"The experience was physically taxing, he was diagnosed with tendonitis after moving hundreds of boxes a day, but it pulled him out of his depression and helped him gain perspective and a deeper sense of meaning".......
I have mixed feelings about this. What this has proven is working at amazon warehouse sucks, and is not sustainable.
I've had many physical shitty jobs in my 20's. Then, I had some health issue and could no longer keep doing that to my body, so I went back to school and got a CS degree.
I sometimes get depressed and miss physical work, but then I remember how shit it was and how an injury would prevent me from working. As a dev I think I'm going to be able to earn money as long as I'm alive and have a functioning brain.
I guess once you have enough money then maybe someone might find that work fun? Obviously it helped the writer with depression. However, if he ever gets permanently hurt and it affects his daily life I have a feeling depression will come back in full swing. Office work is much much safer.
There are ways to help people through tech and have much bigger affect then moving boxes for a shitty company.
Edit: What helps my depression is connecting with people outside of work, helping people in my community, doing projects around my house and spending time with my son. Additionally, I try to make good choices when spending my money and limit my spending on stuff I don't need, as I dislike excessive spending.
Edit2: Some great comments below. This is very much poverty/shit job tourism, which the writer can escape at any moment. This is some BlackMirror type of content. Guy makes it big in tech, retires, now works shit job people are trying to escape to cure his depression. He then writes about it on a blog. Now, other non-aware devs might be reading it contemplating leaving their jobs to do a REAL job.
> What this has proven is working at amazon warehouse sucks, and is not sustainable.
This person went from a 23-year career sitting at a desk to doing physical labor all day. Any physical labor is going to take a toll on someone in their 40s who hasn't been doing physical labor.
I have a lot of people in my extended social circle who are in physical labor jobs. Amazon Warehouse jobs are always viewed as the "easy" fallback option: Doesn't pay as well as the hard physical labor jobs, but it's also viewed as the safe, comfortable option. Obviously, someone coming from a 20-year desk job is going to have a different perspective when thrust into a job with any physical demands.
I also have people in my extended social circle who are in jobs that involve a lot of physical labor. As we all enter our late 30s-early 40s give or take, and they realize what a toll it's taking on their bodies, most of them are trying to get out of it, or have gotten out of it. They realize they aren't going to be physically able to do it another 25 years, and their bodies are going to get increasingly wrecked.
From what I've heard (including from acquaintances who have worked there), a job at an Amazon Warehouse takes a toll on your body for sure. For sure it's hardly alone in being like that.
(The people in my extended social circle who are in jobs involving physical labor are perhaps more likely than most physical laborers to have people in their social circle who sit at desks, and to be able to access networks and resources to shift out of physical labor to make a living).
> As we all enter our late 30s-early 40s give or take, and they realize what a toll it's taking on their bodies, most of them are trying to get out of it, or have gotten out of it. They realize they aren't going to be physically able to do it another 25 years, and their bodies are going to get increasingly wrecked
This is why when you see people who do physical labour well into their 40s they almost always have substance problems. Job takes its toll on them and drugs are what let them push through.
You can also write a very similar rant about how sedentary desk jobs are not sustainable with all the obesity related life shortening conditions it leads to :)
The solution to obesity is eating less and going on a walk or two during the day. The solution to your back getting blown out by moving boxes is… giving up your job.
That's something I think we need to spend a lot more time acknowledging. The preeminent idea makers that have created a lot of our modern framework of thinking about the world were not very good at answering the question "what's the point?"
Slow loss of ability to function and then death is inevitable. People are not going to be optimal workers their whole lives. We still need to keep the machines running, which is incredibly difficult and probably always will be due to the majority of us being limited bumbling morons, and the safeguards we need to put in place to prevent the morons who think they aren't morons from messing up the efforts of the minority of competent productive people hiding out there. But being the best worker for as long as you can is not the point of life.
This sounds trite to most modern thinkers, but it's not: genuine, actual, familial support, acceptance and loyalty between you and your tribe is something that can transcend the trials and tribulations of life and our inevitable death. Another ingredient in acceptance of the human condition is acknowledgment of the mysteries of the world and the strangeness of human perception and consciousness. Neither of those are sufficiently reflected upon in any organized manner like they used to be.
Obesity and weight gain in general is mainly caused by diet, not exercise. You can run 12 hours a day but if you eat 10k calories a day, you're going to end up fat.
I think the mainly part is correct, but 12 hours of running like 6-7k calories for an 150 lbs. person. As you get heavier it’s going to go up fast (and non linearly)—essentially any kind of extreme exercise is going to put an upper limit on your weight.
I’m unsure if your body can even process 10k calories in day. The basal metabolic rate for a 1000 lbs person isn’t that high.
And the counterpoint is that most people aren't able to do that much exercise. Because it's A LOT. Basically full time athletes or highly physical workers. So that excludes all people with a sedentary or only partially physically demanding work.
Sufficient is a lot.
If you eat a fast food meal (burger, fries, soda) above maintenance you're looking at half a marathon to burn that off. And most people aren't pro cyclists that are able to sustain 400 watts+ for a hour.
Sufficient is a lot, but it’s nowhere near as extreme as that example makes it sound.
That’s a half marathon for a 150 lbs fit person, running efficiently. A 250 lbs person who is a little out of shape will burn that in a 2.5 hour walk.
Obviously 1300 calories a day above maintenance is extreme for most people, but energy expended scales non linearly with weight. There are also a lot quicker ways to burn calories than marathon running.
Perhaps, but the epidemic of sedentary lifestyle has lead to a large suite of problems, ranging from miserable back pain to cardiovascular problems to diabetes. The average office worker can barely run a mile, do a pullup, squat below parallel with their bodyweight, or climb a flight of stairs without panting.
Some of us spend hours a week compensating for this. If lifting boxes and carrying them around all day long paid a fraction of the salary I have, I think I would take it in a heartbeat. It sounds delightful. You prefer to be in meetings for 6 hours a day and scramble to code in between them? And let me guess, no neck pain and daily headaches for you right ?
Its one thing to do hard physical exercise, like gym work, cycling, swimming, running etc for like and hour or two everyday, and then get good rest- Work in the time there is in between. This is actually far healthier than a full time job doing hard physical labor. There is certain thing call physical wear-and-tear which is real, together with injuries, and you won't be getting paid nearly as well or with the same benefits and perks. Eventually your mind will find a job repulsive that doesn't pay as much.
I also heard some where at some point nearly every one working these hard labor jobs indulges in after work drinking as a means of pain relief analgesic.
The thing that you describe about the average working job Joe, is really physical abuse in the exact opposite direction to the extreme physical labor. Both are bad. Balance is how you enjoy life.
Sports are the better answer for improving physical fitness. I do moderate weightlifting and HIIT-style MTB/cycling 5-10 hours per week, and when I took up a short gig to unload shipping containers, I was far more muscular and athletic than the other workers.
The job descriptions for manual labor positions that say “It’s like getting paid for going to the gym!” is deceiving. Yes, you will develop a fortitude and lean strength. It’s very hard work. I was battered after a week. But the physical payoff isn’t worth it and the life-long risks are severe.
