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The smartest people in the workforce know this.
They aren't useless. They are perfectly capable of accomplishment, but know that taking on more responsibilities or assisting will make them miserable in the long run.
I've seen this with some of the highest ranking & paid engineers/PMs in big tech. I usually give the benefit of the doubt that everybody:
1. Has a sense of autonomy 2. Has a sense of competence 3. Has a sense of relatedness
If at anytime any of these are put into jeopardy, a wonderful tactic is to "be useless". There's many bullshit jobs out there that use you and your abilities for the bullshit job holder's personal gain. This is one of the best tactics to take a stand for yourself in corporate America.
I see a lot of these comments on Reddit and HN recently, but I have no idea where all of these people are working that doesn't do any sort of performance management. Outside of maybe the biggest, oldest tech companies that have so much profit that nothing matters, companies really don't enjoy burning cash on useless headcount. It's hard to tell if they're even actually practicing what they preach, or if it's just a sort of escapist fiction.
At every reasonably well-run company I've worked for, the "useless" people were steadily sifted out of the company, either through PIPs or routine layoffs.
That doesn't mean you had to monotonically increase your workload forever until you were crushed, but it did mean that management routinely did basic performance management and would look deeper into people or groups that weren't really doing anything (including maintenance, upkeep, and routine tasks that don't necessarily involve new features).
Another common technique is to periodically restructure and shuffle teams around. It may be easy for someone to wiggle into a position where they can be useless while fooling their manager, but it's much harder to maintain this state across multiple teams and even divisions.
I love CAR - Competence, Autonomy, Relatedness :D
These three I think are the pillars to a happy job!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory#Basi...
Yep. Definitely. Especially now, as the pandemic rages on, why should one take on extra responsibility when they're stressed out? You'll wind up with a bunch of extra meetings, presentations, and bullshit you are able to do, but don't want to. Why bother? Some days I can barely get out of bed.
Another tactic that works wonderfully is pacing yourself. For engineers, if you finish your "sprint goals" early, you run the risk getting assigned more. So don't do that. Use that free time. Your work still gets done on time and everyone's happy.
Another, maybe even more simple approach is: the art of saying no.
Corporate life today has this idea that we should always be doing more. Side hassles, taking on more. Putting in extra hours, etc.
There's beauty in knowing when enough is enough and stepping back and making time for yourself.
I'm having a hard time understanding your comment. Are you saying high performers will feign uselessness to get out of undesirable work or commitments? Or that being useless is a psychological defense mechanism for corporate survival? Something else?
There are people who easily interpret Taoism's themes such as goallessness and stories like these as idleness. I used to be one of those people. This might be in part due to the western translations of the Tao Te Ching.
Recently I found a page by Derek Ling[1], which shifted my perspective. I now think the point is closer to _balance_ than idleness. When it comes to goals, it means that you can have them... but don't expect to reach them. Goals give direction to your efforts. But in order to avoid suffering when life inadvertently gets in the way, hold them loosely.
The same goes for this story, I think. Not being useful is not going to get you anywhere, but being too useful isn't either.
An informative comparison of Tao Te Ching translations can be found here[2]. It shows how differently the same verse has been interpreted by different people.
[1] https://truetao.blogspot.com/2010/04/sage-has-no-goals.html [2] https://ttc.tasuki.org/
Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
I think I learned more about eastern philosophy by taking a taichi class than I ever did reading about it or listening to lectures. Taichi is not Taoist but good luck finding a good instructor who never mentions it. I've never met a group of martial artists so unanimous about the idea that there are some things you cannot learn from a book or videos. Both assert that there are some things you can know that you cannot put into words.
Western psychology is coming at this from the opposite direction: Intellectualizing won't fix all of your problems. But by god are we (especially CS folks) gonna die trying.
Thanks for https://ttc.tasuki.org/! I forked it and put the first 10 verses of Ursula K LeGuin's interpretation here as it was missing: https://thadk.net/sbs/#/display:Code:gff,sm,jhmd,jc,rh,uklg/...
