Ask HN: How did you escape your safe 9-5 job? - <AUTHOR> How did you escape your meaningless 9-5 job to work full time on what you wanted to work on[1]?
Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith?
Did you regret it later on?
Are you happy with the decision you made?
Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that job?
If you are currently in a job like that, then do you have any plans of escaping to work on your passion[1]? if yes, then please share your plan.
[1] Your passion may be a dream job, a special course (masters, software bootcamp, course in another field like marketing or airplane pilot etc.) or a startup. It just has to be something you love but are not doing because you think you're job is currently the safest option for you. <comment><USER2> I bought a side project from someone else that was doing 2K per month at the time and 4 years later, I have turned it into a 10+ person company (yes bootstrapped so slow but controlled growth and I own 100% of the company). So pretty happy about it. It cost me 60K upfront though which I had saved by working a miserable Wall St. Tech. Job.

I just couldn't figure out how to get out of that routine. I had tons of ideas but could never work on any of them. So I decided to take someone else's validated idea and grow it further. The point was to get STARTED somewhere. Force yourself into it. I forced myself into it by buying that side project and then quitting my job 4 months later. My income went down but couldn't be happier.

EDIT: So a few of you asking how I found the project. It was flippa. Yes, I know it is needle in a haystack. That is where I guess the luck factor comes in. I was just browsing that day and came across that project for sale. It looked perfect for me and I talked to my wife and put a bid. Leap of faith really. I never met the seller but he was an excellent marketer. THe software was crap but he had already built a very small paying audience which I knew could do a lot more.

If anyone is interested, I wrote a blog post on how to buy an online business. Linked on profile.

<comment><USER3> Literally in the same position (miserable WS tech gig). How'd you get the grit to make the jump?

<comment><USER2> there is no one way really. I just had enough of it and was lucky to have some money and timing on that flippa project. But I don't consider it just luck. I think of it as me being proactive because I have been browsing flippa type sites for years. So the key is: do something. anything. Even if small. But do it towards your goal.

<comment><USER4> I've found this is a/the key to being successful in anything. Just keep working at it even if you're only making small steps forward. Each step gets you closer to the goal and also puts you in a better position to take advantage of opportunities when they show up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > How did you escape

Out the window. I had to back up quite a bit and take a running leap, but I was able to easily shatter the floor-to-ceiling pane glass. Marge from Accounting tried to stop me, but luckily I had begun taking Parkour classes recently and was easily able to dodge her.

> Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith?

It was a literal leap of faith. Some banners set up to advertise a corporate conference broke my fall.

> Did you regret it later on?

Well, yes and no. I didn't regret choosing to leave my job, as I was able to take a chance and see what I could achieve. But I did regret the broken legs and fused vertebrae.

> Are you happy with the decision you made?

Yes.

> Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that > job?

Probably not in this motorized wheel chair...

<comment><USER6> Should've grabbed some cat-6 cable for a climbing harness first. [https://xkcd.com/308/](https://xkcd.com/308/)

<comment><USER7> Cat 5a would do

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The whole safe but meaningless job is just romanticization. The same job can be meaningful if you are working on a good project. It can also be unsafe if the workplace is toxic.

It is about finding what you really want in life. Sometimes safe but boring is good enough. But sometimes working on a dream project might feel like a chore because of the circumstances and people.

<comment><USER9> I love this response so much because it encapsulates a SO style response of "why are you soon X, you should do Y instead". The person asked about how to escape from a job he perceived as meaningless and safe, not a job everyone perceived as meaningless and safe.

<comment><USER10> But you DO escape a meaningless job by giving it more meaning

<comment><USER11> It might be better to stop looking for meaning in your job. I don't think real meaning is there.

This does not mean that you shouldn't look for a better job, or one that has _more_ meaning (for you). But ultimately, you need more meaning in your life than a job can provide. If you try to make your job provide meaning, it probably won't provide enough, no matter how good of a job it is.

And though a job may not provide real meaning, it can still be really meaningless. If it's just make-work, if it's just bureaucracy, if it's just _pointless_ , then by all means, look for something better. Full meaning for your life isn't found in a job, but a meaningless job is soul-crushing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was product manager for fast growing product, but I was waking up at 5am every morning, just so I can do some coding before work and then do another coding session after I get back from work.

That managerial job was ok and it paid well, but still my morning/evening coding sessions is what I was looking for all day. One day I was like "Cmon somebody will always pay me to write a code." I had some savings, didn't have kids or mortgage, next day I resigned.

It turned out well, I find maintenance contract doing programming job nobody wanted to touch (writing internal application in Delphi) that lasted for decade. I haven't made that much money, but I was able to travel the world few times over, failed few startups, read a ton, play a music and even bought a farm (dont ask).

I am in my 30s, having two small kids, mortgage and that farm. Everything is going well and I am still happy to code everyday and when money get low I go and consult for startups or something. If I stayed at that job I am sure I will have some career going on and more stable live, but I am still glad I did jumped the ship.

<comment><USER13> I'm also in my thirties and have a 1 year old boy. I want to wake up at 5, but can't find the power and energy. What would you suggest me?

<comment><USER12> I have 9 month old boy and I wake up at 2am, also 3, 4, 5, 5:30, 5:45... Joking aside, it is just hard to keep any schedule with kids that young. Brace yourself, in few months your sleep situation is going to get better.

<comment><USER14> For you and poster above - I have a 6-month old kid and he's sleeping full nights since 3-months old. He only missed two nights (one was sick and the other one just started teething). The resource we used was called "On becoming babywise", highly recommended! (also, knock on wood, I believe we've been lucky with the baby, so far!)

<comment><USER12> Each kid is different, you might just get lucky. Our first born was heavy cryer till her sixth month, then she was sleeping nicely. Second did sleep very well till 6th month, then teething started and he is just crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith?

Complete leap of faith. Got a very safe job in the French administration writing programs that manage pension for public servants and electronically archive documents. So safe I was bored to death and depressed.

I applied for a Canadian work Holiday Visa, got it with a friend, left and never looked back. My boss at the the time was so surprised I left such a safe place he literally told me "You've got balls" ("t'as des couilles"). Truth be told it was a matter of mental health.

I've spent two years in Vancouver, Canada, learned scala in a startup, met people I'm still in contact with. Now I live in the UK and work for the Guardian which is by an order of magnitude the best job I've ever had.

>Did you regret it later on?

Never. It was risky but it also was the best decision of my life. I just miss being closer to my family.

> Are you happy with the decision you made?

Yes

>Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that job?

Probably still integrating bloatware in order to manage French public servant pension, if not in hospital.

<comment><USER16> Nice! The Guardian was my dream job for a while... I put together an application, submitted it - and a week later all tech job openings disappeared. open source too - so I found the PR removing the job descriptions on github, it was quite a funny and surreal experience.

Keep up the good work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A risky, non-9-to-5 job can be just as meaningless as a safe 9-5 job.

The hours and safety of the job are not what give the job meaning; it is you that gives it meaning.

I have worked for large firms and startups (none of them, by the way, were 9-5) and always felt it was a great job to have at the time. There was no "escape" though since the work was remarkably similar. The startups still paid.

To put it another way, I think you're looking at the wrong feature set to make this prediction.

</comment><comment><USER18> It sounds like you overthink uncertainty, which is something I was stuck in for years. If I just reason it out enough, and have a good idea, and think it all through, maybe I can solve the problem before I quit that cushy job, or so the thinking goes.

It turns out that as long as I'm employed as a factory worker cranking out pointless Jira tickets all day to integrate another A/B testing framework, I don't have any good ideas. Boring works makes people dull.

How to escape: have f-you money. Pay off debts, save ruthlessly. See e.g. Mr Money Mustache [0] or The Simple Path to Wealth [1] for more. Bonus: you'll end up making better decisions at your 9-5 job because _you just don't have to put up with all that_, if the need arises.

My strategy: realizing that having a boring 9-5 job I found unfulfilling would make me insanely unhappy in the long term. You can always get another job if you decide you'd rather do that again.

Did I regret it? Am I happy? N/A. I know for sure I'll regret wasting another day arguing with a project manager that putting a ticket in the "in progress" column isn't actually the same as progress. In any case, others' experience doesn't have any bearing on yours (fortunately!). However, I strongly recommend against discussing this with your coworkers. They've chosen the same path you have, and will demotivate you despite having best intentions for you. If you go on an antarctic expedition, you'll run into a lot of people interested in the South Pole, and may begin to think it's common to spend lots of time thinking about penguins or the aurora australis. Well-intentioned but bad advice is pernicious.

You can't go wrong spending your days doing something that matters to you.

If you haven't read it, I recommend Post Office by Charles Bukowski.

[0] [https://www.mrmoneymustache.com](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com) [1] JL Collins: The Simple Path to Wealth

</comment><comment><USER19> I was deeply unhappy in my job as a web developer. My co-workers were great but our department (attached to an IT support company) was treated as an afterthought. Our manager had no development experience and had bounced around from department to department. He was basically one step away from the door but the owner of the business didn't have the heart due to personal reasons.

