I'm a huge fan of sloth. I frequently take many months off between jobs, sometimes a year or more. I refuse to work more than 40 hours a week except for genuine emergencies (things like outages; being behind schedule never counts), and I'm close to drawing the line at four days a week. I always take at least three weeks off a year, and that's in a bad year. I take "mental health days" often and with no guilt. If you don't own your time, people will take it from you.
I'm perhaps speaking from a place of privilege, but it's not that hard to achieve. I've been doing this my whole life, from minimum wage jobs through decades of professional career.
Sit on the couch. Take a vacation. Quit your job. Say no to overtime always and forever. Blow off weekends often. Nothing is as important as others will tell you it is. You're going to die some day and when you're on your death bed you won't regret the times you did nothing.
I could not agree more. I'm pretty early in my software career after a few years as a military officer, and if that job taught me one thing, it's that NOTHING at work is as important as you think it is. Looking back on those times, even in a job where lives are sometimes on the line, I can't believe how seriously I took some things and how much more fun I could have had. It's a disappointing lesson to have to learn in hindsight.
Amusing that so much of that movie is still relatable 20 years later to a whole new generation of workers. Except maybe the scene where he kicks down the cubicle, if I need to be in an office give me a cubicle or something lol
Yes. I'm genuinely surprised how timeless this is.
You watch it today, in 2020, and it's shocking that it was made 20 years ago. This tells me that Judge and the other writers managed to latch on to some very timeless things.
They latched onto the meaninglessness that is office work, combined with the obvious passive aggression and lack of respect that big companies have for their employees
It's fascinating how good Mike Judge is at 'nailing' a variety of experiences.
Office Space is pitch-perfect, but then he went and created Silicon Valley and King of the Hill too. I can't personally confirm that King of the Hill is accurate, but I've heard it is. Silicon Valley just nails it though, and it is far more specific than the Office Space type stuff.
i still remember the time (early in my career) i was summoned to jury duty and tried to register an "undue hardship" with the judge because i had a project deadline coming up.
i genuinely thought it was that important, but looking back it was really not a big deal at all (and the judge knew it) :)
You don't think doing your part to guarantee your fellow citizens get their (in the US at least) constitutionally guaranteed right to a jury trial is "worth it"?
My own experience as a Software Engineer in Switzerland:
- A lot of companies are ok with 80% (most often that means 4 days of full time work). Some aren't, but especially towards more experienced roles, it's not out of the ordinary at all.
- 40h is actually somewhat rarer. I've been interviewing recently and lots of smaller companies think it's a point of pride to have 45h or 43h weeks. When you point out to them that this 12.5% rise in hours should also come with a 12.5% pay rise, they are baffled how you would come to that conclusion.
- 4wk vacation is the mandatory minimum. 5wk is nice and often available.
I like your attitude. How, if I may ask, did you end up with your current philosophy? Was it through past experiences where people did take your time and you gave in?
I love the idea of taking lots of time off, but on a personal level I have a lot of guilt surrounding that. I know it's not rational since ultimately it's my life, but it's still something I need to work on to get over. If you have tips on changing my mindset surrounding this, I'd love to hear it.
I identify with his post. I always had a rebellious streak when it comes to people judging me. In return, I don’t judge other people myself. It also saves a lot of energy :)
That’s how I don’t feel guilty. I am not doing anything and you can do whatever you want in life too.
I find it tough to achieve though. I am currently at 4 days per week but would like to be at 3.5 days, that’s my optimum (lower than 3 days and I will go insane of not exercising my mind).
I agree but I find it the most practical place. If I can’t exercise my mind, then there’s nothing for me at work other than obtaining an income (no SF salary here so no financial independence possible).
Fair enough, I thought about doing that too. I chose for the mind, but IMO the body is a good option as well, especially because if you choose the right profession (i.e. light to medium exercise), it probably means you'll live longer.
If you need the workplace to 'exercise your mind' then I don't know what to tell you... all your free time gained this way is useless then if you don't know how to spend it.
One needs to work to survive. The benefit of work for me is to exercise my mind. Other forms are available but do not aid survival. So assuming everything else is equal, I should use work to exercise my mind.
The issue with work is that it is constrained to one thing (web dev in my case). I can use my free time to do whatever (relax or other exercises such as meditation).
Can't answer for caymanjim. Personally, I now work about 2-5 hours per week, mostly just meeting some people (don't have to do anything besides talking to them).
What I realized early in my professional career was that position trumps everything. For example, if you are born into a great enough position, you are set for life, pretty much regardless of anything else. Then I figured out (slowly over time through trial and error), which positions I could move to from the one I was in, where I could either: a) do less work for same pay, or b) get more pay for same work. Although a lot of times switching positions required intense "extra" work.
In the end however, it seems to mostly just been a lot of luck in the way things played out, together with an intense desire to, in the long term, reduce my work-related load/responsibilities.
Depends on who I meet with. But mostly it's about financials, sales, planning, legal issues and team building (usually talking about personal stuff and building rapport as a group). Sometimes it's about product and programming.
> I frequently take many months off between jobs, sometimes a year or more.
Definitely speaking from a place of privilege. Single moms living in poverty don't have the luxury to care for her mental health. She probably can't take even a few days off, voluntarily, much rather months or years.
