>but it's that getting something cool done is rewarding in its own right. Why don't they want that feeling… ?

Cant speak for everyone, but in my case, Ive done the grind to get something cool done in my younger days. Ive designed, programmed and tested a differential braking system for a sizeable unmanned aircraft technology demonstrator, from hardware to drive the master cylinders, to the software with control of stepper motors following dynamic control laws, and then sat in a control room at a US Air Force base and watched the traces as the real thing was landing and purely steering with the brakes after touchdown (to test nose wheel actuator failure).

At my current company, when I got hired, I specifically said upfront that my goal is just to become a subject matter expert, and to have a more consistent and chill workload. I did what I was supposed to, nothing more, but I did it correctly, and put in extra hours when crunchtime before deadline came. I got promoted to senior after 4 years, and now Im pretty at very minimal hours of actual work per week.

But, because Ive been on the same team for so long, can answer questions about the entire tech stack, I can debug things, I am happy to sit in meeting and talk about high level things when managers don't want to, so my value is still fairly high. I no longer care to really put in hours to build something cool, instead I am focusing on things I didn't have time to do when I was younger and grinding, like travel and fitness.

To me, your current situation is ideal. I've been here for 5 years and I'm ready to transition slowly to something a bit more hands-off since I have (sole) familiarity with nearly half of our apps since I helped build them while many of the others have since left the company, but we're severely understaffed as is and so my responsibilities are growing responsibilities, and they're growing fast and throwing on new things all the time. I love the work but I don't like being one of the ones holding it all together. I'm exactly the OP now -- minimal work, just getting by.

I could be completely wrong on this, but I think there's a bit of positive punishment at work.

If you do something quickly, and it is of high quality, it will probably get noticed, and your reward in addition to a sense of satisfaction, is more work. The satisfaction high won't override the punishment of more work, although salary will. However, salaried employees don't get paid more to do more work (bonus notwithstanding.)

Knowing that, it's not a far jump to realize that you can minimize your work but keep your salary, so long as your work output doesn't dip enough that you get fired.

Yeah this was a huge revelation to me. Spend months of long days to complete a record milestone for the company with hundreds of people involved…get a couple celebration dinners and it’s immediately into meetings to scope out the next months long, record milestone. Corporations will continuously push you, they never run out of work to do, and the better their documentation the more disposable you are (although they’ll never realize it). If you’re in the mood, fine. But it’s not a lack of motivation if you’re not…it’s being realistic and having self worth. Milestones and the share price and the late night meetings are a fun game if you have an interest and spare time, not something intrinsically great and motivating.

I've encountered this so many times myself, and I still get burned on it, but mostly because sometimes the work you're doing is so technically interesting that the "reward" is the work itself. Then, when you finish, you somehow expect everyone to celebrate and take it easy but then they shove more work at you.

You couple that with maybe one day your project gets cancelled, and not due to the quality of the work itself but for other business reasons, and all of a sudden you just don't care anymore. This is something that just happened to me recently and I find it incredibly hard to get motivated to work hard on anything. I just can't "logic" my way into doing more than the bare minimum.

Not an engineer but definitely seen and experienced that. I want to exceed expectations, just not to the point where I'm carrying the cognitive load equivalent of 10 mediocre people on the regular just because I've proven that I can on occasion do it

Indeed, I made the mistake of working too hard early on in my tenure at my last job, and was quickly rewarded with more responsibility than I could handle, leading to burnout. This time around I'm trying to be more tactical in my rate of exertion.

But is keeping a chair warm really how one wants to spend the precious few years one has alive?

Of course it can be, especially if one can work remotely or can do other things they are interested in. I mean, for sure it sounds bad (parasite!), but it does not feel right at all to me this (very US- or US-driven) attitude that one's contribution to the world is through work or family.

