"I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering.
“But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision, or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action.
“The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.
“The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable.
“It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
This resonates so deeply with me as an ADHDer. In the sense that I abhor it and have become clinically depressed in such situations.
It’s also why “evolutionarily” the farm-and-plan neurotypes became so numerically prevalent over the forage-and-explore ADHD neurotypes with the advent of farming and modern society.
That’s my working hypothesis at least. Also makes me think that’s why beer and alcohol were such an important aspect in Egyptian and other ancient societies. Perhaps believing that is just what helps me sleep at night having a semi-disfuctional prefrontal cortex. ;)
Still it fascinates me that ADHD neurotypes persist at a stubborn 1/20 ratio in almost all large societies even in cultures such as Japan’s where one might assume ADHD traits would be heavily discouraged. As in ADHDers are the required lubricant to keep the bureaucratic machines from rusting up and so persist.
As a descriptive counterpoint look at the imagination of the “perfect bureaucracy” in Star Trek: the Borg. The only way they progress technologically is by assimilating new peoples. I hope someone pursue this as a post-graduate thesis at some point.
I know DFW was, to say the least, a smart guy, but this book just oozes the essence of his depressive mentality - I could not get through it. Further I have a hard time accepting any insights derived from such a melancholic mind.
Zoo monkeys are bored too. Is that because they're too stupid to be "un-borable" or is it because they're trapped forever in a tiny boring cage?
And dealing with boredom is something nobody learns how to do anymore. We have constant entertainment in our pockets with mobile phones, social media, and streaming.
When I go to the gym I sit in the sauna for 30 minutes just doing... nothing. Just sitting. No earbuds, no phone in hand. I'm usually the only one like this. I get asked how I can stand it. It's just normal to me. I think about stuff I need to do. I map out the next day, or the rest of the day, or next week. I reflect on last week. My mind always finds something to think about.
In the US, yes. I've seen this more than once, but the worst instance was a guy who came into the sauna with all of his gym clothes on, also looking at his phone. You can't make this stuff up.
I think every time I’ve been (or even been moving toward) excellent at something, it’s because I found very little or none of it boring. Even very-focused drilling and such, or studying “boring” material (it wasn’t, to me—I didn’t have to deal with boredom to progress!)
Office work and dealing with bureaucracy stands out as something that lots of people find themselves doing and almost all of them find unpleasant, including experiencing tons of it as very boring.
TFA doesn't say that "frustration tolerant" people tolerate problems, but that they tolerate frustration as they fix those problems "without succumbing to negative emotions or counterproductive behaviors".
I was far more frustration intolerant earlier in my career, part of which I can now attribute to undiagnosed AuDHD. Although I can't say that I've mastered frustration tolerance, I've learned to moderate it to the point that I'm far more effective now.
What the article fails to mention is that only in organizations of a certain complexity and dysfunction can the result of high frustration tolerance be referred to as progress.
The real key to success in complicated org is not just dealing effectively with frustration, but the ability to realize what the stakes really are in a complex organization. I've seen people promoted to the stratosphere not for successfully completing a project, but for keeping the wheels on the bus in spite of what happened to the project. This can at times involve repeatedly and energetically referring to failure as success.
> I’d be interested to hear how you’ve learned to moderate your response to frustration more effectively.
I loved @Schiendelman’s answer, and I believe that prioritizing mental and physical health is a prerequisite for tolerating frustration effectively. For me, it's been more about a change in practices and perspective.
For example, I never react in the moment to professional frustration beyond listening and asking sincere questions. I've learned that I need time to respond, and even to consider whether I should respond at all.
If I find myself awake at 4am ruminating about an aspect of my company or product, I remind myself that I may be taking it (and myself) a bit too seriously, and reassure myself that it can safely be tabled until tomorrow.
There's wisdom in the Serenity Prayer: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
I have noticed that on the mornings where I do some exertion before anything else—a run, some yoga, etc.—that my ability to "receive" and process the things that come at me is so much better. It feels like there's a waiting room, whereas otherwise, whatever comes at me gets a 1:1 response.
Have you found weightlifting to be specifically beneficial, or is that just your morning workout of choice?
