A study I'd like to see done - <AUTHOR>

Ask the following question to twentysomething males whose net worth is not currently above $250k:
Suppose someone offered you the following wager: consider your net worth on the day that you turn 55.  If it is greater than $n, where n is adjusted for future inflation, then your worth doubles.  Otherwise, you lose all but the last $5000 of everything you own.  If you are in debt, your debt doubles.  What is largest value of n for which you would accept this wager?
I'd be fascinated by the results of a controlled study which compared how answers to this question varied across cultures.  Anyone want to posit any hypotheses, or give their personal responses to the question?
Edit: perhaps the question should be changed to "consider the highest that you net worth has ever been...", to accomodate the case of people who have already gotten very rich but given most of it away. <comment><USER2> For me: n <= ~10,000.

This isn't a very enticing wager--it seems like I have a lot more to lose than to gain. If I set n at, say, $1M, then I might win $1M, which would be nice, or I could end up with basically nothing, which would be devastating. You might have a more interesting wager if $5000 were changed to something more substantial, like $250k.

<comment><AUTHOR> > If I set n at, say, $1M, then I might win $1M

I'm not sure whether you're understanding the wager correctly. If you win, you double your entire savings, not just gain $n.

<comment><USER2> Oh, that's true. Still, I think the wager is too scary for most people to accept for large values of n. Even if I set n=1M and have 10M when I'm 55, gaining the extra 10 million will make significantly less of a difference to my life than losing all but $5k will.

<comment><USER3> that's the point of the study

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There was a simpler question about risk on the first Y Combinator application: [http://web.archive.org/web/20050324021230/www.archub.org/sfp...](http://web.archive.org/web/20050324021230/www.archub.org/sfpapp.txt)

>If you could trade a 100% chance of $1 million for a 10% chance of a larger amount, how large would it have to be? Answer for each founder. (There is no right answer.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Quite a study. I'd like to see a study in which a group of very young children (even babies) are made to populate a controlled environment (where they are served by Automat-style food dispensers) in order to see what form of government they develop in such an untarnished state of nature.

My guess? Anarcho-syndicalism tempered by naptime.

<comment><AUTHOR> My guess is something closer to Lord of the Flies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 21 Male/USA - Depending on how the wager is presented, I could probably be sold on $n = $1 billion.

For example, one should consider it a motivational tool - sure, most people in my position _could_ make $1 billion with the right motivation, and this bet is just the right kind of motivation!

To take such a bet is morally required, because it'll lead me to leading a life where I create more wealth for humanity, even if I don't reach the $1 billion mark.

So morally, the question shouldn't be about maximizing one's outcome at age 55, but about finding a value that I would deem achievable for the next 35 years.

Also, even if I don't make $1 billion, the kind of skills I'd learn _trying_ to make $1 billion over 35 years would allow me to live a comfortable life after 55 anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not high. Money has diminishing marginal utility. If your net worth is high, you get little extra benefit for doubling it.

So I'd say $100k, just off the top of my head. Seems like risking 95 to win 100 is pretty good, not to mention it's trivial to get there.

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's trivial to get there, then why wouldn't you be willing to go higher? Remember, you double your _entire savings_ if you win. No matter how quickly your marginal utility curve flattens, it seems absurdly risk-averse to name any number lower than half of whatever you think you need in order to retire.

<comment><USER7> I'd need about two mil to retire comfortably I'd say. It's far easier to get to that from one million than it is to get to one million from $5,000. Hence I'd be seriously screwed, especially at that age, If I found myself with $950k and had to lose it all, whereas had I not made the bet, I'd probably be at most 5 years from retirement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Two million to retire comfortably? That's quite a standard of living. Supposing you're earning 6% interest and expect to live to 100, that's a budget of $10725 per month. That's enough to spend the rest of your life living in the penthouse suite of a cruise ship.

<comment><USER7> Right. Exactly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, it has the problem that people may answer surveys differently than the same question in real life.

It looks like it tries to expose expected future earnings and risk (avoidance|tolerance). Did you mean that? If so, that relationship may show in asset allocation choices by people over their lifetime. Data from any tax firm would work....

Also, why focus on 20-year-olds with less than 250K? Have you already established that current net worth and/or age has a quantifiable impact on risk aversion?

Patrick

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd say about $900,000 ( in 2007 dollars).

My logic is that I'd be approaching retirement age. I could/would definitely plan my career so that I had enough money to retire comfortably, which would require about $1.5 million. I'm saying less than that just to be safe (and in case I really want to switch to a less lucrative/more fulfilling career). In reality, I think I'll make a lot more than $1.5 million, but it's a little too risky to bet on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, so among a relatively homogenous group, the first two answers I've gotten vary by a factor of 90. Nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> can't i beat the wager by getting my parents and friends to give me a big pile of money a few days before my 55th birthday?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not if you owe it back to them. I said net worth, not gross.

<comment><USER4> He said give, which means no obligation other than to the federal government.</comment></comment></comment>


There Was a Time Before Mathematica … - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/06/there-was-a-time-before-mathematica/ <comment><USER2> I hated Mathematica so badly when I was in undergrad. It was nearly impossible to use, so struggling with it on top of trying to learn the actual course material earned my hatred of it forever. Plus, sometimes it would just corrupt your notebook with no warning. No way to avoid it. When that happened, too bad. Do your assignment again.

I honestly think that for years afterward, that experience made me passionate about building software people can actually understand how to _use_. It was just atrocious to me, that people would make such a thing and then expect everyone to just deal with its horribleness.</comment>


Universal Engineering Principles - <AUTHOR> What principles are common to all Engineering disciplines? What makes Engineering "Engineering"? <comment><USER2> I tend to look at engineering as encompassing a series of building blocks:

* understand the physics of your discipline at the application scale. By scale I mean that the physics we need to understand are very different for structural engineering to build a steel bridge to the semiconductor atom level design to build a CPU chip. But it is physics in both those examples.

* have a proven model (usually mathematical and/or implemented on a computers) that allows you to understand, analyse and predict the realm of potential designs.

* understand the requirements to a comprehensive level of detail.

* evolve a design, using the models, that will fulfil the above requirements.

* verify through simulation, further analysis, etc that the design is "correct".

* using the blueprints developed in the previous steps, construct the solution.

* operate the solution and verify the accuracy of the model(s). In many fields of engineering, this allows the models to be fine-tuned based on experience.

It is interesting to note that early steel bridges were typically over- engineered compared to those designed today. With experience and more refined modelling the margins for error have been reduced. Sometimes with dire consequences.

Of course, in well established areas of engineering, there are numerous standards and empirical knowledge that makes the design process less demanding than for emergent areas.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of my engineering lecturers said something like, "You will find many people through your travels who can design and build the sort of things things that you will in your career, but it is the engineer who can do them safely, to a known quality, budget and schedule". (Usually)

<comment><USER4> Was he an academic? I still have to meet an engineer who will deliver on budget and schedule consistently. Quality in software engineering is a grey area.

<comment><USER3> Because you are dealing with people who are not trained as engineers, practice little of the engineering patterns, yet insist on calling themselves "engineers" because they think it makes them sound cool.

An engineer that builds software to a known quality and time will generally use a V-model (all requirements are defined, then validated) and won't spend most mornings standing around talking about new ideas their breakfast acid gave them to try out in the next 24 hours. The engineer will also generally not commence "construction" until "design" is near or substantially complete, or else budget/schedule/quality are unable to be predicted, even by god.

It all leads back to the eternal question in software, "how will I know when I am finished?" (the software). "When you have done what you said you will you do". At which point it often breaks down because "make something cool" isn't usually a measurable objective that satisfies a requirement, unless you work for Hasbro, maybe.

Engineered software is built and tested to satisfy specific requirements that solve a problem (to meet a need). It is often perceived as expensive and slow, but is the process to follow for a chance of known and measureable results.

That is engineering - designing, then building, then testing and validating that the requirements are being met, satisfying a need.

TDD starts to get you near there, if all the tests are written first, or at least to some sort of hierarchy of detail concurrently.

Starting something you don't know how it's going to end is speculative exploration, and there is nothing wrong with that, but it is not engineering and in engineering projects is usually limited to very small "proof of concept" phase up front before most aspects of design are fixed and detailed engineering commences.

Quality in software is not as nearly gray as many like to think, it is just the cost to not operate in a way where 90% of the outcomes fall in the gray area is perceived as too expensive/slow.

And also because if you are not engineering a bridge and you can make "pivots" 17/18ths of the way through, but just at way greater risk/desperation than any sane engineer would do unless at war or halfway back from the moon and out of oxygen.

Finally, the engineer will follow practices and procedures that they are able to, and prepared to, defend in court if someone dies as an associated result and the grieving widow wants revenge.

<comment><USER4> Is this wishful thinking or actual experience? :-)

Sounds a lot like what it should be vs what it actually is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me engineer is anyone that counts before the implementation. Even if it is back of the envelope calculations.

Two developers came requesting a Kafka partition topic scale-up. One of them knew how many jobs per second his workers consume, how many messages per second were going thorough the cluster, etc. The other did not. One acts as an engineer the one does not.

