Thread by @patio11

Interesting thread on HN about someone who worked for AppAmaGooFaceSoft for 6 years and is dealing with a sense of ennui and purposelessness.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=219615…

My brief thoughts are that if one wants to be well-paid for munging data using internal frameworks and find meaning elsewhere in life, great, that’s an entirely acceptable life plan.

If you want to find meaning at work, though, there are plenty of great options out there.

I am almost unrecognizable from the person I was at age 20 through 26 at work, partly due to growth/etc but partly because I was deeply disengaged by being in an environment which didn’t really need or use my talents.

You’d have diagnosed me with a terminal case of laziness.

Not casting aspersions on AppAmaGooFaceSoft generally, by the way. They produce incredible value for the world and some people there have excellent jobs which they enjoy.

But as businesses they’re so good that they can afford large numbers of people just coasting.

In an environment where many of your peers are trying to do something that has never been done before, you’ll get pulled up. In an environment where many peers coast, you’ll tend to get pulled down.

(This salaryman was explicitly told to sandbag to avoid making folks look bad.)

Also if you’re lacking direction you might read to e.g. management as “Ahh, a coaster. Well, that’s totally acceptable here.” rather than as someone who needs support/direction/instructions to urgently find a better opportunity.

(In advanced stages management loses the ability to identify coasters because coasting has come to define what local productivity looks like.)