A friend who owns an ecommerce business said that he would create enough work for me full time for my first 12 months if I set up on my own, as well as paying me the same as I was earning at my previous employer. My first job was to build him a new website which involved not only building the site but migrating all of his product and order data, which kept me occupied for the first few months. I jumped at the chance, splitting my time between home and his office at first.

This was 8 years ago and while growth hasn't been explosive, I've been consistently employed since then and now have 2 full time employees to help me out, with revenue slowly increasing year-on-year. I still have the original contract (he started another ecommerce business in the meantime which has grown to be the biggest in their sector) and have picked up a couple of others along the way, expanding into industrial software and interactive marketing. It's a mixed bag, and a lot of fun getting to pick and choose which projects we want to take on.

I honestly couldn't be happier with the way things went. My life is relatively stress free and I (and my employees) earn good money off the back of a very small number of stable long-term contracts. We have a nice office and nice working conditions. Everything I ever wanted and never got in my old job.

As far as what would have happened had I stayed? The company was acquired and the web department was eventually dismantled after years of sitting around with nothing to do. I hear the redundancy packages were half decent, at least.

</comment><comment><USER20> I spent years working on side projects. They were always these apps that didn't really exist yet, and by the time I finished making them and trying to market them, I'd realize I had no idea why someone would pay for it. Then I'd throw it on the trash heap and start the next idea. After far too many years of this I decided to be more practical about it. At the same time I also cut my living expenses in half and started saving all the money I could. Once I released the app a major multi-national company signed up on the first day, saying they had been looking for something that did what the app does for a long time. Unfortunately, they were using it in a completely different way than I had anticipated, and the amount of usage it was getting right off the bat was way more than I thought it would get when I released it. Keeping up with the bug fixes and feature requests was too much, and I couldn't stand my job anyways, so I just gave notice. It's a bit strategy, a bit leap of faith.

This is actually all happening right now, but I am currently very happy with the decision. I enjoy the risks and the unknowns. They are huge motivating factors for me, rather than a source of stress. I honestly don't think I could be happy working for someone else. Every job I have worked at, people justify bad behavior as just being "good business". I simply can't accept that, and don't want to be part of it. On top of that, I can't stand giving someone else so much power over my life. I understand a certain amount of that is inescapable, but a 9 - 5 just feels oppressive to me.

</comment><comment><USER21> Got laid off. Started taking contract gigs. Found I preferred it. Partnered w/ a collective of consultants founded by a friend and former colleague. Established my S-Corp and committed to consulting. Now I make more $ and have more autonomy than ever before. It comes w/ some uncertainty and some downsides, but what doesn't? I don't expect ever to go back to traditional employment.

I haven't yet reached the point where I only ever work on projects that are particularly meaningful in terms of impact on the world, but I have more time w/ my wife and daughters and dogs and guitar, and I take every July off to go sailing... so it's a lot closer to "dream job" than anything else I've yet come across.

<comment><USER21> P.S. The "safe" job might not be as safe as it seems. Stuff happens. Acknowledging this reality and being prepared to adapt and move on is crucial, and much harder if you're complacent and stay put based on the illusion of security. There's a huge opportunity cost in basing life decisions on risk avoidance.

As for "meaning", one can find purpose and merit in almost anything, it's more about mindset than circumstance!

<comment><USER22> > P.S. The "safe" job might not be as safe as it seems.

It's been my experience that if you can get one 9–5 job, you can get another as long as you have a nontrivial amount of experience.

For example, I last got laid off in March of 2016. In May of that year, I applied for a job that I ended up starting in June (and I'm still here two and a half years later).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just be careful that you don't use your job as a proxy for life. Understand what _you_ want first, then figure out where work fits.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wouldn't say that I quit because I wanted to work on something that I wanted to, but instead, I quit and then came up with something that I would love to work upon.

It was a leap of faith and within 10 days came up with Draftss. 9 months later we've achieved 8k MRR. ([http://draftss.com](http://draftss.com))

Very much happy with the leap of faith. At present, I wish I would've done it sooner.

</comment><comment><USER25> I was laid off in 2008 during the recession.

I always wanted to start a business but preferred the safety of a salaried position. When that was taken away and no one was hiring I had no choice.

I bought a laptop on my way home and started calling my professional network. Within a day I had signed my first web design client.

5 years later I sold the company.

Both starting and selling my web agency were incredibly rewarding for my professional growth.

</comment><comment><USER26> Depends. Do you have a family? A spouse? Debt? Do you need meaning in your work or just a paycheck to get satisfaction out of life. You create your own meaning or lack of it - the job doesn't inherently have or not have it. If you want a more fulfilling life find thing that give you that and do them. they don't have to be mutually exclusive.

</comment><comment> EZ-E Remember that your job doesn't define you.

If you think of a job as just a tool to make money, lots of the pressure of having a "meaningful" job goes away. The job has meaning because it allows you to feed yourself and your family.

<comment><USER27> That's some any-time-previous-to-the-late-20th-century shit right there. Only a few decades ago did we start to have the luxury of even thinking our job should be "meaningful". I often think of a caveman or a child working in a textile mill or the lead dude in "The Jungle" screaming out "My job has no meaning!" as they're trying to just not die of starvation. I often find myself too thinking that I would like my job to have more "meaning", but the truth is, my boring corporate job provides me creature comforts that most of the world present or past will never know, and me deeming it meaningless really points to the fact that I lack volition and drive to make it or my life outside of work sufficiently(existentially?) meaningful. Still, fuck corporate bureaucracy that keeps me writing TPS reports instead of using my trade skills.

<comment><USER28> This. Especially fucking the corporate bureaucracy! I always enjoyed my work before I joined my current company and, with just how _corporate_ it is, it's opened up the "where does my meaning come from if not work?" can of worms for me. I had quite a negative emotional reaction to the workplace at first but now I realise I have an opportunity to grow by finding meaning somewhere else in my life.

For reference I work at a large bank, so I suppose the availability/features of our systems/applications is not meaningless for our customers. That said there's no way I can see my professional experience moving forward here. Maybe experience surviving in a corporate environment counts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wrote a longer version of this before[1], but here it is in short form:

> Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith?

It was more of a loose plan. I'd been reading Patrick McKenzie's articles about consulting and knew I wanted to try it. When my 9-5 (more like 8-10) job pushed me to the edge, I decided to put in my notice and give consulting a shot.

I had about $30k saved up from four years of 9-5 work which helped A LOT because I made zero dollars for a few months. But that cushion was a result of good personal finance decisions, not because I knew I'd quit some day.

> Did you regret it later on?

No, never.

> Are you happy with the decision you made?

Absolutely. I still have challenging moments but they're the good kind of challenges; interesting and rewarding.

> Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that > job?

Miserable. No way my mind or body would survive that long in that environment for that long.

In short: I made the right decision for myself, but it wasn't a rash decision. My savings cushion helped me survive for the first few months. Even if things didn't work out as well as they did, I would have no regrets for trying.

[1] [https://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get- consulting-l...](https://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get-consulting- leads/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I found a meaningful 9-5 job.

<comment><USER31> I agree with this. When I had to look for work last, I asked myself what was the biggest problem I wanted to contribute to fixing (for me it was climate change). Then, I started researching and networking with people who worked for companies in that area. Eventually, I got a job in renewable energy. So far I've loved every minute in this field because I feel it is so meaningful.

There's lots of 9-5 jobs that are meaningful. They may not pay as much as a meaningless adtech job, but if you're in software engineering, they still usually pay pretty well.

<comment><USER32> This is exactly the path I'm on, software eng in ad tech would love to help the cause for addressing climate change - any advice?

<comment><USER31> Sure! Check out this post (and posts like in my comment history).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154)

Also, if you're in the bay area, start coming to events on my bayareaenergyevents.com calendar. Software engineers usually have no issues finding jobs once they come to a few events and learn who's hiring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you're a Malaysian, it's a no brainer.

A senior tech job pays about US$1000-$2000 per month. Maybe $3000-$6000 for managers/VP of listed companies. Conditions can be poor. Long hours at work, long hours in traffic, 14 days of vacation. Aggressive people. Pay is often late with startups, and the norm is paying on the 5th of the month.

The trick is to work foreign jobs. I make about US$35/hour freelancing, which is a very comfortable amount for me personally, and also well below the usual rates internationally. I can live in a comfortable area away from the city with good food, good traffic, and fast internet.

If I can just make an international SaaS thing at $1000/month, that should be enough spare change to buy a family house.

</comment><comment><USER34> I did not escape in the physical sense, but I picked up side projects to keep building out my skill.

I make it a priority to try to find more interesting work and projects that will add value to the company.

I have tried for many years to create a profitable side project, but I am still trying. You have to be careful about survivorship bias when you hear about successful startup. I am not saying you should not try, I am saying you have to consider that there are far more failures than successes. Keep that in mind and try to learn as much as you can along the way.