It’s super depressing to work alongside a 19-year-old recent high school graduate, who jokes to you about his chronic lower back problem, while he angrily tosses 2,000+ oft-heavy boxes onto the sorting line. It shouldn’t be our children doing the crippling work.
Erm you can definitely make six figures doing physical work. Have to imagine that’s a pretty decent fraction of your salary. You’re not going to do that though, because that work is hard and desk/computer shit is easy af in comparison with banger pay & benefits. Cool story though I guess.
Inertia, being carried by past success, delivering juuust enough new value that their clients don't switch away from them.
Or their clients have inertia and continue to use their product long past the time they should have moved to a competitor who is innovating.
I don't know. I think there's a lot of dead weight in the big corporations that is being carried along. I think you can see this a lot in marketing departments with massive budgets. They spend their money marketing to other big companies. Those companies are spending their money marketing back to them. It's like a shell game where a lot of money is moving but nothing changes.
I too had many shitty jobs in my early 20's and reading this article kinda triggered those job's bad memories and how much I hated working at those places. I remember even after getting into tech many years later I would sometimes have dreams where I would be back in one of those jobs having a minor case of PTSD.
That being said there are other ways to do the type of career shift that the author wants. My Wife's cousin who worked as a electrician near SF mentioned to me one of his co-workers was a former sr. director at Oracle who got burned out and wanted to try something new. I asked him how they liked the new career and he said she loved it. That job payed well and didn't require the forced degradation seen at amazon warehouses, plus you get to interact with interesting people and travel to different locations frequently.
A senior director at Oracle likely had enough money to be able to afford to take classes while not working (and not going into debt), get an apprenticeship (mandatory for electricians) working for peanuts, and then spend a bunch of money on advertising and/or leverage all his business contacts (as everyone, especially the wealthy, need electricians at some point.) He could afford to pay $$$ for all the electrical code books that non-master-electricians are required to memorize (and pass tests on.) He likely didn't have to worry about health insurance, wasn't carrying any debt, had a reliable car, etc.
Dear everyone in this discussion: stop pretending like people working Amazon Warehouse jobs can just switch gears, and especially stop citing examples of rich, educated, privileged people doing it as "proof" it can be done.
It's pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps nonsense. These sorts of jobs are so physically demanding that you end up exhausted at the end of a shift and there's not much energy for other things unless you're pretty young....and unlike wealthy connected people, they don't have the personal/professional network.
I don't think you "get" what I was trying to say. I had mentioned a actual person - this was a woman and not a man btw(I mentioned that, I guess you didn't read my post close enough), who moved out of a engineering director position and was now a electrician. They don't own their own electrical business, they are just another electrician on the job. And yes they probably are very wealthy but wanted to switch careers like the author of this post and really enjoyed going into manual labor and getting out of tech. I don't know what else there is to argue about?
I used to do landscaping. One morning I pulled my then-girlfriend out of bed by the legs because I was dreaming about dragging a tree into a hole. I moved a lot of heavy trees and shrubs in that job. Haha, memories!
I don't think the author is recommending their experience. He's merely talking about what he did and what happened. We've known for millennia that physical work sucks. That's why the lowest echelons of society always end up doing the worst of it. This, I think, is why previous generations were so emphatic about college education. In their experience, it was a ticket out of doing physically taxing work.
Overly taxing and dangerous physical work sucks. Working in a professional kitchen is some of the most fun and (non-monetary) rewarding work I've ever done.
Maybe Amazon should take a cue from the service industry and have a lot more sex and drugs in their warehouses. Right now it's all misery and desperation.
> service industry and have a lot more sex and drugs in their warehouses.
Nope.
The business insurance usually requires drug free or zero tolerance policies, especially with forklifts, unmanned delivery robots, trucks, conveyors, and all other hazardous warehouse conditions around.
Heh, business insurance is one thing. Some of the guys I’ve worked with are another. One swore up and down he couldn’t be functional before a toke and getting lifted was safer for us all.
And after 5 years you start to have feet, knees and leg issues. My sister worked at (very)good restaurants for six years, there is a reason why she started college at 23. It got easier when she got to 'second', since she could reserve herself the "easy" cleaning tasks and the inventory, but still.
Definitely. My dad always recalled working on the Navy Ship yard and how cold it was before saying to himself, "F--- this" and going to college to become an accountant.
> If I had it my way, tech workers wouldn’t take sabbaticals just to climb Machu Picchu or see Antarctica — some subset of them, the set for whom the malaise I’m describing resonates, would instead take their sabbatical at an Amazon warehouse.
I thought you were kidding, but this is actually in part 2 of the interview.
I guess the author is happy about transitioning from depression to living in a fantasy world with no basis in reality, but I think most of us would prefer to keep our vacations... vacations
It's not sustainable for amazon-ish [1]. They offer higher wages than competitors because they need to keep accumulating new employees or convincing old ones to come back.
Do they? Ten years ago Walmart distribution center workers were making what the writer says he made at Amazon, which is itself surely the result of recent increases. No idea what Walmart pays today, especially in these post COVID-induced work and price changes. Four or five years ago, on the other hand, I'd heard Amazon was around $13 to $14.
Experienced both sides too. Some physical jobs suck and some bosses really suck, but some are also great and massively rewarding even though pay may not reflect that. Really depends on the company, the match of body+job, and importantly the Country - worker protection laws.
I met a young software developer who got a night job loading UPS trucks instead of joining a gym. It seemed to work for him, although it's probably not sustainable.
Tendonitis is also common in SDEs, do you think IT industry also non sustainable?
The work condition in Amazon warehouse sucks not because Amazon wants it happen but just 1. because you want buy something at a mouse click not wanting to get it yourself, 2. other retailers do not want pay as much as Amazon did.
You are winning a game does not mean you get to choose the rules.
It is astonishing how people today are only think everything as one step process and just fire his/her original thoughts without the capabilities of observing the system as a whole. And particularly worrisome for a tech forum.
Software development is taxing on your brain the same way physical labor is taxing on your body. It’s depressing, soul sucking work. You’re stuck inside, staring at a screen for 8+ hours a day.
If all jobs had the same salary, benefits, career path, etc, there is no way I'd trade software development for a job involving strenuous physical labor.
I would. I enjoy working on software, but honestly, the most satisfying job I ever had was a janitor, cleaning office buildings. Seriously. The job was at night - I'm a night owl. The job was performed almost entirely in solitude - I hate people LOL. I could listen to music all night and it never interrupted my work. No meetings or drawn out decisions. No "case of the Mondays". I worked my butt off physically, but at the end of my shift, my brain was still totally fresh. I used to look at it like I was getting paid to exercise because the work was so physical. I slept like a damn baby when I was a janitor. But, most of all, I really enjoyed cleaning: coming in at night, looking at a total disaster area, working my butt off, then leaving just before dawn with everything looking spotless. I took pride in it.
