>people at white collar jobs are generally happier than people at blue collar jobs (let me add that I hate this way of classifying jobs, but it comes pretty handy for my current discussion). This seems like a clear result of what I just mentioned. Blue collar workers definitely work for money. They most probably aren’t aligned with their employers or companies’ goals, and they see their jobs as monotone means for making a living, without a mission in mind.
I dunno, I was pretty satisfied at my last 'blue collar' job with everything but the money and the hours. I got to make things every day rich people paid tens of thousands of dollars for, I got to operate and maintain large expensive machines, we all had pretty much complete autonomy, we just followed the schedule, each did our part and made some really nice things. The people I worked with were all great, there was no 'office politics' bullshit, no manager fuckery, we all just showed up every day and got things done. Our goals aligned with the owners, make the customers happy so the business kept getting work and we all kept getting paid.
Everyone that worked there really cared about the business and worked hard to make it successful. Leaving that place was honestly one of the harder things i've done in my life. It was a sad day when I left.
I spend a lot of time with 'blue collar' tradespeople, and from everything I can see, they enjoy their jobs more than most 'white collar' people. There's far less decision fatigue, stress about long term decisions made with too little information, and feeling responsibility for things outside of your control. The emphasis is more on bite-sized, straightforward chunks of work that you can finish in a day or two and feel good about it.
I'm sure there are non-technical office jobs that lack the 'white collar' pitfalls I've listed above, but they all seem to involve dealing with far too many people.
Matthew Crawford has some good thoughts on this subject. He posits that the agency afforded an individual by working with their hands is something that, by and large, has been lost. He also touches on the liberation of working on things where the result is easily measurable and not open for debate. For reference, he quit his white collar career to open a motorcycle repair shop and he offers the following as an archetypal example.
When you're repairing a motorcycle the end result speaks for itself, it either runs properly or it doesn't. This is often in stark contrast to the white collar world where, not only, long term decisions are made with too little information but most things are outside our outside your control.
I don't think many white collar jobs have as much of that stress as you'd think. There are definitely some high stress jobs because of their effects on other people (doctors, lawyers, etc), but there are also some incredibly low stress white collar jobs that nearly put people into catatonic boredom. Getting a job that can be automated, but your boss doesn't realize it can be automated, is a good example. Automating some of these jobs can require as little effort as learning Python for 2-3 months and hacking together some scripts. Blue collar workers likely have a higher attention floor - due to safety reasons around large machines usually. Some white collar jobs can be slept through.
The problem is then you still have to go there and pretend to work - sitting in front of a screen for 8 hours while doing nothing probably sucks the life right out of you.
I mean my job is a little bit like that. I have automated a lot of annoying stuff with VBA (but have yet to start with python, it's on my todo list). However, it's impossible to automate everything - so in the end a worker is necessary (but not the hours that were planned). I would assume it's the same for many white collar jobs. [since I'm paid by the hour the automatization is not really worth it monetarily by itself, but that's another discussion]
Another aspect regarding agency and happiness: I've noticed that I have some (kind of stupid/gameified) sense of accomplishment when I sort my mails, write down the current status of a project or something similarly "boring" but important stuff for ease of mind (similar to doing a todo-list to become organized). Just knowing (and accomplishing) that everything is in order is quite satisfying.
I'd find that incredibly stressful. I need to have some sense of accomplishment and meaning in my work. In fact I'd guess most people in that sort of situation wouldn't be allowed to download Python and automate away their jobs, these roles rarely have any autonomy.
(Too late to edit, but:) Another thought is that while job security in any given job is often lower (a lot of blue collar work is casual or short fixed term contracts), job security in the sense of knowing you'll have a job six months from now is arguably higher. Blue collar work is far more fungible than knowledge work, but that increases job mobility more than it increases replaceability because replacing a good employee is always a pain. The net result is more freedom to move jobs if you find yourself in an unpleasant environment.
This is a good point. For me, the inertia around getting a job in the tech sector is a big impediment to happiness. I am not currently happy in my job but it takes so long to find a good company, filter out the chop shops, find a good cultural fit and then the actual interview process which will take a month just for one company. Multiply that by however many companies it takes to find a fit. All for a risky proposition that you may enjoy working at the new company more. I'm sure it's different in Silicon Valley but I don't and never want to live there.
My brother has a job in the U.S. Virgin Islands doing construction work on resorts. He has a house and cook paid for by his employer and goes fishing on a friends boat or has beach side barbecues in the evenings. He works 9-10 hour days but never brings work home and makes almost as much as I do when you factor in that he doesn't pay for housing or most of his food.
Yeah, as a white-collar I sometimes wish I had a job like that, doing welding or similar. Not that I don't like my job, but doing straightforward physical work like you describe sounds nice.
I think physical is the key point here. Physical activity creates endorphins which make us happier. The current state of office jobs is resulting in chronically sedentary people who don't benefit from this.
Well, it being physical is certainly part of it, but it's not all. There's also the point that most of the time, it's predictable.
For example, you come in and you have to weld up a particular structure. I think one would be able to foresee how the whole thing is going to go down, including details, and how long it's going to take.
Compare that to coming in and having to figure out some bugs on a software system. It's investigative work. You might figure them all out in an hour or you might get stuck in the first one for the whole day. You might end up staring into space wondering for who knows how long what kind of detail you're missing that would explain the behavior you're seeing. You have no idea how your day is going to pan out, and that is kind of fatiguing and/or stressful. There is no certainty in how much progress you'll make.
>I'm sure there are non-technical office jobs that lack the 'white collar' pitfalls I've listed above,
Sure, but then we have our own issues.
