Indeed it is. Haven't I accrued debt, worked hard, and earned the right to be in a job I should be happy at? I deserve that. So do you and so does every body else.

Happiness is not a right. This kind of thinking will perpetuate your misery.

It's enshrined in the American Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence declares a natural right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness[0]." Happiness itself is not enshrined as a right, certainly not by the Constitution[1].

[0] http://www.founding.com/the_declaration_of_i/pageID.2423/def...

[1] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CDOC-110hdoc50/pdf/CDOC-110hdo...

PURSUIT of happiness.

try going to the police and saying your right to happiness has been thwarted by the company paying your salary... see how far that gets you

no one deserves anything

Everyone deserves everything. We live in a society that is capable of creating a post-scarcity economy (and in many cases, such as media and software, has) yet is putting itself through ever more convoluted contortions to make sure poor people don't get to have anything. Eff. That. Noise. Work is not a moral imperative.

>We live in a society that is capable of creating a post-scarcity economy (and in many cases, such as media and software, has)

Media and software are not examples of post-scarcity economy. They require hardware, which requires infrastructure, which runs on the expenditure of fuel and calories, and is built oftentimes with slave labor. The music needs to be composed, the movies need to be filmed, the games need to be designed. Storage media needs to be replaced. Programmers need to be educated generation after generation, and then everything rewritten in new languages when no one cares about the old ones. Factories need to keep building new models and old models keep filling landfills. The digital world is very much tied to scarcity of resources. Every bit flipped contributes to the inevitable heat death of the universe.

If one of our descendants happens to be born into a society that grants him/her the _entitlement_ to happiness, that person will be very lucky indeed. We haven't been born into such a society, however.

We're on the threshold of one. We should start living and working that way.

no we aren't, happiness is to nebulous to just be 'solved'

You are not giving the writer enough charity with your interpretation. Almost every single programmers I personally know around his age shares the sentiment. Ranging from SV startup jobs to the FB/Google/Microsoft/AMZN, even some doing programming in countries half way across the world.

So, a generation of entitled?

Me - I stay with a job (or side project or consulting) if it is fun and I am learning something. Pick and choose accordingly.

From the article -- "I write test automation to test the front-end" -- there were potentially interesting things here maybe some years ago, but he put himself into a position that frequently gets off shored and doesn't have a lot of room for growth/creativity.

Really, all these entitlement 20-something posts are basically the same in general content.

If you believe that there are a world-wide generation of entitled human, there is not much substance to be discussed.

I read the post as simple as the field where he grew up with turned out to be a much different thing in a (industrialized?) setting.

I didn't know if I'd like testing or not. But I thought I would try something new. Comparing my daily work with the coders around me, I still think I'd pick testing because they literally just glue too many shitty api's together into an AngularJS application.

We live in a time of unprecedented prosperity and productivity. Why shouldn't we be entitled?

I rather much agree with him. What the hell was the point of getting a supposedly in-demand degree, graduating top of my class, maintaining my skills at the top of the industry, if I was just going to get stuck in a corporate hell-hole?

Programmers of the world, unite.

I was going to reply to the parent saying, "He's not saying he's entitled to anything! He just doesn't like his situation and wants to change it!".. and then I realized the author replied first, and indeed is asserting he's entitled to happiness?

What was the point of any of that hard work? Maybe there was no point, maybe he/you made a mistake. From where do you derive entitlement?

If you live in the United States you're entitled to the _pursuit_ of happiness. Go, pursue it, but your career choices and mistakes are your own. No one owes you anything.

Alright, fine, we don't deserve anything. We don't deserve to be treated like children. We don't deserve to have the majority of our productivity either stymied or taken from us and bastardized. We don't deserve to be told "do this for us and we'll take care of you" and that turns out to be nothing. Yeah, there's a lot we don't deserve.

I'm owed what I was promised. I was promised "pass these tests, you can get into any grad school or company you want." That didn't happen. I was promised, "finish this project, and you'll get a raise and to run the next one your way." That never happened. I was promised a lot of things, and because I don't have a rich daddy to threaten people with a lawsuit for breaking those promises, I get told it's my fault for expecting anything.

As I said before. Eff. That. Noise. Your rules suck. I choose my own.

Keep on insisting you're owed what you were promised, and keep on saying "Eff. That. Noise." See how far it gets you. My rules may suck, but they have the advantage of being reality.

But you probably have your own reality? Great, just don't be surprised if you're the only one living in it.

I don't understand why this discussion is about entitlement. I thought this was the american dream? You work hard, you make something of yourself. Things go your way. Things are going well enough my way, but I'm not happy. I don't want it.

Hell, give me a lobotomy and erase my education from me. In return, absolve me of my student loans. Let me start over and try again. I can't even do that because I'm in so much debt that switching careers is not even feasible. I have to program to pay these loans. I wouldn't survive without a programmers salary, but I don't even want the money. That's the part that kills me.

I also don't understand why it ever was about entitlement. Your blog post wasn't about entitlement. I don't understand why grillvogel made the original joke about entitlement. And I was about to say that, when I read that you replied that indeed the entitlement is strong in you.

That's why this is about entitlement now. Because you said it is.

What kind of defeatist attitude is that? "Reality sucks and you can't change it"? Where would our lord Steve Jobs be if he thought like that?

Seriously though. If you don't like the hand you're dealt, you try to change it. How is that unrealistic, or unlike what most people do?

And how is it unreasonable to fervently wish to have it better in life than what you do? Why is it entitled? There's nothing more common-sense, down-to-earth, than that. Otherwise, what the hell are you striving for?

I don't understand how you get "Reality sucks and you can't change it" from anything I said. The part of reality that we're talking about, that I said sucks, is the rule that says that you are not entitled to anything. No matter how hard you work, no matter what tests you took, no matter what they told you would happen if you paid tens of thousands of dollars for school, you are entitled to nothing! Like everyone else who isn't lucky enough to have it all handed to him, you'll have to continue to claw and scratch and struggle to survive and to create wealth and to get the things you want.

When did I say you shouldn't try to change the hand you're dealt? Absolutely you should! If you don't like the status quo, turn it over! How do you confuse "No one owes you anything" with "you should not try to change anything"?

You said: ". My rules may suck, but they have the advantage of being reality."

Hence "reality sucks". I don't see that I misread that.

I agree you didn't say anywhere that you shouldn't try to change the status quo, but to be fair, there's often a lot of confusion between "that's how things are" and "that's how things should be".

I don't have the patience for a lengthy discussion on this now- apologies.

So what are you going to do then?

"if I was just going to get stuck in a corporate hell-hole"

Who exactly "stuck" you in that hole? If you're "at the top of the industry" then FIND SOMEPLACE ELSE if things are terrible.

Your boss is not a cruise director; just getting your paper and showing up is not a guarantee of happiness, any more than getting good grades in HS and then showing up at college was a automatic guarantee of academic success.

Depending where, that "cabin in the woods" doesn't come cheap. And the time and effort needed to make a decent fraction of what one does "coding" in jobs around cheap locations is going to take many years of hard work.

Not if you buy the land at a tax sale, built it yourself, and live with bare essentials.

Lets say there are two people who want a home, one person builds theirs and the other buys theirs via a loan.

Both are looking for a $200,000 price range. The one who is buying a prebuilt home is going for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage.

* Solar Panels - $1,000

* Building Materials - $10,000

* Land - $2,000

* Well Drilled On Property /w Electric Pump, Filter, and Tank - $10,000

* Backup Power Batteries - $1,000

* Composting Toilet, Sink, Kitchen Appliances (All top of the line) - $20,000 (You can save a LOT of money here by skimping on the stove and fridge)

* Nice HAM radio set - $1000

* Satellite internet hookup - $500

* Zoning, Permits, Safety inspections - $1,000

Total Approximate Cost: $46,500

This is with very heavy rounding upward. Granted, this home will be small, likely no basement, and two stories. But it will be very comfortable living if you build it yourself.

You will be able to maintain everything, no more rent, no more service fees, no more power/water bill.

So, just to give buying a home a better fighting chance, let's make this humble home a super humble home.

* Aerogel-Composed insilation: 40,000

* Super Efficient NAS/Server: 5,000

* Some more battery capacity: 5,000

* High efficiency HVAC system: 30,000

Added Cost: $80,000 Total Approximate Cost: $126,500

Now lets start going to where money can buy, but you just need a lot of patience.

* Why not launch a small satellite in geosynchronous orbit? $100,000

* More HAM equipment for tracking satellites. $5,000

* Underground bunker underneath your home. $60,000

Added Cost: $165,000 Total Approximate Cost: $291,500

Both where able to get into their homes within 2 months, both started out with what was probably going to need some work over time.

The home buyer paid $340,427 in total, along with extra taxes. The home builder got a $291,500 and did some really cool shit if you ask me.

Yes, I am exaggerating a little. But you get my point. You can always make your dreams come true.

Yeah, I know. He wants to be productive at work. What folly, eh?