the issues were with the employee.
> Not surprising, lying is one way people get promoted
Don’t be an asshole. That’s another “explicit” issue that will make it difficult for you to get promoted.
To be clear, my point is that being a clock puncher is an extremely effective way to limit your own career. Giving a shit is not a guarantee to get promotions, but it is requisite baring other very unlikely circumstances.
My own experience tells me otherwise. Passionate workers get taken advantage of. Difficult coworkers still get promoted. And promotions can have far more to do with office politics than any form of merit. If your own experience is an honest exception, then you're either still naive or else profoundly lucky, in which case you have my envy.
Well, this is more what I feel internally about working in general than about a particular company. This is not something that spills out into the work environment. I perform tasks to the best of my ability and just "put on a face" that is expected of me. Company is satisfied about my performance during evaluations.
I think it's possible to be invested in the performance and improvement of the company you work for without being personally invested in the exact product you're helping to develop.
That seems a little disingenuous. Of course they know you’re there primarily for money, so that’s not really the question they’re asking. They’re really asking “why are you looking for money from us and not someone else?” You can be cynical and call that “performance” or be realistic and recognize it as communication shorthand.
What is wild about this question is that I would get asked this sort of stuff while applying for minimum wage work way back in highschool, on paper applications and in interviews. You are short staffed for a given shift and I am available to work then, that should be the extent of the application and interview for unskilled labor where you don't even give me benefits and charge me for my uniform.
> why are you looking for money from us and not someone else?
But again, in most cases, the answer is "because your company seems tolerable to work for and you advertised an opening and I need work". So you're back to performing.
You can earn money from practically any business. Why do you want to earn money from this business? What about it makes you more interested to spend your time here than somewhere else? Lots of places pay well, after all.
Haha maybe that’s the answer for you personally. I wouldn’t take more money for a worse job (generally), so I guess I am assuming money isn’t also the second answer
By the time I have offers in hand I’ve deemed each company to be worth working for, so there is no matter of one job being “worse” than the other — they are all acceptable. If there was something I disliked I would have terminated the hiring process.
I guess if someone has a fixation on some particular technology or industry then that could be a distinguishing factor. But I’m motivated solely by the capacity for me to make a positive impact and be appreciated. However, any company that isn’t completely dysfunctional will (at least, from the outside, appear to) check that checkbox.
Maybe I have just had good luck with my interviews so far and I am thus taking (at the point in time that I’m choosing between competing offers) some critical thing that usually varies between employers for granted. I dunno.
if money is the only reason, you can get money elsewhere.
it ties back to theory of employee motivation, money being only external motivator. For high performance, employee needs also internal motivation (drive).
employees with internal motivation are miles ahead and more productive than without one.
this is why well paid and pampered Gogle engineers are less productive than some open-source enthusiasts
> employees with internal motivation are miles ahead and more productive than without one.
Isn’t that invariant with respect to (prospective) employer?
I naturally feel motivated to do a good job and earn the respect of my coworkers, and the satisfaction and pride that comes with a job well done. In addition to my work output, the title I hold and the salary I’ve earned are evidence to my friends, family and romantic interests of my drive to generate value and the expertise I’ve tirelessly worked towards developing. This further motivates me do good work.
I don’t see why “internal motivation” would vary between employers. Could you give examples of attributes that contribute to your own level of motivation?
> if money is the only reason, you can get money elsewhere.
And they are all asking the same question. Will they accept an answer like "because you're only a 7 minute commute from my house", "I think the work will be easy in relation to the salary", or "I think I can get away with barely doing anything for an indefinitely long time period because your org is large and dysfunctional"?
You ask for a performance, you get a performance. Or maybe you're just asking for a rube?
by asking "why you wanna work for our company", they really are asking "What are you willing to sacrifice while working for our company"?, just in a roundabout way
Generally, employers want to screen out apathy, which isn't conducive to creativity, productivity, ingenuity, and worst of all, is contagious.