Let's say I am the daughter of rich parents and I inherit a fortune. It happens, am I right? For some (intuitively "right") reason, it is not considered as bad as getting "free" money from a corporation, which has intrinsically zero control over spending at the individual level. Paraphrasing some Blade Runner here, "I have seen people paid...". And while the fortune is inherited just for sheer luck (I don't think anyone has chosen their parents), most of the time those cushy positions are coming after years or decades of hard study and hard work. How many of those inheriting good money said, "I don't want it, I have no worked for it". Some, for sure. But the vast majority pocket the money, maybe do some charity or some work, and carry on.

Sure, one feeling the need to work effectively can change jobs, we all can do it. But there are many other opportunities to have a good time and good impact on the world outside of a corporate job. If the money is coming in and who's distributing the money is ok, who am I to say no to good fortune?

I think coasting ain't as bad as many people think. That's because a) you are doing your job good enough, so you are not a burden on your team and b) you have a better chance to stay healthy than if you're overworking. Also, you're probably a better team player because of your healthy/peaceful state of mind. I think if you can find the line between overwork (burnout) and boredom (boreout) then you're good (even if it means only working 20h instead of 40) and your employer can be satisfied for a long time. But really, we must not discount healthiness. Health is the most important part of being a successful cog in the machine.

I would rather be kind of poor but having a good time (like other people paying for having a good time) than have a very good salary and have miserable days. Maybe accept some temporary misery if this means some personal development that I like.

But I can fully understand a decision not to change to a much less paying alternative as it decreases the quality of life for an other part of every day. Considering the frightening fact that when you move away there is probably a chance that you cannot come back that easily. This may present a fear of trying out the alternatives.

Of course not. I bought a heating pad and now the chair keeps me warm.

No, but keeping your family housed and fed usually is.

If you've got kids to look after, and a mortgage to pay, it's very likely you're stuck doing whatever your doing, whether you think the work is worthwhile or not.

Most parents won't put their kids in the poorhouse because they hate their job.

Sometimes that feeling has been beaten out of us by various means.

I had a ton of ideas in many a job, rarely if ever I could get into conditions where I could even start working on them - usually the interesting stuff happened in secret side projects, off the company time.

I think this is a big one, there comes a certain point where the bureaucracy simply squeezes the ambition and desire out of you. I hit that at some points, I just didn't want to work anymore excelling at my job made no difference to me or anyone else because even if I stood out and did excellently it wouldn't matter because I had to go to other teams or get other approvals to actually acomplish something.

I found myself spending time on leetcode, or learning emacs because I could justify those as improving my abilities. To quote Office Space "I have 4 different bosses, my only motivation is to not get hassled, that and fear of losing my job. But you know what Bob, that gets someone to work just hard enough to not get fired."

As my old boss would say: "Why would I push that rock up that hill".

It's both remarkable and incredible saddening how relevant Office Space still is.

I want to be ambitious and enjoy my work, but most of it is REST or similar level work. Those rare times I have an interesting project I end up stuck waiting for information or eventually code review (for days).

Nowadays I just want out. I'll get that feeling doing my own thing with no blockers but time and myself. I'm not at all convinced this is generally possible at any company (based on what I've heard from friends and read on HN and elsewhere). There's always something in the way.

I used to feel the same. The work I was doing at the last startup was just REST level work. Work at current team at Amazon was fun at first with new serverless technologies, but I ramped up in a month and it's now data pipelines and full stack development and integrations that is better than REST level work but still getting boring. The engineers are all much better and processes are solid, but I wanted out.

Now, I'm joining a systems/kernel team working right above hardware that drives EC2 servers.

Believe me, lots of good work is out there. Join a large company and look into internally transferring into an interesting role. I heard back from DynamoDB, Lambda, and so many other cool teams while I was considering transferring out of the current team. There's loads of interesting work at the bigger companies.

There is good work at some startups too, I'm sure, but it's easier to try different teams at a FAANG than switch between small companies.

I'm curious to know how different the work feels on your new systems/kernel team than when you were working on the full stack REST stuff. Of course, the subject matter is different, but does the work feel different? Like more rigorous, interesting, meaningful, clever, etc? Does it challenge you more? Do you feel like you're more able to explore your full potential on the new team?

