HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy?...

"Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned."

"Certain changes in brain chemistry" result in us adjusting to be approximately as happy as they always are even in situations which one would predict way less or way more happiness.

I feel like "Get a job, get married, have kids" meme is also just that, a meme. Of course it's a meme supported by biology/genetics, but why is that the path to happiness?

On the other hand, we learn to be happy with what we have, according to these 2 authors (who happened to have TED talks):

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfcro5iM5vw

There's more to it than rationalization.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

It turns out, we are wired up for gratitude.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

Basically, keep striving until you are satisfied.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

I had a very similar experience to this a few years ago. I made an app called Face Juggler which was one of the first face swap apps (before snapchat started doing it for free). I made it just for a bit of fun but it somehow went to the top of the charts with zero effort or publicity and I made a similar amount of money to you. And I also got really down about it.

Apparently this is pretty common. We aren’t that good at predicting things that will make us happy or sad. There’s a great TED talk about this https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy/...

I think the problem I had was that when you have very little you are quite care free. You take chances and don’t worry about the consequences because you have little to lose and lots to gain. This feels good! But once you actually get somewhere you start to worry about stuff. What if I lose this money? What if I do the wrong thing and it all goes wrong. What should be a great position becomes scary and unstable.

Now would be a great time for some proper reflection about what you want from life that isn’t just about owning and buying stuff. You’ve bought your way out of that game now and it’s time to think about what’s really important to you. I also think Tony Robins is a genius for his ideas in this stuff.

⬐ rosspackard

Can you point me to some of the Tony Robbins stuff that is good for this in particular? I find myself worrying more and more about losing what I am gaining.

I've struggled with this, but feel that I've made some headway in the past decade, so for what it's worth, here are my two cents (YMMV): I'd say start by conscious effort, and then eventually you can build intuition and 'empathy' in a more traditional sense (and your mirror neurons might even help you understand your own feelings better that way too, as seeing something in others might help you recognize those same things in yourself). Whenever you interact with a person, consciously ask yourself questions like 'how does this person feel?', 'how do they perceive me?', 'what are they trying to achieve?', 'what do they think I am trying to achieve?', 'in what context will they interpret the things I say?' and so on. Even if you won't have a lot of those answers, just making yourself aware that there is information there that you are missing is a valuable step in noticing it - and teaching yourself to care about that dimension of the human experience. Understanding what goes on inside a person is not unlike playing an imperfect knowledge game, e.g. reading someone's hand in poker - a combination of observation, prior knowledge, statistics and logic can help gain you insight into likely scenarios (e.g. "Aggressive behavior is often due to being stressed, or feeling threatened - this person is normally well-mannered, so they are likely under stress right now, so instead of snapping back at them, I could ask them if there's anything I could help with - assuming they normally trust me enough to confide in me"). And read books/blog posts about psychology and what motivates people (e.g. watch stuff like this, https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy (that book is recommended too) and read stuff like this https://youarenotsosmart.com/ ) - it'll help you think about a mind as something that follows rules and patterns, even if those patterns aren't always strictly logical, and hence it is something that can be understood. Eventually, all these things can combine to give you an intuition (a heuristic if you will) about what goes on emotionally inside others and yourself, and as this becomes a greater part of your world view, you'll also get more of a chance to feel a link between those feelings inside yourself and others (which is what I'd call empathy). I think some people, the "natural empathists" stumble on this by themselves; they've just developed this intuition without ever becoming aware of it - but for a person like myself, I needed to understand it consciously before my subconscious could really catch up and start to work on the domain. But it's totally a learnable skill like all others.

this is the only tedtalk i approve of https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

Yeah, I know that feeling - it is hard to get past it when it happens and it certainly takes a while for me every time it happens.

This is certainly not a universal cure, but for me the ideas presented in this ted talk have helped: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy?...

So, set a goal and work towards that - but, looking at your profile that suggestion seems trite and silly, because you are and have been doing that for some time. Doing difficult things falls into the same category.

My suggestion would be to pick something completely pointless - something that you could easily pay someone to do for you, better than you have time-skill for and then do that.

For example, I'm building a house. Fairly big, not huge, wooden. I have no training in it and it has taken 5 years of evenings and weekends so far. Any reasonable construction team would have finished in 6 months and it would have had better quality of work.