Kinda funny how most of the software projects I work on now are around hygiene, cleaning up old code and dead configs, stuff like that. Once a janitor, always a janitor.
Oh yeah, the worst thing about being a janitor isn't the pay. It's being treated like shit by literally everyone. People can be assholes, especially when they're talking to the janitor.
There's a surprisingly large number of jobs, but making even middle class income is difficult unless you're one of the dozens of people that get a staff job with the government or win the academic lottery and get a tenure track position.
I would. Imagine getting paid to be outdoors in the sun getting exercise. Imagine not having to spend an extra hour each day in a crowded gym doing boring repetitive movements because your sedentary job would ruin your body otherwise. Imagine not having posture and back problems at age 30. Imagine having the output of a hard days work be a physical object you can point to your son and say “see? I made that”.
> Imagine getting paid to be outdoors in the sun getting exercise.
Combine that with - imagine being outside when it's cold, windy and raining - and you still have to do an 8 hour shift in those conditions. At minimum, it sounds like a fast-track to arthritis (a painful and non-curable condition that will plague you for the rest of your life). Or, imagine doing hard, physical labor for 8 hours in sweltering heat, which makes other human people avoid going out at all.
If you are an American SWE or have a corresponding salary, you pretty much only have to work for 10 or so years before retiring, assuming you learn how personal finance works and learn to live without a fancy car or any status-related possessions.
Heck you could do it in 5 years if you are a FAANG employee.
I’m not sure you could do it in 5 years at a FAANG even if you saved every penny (literally zero living expenses.)
Because if you start a career at 22, that means you retire at 27, and have to have enough saved up for something like 40 years before social security kicks in. That’s a long time to be living off of savings. Can you have enough that you can live off the interest in your investments? Depends. You’d need near-zero-risk investments because you don’t want to get wiped out at the next recession (they happen every 10-ish years) and those tend to have low yields.
Source: I’m 10 years into a faang and I have a bunch saved up, but I’m still in my 30s. There’s no way I could retire now with my wife and kids depending on me, the amount I make on the interest of my investments isn’t nearly enough and is too risky.
I'll admit 5 years was hyperbolic and unrealistic, perhaps something reserved for the most promising workers at those FAANGs. But if you are 10 years into your FAANG career, you should be earning at minimum in the 300K net/210k take home range, and have done so for years. At this point you must be trading freedom for creature comforts or status goods if you are not financially independent.
What’s financially independent mean at age 35? Say you saved 200k every year (which isn’t even technically possible given that the typical tax rate for 300k means a smaller net than that.) You have 2 million in the bank. Can you live off 2 million for 30 years (social security age) while supporting a family as the sole earner, for that long? You gotta be really confident in your investments to take that plunge.
Well it depends on your personal circumstances. As per the 4% rule, you can definitely live off $80K with a family. That's above the US median wage by a large margin. You could live on $40K too, which is terrible if working but completely different if not. Again, this will depend on what you value in life.
Think about what not having to work actually means. There's a list of advantages that is too large to properly enumerate. Being able to see your children. Eating correctly and cheaply. Engaging in intimate relationships with vigor, time and energy. Being in great health. Fixing maintenance problems yourself. No career forcing you to live in a particular place. Traveling inexpensively when you want. Less obesity, stress and copium. Have hobbies and self-actualization. All of this in years that still qualify as your prime instead of when your body is failing you. The same salary when not working is like operating in a different world.
And ironically this would also give you the time to pursue entrepreneurship or any number of money-making ventures if you are so inclined. Heck, just go part-time if you miss it. If you are a FAANG person you can have a higher salary than people's full time.
Most people will not have that opportunity. I certainly won't, barring some miracle. But you have it. What will you do when you retire at 55 and realize that pretty much all of the really healthy years of your life have been spent in an office? Great, you've got a comfy retirement but it's too late.
The premise is you only need about 20-25 years of expenses saved up and have like a 90+% success rate given history. That's what the FIRE ideology started with. Anything beyond 25 years is security/luxury. For a single person not having others depend on them and willing to locate away from any expensive mega-/metropolis, FAANG did make that doable in 5-10 years.
> The premise is you only need about 20-25 years of expenses saved up
What happens in 20-25 years, if you’re 35 now? Your net worth hits zero right when you turn 55-60, and have years left until you get social security? All so that you can live with zero luxuries for the best years of your life, and have no family to pass anything onto?
I’m sorry but it just seems like a huge misplacement of priorities to me, to forego so much potential to retire that early.
To me, the priority is the ability to simply say “fuck off” to my boss if I’ve had enough one day, and have enough saved up to absorb the mistake, if it turned out to be one. Having that fallback in the back of my mind means I’ve basically already won, I’m just racking up the score until that day comes. But until that day, there’s zero reason not to continue banking everything I have. Deciding “that’s probably enough, I should walk away now” at age 35 seems like one of the biggest mistakes you can make. 50? Maybe. 45? Maybe not. But 35? Huge mistake IMO.
I'll walk back on the five years FAANG claim as I was venting a bit. But let's say you earn $200K (you'd start with less but end up with more at the 5 year mark), $135-165K take home, $105K if you save 70% of your salary. If we count compound interest, investments, stocks, healthcare savings due to generous SWE contracts, you could definitely achieve freedom if you wanted to with the 4% rule. It would require abandoning some luxury, but even on 30% of your take home salary you would have a decent lifestyle, more than most make total. And then you'd be in a position to do what you want, be as healthy as you need to be, no longer a need to buy things to make you forget about your servitude. You could travel on the cheap with longer flights because you would have time to do so.
Let's say I'm wrong, and it's more like 15-18 years. Well, that's still much much much better than what most people get. You can have decades of your life back. How much of your freedom are toys and consumption worth?
Ok, but then you'd have spent your entire unrecoverable youth working for a FAANG. I realize this doesn't bother some people, and I don't understand that.
Devs can get by working few hours a day, some barely do any work at all
Not sure how others here feel, but I have to say that when I've found myself in situations where there isn't much work to be done I find it utterly soul destroying.
Always feel guilty doing anything else in down-time when I'm billing a client and so sometimes end up sitting in a weird stand by mode, feeling like I'm somehow being lazy.
It's not lazy. If I go for a walk I'm actively thinking about projects. I have solved many problem by just clearing my mind and taking breaks.
Building software should not be paid by the hour. It's a weird thing.
If I can build a piece of software in 10 hours, and another dev needs 40 hours....it seems kind of odd to pay the slower less resourceful dev MORE for a slower delivery?
So I consider taking a walk to clear your mind part of work for sure. I also consider reading HN or other engineering news/continued education sites to be part of work. And taking a coffee break to chat with co-workers about whatever (back when we worked in an office), including big-picture stuff and non-work related stuff, sure, that too.
That's all part of work when you do this kind of work. You can not just write code 8 hours a day, indeed, it's impossible, and if an employer tries to make you work that kind of sweat-shop environment (sometimes it seems like that's the actual goal of some Scrum implementations), it won't actually get them your best or even most productive work.