I agree that asking that question in an interview probably isn't the best method of screening out apathy, but that's why they ask it. I don't actually know what the best method is.
It's funny that this won't get you hired considering an employee motivated purely by money would do all the corporate malarky to try and run up that compensation ladder. HR should be preferring candidates with these tendencies if they want someone who will actually hit all their metrics.
I have been in places where I not only didn't give a shit about the product, but it was against what I believed ethically or morally. In those cases I managed to find pride in my own small piece of it and ignored the bigger picture. I'm lucky to work in a place now where I really believe in and use the product, and the same kind of soul-suckiness you're describing is far more tolerable.
Making money for someone else is inherently soul-sucking though, at the end of the day.
> Making money for someone else is inherently soul-sucking though, at the end of the day
The emergent nature of corporations is to slowly consume employees' lives and throw away the burnt-out husks once they no longer bring value to executives and shareholders.
I'm "around on Teams/Slack" for ~7 hours a day but I 100% have not worked 8 hours a day in years. Am I the only one? Am I the minority? Am I the majority?
If I go to 60 minutes of meetings a day, it's a lot.
If I write 80 lines of code, it's a lot.
If I research 1-2 production issues, it's a lot.
If I write 20 Teams messages/3 e-mails, it's a lot.
Ages ago, someone (I forgot who) argued that nobody really worked more than 2 hours a day. Most of the rest of our work is either waiting, hanging around, or pointless busywork. I'm sure it's not true for every job, but I'm pretty sure there's a lot of unnecessary inefficiency in our work.
On the other hand, lots of people like those inefficiencies: a chat at the watercooler, talking about how your weekend was, etc. And those are certainly better for your mental health than the pointless meetings some managers would love to pad your schedule with.
I've found that by caring about the product, I can deliver higher quality results and charge a premium rate for doing it. Additionally, the quality of the work leads to good reviews and referrals, increasing demand (and lowering cost of sales) which ultimately increases my rate / profit.
The grass is always greener. Plenty of people become depressed once they stop working. The excitement of a hobby comes out of a balance with the struggle of work. Not everybody. If you like try taking extended time off to see where you land.
There is a certain balance to be had yes when experiencing flow. Practice raises the threshold, makes harder things more enjoyable (e.g. a musical instrument).
However we're creatures of habit, and I think most people search for rationalizations to do nothing or change nothing. That's comfortable and familiar. People don't know what they want and seem to shop around for placeholders for identity. It's not certain what the payoff will be for any new undertaking.
> The only reason I go to work is for money. I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?)
You should care a bit, because ultimately whatever we produce ends up directly or indirectly used by other human beings. That is at least my motivation to care about the product - thinking about that person on the other side that will be directly affected in their daily life by the choices I make.
I agree with what you say, but for me it's easier said than done. There's a disconnect in my brain because it feels like the rewards for taking the extra time and effort to care about the product tend to end up mostly in the pocketbooks of upper level management.
Some days the idea of making a better product because it makes the lives of users better is enough motivation, but not most. I wish I could consistently be more selfless in this regard, but when I'm tired or stressed or depressed, my lizard brain needs a more direct incentive.
I feel like I could've written this. I've even been feeling this more strongly lately and talking to friends about it. I just wish I could live my life and stop needing to work so I could have money.
Of course, but this is just my point of view. I am doing relatively well compared to, I dare say, a large number of people. It just felt pointless to state the obvious.
If you care about the products, the emotional investment in your work might propel your income, which is the reason why you're working in the first place, so ostensibly a follow-on goal of that might be to raise your income.
This is an interesting theory. My experience has been quite the opposite, in that typically jobs that people care about and connect with on an emotional level are those which pay relatively little. Teaching, social work, caring, and so on.