</comment><comment><USER35> Never had one. Straight into startups right out of college. Never looked back.

The fallacy is, that a corporate job is safe. One startup got bought by Dell, then we got laid off. Hadn't been laid off before.

</comment><comment><USER36> How did you escape your meaningless 9-5 job to work full time on what you wanted to work on[1]? I assessed the 'worst case scenario' vs current scenario vs best case scenario and threw a reasonable probability at each. Next I looked at my potential happiness with each. It was quickly apparent that staying where I was at was the dumbest thing I could do. (also consider how 'safe' your job really is, every company and gov't changes direction from time to time)

Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith? Of course you have to have a plan or an idea, but then it is just a leap of faith, not much in life is a guarantee.

Did you regret it later on? Nope.

Are you happy with the decision you made? Yup.

Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that job? In that same job, doing the same thing, reasonably happy, but slowly dying.

Background: I am from Canada where the social systems and job prospects are good, therefore my 'worst case scenario' is not that bad, so YMMV. I also have an engineering degree to fall on. However; I do have a wife, 3 kids and mortgage. Honestly, the kids are the only thing that concerned me. Wives can work too if need be, and mortgages are easy to get rid of.

Worst Case Scenario: Don't let fear of failure (ie Pride) get in the way. Where is your pride when your dying and full of regrets?

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm delivering my notice today, in Brazil it's 30 days of notice and then I'm free :)

My plan is to work on my projects, blog, study in both specializing and generalizing, get in touch with the developer community, do Open Source, seek remote & independent work, I've saved enough for about a year on a budget.

I also plan to take the opportunity and take a very good care of myself, I skate and I'm taking up calisthenics, at 31, I'll skate everyday! Small-scale farming & getting a masters is also planned.

I've been trying to conciliate my actual interests with job unsuccessfully for about 7 years now(subtracting some 2-3 years from the beginning), I've been considered above average generally and almost always the employer wanted to talk me out of quitting but I think I've reached my tipping point, the cost of this salary is just too high for me. Feel free to get in touch anyone.

<comment><USER38> good luck on your ventures! you sound excited

<comment><USER37> Thanks man!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There are two outlooks. I like to think of them as theory vs practice.

In Theory: "Do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life."

In Practice: "It's not about where you work, it's about who you work with."

The theory is achievable, but it ignores working with people. The practice can tend to avoid obtaining your ideal work to perform, but can lead to more satisfaction among most people.

Working on a dream project can feel like bore or a nightmare due to the people or dependencies. Sometimes safe but boring is awesome because it still might challenge you and the people around you are amazing, they pick you up when you are down, support your failures, and celebrate your success. Ultimately it's a balance that we all have to find.

</comment><comment><USER40> I ended up retiring from the military. It wasn't 9-5 and it wasn't meaningless but it was soul sucking at times. I originally planned on getting into information security/ cyber security but a good opportunity popped up to own a franchise that does stretch therapy and I took it. Right now I am able to make a difference in other peoples lives by reducing pain and increasing mobility thru stretch therapy. Running a business has also been extremely educational. Especially coming from a military background.

For the information security side of the house I am just doing my own thing learning pentesting and reverse malware analysis. It is still fun but I have less time to do it as I would like.

</comment><comment><USER41> Started my own company with a couple of partners.

Lots of risk and hard work, but it can pay off. It did for me. Not really that company, though it was successful, but companies I started after that which were more closely aligned with what I love to work on.

My plan was to become my own boss, or at least a boss. Turns out it's not that black and white, but it defined my career for the better.

I will say this:

Taking calculated risks is as important, or more, than any other factor in what you'll accomplish in your life. I've seen _many_ otherwise very talented people get stuck in local maxima because they're afraid of failure.

Listen to your instincts. Take risk.

</comment><comment><USER42> Read Mastery by Robert Greene, great resource that talks about this topic widely.

</comment><comment><USER43> This was me at my last job. I was there for 10 years, stuck for 5. As other's have said here it is as simple as just quit, but go deeper than that. I'm sure you have come to the same conclusion on how to escape, but you should since down and ask yourself, "Why haven't I quit yet?". Are you simply scared of failing somewhere else, knowing that your current situation is guaranteed? Are you not confident in your skills? Analyze the reasoning for your reluctance, and then working on your confidence. This is at least what worked for me. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER44> I had a "plan" but it was still a leap of faith, leaving a 8-5 steady job with no income. My enabling factor was a good amount of savings and low debt. I had around 1 year of comfortable living to figure it all out.

Staying at my last job wasn't an option so I'd have a different job for sure, but not satisfied with what I was doing with my time. I find running a business and developing my own products much more rewarding. 7 years later I don't have any regrets although running a business is a whole new set of challenges.

</comment><comment><USER45> It was part strategy in that I kept my day job (web developer at a university) and split my paycheck with my two co-founders so that we could start our business/product. I would work on the idea on nights and weekends.

Luck and faith came into play when we applied to YC and were accepted. At that point I quit my job to move to Mountain View.

There are no regrets today, but it was a difficult decision at the time. Keeping my day job allowed me to still feel secure while also pursuing something ambitious.

</comment><comment><USER46> By taking a massive pay hit over my potential, and teaching 2 days/week in China. I'd honestly rather die than getting stuck in a make-work 9-5 in America.

</comment><comment><USER47> Earn that much that you can afford to work just 80% or 60%. 60% would be ideal since it gives you a 4:3 ratio of free days, which is more than half the week.

</comment><comment><USER48> Just quit.

Really, that's it. Just quit, and go do the work you enjoy.

<comment><USER49> Sorry, but this is terrible advice. Do not quit until you have something else lined up. Quitting with no plan for the next day will leave you out on the street. Go part time if you want more time to set something up.

<comment><USER48> Well, obviously you need to have either money or a plan so you don't end up homeless.

The OP edited his question after I replied. When I wrote my reply the question was a oneliner: "how do I escape my meaningless job"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> [https://80000hours.org/career-guide/](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/)

</comment><comment><USER51> Those questions seem like they're a part of a course assignment. Ie the replies here will be reproduced in an essay.

<comment><USER49> > Your passion may be a dream job, a special course (masters, software > bootcamp, course in another field like marketing or airplane pilot etc.) or > a startup. It just has to be something you love but are not doing because > you think ( _you 're_) job is currently the safest option for you

Hopefully it's not part of a course assignment otherwise the instructor may need a course of their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I've been having the same questions which led me to so good they can't ignore you. The concept of career capital really resonated with me. For me it's about bringing more value to my current organization and to myself to stay in my current job and role, current job new role, new job or on my own.

</comment><comment><USER53> > If you are currently in a job like that, then do you have any plans of > escaping to work on your passion? if yes, then please share your plan.

I wouldn't really call my current job 'meaningless', it's nice to work on something that customers actually value (I get to say "someone wrote a book about the product I helped make" which is pretty cool) and isn't adtech or analytics tech, but it is annoyingly safe and I've been thinking it's probably time to look into a different environment. 3 years ago I estimated a 55% chance I'd still be here, it drops to 35% chance in another two years. What keeps me? Part of it is I've done the math on early "retirement" (having enough investments to live off a % of interest/dividends) and if I stick it out a few more years into my early 30s (I'm 28) I'll be at a spot with a nice buffer to be fine even in years like 2018 where the final 1YR ROI for the S&P 500 was negative.

Alternatively I could try switching jobs to another bigco that gives out more stock in annual compensation and maybe cut that need-to-work figure by a couple years. As another alternative I could join various kinds of startups. In the worst case for that (at least given what I would settle for, e.g. especially now startups can band together into group insurance policies I'm not going to accept a role without some sort of advantaged medical insurance plan vs paying for one all myself) I just pay my current cost of living and don't raise more savings until I have to get another job, so that extends the time frame of "retirement". Perhaps in a close-to-average case it doesn't change the years-to-goal line too much as startups with funding can at least pay semi-competitive base salaries. In the best case it cuts the years required by a few years (like another bigco job) due to a quick IPO or acquisition. So ultimately on the financial front there's not a strong reason to change right now. I can afford to be picky and wait to see if something comes along that stirs the "I actually _want_ to do this for its own sake" feeling (due to technology, the nature of the problem, or the people I'd get to work with). Perhaps that thing will be my own thing and I'll make a startup for it then. "Retirement" I often put in quotes because I do think there's a strong possibility of continuing to work, just not in the traditional sense. My dad just actually retired, I don't think I could last until I'm 60 without a much stronger external driving influence (e.g., a kid, or a mortgage).

</comment><comment><USER54> I had an extremely easy gov contractor job that paid really well, used my skills, and I worked with great people. I still was living for being off work.

Decided to pursue a PhD, which requires about 20x effort but I like coming to the office every day to work. Huge difference for my mental health.

</comment><comment><USER55> I worked in a support position w/ the DOJ for several years. After my pay was frozen for two consecutive years, I realized I hated what I was doing anyway and quit. Attended a coding bootcamp and have been a paid dev for about five years. Best decision ever.

