<story><title>What Doesn&apos;t Seem Like Work?</title><url>http://paulgraham.com/work.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stegosaurus</author><text>As an addition to this, I&amp;#x27;ve struggled a lot with the concept of working for pay and only recently could I really begin to explain why.&lt;p&gt;Some people would probably call it &amp;#x27;entitlement&amp;#x27;, but I&amp;#x27;m not really sure that&amp;#x27;s an accurate description.&lt;p&gt;As an employee, your role is essentially a permanent state of brown nosing. First of all you must convince a rich person&amp;#x2F;company that you are worthy. Then you must convince them that you want to work for them, that they&amp;#x27;re special, and so on. And then later, you must defer, every single day. Ill? According to policy document AED, page 5, section b, one of your eight sick days will be deducted, worker drone!&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not enough to simply perform a valuable function for society. You need to be subservient and defer to authority - you are worth less than your betters (those with wealth) and must please them in order to eat, in order to shelter.&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways left in which you can directly serve other humans and profit via such - private entrepreneurial services such as window cleaning, antique dealing, etcetera - but these make up a small portion of the employment market today and are often subject to ridiculously overbearing regulation. The vast majority of &amp;#x27;jobs&amp;#x27; in the Western world involve being directly, by rank, inferior to another human being.&lt;p&gt;Other people seem much more capable of dealing with this than I do. Often I find myself resenting others for putting up with the more ridiculous aspects - it feels like a betrayal, that if only people were better human beings and less likely to defer to authority we could all have a better experience.&lt;p&gt;This is the struggle I face, really. Physical trauma I find very simple - the emotional aspect of actively taking part in a system that I despise is much more difficult.</text></item><item><author>stegosaurus</author><text>What if the idea of work itself is what you dislike?&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of activities I can enjoy, and some, quite a few of them in fact, are profitable.&lt;p&gt;Once you shoe-horn them into the power dynamic situation of a traditional job (with the bureaucracy that entails unless you&amp;#x27;re dealing with Actual People as opposed to corporations), suddenly a lot of the luster disappears.&lt;p&gt;As a ridiculous example - I enjoy reading. It&amp;#x27;s not really work at all, right?&lt;p&gt;Ask me to read 9am-5pm and I&amp;#x27;d start to find it frustrating. Or add in a commute, or very low pay.&lt;p&gt;The actual job itself is very rarely the issue for me. It&amp;#x27;s what you miss out on, and also the fact that it invariably involves submission, acceptance of being subordinate, etc.&lt;p&gt;edit: To be clear here; I&amp;#x27;m not talking about work ethic in the sense of &amp;#x27;pushing through something you find difficult&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;More the general idea of not wanting to be a part of a machine, a construct that you don&amp;#x27;t agree with. Large corporations and their &amp;#x27;policy documents&amp;#x27;, for example. I don&amp;#x27;t want to work for a company in which my boss doesn&amp;#x27;t have the autonomy to speak to me as a human being - this stands regardless of whether my job is backbreaking labour or eating chocolate bars.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jusben1369</author><text>I definitely wouldn&amp;#x27;t call it a sense of entitlement. What you say though is disturbing and unfortunate and I wish I had a good answer. Imagine you buy a plane ticket and fly to somewhere exotic. Passenger in seat 11a is thinking &amp;quot;flying is horrible. It is a huge polluter. You&amp;#x27;re all crammed in like sardines. The airline is owned by wealthy fat cats and I had to pay $1500 for the &amp;#x27;honor&amp;#x27; of being stuck with horrible food, crying babies and long lines at the toilets&amp;quot; passenger 11b has a constant smile on his face &amp;quot;I can&amp;#x27;t believe that one weeks salary + 12 hours of flying is all it takes to be in a completely different part of the world starting an adventure with unknown possibilities and tremendous learning to be had&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The thing is I guess they&amp;#x27;re both right! But now you know why you dont need to worry about why your coworker is grinning in the seat next to you. He&amp;#x2F;she is viewing the same circumstance very differently. Maybe over time your view can change to (mainly because you seem so unhappy with how it currently is)</text></comment>
<story><title>What Doesn&apos;t Seem Like Work?</title><url>http://paulgraham.com/work.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stegosaurus</author><text>As an addition to this, I&amp;#x27;ve struggled a lot with the concept of working for pay and only recently could I really begin to explain why.&lt;p&gt;Some people would probably call it &amp;#x27;entitlement&amp;#x27;, but I&amp;#x27;m not really sure that&amp;#x27;s an accurate description.&lt;p&gt;As an employee, your role is essentially a permanent state of brown nosing. First of all you must convince a rich person&amp;#x2F;company that you are worthy. Then you must convince them that you want to work for them, that they&amp;#x27;re special, and so on. And then later, you must defer, every single day. Ill? According to policy document AED, page 5, section b, one of your eight sick days will be deducted, worker drone!&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not enough to simply perform a valuable function for society. You need to be subservient and defer to authority - you are worth less than your betters (those with wealth) and must please them in order to eat, in order to shelter.&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways left in which you can directly serve other humans and profit via such - private entrepreneurial services such as window cleaning, antique dealing, etcetera - but these make up a small portion of the employment market today and are often subject to ridiculously overbearing regulation. The vast majority of &amp;#x27;jobs&amp;#x27; in the Western world involve being directly, by rank, inferior to another human being.&lt;p&gt;Other people seem much more capable of dealing with this than I do. Often I find myself resenting others for putting up with the more ridiculous aspects - it feels like a betrayal, that if only people were better human beings and less likely to defer to authority we could all have a better experience.&lt;p&gt;This is the struggle I face, really. Physical trauma I find very simple - the emotional aspect of actively taking part in a system that I despise is much more difficult.</text></item><item><author>stegosaurus</author><text>What if the idea of work itself is what you dislike?&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of activities I can enjoy, and some, quite a few of them in fact, are profitable.&lt;p&gt;Once you shoe-horn them into the power dynamic situation of a traditional job (with the bureaucracy that entails unless you&amp;#x27;re dealing with Actual People as opposed to corporations), suddenly a lot of the luster disappears.&lt;p&gt;As a ridiculous example - I enjoy reading. It&amp;#x27;s not really work at all, right?&lt;p&gt;Ask me to read 9am-5pm and I&amp;#x27;d start to find it frustrating. Or add in a commute, or very low pay.&lt;p&gt;The actual job itself is very rarely the issue for me. It&amp;#x27;s what you miss out on, and also the fact that it invariably involves submission, acceptance of being subordinate, etc.&lt;p&gt;edit: To be clear here; I&amp;#x27;m not talking about work ethic in the sense of &amp;#x27;pushing through something you find difficult&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;More the general idea of not wanting to be a part of a machine, a construct that you don&amp;#x27;t agree with. Large corporations and their &amp;#x27;policy documents&amp;#x27;, for example. I don&amp;#x27;t want to work for a company in which my boss doesn&amp;#x27;t have the autonomy to speak to me as a human being - this stands regardless of whether my job is backbreaking labour or eating chocolate bars.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>heurist</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m with you. The only options I&amp;#x27;ve thought of are independent employment or escaping society, both come with significant tradeoffs and neither are simple to accomplish, especially without personal guidance... I guess you could find a job you&amp;#x27;re overqualified for too, make things easy at least even if you don&amp;#x27;t get to own your time. I&amp;#x27;m not sure that would be fulfilling either.</text></comment>