Laeserin on Nostr: ...

quoting naddr1qv…9g89

What is 3 minutes worth?

I think I’ve run into the problem that the sort of work I do on here is only efficient and effective, if I spend all day doing it and really concentrate on it. It’s not like being a developer or an influencer, where you can allot 2 hours in the morning to it, and then spend all day doing something else and talking about touching grass.

I either have to do it all day or completely stop because 99% of the work is absorbing and digesting information and interacting in real time; pausing is like pulling a mental break and slamming to a stop. It’s more of a performance art than a durable good. I have to practice all damn day, every day, for a week, producing only ephemeral products, just to get up and sing for 3 minutes.

Shut up and sing

But with singing, the value is obvious, since most people have tried to sing and know that they aren’t very good at it. Most people haven’t tried to manage, design, or test systems on an open software protocol, but they all figure they can spontaneously do it, at some point, with little knowledge and no preparation, and be really great at it. That means that hardly anyone sees any value in it, especially as I make it look so easy, that watching me do it merely enhances the idea that the effort can be performed on a whim. The difference in enthusiasm between my dev work and my other work is palpable, but contains no signal.

That is the opposite of development or system administration, that is mostly done off in a hidey-hole, and no one can tell how much effort you personally expended, but they know you did something they can’t fully understand, so they get all excited about it.

The indifferent bleating at the uninterested

But we can see that this differentiation is unfounded. Auxiliary software development is highly-skilled labor, it’s tedious and exhausting, and it brings no status or prestige, which is why hardly anyone does it or their efforts are of low-quality and relatively pointless. Most developers and funders are regularly encouraging people to “step up” and do it spontaneously and on a purely volunteer basis because they feel obliged to pretend to care about software quality, but actually think it has little value.

Well, the people they are speaking to, agree with them. So, they ignore them.