Comment by necovek
5 years ago
While Dan Luu's post resonates with me to an extent, I think you are missing the GP's point.
In practice, if you improve your productivity at work, it's going to be mostly for your employer's benefit (other than bragging rights and some personal satisfaction).
Gaining time back is not always possible, and that is the core desire for most people (as your OP quote suggests you could do): incentive to improve significantly is not there in a job (even Luu acks this in his blog).
But GP is making a point that it should be perfectly acceptable to not want to (significantly) improve at work while meeting the bar for staying employed.
Not that GP and OP are not really in opposition: Luu is arguing for why it's ok to work on your speed/performance with deliberate practice, GP is arguing that it is ok not to. And I agree with both.
> In practice, if you improve your productivity at work, it's going to be mostly for your employer's benefit (other than bragging rights and some personal satisfaction).
This is true if you're bagging groceries, but certainly not true for most software developers. To quote the post again:
"I'm sympathetic to the argument and agree that upper management and shareholders capture most of the value from work. But as much as I sympathize with the idea of deliberately being unproductive to "stick it to the man", I value spending my time on things that I want enough that I'd rather get my work done quickly so I can do things I enjoy more than work. Additionally, having been productive in the past has given me good options for jobs, so I have work that I enjoy a lot more than my acquaintances in tech who have embraced the "antiwork" movement."
> But GP is making a point that it should be perfectly acceptable to not want to (significantly) improve at work while meeting the bar for staying employed.
I don't see any point in Dan's post against this idea... it's the GP who is elevating this into a moral choice, i.e. from his/her response to mine:
> Yeah but he doesn't recognize that his entire argument is personal choice elevated to moral imperative.