Absoutely. I was similar to the author all the through college. Then I got a job, which was a brutal entry level programmer job. It killed what little social life I had at that point. But the upside was that I was pretty good at it and started making some decent money. Over time I was able to use my professional capital to switch to a company with much healthier expectations. I was able to go out and explore the world after being caught up in the daily grind for years. I was able to associate with a much wider set of people. I got 'real' hobbies to replace my 'geek' hobbies. I got a girlfriend. One day I realized that I cared more about being a good person, a good partner, a good lover, a good friend, etc. than being a good programmer/scientist/etc. I realized that the chance of any 1 person making a breakthrough contribution to a company, science, or the arts is vanishingly small. The chance to be a good person and positively impact the people in your life and community is 100%.

I'm very thankful that my experiences have allowed me to put my professional life in perspective.

Sounds like you had a bad job, not a bad time programming/sciencing.

Well yes, but that's precisely the problem: our career expectations have, as anyone who's done a job interview can tell you, gotten pretty extreme.

I left a bad job once, and for months interviewed in loads of places and didn't get any job. I'm fairly sure it was because I truly sucked at explaining away the bad job time and why I left without "sounding like he doesn't want to work."

There should be nothing wrong, in "True Scotsman capitalism" or "True Scotsman career development", with leaving a bad job if it just can't work out for you -- particularly when you're young, unmarried, and not in debt. But somehow there is. Every bad job is a black mark on you. If interviewers don't view it that way, you've often trained yourself to view it that way. I certainly did. Haven't quite gotten over it yet.

(Admittedly, after a few months I started finding different crowds of people and eventually got a contract position that could have become full-time if I was still looking for full-time work by then.)

Yeah, I did.

The point I was trying to make is that the lifestyle I led through college in some ways fed in to my willingness to do the same thing professionally. I never knew any better.

If things had gone differently, I could still be killing myself on a daily basis. And for what? The possibility of making a few more bucks?

surio, your account was hellbanned 5 days ago.

I actually think you might have the logic flipped here. The only thing that has a real chance of making a lasting impression on the world is science and engineering. Fulfilling your roles as a social person is highly ephemeral.

I actually think you might have the logic flipped here. The only thing that has a real chance of making a lasting impression on the world is money. Fulfilling your roles as a person is highly ephemeral.

I used to go out all the time in college. I got puked on by all sorts of people, had lots of frustrating experiences, adn realized how peer-driven my life, and concept of happiness was.

So when I hear people talk about how much they love their friends, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how to take care of themselves without external validation. And how working to accomplish something can lead to more meaningful relationships as well.

> So when I hear people talk about how much they love their friends, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how to take care of themselves without external validation.

You espouse a false dichotomy.

There's more to loving friends than loving the external validation they may (or may not!) provide.

Go get some really extraordinary friends and try again.

Yes, but by the same token the original poster seemed to imply that there was nothing more to working than coding. Whether you're founding a start-up or working as a developer for some giant multi-national, I hope there's more to your job descriptions than typing code and check-ins (and hence a more balanced experience).

With that said, that is all some people have. And for those people, the OP is probably right and they will probably not be happy for long.

I get the contrarian perspective, and partially agree with it. I think in both cases, however, you have to frequently make sure your reasons are ones you can live with.

Many people are concerned with how they appear to their friends and behave differently in the college/young professional scene you allude to. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking what you're working on is so important to YOU and that you don't need external validation. In some cases though, we assume we're already validated because WE know that our work is important. You're still relying on validation possibly; you're just getting it from made up people instead of real ones.

But as long as you truly believe in your work and aren't doing it to keep your head above everyone, props to you :-). I struggle to objectively examine where I'm at in my life at times and I think it's something we all need to do more of.

What if they are happy at a local optimum, and what if we human could only feel happiness on a scale between the best we've been and the worst we've been?

Sure then they may not be the happy at a maximum, but since they haven't found such a maximum yet their hapiness on a relative scale is 100%.

In other words, ignorance is bliss, and if you don't have "other experiences", it doesn't matter, you could still be just as happy - or even more!!

Considering I felt like the author, happier in the most work intensive years, and less happy afterwards, I have come to this theory of my own. It's not substantiated by anything but the famous "ignorance is bliss".

