Frankly, most orgs will not reward pro-activity, in fact you can even be punished for it, since if a problem is not yet known by stakeholders then why are you solving it.

There have been times in my career where I spotted issues from other teams on preview or staging servers and helped to fix it. Then I later got blamed (or dragged into the subject) when a similar issue occured on live which I had no association with.

It's better to just sit back and do the minimum, but do it well and professionally. Most importantly, don't make yourself too available:

> Don't respond immediately to messages and emails.

> Don't propose solutions, that you will have to own (at least partly).

> Don't answer questions outside of your responsibility space - even if you know the answer. Instead, direct people to others who should be answering those questions.

I have found a little bit of pro-activity on things you like to do anyway is a good way to turn your job into the job you actually want to do rather than the one you got hired for. I started my current job doing wetlab biology, but I currently do coding and grant writing. I like wetlab, but its exciting to transition into a different area I have wanted to get into for years.

To be clear though, I am still often re-active. I generally won't push hard on things I am not enthusiastic about. It helps to have a friendly and permissive boss.

I think this is the most impactful factor in achieving pro-activity at a level you are comfortable with. The company might not reward you directly, but being able to change your own job description, find ways you can contribute better, etc. are all more motivating than financial incentives.

It’s easy to get burned out doing too much without a boss that’ll recognize your efforts and encourage you to do less from time to time though. A little bit of love and care, however superficial, goes a long way here.

I agree with doing the bare minimum at an expected quality if you are working in an inflexible system, but getting too comfortable there might leave you doing that until retirement.

I used to like (still do) building tools that help with my job. Little command line tools or browser extensions that just make things easier. As soon as management discovered these tools (because i shared them with other devs) it became a full time responsibility for me to maintain them - I had to port them from my personal Github onto the companies.

I also now get feature requests from global teams to add updates to these tools. Now, I don't have a problem with this - I enjoy working on these tools but the issue is they are added on top of my actual work (which is a lot). In hindsight i regretted sharing these tools and adding more responsibility to myself. Mostly because I didn't get a meaningful pay rise or promotion to reflect my additional contribution or lets say expanded job description.

But again, all depends on where you work and with whom.

I moved from development to management a few years ago and as a manager I have to say my proactive developers are far more valuable to me. I recognise their value and I give them more interesting work and more financial rewards as a result. I also do everything I can to be sure that they're happy and not overworked because I'd hate to lose any of them.

[1] - favoritism is not acceptable in this case as well.

As much as I recognize this can be good advice, this comment makes me sad.

It's like "start underperforming" is the answer given to bad management problems.

Which I agree actually makes sense in a lot of companies (if pro-active efforts are not already being recognized, then it's hard to change the culture).

I also think that a lot of comments here are directed toward financial success, but many people are actually looking for meaningful ways to contribute. People for which the "re-active" approach might not be a solution.

What would be the solution for those people? How unlikely is it to actually switch to a company which recognizes employees willing to be more involved?

Some of the best devs I've worked with are those who just like to work. They are also up for any problem and rarely complain even if (imo) they have too much on their plate. It really just comes down to your personality and needs at that stage of your life.

For myself, I sort of came to the conclusion that I won't encounter meaningful financial success in my day job. I would have to work another 20-30 years to accomplish (financially) what I used to expect I would have done already in my late 20s. So, it's more about trying to maintain some kind enjoyment in my work and also to protect my mental/physical health.

Many cases, the stakeholders don't have an appreciation for what you're suggesting or even the consideration to balance your workload:

"Oh, thanks for bringing the problem to my attention, let me just add that to your massive pile of work and make it a P1 like everything else - and this problem space is also now your responsibility forever because you're (in my mind) the expert on it"

- unfortunately, there are many managers that operate this way. Just clueless.

That's why i always advocate a cautious, cynical, self preserving approach but again depends on the env and your relationships.

It does matter how it's conveyed though - it can be interpreted as "not my problem" in certain cultures where people wear too many hats.

One of my workplaces has its engineers overwhelmed with too many responsibilities, like expecting front-end engineers to be wearing the DevOps hat any time a fire comes up related to their own staging environment.

I have found it's a matter of finding comfort in being assertive (and well aware) of the best and worst skills I have to offer in a realistic sense. If I'm particularly weak at a skill and I have little time to build it or refer to deep heady documentation, I ask a colleague who is capable to join me in looking, and they often find the problem within a few minutes, resulting in far less time wasted for all.

I find that if I propose anything at all ever I immediately become the responsible party for it and forced to own that no matter what it was. Which has lead to me not wanting to propose anything anymore. If I expose that we have a problem with X, I am then the one tasked with solving it no matter how much is already on my plate. So now I try not to see things that aren't going to immediately put us all out of a job.

Balance being proactive with being responsive.

I feel you would of received a better response if you used the word Responsive not Reactive in this context and replaced "Don't" with Balance.

Being responsive to things that happen on a daily basis acknowledges that the company we are employed in is messy and stuff happens that you may need to urgently attend to. Yet it doesn't mean that you still can't achieve things that make your place of employment a better place for others.

