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Daily discussion thread 2025-01-30
6d • timdaub.eth •

gm, watched the FOMC meeting and thought it was pretty boring: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/FOMC-meeting-January-29-2025?index=0x679a90723c50b7bb5f89b2d0135b72c57bb8bf1bbeea0325c7091aed2f4c6324929bc050 What did others think?
gm, haven't watched the meeting, but was a bit surprised they haven't changed the rates. What was the reason? For me, I was yesterday thinking about work. In the last few years a lot has been said about 'quiet quitting', so people who show up to work, but don't actually put enough effort. It's seen as something negative, and I agree with this judgement. But I lately started talking with my friends about it, it turned out that many of them work like 1-3h per day, and still get raises and promotions. My friend's gf literally plays League of Legends most of the time, and she's considered one of the best employees in her department. Another friend gets on one meeting per day, sends a few e-mails and spends the rest of the time pursuing his hobbies. He said he felt guilty about it at first, but his employer is very happy with the results, so he decided to continue his practice. I won't even open the subject of SWE at big corps, because some of my friends there can sit idly for 2 weeks to get permissions to even start a project. Of course it doesn't work like that with everyone. I had a friend at Investment Banking who had months where he worked from 10am till midnight. I have friends who run companies, who work their assess off. I have some friends in consulting who often work weekends. But the catch is that the friends from the 'hard working' group don't make that much more than the friends from the 'just chilling' group. Yeah, they might make like 30-100% more, but they work like 200-600% more. So why is that? One of my friends said that it could be because of the company's position and business model. So if a company doesn't need to fight for new users/customers because they come in easily, and the business is set up in a way that it produces a lot of profit, the companies don't care about squeezing out all drops of employees' productivity. And it's true that the majority of these 'just chilling' examples come from corporations, whereas most 'hard working' people work for smaller businesses who are still trying to build a strong position. Also, I personally prefer to work for a smaller company where I can learn a lot because it's just 10X more interesting than sitting on some boring meetings, and having to deal with Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Wondering what Kiwis think about it?
Yeah, aware of this. The thing is, you only get to have one life with only limited time. I just like doing what I like to do and to get really good at it. It gives me joy and purpose every day. So I became an artist and started my own business. No one to account my time to but myself. I have never earned a lot of money, it just comes and goes, I have enough for what I want to do and I’m in total peace with it. But I can really mostly do whatever I feel like doing. And this exactly where the value is. Value is not just some numbers on an account you can get stuff for. Personal freedom, free time, health, spending your time with people you like, it can’t be bought. That might be very obvious, but why are not more people pursuing it? To quote from Thomas Mann’s ‘Der Zauberberg’ (one of my fav books): "Zum Leben gibt es zwei Wege: Der eine ist der gewöhnliche, direkte und brave. Der andere ist schlimm, er führt über den Tod, und das ist der geniale Weg!"
> But the catch is that the friends from the 'hard working' group don't make that much more than the friends from the 'just chilling' group. Yeah, they might make like 30-100% more, but they work like 200-600% more. Wait a bit. I see the same as you're seeing but this won't be like this forever. Obviously it'll matter later if you prefered to play a game or work your ass off and learn new stuff. I'm now a master of coding and building stuff. Not many are on my level and this took a lot of practice and dedication. Others are, of course, larping to have skills as mine but that'll tire them out eventually and they'll regress to who they truly are.
Yes, well said. I can fully agree.
> I see the same as you're seeing but this won't be like this forever. Obviously it'll matter later if you prefered to play a game or work your ass off and learn new stuff. I'm now a master of coding and building stuff. Agree, probably it's just the matter of when do you take a snapshot. I have this one friend who's a few years older than most of the people I mentioned, he worked his ass off since 2014, and went deep into data engineering. He now works about 10h a day, but makes 5-10X more than most of these people, and is on the trajectory for 10-20X. And for him, it's not that he's so much about money, actually he spends a small part of his salary. But instead of playing League of Legends he plays "being a great data engineer", and he enjoys learning his craft and reaching new ranks in this domain.
I think what I find surprising here is that I've been taught that "If you don't work your ass off, you won't have a nice, comfortable life". And that was def true for my parents who went into the job market in a post communist Poland, and had to grind to have a good job. But maybe this 'just chillin' group of friends being able to have a pretty nice life financially is a symptom of Poland becoming richer. And I imagine this is how Western European countries got slower and less hungry. When you can chill and still make enough to travel around the world and have a nice urban lifestyle, why would you grind? I guess an antidote to that is a strong culture promoting excellence, ambition and entrepreneurship. Maybe that's why the US is still hungry?
Most people, if they get the chance, will choose convenience, you see that on every level. That is why it is hard to get people into new stuff (also web3/ crypto) - even if it’s rationally better for you. Real change is hard and people don’t like it. Rather people like to give into their fantasies and imagination and just believe some attractive proposition even if it’s far from actual realities. If people get more wealth and nothing is clearly at stake most are likely to choose convenience. That might be what is happening in Western countries. For US, they are already a step further and gladly giving into their fantasies. Just an opinion of course! I could be missing something. Anyway as said I think, at least for me, joy and purpose come from dedication to something, mastering stuff. Learning and discovering, engaging even when it is hard. Not meaning you have to grind, or be like a monk, but if you’re working towards a goal also the grind has joy in it. Purposefully putting stuff in your life at stake, can really be rewarding (I don’t mean financially perse, but it could be surely). You should have a stake in something that drives you. If you don’t naturally get them from the context you live in, I think, create them. In the end it all doesn’t really matter, we’ll all die whatever we’ve accomplished. But while you’re here let’s keep playing, put out your stakes. What else to do?
