Before you get a tenured position, you're basically stuck in the publish-or-perish rat race and when you eventually get a tenure, you now have an enormous responsibility towards the younger non-tenured reseachers of your department, who will eventually lose their job if the department isn't “productive” enough, so unless you're a complete insensitive assh*le, you'll still be under pressure.
Some people love academia. My PhD mentor is as happy as a pig in mud in his academic role. He only has to teach every other semester, and his course/lecture plans are solidified such that all he has to do is recite his notes beside slides and answer questions. He has to schlep to the classroom two days out of the week in these semesters, but his classes are back-to-back so that even those days are spent mostly where he likes. All of the rest of his time is spent happily “doing research” in a domain in which he’s a world expert. Publishing is a specialized sausage-production manufacturing domain, but if you enjoy the subject matter like he does (and I do) it can be a low-effort byproduct of effectively playing with code and ideas.
At my research university, even associate professors (not sure about the details of what’s tenure track) don’t have to teach that much. There are actually “teaching professors” here who’s sole responsibility is teaching without research pressure, and they still only teach two classes per semester (admittedly, those classes might have 300 students).
I was deeply inspired by these lifestyles, but it turns out not working for a boss doesn’t fit my personality. I’m too much in need for social validation. Work and suffering are a religion where I live. Programming makes me mostly anxious and I need to be surrounded by colleagues to get comforted. Consumerism is also a religion. I have a hard time being surrounded by people who are able to indulge in consumption while I’m not.
I can relate to the vicariously living through reading part of your message, I love coming across people who share their alternative lifestyle!
The fact that the most successful ideas&products weren't born in such places might cast a shadow on the attractiveness of this perspective. I think that without a challenege the mind is at risk of atrophy.
You need to be able to let the subconcious do its thing, for which it needs peace, quiet and freedom from stress. Difficult to do the step back otherwise.
The stress returns, when things then get traction, so i guess the truth is - alternation between stress free "creative" periods and stressy "realization" periods?
No idea what the optimal sinus is.
This idea that x person worked a little harder than the rest and therefore he is successful is laughable. There is a range, say 5% or 15% or even 50% ‘worked more than the rest’, ok so what? Do you think you are within 5% or 50% of working x hours more per day before you become the next tech billionaire? You are not. It’s not that easy.
Oh and then there are the struggling artists of the renaissance which all came from the illiterate peasantry struggling to feed themselves.
And the media common folk of today, who come up because they struggle therefore they act, and everyone we see in TV was a nobody before their first big role and just worked really hard right?
Or the government families which somehow if you are the son of a governor your chance of being in government and a high ranking official far outweighs any other factor.
Or if your parents are rich chances of you being rich far outweigh anything else…
But no, alas I’ll let everyone know we gotta push just a little harder and we’ll all be rich.
Struggle breeds stress, which intern breeds health issues. If we didn’t struggle the world would not end, innovation would not stop, WALL-E is just a cartoon.
Einstein was able to always study and Sergei Brin was able to work like a maniac precisely because they were able to remove the restrictions of paid technical labour that drains your brain before you even get to the interesting stuff.
Programming is no different. Other developers code in their free time. If your low energy maybe you need to fix that part?
Struggle implies unsuccessful efforts. These men were not bound to busy work, crying for help. They had comfortable settings and could focus on what mattered to them. OP wants just that.
Arguing that "get out of comfort zone, grind, struggle" is the way to advance society is disingenuous at best.
A full time phycisist already tends to work a lot of overtime hours to get anything done, while already doing that as their main fulltime job activity, so with 100% certainty Einstein grinded like a madman in afterwork hours to do his actual research. This is also why he quit that patent office job as soon as he was able to.
Not to criticize your approach. genuine 0.1x programmers allow 10x (aka 1x) programmers to exist and get a lot of money doing a normal job.
You should not conflate focus and effort with physical busy work. Grind means literally to wear down physically. Theoretical physicists don't 'grind' by any stretch of the imagination.
People should absolutely be allowed to be comfortable, free of immediate concerns with acquiring resources to survive. As OP puts it, 'freed from societies expectations of sweat, tears and busy work'
Arguing against this right is drinking the elite's cool aid. If you don't profit from exploiting the working class, you shouldn't see a problem with setting them free.
> I think that without a challenege the mind is at risk of atrophy.
Not everyone needs external challenge of "afford rent". Some people are entirely fine with picking their own goal and striving for it, without their survival at stake.
It was quite satisfying and made me realize that I should be doing this for a living. I quit that company for way better pay as a software developer. I don't know if I'll be able to find such a job again, but I really enjoyed it.
I never hid the scripts. The automation was out in the open and everybody in the team was making use of them.
I quit because I didn't receive pay raise and wouldn't have in that position(EDIT: They wanted to promote me to team lead(people management), but it is something I'm not interested in). Plus with the skills I've gained I managed to get a better paying job.
It's nice to do good work and not pollute it with the usual growth strategies, to tell advertisers to sod off, and to obsess over details of your choosing.
This completely changed how I work. If it's sunny outside, I'll forget about work and go ride my bike. But I'll also take a day during my vacation to implement an idea because it's just can't wait.
I don't know how other people work, but I found my perfect way of working. I've never been so productive before.
It didn't happen because people already do it for free, so why overpay?
Imagine the software you can write, if freed from societies expectations of sweat, tears and busy work. Not to be rich, just to be technical excellent, productive and at peace.
I wonder why this has not yet happened with open source. If a sufficient enough part of the public uses your software, the state offers you a maintainer role. Nothing big, but enough to life on and do work.