</comment><comment><USER56> before you can get something in your life, you need to have space for that. the trick is to know yourself enough, that way, you can choose what you actually want. if it feels like a leap of faith, then probably you have too many unanswered questions (about yourself)

</comment><comment><USER57> I don't particular the implication that a safe job should also be consider as not meaningful. Would you continue doing a job that is meaningful but unsafe (kinda like a lot of the US public servants now due the US gov shutdown but I digress)?

</comment><comment><USER58> I switched to management role in game development couple months ago. Now I'm broken and miserable and sending applications to get back to sofware development. Managing others just isn't my cup of tea, no matter how cool the project is.

</comment><comment><USER59> Self-actualization in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) ?

</comment><comment><USER60> I got laid off. Twice. And decided, fuck it, the world was a garbage fire, I was going to go do the PhD program and academic career I'd always wanted.

Seems to be working so far, though I'm super tired all the time.

</comment><comment><USER61> You need to find autonomy somehow. More info here [http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html)

</comment><comment><USER62> Find meaning in your 5-9. That's the best I got at the time. Once I escape the 9-5, I'll let you know :P

But for most people, the best way is probably FIRE.

</comment><comment><USER63> it was a leap of faith and the best decision i ever made.

i left my cushy consulting gig for a small startup that was acquired a year later. if i had decided to stay there, i would likely be doing the same meaningless projects for about 5% more than I was the year before.

</comment><comment><USER64> Is a safe 9-5 job inherently "meaningless" now?

I am good at software development. I help a company with software development 8 hours per day and they pay me for my time. They take care of hardware, air condition, desk space, social stuff, cleaning, internet connection, tax pre- deduction and regular payment transfers. I get to focus on what I'm good at.

My colleagues are pleasant and my work tasks are challenging.

In the evenings and weekends, I spend time with my family, make things for myself, or play games alone or with others.

<comment> rv-de What does your company sell?

<comment><USER65> I haven't up/down voted you, but I think I understand why others did. Your comment appears either as relevant to or an off shot from the perceived topic, thus gets judged and receives its due votes.

<comment> rv-de How is the the product not relevant to the meaningfulness?

<comment><USER65> It may happen, say... when the love is gone yet almost everyone hearing what you're working on expects you to act delighted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I replaced my with safe 9-5 meaningful

</comment><comment><USER67> I really need advice, I'm in this exact situation and I'm feeling lost.

I'm gonna go throwaway since I really need to spill the beans here:

My story is full of 'pendulum swings' and 'comparisons' and I can't really make up my mind. I need help.

\- I am married with children.

\- I live in Brazil, which is shitty right now, as most of you know (far-right trigger-happy president just got elected). Lots of unemployment going down here, people are genuinely struggling. Basically everyone knows someone unemployed or in bad shape financially.

\- I managed to somehow escape all the suffering from the last 3-5 years by landing a .gov job several years ago. That means I currently have a good stable income, I am able to afford a mortgage and a comfy home, I have a car and health insurance. Not much money left at the end of the month but everything is properly paid and managed. And I basically cannot be laid off unless I do something really bad.

(Lots of people here would kill to have this job -- in our culture landing a .gov job is synonymous of "having made it", because the majority of Brazilians don't really enjoy hard work -- they measure success by your amount of free time).

\- Problem is, my current 8-5 job is as meaningless as one can imagine. I siphon data thru python scripts and write excel spreadsheets, deal with lots of useless crap, data that is not going to be used for anything, and that's it. It's a .gov job after all, filled with bureaucracy and useless stuff to do just to fill time. It makes me feel really empty and after all these years I have ended up developing Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Attacks ;(

\- Otoh, before working here I worked on places in which I've consistently put 70h+ work weeks, I was really fat and my overall health (blood pressure, sugar, cholesterol levels) was poor. After joining this boring dayjob I managed to have more time for exercising and hobbies and I ended up losing an excess of 50kg, which was really good to me. My health is mostly in check, besides my anxiety which fucks me on a weekday basis (I almost don't have it on weekends).

\- After I arrive home from my dayjob I'm usually so stressed out for not really doing anything meaningful (which worsens my anxiety) that I have several freelance gigs lined up so I can 'feel alive' for a bit. I am a systems developer and I have almost 20 years of UN*X experience, which lends well to these kinds of custom workloads where they need specialized solutions and whatnot. When I'm in the zone doing this kind of work at my home office, I have no anxiety whatsoever.

\- I know I need more free time for my family and the kid. I don't think I should be living two work lives for that much time or I'll end up not seeing my kid grow up or something. As much as the freelance gigs make me feel really accomplished, I realize I also need time for "real" hobbies (music making, woodworking), exercise, etc.

\- All these freelance gigs helped me shape my career outside of my day job and build a good network and portfolio of solutions and cases. I currently have some interviews lined up with recruiters from Europe, and some are going pretty well. I think I might score a job there soon-ish and if that happens I'll be offered to move. That means abandoning my "dream job" here.

\- Thing is, I don't know how it can turn up there, it could be good, it could be bad and if I come back I'll not have my safe job anymore, and I'll end up being thrown into genpop without any kind of safe net which is much needed in this extremely volatile environment that is Brazil right now. And now I'm older and I have a mortgage and a kid.

\- I am currently "taking a hit for the team". Not happy at my dayjob, but I do it anyway and I "like it" because I am thinking about how I am able to keep my family together and well-fed, while several people are losing their houses etc and suffering a lot. It really is a 'lesser evil' situation.

My doubts are:

\- Am I complaining on an full stomach? Should I stick to my safe job and not go into unsafe adventures?

\- What if I end up hating there as well and regretting not having valued my current safety as much as I should?

\- Otoh, what if I am losing myself into this hole of a job and living a lesser life, for me and for my family? Emigrating to a better place could mean more work and less slack but also living in a better place, with less crime and with a better overall quality of life.

Doubts doubts doubts.

I'd appreciate your sincere opinions! I'm gonna come back in a few hours to read the replies.

Thanks in advance and have a good day, y'all! o/

<comment><USER68> "\- I know I need more free time for my family and the kid. I don't think I should be living two work lives for that much time or I'll end up not seeing my kid grow up or something. As much as the freelance gigs make me feel really accomplished, I realize I also need time for "real" hobbies (music making, woodworking), exercise, etc."

This bothers me. You made a decision to start a family, when you did so, you made a commitment to uphold their well-being to the best of your ability. Living "two work lives" will most likely have detrimental effects on your relationship with them. I know, I've been there. Be careful to balance your needs with those of the ones you love, they are more important than some temporary high of doing fun work on the side. Yes we need to do meaningful work in our lives, but not necessarily at the cost of these other meaningful things. As a programmer (and creative) with a family, I completely understand where you are coming from. As a loving father, it is easy to make the necessary sacrifices. I hope you find more meaningful work soon, but unless you breath that work with your heart and soul (which is rare), it will always be just that, work, and at best a fun distraction you will trade for time.

<comment><USER67> thank you for your reply!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I'll prefix my answer with a definition:

adj. meaningless - not bringing a sense of meaning, satisfaction, worth, value, or purpose.

Now onto my response...

I was in AAA video game development, and regardless of what game I worked on, it was always the same thing each cycle: solve the same problems, work long hours on a game I'd never play myself, often detested, and maybe get some kind of a bonus or vacation time if it did well. Rinse and repeat, only each cycle was worse as I got older, had a family, wanted to spend time with them, and learned from past mistakes, but the designers got younger (from my perspective) and wanted to continually make all the same mistakes over again.

After a while, I came across - and read - "What Color Is Your Parachute" ([https://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your- Parachute-2018/dp/039...](https://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your- Parachute-2018/dp/039957963X)), which was fantastic!

At the time I was working for Disney and used the strategies I learned to come up with a plan to make connections outside my studio, learn a few new things while helping with other issues. Eventually (it took about a year) it paid off and I was moved + promoted to a completely separate division. I was still helping the game studios, but doing work that was far more rewarding to me and I was learning new skills: big data, ETL pipelines, databases, etc. And, I was able to apply all my existing knowledge and experience to that new position to make it better. I may not know Kafka yet, but I knew how to integrate pipeline code into the game engine using very low memory and CPU.

Time goes on, and - after helping someone else with a Scala + database problem on Reddit, I ended up landing a job using all my new skills at The Broad Institute helping with genetics research. I can't say that I've ever been happier or ever had a job that was more meaningful. I go to conferences now and meet people who are actually using my tools, REST APIs, etc. to cure complex diseases. And I'm learning so much more than I ever thought I would.

Back to your questions:

> Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith?

It was a strategy. I think when you're young and don't have a family it's easy to take big risks and leaps of faith. That was not an option for me. But, I think that believing that I _could_ successfully make the transition was a leap of faith.

> Did you regret it later on?

There was one point early on I did. I knew game development inside-out and was an authority on the subject. If I said something in a meeting it was taken seriously. It was hard to go back to being the newbie. After a while, though, that went away. I absolutely do NOT regret it now.