> I think what I find surprising here is that I've been taught that "If you don't work your ass off, you won't have a nice, comfortable life". And that was def true for my parents who went into the job market in a post communist Poland, and had to grind to have a good job. > > But maybe this 'just chillin' group of friends being able to have a pretty nice life financially is a symptom of Poland becoming richer. idk, I think there have always been people who are well off and don't have to work much, even in our parents' generation. I think the longer you live, the longer you can then see the effects of "investing," be that in your body, or finances, or career, house etc. For example, there were a couple of my parents' friends who passed away early when I was a teenager and it was credited to unhealthy life style etc. I think it'd seem very premature to say to a 30yo friend today that their regular partying is going to make them die early, and then that exact thing could happen to them later though. But it's statistics. For a population you're going to see this play out and then there are individual outliers everywhere. That said, I feel like "playing" or the "gamer" career is actually a wise choice in today's world. People probably overcredit Ninja's success to him being a very consistent streamer or whatever, when it was probably that he was obsessed with playing video games as a teenager and his parents were probably quite concerned. So what now? Was he earnest in pursuing his future or just optimizing his short term monkey brain? I think there is a bias in your thinking that necessarily hard work has to result in wealth etc.. Or that only hard work can result in wealth. While that is an ideological political cause I can agree on, I think it is unwise to think personally that only hard and earnest work can move you forward. The world absolutely does not work like that and no political framework can make the world work like that either. It might as well be that all the hard work that I've put into becoming a good app builder is now automated away and those last ten years are worth nothing. We know that life can be cruel to some. My advice, if you feel like you're missing out on enjoying life, because you're working too hard, or because you feel that hard work is hard to maintain is to do some soul searching into what you truly want. I've had some times in my career when it was really really hard to focus on writing code. And so I played the piano and learned a bunch of other skills, for example, drawing and writing. And this ended unblocking me at coding and also opened up new possibilities. I even think that learning to play LoL can be such a thing. I'm sure there are many transferrable lessons in mastering to play this game.
> If people get more wealth and nothing is clearly at stake most are likely to choose convenience. That might be what is happening in Western countries. For US, they are already a step further and gladly giving into their fantasies. I think it is the case. Would the US be the same country without "American dream"? I don't think so. I think people would just slow down. > I think there is a bias in your thinking that necessarily hard work has to result in wealth etc.. Or that only hard work can result in wealth. > While that is an ideological political cause I can agree on, I think it is unwise to think personally that only hard and earnest work can move you forward. The world absolutely does not work like that and no political framework can make the world work like that either. I agree with your point. You can not work at all and buy the right memecoin at the right time and have tons of money. Or just work in the right company at the right time, and surf the wave of its success. Many such cases. Now that I think about it, my observation is less tied to the fact that people have a comfortable life with little work, and more to how many of them can achieve that. When I was in my 20s, I knew maybe 1-2 people like. And now I see more like 10-20 people who successfully follow this path. I even observed it when I was recruiting people in my previous company. Gen Z candidates asked for stuff like "I want to have 30 days off per year" or "I only want to work 4 days a week", which I have never heard from a millennial candidate. I guess "Day in the life of Product Manager at Meta" TikToks made some impact. > My advice, if you feel like you're missing out on enjoying life, because you're working too hard, or because you feel that hard work is hard to maintain is to do some soul searching into what you truly want. I've had some times in my career when it was really really hard to focus on writing code. And so I played the piano and learned a bunch of other skills, for example, drawing and writing. I think it's a good advice. Lately I returned to learning singing and I feel like it enriches my life a lot. I even played LoL a bit, like one 30 min round per day, and I found it very enjoyable because I do it purely for fun. BTW speaking of transferrable lessons, my brother used to be a super lazy and non ambitious guy, and then he started playing StarCraft II. It was the first thing in a long time that he really wanted to get good at, so he played for hours per day, watched streams and so on. In a few years he reached Masters (which is basically a semi-pro level), and the discipline and focus he built while playing helped him become a great Project Manager.
Speaking of the American grindset, last weekend, I was watching this video on the myth of hard work. It does touch on the frustration of hard working people who aren't making it even though that is supposedly the dream. And maybe because the myth is still so strong, people continue putting up with it. https://youtu.be/HxQyzMTnnNQ?si=bBHPbh3yKPurLJjX At the moment, I am in a weird spot with work where I don't really feel like I'm learning a whole lot - but I get paid fairly decently (at least by German standards) for writing, which isn't that common. It does leave some room for me to pursue my personal interests and find satisfaction in the things that aren't valued much by the market - but it makes me happy to see progress in (guitar, studying different philosophers, picking up calligraphy, volunteering) Of course, I could probably take on many more freelance gigs to earn much more - but I don't think it's worth It - as Mischa said we only have one lifetime, which means we should find space for little joys more often than not. In line with quoting German authors, Hesse wrote in his essay on little joys: "Great masses of people these days live out their lives in a dull and loveless stupor." - I don't want to become one of them.
I think a big part of this American Dream comes from the 50s when a man could work in a factory and have enough money to have a house, a car and aupport his wife and two kids. I don't think it's possible anymore. So a lot of people in non-career jobs get frustrated. If you're an Uber driver and you invest a lot of time to become the greatest driver, it won't result in much higher pay compared to career jobs like a doctor, lawyer or engineer. Not sure how we can solve it tbh, I don't think AI and robotics would help much unless we will get UBI