The Stoics have a reserve clause that I like that they add to there goals...
i.e if the goal is 'I will do this' then you add 'if all goes well' to the end of it, avoiding any form of attachment, giving the sense of direction but understanding that there are things outside of your control and you might just not get lucky.
I think in this sense it's good to have goals to give you the direction when you do want to do some work, but not tie your entire being to it, so that you can also just enjoy life too and sometimes that might mean not hitting a goal but that is okay too.
The story isn’t about being a lazy mooch. It’s about realizing if you only view yourself in terms of your utility to others, you will be consumed for your usefulness.
Don’t laugh but there’s an excellent comic book version of Zhuangzi’s writings: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691008820/zh...
> if you only view yourself in terms of your utility to others, you will be consumed for your usefulness.
I have seen what you say firsthand in myself over the years. Concepts about treating yourself like a business and over emphasizing your "brand" are part of this. I'm not demonizing those concepts, just they can be overdone or overemphasized.
Some people, in some way, thrive relaxing in the shade of a tree. But for some, such idleness kills their soul.
I tend to enjoy challenging myself by attempting to overachieve. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't, but each time, lessons are learned. Although, I've asked myself why I bother when something doesn't work out. Then, this article was shared with me:
https://www.earlytorise.com/spend-more-time-with-this-destru...
I think it's better to be conscious of these different perspectives, and tread between them as necessary.
> Framed in terms of today, we should not reduce ourselves to tools that serve others, or the economy, the greater good, or even our future selves (for example, the urge for young workers to work very hard to secure their future career).
I'm trying not to be cynical but when I read this sort of advice I can't help but think "it's easy to say this, but we all need money, and life's costs tend to go up". It seems like a lot of the folks talking about living simply or with less anxiety, etc, are already wealthy (but of course that is selection bias).
How do you reconcile the need for money with the need for youth to not secure their careers?
right to a dignified life instead of need for money. guaranteed basic necessities: housing, healthcare, education, food. this is the platform of antiwork.
what future is a future defined by a career? that may be satisfying for some, but for many others, it's not what life's all about.
A related classic: In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell
Yeah, it was referenced in the article.
One of the great joys of my freshman-year humanities sequence was reading the Zhuangzi, and I still have the book we used on my shelf. I'm not an expert of the Chinese of that era, but I've heard the original is extremely vibrant and playful, so choosing the right translation is critical if you're reading the text for the first time.
Here's one of the more famous passages from the Zhuangzi as told in the translation we used (The Essential Chuang Tzu, by Sam Hamill and J. P. Seaton):
> Long ago, Chuang Chou dreamed he was a butterfly fluttering among trees, doing as he pleased, completely unaware of a Chuang Chou. A sudden awakening, and there, looking a little out of sorts, was Chuang Chou. Now, I don't know whether it is Chou who dreamed he was a butterfly, or whether a butterfly dreams he's Chuang Chou. But between Chuang Chou and the butterfly, we ought to be able to find some sort of distinction. This is what's known as Things Changing.
Reminded me of a song from Brazilian singer Raul Seixas "O conto do sábio chinês" (a tale about the wise Chinese)[0]. I stopped to actively search about the meaning / sources of many of his songs and let the dots connected naturally.
Today one more line has formed.
Thanks for picking such a striding passage. I may would have otherwise passed it over.
I'm really happy to see ZhuangZi show up on HN and a good reminder to go back and re-read his work from time to time.
I have a friend witch schizophrenia who’s never been a lot hold down a job. He always talks about the sense of shame he has for not contributing anything to society.
I think the way we bind our identity to our productivity can be super destructive for those of us who are like Zhuangzi’s knotty tree.
Our "Be Productive or Feel Bad" predisposition is a very powerful meme (in the original sense of the word) in that it is very good for Society at the expense of the individual.
... except that societies are made of individuals
Here's a phrase I like: "the world has no contract with you."