But there are people on HN who say that they literally spend the majority of their day the majority of days just doing things that are not work at all. I dunno, watching TV, running errands, riding their bike, mindlessly social media'ing, playing video games. Like they only spend a few hours a week on anything related to work at all.
I agree with GP that for me that's utterly soul-destroying, I end up feeling useless and unmoored. (The other day on the radio I heard someone reference a study that busy-ness to life satisfaction graphed as an upside down U, if you have too little free/leisure time you are unhappy, but people with too much are unhappy too, there's a sweet spot in the middle. Perhaps that's what we're talking about here).
But maybe different people are different.
Or maybe in new remote world, if you spend that time on projects you find rewarding (writing poetry, I dunno) instead of just goofing off, then it's not really "leisure" anymore, and you won't have that problem. If also you don't have any ethical problems with it (maybe your employer is awful and deserves to be drained of money), or just worry about getting caught.
Yep. Same here, at my level of experience can deliver work in high-quality at a fraction of time required for a junior. Instead of burn-out, use the extra time to enjoy other things and keep learning/improving.
Dev work is not digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screw driver, but it is forcing your brain to do things brains were never meant to do in a situation they can never make better, ten to fifteen hours a day, five to seven days a week, and every one of them is slowly going mad.
You might be surprised to learn that for every dev working “few hours a day” or barely doing anything at all, there is another engineer doing all their work for them - usually in a constant state of fending off burnout due to having to do other peoples’ work in addition to their own.
That other engineer is actually a problem. He is accomplishing nothing by grinding 8+ hours a day and will burn out, most deadlines are bullshit.
Nobody can sustain that much work for a long period of time.
I would much rather be a good well rounded reasonable dev than someone doing others work. That is a huge red flag. Every dev should be responsible for THEIR work, not their team mates. Unless of course they are doing code reviews.
Arbitrary deadlines are bullshit but I never mentioned deadlines. At the end of the day, people get paid to do a job and businesses earn revenues by doing things. Someone needs to do those things, and if these hypothetical developers "barely doing any work at all" aren't doing it, someone has to at the end of the day or everyone is going home.
Is it? In my career, over 20 years by now, I've not seen that one often. When it happens, management has to be on vacation too, as it's not that hard to see that someone is doing all the work. I have seen this continue just once. It had to do with the place having very poor pay. Management wasn't firing the slackers because that's all they could hire at their rates. The hard working engineers just weren't wise enough to realize that they could often do a bit less work for a lot more pay somewhere else.
What is more common is that effort levels are similar within the same department, but wildly different across companies. I've worked at places where people considered themselves slackers when they were doing 60 hours plus on call time. I've also worked at others where entire teams did about 2 hours of actual work a day, and the rest was spent on long lunches, ping pong and retro consoles.
I think the trick is to give and take. And maintain teams that give and take.
Sometimes I need to take my foot of the gas. But I also appreciate that, when I do, someone else has to pick up the slack.
When I encounter teammates who only take, take, take, and never give, either they leave or I do (depending how much influence I have over their employment)
The trick is that everyone is both in my experience. I had weeks where i worked barely 10 hours (well, a week actually, but in my defense, the onboarding was shit), including meetings and mails. Most of the time once i understand what i have to do (and that can take some time), i'm around 20 to 30 hours. But i know i can whip myself and work 45 full hours (legal duration in my country is 35), as i did during august when the team was on vacation and we had a lot of fires to tend to, for two weeks.
I'm a long time paramedic who has seen more people die than I care to remember.
some days I'd rather be an order picker at Amazon. It's a lot easier to clock out and not bring work home with you. I might actually make more money at Amazon, to be honest.
Not to mention the perverse association you develop with the computer being a requirement for getting work done. My dopamine is so tied to ticking off boxes by finishing computer work that tasks like cleaning the kitchen have an empty feeling.
My son in law was visiting the other week and asked me about my tech job. I told him that it is like taking a calculus exam everyday of the week, where I am not exactly sure what the course material is that day, or that it is a chapter I have not seen yet.
I was thinking this too while reading it. Good for him I guess but there's sort of an eat pray love tone deafness to writing an article about the experience.
The author was pretty clearly self aware of their unique context:
"I am not going to bill an Amazon job as some sort of upper-middle-class panacea, something you go do just like you go enroll in survivalist camps or silent retreats. The job can be dehumanizing, physically wearing if not outright painful, and mind-numbingly boring if you can’t invent little games for yourself while lifting 300 boxes an hour for eleven hours straight."
It doesn't invalidate their experience.
Something I've started trying to do more consistently when reading stuff on the web is instead of asking myself, "How can I discredit or discard this author's point?" Instead, I try to ask, "What can I take of value from their writing?"
There is always ample reason to disagree with something you read. There's an edge case the missed, an exception they overlooked, a tragedy even worse than theirs, a privilege they failed to properly check, a mistake they made in their past, etc. It's not interesting to poke holes in what you read because you can do it in almost everything. Any property that is true of all writing is essentially meaningless.
Instead, I try to seek out what is true and useful in it and just ignore the parts I don't agree with. (And I certainly try to comment on those parts less.) In this case, we have an upper-middle-class successful software person who still found themselves struggling with depression despite "winning" at all the things our culture says we're supposed to do. And this person had a real, true experience where a shitty job at Amazon dramatically improved their mental health.
That's clearly telling me something interesting about our need for structure, for work that feels grounded and tangible, and likely to spend more time using our bodies.
The most sinister thing about it is that we do need to honor those people who work incredibly hard and undesirable jobs, but by compensating them, not just worshipping them like heroes.
Mike Rowe and the cabal that funded his character attempt to make the viewer feel self-righteous satisfaction merely from empty recognition of merit.
He argues against a minimum wage because some jobs are ‘stepping stones,’ but this runs counter to his whole narrative. Further, a proper trade skill training infrastructure a la unions or guilds would allow for experience ranked compensation. I get that people are wary of corruption and protectionism in unions, but it seems relatively fair in an adversarial market system.
(I’m also aware that simply expressing the need for higher compensation/benefits here is going to sound like bootlicking to smug leftists, but I would respect the dirty job of literal bootlicking.)
The reason I as a dev earn a lot more than our order picker where I work is that the software I have built is speeding up everything. I created massive improvements in efficiency. My high salary is justified because my work has a much bigger impact on the finances.
It is that simple. I interview often to get a true market rate. Nobody would pay me what I'm making if the market for devs wasn't this good.
You're paid what it costs for you not to work somewhere else. This is largely decoupled from how much value you create.
The only kind of compensation that is correlated to value are sales commissions, which most devs don't make.
A lot of us get deluded from the fact that we're highly skilled labor that takes a ton of training and skill sets most people don't have, while at the moment we make products with zero marginal costs. It's not the latter that's as important as the former.
> You're paid what it costs for you not to work somewhere else. This is largely decoupled from how much value you create.
I bet quite a number of HNers have liked a given workplace, but done the "job boomerang" where they jumped over to a much higher paying (but less desirable to them) job, only to jump back to their preferred place at much MUCH higher pay.