Highly repetitive work, sharing desks, open offices where team leads are in the back of every row to watch our every move, paperwork for this, paperwork for that, gotta print this out and hand write this then have another person scan it in at some point so you can do this, this is on one doc in the case but it is marked wrong so you get to virtual print it back into the case as the appropriate doc and it's not the fault of whoever scanned it originally it's your fault for not noticing they did it wrong but they're gonna get penalized as much as you. When I mess something up it's quite literally like Office Space - I hear from my senior coordinator, I hear from my team lead, I'll get a file referral issued by someone I've never met in another state that my team lead then tells me about again and I have to review it and agree to it with whatever my team lead tells me to because God forbid I get to dispute it and explain my logic, then I get to hear about it again during my monthly meeting with my manager and then for our annual merit review I'll hear about it as a statistic "sorry, you only get a 2 out of 4 here because you had that mistake 9 months ago even though you look at hundreds to thousands of pages of paperwork a day while trying to make quota. You now get even less of a sub-inflation merit based increase for the next fiscal year!"
Don't have a degree like me? Congrats, All but two of the managers and all but one or two of the team leads have been here as little as half as long as you making considerably more than you. Oh, your friend that moved to 3rd shift, they now make at least 15% more than you because of shift differential for doing the same job and oh, they've been here half as long as you and... are a team lead.
Oh, and, we're going to stop funding the pension with a % of your income and instead we're going to add 2 more % of match range to the 401k even though you can't afford to even get the full match now!
Oh, and remember how you used to get all of your vacation June 1st each year (start of the fiscal year), well we know that's how we did it the first 12 years you were here but now for the 13th and beyond you have to earn your time weekly and oh, it still doesn't' roll over. Use it or lose it sucka.
Oh, yes, we haven't given a cost of living increase in a decade but it's ok our CEO took $15.96 million in total compensation in FY 2019, down from $16.67 million in FY 2018 so we're trying to save money! Don't feel so bad about only make 0.2% of what he did, everyone's struggling!
It's cool though, I only have to work here until I die since retirement isn't realistic. If sharing desks doesn't give me a potentially fatal bacteria or virus since we're highly discouraged from calling in sick and we work in an office where people urinate on the floor, defecate on the toilet seats, leave blood on toilet seats/floors and pick & stick boogers on every surface in the bathroom then between the strong smell of mold in the building every time it rains and the jet exhaust coming in the doors on windy days I'll die long before my dotage.
Visiting the OpenAI office 2 years ago ruined my life. Clean offices, everyone was calm and quietly working, no overlords passive aggressively staring at you if you were talking, catered meals twice a day, no smell of mold, no one coughing and sneezing without covering their mouths, was offered water (from a bottle! It wasn't even milky white, I'm not kidding you our tap water is milky white the first several seconds) by the nicest security guard ever. I thought I'd died and gone to job nirvana. I was just visiting someone though for a quick meeting unrelated to OpenAI, alas I had to return to my bottom rung office job where I'm a replaceable serial number and not a human being.
At least I'm not digging graves anymore though, sun poisoning sucked.
I clear international freight through customs, if you've got a pulse and can type have I got a job for you haha. It wasn't so bad when I started, it was terrifying due to the volume of information you have to learn (back then it was 3 weeks in a classroom before you touched a shipment, now it's 2 and then everything you touch is quarantined and reviewed before it gets submitted) but over the years it's gotten more and more blah.
When I started we didn't share desks and up until maybe 4 years ago only like half the office shared desks. Now basically everyone does unless someone quits even though we have like 25-30 new desks they bought planning to add more jobs to our office but then opened 2 satellite offices in other states instead... but those desks aren't in the core area so no managers can peak out of their offices and see them.
We have a lot of issues with our building (water/mold, leaking pipes, blah water, HVAC goes out all the time) but that's not my employer's fault, we lease the building (I believe from IND airport authority) and you know how that goes... landlords generally suck.
As far as dirty people, pick and stickers, people peeing on the floor, people crapping on the toilet seats... well, a lot t of that happens on 2nd and 3rd shifts. You attract a weird group of people that want to work from like 9pm-5:30am.
In the past we had someone that would smear their feces on the wall, you could see their fingerprints in it. We also had someone that kept flushing paper towels down the urinals. It got to the point where it was a very real threat that bathrooms would require management to go with you because we were having so many issues in the men's rooms and the managers were the ones that had to clean it up. A couple of people quit that summer though and it magically stopped (poop on walls, paper towels). That was just one or more disturbed individuals probably.
It's all just a lot of little stuff that adds up and makes you miserable. Sharing desks is super annoying as you come in and your keyboard has crumbs or hair on it, your monitors are moved, every possible setting on your chair is changed and all of your stuff has to fit in one drawer and you have to buy wipes to wipe everything down because you don't know if the person was sick. Then the HVAC being inconsistent means you never know if you should dress warm or dress light because it might be 66F and it might be 74F in the winter and in the summer You're lucky if it's 74F and it might get to 82F for a few weeks in the office (again, not my employer's fault, totally the building owner's fault because they'd rather send someone out for 5 hours to tinker than actually replace the HVAC equipment). Then you've got 2 microwaves and 100ish peopel there during the day. Then you've got 1 soda vending machine and 1 snack machine and the vendor comes once a week but will sometimes vanish for 3-5 weeks without notice and the machine is mostly empty within 3 days and you don't have time to go anywhere with your 30-minute lunch if you need a caffeine fix because we're on airport property and the closest thing is McDonald's which will take about 20 minutes roundtrip if it isn't busy and the two refrigerators aren't big enough for even half of an entire shift to store stuff in.
It just adds up. Then all the constantly changing government stuff... it just adds up.
Originally, I never intended to go to college after high school. I got my GED, and went from working part time at a furniture shop to full time. We made classic inspired case pieces, tables, chairs etc. We used machines but all finished surfaces were hand detailed using a hand plane, chisel, rasp or scraper.