You wanna be an engineer? Easy, learn how to count. And to give a pass to those who don't, counting is not easy. Most likely you will get it wrong, you might be counting the wrong metrics, etc. But counting makes all the difference in the world.</comment>


Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do? - <AUTHOR> I have an extreme case of neophilia. Well, most of HN readers like new things, but in my case this is really extreme. I start many projects, but never finish them because they are inevitably losing novelty (I had better luck with shorter projects). I am a fairly decent software engineer, but I never held a job longer than 1 year (for the last 12 years), and recently I realised that the only thing that motivates me in software engineering is learning new things and trying new fancy toys, not building something working and useful (this is obviously an invalid approach in engineering, and it makes me sad enough to consider leaving this career path for good). I've been fired from 2 jobs this year (having a stellar start, then quickly boring for good). Everything I do seems to be motivated by novelty, it seems like a dangerous addiction now. I am 32, jobless, and have more than $50k in debt now.<p>What should I do? Is there a cure from novelty-seeking behavior? Or how it can be managed to be useful, not disabling? Please help, if you have any experience coping with this... <comment><USER3> I have found people like you really useful to know because you have had contact with such a broad range of techs that when I have a problem, I can quiz you and get some killer pointers for where to look next.

I wouldn't want you to change, just to find your place in the world and satisfaction in being naturally you. Its like you have pockets full of keys and really good at finding new keys just no locks to use them with. There are other people who have the opposite problem and have locks they obsess over but find looking for keys exhausting, frustrating and confusing. You can be a force multiplier for them.

One idea, if you wrote a blog about each new thing you try, you accidentally create something "you stick with" because its about all the things you are not sticking with :) When your attention moves on, its not a failure any more because each article is a success. Documenting what you are doing might also let you spot some patterns that take you to the next level.

I wonder if you might find teaching \ training a rewarding occupation. Keeping up with continually moving tech and having a breadth of knowledge might make you excellent at that.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I've got the opposite problem. I'm naturally conservative and dislike novel things because I figure they're a flash in the pan. I'm very cynical of new hype, and prefer tested technologies.

My enormous blind spot is that I then miss legitimate trends, and I can completely fall behind in the industry.

I also find myself not learning new tricks and techniques that would improve my workflow, and have to take time out of my schedule sometimes just to play around with new approaches.

I can definitely see how both approaches lend something, and both approaches have huge weaknesses.

The biggest issue that I've actually seen with novelty-seekers it that they'll build something based on some new framework or tool--that turns out to be be really rough and they hit those rough edges and get frustrated. Then instead of trying to fix the tool they're using they move on to some other new shiny tool of the day. That behavior can leave a ton of tech debt in its wake.

<comment><USER5> I am also one of the novelty-seekers.

As you mentioned I do really have 'ton of tech debt'. I hope I could change my behavior and reduce my tech debt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you often show up to work late? Are you seen as generally unreliable? (Be honest with yourself.)

Do you procrastinate a lot?

Do you have a hard time transitioning? Are you late for things because you a) can't accurately estimate time and b) can't pull yourself away from the thing you're doing at that moment even though you _know_ you're going to be late if you don't?

Do you have a very unstructured sleep schedule?

Do you have high impulsivity? Spending (sounds like it)? Speeding? Substance abuse - including alcohol?

Did you breeze through HS with decent grades without trying but then suddenly find college and its unstructured environment and lack of supervision much harder and hard for you to succeed in?

If you answer yes to many of those questions, then you may want to talk to a psychiatrist about the potential for you being ADHD.

I was very much the same way and was diagnosed at age 29. Best thing to happen to me. I've managed to turn my career and my personal life around.

Everything you describe sounds like the impulsive behavior of ADHD to me, but I am not a medical professional and I am not trying to diagnose you. You just sound an awful lot like I once did.

Best of luck..

<comment><USER7> Interesting. My answer is an emphatic yes to all of those questions. In the back of my mind I've always suspected that I would be diagnosed with ADHD, but never talked to anyone about it. In the end I just chalked it up to being a different kind of person and catered my life around my behaviors instead of trying to force my behaviors into some ideal notion.

Looking back at the age of 40, my life has been much richer for it, having met interesting people, traveled to strange places, and worked on amazing projects. Most of the behaviors you listed have naturally attenuated through experience and age.

But to be honest I still struggle (albeit somewhat successfully) daily with a lot of it, so I'm wondering what treatment you got that worked so well. I'm definitely not interested in drugs for myself, but would still like to hear your thoughts on that if your treatment included them.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here — I am on treatment now, including medication. Didn't help me strategically, but it was worth it being diagnosed nevertheless. At least, medications helped me stopping losing things.

<comment><USER8> I'm confused, you ask a question like this (which is already hard to answer without knowing your full background) and you leave out the fact that you were diagnosed with ADHD recently (and are on treatment), only to mention it in a reply-comment? Do you think these are unrelated?

<comment><USER6> Based on his other replies, it seems he's given up on adhd treatments and probably didn't want all the replies focusing on that (oops!). I guess he was hoping there were some strategies others use that weren't related to treating an underlying neurological condition. /shrug

<comment><AUTHOR> I currently take Elvanse (the long-action form of Adderall). It works for some issues (like forgetfullness and occasionally focus-related things), but it does nothing for novelty cravings. Before recently, I considered it to be a good thing, but when I understood that it is a primary driver of everything I do in life, I had doubts. Hence the post.

<comment><USER6> Aye, I understand. The impulsiveness is a big part of ADHD. I believe you should continue to work with your psychiatrist. Point this out to them specifically and let them know that while you are seeing improvement in some areas, this one is particularly bad for you and that you would like to explore some other medication options - either dosage change or new medications all- together. Worst case scenario is you go back to the medication you're on now which at least helps somewhat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know you can't share your entire life context in a short question, but upon reading this I really wondered if the employers that fired you would have described novelty-addiction as your problem. In many cases, "novelty" is just another word for "avoidance".

Is it possible you are just abandoning ship on any project as soon as it gets hard? The first few stages of any tech - googling, researching, following tutorials - is pretty easy. Shorter projects are easier than longer projects.

When you read textbooks, do you actually do the exercises, or do you just skim? There's an entire second part of learning that involves thrashing and struggling against your own limitations as soon as the tutorials run out, and that's where the real learning is. The trick to that is to accept that it's supposed to be hard and you're supposed to feel helpless and dumb when it happens. The successful ones are the ones that keep trying anyway in spite of their own feelings of stupidity.

Anyway, ignore this comment if it doesn't apply, but your question can be read in a variety of different ways, and this one interpretation is just if you haven't toughened up and learned some tenacity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I enjoy feeling dumb. This means I can learn something new again! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You might be a good candidate to teach at a coding bootcamp.

PROS: 1\. Your energy level would match the students 2\. You could make sure the curriculum stays up to date, and every few years transition some large parts of the curriculum to a new language/framework. 3\. You have tons of experience to draw for the many left-field questions you would get 4\. The consistent new influx of students might feed that need you have for novelty

CONS: 1\. Not sure if you could teach each session knowing 80-90% is the same content as the last, but you're just changing 10-20% for this batch. 2\. Could you handle answering some of the same newbie questions every 3 months? 3\. They would, like most jobs, want you to stick around, but this isn't a total CON, they are likely more amenable to you leaving than almost any corporate gig.

So maybe it's something to consider!

I do think you might need some more help in managing this, but in the meantime, you can always find work that fits what some part of you needs right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are not any bootcamps like that in Switzerland. Probably a good idea to organize one and hope I don't fail in organization minutiae again. :)

<comment><USER11> While reading this I wondered in what country you life. If it has more to do with the expectations from the people around you. I quite given up a so called regular life. I'm very interested in new stuff too (although I'm able to get through some boredom) and even start to appreciate this side of myself. I probably never will be the best in anything, but I never was anyway, so in the end it's for me just what I enjoy. I also like to teach stuff to others and in this case I'm rarely bored to repeat myself. I lived/live in Switzerland too. One another different thought: The companies I worked for (in Switzerland, big and small, but not Google or MS) never had something like a career for Engineering related fields where you gain some relevant benefits (most of my friends best benefit was that they now not even have paid overtime, are called Senior Engineer and get a irrelevant amount of few bucks more). After a few years the only possibility seems to get into project management which is for me too boring (yet). Maybe we should start a bootcamp in CH?

<comment><AUTHOR> Will be happy to partner with (or just talk to) locals. My email is sorhed at gmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fixing that may take a long time, but it will probably fix your whole life, so it's worth it to just focus on this instead on software or work. Dedicate to work only the minimum necessary time for survival.

There are probably a number of causes, but coffee may be one of them. Don't be radical, but if you're having too much coffee, I'd suggest cutting down to just one coffee in the morning. It will take a bit of effort but may help you concentrate.

Then I suggest you try to focus on finishing things as the main goal. You have to get rid of the addiction to the rush of novelty, but you can get addicted to the rush of publishing, with obviously positive results. In order to do this, lower the bar enormously. Take only TINY projects: writing a short article or even a tweet. Writing a tiny piece of software that does something. Cleaning up one corner of your disk. It is _key_ that you accept average or even poor quality, that shouldn't be a consideration. And it is very, very helpful that you _publish_ the result: post the essay on Twitter, Facebook, or a blog. Upload the code to github and share it. Obviously, cleaning up your disk drive isn't so amenable to be published, so maybe you want to write a line in an "achieved.txt" file.