The masochists are all too happy to do something the hard way in perpetuity. But they are in the smart-industrious quadrant and they will burn up man-hours like no tomorrow. Their goal is to fill a week not get stuff done.
You can be the person who jumps on the tedious tasks and that’s fine - as one personality in a diverse team. I worked on a project with all super senior people who never wanted to do any tedious work, ever. Over the course of a year the project started to more and more resemble Second System Syndrome, as each dev contributed an “engine“ or “framework” to perform Task Golf and never write any boring code. That’s just as bad as all masochists.
But a masochist that insists everyone else experience pain too is now a sadist. And from a progress standpoint that’s probably the worst monoculture to have.
At a pivotal point in my career growth, I got stuck with a project I had grown tired of while a more stimulating project was being spun up with new hires. I was “too important” to the old project and shut out. I did not enjoy that experience.
I’ve always been a pretty decent writer, and a passable tutor. It wasn’t that I couldn’t divest knowledge to other people, we just hadn’t made the time. I never did get onto that other project, the company started spiraling before I convinced that manager the team could deal without me. But I have seen what happens when a senior person becomes the bottleneck, or when only one voice champions an idea in meetings, and I do a better job of carving out bits of subject matter to co-create with peers or bequeath to people I’m mentoring. There’s plenty of breathing room between Work Yourself Out of a Job and Being Indispensable, where you have enough capacity that you can participate in new ideas that strike your fancy.
One of the things I often find missing in articles and discussion of these topics here on HN is the understanding that different people are really quite different.
Articles or comments like this often read like moral judgements. You should be X to succeed. Being X works for me, and it should for you. If X doesn't work for you, it's your problem. There's usually little considering that achieving X may be significantly easier for some than others, or that there may be other ways of achieving a persons goals that work better for them.
This article is better than most in that it has a well defined scope, large organizations. I don't have any major problems with the content, other than I'd like some more time spent on wether the model they are applying is really as applicable to the situation as they claim.
I must admit to some bias, as I do no do well in large organizations, and the description of frustration in the article doesn't resonate with my experience of frustration at these orgs. I left the last place I worked because it was bad for my mental health. In many ways it was a dream job. It payed extremely well, I liked the people I worked with, and it wasn't that hard. Eventually though, I just couldn't do it anymore, and left for a small startup. I didn't realize how bad it was until I noticed I could still feel myself physically unwinding three months later.
I've been at this company for three years, and still love working here. It's absolutely not frustration free. I am however, much better equipped to handle the kinds of frustrations I face at this new company.
The author of the article says:
"It’s like learning to navigate a bustling city. At first, the traffic, noise, and crowds seem like overwhelming obstacles. But over time, you see these elements as essential aspects of urban life."
I've experienced this first hand after moving to NYC, and it's true, but it's also important to remember that some people just don't like cities, and that's Ok.
This resonated with me, but not in its original context in navigating large organizations - it reminds me of chewing on a tough open-ended math problem, or other situations where you try a 100 solutions to find one that actually works. I hope it’s the same concept here.
Also sounds like an exploit, a cheap excuse for people with the power to profit from frustratation to get away.
On the long run, frustration leads to paranoia, and paranoia leads to unpredictableness, which in high doses seems to be harmful for any organization.
So, it seams that dealing with (not exactly tolerating, also not intolerating, it's different) paranoia is way more important. But also, if we don't have paranoia, we can find ourselves in the receiving end of endless frustration.
This is a great piece, and the comments here are part of the learning - the author has hit the nail on the head of the growth opportunity for most engineers. Frustration is an internal issue, managing it is difficult, and being told you need to is uncomfortable.
For a mid level engineer, learning to do so effectively is worth a lot more money than any other marginal skill improvement.
Why does reading this make me think of the book “who moved my cheese”, that was handed out at many large 2000’s ish companies a quarter or two before layoffs started?
That phrase resonated with me. Do you not get burnout when you spend too much time in a busy city? God forbid you'd have to navigate one 8-5 every weekday.
Did you know that some people actually choose to live in cities?
Personally I can’t wrap my head around the continuous boredom of living in rural areas or suburbia, where anything interesting is an hour or more of wasted life in a round-trip car ride. Even fetching groceries is a half hour there and back instead of a few minute walk. Crazy!