I have never enjoyed a job more.
Even after entering the tech field, I have held part time jobs (not sure if they qualify as blue collar but certainly not office jobs). One as a barista and one as a personal trainer. Again, I have enjoyed those jobs more than anything else I have done.
Feedback is immediate: a smile on someone's face, a beautiful curve in a hand carved detail, high-fives after group fitness class. Or, negatively: "this tastes weird/I didn't order this", a chip or crack or blemish in the finish, grimacing in pain.
Most of what I do, no one ever appreciates or even looks at. It will never be seen, even my superiors only care about the end result. I could write it in brainfuck and PHP4 and they would never even know. If the kitchen is dirty, it's noticeable to everyone. If the project is dirty, from technical debt, only I see that.
If I say "We need a new espresso machine because this one is broken and that's the second time this month" Everyone understands and if I say that I actually fixed it myself to get it to limp along for another month then that's going above and beyond.
If I say "We need a new backend because ours was written by someone who hasn't worked here in 5 years and it takes us 4 hours to deploy" then everyone wonders what's wrong with me and why can't I just make it work. And If I say I added some shims and interfaces to allow us to gradually change it instead of replacing it wholesale, that's wasting time.
I really, really, really wish I'd got a degree in my late teens/early 20's. I unloaded 100 bitcoin for some WoW gold one time but if I had a time machine for one use I'd go back and tell me at 18 to get a degree and not even mention the crypto, I'd have had a better life.
Highschool -> GED > switched from part time to full time retail [1] -> grave digger/grounds keeper [2] -> full time retail [3] -> contractor for CBP [4] -> current job [5].
[1] Best Buy was ok. We were the product processing team so we had to throw the trucks, stock everything, reset the planograms, load heavy stuff, get stuff down stored up top etc. There were 4 of us, there were supposed to be 9 of us so we had to bust ass and it got pretty tiring.
[2] Minimum wage was 6$ and change, I was making 10! Outside 50-60 hours a day with no shade, got sun poisoning, had to bury a high school kid, had to bury an infant, would regularly sit in freshly dug graves just to cool down and get out of the sun for a few minutes and climb out before my boss would notice, if I had a fresh grave I'd usually eat my lunch in it too for the same reasons. Showed up at work one day working my way towards sun poisoning again and parked my truck. Sat there for a minute, put it in reverse and left and called the office guy and said sorry man I'm not coming back.
[3] I honestly loved everything at Lowes but the pay and the random hours. There was a guy that had a full time job, he only wanted to close. I didn't mind opening and would have been fine with opening and throwing the truck for the departments (hardware, always had to help tools because old guys). So what did they do? "Hey Larry we need you to open, Ryan you're closing"... blinks
[4] Got paid a fraction of what the federal employees did, took over the desk of a woman who had retired and apparently had stopped doing anything more than a year before and left a mess, was given zero training on SAP or what I was supposed to be doing and was given a single sheet of paper with some photo copy of a photo copy of a photo copy of a photo copy of some screenshots showing me vaguely what to do, the CPA was never in the office if it was nice out as he'd clock in and go play golf, the manager would come in and turn her light on, close the blinds on her window and either leave or just not answer her phone/door, guy across from my cubicle would come over to talk and sit in my extra chair and fall asleep every single day but he did manage to help me sorta figure out what I was supposed to be doing, DHS and other federal and state agencies were in the news for mismanaging funds and doing stuff like buying 2k$ bullet proof vests for dogs in Podunk, Middleamerica population 19 so put in a 30 day notice figuring I'd find a job quick.
[5] 13 weeks after my last week at CBP got hired by FTN, been here for 13 3/4 years. Same position I hired in to, although now on my 3rd job title as they change it every few years company-wide. Don't have a degree, only a GED, FedEx wants 4-year degrees minimum for everything. Been here twice as long as all 3 of my team leads, yes I have three team leads. The 3 people on my team immediately higher than me have been here 1/5-1/3 as long as me. 3rd shift makes 15% more than us so new hires start almost at what I make. If you want to move up you need a degree and if you want to be a manager (4 steps above me) you have to be willing to move to another state for (likely) years like my current manager (my 4th manager to date) had to. We share desks with another shift, I had one former desk mate management had to throw the entire contents of their drawer away and some of my stuff because they wore the same shirt every single day at work and kept it in their drawer between shifts, for years, and it smelled horrible because they'd go out and walk in the heat and humidity on their lunch and sweat it up. I had another desk mate that would pick and stick boogers on the monitor frame, the tower, underneath the desk, the stapler (we also have the walls covered by the urinals, and in the stalls, in both men's bathrooms from pick and stickers). Every year at best I can manage about 3% merit increase, I don't think I've ever actually got 3%. They just nuked our pensions to up 401k match, I already can't afford to contribute enough to get the match they had before let alone the new match. Insurance usually goes up more than my merit increase, 2019 I made 2k$ and change less than 2018 thanks to zero over time available. They said they were going to bring a bunch more jobs here so more room for advancement, instead they opened 2 satellite offices in other states. There are now people in those office that have been here 6-12 months that are now higher than me because they had to quick promote them. Realistically I will have to work here until I die as this job doesn't translate to anything else and I'm about to turn 35 without a degree. If I tried to get a degree I'd be 42ish probably and probably fail a few classes before I got used to school after being absent from it for half of my life. I'd then be 42ish going for entry level work with 40-60k$ in debt. I'd probably pay it off by 55ish, meaning I'd have 5-15 years to try and make up on 30-40 years of missed retirement contributions. If I don't die before then, cancer killed my father in his 40's and his mother in her 50's, my mother had cancer in her late 50's. Hate my job, completely dead end yet know I'm stuck here dealing with more and more absurdity until I die. Fun times.