Make sure we are talking really small projects here, and that we are not expecting anything from them but completing them. They will be small and mediocre. No problem at all! You can't solve everything at the same time. Make things small enough that their scope fall under your current reach, which you said is tiny - so make tiny thing! Err on the side of caution. You want to make sure you complete them. Half-an-hour projects are _perfectly fine_ here!!

Do this for a week and recap.

<comment><USER13> _There are probably a number of causes, but coffee may be one of them. Don 't be radical, but if you're having too much coffee, I'd suggest cutting down to just one coffee in the morning. It will take a bit of effort but may help you concentrate._

I'd suggest gradually cutting down to none. Apparently the alertness and general cognitive enhancing properties of caffeine don't really exist and all that people are noticing is the effect of the caffeine on their caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

<comment><USER14> Given the way that first cup of coffee in months can affect a person, you seem to be suggesting that caffeine withdrawal is a permanent condition. ;)

<comment><USER15> OPs point is that your brain adapts to the level of caffeine you're ingesting. So if you're _used to_ drinking coffee then you're basically at the same level of alertness/functioning that you were before you first started drinking coffee (i.e. before it became habitual). The effect you notice from the first cup of coffee in the morning is really just the coffee counteracting the withdrawal you feel after ~6-8hrs of no caffeine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> (This is intended as just another idea to think about)

The long-term passion and commitment come _after_ some level of success, not before.

Steve Jobs didn't dream of dedicating his life to Personal Computing. It was his early successes that fed into his self-image and a feeling that it was what he was meant to do.

Maybe you need to find the right project.

Turn your weakness into a strength by publicly launching a new project every week. A new mobile app, web site, screencast, open source project, whatever. They don't have to be good, just a bit useful. Make things that you want and try to give them away and/or sell them to other people.

There are a lot of ways to make a living as a skilled programmer. Most people have trouble finding the right kind of project, and that's mostly because they don't iterate quickly enough.

<comment><USER17> Yes, I think passion and self-image are often tightly coupled. Passionate people tend to project their ego/self-image onto their work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Is there a cure from novelty-seeking behavior?

Start a project, commit to the technologies beforehand, and deviate under no circumstances.

Facebook was built with PHP. AdWords was built with MySQL. Instagram was built with Django. GitHub was built with Rails. Stack Overflow was built with Microsoft technologies.

It seems there are few instances where a "boring" tech stack prevents the product from being built. If the idea is good enough, you'll make it work with what's on hand.

If you can commit to a stack, yet still can't finish a project, you may have to face some uncomfortable possibilities: that your ideas are no good, or that you're simply not a very good programmer.

Attention span _is_ a requirement for being a decent programmer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a huge working memory and ability to hyperfocus (occasionally), which helped me to deliver some quite successful short-term projects. It is persistency I have problems with.

Commitment to stack is some problem for me, but it's OK for 6 months, maybe even a year. Anything longer-term, and I inevitably think something in the lines of: "this Java code now looks like shit, I learned so much new things, why not rewrite anything in Scala/Akka/Go/another interesting stack du jour?"

<comment><USER19> Sometimes this is not a bad thing. I started something in PHP an year ago, about 3 months ago I played with node, evaluated it and it felt like it would give a productivity boost in the long term. And it did! I am a lot happier with the new codebase. I guess it really depends on what you're working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most addictions are flights _from_ rather than flights _to_.

I realized embarrassingly recently that I am a mental coward---if I don't like the implications of something, I just don't think about it. This is surprisingly non-disabling in a classroom setting, especially if you enjoy learning. It is a no-good for homework, though. I was everyone's favorite student---and failing.

My _fear_ of unpleasant mental work ( [http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html)) led to an _inexperience_ with mental work, making the fear _worse_.

When I untangled all this, the solution manifested itself in a few different pieces:

1\. I gave up on the entitlement of always being in a flow state. This was scary, and my faith helped.

2\. I started my days by planning them. I am actually not very good at this, and often I just write "coding" for a significant portion of the day, but the biggest benefit here is that I force myself to think about whatever it is I don't want to think about.

3\. At the end of the day, I write down what I did that day. This forces me to confront myself about whether I'm planning badly or not.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906843)

</comment><comment><USER21> I would second a therapist/counselor/etc. Did that during college (thanks to the couseling services my Uni provided), and it helped me just not feel _too_ crazy.

I spent a long while, and still do, thinking about what am I heading towards. I know a lot of people don't know this and there is no way I will ever know all the details to make a decision, but I prefer the 'fail to plan, plan to fail' montra. Thus I plan, but am willing to scrap my planes in the wink of an eye, contingent on new infromation.

This is what I did and maybe you'll find something helpful in this method. Find what makes you tick. Make a list of things you enjoy doing. Try to be specific as you can. (You like novelty. Okay then maybe something like 'I like to learn a new trade skill (wood carving, stained glass, etc.) every 6 months.') Try to begin to boil it down to a long list. Keep adding things to the list, and take a break from the list every now and again (just to bring a fresh pair of eyes to it). If an idea seems broad, try to break it down (when I did/do this, I try to be able to tell someone the idea and they would be able to go out and do it exactly how it is in my head).

Then next to the list make columns like 'Financially sound ideas' (buying 32 Raspberry PIs to make a large cluster computer is not as financailly sound as Learning how apache2 works), 'Speed of doing' (you can learn how to write C at a basic level in an afternoon, but learning how to weld may take you longer), 'Practical for you to do' (if you weigh 400lbs and wanting to go backpacking through the Rockies is not as practical as learning how to write better on a whiteboard), 'It would bring me immediate gratitude', 'it would bring me long term gratitude', etc.

After you make a large list rank each column with 1-5 or some other ranking system (I liked the 1-5 because I could say I really hate, sort of hate, neutral, like, love an idea). Then you can hopefully start to see things that rank high in each category you made. (e.x. I really want to take a trip around South America (drive for two weeks or so through the Andes). It isn't practicle, it isn't quick to do, it isn't finacially sound, but it would be one hell of a memory. It is something I want to strive towards and go one day.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can write good code in Java, Scala, Python, Perl, MATLAB, Javascript, and now learning Go. I can configure Apache, nginx, Ansible, Docker... I worked with nearly every favor of Linux, OpenSolaris/OmniOS, CoreOS, etc. I learned how to do things in big data, business intelligence, algorithmic trading. Learning new things is not a problem, this is what I enjoy. Most of them are marketable.

What's killing me is inability to stop learning and start focusing on doing, intensely and persistently. When I have a job, I can't focus on the job. When I try to run my business, I can't focus on administrative side and routine (and successful routine is the essence of every business). I only want to learn, even if it is self-destructive, even if there are many more urgent and important things to do.

<comment><USER22> I can relate to your situation. While I have not completely figured it out, one thing I realized is that, even though I shelve many of my side projects, occasionally I come back to some of them, with fresh enthusiasm and move it forward another step or two (before loosing enthusiasm again). I realized that given enough "cycles" at least some of them are bound to be completed.

So a new approach I am trying is the "GPU Pipeline of side projects". First, I choose to trim my list of side projects to a few important ones (4 is a number I like, so four). I work on them in a parallel pipelined fashion. So I have one that's more advanced, one that is being setup, one that is being fleshed out, one still in ideation phase (you get the idea).

Secondly, I realize that when building things, the novelty can come from "recursing down to the details". For example, setup a AWS pipeline for code deployment would mean, learning how to setup an Ec2 deployment, then a Chef or Puppet instance, then easy config management of them, best way to document our setup (gitbook etc) and so on.... So if we use our boundless curiosity, which is both a strength and a weakness, to look a little deeper, we will find enough novelty to keep going even in a "single" project.

What I realized is that one single project is like a LISP S-Expression. (project). You (eval project), and it returns (list sub-project1 sub-project2 interesting-research3 wonderful-idea4) All you have to do is keep eval'uating the sub-expressions till you hit an "atom" of truth to share with the world.

<comment> xor-xor Your conclusions regarding "GPU pipeline of side projects" and "recursing down to the details" resonate with my personal experience a lot. Great s-expression analogy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I know I'm a monster but my answer would be something along the lines of "suck it up". We're on this planet for 80 years or so. There's going to be some repetition. Not everything is going to be "novel". Best to train yourself to lose this odd hang up.

<comment><USER24> In my experience, advice to "suck it up" usually indicates a lack of understanding on the part of the advisor, and an assumption that your mental state is similar to that of the person asking for help.

The OP is asking for strategies, alternate ways of viewing things, ideas he hasn't though of or dismissed. "Suck it up", is something we all try, or attempt to convince ourselves we "just" have to do. It usually doesn't work. The brain is changed by tricks and nudges, not some doomed-to-fail attempt at overriding yourself through (easily depleted) willpower.

If sucking it up worked for you, then you are probably in a very different situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hunter or farmer?

The hunter seeks new challenges, is less risk adverse, needs to be good at responding to the unknown and seeks the thrill of the pursuit and catch.

The farmer is more risk adverse and has the patience and diligence to gain satisfaction from seeing plans develop, mature and deliver results.

For me, while a definition of ADHD delivered by someone trained in identifying personality traits might be useful in developing a perspective on the strengths and weakness of one's personality, one might choose a more 'active' approach and look at the techniques that can help mitigate the most destructive aspects of the 'condition'.