Sometimes you want to work on something that you see it can be useful for you in the foreseeable future, voluntarily, without anyone asking(and you don't have to tell anyone) Said work occasionally benefit you, or even save your ass along the line sometimes.

but too much of it do you no good, that's for sure. And don't announce it to the world because it'll bring you all miserable things. :p

Highly reactive employees and companies end up being left in the dark and given short notice on everything... leading to more stress

A balance between pro-active and re-active is ideal.

Well I would say that Wally is a true pragmatist, whilst Dilbert is an eternal optimist - despite the reality of his actions never meeting his expectations. Wally has learnt his lessons unlike Dilbert.

It's kind of the cliche of work smart not hard. Easier said then done but the sentiment being to elevate your status whilst simultaneously reducing your actual deliverables (or delegating them elsewhere) - isn't that ultimately the goal of career progression. Is there anyone that does less actual "work" than a CEO.

New Job will pay me double and as such will help me achieve my goals.

Old Company said if I stayed I could achieve a 25% increase in TC if I continued to work on "impactful projects" for 2 years or so. But those projects are the ones I hated there (otherwise a great company)

I've seen first hand when developers leave how all their prideful work becomes a burden to be distributed and shared, and while on notice myself I've seen how all my best and most impactful ideas and projects has been deprioritised. I expect some of it to be lost forever when I go. Instead of milking me for info on my most useful works (libraries, scripts, etc), they have me reassigning meaningless JIRA tickets.

For existing employees, this is rather high, but as you did, you should discount this. To get that boost with your current employer, you need to (i) be irreplaceable for a critical service; or (ii) show proof of external offers.

HR/Finance will sets wages at low-mid market so that the 10 other high performing/underpaid employees in your situation will stay and only you will leave. HR's fine with that bet, and people with initiative like you are the victors.

People on here are always talking about changing jobs and getting a huge salary increase, but these numbers don't make sense unless you were tremendously underpaid for many years.

I spent most of my twenties in college and grad school. Then worked in the Midwest in my early thirties making $100k-$130k.

I moved to Silicon Valley and took a job for $150k. That was a downgrade considering the much higher cost of living, but it seemed like a good stepping stone at the time. I stayed at that company for way too long working towards a promotion that was dangled in front of me but never came, and finally switched to FANG for a 2X increase in total comp.

And many people at my age in the company make about 2X+ of what I make now. The housing prices here are so crazy that I’m ready to throw in the towel on SV, even if it means a pay cut. My QOL was highest outside of the Bay Area working for less.

All that clever software that increased the company's revenue by 10%? A large part of those additional earnings ended up in some landlord's pocket.

We're all just working around the clock so that landlords can increase their rents and sip cocktails.

It’s like the peasants who work all day and have nothing when people from blue blood are having generations living of their backs in castles.

Having an elite is fine, it’s even better when class movement is feasible but when you have a large class of people doing nothing or rewarded drastically differently for the same input, things are not fine.

A friend is thinking about to open a restaurant in a very attractive location, but I said, if you don't own the property the restaurant is in, the land lord will just increase rent until the any profit is barely OK anyways. There is no money in that.

Then, contract around it with a capped escalation factor? And doesn't this apply to any <insert business> renting space?

Of course the restaurant business is probably hit-and-miss and risky, and owning the premises might give you more stability, at least if you don't have a large amount of debt. It sounds to me like your stance might be quite cynical in the sense that almost nobody would try starting a restaurant if they considered owning their premises a necessity.

On a $300k income, even with one earner, you can comfortably afford a $1m+ home (of which there are plenty of single family homes available in many parts of the bay area), and while yes the COL for things like groceries/eating out is higher than in Austin TX, it's not high enough to seriously claim that it's not liveable

I work on the Peninsula. 90% of 3+ bedroom houses currently on the market here cost over $1.75M. Those below that, in the bottom 10%, are what you’d expect to find in the bottom 10%. There are many great places to live where I wouldn’t be forced to choose between that or spending a couple hours a day in traffic. Less money and higher quality of life.

Every time I've changed jobs to date I've had multiple job offers. 3 years ago I had 3 offers from 3 different companies. This time around I had the same - 3 offers, 3 companies. Just in the last 5 years my salary has increased 6 fold.

My basic philosophy with respect to compensation is to take home enough to maintain the lifestyle you want + 20% extra to save and invest.

I guess I’ve been incredibly lucky and probably am in a nice west coast dream bubble, but my bubble vision means I definitely don’t buy that am a rare unicorn. I don’t think I would feel happy about working with peers who had a cynical outlook and we’re not invested in the shared dream.

I am replying only because this was the top comment - I really hope I reach at least one person who’s on the fence about committing to a goal bigger than personal!

I don't think it's cynical at all. Quite the opposite: I think it's how functional teams work effectively.

Of course you can get rich from a FAANG job. But most of us don't work at FAANG. And there are plenty of slackers even at FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21961560 "Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?"

My thesis here is that this person wasn't doing anything wrong. They don't need to feel bad about providing value to their employer by only "patching things together from an internal codebase" or "not deeply understanding every aspect of what they do." The vast majority of the world operates this way, and I'm not sure FAANG is much of an exception.