It has had one effect - stopped me from seeking "experiences" - because I want to maximize my relative happiness level. I noticed that when I did stopped that (buddihsm like), happiness happened (but didn't last - maybe there are disminishing marginal returns of staying at one level of "experience" - and we should gain experience, but little by little, to keep happiness maxed out.

> Sure then they may not be the happy at a maximum, but since they haven't found such a maximum yet their hapiness on a relative scale is 100%.

Interesting concept. That may have been true 50 years ago when it was not really possible to discover if other people were happier than your personal 100% level. Unfortunately, due to the internet, TV and Hollywood, it's extremely easy to discover there are tons of people out there happier than you.

After traveling the back roads of Central and South America for 2 years, it was amazing to show up in a dirt-street town where people were struggling to get food and potable water, and see them crowd around a TV and watch a blonde hair, blue eyed Jennifer Anniston complain about some trivial issue like her sofa not matching the carpet. Hollywood is an excellent marketing department, and purveyor of a "You are not as happy as you could be" mentality.

True, it may no longer be easy to do that passively - it now requires active action, like refusing to watch TV. (maybe that's why more and more people are complaining about not being happy - it's no longer the default!)

Still I believe there's some interest in doing that. If you are interested in maximizing your happiness, refusing the "You are not as happy as you could be" is required. It can be hard, especially if you know the fakeness of your action and that people do differently.

I wouldn't say they are happier than you : they seem to be, but they have their own problems. And if you watch them too much or try to emulate them too much, they make you less happy (following my own theory)

IMHO, the answer is still to join the rat race, but at your own pace, and for your own gain in happiness.

> True, it may no longer be easy to do that passively - it now requires active action, like refusing to watch TV.

For sure. I don't have a TV personally, but it's interesting to go to a developing country where they are desperately trying to get things like TVs, iPhones and shiny cars. By definition that's an increase in standard of living, so of course they want it.

> I wouldn't say they are happier than you : they seem to be, but they have their own problems.

That's the big one. Hollywood is an excellent marketing dept., but it's not even close to the truth. Funny how you never see a blockbuster movie about the millions living in America below the poverty line, or those that have lost their houses etc.

Once again, when you're on the other side of the world watching Jennifer Anniston, how can you know it's not reality?

You can't, unless you are either a) not trusting anything foreign (I don't know how this is linked to happiness, but I'm more and more interested in what's called parochialism- I wonder if on a large scale it usually makes people more happy or less - if it has some protective power) or b) you've had the experience for yourself and noticed happiness was not exactly correlated with standard of living.

But I guess the majority will fall in the trap and be miserable since they can't know it's not reality.

[I also made the choice of cutting TV a long time ago, only recently introducing a fraction of old series I watched before and new shows that enjoy high rating, watched on the computer - it was an experiment that I started when BSG was first airing.]

At the moment, I believe "standard of living" in a low amount can raise happiness, but that it's highly addictive and suffers from hugely decreasing marginal returns - so you have to control the increase very carefully.

It's kinda ironic that "refusing to watch TV" is now considered "active" action.

To use an old phrase, I work hard and I party hard. I massively enjoy both aspects of my life, and whenever it gets "out of balance" (not enough working or not enough fun) I begin to feel bad. Everyone has their own balance to find, but I agree it's really important to experience both ends of that scale to work out where your own middle is. I've worked 9am - 3am before, which was too much work, and I took 6 months off work before starting at my current position, which was too little work.

I want to second this comment. I spent my high school, and college years programming stupid shit and I had fun, but if I could go back I'd slap myself and learn some basic social skills and just be a kid. My social circle now days consists of senior programmers, managers, and BA's twice my age. You have your whole life to build up wealth, but I really feel I missed the boat by not building up some really good friendships during my school years.

TL;DR

Lasting happiness is having social skills and quality relationships; not an advanced software developer skill set.

I think that's fair. I think what we need to stay "balanced" changes over time. Just because you don't want to program all the time now doesn't mean that you didn't enjoy your time in high school.

Exactly, saying that doing one thing or only similar things all the time is "my balance" is a strange, almost Orwellian, redefinition of the word balance.