Everyone is unique, we are somewhere on a bell curve and I don't believe that classification is particularly helpful, knowing one's self is not always any help in changing the status quo.

In terms of advice, I've never met anyone who has come to any harm from seeking talking therapy, I loved CBT and met a very nice councillor with a 'holistic' approach, trained in many diverse disciplines and with a very rounded and realistic angle, baby steps towards things you want to change.

Good Luck :)

<comment><USER26> Good advice. Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > _I realised that the only thing that motivates me in software engineering is > learning new things_

One could question if you really "learn" those new things, instead of merely skimming over them, since you don't seem to stay with them long enough to really get into the details.

Maybe what you're afraid is really learning? Which involves comitting to a stack, and also getting to the parts where a project approaches being finished, which is where the real and important issues emerge.

</comment><comment><USER28> I will try another approach that has not been mentioned so far.

I know this is HN, but you haven't really mentioned anything about novelty outside software. Now, I will try to not make assumptions, but is it perhaps that you are only seeking novelty in a very constrained way, which makes you feel uneasy about your choices?

What type of food do you eat? What hobbies do you pursue? Maybe you have a very monotonous life (or at least you think you have it) and try to compensate in your career with novelty.

If I were in your position, I would first write down when and where I experience these 'novelty rushes'. The key here is not looking at these notes after you write them for at least a couple of weeks. After a couple of weeks doing this, look at what you wrote and see if it maybe has to do with other factors in your life (maybe you rush to try something new after an argument with your wife, when you don't drink your coffee in the morning or when you don't go running for 1 or 2 days)

Perhaps it has nothing to do with your life outside this area, but maybe you just like reading documentation. At any rate, writing down what you are doing when you get these 'novelty rushes' would help you identify the problem. Hopefully.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh no, my life is anything but monotonous.

I lived in 6 different countries (going through bureaucracy hell while getting paperwork done each time), visited another 20 or so, tried getting a PhD, founded two startups (failed both), etc etc.

Part of the problem. :)

<comment><USER29> This sounds very similar to me! I've also been thinking about going for a PhD one day, or at least a degree. What was your field of study?

I don't know if I can think of any practical advice. But I'm in the same boat, and I think this can be a good quality if it means you are constantly thinking of new ideas. I also love starting new projects, and have even been able to finish a few. Recently I even posted an unfinished project on Reddit, which got a few laughs, and that's all I was going for.

If you're up for it, I would enjoy chatting about some of the projects we worked on, and countries we've lived in. I'm still looking for the perfect place on earth to settle down for a while, although I think I might have actually found it this week (New Plymouth, New Zealand).

Feel free to send me an email, my address should be in my profile. And we can also maybe work on some ways to mitigate the addiction to new things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Computer science / network science (I am fascinated by complex networks / scale-free network properties).

Can't find your e-mail, contacted you through your blog form. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My own experience is that I look for novelty outside of the main job I'm doing.

Our product ([https://grabaperch.com](https://grabaperch.com)) is a PHP and MySQL CMS. A self-hosted PHP and MySQL CMS. That means that we are not only PHP, but we have to support really old PHP, we support right back to PHP5.3 as that is the reality of the terrible shared hosting people use. Then in the UI we have to support the browsers that our customer's clients use. So we can't use all the latest front-end techniques.

So it's very easy to get bored and not learn anything new.

To counteract that my personal projects tend to be about really new stuff, for example I've spent a lot of time writing and talking about an emerging CSS spec that interests me. I tend to implement new and interesting things in our own stack too where we don't have the constraints that the product does.

So my best advice would be to see if you can channel your novelty seeking into places outside of work, and accept that work sometimes involves having to stick at something that is boring. Sad but true!

</comment><comment><USER31> Have you considered a career in information/computer security?

I have some of the same tendencies, and infosec has given me all the entertainment I can handle and then some.

(There are other fields adjacent to software engineering which you might prefer as well---consulting, operations.)

<comment><USER32> I have a career in infosec, and unfortunately I'm suffering the exact same problems as OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can relate I think. Whether you need a cure or not is probably a question for you and a therapist. Ask about sliding fee scales and other options.

My story and maybe something for you to explore. I never held a job longer than 24 months when I was younger. Not being able to figure out a career direction and trying to get some direction in 2000 I sought testing at a great organization called Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation. They do aptitude testing and have been for 70+ years. Lots of data and studies on job satisfaction, aptitudes (which are different from both interests and skills), and success. Check out their web site they have some great info.

I tested high aptitude (80 - 99th percentile I think) on about 1/2 of the 19 or 20 aptitudes they've identified in their research. About 10% of the population tests this way. Most people have 3 or 4 max. The problem is if the aptitudes don't get used they agitate. Deeply. Like having a team of 20 sled dogs all fighting to run and no sled to pull or direction to go.

So I have learned I must use them or suffer the consequences. For example, Argentine Tango exercises my musical and social aspects. Engineering aptitudes, inductive reasoning, rapid idea generation, etc... all need expression. Some more so than others. Ideaphoria is rapid idea generation, handy in marketing or teaching, and a real pain if it is suppressed.

Commonly people with many aptitudes have a lot of difficulty with careers. Some use seasonal work or multiple part-time jobs or many different activities in one job to deal with what can often be conflicting drives.

Whether or not you are in this situation I don't know. What I did learn that may be of help was that I needed to respect the cards I was dealt in life. Gifts or burdens depended on how I looked at things. It's okay to have multiple projects and very diverse abilities and interests. Some may get abandoned quickly while others stick around.

Sharing seems to help. Get a blog up and start writing about all your projects. The ones that work and the ones that don't! For some reason sharing project results seems to help regardless of how they turn out. For example, I just had a surprising and inspiring response from HN readers on a blog post I wrote in November. I didn't realize other people would find what I was doing interesting enough to discuss!

I'm going to be 50 this summer and finally feel like I'm getting a handle on things. Keep at it. I hope some of this was useful. Get the help you need as you find the resources. Take care of your health, physical and emotional,and honor your gifts.

<comment><USER34> I agree with hanniabu that this should be higher up, this is definitely the kind of thing I come to HN for.

I'm definitely going to have to follow up on aptitude testing! I reckon I fit the description of sled dogs to a tee; I actually have absolutely tragic committal issues and I wonder if that might be the cause.

Link to website for Johnson O'Connor: [http://www.jocrf.org/](http://www.jocrf.org/)

Testing is apparently $675, $750 in NY.

FYI, this particular group doesn't franchise outside of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D. C. - and sadly I'm in Australia.

<comment><USER33> Thanks for your kind words. Glad my experience was helpful. Best of luck to you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have some similarities with you. 8 full-time jobs in 15 years all after a 9 year stint in graduate school where I quit a PHD program. I also crave trying new things even when they're risky, much to the horror of the people I work with (I'm in manufacturing, so I deal with operations and supply-chain people everyday).

You cannot "cure" what you find motivating. Just learn to live with it and perhaps force yourself to take longer "tours of duty" in jobs. Consecutive jobs held less than 1 year is universally considered a red flag by employers, as is getting fired. Engagements lasting 2 years in fast-paced industries are generally OK. If you're good at what you do you can probably control your urge to quit for a bit longer and do enough to not get fired. 2 years is not a long time and if you're able to do other things besides work, it can be a great advantage to have a job while exploring new things.

Another thing to consider is your life outside of work and your relationships with family or a significant other. If you're defining yourself strictly through work and ignoring the role you play in the lives of others, you're going experience some profound disappointments. In other words, perhaps your career decisions aren't really the root cause of your turmoil-- perhaps it is something far more personal? In that case nothing you do related to work will resolve your issues. YMMV-- just a thought to consider.

</comment><comment><USER36> > I realised that the only thing that motivates me in software engineering is > learning new things and trying new fancy toys, not building something > working and useful

I used to feel this way as well, but at some point things changed for me and I began to care deeply about the impact of a technology far more than what components it was assembled with. The obsessive, myopic phase is good for awhile because it gives you the motivation to build useful skills when doing so is hard work, though it does become a burden eventually for the reasons you list.

Others have recommended speaking with a therapist or counsellor, and I agree with that advice; you may be surprised at how deeply-held attitudes or patterns of thought can hold you back.

Finally, I can tell you what changed my goals, though this is obviously anecdotal and not treatment advice. I joined a big tech company, which gave me the ability to work on projects with a ton of reach. I didn't realize how tired I was of working on little-used web apps and experimental stuff that never saw the light of day until experiencing the contrast.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks interesting. Impact matters, of course. The problem is that there are not many impactful tech companies headquartered in Switzerland, where I live (except maybe in finance, but they are just big, not doing new things), and not many big companies accept remote developers, but it's worth looking for opportunities.

<comment><USER36> Not sure where in Switzerland you are, but Google has a pretty big engineering office in Zurich. :-)

But yes, good point. This may not apply in your case. I wish you luck...the search for motivation and purpose is fundamental to identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I can relate. I get bored really quickly as well, and I am one of those people who usually kicks ass at a new job for about the first year, and then starts to tail off after that because I'm bored out of my mind.

