The only people that don't have to work for a living are people who were born rich, mountain men living off the land and eating roots, or people living off of disability. In other words, no one that has any right to judge others for working.

The concept of "wage slavery" is based on people living beyond their means without any sense of fiscal responsibility. If you learn how to live within your means, it's not hard to save a few months of living expenses. That gives you the freedom to quit shitty jobs and find good ones. From then, it's not hard to build your saving up to six months or even a year of living expenses, which gives you basically total freedom to pick and choose your jobs.

---

More on topic, I made my hobby a job for around 10 years working in IT, and I absolutely loved it for the first 8 years or so. I made great money, I learned a lot, had a ton of fun, and was treated very well by the company. I think I would have still been working in that field today, probably even at the same company, had I stayed back in the US.

You can quit and slowly run out of money. 🙃

For my dad, a successful "Okie from Muskogee" Baby Boomer American, the "Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life" adage has been true. For free, he sometimes still performs the job that he retired from two decades ago.

For me, however, turning my passion into my career ruined both for a while. For a couple of years, I was really depressed because expectations didn't match reality. Now, with lowered expectations, I'm in the "find work that you can tolerate" camp like most people here.

My observation about life is that there are a few lucky people for whom "Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life" is true, but the rest of us shouldn't expect those lucky few to be able to understand how most of us experience work. And we shouldn't assume that we've failed at life if we don't enjoy work like those lucky few do.

^Another classic used to be "with 30 (years) the life just starts"
Or, "later in life, no one will ever ask you about your (school) grades again"

Why are parents and society do keep telling us such lies? 🤷‍♂️

Hmmm... no one has ever asked me about my school grades. No one has ever even asked me what school I went to.

Hmmm... no one has ever asked me about my school grades.

I think that's a German thing, they ask crazy things during interviews. A former colleague who is close to 60 was asked about his grades during his last interview he told me. And I was asked what I did during my half year of unemployment 15 years ago. As if it made any difference.

Kalle wrote on 2025-06-29, 09:00:

Hmmm... no one has ever asked me about my school grades.

I think that's a German thing, they ask crazy things during interviews. A former colleague who is close to 60 was asked about his grades during his last interview he told me. And I was asked what I did during my half year of unemployment 15 years ago. As if it made any difference.

HR people are testing your reaction I suppose.

They aren't testing your reaction, they want to know your relation to unemployment. Also makes sense to want to know about grades even if they were decades ago as they're part of your performance and focus in life. Obviously the factors about you accessible to HR become important whether they're particularly relevant.

No normal people ask or care about your grades or whatever. If they do ask, it's a trick question, and also a sign that you're interviewing at a company you'd never want to work at.

If you do want to work in a toxic environment where HR has total control, and people are being hired based on their response to trick questions instead of their actual merits, the actual real answer is to be honest. Because your high school grades have nothing to do with your work performance as an adult, and they are just trying to make you nervous.

HR doesn't give a shit about playing trick questions on you. They want to understand you as a person. But IT recruiting is great if you want toxic.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-06-28, 15:34:

The concept of "wage slavery" is based on people living beyond their means without any sense of fiscal responsibility. If you learn how to live within your means, it's not hard to save a few months of living expenses. That gives you the freedom to quit shitty jobs and find good ones. From then, it's not hard to build your saving up to six months or even a year of living expenses, which gives you basically total freedom to pick and choose your jobs.

this is true, and within it there is an ironic need to resist the influence of the things 'we' are doing at work - i.e. most working lives are based on the ideas of the company selling more, influencing people to choose their product, not wanting to miss out, adding features to increase appeal and so on and so on. To live within your means (on salaries that regular working people have) means resisting consumption, i.e. earning $80k but living as if you earn sub $60k or whatever, i.e. choosing to "miss out", choosing the less featured product, the older car and just accepting not having some things. It's also easier when pay reaches a certain point, those on lower pay just can't save anything.

STX wrote on 2025-06-28, 23:48:

My observation about life is that there are a few lucky people for whom "Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life" is true, but the rest of us shouldn't expect those lucky few to be able to understand how most of us experience work. And we shouldn't assume that we've failed at life if we don't enjoy work like those lucky few do.

also a good point, work means compromise - if you work for someone else you accept that there will be conditions of work you don't like - whether it's ways of working, policies, politics or whatever. Actually working for yourself is the same, the rest of the world isn't going to shape themselves around your preferences

the only new(ish) point i'd add is that specialisation has been a big influence for years, very few people get to do IT for 10 years, then become farmer for 10, then a medic for 10 and then a carpenter for 10 - we tend to quickly fall into a groove from which its hard to exit because doing so involves starting over at an older age, and earning less (and just being turned down...)

They aren't testing your reaction, they want to know your relation to unemployment.

What good would it be for them to know? After all I applied to be employed, not unemployed. My relation to unemployment should not be of their concern.

No normal people ask or care about your grades or whatever. If they do ask, it's a trick question, and also a sign that you're interviewing at a company you'd never want to work at.

Indeed. Right now I am happy where I work, I wasn't asked such questions during the hiring process, and for sure it's for the better 😀

I can understand asking the questions.
What grades did you get = rough idea if you were a hard working student or not. But it's a very lazy question which becomes less relevant each year out of school.