I feel your pain, but beware, university degrees are not the solution to life problems. I´ve got one, supposedly a hot one, in C.S. and my life has been stuck in absurdity forever and I´ve been stuck in insanely shitty jobs (programming-related ones) for the last 7 years. The situations that lined up one after another to fk my life were extremely improbable but happened. Sometimes life sucks. But don´t give up, try to find solace in your fighting.
Thanks For sharing Ryan. There's a reason I did eventually go to college, get the degree and enter tech. Doesn't change the fact that I've never loved any job, company or role as much as I loved making furniture and helping people get fit.
Sounds like I'm just a bit older than you. minimum wage was 5.25 when I first started part time at the furniture shop. I was making $12 an hour by the time I quit (this was 18 years ago). I do know blue collared workers who are quite happy and make decent money. My brother I mentioned in another comment being one of them, another brother who drives for Sysco is unioned and has a good career path (admittedly based on seniority) and makes good money.
Edit: I actually DON'T have a degree. I went to college, got a lot of credits but missed a requirement in a non-degree related class (I forget but it was something like not taking enough history or something). I already had a job offer lined up so it didn't matter and after that first job, no one has ever cared.
I'm not a software developer and I haven't touched code, aside from pasting some ad script into my website, since trying to copy paste sections of C++ on MUDs in the 1990's.
That's not entirely true, I have been trying to learn Atari BASIC (vintage computer fan, 8-bit Ataris are my interest) but it's slow going. It's more like feeling stupid and growling at my PVM. I do not think like a machine. I'd have better luck writing a sonnet from a can of alphabet spaghetti than I would writing a meaningful bit of code.
People tend to forget HN is more than programmers.
He used to work in finance, quit his job in his late 20s, and went to work moving stuff around a warehouse in the outback during the mining boom.
He did this for two years. He said he absolutely loved it. There was no stress. He just lifted things, got big and strong, and went home everyday tired in body but relaxed and happy in mind.
It's the stress and psychological torment that does you in. This is why I feel genuinely sad when I see guys grinding away at their high paid, stressful, draining, and often psychopathic corporate jobs, who blow all of the salary.
That's just messed up. My savings target is always 50% or more. If you're never going to be free of it, what's the point? Should we all not be trying to buy our freedoms? Rather than handing chains to landlords and bosses and bankers?
Like an old boss of mine, who was getting paid more than all of us, and yet when he switched job, he left us on Friday and started there on Monday. By his own words, he spent 99 dollars of every hundred he made, so couldn't afford to do otherwise.
Personal margin is everything. If your job takes all your energy, and you spend all its money, you're trapped. You have no bargaining power (you can't walk away), and you'll never move to positions with less stress, less politics, less hours, better and more interesting work, or more pay. This is such a critical concept that it's crazy people aren't being taught it at school.
This is a pipe-dream for most workers. Salaries just aren't high enough in many industries or places in the world to be able to put away 50% of your earnings and still live comfortably (or even not comfortably).
Place in the world doesn't affect margin (%) -- if you work in London you'll make more than in Lahore, but your landlord is making the same "more" in turn.
The goal isn't to live comfortably, it's to live minimally, to open up margin so you can spend time upskilling and trying to get higher paying jobs.
I get that 50% is hard. I don't enjoy it myself, but I've been broke before and I've had really crap jobs before and so now it's fear that makes me save that rate. Rather than having my apartment be twice the size, I'll take a smaller one and funnel the surplus into my skills and my business pursuits, which in turn raises income and thus margin further, in a virtuous cycle.
I just don't buy all the people saying a few percent is the absolute best they can do. Usually they're buying things, which I get -- the pleasure of those things are like the "reward" of the painful work hours. I think if they tried harder they could hit at least 25%. After a year that gives you a 4month runway -- a world of difference if you lose your job vs a 1 week runway.
At a minimum, everyone should work out what their genuine subsistence level is, so they know what they're spending on comfort.
While I'm a big believer in this kind of saving, inflation is a reality and a huge deterrent for long term savings that doesn't involve some kind of interest, compound or not.
But then there was that 2008 economic crisis... sigh still, better to have savings than not and there are some decent (5% ish) savings accounts that generate interest with minimal risk.
>and went home everyday tired in body but relaxed and happy in mind.
One thing I miss about being a grave digger, and working retail, is that you just had a lot of time to think. It takes minimal mental effort to straighten things on shelves/shelve things/cut grass/weed eat/dig a hole.
With retail, especially at Lowes, you'd occasionally get some conversation with customers and again with Lowes they'd often have some problem they were trying to fix/solve and you got to think about the best way to help them. At the cemetery I just listened to talk radio when I was tired of my thoughts, or I'd have one-sided conversations with random 'customers'. I'd come home and be tired but actually feel like reading or talking to a friend, now I analyze paperwork all day trying to meet quota while interpreting laws and trying not to make any mistakes and go home and just want to turn on some video and go mildly catatonic until bed.
>My savings target is always 50% or more.
I can't even afford 7% to get the full employer match for 401k and now that they've nuked our pension to instead contribute more towards 401k I won't even have that as a half inflated cushion augmenting me. Unless software replaces teachers, then she's up the creek too.
The blue-collar jobs I had in my early 20s were the only jobs I've ever been remotely happy in. They were all relaxed & itinerant kind of things (forestry, farming, driving, fairgrounds). I suppose (but am not sure) I would have grown tired of that kind of life eventually.
But I have truly loathed every microsecond of every white collar job I later took on, for a variety of reasons. I'm relatively immune to envy on the whole, but I do admit to it for people who have found satisfaction in work (not that I have known many).