I was addressing the heretical point you mentioned - ignore employer’s goals.

May be I missed an exaggeration there.

The trick is to make it a mental shift. Here's a concrete example: Suppose you were coordinating with some large bank that takes a very long time to do anything. Should you feel bad that most of your day is spent waiting for them? Should you proactively go out of your way to find extra work for yourself?

I don't think so. You waiting for Big Bank is the business goal. But most people will tell their manager "I have nothing to do; please find me more work" (in so many words).

There's no reason to stress yourself out like that. Some would say you'd be doing the bare minimum. I would say that you'd be fulfilling your business obligations, and that you'd be acting professionally.

Most people won't have such direct opportunities to minimize their workload. But they often maximize their own workload for no reason, until their managers practically force them to take time off. (Or they don't, which is worse.)

I know only a lucky few who got there by being there at the right time and coasting out. Most had to work it. I can really feel how it is easier to focus on those lucky ones (or the ones who missed out), but I prefer to still focus on the middle ones with right values for whom it worked out.

Now this all seems reasonably true. Most important thing they missed to tell was joining industry/company at time of explosive growth in sector. If one is out with graduate degree in EEE field in late eighties or early nineties and joined a growing tech firm they undoubtedly ended up doing very well even if not an SVP or higher. To their credit was not to totally screw up things and not some great leadership lessons.

This story is not going to repeat for engineer joining in 2020s. There are no great green field projects coming, or customer negotiations happening for a low/mid-level engineers. Most of them will be put to churn out and integrate thousand little micro services and feel grateful that they still have job and health insurance.

Reflecting on myself who joined in mid 2000s all interesting work is now past and even after gaining lot of experience I ended being a JIRA slave and daily agile standup chump today. I can't imagine what an extra mile would be in this environment. I might, however, get fired if I tell a lot of work they are trying to efficiently should not be done at all in first place.

Without more details, any points I make / advice I give will just sound like platitudes. But I do hope you turn it around. The job market is very hot right now fwiw if you want a fresh start.

Each one of those represent very big dreams for me. Dynamo powers practically half the internet. AR experiences are the future of computing interfaces (IMO).

That’s just my experience. I also know of a million projects with equal scope getting built out even today.

It comes down to this: do you want to be judged by your best day or your worst? I personally don’t focus on the media narrative that target a sliver of badness in these places. I prefer to work within the system either advancing the goodness or trying to rethink the issues affecting folks - sometimes luckily both. I believe these companies are too big to be brushed off in a single stroke.

And "caring about your employer's" goals in this day and age while you're working at FB/Google/Amazon (I'm on the fence about Apple, don't have much of an opinion about Netflix) actually makes you look like a sociopath in my eyes. Again, imo being a cynic beats being a sociopath.

Google and Amazon are very large corporations. Someone who works in GCP or AWS is benefiting rest of us.

Another way of seeing this is acknowledging that anyone who owns S&P 500 technically owns these companies. So if you’re making money in stock market, it’s happening due to the very same people you’re condemning. In this day and age it’s very hard to draw a line for “us vs. them”.

Would you want to go to a hospital where the “it’s not my job” attitude is prevalent? Would you hire a contractor to build a house with that attitude? I tend to think the better organizations don’t think in terms of what are peoples “jobs” but what problems actually need solved

I understand what you’re saying about a problem solving mindset, but that is not the issue in burnout. The issue is unrealistic volumes and deadlines that encroach too far into the rest of your life.

Personal boundaries exist in medicine, in fact they are essential to surviving a career in medicine. There will always be more sick, injured, and dying people. The hospital has the mission to save them all if it can. An individual doctor or nurse has to understand that they personally cannot. Or they will burn out very fast.

Overworked tech companies could benefit from some perspective from the medical field. Is someone going to die if your feature misses its ship date? Probably not. People die in ERs every day, but guess what: ER staff still work a fixed set of hours, take vacations, etc.

Hospitals on the other hand, you're just downright wrong about that. Not only in general do hospital staff work 12 hour shifts including being on-call and having to work abrupt hours, especially over the past year their hours have been absolutely ridiculous. This includes nurses and MDs.

Feel free to review some studies on this issue, it's not hard to find nor is it some kind of secret. Basic Google search pops this up within the first few results:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200130302_The_Worki...

That study shows that in fact, nurses work their regularly scheduled shift less than 50% of the time, and 81% of their shifts involve overtime even though only 7% of it is scheduled in advance.

Here is a study looking at work hours among surgeons and physicians:

https://forums.ucdavis.edu/local_resources/docs/Freischlag-S...

It paints a very different picture from the idea that medical staff work very strict and well regulated hours. Their working hours are very chaotic and extreme.

You completely missed my point, which is that it is ridiculous for tech companies to compare themselves to a profession that faces literally life and death situations. Comparing to “the past year” (i.e. a historic global pandemic) just highlights the absurdity.

Your OKRs are not COVID patients!

Healthcare was easily the most toxic environment I ever worked in as well. The CTO literally was happy to quote that he treated it like a sweatshop because thats how you got the most value out of your human resources.