> Are you happy with the decision you made?

Couldn't be happier. Life is better on every single front for me. I'll also note that much of that is intertwined. I'm happy (with work), so I act happier (at home), which means the family is happier (around me), and it all feeds on each other.

> Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that > job?

Do the same shit over and over again, until something happened to the studio and I was let go. Eventually, I'd be a 50-year old game developer that no one would hire because my price tag would be too high, and I wouldn't put up with someone telling me to work 80 hour weeks.

> If you are currently in a job like that, then do you have any plans of > escaping to work on your passion?

No.

But, I'll answer this a little differently than you probably expected. At every job I've had - until now - I've always had side projects and little programming things I did for fun at home. I always had an "itch" that wasn't being scratched by my day job. That's no longer the case. I get fulfillment at my job, and if there's ever anything I'd like to explore, I'm lucky enough to be working where it is actively encouraged.

In summary, I'm not sure if your question was a kind of "poll" for something else you're working on or if you are looking for encouragement to escape a job that you find meaningless. Assuming it's the latter, I would suggest reading the book linked - or at least enough to get you going. It has many great tips for helping you discover what's actually important to you, and then how to come up with plans on how to get there. It may take a while, but often, simply having a plan and sticking to it (and being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel) is enough to keep your spirits up.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER70> I escaped the 9-to-5 with freelance web development. I never actually had a full time job because I decided I never wanted one when I was doing a summer job in college that required me to sit in one place programming for 6-8 hours a day. I discovered Hacker News around that time and the idea that I could make money on my own and was hooked.

I started out doing what basically amounts to working in an agency. A business guy I graduated with wanted to start a marketing company and he got the jobs and I built the websites. It was still a contract setup and I made $50 an hour because Hacker News told me that $50 was a good starting rate so I asked for it and he gave it to me.

Then I got into doing Django web development and charged around $90/hr because I got a lead and I didn't really want the work so I said, "My rate is $90/hr" and he said "okay" and from then on my rate was $90/hr. (Ha!) I just recently got $125/hr in a recent project.

Starting when I was still sort of in college helped a lot. Living in small town Indiana where the college was and this company started out helped a lot lot. Rent at the time was $150/month with a roommate. Having very low expenses meant I could experiment more and not have to worry as much about paying rent. Not having any dependents helped too.

The biggest advice I have to anyone who wants to go out on their own: learn business skills. If you already know how to develop, you may think that's all you need. It's a meme at this point that "If you build (a SaaS) they will come." No, they really wont. You need marketing, marketing, marketing, and coding to build a webapp.

This is why I recommend people start out freelancing first. Then go into building consulting services. And _then_ build products. Freelancing is so much easier to make money with. Any competent developer can get $100/hr+ with some networking. That will teach you how to talk to clients and how to sell yourself. All things you need if you are going to sell products, but it's way easier and you don't also have the burden of designing a good product.

Consulting services are very lucrative, but require even more business sense. If you can business and code at the same time, you are in a verrrrry small percentage of people, and have superpowers.

Build your audience somehow. You'll need one if you are going to sell a product. Make the product first as a service that "doesn't scale". That is, manually implement the business outcome your software would give your customer manually yourself.

Then if you feel the need build a product based on your consulting business. Create rungs on a "product ladder" \- free content you put out, paid info products, higher price consulting services, and then at the very top automate all of it in software. It's a model I've seen a number of people do that will be a lot "less risky" than quitting your job and building a webapp blind without anyone watching.

I tried this once. I quit all my freelance work for a year and lived off of savings. I then proceeded to not make anything anyone wanted and just ended up spending all of my money. Then I got back into freelancing and have money again.

In general, this strategy is: "Have safe money and risky money". Your employment is safe money. It's boring, but safe. If you want to get out on your own with less risk, figure out a way to get more time but keep that safe money (maybe try to reduce hours, maybe try to reduce your commute, maybe try to work 4 days a week), then pick up freelancing part part time. Then once freelancing becomes "safe money", quit your job. Work on freelancing part time and build a business that is "risky money".

This is what I'm now doing and I have managed to make a reasonable living while having a lot more time to pursue ventures I'm passionate about. I still spend about 20 hours of my day doing "boring" web development work, but it pays for the rest of my life. I'll probably always keep at least a little of that work because it pays so well for the time put in.

Happy to talk about this more, this subject is of great interest to me and is something I've thought about a lot. My email's in my profile if you want. I think your mindset is more reasonable than many people seem to think, and I wish you the best in your quest to find work you love. It's a long term process but in 10 years of doing this I wouldn't have it any other way.</comment>


Looking for a Web Developer @ Sequoia Capital - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupdigest.com/classifieds/web-developer-sequoia-capital/ <comment><USER2> Might be a cool way to get to see part of what makes the valley tick from the inside. On the minus side, the word "ninja" is trotted out.

<comment><AUTHOR> don't where the meme ninja/rockstar came from but it gets quite annoying after awhile...

But I wonder if the job is for Seqouia the VC firm or an internal portfolio company?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "We need a Javascript and UI ninja..." Oh dear</comment>


Maybe NYC could start with a simple URL - <AUTHOR> http://www.nyc.gov/html/simplicity/html/home/home.shtml

<comment><USER2> Second news highlight on linked page:

> _New York City and Microsoft Partner to Modernize City's IT Infrastructure - > Mayor Bloomberg and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announce first of its kind > partnership to keep New York City at the cutting edge of technological > innovation while saving taxpayer dollars._

Long term licensing of proprietary software somehow does not seem like the best way to save tax payer dollars. I wonder how many thousands of IT departments and millions of computers exist across federal, state, and local levels? It seems likely that either the Department of Energy, NSA, or DoD already maintains their own Linux or BSD distribution that could be used to run open office on every government computer in the country for free. Even if you are a Windows fan, it seems hard to justify spending tax dollars on that many licenses for government use.

</comment><comment><USER3> To be fair to NYC, they were enlightened enough to let developers compete to build apps on city databases.

<http://www.nycbigapps.com/>

<comment><USER4> That's really cool. Someone should make a game to compete with your neighbors for lowest power/gas/water usage... Maybe have a Friends Leaderboard on fbook.

<comment><USER5> Why don't we have a game where elected officials actually compete to fulfil campaign promises, lower spending, increase efficiency, hold people accountable.

That sounds fun! We can vote for the officials that do best!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> .../html/home/home.shtml ...there's a certain symmetry, don't you think?

<comment><USER7> Agreed. To simplify even further: [http://www.nyc.gov/shtml/home/home/html/simplicity/html/home...](http://www.nyc.gov/shtml/home/home/html/simplicity/html/home/home.shtml)

<comment><USER8> In fairness, <http://www.nyc.gov/nycsimplicity> works too, and www.nyc.gov is pretty damn simple itself.

<comment><USER9> Until it redirects you to:

<http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/?front_door=true>

<comment><USER8> yeah but once they've gotten in, users generally don't care about URLs within the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Try <http://nyc.gov/residents>

Then click the top left logo.

That's 174 characters long

</comment><comment><USER11> Something like <http://www.nyc.gov/simplicity>, maybe?

Oh, that works.

Let's try to be constructive here.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is what you get when you spend millions of dollars on an enterprise CMS + integration once every 8 years or so.

<comment><USER13> Yes. Many of the NYC.gov websites are run on a "enterprise CMS" that imposes long URLs (name of the CMS starts with an "I"... ends with a "woven").

I understand that the purpose of this submission was to poke fun at NYC gov't and their seemingly inability to adapt to current-day tech standards. In a lot of cases this is valid criticism. However, for the past few year, nyc has made some pretty cool initiatives to make data and services it support more open and available. Someone else mentioned the nyc data feeds which is a good example. There are a bunch of twitter accounts (like @311nyc) that are actually useful. Another cool use of data is: <http://gis.nyc.gov/doitt/nycitymap/> (geo map search, great for looking up official city building info).

Even with some flaws (and many inefficiencies), we should commend NYC for not treating tech only as "necessary overhead" as most other cities do. IMO, NYC is second only to SanFran when it comes to being progressive on tech (SanFran has a policy to look OOS first for any new project which is great).

BTW, I do not work for the city but I interact with many agency IT groups via work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://www.nyc.gov/simplicity> works! Are we trying to make HN like digg or something? maybe a little restraint could help.

"Look! That Hacker picked his nose!"

</comment><comment><USER15> Redundancy is important in simplicity discussion, they want to say.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain why this is? You would think that the developers building it would say, "hey, let's make these urls a bit more friendly..."

<comment><USER17> I used to work for a company that made custom web applications, occasionally for the government (though more often, not.) This problem is actually a pretty tough one.

The way it usually works is the government agency drafts a request for proposal which has a list of features and other miscellaneous, sometimes random requirements. The thing is, who at the government would think to request friendly or short URLs? They are not web developers. They are probably older than 40, and not really up on all this social media stuff.