I hate interviewing as much as the next person, but it is the only way to actually get closer to what one is worth.
Trying to just save up for when the AI gets so good all of us will be going to FCs like this story /s
Supply and demand only work in the short term as an explanation why something costs the amount it does _right now_. Once enough time has passed for the markets to adjust then there is something fundamental that causes them to be stuck at a given level.
Software development is applied autism. There aren't many people on the spectrum and the ones of us lucky enough to be interested in computers (instead of say model trains) are making out like bandits because there's no one else who could do our jobs.
OP already covered why there's such a high demand for us. When you have a limited supply and unlimited demand wages increase. Or to put it another way: there are no other professions that can make 10 million for their employers in an afternoon by thinking really hard.
> Supply and demand only work in the short term as an explanation why something costs the amount it does _right now_. Once enough time has passed for the markets to adjust then there is something fundamental that causes them to be stuck at a given level.
[citation needed]
> Software development is applied autism.
[citation needed]
> Or to put it another way: there are no other professions that can make 10 million for their employers in an afternoon by thinking really hard.
The entire finance industry called and wants to have a word. Not that I'm a fan of theirs, but perhaps you should think harder next time before you post.
The financial industry doesn't make money out of bits and bytes. They make money out of other money and lose all of it every 10 years or so. We're seeing it real time today hilariously enough.
It's not propaganda, it's a perspective. He's pretty involved in activism on the behalf of trades work, not just the mouthpiece of some think tank ad campaign.
> not just the mouthpiece of some think tank ad campaign.
Uh huh. Here's his "worker's pledge." It is literally "be a good little peasant worker drone" bullshit:
I believe that I have won the greatest lottery of all time. I am alive. I walk the Earth. I live in America. Above all things, I am grateful.
I believe that I am entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing more. I also understand that "happiness" and the "pursuit of happiness" are not the same thing.
I believe there is no such thing as a "bad job." I believe that all jobs are opportunities, and it's up to me to make the best of them.
I do not "follow my passion." I bring it with me. I believe that any job can be done with passion and enthusiasm.
I deplore debt, and do all I can to avoid it. I would rather live in a tent and eat beans than borrow money to pay for a lifestyle I can't afford.
I believe that my safety is my responsibility. I understand that being in "compliance" does not necessarily mean I'm out of danger.
I believe the best way to distinguish myself at work is to show up early, stay late, and cheerfully volunteer for every crappy task there is.
I believe the most annoying sounds in the world are whining and complaining. I will never make them. If I am unhappy in my work, I will either find a new job, or find a way to be happy.
I believe that my education is my responsibility, and absolutely critical to my success. I am resolved to learn as much as I can from whatever source is available to me. I will never stop learning, and understand that library cards are free.
I believe that I am a product of my choices – not my circumstances. I will never blame anyone for my shortcomings or the challenges I face. And I will never accept the credit for something I didn’t do.
I understand the world is not fair, and I’m OK with that. I do not resent the success of others.
I believe that all people are created equal. I also believe that all people make choices. Some choose to be lazy. Some choose to sleep in. I choose to work my butt off.
I find this to be empowering, not offensive. Seems like it's mostly telling you that some things are in your control and some aren't, and that you're responsible for the stuff that's in your control. Frankly, this would be great for an entrepreneur.
I've had plenty of crappy jobs/bosses, but I can't think of one job where being bitter, entitled, or negative would have helped me.
It can be empowering if you take it at face value. The obvious subtext is that it is something used to discourage the worker from seeking collective action or improving their working conditions. If you applied these ideas in real life we'd still be living with Victorian-style working conditions, and we'd be unable to do anything at all against structural economic problems that determine livelihoods way more than any personal responsibility or gumption.
Heck even the part about showing up early etc. to distinguish yourself is naïve even in the best light when you've spent time at a job.
"I believe that I have won the greatest lottery of all time...I live in America." And this is the point where my bullshit detector overheated and exploded.
You have to understand that most Americans are indoctrinated to believe that America is “the best” from the moment they are born. I have lived and worked in the US, Europe, and Australia and can truthfully say that you have won the lottery if you are born in any of the rich western democratic country. And I personally don’t put the US as #1 on that list.
Maybe you don't care, but I care and so do many people. I'd argue you should also care.
Knowing where the money comes from is fundamental is so many aspect of our society.
Getting a loan from a bank will require you to disclose some information about your money getting activities. Why? First to make sure nothing illegal is going on, and second to make sure you will be able to pay back the loan.
Running your political campaign will require you to disclose how it's financed. Again why? Because people realized long ago that you don't bite the hand that is feeding you or something. Meaning you should expect a strong bias by that politician for their backers.
And so why care about a public figure getting money from the Koch Industries? Because it adds a crucial information on how to process the opinions coming out of that public figure.
Yes it's possible that the source of money doesn't affect anything, but it's also highly possible that it does and many times it does, so why not care about it?
All of those are true! Those projects serve their corporate masters, not you-the-user.
If you get some benefit from using them as a dev, it's either incidental or part of a larger plan to lure you into their corporate "ecosystem" (think: why is React so much more dominant than Vue or Svelte?)
This was the first I'd heard of this and thought it sounded interesting, so I looked into it.
If I were a fact-checker, I guess I'd rate this as "mostly false". He's not "bankrolled by Koch Industries", but he runs a non-profit which publicly discloses donors and one of the Koch brothers donated some money to it.
But it did lead me down an interesting far-left rabbit hole, where the worldview is that a guy saying "respect people doing blue collar jobs" and encouraging people to keep working to improve their lives is treated as a nefarious enemy, so that was fun. A good reminder that QAnon doesn't have a monopoly an eyeroll-inducing political views.
More capitalist propaganda. You're incorrect... workers do get paid in a command economy. Of course there isn't a command economy on earth, so this is pointless whataboutism on your part, but like I said... capitalist propaganda.
I'd never heard of this guy before this morning (and I was happier then). Given his image, you'd think his Wikipedia page would be quick mention if he'd ever held a blue-collar job himself. Far as I can tell, however, he has only worked a a TV personality and opera singer.
Given that, and the fact that his spiel below is exactly what I'd want my employees to believe if I were a rich sociopath, my conclusion is that he's a shill, pure and simple.
I read the article, and... I get it. But something about this just seems weird to me. I grew up mostly on a family farm, worked every day of my life in some capacity since I was 9 or 10 years old, and did shit jobs to pay for college (which I eventually dropped out of right before graduation). I don't think my route into tech is that different from many of the other folks I've worked with... this guy lived a /very/ charmed and privileged existence compared to the average American tech worker, and going to work at an Amazon warehouse to get a reality check seems... patronizing somehow. I am glad he got a reality check, but I feel like there's another way to do this, or at least how to write about it.
I think part of that feeling is coming from how we've been socialized in the middle/upper classes to perceive people with lower incomes working more physical jobs than us.