Relevant Reading;
* Master of the Three Ways: Reflections of a Chinese Sage on Living a Satisfying Life AKA The Unencumbered Spirit: Reflections of a Chinese Sage AKA The Roots of Wisdom: Saikontan (Vegetable Roots Discourse) by Hung Yung-Ming translated by William Scott Wilson
I suspect that there is a class of people who've long since mastered the art of being useless, and continue to enjoy the bounty that that brings. However they know this depends on the toil of others, and are reluctant to share that bounty. Hence the results focused 'meritocracy' that the rest of us have to put up with.
Respectfully, I spent a few years fascinated with Taoism and quite a bit of time studying it and reckon you probably get some wrong impressions from this article.
The challenge in learning from the Taoist writers is that almost no one can read their original works directly any more — the writing was so long ago that most modern-day Chinese people can't read it directly from Ancient Chinese without translating into modern first. The language has evolved.
That's before even getting into the challenge of learning in English or another language, since the works tend to have lots of metaphors and idioms and poetic language in them.
In my case, I had a really cool opportunity to go through over a dozen translations of the Taoteching with copies of the translation from ancient Chinese into modern Chinese and a translator's attempt at an English translation with a Chinese friend who is a scholar of linguistics. It was really fun and insightful.
That all said, I think Rosenthal's "The Tao Te Ching: An Introduction" is a wonderful starting place.
http://enlight.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-AN/an142304.pdf
Rosenthal takes the very terse, poetic, and metaphorical lines of Laozi and turns them into extended prose while keeping a lot of the aesthetics. Like so:
> THE TAO AND ITS NAME
> 1. Naming things enables us to differentiate between them, but names are words, and words easily give rise to confusion. They do not replace the thing or direct experience of the thing which they name, but only represent or describe it.
(And then it goes deeper into explaining on that point.)
At least in Rosenthal's case, his take is quite different than the professors who wrote this article:
> KNOWLEDGE OF 'THE TAO', AND EXPERIENCE OF THE TAO.
> There is a way in which we may conduct our lives without regrets, and in such a manner as assists in developing and realizing our individual potential, without harming others, or inhibiting the realization of their potential, and which is beneficial to a healthy society.
> Such a way of life may of course be conducted without a name, and without description, but in order that others may know of it, and so as to distinguish it from other ways in which life may be conducted, we give it a name, and use words to describe it.
And then, critically —
> 2. LETTING GO OF OPPOSITES.
> It is the nature of the ordinary person, the person who is not yet at one with the Tao, to compare the manifestations of the natural qualities possessed by things. Such a person tries to learn of such qualities by distinguishing between their manifestations, and so learns only of their comparative manifestations.
> So it is that the ordinary person might consider one thing beautiful when compared with another which he considers to be ugly; one thing skillfully made compared with another which he considers badly made. He knows of what he has as a result of knowing what he does not have, and of that which he considers easy through that which he considers difficult. He considers one thing long by comparing it with another thing which he considers short; one thing high and another low. He knows of noise through silence and of silence through noise, and learns of that which leads through that which follows.
> When such comparisons are made by a sage, that is a person who is in harmony with the Tao, that person is aware of making a judgement, and that judgements are relative to the person who makes them, and to the situation in which they are made, as much as they are relative to that which is judged.
The interaction and fusion of Taoist and various other Chinese thought with Buddhism, attributed typically to Boddhidharma traveling from India to China, became the foundation of Chan Buddhism in China and later Zen Buddhism in Japan.
I reckon most scholars and practitioners from the tradition wouldn't accept the useful/useless distinction as correct or as "Follow[ing] the Daoist way" - like, some nice ideas in the article, but both a false dichotomy and unfortunate dualism there.
As far as i understand, the dao de ching is in fact more of a confucian text. Its original focus was 'how to rule'. Albeit a great intro to thought of that time and place. It may be my perverse nature, but religions that actively try and hide their knowledge make me think they have something worth researching (as opposed to ones that knock on the door and try to convert me!). Its hard to find good stuff online. Here is a rare "interview with a daoist":
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZG_E1BDb_XFmvq-dj6ZK_vFWYJz...