Now, some firms that submit proposals are of a high-enough quality that they would know that friendly and/or short urls are a part of modern web best practices. But again, how does the government agency know that seeing that is a good sign?

So sometimes, the agency realizes it doesn't know anything about technology and hires a company who does to develop the RFP. Except, then you're back at the same problem: how does the government agency know how to choose a company that will write a good spec?

<comment><USER18> >They are probably older than 40

Yep it's tough being over 40 - we don't really understand this web stuff. I mean we invented it all 20years ago, we wrote the first browsers and the first servers, we wrote the first pages - but since we don't spend all our time following #britney or end every sentence with LOL we obviously can't understand it.

Now you kids get off my (virtual) lawn

<comment><USER17> You're right, that was an ageist thing to say, and I'm sorry I said it. My point is just as valid without it.

<comment><USER18> You're exactly right though ;-)

As a 40+ engineer I would have considered REST urls but facebook would never have occurred to me.

<comment><USER8> I'm over 40, and admit that I don't "get" facebook. I use email, IM, SMS with my friends but I don't even have a facebook account

<comment><USER19> Don't worry, you aren't missing anything of value. Maybe some inane babble, but you can just turn on CNN or Fox News if you're need a quick fix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> haha. double home is funny.</comment>


Three.js – WebGl examples - <AUTHOR> https://mrdoob.github.io/three.js/examples/

<comment><USER2> It would be nice to have there also some minimal demos, simplest texture demo has 271 lines of code just to display single texture.</comment>


Nudity, e-books and censorship: How Apple became Big Brother - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/nudity-e-books-and-censorship-how-apple-became-big-brother/article5541912/

<comment><USER2> Apple is not censoring anything, they are only regulating what can be sold in their store. They do not have a monopoly/single-handed-control on eBook distribution, let alone publishing in general. Your local Barnes & Noble probably does not carry hardcore porn, but it would be crazy to call B&N's policy being some form of malicious censorship.

<comment><USER3> Given that they have unilateral control as to what can be installed on non- jailbroken devices, that's rather a cop-out. Apple does have a complete monopoly on content that can be purchased for use with iOS devices. If you don't like B&N's policies, you can very often find another retailer with better policies, but this is not at all the case if you are looking for software compatible with iOS.

<comment><USER2> So? Accusing Apple having a monopoly on iOS contents regulation is like complaining Honda having a monopoly on Civic's engine parts (Yes, there are after-market parts, and yes, those WILL void any factory warranty). They make their own devices and they can decide however they want to regular its hardware/software/ecosystem, but they don't have a monopoly on mobile electronics so you are free to choose any alternatives. Calling a company having a monopoly over their own product is simply silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Competition is the answer. If Apple isn't interested in your particular content, put it on Android.

The article is a great example of why developers should be cautious of the iPhone: The developer invests substantial resources up-front, and it's a crapshoot whether your app gets accepted or stays accepted.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Who appointed Apple the globe's moral arbiter?"

We did.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure you mean this in the vein of "Apple is controlling the App Store so they're evil" but in reality you should be thinking "Apple is controlling the App Store because if they didn't they would be sued over and over again by posting adult-themed apps because the US is a) puritan and b) lawsuit crazy".

<comment><USER5> No, Apple can do what they want. We make them the censor to the extant that we rely on them for distribution.

As for lawsuits, I doubt that B&N would be sued if they offered this book in hardcover, coffee table format. Which is probably a better format for something like this anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And how is this any different from your average book or video store ?

<comment><USER8> Because you can purchase other books and content from other places. This would be more like your DVD player not allowing you to play any content rated above R, and blacking out breasts in any context, even documentaries. And not telling you it did this when you bought it.

This isn't about Apple blocking hardcore or even softcore apps (as is mentioned, they allow Playboy). It's about them blocking history books from publication based on an extremely narrow definition of adult content.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you like to find sites you have forgotten about? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
On multiple occasions have I had the problem that I once visited a site and now I want to get back to it. I remember the site I was on before visiting this site and I remember a qoute from the site, but not the name or URL.
The qoute is to generic to find anything on google so googling didn't help me.
So, I thought to myself: I should build a service that would record my browser history, encrypt it before sending & storing it, and allow me (and only me) to search it like I would search google. (I even have some really smart search details I think could help to discover the right site)
I know I would use this service, and I want to ask you, dear HN: Would you like to use this service? Should I build it?
I intend to make it cost a small fee (like $1/month) to make sure that the user is not the product, and to make it clear for users that's the case. <comment><USER2> It is sounds cool, but I'm seen some other services that offer same functionality, but forgot them =\ and I'm not sure, that I will pay for this.</comment>


Why Alarm Clocks Snooze 9 Minutes Instead Of 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1361/why-does-the-alarm-clock-snooze-button-give-you-nine-extra-minutes-not-ten <comment><USER2> I learned in my hardware design class that it's actually theory 8. As described in the article:

"(8) On a digital clock, nine is the greatest interval obtainable by advancing some sort of "snooze counter" on the ones column. But why mess with the ones column? Why not put the snooze counter on the tens column and advance that by one?"

On early digital alarm clocks, the "ones" (minutes) column was a binary-coded decimal (BCD) counter with ten states: 0, 1, 2, ... 9. When the snooze button is hit, you want to make the alarm turn back on after about 10 minutes. However, in exactly 10 minutes, the "ones" column state will be where it is right now, which is a problem, because if you made the alarm turn on at the current ones state, it would turn on immediately, giving you no snooze delay at all.

You can achieve a snooze time of almost 10 minutes by picking the "ones" state that is furthest away from the current state, e.g., if the current state is "zero", make the alarm come back on at "9", and if the current state is "7", make the alarm come back on at "6". This results in a snooze time of 9 minutes.

Another reasonable way to implement the snooze function is to use an additional 10-digit BCD counter which advances every minute. In this method, the snooze button resets the counter to its first state (zero), and the alarm turns on when the counter reaches its last state (9). As before, this results in a snooze time of 9 minutes.

Why not put the snooze counter on the tens column as suggested in the article? Because you don't know how long it's going to be until the tens column changes. If the ones column is currently showing "zero", it will be nearly ten minutes until the tens column changes and the alarm comes back on. But if the ones column is showing "9", then the tens column will be changing in less than a minute. The "tens column" method results in an alarm clock with a variable snooze delay anywhere from zero to 10 minutes.

Of course a 10 minute snooze is achievable, but it involves a bit more work and likely additional components. Nine minutes is just easier.

Finally, in case you're still with me, I'll mention that depending on how the methods above are implemented, the "9 minute" snooze time might actually be anywhere between 8 and 9 minutes, but the delay will generally be read as 9 minutes' difference on the alarm clock itself. For example, a snooze button hit at "06:00:59" (six a.m. plus 59 seconds) might turn the alarm back on at "06:09:00" (six a.m. plus zero seconds). This is barely 8 minutes later, but the clock time will read 9 minutes later.</comment>


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Ask HN: What do Facebook employees think about their company? - <AUTHOR> How do they feel about Facebook's business practices etc? <comment><USER2> I think the way this problem is framed succumbs to an outdated world view, an image of the samurai computer hackers that put themselves in the service of the corporate lords - but are ultimately responsible for their actions against society and can choose to rebel. They are rare and prized and thus their collaboration is valued by the lords.

This is a romantic vision that the companies themselves like to perpetuate, but it's no longer true for a decade or more. It's irrelevant what the Facebook employees think, just like it's irrelevant what the employees of McDonalds think about the health of their customers. They are not unique, precious snowflakes of rare skill, they are replaceable cogs in a machine that exists for a single purpose, profit. Massive IT education programs now underway everywhere in the world will ensure that the corporations will have vast masses of foot soldiers so they can concentrate on what matters: creating competitive advantage and market dominance using the strong network effects technology affords.

Silicon Valley has bred an ultra-aggressive type of capitalism that will crush and automate the old competitors away but will no longer redistribute the wealth to the workers, as capitalism has done for the last few hundred years, because it no longer needs them. In this economic war, developers are rich mercenaries, not noble freedom fighters. The likes of Facebook and Uber are simply the expression of that social reality, a glimpse into the world of tomorrow.

<comment><USER3> Nonsense, at least today.

If 'massive IT education programs' had made engineers disposable, then salaries would be a lot lower. (If you need 'data' on this, Glassdoor says FB SWE salaries are >120k, total comp will be a lot higher. Compare that to a job with an actual disposable workforce.)

>In this economic war, developers are rich mercenaries, not noble freedom fighters.

If you said developers were poor mercenaries, that'd be one thing. But if you are rich, then you can choose to work somewhere compatible with your morals.

And if you don't make that choice, its on you.

<comment><USER4> Can you please share a list of companies with strong morals and are above criticism?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I left Facebook a few months back so I don't have anything holding me from sharing my honest take. Also I was involved in platform development a lot. Don't envy the folks who stayed btw - now it's gonna be much harder.