It's no longer acceptable to be snooty towards people in these positions, but we haven't dropped the stigma totally, and now the acceptable way to view + interact with them is to act (in the performative sense, because many of us don't actually know) with deference, assuming that their lives are truly miserable and their dignity is on the line every day they work such jobs. The expectation is that we must feel sorry for them and treat them better than other people because of it, or treat them with kid gloves.
When you adopt such a stance, the idea of someone willingly going and doing one of these terrible no good jobs does seem patronizing -- it's masochistic even, and so is viewed as suspect and "touristy". When someone does such a thing they are "disrespecting themselves" by people with this view. If anyone ever tries to provide and alternative view and tell us that most people's lives in these positions aren't so bad by going and experiencing it themselves, however partially, we heap scorn on them. "They don't know what it's really like, it's horrible what these people have to do." "They have millions of dollars in the bank so their experience can be dismissed." Etc.
I just don't think you can provide an accurate view by working a job like this for six weeks and leaving right as it starts getting bad. I also think it is fair to dismiss anyone with millions in the bank who reports about their stints in a warehouse as an alternative take.
I'm not offended by the piece because I don't actually think the author is trying to give a critical take about manual labour. It didn't sound like he thought critically about the experience at all besides feeling good about himself. Instead this piece reads more like somebody recommending a trip to Bali.
Of all the comments in this thread, I think this one most accurately captures the mentality of those disparaging the author. It certainly aligns with how I reflexively reacted, before taking time to consider more deeply.
> this guy lived a /very/ charmed and privileged existence
His experience in tech doesn't sound so charmed to me. He was obsessed with climbing the corporate ladder. He slept in the office and woke up early every morning to start grinding again. He worked so much he didn't even have time to play a game with his son.
He tried another kind of work to see how it compared, and he learned stuff. There's nothing patronizing about that.
A) that’s how Microsoft functions I had a director comment on how productive I was when I worked 60-70 hour weeks, how unproductive I was when I worked 40 hours. Coworkers would regularly work 6am-6pm plus respond to messages overnight.
B) in my early years I too worked my butt off in a very similar manner thinking this was The Way(tm) until I realized I was burning myself out (though if I was making Microsoft money back then I’m sure I would have accepted it) so maybe this is a rite of passage. Or maybe I’m still harboring completely unacceptable norms
Life is fundamentally unpleasant and once you have your basic daily needs met you have time to develop mental issues. In the west basically everyone including the homeless don't have to worry about being eaten, murdered, starving or dying from exposure. This leaves a lot of leeway for everyone to think how bad they have it while historically being in the top 1%.
It's rather hard to have empathy for someone who has it better than you. But I've found it helps to also remind yourself that the majority of people who ever lived will feel the same way about you.
Why deny his experience, though? Not everything needs to be viewed through a lens of privilege. I hope the author gained an appreciation for those less fortunate or less ambitious. At least they have experienced the "other side," so to speak.
He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives.
Good on him for having an epiphany, but I'd wager that he'd have a different perspective if he had to do that job long past his soft-handed tendonitis episode in order to feed his family that he barely mentioned in his interview.
Imagine having built so small of a life for yourself and your family that in order to get a reality check, you have to check yourself in to rehab with the "common folk" in order to rescue yourself from your "depression".
It's lamentable, not commendable. It has all happened before, and it will happen again.
This is not a salvation story; it is a cautionary tale. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
>He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives.
He literally didn't though if you read the piece, he's very aware of the nature of a rich guy going to work a manual job
>"I am not going to bill an Amazon job as some sort of upper-middle-class panacea, something you go do just like you go enroll in survivalist camps or silent retreats. The job can be dehumanizing, physically wearing if not outright painful, and mind-numbingly boring if you can’t invent little games for yourself while lifting 300 boxes an hour for eleven hours straight. The job has been incredibly rewarding to me, far beyond what I had expected. It saved me from a downward spiral that I just could not get myself out of. But it’s no dream job. I want out of there as soon as Peak ends; I do not want to stay a minute longer."
I grew up blue collar, I'm not offended by this at all. Is he supposed to be categorically excluded from ordinary jobs just because he lucked out in life, like some reverse class segregation? This isn't Jack Dorsey meditating in Myanmar while there's riots on the streets or Zuckerberg touring Middle America, it's just some dude who felt depressed and changed his job up to get a different experience.
To be fair, in the episode where he details the tendonitis, he spends a lot of time describing the ways that the AMZN warehouse bureaucracy is designed to abuse their workers (delay their claims, structure work alternatives to be impossible to accept, etc,) and reflects on how this affects those who rely on their warehouse jobs for, e.g., family health insurance.
Maybe it's less patronising, and more just blindingly obvious to those of us who have had crap jobs in the past?
Having grown up adjacent to upper-middle class people (I'm arguably entering that sphere now, but I definitely didn't start there), I think a bunch of them could benefit from hearing this story from one of their peers.
Instead of moving geographically, the author moved social-economically to experience something different.
I think it's great, we crave authentic experiences on the road, this should also be something more common. If more people (on the top) do this, we'll have a lot less of those out of touch just eat cake stories.
It has some extra sense to tourism it's like taking photo smiled with poor villager to pretend you are kind. "Human zoo tourism" is close to what this sense means.
> I had what I would stereotype as a traditional Chinese upbringing in America, which meant my parents very much expected straight A's. Anytime a B happened, something had gone wrong. The explanation was never like you lack the talent or whatever, but that you didn’t work hard enough.
It sounds like the author never got a chance to figure out the intersection between what he liked to do and what he was actually good at. Instead, he was trained to respond to the approval of authority figures. So the true north of his internal compass pointed to whatever the person in charge at the time thought of him.
Fast forward to 2021:
> I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. I skied on weekdays, shopped at Target at 11am with nobody there, and played video games. But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I became unmoored, set adrift in a sea of theoretical possibility only to drown in unbounded optionality. Novelty and excitement turned into a spiraling vortex of depression as I began to wake up sometimes at noon, sometimes 2pm, and on the rare occasion even getting out of bed at 6pm.
With no authority figure to send the positive vibes he craved, the author felt adrift. This is where the gig at Amazon comes in. Authority figures galore and a clear sense of what a job well done meant.
Some are chalking this up to poverty tourism. Maybe it's something else.
> It sounds like the author never got a chance to figure out the intersection between what he liked to do and what he was actually good at. Instead, he was trained to respond to the approval of authority figures.
I also read that section and thought it unfortunate the author missed that realization as being the likely root cause. External validation seems to be a major driver of his unhappiness. There's nothing wrong with finding solace in structured work but I think if he returns to his old job he's likely to reach burn out unless he can identify this as a root cause.
I made that connection for myself as I've had a strangely similar recent experience to his, albeit without the Amazon warehouse job. I burned out, took multiple months off of work, didn't implement any lasting structures, and became depressed. But I did spend a ton of time in therapy to evaluate my mental health and what drove me to burn out. Practicing self-awareness and emotional awareness has made me more optimistic about finding routines and habits which will bring more fulfillment.
