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Ask HN: Why you do what you do?

by lnalx on 5/30/20, 12:34 AM with 29 comments

• by mikekchar on 5/30/20, 2:09 AM

  A quote from George Mallory about climbing Mt. Everest:

  People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.'There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron... If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.

• by muzani on 5/30/20, 10:47 AM

  I just try to do good.

  My long game is the afterlife. Every philosophy and religion says that if you do good in this life, the next life will be better. If there is no afterlife, I will have lived a good life at least.

  It's also really practical; doing good and helping people costs little and gives you the best deals and connections. It highlights the parasites in your life. It brings you closer to other generous people and pushes away the selfish ones.

  Wealth is also a really odd thing - most people with wealth choose to invest it rather than enjoy it. Those who enjoy their wealth, whether it's buying a better car or a gold toilet seat, they mostly enjoy the purchase, but not the state of having the thing they bought.

  Spending wealth to help others gives you more of a buyer's high, and you don't have to deal with say, the payments of the more expensive car or the guilt of having a gold toilet seat.

  Wealth isn't just cash, but also energy and time. Spending my time and energy on vices feels bad. Whereas spending it to help others - teaching, mentoring, assisting, learning, blogging, these are all good life experiences, whether or not there's a return on investment.

• by skrtskrt on 5/30/20, 2:46 PM

  Software is a field where I can just create something out of nothing, virtually in my own. Even at a non-senior level I can make the vast majority of design and implementation decisions for a project - it just might not be as ambitious or complex of a project as someone senior.

  Most weeks I leave work, something exists that did not before. Bonus points if I’m proud of the design and execution.

  Eventually I would love to work on open source software like OS’s or languages/compilers. The idea of making even a tiny contribution to something that helps build and run the world and will be used for decades or longer is amazing.

• by yulaow on 5/30/20, 12:02 PM

  Honestly I like to learn and I love the feeling of "yeah, now I get it"

• by gitgud on 5/30/20, 3:37 AM

  I like programming, because programming is the fundamental essence of automation.

  Automation reduces the work humans have to do, which is generally good for everyone.

• by polishdude20 on 5/30/20, 2:31 PM

  Since I'm not getting paid for writing software, at first glance someone would say I do it so that I get a job in software at some company. But now that I think of it, I don't start software projects with getting hired in mind. I do them because I enjoy the satisfaction of putting together a complex system and turning on the big red switch and seeing it all work together. Why do I enjoy that? Now I can only guess at such a deep question but maybe it's to do with my need for order. I get enough chaotic things happening in my life and personality that I feel programming balances it out. Also, since I'm still pretty new to this, software feels like a new frontier with loads of possibilities. I get this feeling of there being gold at the end of every tunnel of knowledge.

• by ekr on 5/30/20, 9:24 AM

  I don't think you can get useful answers or of this thread simply because most humans don't have metacognitive introspective awareness; it's not something we evolved to have, in fact it is something that would bring negative reproductive fitness, given that the brain has mechanisms to actually hide the root motivation for our urges.

  The best way would be to study the neuroscience of human motivation. There's a specific brain circuit involved. But from another perspective, we do what we do to fulfill various needs, mostly security and belonging. That can result in things as complex as status games.

  Things are a lot more complex than that, if you consider the evolutionary history of the brain stem, limbic system and the cortex, each newer system is able to override the older one, resulting in completely different behaviour.

• by burntoutfire on 5/31/20, 11:13 AM

  Make money -> retire. Should achieve it in a about a year from now, a bit under forties. The project is relatively undemanding if you know how to deal with the stress of corporate misery (nothing works as it should, the requirements are shit etc.). After that, who knows, make an indie game? The underlying goal is to strive for mastery, autonomy and balance in life, none of which I think I can achieve while in a career.

• by austincheney on 5/31/20, 11:19 AM

  I love building things and software pays more than carpentry, so there I love writing software and do so full time.

  The corporate software culture with all of its incompetence and false expectations grates on the soul like sewage flooding your bedroom. As a result I maintain a lower paying employment in the US Army Reserves, because sometimes a year long vacation to a foreign nation doing real work under real leadership recharges the soul.

• by dilap on 5/30/20, 1:29 AM

  I'm working on a game for phones. It's defnly a mix of $ and stuff I like; if cash were no object, I'd like to be spending my time doing some mix of trying to make a replacement for emacs, trying to make a better language learning app, and learning more about art. (Though I'm not sure I actually _would_; unfortunately, I can be lazy w/o an external motivation.)

  I'm not as passionate about games, but it's still pretty interesting to work on, and I can get paid...which, I need. :-)

• by diablo1 on 5/30/20, 1:33 PM

  > For some people it’s just money

  Money is a terrible motivator, because when you reach certain monetary events, it doesn't matter how much it is, how you feel internally will decide how you feel about the money.

  That's why you should always find something that makes you feel really alive, and the money should follow naturally. If it doesn't follow naturally, then find ways to make it follow naturally. Charge money for whatever it is that makes you feel alive.

• by Jeremy1026 on 5/30/20, 2:14 AM

  Because there is someone willing to give me a sum of money to use a skill that I have worked on over the years, and I need that sum of money to afford housing and nourishment for myself and my family. I have no "change the world" mentality. I'm just doing what I need to do to continue my way of life.

• by dorkinspace on 5/30/20, 3:41 PM

  The simple and blunt answer is that software dev is easy, the hours are lax, and it pays well.

  By easy, I mean my most challenging days are those in which I have to solve a hard code/architecture/etc problem and solving hard problems inside a simple defined space is fun.

• by nunez on 5/30/20, 4:55 AM

  I love being able to automate things that I hate doing and being paid very well for knowing how to do it

• by apple2ta on 5/31/20, 4:48 AM

  Money.

  But in your head hear that as "Moooonneeeeeeyy" from the Pink Floyd track.

• by bedhesd on 6/1/20, 4:32 PM

  I am a technical writer and I am physically disabled. At my point in life I work to survive. Technology is my single source of income potential.

• by rcharpentier on 5/30/20, 1:58 AM

  I’m currently building a user feedback tool for SaaS companies. I do it because I need freedom. Freedom from working from someone else, from having an employer decide my fate. I need to create, to achieve.

• by k00b on 5/30/20, 12:43 AM

  I feel compelled express myself. I'm pretty bad at "succeeding" with independent projects but I suspect - like with anything - I'll get better incrementally at least.

• by non-entity on 5/30/20, 6:39 AM

  For my personal / side projects?

  Sure I'd love to make money doing the type of stuff I do there, but I'm initially driven by curiosity.

• by zubairq on 5/30/20, 7:52 AM

  I am building stepping stones for a future in which AI and small robots can help to heal our bodies and other useful tasks ...

• by RajSinghLA on 5/30/20, 8:54 AM

  Working on a hotel concierge AI. Goal is to make a billion people's lives easier.

  Have helped 10,000,000+ hotel guests already.

• by rl3 on 5/30/20, 8:06 AM

  >On what project are you right now and what is fueling you ?

  I don't know anymore.

• by mortivore on 6/1/20, 2:57 PM

  Fun, money, and work/life balance.

• by quickthrower2 on 5/30/20, 3:12 AM

  Side project? To make money of course :-)

• by rolph on 5/30/20, 3:59 AM

  an archive to facilitate a rebuilding after im dead and gone and people reemerge from the chaos

• by gcheong on 5/30/20, 8:33 PM

  I got nowhere else to go.

• by a3n on 5/30/20, 1:05 AM

  They were hiring.