We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31439009.

I personally find it incredibly rewarding to help other people improve.

More than that one guy we all had to work with one time and wished we didn't? The one who bigs himself up over how much he knows, insists on making himself a constant obstacle to gratify his fragile ego, and that's why nobody actually wants to work with him?

Yeah, I don't know why it should come as a surprise that hiring managers don't especially like that guy. No one else does either.

Did you know it's possible to be a team player without having to worry about other peoples' career development? Sounds more like the manager is being an obstacle if the direct reports have to do that kind of legwork.

I was more thinking about the kind of guys I've known who've liked throwing around nonsense like "simps". But if it hasn't yet occurred to you that helping other people develop their careers is also a great way to develop your own, I don't suppose I'm all that likely to disabuse you of the oversight.

In my experience, it doesn't help at all. Move to SV and you'll understand.

I did my big tech tour of duty, and most of my later years were all about helping people. Even now, as a retiree, I help people.

I looked at it early on, right when I was starting out. That was a little before the dotcom crash, enough that only the really smart people were starting to think it was coming. Everything there looked amazing, and everyone I knew there was miserable every day, and I couldn't spend all my time in the Castro. So I took a powder and ended up in Baltimore.

I wasn't sure I'd made the right call till a few years later, when I heard one of the guys I'd stayed with then had killed himself. Sure, so maybe I missed out on a shot at some lottery tickets. So I'll never have fuck-you money, so what? Neither will almost everyone else - we call them "lottery tickets" for a reason, and that's before we get to the shitshow the next five years are going to be.

With the time I didn't waste chasing after them, I've managed to build a hell of a good life for myself, work included. I sit every day in an office full of windows and surrounded by trees, and I'm even still able to enjoy the birdsong once in a while. I don't have to look very hard for good jobs by now; mostly these days they come and find me. I don't want for a thing in this world that money can buy. And it's been a very long time since I had to work with anyone I couldn't find a way to like.

So yeah, the choices I've made have been more than worth what they cost me. Can you say the same?

Who's gratifying his ego now?

Could you please not break the site guidelines like this?

In fact, if I'm not mistaken, every comment you've posted over the last 2 years has broken the site guidelines, and that's well over half your posts to HN. Obviously we would normally ban such an account. However, your posts before that were good—so I'd much rather not ban you.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

There isn't a nice way to say this. You are acting like an an asshole...

You even have a good point. I'm sure many SV companies are filled with politics and good deeds aren't often rewarded.

But being an asshole doesn't make you more right. It just makes you an asshole.

Okay. I wish you joy of it, I suppose. You seem like you could use some.

Could you also please stop breaking the site guidelines, regardless of how annoying another commenter is or you feel they are?

You unfortunately have a long history of doing this and we've had to ask you many times not to. That's not cool.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24472907 (Sept 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22709407 (March 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22709404 (March 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21522018 (Nov 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15044234 (Aug 2017)