Add a blog post: "Uh, I like my job?" #10101
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Is this associated with our value of being weird? (I think without that context, it could come across as a bad thing but in our case, it's actually good, so linking to some writing about this being a good philosophy might be nice?) The rest of my feedback is about things I already shared in 360, so just as reminders:
This is an example of something that is obviously very eloquently phrased in a high-brow way, but also somewhat hard to digest/scan (to us average people) without reading 3x, which I think can have a negative effect on our generally easy-to-read style of writing where we use smaller words that don't take any mental processing to understand what we're trying to say. That and you managed to use "ass", "bullshit", and "fuck*" a total of 5x in a single blog post, which would represent a 100% increase on any use of this in our repo. (Currently we have 4 uses of "ass", 1 of "bullshit", and zero f-bombs.) |
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Hey, some free feedback from the sidelines. I think the content itself is great, but I will echo's Cory's feedback and say the f-bombs and long words distracted me from reading it --> they break pacing and take me out of the flow. Somewhere 1/3 of the way in, due to the elongated words, I started skimming and skipping sentences to "get to the end already", which is a shame as the content itself is really worth reading! And a big +1 to less f-bombs in general. Those have a time and a place, but this isn't it. When used improperly, f-bombs make the author look like a try-hard Mark Manson, which I believe isn't what we're going for here :D. |
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I haven't had a chance to do a line edit yet, but I love this article. This is all valid feedback, but very fixable. I'll dive in when I get 10 minutes to thread the line. |
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Agreed, and overall I liked it. Re: f-bombs, the above reminded me of an article by the aforementioned Mark Manson. It's now paid, but fully available under archive.is here. It's about using "potty mouth" words. The tldr is that sometimes they really do add value, and you shouldn't apologize about that. Other times it feels like loud noise. Getting it right seems to be a subtle art, and when in doubt, I'd lean towards having less of them. |
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Have done a little edit pass on this now. A couple for small things for you to address, but I like this piece even more now.
Random things:
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I don't know if it's natural or deliberate, but your writing has great rhythm. Imo great writing is mostly about knowing when to go short and when to go long, as it were. I also appreciate short paragraphs.
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We should explore headline options. I'm not totally against the current one (it land on HN), but there may be others.
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It's very different to what we normally put in the newsletter, but I'd like to try and use it there somehow anyway. We could run this version on the website and a slightly revised version on the newsletter that's more actionable / less self-promotional, but we I can cross that bridge later.
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I think this deserves some custom art. Could we come up with a meme that Lottie could hogify?
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Frontmatter isn't right, which might explain why it 404s on preview atm. We can fix this later.
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I wonder if this would work really well in early Jan. Might tap into everyone's new year vibe for new opportunities. New year, new me and all that.
contents/blog/uh-i-like-my-job.md
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| So I gave up on ever liking a job. Eventually I gave up on *jobs* altogether, hoping to scrape a living from a pile of grit and contracts. | ||
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| Then I found PostHog. Two months in, I’m still finding the experience to be *extremely weird.* It seems as though everything that made previous experiences of work into bullshit can be solved through **hygiene**. |
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| Then I found PostHog. Two months in, I’m still finding the experience to be *extremely weird.* It seems as though everything that made previous experiences of work into bullshit can be solved through **hygiene**. | |
| Then I found PostHog. Two months in, I’m still finding the experience *radically* liberating. It's in "pinch me, is this real?" territory. | |
| Why? I'm still learning and decoding how it all works, but it seems as if everything that made previous work environments oppressively painful experiences can be solved through simple, deeply honest **hygiene**. |
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I think "weird" is the wrong word. I've elaborated a little here, but feel free to tweak or go in your own direction.
Likewise, I do think "bullshit" lands kind of weirdly here. I don't think the "bullshit jobs" idea really translates without that framework.