Unemployment seems to scare some employers. like you are going to do it again. I guess if you say I was sick or fired or something then they will think "not worth the risk"

I learnt many years ago HR is mostly useless during the hiring stage. Same as recruitment companies. They rarely are experts in the individual departments of a company so will focus on keywords and phrases to filter out the first level of applicants.
It's not till your been interviewed by the manager or at least someone from within the department that the real interview process starts.

I'm not convinced HR are better than random chance at vetting human resumes, they may just as well be more harmful. If you select at random you get the benefit of sampling talent from unusual backgrounds, and ideally prevent a one eyed culture. This assumes your interviewers aren't closed minded, but in any case it's easy to find them complaining about poor quality of candidates vetted in by HR.

Any effort of worth is turning into a painful strain - unless you're a talent/genius and taking it easy.

I worked for a computer shop "startup"(which morphed into a business installing/servicing small networks) from 1997 to 2001 and it totally sucked in the end. All the interesting hardware was steadily vanishing and nearly all machines sold were low cost "Celeron" abominations packaged in colorful imac clone cases. I ejected myself out of there and the business owner, who I was friends with, was pretty pissed that I was not willing to drive around and service various networks installed by his company.

In hindsight I'm a bit sad that I was not clever enough to properly study math or physics and write some "interesting" programs for a living - one of the few things I dearly regret.

amadeus777999 wrote on 2025-07-01, 15:34:

Any effort of worth is turning into a painful strain - unless you're a talent/genius and taking it easy.

I worked for a computer shop "startup"(which morphed into a business installing/servicing small networks) from 1997 to 2001 and it totally sucked in the end. All the interesting hardware was steadily vanishing and nearly all machines sold were low cost "Celeron" abominations packaged in colorful imac clone cases. I ejected myself out of there and the business owner, who I was friends with, was pretty pissed that I was not willing to drive around and service various networks installed by his company.

In hindsight I'm a bit sad that I was not clever enough to properly study math or physics and write some "interesting" programs for a living - one of the few things I dearly regret.

I suspect that's universal, novelists have to force out books to stay with their publisher, musicians have to bend to marketing to get support and IT folk have to abide by the policies and processes of their employer - and in each case its because not doing that means the continuation of the publisher, the record label, the IT company may suffer if everyone just does what they want and not what is wanted by customers

you can still learn to do some interesting programming though, it doesn't have to be for professional reasons at first, you may then find you write some scripts and from there some more at work anyway.

A related thought - there are some people who appear to do their hobby and / or travel around and do what they want without a care, they are either

1) Not actually doing that (i.e. they're working too and maybe not enjoying it, or they worked and now retired)
2) being supported by others, trust funds, handouts, inheritances etc

in fact for some people to have lives exploring, doing art, or anything like that - there has to be a lot of people mining steel, fitting tyres, mixing concrete, setting bones, processing sales and so on. Luxury lives cannot exist without all this being done by someone somewhere

Hardware was a love at first sight for me since my father got our first PC, an absolute junk 386DX from gray market, with no sound card in 1994, life is not easy on 3rd world countries...

I graduated with a minor in electronics and later a bachelor in electrical engineer had very decent jobs while attending University and after graduating, but was absolute frustrated that I was not working with PC hardware.

In 2007 a friend got a job at one of the biggest Motherboard/PC manufacturers in the world that just opened a plant in my country, I annoyed the hell of him until he was able to get me an interview there, somehow I was able to convince the managers there to hire me despite me having no real world experience in the electronic industry, maybe they saw how passioned I was about the opportunity.

Anyway, I'm now my 3rd hardware company since 2007 and I still love it, everyday I have the chance to touch a newly released product it's still a joy. I come back home after work and still play with modern/vintage hardware.
Yes, some days are very frustrating, specially as you move up the management chain you deal way more with bosses, employees, customers, HR, lawyers and etc, but I like to focus on the big picture.

gerry wrote on 2025-07-01, 16:08:

A related thought - there are some people who appear to do their hobby and / or travel around and do what they want without a care, they are either

There are the employed, the unemployed, and the nonemployed. The nonemployed, working-age people neither employed nor looking to be, tend to be the most content, and that's where you stick to your hobbies. Probably not many adults get to do it before retiring if even then. Being rich enough, or at the other end academic on welfare, may be the most workable positions for it.

Kalle wrote on 2025-06-29, 09:00:

I think that's a German thing

No one in Germany has ever asked me about my education. I just quit my job as a webdev to work for another company - they didn't even need a résumé, I just talked about a few projects I did in the past and was hired on the spot. I realize that's not the norm for most people, though.

Someone here mentioned that you're always able to save up in life, but it's not that easy. A lot of people can barely make it from month to month, because minimum wage is even more of a joke in the US as it is in Germany.

When you're working in the IT field that's probably not a problem for you, since that field is paid fairly well, but you should never forget the privileged position you're in.

To me, work is just a means to an end. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's painful. Some projects are boring as fuck, while others force me to get my brain overclocked (and those are amazing!). In the end, though, I'm not working at a company to make friends, attend parties or commute for two hours every day. I work to bring the money in for me and the company and that's it. Everything else happens outside of working hours.

My mental health also improved when I turned to other hobbies besides coding. I barely code in my spare time anymore, it just isn't that satisfying anymore when you're doing it for eight hours per day.

Being Intelligent, capable, and motivated is not a privilege. All men are created equal, its what you do with your time after that which separates us.