Different people have different norms, different preferences, and are acclimated to different environments.
Most people learn it once and then they go around the city largely on autopilot. Some stress is there but more manageable. Doing on autopilot is not possible in large orgs, or if it's possible it's prone to make you feel unfulfilled instead of burned out.
It's important to realize that busy cities (and large organizations) are the way they are because many people can tolerate them and some people thrive in them. (Nothing wrong with deciding you personally can't, or just that you don't want to.)
I drive a classic car in NYC and have 100% patience and 0% frustration. Meanwhile I cant keep a job at a big corpo because of my frustrated rebellious behavior. So yeah, awful framing.
Let's face it. If you get frustrated, either you get paid enough to put up with the nonsense, or you don't. If you do, you can stick around. If you don't, you will move on, but just don't repeat the loop.
As it turns out my frustration tolerance is very low...I decided to check out of this rotten system and go my own way a few months ago. My stress levels plummeted since.
Being an expensive freelance dev/consultant that gets flown in to solve actual "our shits on fire plz help" problems, instead of an underutilized "human resource" that noone listens to unless you repeat your message 1000 times.
In Germany, you have to be extremely frustration tolerant for surviving running a small startup. The bureaucracy is crazy and convoluted, the funding (including research grants) frustrating and obscure, the consultants (e.g. tax advisor) to help with these expensive and infuriating, the software (eg bookkeeping) infantile.
"I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering.
“But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision, or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action.
“The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.
“The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable.
“It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
This resonates so deeply with me as an ADHDer. In the sense that I abhor it and have become clinically depressed in such situations.
It’s also why “evolutionarily” the farm-and-plan neurotypes became so numerically prevalent over the forage-and-explore ADHD neurotypes with the advent of farming and modern society.
That’s my working hypothesis at least. Also makes me think that’s why beer and alcohol were such an important aspect in Egyptian and other ancient societies. Perhaps believing that is just what helps me sleep at night having a semi-disfuctional prefrontal cortex. ;)
Still it fascinates me that ADHD neurotypes persist at a stubborn 1/20 ratio in almost all large societies even in cultures such as Japan’s where one might assume ADHD traits would be heavily discouraged. As in ADHDers are the required lubricant to keep the bureaucratic machines from rusting up and so persist.
As a descriptive counterpoint look at the imagination of the “perfect bureaucracy” in Star Trek: the Borg. The only way they progress technologically is by assimilating new peoples. I hope someone pursue this as a post-graduate thesis at some point.
I know DFW was, to say the least, a smart guy, but this book just oozes the essence of his depressive mentality - I could not get through it. Further I have a hard time accepting any insights derived from such a melancholic mind.
Zoo monkeys are bored too. Is that because they're too stupid to be "un-borable" or is it because they're trapped forever in a tiny boring cage?
> "The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom."
The key to excellence in any human endeavor is the ability to deal with boredom.
Wallace was a serious tennis player for awhile, surely he must know this.
It's as if he (and most of HN) has a kind of intellectual allergy to the word "bureaucracy" that suppresses his critical faculties.
And dealing with boredom is something nobody learns how to do anymore. We have constant entertainment in our pockets with mobile phones, social media, and streaming.
When I go to the gym I sit in the sauna for 30 minutes just doing... nothing. Just sitting. No earbuds, no phone in hand. I'm usually the only one like this. I get asked how I can stand it. It's just normal to me. I think about stuff I need to do. I map out the next day, or the rest of the day, or next week. I reflect on last week. My mind always finds something to think about.
People are bringing their phones into the sauna?
In the US, yes. I've seen this more than once, but the worst instance was a guy who came into the sauna with all of his gym clothes on, also looking at his phone. You can't make this stuff up.
I think every time I’ve been (or even been moving toward) excellent at something, it’s because I found very little or none of it boring. Even very-focused drilling and such, or studying “boring” material (it wasn’t, to me—I didn’t have to deal with boredom to progress!)
Office work and dealing with bureaucracy stands out as something that lots of people find themselves doing and almost all of them find unpleasant, including experiencing tons of it as very boring.
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Having an organisation of highly-frustration-tollerant people is a great way of getting an organisation where nothing ever gets fixed.