This has been my experience so far. It seems employers/supervisors can sniff out when you really care about something, so they use that as leverage to take advantage: heap on more responsibilities without accompanying pay increase, cut benefits, delay raises and promotions, etc. I really wish that weren’t the case, but as a person who’s passionate about my work, I’ve encountered it at every employer so far :(
I’m not in SV so maybe the situation is different there
It's not guaranteed, but caring and working hard can pay off over time and can give longevity to what you do. If you are working with the right people, they tend to notice and reward this.
The result of not caring shows over time and companies that operate like this tend to fall behind and become obsolete.
Caring just as often leads to burnout, since many people wind up dealing with organizational dysfunction. If you truly care and the resultant product gets butchered due to politics or simply killed on an executive's whim despite having promise, that's going to affect you longer term and could make you less efficient or unable to dedicate good effort in the future, especially if that cycle is repeated several times. Getting too invested in something that you only have marginal control over is a two edged sword.
I’m surprised I had to scroll this far to see this.
I think most folks want to care about their jobs and the default is having a healthy level of investment. But especially in larger companies, it’s so easy to get burned by workplace politics or leaders just not seeing things the same way you do — just as you said.
Emotional disinvestment in work is a defensive mechanism. Honestly, it feels like the two camps in this thread are almost talking past each other. Yes, it’s good to be invested in your work — it’s better for your emotional/existential health and good for your career. On the other hand, investment being a net good for an employee is hugely dependent on your work environment.
While one could argue that the right thing to do if you feel you can’t be invested is to leave, and I generally agree that leaving is the only real long-term solution, there are also a million reasons why it might not in the short term.
Yes, I think that the folks who haven't been burned like that before have either not been in the industry for very long, or they have been very, very fortunate in their work environments. Having a supportive work environment that rewards passion is something that everyone who puts in solid work effort deserves, but unfortunately much of the industry works like slash and burn agriculture: exploiting, exhausting, and then moving on.
Like all those Microsoft developers, who worked long hours, made their company $15B in profit last quarter (and $5B in stock buybacks) and are now not getting any raises?
At-will employment isn't a valid reason to not care about what you do. The armchair theory is the emotional investment would still lead to promotions, higher raises, etc than someone who otherwise wouldn't be. The macroeconomic climate is orthogonal. For example, suppose that by caring, they got promoted to a new job that will make them a more competitive candidate in the job market. Now that person can more easily leave Microsoft for a non-pay freeze company, so the advantage remains.
It seems employers/supervisors can sniff out when you really care about something, so they use that as leverage to take advantage: heap on more responsibilities without accompanying pay increase, cut benefits, delay raises and promotions, etc. I really wish that weren’t the case, but as a person who’s passionate about my work, I’ve encountered it at every employer so far. Because of that, my career mobility has come entirely from job-hopping (which I’m not a fan of, but I need to pay the bills).
I’m not in SV so maybe the situation is different there
Eh, there's quick diminishing returns in making more income, especially in software engineering. Being interested in the products you're building is a better path to work contentment in my opinion.
Have you considered the posibility of doing a rewarding job (other than money). I think is possible sometimes, often it might be less money involved, but imagine that your work allows you to work in what you enjoy and in your free time, er r …you just rest or do more of what you enjoy.
I've expended an inordinate amount of effort trying to get a rewarding job, more-so than at any of the jobs themselves. It's not a given. If you've taken a career trajectory that employers find don't match the pattern they are most familiar with and place a premium on, you will have a doubly hard time, as you're competing with those who haven't.
Free time is what there is for me, and though I don't think of it in "productive" terms, I do think it's important to bias towards action rather than passive consumption.
What I am saying is that entertaining the idea, that there might be a job out there that you actually enjoy, might help you find it. At the end of the day is a transaction and is better to learn to make good deals for oneself, and also accept if one can only take a bad deal at the moment. I always tried to make the best out of the bad deals with different degree of success.
yes and the article's definition of productive is hazy to me. Pursuing a hobby or interest outside of work seems productive to me but the article implies it's not. From the article it seems like the only productive activity outside of work is preparing for more work, i don't think that's true.