The other component that seems uniquely daoist is the fundamental goal of long life/immortality (as opposed to a buddhist nirvana) hence the emphasis on starting with the body and the overlap with chinese internal arts taichi, hsing i and bagua.
Around the 15th c there was a fundamental shift in physical training theory to the principles of the yi jin jing ("changing the muscles into the quality of tendons theory")
This is a sophisticated and fundamentally different approach to the body than most western training systems.
Here's a rare clear explanation: https://youtu.be/ZuA484T1CHM
I admit that after reading, the "useless vs useful" framing comes off a bit like a false or maybe just unnecessary dichotomy. Maybe there's more to the idea than what was presented though.
It reminded me of the film _About A Boy_ which tackles a really similar set of themes and also avoids this "be useful" trap by getting at something more like the "subjective value of heroism" or in other words the perceived value of helpful interpersonal connection--to the subject. In any case the theme is IMO naturally attractive to humans and is a key part of cultural narratives. The Uncle Ben story from Spider-Man--it's great to be a hero but what are the real dilemmas there, _and_ what do we make of them. Etc.
Heading in this direction naturally confounds the idea of social boundaries a bit, which IMO is a really good conversation to be having these days, since boundary-setting, having shown so much therapeutic value, is a crucial concept to reconcile with a more boundary-opening approach.
Not to criticize too harshly, but if the only tool we are considering is this useful/useless filter, the outcomes might be unnecessarily not-so-great, for both others and ourselves.
So who exactly was John Galt?
I'm noticing a sad trend recently.
* This article is one instance.
* Within the past 24 hours there was a Hacker News submission "Self-improvement is embracing your messy, imperfect life" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29928873 )
* Combine this with the sudden appearance of subreddit "Antiwork".
Are people depressed or anxious because of covid, or what's wrong?
Trying to be a better person every day, in combination with the wonder of creativity and building, is what made the internet interesting in the early days. Who are these people who are turning communities into sad opposites of these values?
You are seeing this a lot everywhere.
I think people are just burnt out and maybe lockdowns/covid has made them realise this more as they are unable to do the things that used to put some much time into.
Life cannot and should not be just about doing work, being productive, attaining goals, being useful etc. I think the problem is with a standard job and a normal adult life, we have little time for anything else and life just seems like an endless stream of things we need to do in order to be worthwhile or to reach any level of competency.
Like with most things though, there is a balance. It's good to work on yourself, make improvements, obtain goals etc, it's not so good if your entire life just becomes this and balance is exceptionally hard with the lack of time and energy that exists compared to what is required to do all of this.
What's wrong is wealth inequality. It all rolls downhill from that. Minimum wage is not enough to make ends meet and rent + food is through the roof. That's what is wrong. Imagine being scheduled to work 39 hours on purpose to avoid being full-time and getting benefits. That's just one problem in a laundry list of problems.
An entire generation was sold a dream and now people are waking up.
For me it's the sense that the world is rapidly heading out of control, with big companies and governments everywhere performing a mass stitch-up, and if you haven't already made it you're probably not going to. And they're driven by greed alone, and those trying to build a better world are losing. And it's got a lot worse since covid started.
That subreddit has existed for years though? Accepting your life for what it is goes back millennia in some religions, so that is not a new trend either. Greek and Roman philosophy is absolutely filled with people stating that striving for political or monetary gain is a fools' errand, so that is not something new either.
Perhaps this is merely a case of the Baader Meinhoff phenomenon and you suddenly notice it more than earlier?
I don't know about the rest of the world, but I know that these last two years have been rough for me. It's not something I feel every day, but when I pause and look back, I see that I'm in a worse shape than two years ago. I still derive most of my pleasure from helping people close to me, this hasn't changed. But I have a hard time finding pride, pleasure or something like that in my day to day work. Maybe it's the disconnect between me and the users (I work for a relatively large SAAS company), maybe it's me losing empathy for strangers due to isolation, I don't know.