In short: Facebook does care about user privacy a lot. Some of the worst pains we had in platform development at Messenger were related to convincing privacy team to let us open more info to developer. And we usually fail. There was and is a strong sense of internal paranoia around leaking any user data, even if anonimized.

Whenever there's a chance of a data leakage of any sort, everything halts and the whole team is in on it. I personally spent weeks of my life in such meetings, redesigning whole parts of the product to avoid even simplier things like anon user tracking by developers with no explicit consent etc.

So when I hear people saying that Fb intentionally does something bad or doesn't care - those people really don't have clue.

Current situation is a byproduct of two things: 1) legacy decisions (that were reverted in 2015) from when the company was younger and more open and didn't have those protocols and 2) just the very sensitive nature of this data. This is a social network. What would you expect it to give developers from it's API? If not your info and parts of your graph. Even those days are over now due to (imo) unjustified paranoia.

Ads targeting is another example of that. The fact that you see targeted ads _does_not_ mean advertiser knows _anything_ about you individually. It's fully anonimized for them!

And no, there's no evil intent to make the UI more confusing to get more of your data. It's the opposite at that point, Jeez, folks, take off your tin hats. Many things to question Fb about (most notably product innovation) but here they are doing their best.

<comment><USER6> Average users see years of Facebook not caring enough about privacy, with a CEO and COO making anti-privacy statements.

Things have changed? What about that Real Name Policy?

Anonymized data? The world of data brokers might disagree.

The shady world of farmers and affiliate marketers rely on the ease of Facebook data mining.

Tin hats? Facebook has relied too long on users not understanding what happens with their data behind the scenes.

Personally identifiable or not (trivial matters) the fact that Facebook and its devs fail to see the harm that this platform is causing from its gluttony of user data is mind boggling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Imagine that software development / engineering was a profession along the lines of law or medicine - no one could "practise software" without belonging.

Now imagine we are drawing up the ethics code for that profession - is what facebook did something that could reasonably be banned? Is there direct harm involved?

In my (very personal) view Facebook is just an example of an externality - this loss of control over data is a form of pollution, and the costs are rarely direct harm to individuals, even though society as a whole seems to be being harmed.

So rather long windedly, i don't think this is something to beat up on individual Facebook employees - this is something for society level regulation - look to the GDPR and its successors

Medical ethics jumping off point: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ethics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ethics)

<comment><USER8> The IEEE Computer Society and ACM jointly adopted just such a code of ethics.

[https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of- ethics](https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics)

None of it gives Facebook engineers any comfort.

They are responsible for the fruits of their efforts. Recent revelations are of _degree_ , not _kind_. The consequences of engineering work were reasonably foreseeable and the consequences were not at arm's length. Facebook's business model has been clear and well-understood for years and years now. This is not technology being misapplied by someone several steps removed from you. This is technology misapplied by Facebook and Facebook's immediate customers and Facebook engineers enabled it.

Technology work has dimensions beyond "it's interesting" and "they pay me a lot". I hold us as professionals. We have duties which go beyond our own self- regard.

I am unsympathetic to anyone at Facebook feeling moral disquiet. I think you know what you ought to do.

<comment><USER7> I am dubious about the value of a "public interest" clause as the basis for everything - that tends to be "whatever we agree post-hoc".

Look at medical ethics ideas of "do no harm" \- or the more modern interpretation "do more good than harm"

It is perfectly arguable that Facebook has been doing more good than harm. And that is not something one should ban under a code of ethics.

NB I personally do not think that Facebook's actions have been correct, or worthy or defensible. They have hoovered up everything and left it lying around for anyone to collect - it breaks every Data protection rule set since the 1980s (due care etc). They can and will pay at some point down the line.

But data is like ... oil. It has massive externality costs, but wow has society benefited. From the data footprints we leave we can (if it is well managed(!)) expect improved medical research, improved mental well being, reduction in crime, improved trade, greater econmic equality. Yes there will be costs. And we need to manage those as only externalities can be managed. But the mass collection and processing of our PII data is not _just_ negative cost.

Edit just to be clear this is not an attempt to justify ends with means, or defend facebooks actions - but to note that just because JP Getty was unethical it did not stop ambulances getting petrol engines, generators lighting hospitals and plastics encasing artificial hips.

It's complicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an ex-fb employee I don't think fb did anything wrong and fb is just a scapegoat now.

Media tries to blame brexit and trump on fb instead of realising that a large portion of the population actually want trump, brexit, no immigration, muslim bans etc. Hey, but it is easier to think that the people were tricked into voting like that.

<comment><USER10> I live in the rural South and although it may sound ridiculous to you, I've met more people here that believe all of the inflammatory, fake nonsense they read on FB than I have that don't. They use it as a primary source of news and they allow it to shape their view of the world and therefore their beliefs on certain political policies. While it's difficult to quantify with a specific percentage, there were absolutely a large number of people tricked, in the literal sense, into voting for Trump. These are the people that are Ill informed enough to think that women are certain to get raped by a pack of muslims if they ever try walking down a street anywhere in Europe.

Note: Surely this doesn't account for everyone that voted for Trump, but it is possible that it made enough of an impact to change the outcome.

<comment><USER9> Fake news is one thing. Targeted ads are another thing. I don't think that targeted ads can change that much. Fake news I agree, can be brainwashing, but fb does all it can to combat fake news.

<comment><USER11> It's all based on emotional manipulation.

Have you seen Nix's presentation at the 2016 Concordia Summit? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc)

For what targeted ads lose to fake news with having to stay clean, they regain with psychological accuracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Facebook used to have a little book that they gave out to employees that was almost like a manifesto for what Facebook was, and should strive to be.

The book claims strongly that Facebook is a communications company, who want to help (not force) people be more social, and that advertising is purely a side effect intended to enable them to achieve that mission. It was quite cliche, but overall I got the impression that it was honest, I really do think that Facebook the company, and by extension, many of their employees do see themselves like that.

I personally find that to be a little naive, but then I am more sensitive to privacy issues than the average person.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can they post an honest answer here, and be confident that it couldn't be traced back to them?

<comment> mh- Guess that depends if they have the app installed on their phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I went out with a girl who works at Facebook (she does software development) and asked her this very question.

Basically her response was that the whole incident really isn't even Facebook's fault but rather the third party developers. Even though Facebook could have done a better job of protecting data, it's a waste of time to do so as these companies will always find a way to violate the TOS. It's a bit like fighting software piracy or ad-blocking, hackers are always getting a step ahead. No company is perfect, despite everything Facebook still does a lot of good in the world, and as a company it's going to keep doing more of it. There's a lot of people who hate Facebook for personal or business reasons, but in the end there's no fundamental reason why Facebook is a bad company that shouldn't exist, it's only going to get better anyway.

<comment><USER12> I roughly agree with this in terms of the recent events, but Facebook has been doing creepy stuff that I think many people disagree with for a long time, and that seems to be getting worse.

Advertisers being able to target so effectively, by salary, by socio-economic status, and by hundreds or even thousands of metrics. I think that's still bad, and I don't think I could work on a product like that.

<comment><USER14> I'm still amazed that people think really efficient advertising is creepy.

<comment><USER12> Really? Why do you think it's not creepy?

<comment><USER15> Because their finances depend on efficient targeting?

I'd prefer to get the mainstream to back things like Masotodon (openSocial), Matrix, and Scuttelbut, than call for regulations, but we have to be educating folks about the benefits such federated/distributed networks.

<comment><USER12> It can still be creepy, even if it's what's required for them to operate. If they can't operate without being creepy, perhaps they don't have a viable business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > What do Facebook employees think about their company?

You mean "their employer"? Or maybe most have some small % of stock, but to me my tiny-% stock holdings do not make those companies "my companies".

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't work at Facebook but I don't know if there are any major companies (tech or non-tech) that are significantly better about this? Nearly all Fortune 500 with any significant digital operations are tracking everything they can, especially all media companies. Marketers want all the data they can get to better target people and better measure ROI - so either you're using the data you gather to better sell stuff or you're gathering data to sell it to people who can use it to better sell stuff. Big technology companies seem way better about this (from the perspective of the user) - non-tech companies have much worse practices when it comes to safe-guarding data, are generally not as conscientious about privacy implications and are much more prone to using shady third-party vendors who are not accountable to users and more likely to abuse data. This, of course, includes nearly all ad-funded publishers, where all this criticism of Facebook (and Google and Amazon and so on) abounds. The journalists that are writing about this and tsk-tsk'ing at tech are literally paid by their employers maximizing yield by selling user data.

This whole big data thing along with all these related jobs (big data engineer, machine learning engineer, data scientist, etc) - what do people this was all about? Why do we have all this data now that we didn't before - it's because everyone is tracking stuff. So where should we all work if we don't want to be part of this? If you're not doing this directly, you're probably paid by someone who is.