I love it - it makes me happy to look at the small bit that I finished yesterday and somehow it gives me a sense of purpose. Maybe it's just a distraction - something to keep away the existential dread, but so what, because nothing has intrinsic value, this purpose is the best possible purpose for me.

⬐ AndrewKemendo

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it!

⬐ brokenmachine

As an IT person, I am slightly jealous of people who can, at the end of the day, point at a physical thing that they have created.

At the end of my day I often feel that I have just kept the cogs grinding for another day. I do feel that my work is "important", and I'm good at it, and the money surely improves my quality of life, but it'd sure be nice to be outside sometimes in the real world digging a hole or planting a tree or something, not just the endless arranging of remote electrons.

⬐ terryf

As also an IT person, I agree! :)

Frankly what you describe is exactly why I started building real things as a hobby.

This is the TED talk you were talking about [0]. I'm sorry for your loss.

[0]: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy?...

This (both the post and the comments here) are very interesting to me from a "some people are intrinsically optimistic and some people are intrinsically pessimistic" point of view.

> Homejoy and ‘fail’ have gotten tethered together in the tech headlines recently but for myself and many of my colleagues Homejoy will always be more synonymous with success than failure.

Rationalization is a hell of a drug And I don't mean that in a snarky way– synthesized happiness every bit as "real" as "genuine" happiness. The brain doesn't discriminate.

Dan Gilbert did a great TED talk [1] about this:

> "Who are these characters who are so damn happy? The first one is Jim Wright. Some of you are old enough to remember: he was the chairman of the House of Representatives and he resigned in disgrace when this young Republican named Newt Gingrich found out about a shady book deal he had done. He lost everything. The most powerful Democrat in the country lost everything. He lost his money, he lost his power. What does he have to say all these years later? "I am so much better off physically, financially, mentally and in almost every other way." What other way would there be to be better off? Vegetably? Minerally? Animally? He's pretty much covered them there."

Startups are often started by wildly optimistic people, while Internet messageboards tend to be populated by wildly pessimistic people. I'm not saying that either is better or worse, but it's an interesting phenomenon to witness.

So the interesting thing here is... while Homejoy is obviously a failure, I legitimately believe that OP feels good about himself, and probably better than some successful founders feel about their successful startups.

Rationalization is a hell of a drug. [2]

PS: Another lesson I think the cynics and pessimists could take away from this (but, by definition, probably won't) is that you can get away with a lot more failure in this world than you imagine, and still probably end up on top. OP is still probably better off than a lot of us career-ily and in many other ways.

I wonder, if blind optimism could be sold in a drink like coffee, would it be worth buying (in terms of net impact on well-being?) Seems like it might be. Curious for your thoughts.

---

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/200912/downs...

⬐ danieltillett

It is fine for the team from Homejoy to be wild optimists, but not the VC investors. They are supposed to be a fiduciary with their limited partners money.

⬐ visakanv

> It is fine for the team from Homejoy to be wild optimists, but not the VC investors.

Hmm... I don't know if I agree or disagree. I think a VC's experience must be pretty unnerving– she probably turns down seemingly lousy deals and then watches them go on to be staggeringly successful. And that makes her wonder if she's too conservative, maybe. I don't know.

I believe that the partners also expect their VCs to take risks, and would rather burn money (which is difficult for common folks like us to relate to) on 100 bad startups than miss out on 1 home run.

After all, if the VC screw-ups are not tolerated, the partners will just cut off their money supply. This isn't happening, or hasn't happened yet. Which signals to the VCs to continue taking risks.

⬐ danieltillett

I would love to be a VC. Someone gives you 100s of millions dollars which you don’t have to give back for 10 years and which you can spend on whatever crazy ideas you like. Just follow the herd and no one will blame you if you lose the lot and if the herd is right you make out like a bandit. It is a game of heads you lose, tails I win.

⬐ mbesto

Except categorically is an awful business to be in. You might not have a job after your first LP, if your LP fails to return. It's an extremely binary business model - you either succeed in the top 10% of all VC funds available or you simply pack up and do something else. That's why you typically see people get into the VC business when money is not an issue for them...fund failure is much easier to stomach.