I've found two things that seem to help:

1\. Start a startup. I started Fogbeam at least in part because it gives me an outlet to pursue things that are interesting to me, and a place to work on really cool new cutting edge stuff, even if my day-job doesn't. Back at my last "boring enterprise software development" job, I found that coming home and working on Fogbeam stuff helped keep me sane. (Note: in my scenario the startup is just a side project, but if you have savings or feel like raising money, I suppose you could just jump into it full time. YMMV)

2\. Become a consultant. I started consulting for Mammoth Data back in 2012, and I've found that this consulting lifestyle is quite a bit more interesting than the typical "sit at the same desk, working on the same product, with the same people" routine. I'm constantly working on new and different things... every project is different, and since we focus on "Big Data", analytics, BI, etc., there's a non-stop stream of new technologies being invented / released that we have to try and keep up with. In the past year or two I've worked with Neo4J, Hadoop, Spark, Storm, Kafka, Knox, HBase, Phoenix, Couchbase, EMR, Google's Cloud stuff, Impala, Kinesis, Pentaho, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. The downside, of course, is the need to travel a lot at times (which is another of those "good and bad" things) and the feeling you get sometimes that you're drowning in all this new stuff. Example: In the past month or two, 3 different major companies have released distributed Machine Learning platforms (Google, IBM and Microsoft). And every day or two there's some new Hadoop / Big Data related sub-project hitting the Apache Incubator. And as a consultant, I feel a need to be on top of all of that stuff.. which, unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to be.

Another side-note: You may find that signing up for and taking lots of MOOC's on Coursera, Udacity, EdX, etc. may serve as an outlet for your neophilia, and might let you stay more focused at work. Just treat coming home and working on a cool new class on Machine Learning or Synthetic Biology or $WHATEVER as a reward for putting in a good day of hard, focused work at the day-job.

<comment><USER38> Any tips on how to get clients as consultant?

<comment><USER39> Start with consulting agencies. That's companies that acts like brokers between independent consultants / contractors and companies.

Later on, you can get business from LinkedIn, mouth to mouth, previous clients who now contact you directly etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Here's how to turn your "problem" into an advantage:

Write.

You love learning new stuff, but get bored quickly. Seize the enthusiasm you have for a new technology while you've got it, and make the most of it. Create books, online courses (e.g. Udemy), and blog about what you're learning. Build up experience and a reputation as someone who can turn lots of new and confusing technologies into stuff that helps other people learn.

If you already have, or can develop, the skills necessary to write and present well, after 2-3 years you could have a pretty impressive portfolio of material. If you can successfully monetise that, you've got yourself a career that fits your working style.

I recommend checking out the book "Authority" by Nathan Barry: [http://nathanbarry.com/authority/](http://nathanbarry.com/authority/)

<comment><AUTHOR> A good idea. English is not my native language, but everything can be improved, and I have some editorial skills (worked as a journalist some 10 years ago). I like writing.

It's much more difficult to make it lucrative, though.

<comment><USER41> From the posts on this topic, I'd have never guessed your native language wasn't English, so this is in no way a handicap for you. (Other than it may be more effort for you than a native speaker, but your end product is quite good.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't know if it will help but the way I tried to stop job hopping was to realize that I work to make a living, and if I want to learn stuff and play with new toys, I can do that on my own time. After all, they don't pay me to learn, they pay me to get stuff they need finished.

It sounds like you need to see a therapist. However I imagine that's difficult if you're in debt, so you probably need to first try to get a job and pay that off.

Honestly there's going to be parts of any job that you don't like. Unless you are filthy rich or have someone paying for you, you're going to have to do things even if they bore you sometimes. The best you can do is try to do them efficiently so you can spend more time learning.

</comment><comment><USER43> It sounds like you may be best off seeing a psychotherapist that may be able to help you better understand and control your novelty-seeking. Your pattern sounds self-destructive and it is obviously causing you distress.

Also: have you considered contract or consulting work? If you have the freedom to travel around for work, it can be more dynamic and rewarding than your current pattern.

<comment><AUTHOR> I own a one-man consulting company, through which I am doing some contract work (mostly in algo trading / finance, and yes, I do realize that poor financial software engineer sounds like a joke, which I am). But finding new customers and _especially_ managing the administrative side of this business is getting increasingly harder for me.

I do see therapist occasionally, but it is quite expensive (especially given my loads of debt) and doesn't help much. I was diagnosed with ADD, and therapy helps with some focus related issues, but not with novelty seeking behavior. :(

<comment><USER44> In similar situation like you.

What helped me is outsourcing the administrative stuff (book-keeping, taxes) to an accountant and forcing myself to meet with him once per month physically, best is to make an appointment a month ahead. Insisting on the physical meeting is a trick to force myself at least once in a month to prepare for the meeting (getting all the documents together, travel receipts, invoices, letters). It costs a lot of money but it is worth it for me.

The next trick has a similar pattern: find somebody to spend talking time on a _regular_ basis, at least once per week. Not necessarily a therapist, but a friend, partner, colleague with whom share some common interests. Then force to keep those talking meetings. This helps, because you can talk about your anxiety, talk about what new things you have found, etc. I do it with a friend on a weekly basis and with a psycho-analyst at least once per week - if I don't travel.

The third trick I discovered only lately when being under huge pressure, in a situation in which I didn't know a way out: I started writing as a form of talking to myself. It worked best by "switching off the screen", i.e. typing without seeing what you type (either by literally switching off the screen, or by putting the font to same color as background - I made color scheme mode Vim), it gives you an additional motivation to re-read it later. When I first discovered this, it felt later like magic. I use this trick only when under big pressure - didn't make it to a habit, yet.

Maybe this advice helps.

I wish you to find a way to cope with your life and get to a situation where you can have a decent and more stable life, but still learn new stuff. Good luck.

<comment><USER45> >It worked best by "switching off the screen", i.e. typing without seeing what you type (either by literally switching off the screen, or by putting the font to same color as background

That's really interesting. Have written to get stuff out before but there is always the reading, writing, rereading, editing flow that kind of makes it a pain. Going to try 'switching off the screen' next time.

<comment><USER44> Exactly this. Re-reading and editing breaks the flow of writing - too many hesitations. When writing with "screen switched off" I can't correct mistakes beyond the last typed word. This forces me to write as I would speak.

I'd be interested to know how it worked for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> You like technology and learning, but you don't have an engineer mindset.

You can look for research jobs or freelance, where you can try lots of things quickly.

Alternatively, find a business partner or team that complements your skills/interests.

</comment><comment><USER47> Seek professional help,good therapist who you trust. People get treated for all kinds of addictions, your case likely will not be that special nor hard. I am not an expert but I would guess addiction may not be the only psychological problem to address. It might be expensive but should be worth it. Good luck.

<comment><USER48> Seconding this. There are many other great suggestions in here to try but I would augment them with therapy. Find one you relate to, one that is accepting of the other things you're trying, and work with them.

Colleges often offer low cost services if you're concerned about cost right now (with the ACA this should be less of an issue). There's often a waiting list, get on it now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I live outside the US (In Switzerland. Before that, I used to lived in Spain, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland again, and Russia, where I was born). Part of the problem, it seems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Oh and: want to market yourself as a tutor? I'd pay a reasonable rate for 1:1 tutoring on the math side of things for an hour or two a week. Get a few recurring people at the right rate, you get the novelty of a stream of problems others are trying to solve and an in depth way to see how others think.

</comment><comment><USER50> Start a daily meditation practice. Just 15 minutes a day can work wonders - <USER2> speak from personal experience, having experienced some of those symptoms myself, and pretty much all of them gone. Here is a very effective one:

[http://www.ishafoundation.org/Ishakriya/Learn- online](http://www.ishafoundation.org/Ishakriya/Learn-online)

<comment><AUTHOR> Tried Headspace meditation app, worked quite well indeed. Then stopped it after 4 months of effort, can't get back on track. Same problem here. :)

<comment><USER51> Well, GO BACK TO IT then. Seriously, you're going to need to make a real material effort to fix your problems whatever you do, and if you're unwilling to bite the bullet and muster some self-control to work on things like exercising your self-control then _there is nothing anyone can do for you_.

I'd guess you don't have a novelty-addiction problem, you have a problem where you're unwilling to apply yourself to hard things with long-term payoffs, and the novelty-addiction is what fills in the gap. Maybe there's some reasons for that (procrastination of emotionally difficult things in favor of mood-repair is a big deal for a lot of people) but you'll just need to deal with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I would suggest create a profile on Upwork.com (or some other active freelancing website) and list down your areas of knowledge. Price yourself competitively - slightly below average rates so as not be considered cheap and low quality but not overpriced as well.

This will help in 2 ways: 1) Slowly bring in cash which will tackle your $50k debt in definite time period. Remember "compounding" is the biggest weapon! 2) The client's project will be short self contained tasks which will bind you in a timeframe to complete stuff. This is very important if you want to grow the focus and tenacity that you lack right now.

After a couple of months or a year, you will notice substantial benefits. The big debt will have come down a lot + you would have learnt to execute on ideas.

Now you will finally be ready to execute on your own stuff and make it big hopefully.

(Advice rendered from personal experiences!)

<comment> Const-me Second that, also from personal experience.

Well, I sometimes worked longer, but never longer than 3 years at one place. In addition, I don't remember being fired, my employers were generally happy with my performance, instead I got bored and quit myself.