We literally had contractors fall asleep at the wheel and die driving between sites during marathon crunches where people got written up for leaving to eat / sleep.

Engineers in Silicon Valley don’t clock in for a 12 hour shift. They are put on salary and any discussion of schedule is discouraged in favor of talking about “hustle” and “team players.”[1]

My point is not “health care workers don’t work hard.” My point is that they are set up with schedules and structure, which tech companies avoid… and then try to point at health care workers or “contractors” to justify the chaos.

Also I bet your wife is not working so hard just so the hospital can meet its financial goals. If she is like most nurses she is motivated by patient care and probably hates the administration, who are usually seen as bean counters who (if anything) impede care. Again, compare to tech companies who build myths around founders and corporate missions to obscure the purely financial stakes of their work.

[1] I know that not all companies operate this way, not all managers do this, not all engineers experience this. But there is obviously some sort of shared experience among a lot of people that the blog post at the top of the main thread is tapping into.

You're making numerous points and your later ones are good ones. But the working conditions for front line workers, including but not limited to their scheduling, hours, pay, etc, are all terrible.

I think you have a narrowly defined scope of “tech”. What about the software that controls the Da Vinci robot in the operating room? Do you want someone to say “eh, code quality checks aren’t my job?” Or the person writing flight software for aircraft? Or the safety critical software for a power plant?

The point being, yes, perspective is important but it’s a difference of degree not of kind.

There’s a time delay that separates these things. That completely changes your approach.

A better healthcare example may have been, would you be comfortable with people changing the building automation software that controls operating room air exchange rates or oxygen delivery systems?

But again, this isn’t really about software devs so it should extend beyond just SWE roles. It’s about positional duties, regardless if you write code or deliver meds to patients.

All of these systems run into schedule and cost pressures that often causes people to feel overburdened. I don't actually think they are fundamentally different.

Not in EU countries that do not allow the medical profession to opt out of the Working Time Directive.

See"Are the opt-outs related to long hours?" in https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/...

Roles are not nearly as defined as you suggest. Take construction: there will always be conflicts between sub-domains. If there’s a clash between disciplines there’s nothing more frustrating than two sub-contractors who point to each other as the one who must “own” the problem to fix it. Same thing in healthcare. A surgeon who won’t do a task because they believe it’s beneath them is not benefiting the patient.

I don’t think most missions are capable of having clearly defined roles like you suggest. There will always be jobs that fall in the gray area and that’s why almost every job I’ve had included a “and other duties as assigned.”

I agree that perspective is important, but that’s talking about prioritization not shirking duties. I also understand burn out is a real risk, but I don’t think the right mitigation is taking a "that's not my job" perspective; I'd much rather see someone work with their supervisor to say, "here's where that falls in my current priorities". "It's not my job" tends to results in un-productive finger pointing or venting as opposed to actually aligning one's work with what's important to the shared mission.

I want to work with problem solvers not people who identify with strictly defined roles.

There is a viable different approach, but the employers do not like it. Let’s stop pretending.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/12/nurses-hospi...

Why British hospitals have a fraction of that cost (1/10th)? Oh yes, it is because they decided that it is not a moneymaking business.

Overworked employees should not blame themselves for not being able to keep up with unreasonable hours. They should blame the real responsible for their misery. Their employer.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/08061...

Hospital profits are part of the costs, but doctors and nurses here are also paid more than elsewhere. Doctors in the US are paid multiple times as much as doctors in the UK, and supply restriction is a big part of why that is possible.

There are also administrative costs, drug costs, and insurance overheads to deal with.

This doesn't factor in all the time spent dealing with inscrutable billing practices for fully insured people having routine medical procedures, or the tens of thousands who are bankrupted every year by the same practices. We recently took our daughter to the ER, which is supposed to be a $400 copay. We now have three separate bills from that visit totaling $1100, and I have no idea how many hours it will take to sort out. The same billing department sent us a $380 invoice six months after her birth because (in their description) they forgot she was there.

Just out of curiosity, what’s your proposed solution?

There's been decades of very smart people working on this problem and its still a problem largely because of its complexity. If there was a simple solution, I have a feeling it would have been implemented already.

The irony of your post that starts with "its not that complicated" ends with an anecdote about just how complicated the system is.

It is not complicated.

https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.ht...

President Obama acknowledged this much when he proposed the Affordable Care Act. He said that he’d prefer a single payer system like other countries use, but that it’s not feasible in the US because we can’t just completely uproot the current system without a ton of unintended consequences.

“Just do it like other countries” isn’t a real plan.

So given the current state of the healthcare system, how do you propose it gets modified to mirror those other countries? Do you have a good handle on how those proposed steps (like drastic reductions in R&D spending) will affect the overall system?

When people naively think there are simple solutions to extremely complex systems, it reminds me of the quote “For every problem there is a solution that is simple, straightforward, and wrong.”

"The facts are undeniable. Citizens of developed countries with variations of single-payer systems — Britain, Germany, France, etc. — pay roughly half what Americans pay for health coverage and have better results to show for it (longer life spans, lower infant mortality).