⬐ danieltillett

10 years is an awfully long time - if your first and only LP fails oh well - at least it is not your money. Plus if you don’t let any of your companies IPO then no one will know if you have failed or not for a very long time.

⬐ nostrademons

I'm pretty sure I'd hate it. (I had the opportunity a few years back but turned it down because it wasn't the right time to leave Google. Also, my wife is an institutional investor, but in philanthropy and not tech.) Some of the downsides:

Your life is consumed by pitch meetings, and you have to say no to the vast majority of them. You have to constantly be out hustling for deal flow. If you miss the wrong startup, you've probably missed your chance to get a return.

You are a support role. Your job is to direct resources to the people who actually make things happen, not to make them happen yourself. You don't usually get to build things yourself, and when you do, nobody can know about them.

When things go terribly badly, you are frequently on the hook for cleaning them up.

Your compensation can be pretty awesome, but your liquidity sucks. Many times, you have to buy into the fund with your own personal money. The fund is locked up for 7-10 years. During this time, you basically can't leave, or if you do, you better be comfortable with someone else calling the shots for a significant portion of your assets. You draw a salary which (if you're not a GP) is fairly generous & adequate but is not going to make you wealthy. The way to get wealthy is off the carry of the fund, which, of course, requires that you got into one of the hot startups of your era.

I would much rather be building things. Even if I wanted to get rich managing money, I think that running a hedge fund, doing prop-trading for a big company, or managing the endowment for a pension or university is a much lower stress, higher-return option.

⬐ danieltillett

This sounds like hard work - I think I might just have to keep running my own business :)

Out of curiosity why can’t anyone know that you built something? Do you mean for your own company, or you can’t help your portfolio companies build things?

⬐ nostrademons

When you build stuff, it's usually to gain a competitive advantage over other firms, and so it's only useful as long as you keep it secret.

Maybe the closest writing to fit your view is Daniel Gilbert[1]. Basically, humans have a biological "set point" for happiness and it's different for everyone. It is not affected by winning the lottery, or getting paralyzed from a car accident, or doing meta-analysis on what happiness is (such as reading self-help books about achieving happiness.) Those events may affect happiness in the short term but not in the long term. People will eventually gravitate back to their predisposed set point of happiness.

If I agree with the above, I can set aside the quest for ultimate measurement of absolute happiness (e.g. Solon's "Count no man happy until he be dead."[2]) . However, I can still do things that affect relative happiness. When I stopped consulting for boring ERP software, my quality-of-life definitely improved. Again, I won't know if I'm ultimately "happy" until I'm lying on my deathbed. Nevertheless, it feels like I got a little victory from changes like that.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/...

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon

⬐ pkorzeniewski

I agree you can do things that affect your relative happiness, but the key here is that it's YOU who must know what the things are - everyone have different needs and you can't fit all in one model. Some prefer to have interesting, but lower paying job, some doesn't care as long as it pays for their hobbies - and both can be happy, but switch their lives and both will be miserable. So if one would give advice to the other on how to be happy, it wouldn't help a bit, because they've different perspective on life.

This might not be completely it.

Human physiology is weird.

Only in recent history have we married for love and in some cultures you don't marry for love. Previously marriage was more like a business arrangement between families. They were also more final because of things like coverture men generally owned all the property of his wife. The woman tended to lose their own identity and become an extension of their husband's identity. My grandma exclusively refereed to herself as "Mrs. HusandFirstName HusbandLastName." For example "Mrs. John Smith." She was never her own name after marriage. My mom said at the DMV they would specifically say on forms "women use own first name."

This sounds crazy but humans have the ability to manufacture happiness.

Since the partners in the relationships of yesteryear didn't have much of a choice in the matter they subconsciously were happier because they didn't have an easy way out nor did they make the choice. They couldn't decide otherwise so their brains manufactured happiness with the situation they were in. This isn't really "fake" happiness, it is real, there is nothing different about it. It is how the human brain works. There is nothing bad about this. It is kinda like a psychological immune system.

If divorce is easy and socially acceptable and you choose your partner from millions of potential partners your subconscious thinks "maybe someone else can make me happier" and you are less happy with your choice.

Our brains "make" happiness with the life we have if we can't choose an alternative.