Let me ask you (caymanjim), in the months and years you take off, how do you subsist? The average American has, what, less than $500 in savings?
Privilege colors your views on reality, and I would love for all of us to get there, but let's not imagine that this "isn't hard to do". It is. It really is.
This sentiment expresses something I'm starting to see a lot in our discourse. I call it "third-party outrage", where you (bystander) get mad because you think some "aggressor" did something bad to some hypothetical "victim".
What cracks me up is that oftentimes, the victims don't even care or don't get nearly as mad as the bystandars. Same story with tech workers getting mad about how Amazon pays their employees. Is there any real harm being done here?
So I gotta wonder, why are the bystanders more mad than the alleged "victims" themselves? Do you realize how screwed up this is?
I don't think it's outrage, it's more so pointing out that "if you're poor and can't afford to renew the lease, just take a million or two out of your savings account and boom, you're wealthy" isn't good advice because it requires having a savings account with at least a few million in it.
And for anyone in that situation: how many of them are too poor to pay rent?
It only makes sense to do something if you expect results. The victim doesn't get mad because there is no point to it. (or they just feel that way) They just have to accept whatever is coming at them. (or they just feel that way) Are there labor laws if you cant afford legal action?
I disagree. The main point, at last my initial point, was that there are people in situations in life -- however they got to those situations -- that absolutely cannot afford that kind of "sloth" lifestyle.
And, sociologically speaking, sometimes single motherhood is connected to privilege, or a lack thereof.
I love the idea of benefits conceived of as a landscape. You have the slough of despond, the scorched desert, the arctic wasteland, the jagged windswept hellscape, etc.
If it was sufficiently long ago, which it sounds like it was, they could. Minimum wage would be significantly higher now if it had kept pace with inflation and cost of living increases over the last few decades.
Yeah, minimum wage jobs mostly won't expect you to work beyond your normal periods and days, but they definitely won't want you working less than that.
The weirdest part, though, is voluntary taking several months or even a year between jobs. Now that is proper privilege.
Why though? You don't know in what conditions he spends that time. He might live in a way you would not like to live without a job so you think of not working a privilege.
Probably because we assume that when he wants a job he can get one, and one that pays for all the time of as well, at the drop of a hat. But it's not so for someone without in demand skills.
Because one of the big concerns of almost everyone who isn't in high demand is gaps in CV. For some reason it seems that - and it's definitely believed that - employers will look very unfavorably at you if your history of employment isn't continuous.
Not just that, being able to afford months and months without salary is quite a privilege, even on relatively high wages like a developer's. Not to mention if you can do that while on minimum wage jobs, you probably aren't a major source of income for the family.
sounds like me except for the 3 weeks vacation in a bad year. I guess you are living in a country with an employees-are-slaves-work-culture. In Germany five weeks is the minimum and six the norm. _maybe_ understanding your situation through my on experience I'd question your priviligedness, though, as it appears to me like you are (also) carrying a considerate psychological burden that you need to deal with. at the end of the day this is what more or less forced me to take time off between jobs. I needed that to bring back some peace and balance to my mind.
I decided, 3 weeks into my first full-time job (as a lab technician) that I profoundly disagreed with the concept of the capitalist work ethic. The idea that a person's life had meaning only if they stayed in work - often boring, tedious work - until their retirement day, after which they could be kicked onto the old-person's scrapheap to do fun stuff for a few years (if they were lucky) until dementia took their dignity and their memories and their final breath ... I hate that concept.
I have, over the years, walked out of well-paying, high responsibility jobs (Civil Service, IT) because the stupidity of the petty empire building and office politics became too much to bear. Sometimes I've been in a situation where I had saved up enough 'rainy-day' money to give myself time off to do other stuff - finally get a degree, write some books, work on an open-source project or even, yes, spend a couple of weeks staring at a wall while I daydreamed. When I've had no money, I've taken welfare cheques, or worked in menial zero-hour-contract manual labour jobs to keep food on the table, or started fresh in an entirely different service/industry.
Things I've learned:
1. Know how much money you need to survive with a roof over your head and food on the table. If you're earning more than that, you're in a good place.
2. Your job title and the numbers printed on your payslip do not determine who you are. Measure your worth in the relationships you have with your friends, family and work colleagues. Measure it in terms of your mental wellbeing.
I like to think that friends and family will look on my works and say "he was a creative man", but deep down I know that those words will only come from a few who already know how to appreciate it.
Therefore, I work to please that faceless few. I am happy with this, because it is nice to be appreciated, but at the same time I cannot help but feel that I am not building something meaningful in my more direct social circles.
I totally agree. Three days has been the max for me, as far as mental health agendas. Far more productive with 15 - 20 hours work, at the most. My employer Walmart, for some reason, isn't as conscious as many, they're telling me that my cart-collecting days are over.
I'm perhaps speaking from a place of privilege, but it's not that hard to achieve. I've been doing this my whole life, from minimum wage jobs through decades of professional career.
Sit on the couch. Take a vacation. Quit your job. Say no to overtime always and forever. Blow off weekends often. Nothing is as important as others will tell you it is. You're going to die some day and when you're on your death bed you won't regret the times you did nothing.