I'd rather do handyman-type work. Or just about anything in a state or national park. I'd probably be better at it, too (in that I'd give a half a fuck). But a middling software developer building things 80% of which never make a return or are thrown away before anyone sees them, still makes a ton more money than someone fixing doors or putting in tile floors, or running campgrounds and replacing trail markers. So. Here I am and here I've (very nearly) always been.
The non-tech job I had for one Summer is probably my favorite job I've ever had, pay aside. Paid minimum wage or just over.
Ha, yes, concurs with one of the aspects of my work dissatisfactions also. The sheer dreary meaninglessness (or worse) of nearly everything I've been paid to do. It's pretty wearing over time.
> I suppose (but am not sure) I would have grown tired of that kind of life eventually.
Rather than mental or emotional fatigue, more of a problem can be injury, or accelerated decline in fitness to do the physical work after labouring for years; while still needing the job for money.
My guess is that this would vary much between types of occupations. I can see that occupations involving highly repetitive actions (assembly line work etc) might cause problems. Many more varied, often outdoor, manual jobs strike me as putting a human fairly close to the kinds of activities for which our body evolved.
Anecdotally, every single fit, strong & able old person I've known has been a manual worker. Case in point: 90 year lifelong builder currently doing roofing work. 87 year old (my sailing instructor!) currently running (on the ground) his tree surgery business. Most lifelong office workers I know are barrel shaped and essentially disabled by their 50s.
The stats might be interesting, though I suspect they'd be pretty complex, different by region & nation, and highly confounded (by class, lifestyle, etc).
> White collar workers, or at least the ones I’ve met which curiously all had clear missions, on the other hand, see their jobs as a challenge and a mean to reach their personal goals.
The miserable white collar workers don't feel like talking about work to some guy on a 'mission'.
No "office politics" is the result of having no possibility of career advancement, which is probably not a good thing. When nobody has any path to promotion then nobody will bother playing games to get promoted.
I think it's just that blue-collar work is naturally more visible. Quality of work (not to mention quantity) can be appreciated with just a few glances of the work. So, it's not that there's no possibility of career advancement. It's just that "office politics" is not as needed.
Career advancement from welder to senior welder, yes. To go from laborer to site manager, that's not the only thing that needs evaluating. If nobody is looking at your people skills, then you probably don't have that second promotion available.
I can see people not wanting that second promotion. It sounds like it would be at least partly a different job, requiring orthogonal skills like you mentioned. I would imagine one can stay a welder and improve to a point where they would earn even more than site managers.
Like, there's welders that can weld garden gates, then there's welders that can work on underwater pipes, then I imagine organizations like NASA need even further skilled welders. I don't think there's ever a need to transition to managing subordinates.
A career can move horizontally or vertically. What most people forget is that "moving up the ladder" isn't a promotion: it's a fundamental career change that requires vastly different skills.
Being a fine engineer or technician doesn't make you fit for a leadership position where people skills make all the difference. And once you're in such a role, your operational experience will go stale after a while since you can't spend vast amounts of time deep diving in concrete technical problems. Your job is to manage the overall picture and delegate.
Here's a nice blogpost from Charity Majors (Honeycomb) about this exact conundrum:
The crux to this is that it's actually fine to not climb the ladder. Like you said, you can perfectly hone your skills over years, establish a name for yourself and become a specialist who gets paid more then their boss
Doing that still requires a due acumen to manage your own career as if it were a personal business. Which means scouting for opportunities that help you earn more while allowing you to work on new challenging projects that help you expand your technical experience. Hence why hopping jobs isn't necessarily a bad thing for your career.
Of course, that's not what employers want or need. That's why they play the loyalty or career card. And why this myth "climbing the ladder is a good thing" persists.
Let's not forget, most people stick to their jobs not because they are particularly fond of their jobs, but because of household debt (children, car, house, student loans,...) or because there simply aren't attractive alternatives close by and moving / migrating is too expensive (emotionally, culturally, socially,...).
Finally, office politics and workplace culture are an aggregate and a compound sum, not just of organizational policies, but also of what employees bring to the table, where they are individually in their lives, what they need now and in the future, and which cost opportunity trade offs they are willing / choosing to make.
>there's welders that can weld garden gates, then there's welders that can work on underwater pipes
Like any other blue collar skill welders are primarily compensated for the skill/experience required to do their job and the amount of inconvenience, discomfort and/or danger that comes from the setting in which their job takes place
Welding fancy alloys for pressure vessels takes more skill and is therefore compensated better. Welding together railings is much easier with much looser quality control so it's not compensated as well because more people can do it.
Doing either of those things in a heated and air conditioned shop is going to pay a complete pittance compared to doing them in the mud in the middle of nowhere, underwater, in a confined space or an otherwise physically demanding and/or dangerous environment.
If you want substantial career advancement in any blue collar field (without dramatically changing what you do or where/how you do it) then the path you take is doing it under your own name and eventually hiring employees.
You can progress much further up the income ladder in white collar fields my moving into management. The career paths are not analogous.
I disagree entirely. Office politics were rampant in companies I’ve seen that had little to no advancement. Because the only way to go up was effectively at the expense of someone else leaving, or someone else not get promoted too.
Environments where your success doesn’t mean someone else loses are extremely positive.
There always seems to be some romanticism of blue collar work from white collar, and vice versa. There is a thread of truth to the things each side says, but there is also a reality that is ignored.
I'm from a blue collar family in a blue collar area and have known people from various blue collar professions. Risk and physical atrophy is very real for blue collar workers. In most trades you will work with equipment that can kill, injure and maim you. Even if you avoid the equipment (and your co-workers using the equipment in your vicinity), the physical toll of daily blue collar work is going to impact your body. Most blue collar workers I know have significant physical ailments which start in their 40's or 50's. Bad knees making it difficult to walk. Bad back making your life difficult in all kinds of ways. If you're lucky, you only end up with arthritic hands, making them useless and painful in old age.