Daniel Gilbert has a great book on this aspect of humans ability to alter their own happiness - "Stumbling on Happiness"

Here is his TED talk on the matter which has a lot of the same material as the book - http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

The following is from my memory and might not be 100%:

For example - he cites a study in which students in a photo class were asked to choose and submit one of the photos to get blown up and framed. One group of students were told that the photo they choose was final and they couldn't change it and the other group was told they had two weeks time to change their minds and submit another one. When the students received their final photos the group who couldn't change their photo were more happy with the photo they choose than the students who had the two week option of changing their photo.

Another one is asking people to rank several Monet paintings on how much they like them. Then they got one to take home. When the researchers came back and asked them to rank the paintings again they ranked the one they owned higher. They like the painting more because they owned it.

⬐ xyzzyz

Seems intuitively acceptable to me. For instance, when shopping for clothes, I usually buy the ones I hate the least. However, I actually like most of the clothes I own, even if I hadn't liked them that much before I bought them.

Almost by definition this is shaky science at best, but Daniel Gilbert seems to be one of the best.

His book on the topic is here -> http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/...

The impatient can look at his TED talk here -> .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

You can make yourself happier by deciding that you want to be happy. Our brain can manufacture happiness. Listen to this talk by Dan Gilbert: .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

What's a stooge? Someone who enjoys their life and the byproduct of that is that someone else gets rich? The point is-- that guy you made rich? You didn't make him happy. You didn't impact his happiness at all (long term). So someone who gets rich on the back of your (rewarding/enjoyable work) isn't getting ANYTHING but shiny objects your monkey brain tells you equal happiness. I pasted these into another comment, but here are some studies around wealth and happiness:

.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h... (tl;dw: After a brief burst of happiness, wealth has the approximately the same long-term impact on happiness as losing your legs in an accident (i.e. NONE))

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100431776 tl;dr the wealthy don't believe that money buys you happiness.

http://www.livescience.com/5462-happiness-wealth.html "Wealth, fame and good looks may be a formula for anxiety rather than happiness, a new study suggests."

There's TONS of data on this.

⬐ ahomescu1

The other guy doesn't just get shiny objects, they also get influence and power over other people, along with freedom to do (mostly) what they want.

One very relevant example: you can move to the US and get a green card as an investor, if you invest a six figure amount. This is also true for other Western countries. Money buys you freedom to not work, freedom to live wherever you want, and sometimes it can even buy you laws (or avoidance of existing laws).

⬐ webwright

Yep. All(most) rich people have lots of power and freedom. Does THAT make them happy? Because all of the data indicates that wealth (and all of its accompanying benefits) do NOT.

Note that $ does correlate with happiness on the low end of the scale. i.e. being very poor correlates with unhappiness. But beyond about $75k/yr, no correlation.

⬐ wildgift

Since wealth won't make the rich happier, but poverty seems to make the poor suffer in very concrete ways (like lacking medical insurance), it would make sense for the poor to be paid better, and the wealthy to have smaller paychecks.

⬐ nostrademons

It wouldn't actually help. The reason poverty makes the poor suffer is that they struggle to afford basic necessities of life. The price of those necessities is set by how much money the average person has available to spend on them. If you give everyone more money, then the price of food/rent/medicine will just rise accordingly.

Just look at what's happening with Bay Area rents. Larry and Sergey having a few billion doesn't materially impact them. Google expanding from 20,000 => 35,000 employees and paying all of them $150K+ does. Now there's someone else who makes just as much as you who's willing to pay a premium for that apartment.

The way to drive down the cost of basic necessities is through massive improvements in productivity that suddenly make the supply of a good large enough for everyone to have one. Think of Ford and the automobile, or GE and household appliances, or Apple/Dell/Microsoft/Intel and computers, or the green revolution and food.

⬐ tomp

That applies to food, hopefully medicine in a few decades, but not to rent. Until we adopt some sort of land/wealth tax, or make land/house management public and available to everyone, land is going to be scarse and sold at a premium.

⬐ wildgift

The poor by definition make less than average - and right now they make a lot less than average. A median income earner at around 50k per year makes over three times what a minimum wage worker earning around 15k per year makes.

These folks are going to qualify for Medicaid in 2014. They can't participate in the market-based healthcare system. They're just too poor. Give them more money, and they'll be able to participate in a market-based system.