For me, freelancing is working OK. Today I'm working on some Windows Store SDK, yesterday I've worked on an industrial-grade WinCE embedded software, tomorrow I gonna work on a cross-platform OSX+Windows 3D authoring software, and in my spare time, when I'm bored, I learn CUDA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> There's nothing wrong with you. Your passion for novelty and learning can be a huge asset in the right environment. There are companies who hire software engineers to quickly build proof of concept prototypes to then throw the prototypes away. You might be a good fit for that. I know Nuance in Montreal has teams that do it.

Also, you might want to consider switching to front end software development if you haven't already. There's always a new framework or library to learn in front end development and the development cycles are shorter.

</comment><comment><USER54> I can somewhat relate. Although I was able to trace the cause of my novelty addiction to a particular job. I then built that into a career path for a bit (doing short term, very targeting consulting jobs. Most were subcontracts to larger projects) and oddly got tired of it and forced myself back to focusing on one thing. I do still find myself reverting back to always wanting to do new things. Usually I will devote a few hours a week just to doing something new or learning something new. Downtime between projects is used for learning as well. I make this a habit to feed my addiction to new things.

My first job in a R&D/Testing type role was working for an application service provider. I was responsible for evaluating new hardware from vendors before it would be released to our data centers. I had to not only test the hardware, but ensure the applications worked correctly, performance test, and document configurations. Each week was something new and I had great relationships with vendors such as Compaq, HP, Dell, and Microsoft that would constantly send demo hardware/software just so I could play. I left the job to take a position at Microsoft, and looking back regret it. I stayed at Microsoft for a little over a year for the same reason as you, I got bored. That is when I switched to just doing consulting.

But, if that doesn't work, I would look for positions in R&D for a company (that is the type of position where I traced my problem back to). Depending on the company/position you actually get paid to find and work with new "toys". Also, look at testing type positions.

</comment><comment><USER55> What kind of job requires novelty? How about reviewer/writer of new technology? How about testing of new products? May not pay as much as software engineering, but you seem to not actually be successful at doing that anyway.

Also, if you haven't yet talked about this with a mental health professional, you probably should. It may take trying a few before you find someone who understands your particular problem.

</comment><comment><USER56> A few things that have helped me:

1\. Realize that tendency CAN be a powerful tool if you channel it correctly and get yourself into the right environment. I'm in media, because the tools change quickly, each project has different problems to solve, and there's a broad, somewhat disconnected set of skills that are useful.

2\. Every job, no matter how passionate you are about it, will have some crap you just have to get through that you don't want to do. Don't confuse temporary boredom with lack of passion.

3\. Willpower is a muscle, and you CAN get better at powering through the portion of your work that you don't enjoy.

4\. If you master things quickly enough you can move up in your career so that you are doing new things with each new move.

5\. It's worth talking to your healthcare provider about these concerns, there are a variety of tools and strategies that can help.

6\. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Use your free time to explore widely disparate disciplines.

7\. Limit your time aimlessly browsing the internet. It's a great tool, but using it without purpose seems to make it much harder to focus on tasks.

</comment><comment><USER57> I would look at the problem differently. I think this approach when you try to accept that you are "broken" or "ill" does not really help or motivate. I would consider myself, my brain, my subconsciousness as a one whole and try to interpret the signs it gives me. Like if you are bored by a project, that does not mean that you are a bad person who has problems with concentration or something. It might mean that it is not complex enough for you.

There is this theory that says that for every IQ level you have to find an appropriate occupation. If the occupation does not require the whole your potential, you feel bored. If it requires higher abstract capacities than you have, you feel overwhelmed. So the thing is to find your level.

On my previous job I switched projects every 6 months. At the beginning they all sounded so exciting, I didn't know anything about things that I would have to do on them, so I was so eager to start them and learn all the stuff. But after 3-4 months they were so boring, I was struggling so much and then I always inevitably landed in my boss office telling him that I cannot stand it anymore and I have to switch the project otherwise I have to leave the company. But the thing is this subconscious urge to do something different is much stronger than rational thoughts. I can fight for some time with myself and then I give up.

But then I decided to switch the whole industry where I was working. And now I am incredibly happy with that switch. Now I am on the same project for 8 months and it is nowhere any sings that I wanna jump to the next thing. It is very different here and the tasks I have, they require really whole my mental capacities leaving no place for boredom.

So what I wanted to say is that IT project != IT project. You can use the same programming language to build something that is not that complex in its nature and it will make you bored, or you can use it to solve a very complex problem and then you don't need to satisfy your thirst with new technology because the project itself is already demanding whole your mental abstract capacities.

So what I would do in your place, is that I would try to find an industry which is not only using new shiny tools but also builds something extremely complex. You have to find a complexity level appropriate for your. So take something that you think you are not capable of (something with complex math or physics or whatever) and see whether you can deal with that.

</comment><comment><USER58> Define for yourself a different set of objectives: find the novelty in staying 2, 3 years at a company, in having a life without debt, in having money set aside. Work for a company that has a big and complex project. There are projects where it's virtually impossible to get to know all the parts of the code. Lower a little bit your definition of novelty when you're at work: consider as new having to work on bugs/features that you don't have any idea where are situated in the codebase when you first hear about them. Remember, there are jobs where you have to work only 8 hours.

Take one of those jobs and spend your afternoons working on your own projects which can be implemented using whatever technology you want and can be as concrete as you want.

Look at your job as a necessary hell, but try to find the fun in it while at work and always remember that you have your fun projects back at home

</comment><comment><USER59> You reminded me of an article by Nassim Taleb called "The Future Will Not be Cool":

[http://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/nassim_nicholas_taleb_the_fu...](http://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/nassim_nicholas_taleb_the_future_will_not_be_cool/)

</comment><comment><USER60> That is a lot of debt. I was once in debt like that and I eventually found Debtors Anonymous to be very, very helpful. I ended up deciding my debating behavior was causing a lot of the other problems in my life and dealing with that really gave me the space to figure out my other problems.

DA website: [http://www.debtorsanonymous.org/help/questions.htm](http://www.debtorsanonymous.org/help/questions.htm) There is a meeting every day somewhere in the bay area. If you come to the friday night Laurel Height meeting you'll see me: [http://www.ncdaweb.org/SF.html](http://www.ncdaweb.org/SF.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not living in the Bay Area, or even the US. Is there something that can be done e.g. over Skype?

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> You finished the level. Time to move on to the next.

You probably have a good idea how great software development should be done. But can you get 10 programmers to actually work like that and stay profitable, while they still don't resent you too much?

</comment><comment><USER62> I think you should sidestep into a related but more appropriate job.

Above all else, engineers should be obsessed with the proper functioning of a system, throughout all aspects - speed, security, robustness, etc. What tools are chosen are chosen only for the purposes of enhancing those goals. An true engineer senses these needs and works towards them uncompromisingly. To choose otherwise - for any reason - is to be a bad engineer, which it sounds like you are (sorry! Just being honest!)

The good news is that having an insatiable appetite for novelty has its place in this world. Could you work as an angel scout? Or a tech crunch (-style) writer?

</comment><comment><USER63> I am on similar lines, but i have a stable job .. (changed 3 jobs in the last 6 years). I quit my own startup because its boring. I cant stick to a project for more than a month.

Try working with a really growing startup you might like it. I was into infra for a while, the QA team, then development, then scaling dbs etc... Keep changing the role.

It is not just about the job. Try doing a course on coursera/edX. I do multiple courses across very different domains. I did Mathematics, biology, Electronics, then philosophy, Quantum computing etc. It gives you the element of "novelty" if the job doesnt interest you.

</comment><comment><USER64> I am a novelty-seeker and I've turned to freelancing (in my case: data science). A lot of short, fast paced projects, everyone being different and requiring me to learn new things.

</comment><comment><USER65> Also, check out the book "Changing For Good" by James Prochaska. There is quote, (not from the book) "Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth." So bounce ideas off people you know and trust. Seek council and constructive criticism. Read evidence based "self help" books. Get a life coach. Because, "I want to change this or that about me" is never as simple as it seems. Especially if you want to make it a beneficial change.

</comment><comment><USER66> Such behaviour can be hardcoded for certain types of personalities and is not bad per se. You're just trying to achieve something that isn't compatible with your personality.

I'd perhaps recommend doing an MBTI personality test (there's a bunch of them on the internet). This might help you to understand the mechanisms behind your behaviour and most importantly give you some hints how to make yourself useful.

I recommend to consider psychologist only as last resort.

<comment><AUTHOR> All right, let's assume I decided that software engineering career is not for me. What careers are compatible with constant novelty-seeking?

<comment><USER67> Open a novelty blog and write about what you love? You can make money from advertising and Amazon affiliate links. You could make a living out of it rather quickly.

Other thing - become a remote freelancer. Get in to projects that last 1-3 months. You can make good money while doing what you like.

Also the short interest period on projects is not part of your personality, but it might be a stage. I had same thing, but turned out to be good for me. I used it to my advantage - I learned everything I could. I would jump from niche to niche making money along the way. My base would be marketing, from there I could freely move to tech, programming and consulting while making money. It took a while but I grew up from it. Now I am full stack startup owner - I do everything from programming, through customer service to marketing - and it is awesome.

<comment><USER68> I doubt the affiliate path is a way to actually making a living... it's been fiercely competitive since 2010.