I’ve taken a similar path. Have always been super anxious at work, left my job. That was almost 2 years ago. I’m finally getting to the point with self awareness and emotional awareness that I feel I can return and succeed.
This person seems like they are suffering from typical tech bubble non-awareness disease. They always strive to make the world a better place as… a director of Facebook. Debatable. Early retirement is such a nightmare for me that.. I became an Amazon Warehouse Associate out of boredom? I’m not sure how any of this narcissism is making the world a better place.
Did you actually read the article? He's probably the one person in tech that is directly aware of what it's like to work at a warehouse because he actually did it for real. He's not claiming to be "making the world a better place" by working at Facebook. He's telling the story of how he got burned out from that world and sought out a real "honest labor" job that he'd heard a ton about in the media to snap out of it and get real.
What more could someone possibly do to wave off the label of "tech bubble non-awareness disease," in your opinion?
He learned what a grueling job was for a few weeks. He did not learn what it means when that grueling job is your past, present, and/or future. The part about the takeout food seals that impression
“For me, a lot of my meaning comes from two things. One is doing something in the world that feels like it's actually making things a little better somehow. And so contributing to society in some meaningful way.”
To be fair, his most recent job after Microsoft and FB was a Gates- foundation funded startup building tools for healthcare in underdeveloped contexts. I think that might be what the phrase refers to?
How dare he find meaning in things that are different from you. Congratulations on figuring out how to find fulfillment and a balanced life before the rest of us. Philip's journey toward that is clearly different from yours.
I just find it kind of worrisome that he finds meaning in work that other people are exploited for for a lack of better options. Why would a financially independent person choose to help enrich a large corporation over, say, voluntary work to help underprivileged people, animals or whatever else you can think of?
> I just find it kind of worrisome that he finds meaning in work that other people are exploited for for a lack of better options.
I think viewing every warehouse worker as a member of a lower labor caste who is merely being exploited is not a warranted view. The fact that people can easily find meaning in this labor is further indication it is incorrect.
You're also presuming a rather tyrannical existence for these people.. wherein their path through life must be dictated to them by their "best options." People make suboptimal choices for all kinds of reasons, and they don't view their circumstances as being "exploited." Probably because the companies they work for didn't _create_ the suboptimal choices for them in the first place, their employer is a matter of circumstance, not conspiracy.
> Why would a financially independent person choose to help enrich a large corporation over, say, voluntary work to help underprivileged people, animals or whatever else you can think of?
Again.. people make suboptimal choices intentionally. The explanation here is "this is a very low risk option that can be exited immediately if such a whim arises." And in all likelihood, exiting in this way wouldn't prevent you from being hired back later if your fortunes or whims reverse.
Forgive me, but you seem to be a little too comfortable looking down your nose at these people.
A lot of feel-good jobs have an unfortunate public facing component. There are segments of the population that treat service workers with contempt or sometimes even violence.
Retail workers and social workers dealt with the worst of it, teachers deal with this behind the scenes, and nurses and doctors became (more) exposed to this over the pandemic. People don’t put up with emotional, verbal and sometimes physical abuse, and they shouldn’t.
Something about what you said triggered a memory in me. I remember a story about how westerners embraced meditation and how monks described how they ( westerners allowed into the monastery ) completely missed its point by enjoying staring into sand, when it was in theory supposed to induce boredom.
I will admit that I am not sure how I feel about the article. I might be still processing it.
He describes exactly what things he finds meaning in:
> For me, a lot of my meaning comes from two things. One is doing something in the world that feels like it's actually making things a little better somehow. And so contributing to society in some meaningful way.
The parent is commenting on how Philip's previous (and new!) work positions apparently fulfilled those criteria in no small way, in Philip's view. They are noting that it is striking that this is the case, as from the perspective of an outsider looking in, it does not appear that a director at facebook, nor an amazon warehouse worker, fulfills the stated criteria.
> Launched a global health software nonprofit, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, focused on using smartphones to improve rapid testing in low-income countries.
Granted that is 3 years out of a 20-odd year career, but it's the stint immediately preceding the events of the blog post.
I appreciate him sharing his experiences, and I've only known about it because he blogged about it.
It rings true to some of my friend and is potentially very useful to people in the same situation. Brain chemistry doesn't care about rich or poor, and unprivileged here in the US could be extremely privileged in other parts of the world. Engaging in a race to the bottom is of no use to anyone and solves nothing.
But it's not just a tech bubble thing; it's more of a 6-figure yuppie thing. I knew a doctor making $500k/year in L.A. who insisted on taking vacations in disaster zones, etc., as a tourist (not with Doctors w/o Borders) so he could "experience human suffering" and "become empathetic" to his fellow men through their "shared suffering" of being in the same approximate location as people who were starving or seriously wounded.
He doesn't actually do anything with this "increased empathy." He just feels like it makes his EQ super high or something silly like that.
Yep, the guy never reflects on his privilege not needing this job. Bad on the blogger too for not prompting them on this - it could have been an interesting article..
I would encourage you to listen to the podcast, because he definitely does reflect on this, but it wasn’t the focus of my interview, because this was focused on ways in which burned out tech workers try to find meaning in their life, not an analysis of low paid jobs.
I left devops behind to go back to an IT help desk. Around a 20% paycut but I never even have to have email on my phones, no on call, no weekends, I barely have to think much. Good benefits and still above average pay for my area and I can return to grad school part time. I realized I just dont deal well with stress and it easily spills over into my personal life, my stress started effecting my spouse so I had to go.
Graduated in 07, was working middle office for a bank, economy tanked so I left to go travel in a low cost of living area (Central America) for a bit.
Came back, couldn’t find a job so worked at a grocery store for two years throwing freight.
Honestly kinda loved it. No stress besides the occasional surly coworker, but it felt very peaceful making a customer-ravaged shelf look whole again. Couldn’t afford the low wages now but at the time not sure I would have traded it for much.
Amazon's medical coverage is no UPS but it is extremely competitive against plans that union members try to tout as better. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753455 as an old discussion where the thread creator thinks their plan is a lot better "due to unions" but it's actually a lot worse.
I have a friend who works in finance at a huge bank. He makes a killing, but absolutely despises his job. His stated goal is to make enough to retire early (we're ~40 now, so soon-ish) and then work part time at a hardware store just for something to do. Pretty much for the reasons you said, meet people, low responsibility and stress, the job ends when you punch out.
I think I'd get bored pretty quick, but I do understand where you're coming from.
Often the tradeoff is not worth it (as in I've seen situations where people were working way more stressful situations for like 20%-30% pay bump), not just talking values, but if it's really high stress it better be paying enough to be able to retire in 10 years because constant stress will kill you faster than repetitive physical labor.
My parents post-retirement after not working for 10+ years both found roles at an Amazon Fulfillment Center - one at the ship dock and the other in returns. They are both in their 70s and built a nice nest for themselves, neither need it for the money. In fact, my dad was a machine learning professor, multiple publications, and they ran a small medium sized business for 20+ years (at their peak they were running 80M USD annual revenue). They both do it for the mental health and for the physical exercise. They meet a lot of people just like them, some of the workers are living in 3M+ USD homes - although most are not, it’s mostly kids that went to state schools and climb the FC ladder.