They accomplish this not through some exotic, foreign magic but by exploiting the economic benefits of large insurance pools that represent the entire population. This allows comprehensive coverage to be offered at affordable rates because everyone shares in the risks and rewards of the system.

Let’s be real clear: This isn’t socialism. This isn’t communism. It’s simple risk management — the same economic principle that underlies all forms of insurance."[1]

The bottom line is that nearly a third of America (over 100 million people) are already on Medicare or Medicaid. That is enough data to forecast any outcome there is. Billing, coding, everything is already at a federal standard. Hospitals, doctors, and clinics love Medicare/Medicaid because they know what they are going to be paid and they are paid. Anyone who claims that it can't work here is either unaware of these facts, or purposefully pretending they don't exist.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-obama...

I'm not arguing whether single payer is a good idea. I'm not arguing that it's tantamount to communism. I'm not arguing that there are many politicians (Obama, included) who are in favor of it. I'm arguing about the feasibility of it in light of naive statements.

It's easy for a politician to endorse a policy, particularly a populist one like Medicare for All. It's entirely different to craft a policy, within the current system, that pragmatically implements it.

My claim is that Obama endorsed the idea because he both thought it was good policy and populist idea that worked in the favor of his politics. But that's entirely different from crafting a pragmatic policy that actually can get passed into law.

I think he's been on the record stating that he didn't like the ACA, but the goal was to pass something, even if it's broken, to try to force it into policy so that it would eventually be fixed into something better. So with so much support, why can't the U.S. implement it? That's central to my point.

"President Obama was clear that – while he would have preferred single payer if we were starting from a clean slate – it would be too disruptive given our current system."[1]

Point being, in many ways it is against the current system. So while you haven't directly addressed my questions, I get the impression you think "Just expand Medicare" is the answer. My point is that it's a bit naive because it really doesn't address the systemic effects that have kept single payer policy from already being implemented.

Medicare/Medicaid is on track to be the largest proportion of the entitlement budget, before expanding it and it doesn't count the Dept. of Veterans Affairs budget (I don't think healthcare is a bad way to spend the budget btw). I know many people will say the Defense budget can be cut to pay for it. But how do you plan on getting that passed when nearly every senator wants to protect the DoD jobs in their state? I'm not even against that idea, I'm just not seeing you advocate a real strategy to implement it. The U.S. is perpetually running against the debt ceiling and your proposal will exacerbate that. This is just the beginning; how do you address the medical insurance industry, particularly when they are heavily lobbying Congress?

If the answer was "Just expand Medicare", it probably would have been implemented already but the fact that it's not should tell you something: maybe it's not that easy. So my question is not whether or not you think it's a good idea, my question is how do you get from the current state to your goal of a single payer system?

[1]https://washingtonmonthly.com/2015/09/13/obama-the-negotiato...

I have directly addressed your question with the fact that already a third of Americans are in a single payer system, and most of the world has a single payer or hybrid system.[1] It's naive to think we don't know how to do it, and that we can't learn something from other nations when we expand it.

If you don't think we're capable of achieving the same results as a bloc of nations that has twice our population and many more cultural differences between them, why? Low confidence in America as a whole? Math and science fundamentally change in different time zones? Nobody in America knows how to read German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Belgian, or English?

> If the answer was "Just expand Medicare", it probably would have been implemented already but the fact that it's not should tell you something: maybe it's not that easy.

There's an even simpler explanation: S.1129 was not passed.[2]

> So my question is not whether or not you think it's a good idea, my question is how do you get from the current state to your goal of a single payer system?

No, your question is, "How can I keep the conversation going pretending that I'll accept an answer?" So let's nip that, and you can answer the following question: what evidence would convince you it is feasible?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_univers...

[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/112...

I mean, it’s “obviously” just so easy. Do you have better answers than President Obama? Or President Clinton before him? Or Bob Dole? Or John McCain? Yet with all their knowledge and connections, they couldn’t get it accomplished. Note that in nearly 20 years, Medicare for All bills only made it out of committee once. Why do you think that is?

Perhaps because it’s an enormously complex problem with lots of stakeholders and lots of competing interests. One that doesn’t get fixed by just copying a different model that operates outside of the U.S. constraints.

You still never addressed why those bills don’t pass. It’s like your answer is the trivial (and useless) one that “it’s because not enough people voted for it.”

Saying “we already cover 100MM” doesn’t explain how it can be more than tripled. I didn’t claim it can’t be done, I’m asking why none of the proposals have worked out so far. I’ve never claimed the US “doesn’t know how”, I’m saying they haven’t shown political will to implement it. I’m asking for a pragmatic answer that shows why it hasn’t worked despite previous efforts.

I’m asking for your opinion why that’s the case that nothings has been passed in the last 30 years despite the desire among many, many people to do so. I’ve already outlined a few examples that you just blow past for the naively simple answer. That’s not helpful nor does it demonstrate anything beyond a simplistic understanding of the problem.