That's at odds with your argument about high tech gentrification in the Bay Area. Those workers were going to start out at the median income, and only earn more over time. So the effect of their getting more money is going to raise prices.

My argument is that the janitors at Google (and other companies owned by the wealthy) should get paid more. My argument is that that housekeeper hired by Meg Whitman should have been paid more, and paid overtime etc.

.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

(tl;dw: After a brief burst of happiness, wealth has the approximately the same impact on happiness as losing your legs in an accident (i.e. NONE))

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100431776

tl;dr the wealthy don't believe that money buys you happiness.

http://www.livescience.com/5462-happiness-wealth.html

"Wealth, fame and good looks may be a formula for anxiety rather than happiness, a new study suggests."

There's TONS of data on this.

⬐ nthj

I think we're having a disagreement over our definitions of "wealthy", which makes for a pretty boring debate. After reflection I don't think you're advocating for "work for peanuts! money sucks anyway!" so much as "charging market rate, working sane hours, and being OK with the fact that you won't ever have $10M in the bank is a perfectly sane choice", which I'd absolutely agree with.

Depression is a hard feeling to cope with, in the moment it seems like it will never go away, but the truth is, that it always does. One of the things that helps me in the short-term whenever I get down as an entrepreneur is watching videos of successful entrepreneurs because you see that even they have their dark days. Elon Musk, for example, was at his wit's end, almost bankrupt from tesla and space x and could not get further investment and had to literally borrow money from friends to pay his rent. http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184-elon-musk-profiled-b... I also like watching ted videos on happiness .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h... (that one has a good point about how nearly everything is based on comparisons and nothing effects us beyond 3 months). In terms of daily inspiration, definitely check mixergy, that will always inspire you as well. http://mixergy.com/homepage/

I have to run out now, but I have a lot more to tell you. Exercise is key, whenever I am in a bad mood I realize that it has been too long since I've exercised. Your body will actually generate new neurons while you are exercising and your brain will release endorphins and other neurotransmitters that increase mood. I know it seems hard to get there if you haven't been in a while, but for a longterm goal and short term boosts of energy, definitely do it. You can try to start with a yoga class or something like that, because at the end of the day yoga is mostly meditation and focus on breath. Meditating is also extremely important in welfare for everyone, especially entrepreneurs and founders. The daily stress of running a startup can not only get you down, but also lead to feeling lost.

I don't know what drugs you are on, but I can recommend some supplements and nootropics that will definitely elevate mood. Try tyrosine.

⬐ flog

I went through a solid year and a half of depression after a cheating girlfriend and rough, isolating startup lifestyle. For me, watching videos of successful entrepreneurs would be horrible advice. In fact, HN, social media on the whole are very biased mediums and not at all representative of real life.

Exercise is great, go and do that. If it doesn't work, at least you'll put on some muscle when you do get out of it.

I am definitely against any sort of drugs, and I dont think labeling things is particularly helpful, but my suggestion is to get over it. Recognise you can take a beating and survive.

The best advice I can give: change. Change something. Change jobs, hobbies, places. Go looking for new things to excite you again. I'm about to take my own advice and go on a cycle tour - I'm starting with Holland, then may try the west coast of the US. (It took me a year and a half to get to the point where I even bothered setting goals like that, but it's something good to try and do)

⬐ matznerd

I think stories of entrepreneurs can seem biased, because those are all success stories on the whole, but if you dial down deep into all of those stories you can hear from the entrepreneurs of the years that they struggled and the years they thought they were at rock bottom. That is what I think he, and anyone else, should take away from the videos, the fact that those entrepreneurs struggled in obscurity before finding success.

I am pretty anti-pharamcetuicals, but I am very pro-supplement and nutrients. Simply not getting enough of certain amino acids can cause depression or other things. An example is dopamine, which is built from tyrosine in the body. is the neurotransmitter dopamine. The evidence is that it has to do with motivation and not pleasure. I recently wrote an article about that change here ( http://matznerd.com/dopamine-is-not-about-pleasure-anymore-a... ) but the main takeaway is that if you lack the nutrients in your body to make dopamine it can result in depression...