TFA doesn't say that "frustration tolerant" people tolerate problems, but that they tolerate frustration as they fix those problems "without succumbing to negative emotions or counterproductive behaviors".
I was far more frustration intolerant earlier in my career, part of which I can now attribute to undiagnosed AuDHD. Although I can't say that I've mastered frustration tolerance, I've learned to moderate it to the point that I'm far more effective now.
What the article fails to mention is that only in organizations of a certain complexity and dysfunction can the result of high frustration tolerance be referred to as progress.
The real key to success in complicated org is not just dealing effectively with frustration, but the ability to realize what the stakes really are in a complex organization. I've seen people promoted to the stratosphere not for successfully completing a project, but for keeping the wheels on the bus in spite of what happened to the project. This can at times involve repeatedly and energetically referring to failure as success.
I’d be interested to hear how you’ve learned to moderate your response to frustration more effectively.
Practices? Medication? Etc.
> I’d be interested to hear how you’ve learned to moderate your response to frustration more effectively.
I loved @Schiendelman’s answer, and I believe that prioritizing mental and physical health is a prerequisite for tolerating frustration effectively. For me, it's been more about a change in practices and perspective.
For example, I never react in the moment to professional frustration beyond listening and asking sincere questions. I've learned that I need time to respond, and even to consider whether I should respond at all.
If I find myself awake at 4am ruminating about an aspect of my company or product, I remind myself that I may be taking it (and myself) a bit too seriously, and reassure myself that it can safely be tabled until tomorrow.
There's wisdom in the Serenity Prayer: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
For me, it was better sleep, a healthier diet, and regular weightlifting nearly every morning.
Intersting.
I have noticed that on the mornings where I do some exertion before anything else—a run, some yoga, etc.—that my ability to "receive" and process the things that come at me is so much better. It feels like there's a waiting room, whereas otherwise, whatever comes at me gets a 1:1 response.
Have you found weightlifting to be specifically beneficial, or is that just your morning workout of choice?
The masochists are all too happy to do something the hard way in perpetuity. But they are in the smart-industrious quadrant and they will burn up man-hours like no tomorrow. Their goal is to fill a week not get stuff done.
You can be the person who jumps on the tedious tasks and that’s fine - as one personality in a diverse team. I worked on a project with all super senior people who never wanted to do any tedious work, ever. Over the course of a year the project started to more and more resemble Second System Syndrome, as each dev contributed an “engine“ or “framework” to perform Task Golf and never write any boring code. That’s just as bad as all masochists.
But a masochist that insists everyone else experience pain too is now a sadist. And from a progress standpoint that’s probably the worst monoculture to have.
This, I'm the low frustration tolerance one and guess what ? I'm also the one that document the product and make it actually easy to onboard on
At a pivotal point in my career growth, I got stuck with a project I had grown tired of while a more stimulating project was being spun up with new hires. I was “too important” to the old project and shut out. I did not enjoy that experience.
I’ve always been a pretty decent writer, and a passable tutor. It wasn’t that I couldn’t divest knowledge to other people, we just hadn’t made the time. I never did get onto that other project, the company started spiraling before I convinced that manager the team could deal without me. But I have seen what happens when a senior person becomes the bottleneck, or when only one voice champions an idea in meetings, and I do a better job of carving out bits of subject matter to co-create with peers or bequeath to people I’m mentoring. There’s plenty of breathing room between Work Yourself Out of a Job and Being Indispensable, where you have enough capacity that you can participate in new ideas that strike your fancy.
One of the things I often find missing in articles and discussion of these topics here on HN is the understanding that different people are really quite different.
Articles or comments like this often read like moral judgements. You should be X to succeed. Being X works for me, and it should for you. If X doesn't work for you, it's your problem. There's usually little considering that achieving X may be significantly easier for some than others, or that there may be other ways of achieving a persons goals that work better for them.
This article is better than most in that it has a well defined scope, large organizations. I don't have any major problems with the content, other than I'd like some more time spent on wether the model they are applying is really as applicable to the situation as they claim.