I have no problem accepting an answer that actually shows an understanding of the complexity of the problem, even if I don’t agree. I’ll help you: I think the very first problem needs to campaign finance reform. Because without that, any proposed bill that goes against the monied interest is dead in the water. But that’s just the first of many things that has to happen before the bills you’re talking about have any chance.

Short answer: a bill that passes.

Again, I’m not arguing whether it’s technically feasible. I’m saying the US has not yet shown its politically feasible. I think you’re conflating my position on these.

That latter part is a much tougher and complex problem but every bit a necessary part of the solution. So take just a very small subset of that problem: how do you plan on mitigating the insurance industry’s influence in preventing the passage of a bill that goes against their interests?

Once you figure that out, you’ll have dozens of other political concerns to solve before you ever get to consider implementing the technical solution.

Other countries benefit largely from the US healthcare R&D machine. The US funds over 40% of the world medical R&D. While other countries put price controls on their medicine, this arrangement won’t work with the current system if the US does the same. To a certain extent, US high prices partly subsidized the rest of the world.

When people complain of being over burdened, more often than not it means the process they worked within had a lot of waste. Invariably, the proposed solution was always “we need more people”. You can sometimes hide process waste problems with inventory. The number of times hiring people made for a long term solution is exactly zero in my experience, and this includes process improvement work within healthcare.

“Just hire more people” tends to be a myopic view that underscores a misunderstanding of the systemic effects at work.

Like the sibling comment said, if you are overworking then the process is broken.

The thing that I added, is that maybe the process remains broken because the employer finds it profitable.

But as regards 'overworking', while that is certainly true for many US residents in particular, I think the majority of people would be overworked on a surgeon's schedule. Yet reducing it significantly would probably be much worse for patients and decried by surgeons. My viewpoint is mostly informed by the British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh's opinion on working hours.

At least at my employer, it doesn't seem like shirkers and work-to-rule folks are rewarded. Maybe there are some people who do work like this and are still getting rewarded by giving off the appearance of being team players, but I guess you'd have to be a pretty careful actor to accomplish that. You'd also need to be able to manipulate your colleagues into doing the work you aren't, but still liking you enough to review you well during 360 reviews.

That being said, there is a grain of truth in what the op was saying as well. It's not healthy to care too much about your employer's goals, because they are necessarily in tension with yours to a certain degree. Work should be compartmentalized to the degree appropriate to how much you enjoy it and the material rewards you're getting from it, and this balance is going to be specific to each individual person.

I am much more a product of the systems than I wanted to accept. That’s the most mature perspective I have had to date - and has led to more empathy than I thought I was capable of.

It’s a lot like how you dislike the people who remind you of your bad qualities.

At the same time, it seems like your yes-person friend is both willingly over-working themselves and complaining that they are overworked. So I'll agree that it doesn't make much sense - unless they truly are aiming for an early retirement.

What other reason is there for a career? If there was no financial incentive for most, I highly doubt anybody would waste the time learning how to be a lawyer, programmer, or doctor. People don't just go into a career hoping to make a menial wage and work 40-60 hours a week.

And even now, I don’t understand why the response to “company will overwork me” is act with bad faith. Just take care of yourself, stop working before the long term costs to yourself your family and your life get too high. That P1 will still be there later. If you have worked for more than two years and not recognized them saying this is crucial is just how they talk, you aren’t as clever as you think. The job market for “can make computer programs” essentially guarantees you cannot be exploited without your consent. Just find you limits and protect them. It will work out. But you don’t need to not offer helpful advice or sketch out solutions for people. That sounds like you are burning down the fun parts of the job to avoid overwork. But the easier way to avoid overwork is to work less.

The world is cynical but not that depressing dude

Greed is what compels people to do the difficult things in life. I highly doubt anybody would put up with what you do for med school if you're prospects of earnings was similar to that of a business analyst. Of which can get that job with an Associates Degree or less.

"highly doubt anybody would put up with what you do for med school if you're prospects of earnings was similar to that of a business analyst." - I'm asserting that people do put up with that in many places around the world, where doctors' earnings actually are quite similar to that of a business analyst. And not because they're somehow different, homo sapiens think/work/behave pretty much the same everywhere. The only practical difference that comes to mind is that they don't go into immense debt during med school like in USA.

Where am I saying this ? I'm totally ok with "rich" doctors. I totally want the doctor to have its full mind caring about "me" and not how he'll have to pay for his debts.

I'm just saying that it's easy for doctors not to care about money. Not that it's bad or that they are overpaid.

I almost feel guilty I get paid to play with computers all day.

Don't make huge sacrifices unless you have a realistic expectation of abnormally huge returns.

A way to make a living doing what you love. I loved programming as a child/teenager. I wasn't paid then.

I think from the responses you've had to your comment you've now seen that you're in a minority here.

The easiest way is to join companies that are obviously doing well and will likely IPO in 2-3 years. This is still a lottery, but one with much higher odds and a lower potential payout. You can make $600k-1m every few years in equity alone by hopping around these companies.

If you ever wondered why so many people have ~1-2 years of experience at each company on their resume, this is often why. They join, get a decent chunk of their equity grant (in RSUs), then go to another company to get more equity. Some of these companies will do well, others will do poorly. You end up distributing your risk and ensuring you'll get a decent payout.