Physically isolated people ruminate.
This is also selection bias. Yesterday there was immense thread about quitting jobs- the majority of people were leaving for other jobs, not to retire.
I never felt that the Internet in the 90's was about turning yourself into a meat robot. Tech businesses want that from their staff and had been slowly working toward it, but the last 2 years feel like that slow creep was accelerated and a lot of people have had enough.
For a long time we watched businesses get leaner, trying to use frameworks and automation so that the same staff could manage 2x, 5x 10x, 100x the amount of resources. The pandemic saw hiring freezes, wage freezes, from which businesses are still recovering. Market analysis is showing that most non-hospitality sectors have recovered though, which infers that folks are really under the gun to deliver more than ever before.
"Trying to be a better person every day, in combination with the wonder of creativity and building, is what made the internet interesting in the early days. Who are these people who are turning communities into sad opposites of these values?"
I'd challenge the assertion that productivity hacking and the self-improvement hustle are what made the internet interesting in the early days. Creativity and exploration, absolutely!
If your flow is converting your time into productivity for a company, for no increase in shared compensation for the result of that productivity, then that's tots cool for you.
I think many are tired of it and you're seeing them say "no."
Its sad that people don't want to spend the measly 80 they get on the planet making widgets for someone else to get rich? Ok.
I noticed that too, and my initial reaction was similar to yours.
But then I realized there's nothing wrong with "Self-improvement is embracing your messy, imperfect life". The paradox is that letting go of the fantasies we have of ourselves can actually help us move closer to a better version of who we'd like to be.
For example, today I woke up and thought "I should just accept the fact the I'll likely waste many hours on YouTube, Twitter, podcasts, etc." The funny thing, it already put me at ease that if the day ends up being like this, it won't totally surprise me, and perhaps I won't judge myself too harshly for it.
Which in turn could change the direction of my day, now that I feel a bit more relaxed and less uptight.
We'll see.
Although I don't agree with the article, I can understand how someone could start hating work and the urge to be always productive. Our economy promotes competitiveness, which of course creates progress and brought us where we are now, but I think covid worked as catalyst for all the pressure the workers were feeling because of this. And when you are so distressed by the system it's way easier to believe that you don't have to work as hard to be happy instead of starting to push harder
> sad trend recently
> Who are these people who are turning communities into sad opposites of these values?
it's not about sad versus happy, but "doing" versus "being". And it's not a multiple choice test. Just you cannot ignore the other polarity.
There seems to definitely be some astroturfing going on with respect to anti-work, pro-union sentiment, and I agree it seems to have found Hackernews recently, from my perspective it looks like a sudden influx.
That said, I agree with at least the headline in your second point - making any kind of positive change requires accepting the current state of affairs as it is first. I've found that the phases in my life where I feel content and not constantly needing to 'change' were actually those times where I was able to most consolidate the gains I was struggling towards the rest of the time. I think it might have something to do with not being in crisis management mode that allows the mind to relax into new configurations. Of course, YMMV.
You should also read "Bullshit Jobs" book. The very purposelessness of this system and the exploitation killed every ounce of creativity from many individuals.
Antiwork is not fueled by lazy people - there's nothing wrong with that subreddit or this movement in general.
Life just got dull and boring and the routine of being a purposeful pushed people to their limits because at the same time, they see a pandemic and the planet's destruction via climate change.
And we support to support this?
Trying to be a better person every day, wonder of creativity and building got destroyed by modern capitalism.
I would offer the explanation that it's the calendar. It's January. New year's rejuvenation could be taking hold of more of us than it normally does in other months.
I think it's the end of the business (or hype) cycle around web 2.0 + COVID making one rethink the value proposition of trading time for money (work). Which is why you have the web 3.0 business (or hype) cycle + metaverse + whatever trying to get pushed to motivate engineers again. Once in a lifetime opportunity on the horizon don't miss it! Or even better, you can create it yourself!
I think there's a cost to constant striving, and it's insidious.