⬐ svdad

I have to say, I think asking someone as deeply depressed as the OP to find the perspective to hear the stories of struggle amid the trumpeting of success is asking an awful lot. That's tough for anyone to do, never mind someone who is struggling from a severe lack of perspective in the first place.

⬐ FuzzyDunlop

As a sufferer of clinical anxiety and depression, some of the things said here don't resonate at all. By the same token, some of them do.

> "in the moment it seems like it will never go away, but the truth is, that it always does."

The truth is, it always does for you. I'm not the same person pre- and post-diagnosis, and even when I'm not feeling down, I never feel quite as 'up' as I used to be. To that end, I don't feel like it's gone away. It's by no means as bad as some other people have it, but I feel like I'm stuck with it now.

Exercise, though, is definitely a good idea, and is a piece of advice I've been given from other depressed friends, my counsellor, and my GP. At the very least, doing a bit of it takes your mind off things, and has the benefit of keeping you in decent shape too.

Personally I don't think someone who is either depressed or feeling blue and is a member here should try and remedy those feelings by immersing themselves in even more startup doom and gloom, or success stories. Take your head out of the job, because it means fuck all compared to your own happiness and wellbeing.

And as has been said, consider change. A change of scenery could offer you some peace of mind.

⬐ druiid

Depression being only episodic? I think not I'm afraid. Many times it is, but there are people with the disease whom never 'recover' in the real sense of the word and require essentially lifetime intervention with therapy, drugs or other treatment. It's a difficult thing to live with and I think part of the problem of understanding is those of us on the outside simply can't understand what it is to be depressed 'all the time', and not necessarily for any particular reason.

⬐ matznerd

I am running out the door with my family, but I will try and post more later, sorry if there are any grammatical errors in there as well...

⬐ InclinedPlane

Not everyone's depression is the same. For some people depression is episodic and goes away. For others, a great many others, severe depression is a constant companion. Every minute of every day of every year of your life, and it's the episodes of not being depressed which are temporary and go away.

That said, exercise has been shown to be helpful for depression of every sort (generally at least as effective as drugs, on average).

⬐ matznerd

I did not mean to lump all depression into one boat, and while I personally do not know that kind of deep long-term depression, I do know the kind of that effects entrepreneurs. There are so many ups-and-downs that it can be hard to weather a deep trough if you are not prepared. I do not know your company or work situation, but I know it can be an extremely lonely and long road working on company. The only thing I know that benefits everyone is exercise. It is a good thing to focus on because even if everything else in your life is going in a direction you can't control, it is one thing you can control and constantly improve upon. And the benefits are long lasting felt in every area of life.

While I don't have much to say about your product questions (I'm an engineer an open-source platform team at Yahoo, other end of the spectrum), one that I can answer though is...

> "Why would someone want to go into that environment?"

Good question. Like all companies, you should choose the one that most fits your ideals and career objectives, so I can only answer your question from my perspective. For me, that is working for a large Web company, who values open-source and front-end engineering, and provides unique challenges and problems to solve at a massive scale. All other issues or perks are secondary to me as long as I get to spend my workday doing what I'm passionate about, and my company supports my interests. There are few, if any other companies I can work with that match what Yahoo can in that regard. In fact, in 2008 there were only two companies on my list when I was looking to make the move from the startup-world, I interviewed at both, one was warm and welcoming (Y!), the other not as much. Really happy with the way things worked out.

It's tough (impossible?) to get everything you want in a work environment. Remember, happiness is entirely relative [1]. You can find dozens of blog posts about people being unhappy at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, startups, etc. just as you can find people who are extremely happy. Everyone values different things, but I think the interest most people share is that their company values them. Oddly enough, last year I referenced a Marissa Mayer quote in a short blog post [2] about finding happiness in your career, and why I like Yahoo. Glad to see she also realized Yahoo is an awesome place to be.

You just have to prioritize which aspects are important to you, and ensure those are important to your employer as well. If someone is choosing their employer based off reasons other than how they spend 95% of their workday, they should reevaluate their situation. That's at least my philosophy.

Sorry that probably doesn't answer your product questions, but I felt your underlying question was "Why Yahoo?", so I tried to best answer that.