I'm quite curious how different it is.

I've also seen such behavior occur because of burnout/depression. Sometimes the person themselves is unhappy and embarrassed about it too.

"Embarrassed because it's hard to understand how they couldn't be more ambitious at work" If everyone was aggressive at work, there are still only a limited number of promotions available. Why cram at work for something that reality dictates is unobtainable for most.

"it's not that companies are that great at rewarding getting things done (sometimes they are…), but it's that getting something cool done is rewarding in its own right. Why don't they want that feeling… ?"

So they finish the task and then what? Move on to the next task and then the next until retirement. There is no real purpose to it, its just a treadmill.

This guy gets it. Those might be the smart employees, the ones getting a better deal.

I make plenty of money, I don't need any "promotions." I leave the glorious cool stuff to the kids who are still on the treadmill (and don't mind going down some AWS rabbit shit hole).

Getting promoted is not going to make me happy. It is likely to make my life worse. Management often doesn't know what to do with me. I am productive with relevant skills, offer no drama (except for scoffing at yearly evals), and I don't need any carrots, nor do I want their job.

The only thing they can offer me is a good team and meaningful work--which is usually outside of their grasp.

Exactly I've reached the point where I make good money, and to make an additional sum of money that would change my life I would have to try and land a sr. role at a faang style company and study like madness to pass the interview and then do actual work for a few years. Not interested I would rather just keep earning what I make, work 4 hours a day and then try and find the motivation to spend the other 4 hours on myself and then call it a day. No interest in the additional stress that comes with promotion or going after a substantial amount of money.

> Embarrassed because it's hard to understand how they couldn't be more ambitious at work.

Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I'm poopin' on company time.

Most companies don't meaningfully incentivize ambition. At most companies, even tech companies, if you save them a million dollars you'll be lucky to get a used Red Lobster gift card. If companies want ambition they should incentivize it rather than only rewarding the corporate ladder climbing sociopaths.

I worked on a project that saved 8mil and got a pat on the back. I basically paid for my self for the next few years to do nothing.

Also for a lot of companies millions isn't a lot when profits,expenses,revenue are near billions. I don't really worry about cost savings anymore, the numbers are so huge all around, individual impact is always almost a rounding error.

My first project at GE was working with an engineer who was trying to classify the degradation rate on a bunch of used engine parts to free up warehouse space--saving the company $20MM.

She told me none of it matters (after working on it for years) when management had just written off $16B for Baker Hughes (a lemon of a company they purchased that had to be sold off for pennies). It was a prelude to a string of even more meaningless work.

They may well get that feeling outside of work. Maybe they like making music but couldn't make a living as a musician. Maybe they're writing a novel. Whatever it is. Most of the things most people in the world enjoy doing are not the things they are made to do for their job.

> but it's that getting something cool done is rewarding in its own right. Why don't they want that feeling… ?

I mean it just... depends? I've been on both sides of this. Sometimes getting something cool done is super rewarding even without getting a raise, bonus or promotion. But I'm at the point now where if someone is going to tell me what to do, and force me to be "at work" for half of my waking hours, the compensation bit far outweighs the "this was cool to work on" factor for me.

Don't get me wrong; when it comes to personal projects, I find plenty of reward there. But for those I get to decide exactly what I do, how it gets done, and when it gets done.

"getting something cool done is rewarding in its own right. Why don't they want that feeling… ?"

I'm getting something cool done on some stuff I actually care about, like my gym gains. You can see other examples in this thread: family, their own coding project, etc.

They used to be ambitious and they kept getting their hand smacked. They already did the things you think are "cool" a few times. Nothing left but slogging through bureaucratic busy work.

What’s the point of building something cool just so your CEO can have all the credit & profits while you’re stuck with a shitty market rate salary and some stock options if you’re lucky?

Potentially leverage, if you can swing it.