<comment><USER67> I mentioned affiliate as a way of monetizing blogging, there is many ways, affiliate through Amazon is just easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I know it may not sound like it, but you could be depressed, or in any case treatment for it may help. Talk to your doctor, or get a recommendation for a therapist.

</comment><comment><USER70> I feel a bit like this sometimes. It is one of the reasons I embrace small JavaScript modules on npm. You can write a 100-line module with a narrow scope. It can quickly (even on first release) reach a stable and frozen API, and it will prove useful for years to come.

It allows you to experiment with a wide range of topics while still providing useful contributions to the community.

</comment><comment><USER71> I have seen plenty of jobs where requirements are to go for novel solutions, get preliminary results and then pass on the job of following up to another dept. I wouldn't say your case is bad, but just not a good fit. Nevertheless there should be balance in everything, getting fired twice in short time may not be a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER72> Find a company that embraces neophilia, these guys for example [https://blog.enki.com/coding-is-boring- unless-4e496720d664#....](https://blog.enki.com/coding-is-boring- unless-4e496720d664#.6re1ueq6b)

"Component has bugs? Rewrite it in a new language!"

</comment><comment><USER73> You ought to consider a career change. If what you've been doing for the past 12 years hasn't worked out, it's time to reflect and make some hard decisions. "If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail." The problem with the replies in this thread is most folks are from a tech background and are suggesting you double down on the software development path because that's all they know. From what you said about your job history and debt situation, this isn't working out so well for you. Why not pick up a skilled trade like plumbing, electrical, or HVAC? They all pay reasonably well, there's always something new to learn, and you're always going to new places and working on new jobs. And you'd be surprised how successful people with 'dirty jobs' are. [1]

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2013/11/01/240780579/are-people-with- dirt...](http://www.npr.org/2013/11/01/240780579/are-people-with-dirty-jobs- the-most-successful)

</comment><comment> j-l- Looks like you have to adjust your mindset (definitely not easy but probably achievable) or, if you are confident enough, to adjust your career. For example you can write articles and do workshops/lectures. Third option (more EU one than Swiss :) would be to postpone the decision.

</comment><comment><USER74> If we add CR to "neophilia" we get ...

       ophilia

The CR moves the cursor to the start of the line without a LF, so the "ne" prefix gets overwritten with the rest of the word.

Sheesh ... what did you all _think_ I was talking about?

</comment><comment><USER75> Consulting firms will offer new projects every ~6mo.

There are research engineering jobs that also might be a good fit - you deal with a lot of different problems and get to satisfy your need to learn additionally from the researchers.

</comment><comment><USER76> I have a similar issue of self destructive behaviour with impulses I cannot control. An extreme solution that I was recommended by my therapist was DBT, it is less therapy and more learning to.control the urges.

</comment><comment><USER77> I would recommend a 10 day vipassana meditation retreat (they're free). They're extremely difficult, but participating in one will jolt you out of your cycle of cravings.

</comment><comment><USER78> I am this same way, I'm constantly looking for ways to learn to work with it.

</comment><comment><USER79> You should man the fuck up, and focus on doing your job, first and foremost.

</comment><comment><USER80> > I am a fairly decent software engineer,

You need to stop saying that. You're not a software engineer.

</comment><comment><USER78> I am exactly the same way

</comment><comment><USER81> contract work?

</comment><comment><USER82> I am much like you, yet am older and I too havent been able to hold a dev job for longer then a year. My addiction is the high obtained from starting up and the opportunities that always seem to knock and i pursue, yet never work out.

I recently had an awesome remote front end gig, yet this crazy outlandish opportunity knocked and I tried to ignore it, but they kept knocking (reality TV show for startups), so I gave up my job for it. I didnt make it that far in the competition, so now I am jobless .. late 30s .. similar debt .. dont own my own home .... no family and g/f is tired of my lifestyle/gave up on me.

Overall you are not alone .. this stuff for those who struggle with business guys/girls (im an inventor), don't have rich relatives or friends (investors to help you have a long runway to figure your road to success) isn't easy. Yet, we continue to do it ... it is an addiction, yet again Im too old now to drop everything(as I just did).

Also, there are so many of us in the industry who jump from one dev job to another for various reasons. Again, you are not alone ... we all have the desire to leave our mark on this earth and or just do what we love to do.. create awesome stuff on the web! Ironically my stuff helps me get jobs and then as you can see above distracts me from keeping many great steady jobs(but I AM DONE unless those who knock offer me loads of money & or a solid job doing what I love to do; invent).

</comment><comment><USER83> Craftsmanship. Quality.

There's always a new technique to master which can be brought upon in your work.

It is novel once you get there, but may take a while.

Quality construction, impeccable tailoring, expert craftsmanship – these are the marks of quality.

There's novelty in the next feature around the corner, but there is beauty in something crafted.

Ecstatic pleasure can be obtained from crafting. Perhaps give it a go.

<comment><AUTHOR> My problem is precisely that I don't get any pleasure from crafting (unless it is a really novel way of doing something). This is something I just can't feel, like color-blind people can't see some colors.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Sending 5k double opted in emails daily and looking to monetize. - <AUTHOR>

base daily. The topics are selected by category/language by the user so we know their interests and location via IP GEO and we are not doing any advertising in the emails as of yet.
Questions Are:
Are there any companies out there we can partner with/turn the advertising within the email over to for a cut of the profits?
Do we have enough outgoing email to make advertising work? <comment><USER2> I think you want to check out: <http://dlewis.net/>

He has about 20 times more readers, has had a number of interviews done, and it still isn't his daytime job.

IOW, I think you may want to consider another avenue for monetizing your emails. Perhaps product recommendations with an affiliate link if these are as targeted as described.</comment>


Munchery's chief customer experience officer leaves company (after 5 mo) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/16/muncherys-chief-customer-experience-officer-leaves-company/ <comment><USER2> I always wished there was a browser extension that would take an article about a high-profile resignation and overlay the real story, or a translated version of what is likely to be the real story.

The actual nitty gritty dirt of how things went down is honestly fascinating to read and I wish more of those sorts of stories were published, although I fully understand and respect why they are not. These discussions don't happen frequently in one's career (well, hopefully not), and so they can be valuable experiences to learn from when they happen to others.

<comment><AUTHOR> ha yes, these are always juicy (having seen a few from the inside...). I would have loved to see the maneuverings during E. Pao's departure from Reddit, for example. Overall, for most the execs and companies, a healthy severance package and accelerated vesting on equity is usually enough to keep things quiet with a separation agreement that contains a mutual non-disparagement clause.

On a separate note, Zenefits recent public breakup is one that wasn't spared, and Buzzfeed did a decent job summarizing IMO:

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/zenefits-ceo-parker- con...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/zenefits-ceo-parker-conrad-steps- down-after-compliance-failu#.vgrAnXqAp)

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/how-high-flying- zenefit...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/how-high-flying-zenefits- fell-to-earth)</comment></comment>


People with low well-being report positive outcomes after psychedelics - <AUTHOR> https://www.psypost.org/2020/03/people-with-low-psychological-well-being-more-likely-to-report-positive-outcomes-after-psychedelic-use-56296 <comment><USER2> "The present study sought to assess under which emotional (set) and environmental (setting) circumstances psychedelic users consume such substances."

This study in no way even seems to purport that people who are depressed (or "with low well-being" per the WHO test) benefit from any of these drugs.

Instead, it proves (supports, reaffirms, etc.) that, based upon the individual's initial state of well being, those with a lower well being benefit more than those with an initially higher well being.

In other words: if you feel like crap, you will feel better, overall, than someone who already feels fine does.

Of course it also has some interesting stats about in which environments they took which drugs, not that we haven't kind of known those all along.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article doesn't really explain what "positive outcomes" mean. Like, are they happier for that instance? Or do they end up changing their outlooks because of that one experience? Or is it necessary to continuously take the drugs? A lot of questions here...

</comment><comment><USER4> Sure sounds better than "suffering people report drugs make them feel good" huh

</comment><comment><USER5> Unrelated maybe, but I find it highly ironic that the recent legalization of marijuana where I live coincides with my utter lack of enjoyment of it. I've tried enough products from the dispensaries and... whatever I loved about it in college just isn't available to me now. Leaves me cranky, groggy, and with a bad headache.

<comment><USER6> Not sure where you live, but the legal weed here is garbage. It's old, dry, overpriced, full of cbn and would give you the effects you describe.

<comment><USER2> Also, my initial impression was "it's legal now, so it's not as exciting". Even if it were exactly the same weed it wouldn't be the first time that someone found the illicit aspect the most fun... drinking or smoking underage is more of a "thrill" than being able to do it every day legally, for instance.

<comment><USER6> Makes sense. I never really cared that much about the illicitness of it. That just made it more of a hassle really. Though it's never really been that big of a deal here for most of my life so that could be why.

I just like the way it calms me down, helps with stress and sleeping. Sleeping's always been something I've struggled with. I don't think it's for everybody though, kind of like the way coffee or alcohol isn't for everybody. Having higher quality coffee or beer might help someone like it if they're unsure, but if they don't like it, they don't like it and the best coffee or booze in the world won't change their mind.

Though, lower quality can give poor first impressions, or second impressions after a long period of not doing something. That was just my thought.