</comment><comment><USER18> This was my first question at job interview to Facebook. Luckily i got an indian developer and i knew about how aggressive facebook in his home country (does everybody remembers free basics?) and i asked about what he thinks. Answer was simple - this is a form of a competition. I think "competition" can easily justify doing shady things - any of your competitors eventually will do the same and because of this there are no reason to not to implement something like phone book scraping.

<comment><USER8> Two wrongs don't make a right.

"Aw, but everyone else is doing it!" has never been the basis of a respectable system of morality. It's playground ethics.

<comment><USER19> Well, many people seem to excuse luminaries of the past for things like slavery saying things like "It was a different time. They should only be judged through the lens of their own culture."

It might not be a respectable system of morality, but it's a popular one.

<comment><USER8> I hardly think 10 years ago qualifies for this point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So far no Facebook employee has answered this thread (unless they did so between the lines). Considering that Facebook has 25k employees, this must mean they have some very harsh policy on keeping quiet. Either that, or a strong culture that brainwashes them to actually believe they are working towards the naive mission of connecting the world. Or all of the above.

<comment><USER21> I am a FB employee. And I ain't sayin shit. It is as simple as weighing losing my job and being deported from the USA on one hand, and being a participant on HN on the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm interested in the answers. I'm having upcoming interviews with Facebook, and I wonder if the recent events should be addressed in the "culture fit" interview.

My personal opinion is that the problem is not so much with Facebook but with the legislation. Corporations like Facebook are there to make profit within the rules defined by society. I hope there will be stronger laws to protect our privacy and data, and generally more awareness on the issue.

<comment><USER23> > My personal opinion is that the problem is not so much with Facebook but > with the legislation. Corporations like Facebook are there to make profit > within the rules defined by society.

This holds true as long as those corporations do not influence what the law looks like (i.e. they are the results of a democratic process). The question is whether that is the case for Facebook.

<comment><USER24> It is also important for industry to inform the public about how certain legislation impacts them, their products and the quality/quantity of jobs.

<comment><USER23> Yes, that's what makes this a difficult problem. You don't want to ban companies from influencing legislation, but then you also can't say they were just playing by the rules, and that they did not influence the rules not being tougher on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't think they can disclose that. Besides they get paid pretty well to do their work and not ask questions about the ethics of it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Facebook, along with the military industrial complex is among the places I wouldn't work for any amount of money. Privacy is a human right and Facebook is by far the worst human rights violator and enabler in this respect. Their behaviour is clearly evil, exploitative of human nature and at least for some people using facebook decreases their overall well-being and mental health. People like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94s0yYECeR8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94s0yYECeR8) are clearly intelligent, articulate and competent, yet they are working on a product that is explicitly designed to be addictive and create an echo chamber, as he nicely explains in the talk (if you are curious how click-bait is formalised go to ~34min).

</comment><comment><USER27> Facebook employees and tech workers in general have a much wider spectrum of opinions that what echo chambers like HN allow. I personally know a lot of Facebook, Apple and Microsoft employees who voted Trump. Palantir employees who are very proud about their jobs and believe that they're making a positive impact on the world. Uber employees who believe that they're engaged in a good fight against regulation and bureaucracy. What's common for all of them, though, is that they generally keep these opinions to themselves and know better than venting them on HN, Techcrunch and social media.

<comment><USER28> There is nothing wrong in telling what do you feel about something when you are asked. And there is no problem in expressing an unpopular opinion on HN as you can sign-up anonymously at any time and just share whatever thoughts you want.

<comment><USER29> To play devil's advocate, in an arena where all comments are ordered by votes, the unpopular opinion would simply be downvoted to oblivion and not seen anyway. Why would someone with a contentious opinion go to the bother?

<comment><USER28> Many (not the majority but still many) people scroll straight to the bottom to see what happens to be there after reading the top comments and also quick- read the comments in the middle (as there actually are many valuable comments on HN).

Anyway, hesitating to say something is not always the best idea, maybe it ought to be said aloud while everybody hesitates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think the more salient question is "why do people post everything on facebook (and other services)". No sane person can be surprised that this is what happens with your data that you freely give away. And what I have been hearing nobody actually is surprised. Nor do they care in the end. Selling adverts is just an extremely lucrative business, get over it. It is what pays for your entertainment (sports etc), information (magazines, internet sites etc) and just about everything.

</comment><comment><USER31> I fail to get an answer about, "How a founder of a company would fail to think that what would happen to this humongous data which his company is collecting if landed in wrong hands?" Maybe he is noble soul leading his company now and tomorrow he would be shown door and someone creepy comes to lead.

I think Fb would be known in history as a major data provider to AI bullshit acts.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd assume that most employees don't have anything to do with dodgy stuff. Interested in knowing if I'm right or not.

<comment><USER33> ...who is doing it then, if not employees? Truly perplexed by your comment.

<comment><USER34> I think that the keyword in the parent post is "most".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hope they think what they want.

</comment><comment><USER36> The groupthink against Facebook needs to stop</comment>


US kids' doodles of scientists reveal changing gender stereotypes - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03346-7 <comment><USER2> That study actually shows that almost nothing has changed in a quarter of a century.

They're referencing 1986-2016 at 72%, versus ~67% from 2010-2017, as a meaningful improvement. That supposedly meaningful improvement is almost entirely wiped out if you adjust just one of the recent outlier data points down to the average. Or alternatively, to show how little actual improvement there has been in a quarter century, drop the data off pre 1992, that 72% vs 67% improvement might even regress (someone want to test that?). That's pretty shaky ground for such a big claim.

Pretty ridiculous article premise given the data in question. There's obviously a lot more work to do on improving the gender stereotype problem the article is claiming has improved, particularly since it has somewhere between barely changed and not changed at all in decades.

</comment><comment><USER3> This could just as easily mean that children simply don't see scientists anymore and have no idea what they look like.

For me scientists are certainly far far less visible than they used to be. It's all programmers now.

What would help would be correlating "draw a person", from the same child and seeing if a scientist varies from that.

<comment><USER4> Kids never saw scientists. I never saw a scientist when I was a kid. And I was a child fairly recently.

<comment><USER5> Most of the giant media-loved scientists have died at this point - Sagan, Feynman, Salk, Pavlov, etc, and are finally starting to drop out of public- rememberance.

The 20th century had a lot of movies featuring (fictional) scientists, like Dr. Strangelove and Men in Black, too.

They were represented quite a bit.

<comment><USER6> Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye are very big in pop culture. My daughter is 10 and came home singing "Bill Bill Bill Bill, Bill Nye the Science Guy" because her school still plays old episodes. NdT had a prime time series on a major network. I'm not gonna suggest they're "as big" as Sagan or Feynman was, but they're really big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about kids' doodles of mine workers, garbage collectors, soldiers killed in war, prisoners, and other undesirable fields?

I would guess they still draw mostly men. Or rather, I would guess they don't even draw them or think about them. I don't hear many calls for equality there.

<comment><USER8> The idea is that women are severely underrepresented in STEM and that negatively influences their standard of life. It wouldn't make any sense to convince them they should be garbage collectors or miners in the same way as it makes little sense to ask men to become nurses. With STEM it's different: there are great advantages, both to women themselves and the society in general, if the proportions change.

<comment><USER9> But also, there are programmes to increase the number of women in mining and construction, and the number of men in nursing and teaching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> what a fit tho</comment>


Ask HN: Defeating infinite scroll: a bureaucratic defense mechanism - <AUTHOR> Formality: This is a non-political post if you want access to information it should cross party lines.
This URL will direct you to the Facebook Ad library for the president's reelection campaign.
[https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=all&country=US&impression_search_field=has_impressions_lifetime&view_all_page_id=153080620724] And this to an article in The Atlantic that will provide some needed context: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/
My point and my question: The article linked reports a phenomenal number of paid advertisements distributed by the Trump campaign that target users of the Facebook platform based on 3000+ data points on American voters. In an effort to try to reverse engineer this massive dataset to see how Trump's social media team are applying this data, I would like to scrape the Facebook Ad Library. Problem is that the library loads only a couple of ads at a time and $32,552,007 dollars worth of ads would take years to load... if I had a machine capable of it. A chrome extension that would auto-scroll crashed my browser after about 30 mins. I had only loaded ads up until February 13th, 2020.
While Facebook touts that it has made this information available and transparent, it is closely guarded from critical eyes by way of website mechanisms that limit access and in this case, inhibit access altogether. Literally speaking, the information is accessible, but only in a very limited capacity.
I have searched around looking for a way to defeat or spoof the javascript infinite scroll functionality but to no avail. Facebook does not make this easy.
So I am asking you all, who are way more able than I am to debug this issue: how can we see the complete history of these political ads? Compiling this data in an open-source project on all political candidates could take considerable strides in achieving a more open discourse. <comment><AUTHOR> Update: I've found this link which appears to provide more context but fails to drill down to a level I'm content with.</comment>


The Underground Railroad of North Korea - <AUTHOR> https://www.gq.com/story/underground-railroad-of-north-korea <comment><USER2> Weird to see an article covering that subject in the middle of fashion article and beard care products.</comment>