White collar work is filled with its own issues like sedentary lifestyle, sitting all day, eye strain, etc. But there is almost a zero percent chance if you getting killed or maimed by your equipment.
You could definitely take pride in operating and maintaining large expensive machines, but you also face the reality of those machines removing your fingers, limbs, or taking your life. In blue collar work there is big heavy equipment, fumes/gas, extreme heat/cold, etc.
I spent my teens and early 20's doing blue collar work (had no plans to go to college), until watching the people around me struggle physically in their 30's made me re-think that decision. Even in the limited time I spent in the trades, I still have lasting scars and injuries from things that happened to me. My scars from white collar work have only been emotional ones. I'm not belittling that, just pointing out that the grass isn't greener.
The first thing we talk about is the clothing we wear to work, that is poignant
A lot of tech workers would classify themselves as neither white nor blue-collar because they wear t-shirts thus eschewing the whole conversation whereas technically they'd probably fall into the whitecollar category during any other phase of human history
That in itself is the greatest cause of grief in this field the sore lack of common professional manners ethics and customs that causes a total breakdown of communication and culture
I'm struggling to see how wearing a specific style of clothing as connected to the following ideas
A. common professional manners ethics and customs
B. total breakdown of communication and culture*
(exception that clothing correlates to the aesthetic aspect of culture)
A shirt doesn't cause you to be on time, sincerely follow up on commitments, and solve business problems. (Part A)
Do people struggle to communicate with people in different clothing? I don't quite get this. (Part B)
What I do see is the insistence on wearing specific clothes to work being an unwelcome intrusion on people's lives.
I'm very interested in your point of view on how the traditional clothing culture makes a difference in the workplace. This is one of those things that has always felt alien to me and I just go along with it to please management.
Chapium I'm glad you asked and I believe the explanation would fill a volume the size of the art of computer programming
I want to encourage you to consider the sociological and epistemiological implications taking into account every relevant consideration of which there are a plethora and perhaps you may arrive at the conclusions I have that manners matter and manner of dress falls well within this broad scope
Beyond that I'll encourage you to draw your own logical and intuitive reasoning to consider whether the unkempt genius is any more or less a genius than the kempt one and which one you'd rather work with all things being equal
I can't possibly explain it better than to say that some men wear neckties out of genuine respect for their peers and I am one such man
As a computer scientist I treat the necktie as a semaphore which it literally and figuratively is and as such let me propose the following game theory question based on the prisoners dilemma
What are the odds your adversary will cooperate if he is wearing a necktie
a) willingly
b) unwillingly
How about if you are both wearing neckties? (willingly and/or unwillingly)
I know it's abstract but so are human relationships and we all know than software is based on cooperation dynamics of this nature at its core
More than anything I'm sick of not knowing who around me just rolled out of bed ten minutes before showing up to standup
Your attitude, honestly, is contemptible and disgusting to me. I will show you the respect of explaining why:
First, the very notion that you spend so much time worrying about what others wear, is quite disturbing, and says much more about your own mentality that that of those whom you're so eager to criticize.
If someone is walking around in a thong or a ripped up pair of shorts, OK, I get it, but a simple T-shirt and blue jeans bothers you? Quite frankly, I don't want to be within 100 miles of you, or anyone like you.
> 'As a computer scientist I treat the necktie as a semaphore which it literally and figuratively is'
Yes indeed. The neck tie is literally a symbol of your mental slavery. It's meant to be symbolic of a leash around your neck, the other end of which is held firmly in Lucifer's grasp. Bet you never considered that.
> 'I want to encourage you to consider the sociological and epistemiological implications taking into account every relevant consideration'
....such as the fact that suits are uncomfortable and ridiculous, and that neck ties (besides being a symbol of slavery) cut off circulation to the brain and are thus uncomfortable? And that your own personal discomfort at other people's perfectly reasonable clothing choices is a mental condition you need to somehow conquer, rather than attempting to impose your own foolish judgment on the rest of us?
> 'I know it's abstract but so are human relationships and we all know than software is based on cooperation dynamics of this nature at its core.'
Life is give and take, and quite frankly, there is nothing a person like yourself has to offer me that I can't find in abundance elsewhere, without having to deal with your crippling mental disorder.
By all means, I don't mean for fellow workers to be unkempt, but relaxed outerwear can be dressed neatly.
What bothers me is the song and dance of "professionalism" taking a seat before actually getting things done.
You make a good point about neckties being a shared symbol of respect, but perhaps these come with some baggage as well. To me, a necktie also is a symbol of bureaucratic management. I propose a middle ground, not held by the unfortunate baggage of the status quo; and a symbol of humility among peers. At my workplace we shall all wear bow ties. Any color or pattern will do. This will unify us under a common symbol and we will know who is on board and who is not.
> More than anything I'm sick of not knowing who around me just rolled out of bed ten minutes before showing up to standup.
That gave me a chuckle, although isn't usually obvious who consistently performs like they just woke up 10 minutes earlier.
> That in itself is the greatest cause of grief in this field the sore lack of common professional manners ethics and customs that causes a total breakdown of communication and culture
Are you suggesting tech workers, e.g. your average programmer, is unhappy because he or she lacks customs and ethics, which breaks down communication with the outside world?
If there even is a she within a fifty metre radius yes I'm telling you that so called tech workers aka code monkeys have graduated straight from the dorm to the open office and have no clue about anything that happened prior to the invention of the soy latte much less how to function in the real world of adult professionalism
I agree with much of your observations about the degradation of civilization, but your understanding is flawed. Going back to some caricature of the Victorian area, where everyone is forced by rigid constraints into the same cookie cutter mold, isn't the solution to society's problems, it's the cause of it.