I would say that if you want to hit a lotto ticket, this is your best route. Increased variance is your friend when you are at the downside and it’s all uphill.

But if you want to get rich, and you are the average HN reader, it’s better to bet on the typical case.

(That said, if you have a list of companies that meet your current criteria, I would love to know! I know a lot of faang engineers who are bored and would love a shot at millions.)

I thought that RSUs were limited to public companies (since they are essentially grants of stock, not options).

Part of why I wanted to be a contractor was precisely because I didn’t want to play the startup lottery. But RSUs would give an alternative.

GP said "anymore", so I assume he was talking about newer startups.

If you're in your 20s or 30s, 2M is probably not "retire tomorrow" money, but it would probably let you retire very early if you managed it and made smart investments with it. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think many ICs are getting even 50k from startup equity, nevermind 2M.

20M is "retire tomorrow" money for sure. And definitely workers do not get that kind of money from startup equity.

Most of what I hear now is companies giving fake "shares" that are ostensibly tied to the value of the company but are not actually shares and do not represent any ownership. If they do give shares it's not enough to pay out big, and they get diluted repeatedly over time.

Yep. It's a thing unfortunately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_stock

It really shouldn't be. At the end of the day, the vast majority of workers are being compensated to do/build something they otherwise wouldn't of their own volition. Your mental health ought never be lower in priority than the ambitions of your senior management, or the ROI of the stakeholders.

More importantly, if it helps you deliver what you agree to deliver on time with more consistency, people quickly learn to appreciate that.

It's interesting to audit what you do v. your ACTUAL job definition, especially when it comes to blurred responsibilities.

Tell your friend this realistic boss saying:

> If you work hard, put in extra hours, and push to be the best, then "I" get a new Ferrari next year!

This part is so true. I worked with people who were the "conscience" of the project I worked on - they started it, knew everything about it, worked late nights to fix issues etc. Then they left and...the project kept running...everyone managed.

For me, it is better to ride it. Since I am not going to change my approach to work, I will continue to be an expensive contractor until I can live from my savings and pursue my side projects.

This isn't an objection to "not caring about employer's goals", far from it, it's clearly an issue with management teething problems as they try to expand a relatively small company and don't know how to do it. But I've found that caring a little bit about the goals, trying to see what they're aiming for and having that inside view of why we aren't getting there, allows me to bridge that gap, offer better advice to management and help the entire team have a less stress filled day, at the expense of some of my own peace of mind.

It'd be easy for me to say "well that's managements issue" but I can't ignore that management issues trickle down to the rest of us, which is much more obvious in smaller companies.

A lot of things will fall through the cracks if people don't pick up.

Professionals are not hourly workers, you're not there to do A->B, you're there to deal with the complexity, which means picking up pieces.

That said - you definitely do not have to worry about stuff. A healthy sense of detachment is actually kind of good for both you and your employer.

Your job is a civic responsibility, it's frankly moral to do a 'good job' - but that doesn't mean 'over striving', it doesn't mean 'being taken advantage of' and it doesn't mean having to worry about the bigger picture. That's definitely not your job.

I think a lot of people could be just as productive if they figured out the emotional strain part.

One little trick is to say to yourself 'I Don't Care' - but then go in the office, and put one foot in front of the other, and just get whatever is in front of you done. It's weirdly liberating and can be productive.

Like 'corporate mindfulness' - be present in the thing that you're trying to do - and not caught up in the giant hill of politics, bits and pieces, it's just noise.

Do your job well, go home, and forget about it.

If you make a middle class salary, underspend your income by at least 10%, max out your 401k and IRA, invest in stocks, and start doing this in your 20s, yes, the odds are pretty good you will.

You're more correct than you think! https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

The TLDR of the above is:

1. There is usually only a single promotion-role on offer.

2. That promotion will go to the best performing employee (whatever metric is used).

3. If you're not the best performing employee, then do only the bare minimum to avoid being fired.

4. Doing the bare minimum to avoid being fired frees up the employee to concentrate energy and efforts towards jumping the corporate ladder (new project, etc).

Note that #4 is an "up or out" proposition: if the employee fails to gain power/influence in the company, then that energy can still be used to land a higher-level position at a different corp using the "new project" effort as an indicator to other companies that the employee has more power/influence than they actually possess.

Even if there's a single promotion per team per year (and there are certainly companies where promotions are not limited like that), that means that, in a team of 4 people, 50% will be promoted in 2 years. So if you like the job and plan to stay for a few years, I fail to see how this tactics is even remotely close to optimal.

Yes. The link goes into details.

> Even if there's a single promotion per team per year (and there are certainly companies where promotions are not limited like that), that means that, in a team of 4 people, 50% will be promoted in 2 years. So if you like the job and plan to stay for a few years, I fail to see how this tactics is even remotely close to optimal.

It's an analysis based on The Office; maybe read it and critique the 20k word write-up (in the link) instead of the 4-point summary.