[1] Interesting study which you can find references to it all over the Web. "Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative?" http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1... Related TED talk, .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

[2] "The Best Career Advice You’ll Ever Get" http://derek.io/blog/2011/the-best-career-advice-youll-ever-...

⬐ parfe

Thank you for taking the time to write a response. I know my original post was a bit scattershot. You gave a very good reply for what I gave you to work with.

"what you imagine it will be like greatly exceeeds what it actually will be like." According to Dan Gilbert, this is fallacy behind most life decisions. In both directions: we overestimate the future pain of negative events, too. .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

Dan Gilbert's TED Talk does a great job demonstrating this (.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...).

Need to take it a few steps further.

Happiness isn't about passion. Or interest. Or possessing something. Or accomplishing stuff.

Happiness is by definition a subjective state of mind. It can be easily manipulated.

Consider for instance someone riding on a bus on a normal day who gets a phone call telling her that she has won a $70 million dollar lottery. This individual proceeds to become ecstatically happy, even though nothing has been gained or lost in that moment. 5 minutes later she finds out that this is just a crank call, now her level of happiness will be lower than it was before she got the fake news. Even though nothing has changed objectively.

In the real world people generally accept that a rockstar, with many things going for him socioeconomically, can be depressed to the point of committing suicide. But don't seem to take seriously the notion that there are people who are incredibly happy but don't really have a lot going for them in socio-economic terms.

On the balance, the meme that there is some sort of objective circumstance that can lead to satisfaction and happiness is required for civilization to progress.

The article itself is poorly written, but links to a very good Ted talk on the issue... .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

I think it has a lot to do with synthetic happiness as described in this TED talk by Dan Gilbert: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_w...

TL;DW: People who make an irreversible decision (buying an app) rationalize their choice ("it must be good, I paid money for it") and become more satisfied with the outcome over time, while people who make a reversible decision (trying out a free app) waffle back and forth ("maybe the other one is better after all") and become less satisfied.

Dan Gilbert on happiness - it changed my life.

.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

Daniel Gilbert asks, Why are we happy? in this TED talk. .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

He also did a great interview on the Colbert Report that never fails to crack me up.

I personally don't think happiness works that way.

.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

> I don't think any woman in the world would date a guy with a colostomy bag.

I think I'd want to be pretty damned certain before I gave up something I valued, let alone my life.

Have you ever changed your mind about something important before? Wondered how the hell you could believe what you did a year ago? I have, over and over. Everyone has - most people get the chance to realise they were foolish.

Out there somewhere, right now, there is someone who is already there, and who would be glad to be able to show you whatever it is they know and you don't. Go find that person. Speak to someone who knows from experience. You have all the time in the world for your project once you've found that person.

In the meantime, spare me 21 minutes and watch this: .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h... You, like most everyone else, are not qualified to judge your future happiness.

.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

Great TED talk in the same vein: .html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...

If you haven't seen it, Dan Gilbert's TED talk -- "Why are we happy?" -- presents some good experimental results on this topic. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_w...

The Wikipedia article (and even the choice of the word "treadmill") suggests that people maintain a roughly constant state of happiness despite improvements in their life. But it also works the other way -- people return to a baseline of happiness even with huge disasters in their life.

You may be referring to this TED talk by Dan Gilbert - http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_w...

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_w...

"Here's two different futures that I invite you to contemplate, and you can try to simulate them and tell me which one you think you might prefer. One of them is winning the lottery. This is about 314 million dollars. And the other is becoming paraplegic. So, just give it a moment of thought. You probably don't feel like you need a moment of thought.

Interestingly, there are data on these two groups of people, data on how happy they are. And this is exactly what you expected, isn't it? But these aren't the data. I made these up!

These are the data. You failed the pop quiz, and you're hardly five minutes into the lecture Because the fact is that a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives."

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=123...

Act two (This is a very fascinating story)

"This American Life producer Alex Blumberg talks with Ed Ugel, who had a very unusual dream job: he bought jackpots from lottery winners. When you win the lottery, your prize is often paid out in yearly installments. And Ed would offer winners a lump sum in exchange for their yearly checks. He's talked with thousands of lottery winners, and the vast majority, he says, wish they'd never won. Ed is writing a book about his years in the "lump sum industry" called Money for Nothing: One Man's Journey through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions. It comes out in September 2007."