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I like that direction. How would you feel about weirdly liberating? I'm really trying to capture the sense of how bizarre it feels not to have all these layers of tedium and micro-resentment building.
contents/blog/uh-i-like-my-job.md
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| date: 2024-12-12 | |||
| title: Uh, I like my job? | |||
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Not important right now, but we should explore some other headline options here.
contents/blog/uh-i-like-my-job.md
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| Even better, the org chart is descriptive, not prescriptive. It’s not a declaration of turf. | ||
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| I got to ship a new feature for our data pipelines product in my second week. *That’s not even my department*. So damn much fun. |
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It might be fun to add a footnote on "That's not even my department" that explains what you're engineer working in marketing, and how crazy this. Can maybe talk about the job "Engineer who loves writing" and how that hooked you in. A meandering footnote can add color without messing up the narrative.
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I didn't know we had footnotes natively built into the site generator! Very into it.
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| But certainty is a trap for anyone trying something genuinely new. Curiosity, meanwhile, is the path to constant opportunity. You can’t know until you try. You can know even more if *everyone* is entitled to try. | ||
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| So everyone at PostHog is free to try, to fuck up, [to discover](/handbook/company/communication#top-tips-for-rfcs). If I have a strong opinion that disagrees even with a founder, I have the option to give it a swing anyway, if the decision is reversible. |
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I think we can keep this fuck ;)
contents/blog/uh-i-like-my-job.md
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| So everyone at PostHog is free to try, to fuck up, [to discover](/handbook/company/communication#top-tips-for-rfcs). If I have a strong opinion that disagrees even with a founder, I have the option to give it a swing anyway, if the decision is reversible. | ||
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| There’s [not an aggressive process](/handbook/values#4-trust-and-feedback-over-process) that dictates what I can do or how I have to do it. I have the trust of my team to make moves, and I’ll get feedback when I get it wrong. We course-correct into the right path through a sort of social eventual consistency. |
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Is there a simpler framing than "social eventual consistency"? It's very eloquent, but somewhat opaque.
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It's a wink at a concept in distributed computing, for our developer audience, but let me know if it doesn't land:
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Oh, ok. Just link to the wiki, then. Or maybe do a footnote. Either works.
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| I'm trying not to be *too* weird about it. I think my coworkers are getting used to my outbursts about how something makes way more sense than usual. | ||
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| By month two I’m usually anxiously glancing at the exits. The endless paper cuts of structures that don’t quite work – but still bind the everyday of workplace existence – start to chafe and rub. Instead, I'm busily learning more and making plans for what I'll do next. |
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You en-dashed. You know the way to my heart ❤️
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Thank youuuuuu @andyvan-ph. Seeing my rhythm means a lot to me, I've worked hard at it. And thank you, homies, for having a read as well, I appreciate your thoughtful attention.
On both of these, what if the value-add was intrigue and curiosity satisfied? Inside a newbie's first months at PostHog or some such. Back to our discussion about audience living a better job vicariously through PostHog's unique circumstances. |
Co-authored-by: Andy Vandervell <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Andy Vandervell <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Andy Vandervell <[email protected]>
…/posthog.com into blog-weird-i-like-my-job
Ursula le Guin used this phrase and though she's not a prude she's also not given to my same sense of coarseness.
Co-authored-by: Andy Vandervell <[email protected]>
Couple thoughts:
with:
or something in the Galaxy Brain domain related to transcendence, no caption, as in:
both would be very funny with hedgehog replacements, but open to other ideas. |
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I like the first meme idea. We could re-use that quite easily, too, which would be handy. |
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Also am I missing a step by not dunking on Jira and specifically promising its absence? Footnote? |
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I think Jira is too easy a target, tbh. |
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@lottiecoxon I'll do a formal art request but first: I recognize that this would require QUITE a variety of perspectives and angles on Max's face that may exist in undefined space, so if adapting this meme makes you quail just say the word and I'll come up with an alternative
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(To that end: we can/should schedule this for a time where it makes the best impact)
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