You posted this comment some time ago:
> "I've been in the industry for a long while now long enough to be past the stage of proving myself and looking more towards creating something of lasting value for the world and society and even my own legacy.
> "Everyone around me from management to the HR apparatus and even my peers seem geared towards me remaining a non client facing worker bot content with my perks and not harboring any ambitions beyond 'solving challenging problems' as a means to elicit that dopamine rush towards the collective ego
> "Growing up I chose computer science because it wasn't supposed to feel like work it was supposed to be a calling a duty but now the whole system is geared towards blind compliance and disengagement
> "My good people, how can I break the endless cycle of mindless mechanical labour that has become the software business and become the consummate professional I've always wanted to be?"
That's a very good question! The question is, what do you think "professionalism" is, exactly? Everyone being forced into bondage-and-discipline compliance? Like the Schutzstaffel officers who patrol this site to quickly and effectively suppress opinions contrary to the group-think, via vigorous use of the ban hammer, resulting in people continually making throwaway accounts and even pushing them from honest commentary toward purposeful trolling, due to their incessantly growing contempt of a society that oppresses their thoughts and opinions and ideas about living? More oppression, more forced compliance to somebody's arbitrary 1950s ideals, is that the answer to solving all of this chaos, you think?
You lost me when I saw the attempt with a formula. There is no formula and it's pretentious to think you can distill the variables.
Try this book:
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
by Matthew B. Crawford
"A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands
Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world."
A really thoughtful book - one of the best things I've read on the topic of work I think. Something like his thinking is kind of in the air amongst younger folk I know, many of whom are seeking more embodied and rounded ways to live than what has been presented to them as the desirable norm.
Poor article in my opinion. As soon as I saw the "Individual’s Sensitivity Vector" which was literally just a single row matrix of undefined variables, I closed it. That matrix added absolutely no value to either the equation or the article. It was there purely to make the article look more scientific. And the article was not scientific at all. Your white vs. blue collar happiness assertion was unsubstantiated aside from anecdotal evidence. Adding pointless equations with "fancy" notation does not make anecdotes more reliable as evidence.
> Blue collar workers definitely work for money. They most probably aren’t aligned with their employers or companies’ goals, and they see their jobs as monotone means for making a living, without a mission in mind.
There are white collar workers that buy their employers' bullshit?
I heard a podcast on the economist that made an impact on me with regards to this very question https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2019/11/15/what-is-the-se... ... it said that after your basic financial needs are met (wrt to salary) the important things in getting satisfaction at work are
Workers need to have
1. A sense of Agency (power and control)
2. Sense of Collegiality/solidarity/respect and knowledge that they will not be undermined (care and closeness)
3. Know that when they are told "you're in charge" it really means that, and there isn't a hidden message behind it (respect and recognition)
A nice paycheck? What else do you work for? Do people really search for happiness at work?
> people at white collar jobs are generally happier than people at blue collar jobs
Because white collar workers get paid more for less work in nicer settings? I'm betting CEOs are happier than their underlings.
> Blue collar workers definitely work for money.
So do white collar workers.
> and they see their jobs as monotone means for making a living
Sounds familiar in the white collar world.
> without a mission in mind.
The mission is to make the shareholders/stakeholders money. It's the same whether you are white collar or blue collar. Maybe blue collar workers are smart enough not to buy corporate PR unlike some white collar workers.The entire article reads like every mass produced self-help nonsense.
> They are happy about being obsessed with their job and their mission.
You just described a corporation's wet dream - a mindless, hopeless corporate kamikazi singularly focused on the mission. But are they really? Or do they use the obsession to mask their dissatisfaction with life? Is obsession with their job and their mission really something to be happy about? Seems rather dystopian.
You're right, pay check is one of the reason to work, and also one of the condition to be happy at work. But there is others, like:
- work/life balance.
- autonomy/work load balance.
- acknowledgement of the work done by the company. The manager or else.
- clear vision of what the company is doing and the role you have in it.
There is a lot more, and a lot of companies don't provide that to their employees.
There is a nice startup[0] that tries to bring happiness at work to other company. What is in for the company ? Better productivity of the employees and less turn over.
[0] Wittyfit. Full disclosure: I worked for them. They are not alone in the field, but I think they are the only one to have a scientific research based product.
> But there is others, like: - work/life balance. - autonomy/work load balance. - acknowledgement of the work done by the company. The manager or else. - clear vision of what the company is doing and the role you have in it.
Yes. This is by now decades old rehashed trope in corporate america.
> There is a nice startup[0] that tries to bring happiness at work to other company. What is in for the company ? Better productivity of the employees and less turn over.
Just like happier cows produce more milk/money. So ultimately, the workers and happiness are just a means to an end ( more money for the shareholders ).
> [0] Wittyfit. Full disclosure: I worked for them. They are not alone in the field, but I think they are the only one to have a scientific research based product.
Let us pray that "scientific" research doesn't one day conclude unhappy workers lead to higher productivity.
I don’t know that having a clear mission adds much to happiness at work unless it’s coupled with proper execution; otherwise it’s just a stream of frustrations. Also I’d imagine most blue collar jobs have pretty clearly stated missions, so to speak. Make people’s yards beautiful. Build beautiful houses.
Based on personal observations, I’d say the thing that makes the biggest difference in terms of work satisfaction/“happiness” is pride in your work. In the past few months alone I’ve had numerous delightful conversations with cafeteria workers about the food they are serving; and some with goodwill workers on the store layout they’ve helped plan and items they’ve curated. Contagious enthusiasm, definitely more than I experience in planning meetings and company all hands.
If I like the people I work with, and management is mostly sane, that goes a really long way. If the money's good, that's close to perfect. Think hard before you walk away from that - it's not real easy to find again.