Honestly I think it’s a wonderful reflection of humans’ innate empathy and drive to help each other, the Stanford Prison Experiment shown to be junk science over and over and over.

We humans are unfortunately exploited by humanoid entities (corporations) who turn humans’ one truly-limited resource (attention) into something that’s also non-human. Everybody has heard the idiom that “time = money”, but have you ever stopped to think how fucked up it sounds when you apply the transitive property of equality to get “money = time”?

Employers most of the time only care about the management board goals, employee of the year can quickly turn into a jobless employee, given the way company roadmaps work in practice.

If you are really feeling as you do, I think it's time to reassess your employment and potentially your life.

For instance, I think many startups are different to this, and not only because they are small. More meaning: the genuine opportunity to enact change, I think is the biggest differentiator, alongside better incentives and stock options that in some cases lead to life-changing financial outcomes. There is always risk with this, and it's a higher risk than a larger company, but that's just the mechanics of life, economics, and society.

I work incredibly long hours, so i'm always 'busy', but for the most part I love what I do, like a passion project. This is because I'm transfixed by cause and effect. It's an amazing thing that I don't think our brains are wired to appreciate by default. It takes discovering this and then confirming it, illustrating that just one person can have disproportionate impact in the world. It seems the vast majority of us limit ourselves or feel a sense of imposter syndrome in our own skin.

The more one realises this and manages to instrument some change, the more positive reinforcement one gets, until one can look back at varying chunks of time in one's life to see the impact that was made. This gives you strong sense of meaning to your life, motivating you to fill your time with high impact activities that have the capacity to genuinely change people's lives, alongside your own. This could includes making time for your family and so on: because in many cases this is an important high impact activity.

After realising this and doing it, the feeling you get with a positive outcome, even if you're still in the middle of doing whatever it is, is better than any drug i've taken.

Steve Jobs did an interview in which he more eloquently expresses this ethos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw

I think a lot of entrepreneurs feel this, but it isn't just limited to starting companies. There are so many ways each of us can make an impact.

Perhaps they have company shares?

I'd honestly be replace "software engineers" with "all jobs"; your post is highly relevant to most fields.

The only reward for a job well done is more work.

The quicker you realize that, the happier you'll be.

Sad. But on the bright side, those that excel at what they do are going to be disproportionately rewarded. I love this aspect of society and certain political ideologies want to destroy this.

I can’t believe I’m reading this on HN, a place that used to be full of optimism and accepting grand challenges, looking upto leaders and doing hard things others shy away from.

I know this is a taboo to compare with Reddit, but lately I have to pinch myself and ask is this really HN!?

If you don't own a significant (5%+) chunk in a company, don't do a single minute of non-paid overwork. Do the bare minimum to justify not being fired (and this is key, if they don't fire you for that, it means they accept that what they pay you is being returned to them in work, so why give them more output for the same money?). Save your energy and time and focus on you, your family, your projects. Companies don't care for you, so why the fuck care for them. Get in. Put the minimum that the company accepts for they pay and get the fuck out. Anything else is just bad choice that are have more positives for the companies and downsides for yourself

Next, they are upset when MailChimp sells and they don't get their options (apparently believing that receiving options is their sacred right protected by God, Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human rights).

Saying yes to everything some random PM wants from you is of course not the way. But neither is "lying flat". Hard work is in many ways its own reward.

After decades in the industry, those that have put in the time and effort far outshine their coasting peers. There are benefits for your career should you choose to put in the effort and ascend.

There’s a difference, and school (and parents) don’t teach us the distinction.

It's certainly easier than doing the work. That's the entire premise of your argument.

Many people — perhaps most — are inclined to be afraid of saying no.

You also can’t say no to homework assignments. So we learn the behavior early in life.

I share OP's sentiment, and I can flat out say that I am truly fine that "[you] see [me]". The thing is, I don't want to work with you or for you, or for people who don't want to hire me. Jobs are a two-way street and I'm going to pick a place to work for that's a good fit for me time after time. And you know what? I've always busted my ass and I continue to be hired, given raises, etc. - but I will always push back for my own sanity whenever I feel necessary.

>Hard work is in many ways its own reward.

There's a difference between "hard work" and "too much work", and the latter looks different to each and every one of us.

>After decades in the industry, those that have put in the time and effort far outshine their coasting peers. There are benefits for your career should you choose to put in the effort and ascend.

There sure are! And just as there are people like you who want to continue that career ascent, there are those of us who are also completely content with prioritizing other things in our lives beyond our careers, while still putting in a solid day's work every day. I don't care if people outshine me and ascend faster than I do - for me, my career is just something that allows me to provide for my family and my hobbies, but it will never be "who I am". And you know what? I'm happy with my choices and where I'm at. Go on, buddy, and get that promotion! I'll still be over here doing my thing at my pace, not bothered by the fact that I might be standing in your dust.

You would really do well to understand that everyone wants something different out of life and are content to take the paths they want, even if they're not yours. :)

But maybe you work hard, do more. What's the financial return on that, for a typical employee over your hypothetical "coasting employee"? 50%? 20%? Less?

Is it worth it? The stress, the extra hours, the opportunity costs?