For me, working alone remotely and Zoom calling all day has totally killed my passion for the field.<p>I’ve always had a percentage of remote work, but with no in person work, events, travel, socialising, it’s just not enough to hold my attention and passion.<p>I’ve drifted into taking a year out of the industry and thoroughly enjoying stepping back for a while.<p>I’m mentally waiting for things to “return to normal” but feeling like I might be waiting for a long time.
I've worked remote for over a decade but this past year has been harder because you had so many more chores around the house plus less options to go outside plus school closures.<p>So, I am basically quite <i>tired</i>. I am kinda considering just taking a sabbatical year.<p>I still like the work, but the non-stop stress from corona, the non-stop news and the barely functioning society makes work a bit futile.<p>I've discovered the only thing I enjoyed to buy were books. And I need more time and quiet to read them.<p>Maybe it's a form of weird midlife crisis.
I'm one of these people. Changed to a 40% contract, work Mon-Tue. I am in a privileged position where I'm able to live with my wage comfortably, albeit frugally. Living in Nordics helps too.<p>I was expecting that I'd be dwelling deep with all of those side projects that I was craving to do on work days instead of solving semi to not-at-all exciting problems for a company. Found out that those were mostly escapistic fantasies to regain my creative mind under the time and stress pressures.<p>Now I enjoy living simply. I feel better mentally and physically. Interesting to see where this will go. Maybe I'll eat the hustle fruit some day and start grinding - this idea that dictated my adult life seems very alien for me now.
An aside, though I think a worthy one; my favorite casual rebuttal to the pretentious phrase "knowledge worker" exists here: <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yDXPkor-Wxk" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yDXPkor-Wxk</a><p>On topic though, I think that to the extent the New Yorker is describing the subset of technical work that many HN participants are engaged in, burn out was already a big problem pre-pandemic. So it's not a complete surprise for burnout to be on the rise during a such a global level catastrophe, even though many in tech have done well for themselves with steady high salary throughout the duration of the pandemic
I don't know if I'm going to quit 'knowledge work', but its sadly telling that the most satisfying project I've had all year is refurbing my mower deck with some paint and new blades and bearings.<p>I used to go to work with my dad and we'd bust out torches and welders and saws and compressors. Neither of my kids had anything beyond a passing interest in computers and my job (infosec) is completely invisible to them. There are definitely rewarding parts of the vocation and I'm still glad I'm in it, but visceral satisfaction can be difficult to find.<p>I don't know what this has to do with anything lol.
Unless you were on cusp of retirement, I too believe that people will return back to work.<p>I also think that there will be some price to pay in terms of inflated pay packages and promotions people are getting these days. Some are warranted, some not.<p>While I've pay disequilibrium and imbalance before, never to this extent. When business cycle shifts and economy turns, the extent of layoff will be far greater.
Anyone else pushing their sabbatical for when the world finally opens up?<p>I'd like to take some time off and decompress. Travel a little, learn a few things and eventually work on my side projects but the world being closed is a big mental blocker as that doesn't permit free travel.<p>Waiting for the world to open up so that I can sell everything and buy a 1 way ticket to Bali. Don't see it happening anytime soon though.
I left my lucrative cybersecurity startup job to pursue full time independent research in AGI. Several months in and it's been great progress wise, and I have to live more frugally.
Being on the cyber startup was like being on a cruise ship headed to some destination that was "just okay", all the while seeing an island off in the distance that we were slowly passing by, which is where I wanted to be. I jumped off the bow and started swimming towards the most meaningful goal I could hope to apply my skills toward. Will I advance the field of artificial consciousness? I hope to. There's so much I don't know, and even more no one really knows. COVID was a gift. Political and economic turmoil is a gift. I was already focusing on the goal of AGI, but the strife of the world gave me the will to leap for it.
"He wanted to establish a hard accounting of how much money was required, at a minimum, to achieve reasonable shelter, warmth, and food. This was the cost of survival. Work beyond this point was voluntary."<p>Wow. That last sentence really resonates.
I would rather go a bit meta and quote Byung-Chul Han, that we live in a 'society of tiredness'. The German Korean philosopher, describes this quite interestingly in his book — Burnout society [1] (some parts are also in the youtube documentary here [2]). He intriguing describes the transition of modern worker from conditions of Foucauldian Disciplinary Society [3] into what he calls an 'Achievement society'.<p>In an achievement society, a subject is kinda like in a self-feedback loop. She/He are constantly reinventing their personality, profession, and beliefs. There is no solid self-image formed due to constant updates. He says this is largely because we live in an over-positivized world. Where there is no room for negativity and hence anything that is negative ceases to exist due to the way it is presented [4]. So, if your job is not working it is not anybody's problem but yours. So go do a masterclass in reactjs and stop being a philosopher. Then you do some personal branding, then hustle on twitter posting threads like "5 cool react plugins" or "Javascript or Typescript?". But we essentially tend to be stuck in that solitary, "I can do it". He says:<p>> “The modal verb that determines achievement society is not the Freudian Should, but Can”<p>Hence, we seem to be always in this Can state, without rest, even in our states of rest we are presenting our rest as images on social media to achieve. That philosophically is not rest. Modern human never rest. He is constantly producing. But, there is a kind of gratification crisis this leads to and one never achieves anything. He says :<p>> “Instead, the feeling of having achieved a goal never occurs. It is not that the narcissistic subject does not want to achieve closure. Rather, it is incapable of getting there.”<p>and eventually people get depressed due to this constant 'need of initiative'.<p>I am sorry, I explained it pretty bad. It seems written like an absolute thing but there are complications. Please do read the book (just 72 pages) and watch the documentary. It is not a supreme explanation but some bits kind a ring bell to be as I have been living in a kind of perpetual tiredness lately. Cheers and have a good day!<p>[1] <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25725" rel="nofollow">https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25725</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNkDeUApreo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNkDeUApreo</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVFtc9_AB2k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVFtc9_AB2k</a><p>[4] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2YeJpkrTOQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2YeJpkrTOQ</a>
I quit my ridiculously well paying cybersecurity job in January. Went traveling for most of the time since. Most of Latin America was/is consistently open, if you're wondering. So is some of eastern Europe and the neighboring Asian ex-soviet countries. Africa has potential too, I think (haven't been). If you're vaccinated (which I was, pretty early on) most of Europe opens up too (but probably not for long now).<p>You've read the cliche reasons for doing this kind of thing many times before, and honestly I don't think this newyorker article is saying anything very different.<p>My additional, edgy, uncensored reason: I couldn't shake the feeling that I was picking up the check for everybody else. I was paying very high taxes to essentially finance crazy government overreach, only to later lose the value of what's remaining to inflation due to all the money printing.
"The coronavirus pandemic threw everyone into Walden Pond."<p>The Author says that like its a bad thing. My open office can shove it, not going back.
The author should change Walden for David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" and he would probably get a better explanation of the phenomenon.<p>"After being in the industry for 15 years, I still do not have a good short answer for what environmental consultants do."<p>That quote alone says it all. These people are not satisfied because they don't have a real job, they have a bullshit job, and they know it.<p>The others are more of the same, you have a "coach" of the obvious that even him doesn't practice what he preaches and a member of "multiple projects and committees" that complains about wasting time all day talking with no focus or clear purpose.<p>They get pay to pretend to work all day by pushing papers, write endless jargon-ridden nonsense and, of course, attending endless meetings.