1. a worthwhile mission that i find meaningful
2. competency and effectiveness at serving that mission
3. freedom from interference from management and other people who typically get in the way of being productive
4. compensation at the level commensurate to the value that i add
i assume for most people a job which met the above four factors would be a job where the person is happy. i also assume that employers intuitively grasp the above points. however, to squeeze as much value out of a worker as they can, i also know that employers intuitively understand how to exploit their ability to minimize their provision of the factors which they are poorly able to provide -- like money -- to make up fofr others. in essence, this means that is is reasonable to assume that most employers will intentionally game the four factors to offer as little as possible while still retaining the employee. this is also exactly how "passion jobs" like science and video game coding are habitually underpaid and abused.
i'll be honest, i've only found this combination of factor at the first job i had. in the 8 years since then, it's been a lot of compromising or surrendering on #1, facing hard realities about my talents regarding #2, suffering through #3 with a smile, and swallowing my pride to carry #4 as best i can without letting the resentment become visible. in other words, finding "happiness at work" has, for me, been a pipedream in comparison to the more immediate concern of avoiding misery at work.
There is a different approach that I've been following to some success. Break these 4 things into two pieces. Turn "work" into work and just make it #4. Punch the clock, limit overtime, try to treat it like a blue collar job.
In your spare time, find the other fulfillment. Whether it is volunteering or a hobby (you can teach others too!) or creation, you can find the meaning you are missing at work here instead. I design board games. This prevents me from side projects which are just more hours sitting at a computer. It is different and pushes different skills and even as I make these, it is something tangible I can hold and show others and even have fun playing. Then there is the whole benefit of going to conferences or game nights with other like minded individuals. This also tends to create happiness from within instead of externally. It breaks you from the "as soon as [event]" or "if only [event]" mindsets that can lock you in inaction.
Finding meaning at work is not always the same as finding meaning in your work.
Earlier in my career I had many lessons I would have learned in any position.
Once I realized that and let myself learn from any opportunity, an appreciation for self growth happened, which lead to a realization that empowering others to have tech work for them meant a lot more to me than I realized.
The same as happiness out of work: Contributing to the greater good, not fucking up the world, pursuing your interests and providing for your companions in life.
The 2nd bullet point hides loads of complexity once you attempt to define what "well" means. Is it you asserting that you were able to do your work your preferred way, even when that doesn't align with the organisation interests? Or is it you simply following orders to the satisfaction of your boss because you feel that external validation is important?
The 3rd bullet point hides complexity as well. Because that depends entirely on the lifestyle you are trying to attain / support.
For instance, a sense of agency and freedom are important to you, as well as having a large impact. Well, you won't find that in a strictly operational role, so you will have to move up the ladder. But then you may find that you will have to compromise on 1 since you can't keep everyone happy.
Maybe you are fine with an operational job. Nothing to difficult. And encouragement and support from management / co-workers, as well as deriving purpose from what you do is enough to satisfy 1 and 2. But then you find that your paycheck is enough to get by, but not enough to support more then 1 child. Even though you really want a large family.
Hence, why you can't have all three of those to a T.
Also, there's only "happiness in life" and even that concept is vague and hard to define, because ultimately is based on a set of complex trade-offs and cost opportunity calculations you make throughout all aspects of life. Your professional life is an innate part of that.
I appreciate the author's thought exercise and sharing it here.
A few thoughts:
1. Instead of the outdated descriptions of using the color of a collared shirt, consider a description of knowledge labor vs. service labor vs. manual labor.
2. Autonomy has been identified as a key (maybe even the) attribute for happiness doing a job, regardless of profession.
3. Aligned missions is a nice to have but temporary and fleeting. Expectations of this will inevitably lead to disappointment.
> Instead of the outdated descriptions of using the color of a collared shirt
Now that I finally learned the difference between all the collars, dismissed is as an odd American characteristic, you are planning to get rid of it again?
> 3. Aligned missions is a nice to have but temporary and fleeting. Expectations of this will inevitably lead to disappointment.
While I generally do think it futile to formalize happiness and an occupation I initially would associate with desperate unhappiness, I don't understand this objection. I believe having a common goal is quite important for any for of corporation. Why would it be fleeting? It has to be voluntarily of course to meet the autonomy requirement, which I believe to be correct. The happiest workers I ever met actually stay at one company for very long times.
Even if I think that formalization isn't possible, I think there is at lot of merit in trying.
"Happiness" seems too squishy and vague a word to be of any use. I prefer "satisfaction". I think of it as a kind of geometric mean of happiness, smoothing out the extreme ups & downs that "happiness" can be subject to.
Not sure it's any easier to translate into an equation but it's certainly easier to reason about.
go watch about two years worth of 'Dirty Jobs' and you'll find a bunch of happy blue collar workers who fit what you describe. Possibly more of them register happier than white collars.
Blue collar work rarely has the kind of uncertainty and open-endedness that white-collar work routinely does. It might be physically strenuous, but it's rarely mentally tortuous.
You clock in, do what they tell you, when it's done you ask for more to do, and when it's time to go home, you clock out and leave it behind.
I dunno, I was pretty satisfied at my last 'blue collar' job with everything but the money and the hours. I got to make things every day rich people paid tens of thousands of dollars for, I got to operate and maintain large expensive machines, we all had pretty much complete autonomy, we just followed the schedule, each did our part and made some really nice things. The people I worked with were all great, there was no 'office politics' bullshit, no manager fuckery, we all just showed up every day and got things done. Our goals aligned with the owners, make the customers happy so the business kept getting work and we all kept getting paid.
Everyone that worked there really cared about the business and worked hard to make it successful. Leaving that place was honestly one of the harder things i've done in my life. It was a sad day when I left.