I must admit to some bias, as I do no do well in large organizations, and the description of frustration in the article doesn't resonate with my experience of frustration at these orgs. I left the last place I worked because it was bad for my mental health. In many ways it was a dream job. It payed extremely well, I liked the people I worked with, and it wasn't that hard. Eventually though, I just couldn't do it anymore, and left for a small startup. I didn't realize how bad it was until I noticed I could still feel myself physically unwinding three months later.
I've been at this company for three years, and still love working here. It's absolutely not frustration free. I am however, much better equipped to handle the kinds of frustrations I face at this new company.
The author of the article says:
"It’s like learning to navigate a bustling city. At first, the traffic, noise, and crowds seem like overwhelming obstacles. But over time, you see these elements as essential aspects of urban life."
I've experienced this first hand after moving to NYC, and it's true, but it's also important to remember that some people just don't like cities, and that's Ok.
This resonated with me, but not in its original context in navigating large organizations - it reminds me of chewing on a tough open-ended math problem, or other situations where you try a 100 solutions to find one that actually works. I hope it’s the same concept here.
Sounds like a buddhist thing.
Also sounds like an exploit, a cheap excuse for people with the power to profit from frustratation to get away.
On the long run, frustration leads to paranoia, and paranoia leads to unpredictableness, which in high doses seems to be harmful for any organization.
So, it seams that dealing with (not exactly tolerating, also not intolerating, it's different) paranoia is way more important. But also, if we don't have paranoia, we can find ourselves in the receiving end of endless frustration.
A delicate situation.
This is a great piece, and the comments here are part of the learning - the author has hit the nail on the head of the growth opportunity for most engineers. Frustration is an internal issue, managing it is difficult, and being told you need to is uncomfortable.
For a mid level engineer, learning to do so effectively is worth a lot more money than any other marginal skill improvement.
Why does reading this make me think of the book “who moved my cheese”, that was handed out at many large 2000’s ish companies a quarter or two before layoffs started?
"no biggie, it's just like learning to navigate a busy city"
Such insidious reframing with absolutely no mention of burnout possibility. Yuck.
That phrase resonated with me. Do you not get burnout when you spend too much time in a busy city? God forbid you'd have to navigate one 8-5 every weekday.
Did you know that some people actually choose to live in cities?
Personally I can’t wrap my head around the continuous boredom of living in rural areas or suburbia, where anything interesting is an hour or more of wasted life in a round-trip car ride. Even fetching groceries is a half hour there and back instead of a few minute walk. Crazy!
Different people have different norms, different preferences, and are acclimated to different environments.
Most people learn it once and then they go around the city largely on autopilot. Some stress is there but more manageable. Doing on autopilot is not possible in large orgs, or if it's possible it's prone to make you feel unfulfilled instead of burned out.
It's important to realize that busy cities (and large organizations) are the way they are because many people can tolerate them and some people thrive in them. (Nothing wrong with deciding you personally can't, or just that you don't want to.)
It's also important to realize there are organizations where no one thrives but everyone stays because they have to.
I drive a classic car in NYC and have 100% patience and 0% frustration. Meanwhile I cant keep a job at a big corpo because of my frustrated rebellious behavior. So yeah, awful framing.
Let's face it. If you get frustrated, either you get paid enough to put up with the nonsense, or you don't. If you do, you can stick around. If you don't, you will move on, but just don't repeat the loop.
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As it turns out my frustration tolerance is very low...I decided to check out of this rotten system and go my own way a few months ago. My stress levels plummeted since.
Yeah... same.
Power to those who can function in highly frustrating environments, but for me the only winning move is to not play the game in the first place.
So what's the alternative?
Being an expensive freelance dev/consultant that gets flown in to solve actual "our shits on fire plz help" problems, instead of an underutilized "human resource" that noone listens to unless you repeat your message 1000 times.
Not being a software dev for one
Good for you, but what do you do now?
i started trading. spent 6 months learning it though
That's the way. I did it for a few years, both manually and algorithmically, but am back at a job for now.
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In Germany, you have to be extremely frustration tolerant for surviving running a small startup. The bureaucracy is crazy and convoluted, the funding (including research grants) frustrating and obscure, the consultants (e.g. tax advisor) to help with these expensive and infuriating, the software (eg bookkeeping) infantile.
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