Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I suspect there are different definitions of "toil" being used here.

Google defined "toil" as, very roughly, all the non-coding work that goes into building, deploying, managing a system: https://sre.google/workbook/eliminating-toil/ , https://sre.google/sre-book/eliminating-toil/ .

Quote: "Toil is the kind of work tied to running a production service that tends to be manual, repetitive, automatable, tactical, devoid of enduring value, and that scales linearly as a service grows."

Variations of this definition are widely used.

If we map that onto your writing example, "toil" would be related to tasks like getting the work published, not the writing process itself.

With this definition of toil, you can certainly remove the toil without removing the creative work.



Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: