If someone did that, I would probably leave them alone, and if someone wanted to use them as a source, I would probably at least ask if they knew anybody more reasonable.

It’s the only place to find classic hardcore and punk.

Exactly. It’s a choice.

I had a family instead, but anyone can do it.

> anytime you want

Doesn’t really then apply to anyone and everyone. Not like I can abandon my child or an ailing parent anytime I want. (Which is my point)

Besides, not marrying and having kids can be a choice that’s relatively easy. But cutting ties with your parents especially when they need you can be a difficult one.

He was incredible and to think he wasnt working incredibly hard to develop his work is (probably, who can say?) nonsense.

It depends how you define "work". For Einstein, daydreaming was work.

That’s a very narrow interpretation of work

What’s important is not how much one suffers but how much benefit one adds to the society

It's not a very narrow interpretation of work - it's the one that matters in this context, and the one that matters day-to-day. Sure, you could define work as anything one did that had results you find interesting, but the narrower definition that's important here is things you do because you have to, because you're obliged to do them by others or by circumstances, vs. things you do for fun - because you want to, and which you control. A job vs. a hobby is a good approximation. It's not uncommon to see people being much more effective at their hobbies than at their jobs, even when both of them are in the same domain. It's also not uncommon to see a hobby to be more worthwhile than one's work.

> Or there’s the tried and true explanation that it’s just micromanagers who want play power games with their employees.

Everyone thinks they are the good employee that doesn’t need to be managed thank you very much. Yet every manager has seen employees that produce very little if they aren’t constantly managed.

And every manager thinks they’re a good manager, too!

And every employee has seen companies that have no idea how to measure or foster high performance.

How many developers work in a companies where achieving a S.M.A.R.T. goal related to their output will result in a defined positive outcome (bonus, promotion, salary increase, title/level increase, stock grant)?

I’ve never seen a software development team be given an incentive like “deliver XYZ feature with less than N defects by datetime to receive a performance bonus of $10,000/1,000 shares.”

I have worked at a grand total of zero companies where anything close to this was the case. For me, every company has made equity into a joke, performance reviews into “you will always be a 3 unless you turn water into wine,” and significant raises regarding high performance merely match inflation.

I thought that we were beyond the illusion that micromanaging works. All it does is produce employees who create illusions of productivity beyond a minimum standard. These illusions will exist whether they’re in an office or not.

It’s as simple as making sure your boss likes you. There’s really no output difference between the mouse jiggler working at home and the salaryman staying late but pretending to work, taking care to leave after the boss leaves.

Meanwhile, the sales team has a grand total of zero people who are slacking off because their salary is on a commission. Every ounce of extra work is potential to earn more money. But for the engineering team the company has a perpetual surprised pikachu face when they find out that employees are just doing the bare minimum to stay off the firing radar despite having no tangible incentive to do otherwise.

“Good things come to those who wait.”

Have the biggest stick. Use it responsibly. The idea that anything else will work is naive.

Precisely. Assuming every other actor will behave rationally has proven wrong over and over through out the history.

Do you find that has worked well? Vietnam, Iraq, Libya?

Thanks for explaining a bit how things work in the EU. Pretty interesting, and not something I would have thought or cared to look up.

In this light it feels a bit like some of the grandstanding bills US politicians write or even pass in the House, knowing they haven’t a chance in the Senate, or whatever. And perhaps the audience is folks in the home country or even other politicians in the home country?

> not something I would have thought or cared to look up.

Wikipedia articles on the operation of EU institutions are awful - barely any better than the official EU documentation. You'd be led to guess that the Wikipedia articles were composed by EU officials.

> In this light it feels a bit like some of the grandstanding bills US politicians write

It's more sinister than that. The Commission is the permanent secretariat of the EU; the Commissioners are usually political has-beens in their home country, and they don't need to grandstand, because they are not elected.

So what happens is that the Commission settles on some horrible scheme, and proposes legislation accordingly. Parliament duly wrecks the proposal, and sends it back. This continues until someone gets tired. But Parliament is subject to elections; the Commission isn't (and it doesn't seem to get tired, either). So the same horrible proposals keep coming back, until elections bring in a Parliament that is more favourable to the proposal.

I retired in my late 30s and had kids. So I’m a full time parent as is my partner. I guess that’s my revealed choice for what my ideal job would be? Sometimes I’m not completely happy with my choice, but mostly I am.

If I had more time, or more energy, I’d program for fun more often.

I don’t especially believe in “changing the world.” Not that you can’t (though really, you can’t, to 3 sig figs) just I don’t care to.