<comment><USER5> My college roommate in PDX was pleased with the legal product he found... my experiences are in northern NV/CA.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Help naming a novel browser+search interface - <AUTHOR>

I am working on an amalgam of a browser and a search engine (and no it is not Chrome like). The idea is that users can search and browse simultaneously, and do away with the idea of hyperlinks, or at least have links recede into the background. Based on your keywords and selections, content is returned and arranged.
This is along the lines of the semantic web.
My question is how do I describe it to a layperson? Thinking of a catch-phrase
- Browsearch: does this name ring bells? perhaps too nerdy? - Searchplorer:
- ...
Any other ideas?
Thanks HN you are awesome!
p.s. I shall post here once we launch into beta <comment><USER2> Internetsopedia?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but that's bit of a tongue-twister.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Linkless.</comment>


Grand Theft Auto 4 expected to sell 9 million copies (reviews have been overwhelmingly positive) - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_hi_te/games_gta_iv_launch

<comment><USER2> saw a commercial this weekend... looks beautiful. Too bad I'd have to buy a $300 gaming machine that I'd never play after the initial week of marathon gaming to play it.

(as I did with the Wii -- got it, played for a while, then it was played more by other people than me, then I sold it and haven't missed it yet).

Video games are just a huge time sink for me. I just end up tired with cramped hands and nothing to show for it (other than hours and days of my life wasted).</comment>


Running native programs on the Amstrad NC200 - <AUTHOR> http://cowlark.com/2017-12-04-nc200-reverse-engineering/ <comment><USER2> Wow, that takes me back many years. My school in 1996 had a bunch of those as a trial. I had one for a while, it was quite fun to hack around with (even if my teachers didn't agree!).

Alas I moved to the other side of the world so I doubt I'll be able to get my hands on one again.

</comment><comment><USER3> I mowed yards for 2 summers in 1987 and 1988 so I could save up enough money to buy an Amstrad PPC512.

I loved that computer</comment>


Frighteningly UN-Ambitious Startup Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://ardenthoughts.tumblr.com/post/20053064127/frighteningly-un-ambitious-startup-ideas <comment><USER2> I find the disconnect between pg's Ambitious Ideas essay and the companies that YC funds rather stark.

It seems as if pg wants to fund ambitious startups, but he is either (1) not having them pitched to him or (2) he doesn't find any of them lucrative.

YC has definitely funded a certain kind of startup - a small team making an interesting web/mobile app (with a few exceptions).

Perhaps it's time for YC to invest some of its capital into an X-Prize type event for some of the ideas that of has?

This may prove to be interesting fodder for the teams applying without an idea and would likely give YC access to a different subset of entrepreneur.</comment>


Open Angel Forum San Francisco March 4th - <AUTHOR> http://openangelforum.com/2010/02/07/applications-open-for-oaf-sf-march-4th/ Very happy to report that Chris Sacca and Kevin Rose have opened the third chapter of Open Angel Forum. The San Francisco chapter will be hosting it's first even on March 4th.
We are accepting applications from startup companies actively raising funds, as well as applications from angel investors who have made at least four known investments in the past year.
all the best, and I hope the HackerNews community has many members apply!  Jason <comment><USER2> People are raving about what Jason's doing with OAF. Kudos!

<comment><AUTHOR> Trying to give a little back since the game has been so good to me.

I know how hard it is to raise money. I've done four or five major projects, and it was a ton of work to get capital to fire them up.

Our goal is to make the OAF will be the best place to raise an angel round-- period. No fees, no bullshit.

Also, on a personal level, although the OAF is never going to make big money, I do get first shot at seeing and investing in all these amazing companies. I'm going to invest in two of the five companies at OAF LA and one of the OAF Boulder companies I think.

If I can angel invest in the top company at every OAF eventually, that would be 100+ startups a year.... I'd have to raise an fund to do it!

if you have any questions, ping me jason @ mahalo.com or @jason twitter

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> would have liked to have known about this.

<comment><AUTHOR> are you angel investing? if so, you're in!</comment></comment>


Web design/SEO/ Feedback please- Good or bad let's hear it - <AUTHOR> Just finished rebranding the website. Had zero web dev experience before diving into this. What do you think? Would appreciate your feedback! https://xlaundry.com <comment><USER2> nice site...as for SEO, I'd transpose your title tag so that X Laundry goes after the | symbol. Didn't look at much else, but that's a common mistake I see with a lot of client sites. Best of luck!</comment>


"Frictionless" as an alternative to "simplicity" in design - <AUTHOR> http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2010/07/21/friction-as-an-alternative-to-simplicity-in-design/

<comment><USER2> 'Frictionless' is much better than 'simplicity' - because simplicity can mean the sacrifice of necessary complexity. But I like Steve Job's definition of simplicity cited by Steven Levy in The Perfect Thing: "Fruit - an apple. That simplicty is the ultimate sophistication" and goes on to describe the iterative development process that eliminates all but the essential needed to deliver the desired experience.</comment>


Show HN: Comntr captchas – a stateless service to stop spammers - <AUTHOR> https://comntr.github.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> The captcha is basically a question to add two 2-digit numbers, e.g. 23+45. The question is returned as an SVG picture.

The hypothesis is that the need to engage brain even for 3 seconds is enough to stop 99% of the spammers, so the quality of comments should shoot through the roof.

The way it works is each comment has a sha1 hash and from that hash we can derive the 2 numbers. No state needed.

Sources of the service: [https://github.com/comntr/captcha](https://github.com/comntr/captcha)

<comment><USER2> Have you tested that hypothesis? In my experience, the real annoyance comes from people that are very persistent and aren't easily deterred by requiring a small effort. Captchas slow them down (by the time they need to solve the captcha), but they'll also slow down everyone else.

Adding effort so you have to _really_ want to comment may be a good idea to reduce the amount of comment, but it might also deprive you of valuable comments because people don't care that much about sharing some information that they'll jump through hoops to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I'm trying to test. Last time I've got 800 mostly meaningless comments.

The idea is to stop numerous zergs: you can't ban them one by one, but a little bump on their way can do the job.

To avoid annoying more serious commenters, the captcha should be as simple as it can be. So asking to add 321+625 would be too much, while a question like 2+4 doesn't need any thinking, so I chose two-digit numbers.

This is a small social experiment. I don't know how it'll go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Getting an error in Chrome

        supercop.js:24 Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read property 'apply' of undefined
            at a._malloc (supercop.js:24)
            at h (supercop.js:28)
            at Object.createKeyPair (index.js:50)
            at getUserKeys (user.js:65)
            at async Object.getPublicKey (user.js:137)
            at async refresh (index.js:16)</comment>


Tax and Spend, or Face the Consequences - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702043.html

<comment><USER2> "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery" \- Winston Churchill

How many more examples do we need of the failure of socialism ? It took 80 years to admit failure in the USSR and they didn't have a private sector (like we do) to prop up the economy.</comment>


Examining and Learning from Complex Systems Failures - <AUTHOR> https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/examining-and-learning-from-complex-systems-failures/ <comment><USER2> > 16\. Safety is a characteristic of systems and not of their components.

> 18\. Failure-free operations require experience with failure (Cook 1998).

These two things in particular caught my eye, especially as I'm not in system design.

So with 16, you can't just slap together components with sufficient -ility rating, you have to study and design the safety of the system as a whole. Those components, in two different designs, are exposed to different stresses in different ways, and live within different monitoring and mitigation systems.

With 18 ... I wonder what the value would be to a promising new engineer who opted to not take the big offer from Google or Apple, and instead worked down among the unwashed for awhile, gathering experience. There's probably a lot of value in having experienced failures in a system that has no relevant mitigation, and you have to figure out what to do next, as the first person to have seen it.

Luxurious to work at Google, where if it hits the fan, there's lots of systems and experience to handle it. Character building if you alone had to figure out how to keep the ship from sinking, from an "iceberg" that no one had thought of and planned for.

</comment><comment> awinter-py very much want to read this but uptimeinstitute is currently, and very ironically, down

(maybe because of a complex system failure? or just load)

<comment><USER3> Archived at [https://web- beta.archive.org/web/20170417232443/https://jour...](https://web- beta.archive.org/web/20170417232443/https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/examining- and-learning-from-complex-systems-failures/) or use the Google cache version from the web link at the top of the thread

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the Google cache reminder. When I view that, it also spins forever, with no page display below Google's header. If I click on the Text link, then I see the text version. I wonder if there's a problem in the source itself, rather than the server.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could you be deported for open source prj? - <AUTHOR>

coude a international student be deported for working on open source projects while at uni, on f1 visa <comment><USER2> What are you studying? Could it not be argued to be part of your studies if you are doing a computer science course of some description?

</comment><comment><USER3> Not unless you were getting paid for it, no.

<comment><AUTHOR> well the border agents are not programmers and they would see it as WORK without pay.

<comment><USER3> Assuming the OP is just talking about voluntary github commits and stuff like that, no they wouldn't. There are standards that have to be met for something being defined as work, like requirements to show up at a particular time and being managed by someone etc. If you're doing stuff that could just as easily be done from elsewhere and which comes with no obligation, that's not work.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: UI Guideline – Standardize the names of the most-used UI Components - <AUTHOR> https://www.uiguideline.com <comment><USER2> This is interesting.

I was scrolling down and when I got to pagination I assumed I'd reached the end of the page and clicked on "2" ... which took me to the article on pagination. Not a bug, just an unexpected consequence.</comment>