But then why enable such a shitty company actively working at eroding human dignity at work and make a billionaire asshole even richer instead if doing actual good like working at, say, a food bank or ant other charity?
I can’t speak for their intent. It has less to do with the altruism or the “mission” and more on their personal well being. My dad survived multiple cancers and after he got his strength back, he wanted to build back up his strength. It’s the structure of the system that helps him. He was telling me about their productivity KPIs, and he sees them as fitness goals - as he builds pallets per hour, etc.
My mom spent the better part of her life as the “COO” of their business, so after being retired for so long, she seeks the mental stimulation of work. They’ve never worked in a corporate office, so seeing the structure and thinking behind Amazon amazes her. They’ve always had their own warehouses, distribution centers, trucking, etc. but they built that from the ground up and never scaled because they were “learning on the job”. Never seen what good looks like.
They both keep to themselves. No one in their section know about their backgrounds.
My parents had to close their jewelry store that they ran for 35 years during the pandemic. My mom has been working the night shift at an Amazon fulfillment center and she loves it.
Working in a warehouse for 6 weeks is gruelling, and from the interview it sounds like he got a taste of that experience, but I think there's a marked difference between working for the novelty of it and working because you're living paycheck to paycheck.
Saying that though I think he's right in the sense that having experience of working in an environment like that does give you the appreciation for the relative comforts of a tech job.
I've worked retail jobs when younger, and sitting on your butt all day writing code is way easier...
I agree absolutely. One of these people can stop whenever the experience stops being fun and the other has few other options. It's about as inspiring as poverty tourism or an episode of Undercover Boss.
The other way to look at this is that Amazon actually reports injuries. My brother worked at a "mom & pop" carpet warehouse and they wouldn't report anything unless it resulted in a hospital visit i.e. broken bones, high blood loss, concussion, etc...
yeah I always found the public, but especially tech's industries interest in Amazon's warehouse conditions somewhat dubious.
Where I used to live there were tons of people who worked at normal warehouses and switched over to Amazon b/c the pay was better and things were basically the same.
Amazon gets tons of, at least somewhat deserved, heat for what they do, but compared to the truly horrific things done by something like the meatpacking industry? idk if the amount of shit they get is equal to the actual on the ground conditions.
Working for a mom and pop manual labor gig generally sucks wayyyy more than a big corporate one. (Lower pay, shittier if any benefits, longer hours, much more nepotism, no recourse for issues etc.)
I think the rate is much higher for most of professional sports.
Which does not make me disagree with your take (I jokingly call all those kinesio tapes "doping" as well: they help tendons and muscles take loads they can't take naturally).
When I was in a warehouse slugging cast iron and black steel all day I could barely walk by the time I got home.
Spending all day on your feet, loaded with a large mass going up and down, and wearing the least shitty boots you can afford does a number on you. I still feel it in my foot and calf to this day and it’s been years.
The old guy I worked with must have been going on 65 and slugged harder and faster than me with less bitching. He hated the company, but not the work he did. Absolute trooper.
Amazon will be the first to adopt the exo-skeleton-assist for factory/warehouse workers, which the unit is registered to you and any damage will result in a docking of your medical coverage/pay.
> "Warning: Your exo-skeleton waste container is full."
> "Warning: You have ran out of your free waste container quota for this shift. If you require a new waste container, it will be deducted from your pay"
> "Alert: High stress levels detected. You are required to report to an AmaZen(TM) Mindfulness Practice Room [0] for 30 minutes after your shift"
Qantas has for decades been one of the safest airlines. During this period, it was also the airline with some of the highest minor incident rates. I believe I read this in The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error by Sidney Dekker.
You may find it a useful thing to consult on the subject.
The worst of poverty tourism is when it is done impersonally without recognition of the inescapable circumstances of others. Do see how real people live and work, connect with them to their faces. Recount your difficult escape from a low-income origin.
But: don’t think that you are one of them and able to advocate as a representative if you aren’t, a la Pulp’s Common People.
We should encourage resilience, but be sympathetic about its absence. Everyone should choose to learn to shake off a punch to the face, but that doesn’t negate the real trauma of someone getting assaulted who didn’t have that lesson.
> But: don’t think that you are one of them and able to advocate as a representative
I don't see how the author did that. He advocated a change of mindset by dialing to an extremely different situation to solve his own issues/or other people with the same issues, not that the situation is great or perfect.
I don't see where he advocated for it. For what it's worth, his effort in the warehouse is already more than 99% of more privileged folks who has never needed to do that. I fail to see why this is being criticized.
The comments criticizing him as patronizing is in turn incredibly patronizing of the warehouse workers themselves, the irony.
I did the other way round. After 5 years in Tesco warehouse somewhere in the UK, I went back to Poland to learn web development. Picking jobs are cruel, I'd advise anyone against taking it and trying hardest they can to avoid it. It gives you problems with your back, your legs, gets you bored about life. You get back home physically tired and mentally numb each freaking day, that's because you wear your arse out there forced to ignore any safety rules just to get on time with all tasks and you still get some angry manager calling you every now and then because his managers always push him to achieve more 'picks/hour'.
If you see warehouse job ad - run.
BTW, a highly disturbed sleep like he is describing is a common sign of burnout/depression/anxiety disorder. Do not ignore it! There are drugs and therapy, it is worth it. It is double worth it if you have the money to stay unemployed or have other ways of getting some extended rest, at least 3 months. BTW, there is even some chemical signalling pathway explanation for that connection. Or maybe it is hypothesized? IDK, it's above my knowledge level. But the correlation surely is real and strong.
Sorry for the double comment, but I think you may be wrong about burnout. There's reasons to think that long pauses won't help with burnout. Once people return to the original conditions, they often wind up right back where they started.
You bring up financial means, but the issue that it puts you into a lower caste of citizen, entitled to fewer rights. This position may be temporary, mitigable, or you may be in a position talent / career wise where it doesn't matter.
The fact remains that in the eyes of our society you have become less valuable as a person. Lots of people can't take that hit.
OP here. Decided to share this on HN because it seemed relevant given the earlier article on seeking structure. A lot of folks responded to my comment about Philip sharing that they too have experienced a yearning for physical labor.
> For me, a lot of my meaning comes from two things. One is doing something in the world that feels like it's actually making things a little better somehow. And so contributing to society in some meaningful way.
> But the other thing is socialization with my coworkers is a huge part of my daily satisfaction in a job. You might be free Monday through Friday but all of your friends are working when you want to grab coffee.
I can't relate to many of the author's life experiences, but this quote really hit home. I think we're all wired to want to (a) make something better and (b) share our life and experiences with other people.
How (a) and (b) manifest varies greatly depending on life background and opportunities, but I can say most of the mental healthy difficulties I've had previously in life can be related to those two points.
I came here to say the same thing and was glad to see someone else already did. So I simply upvoted you.
I might add that also he was looking for two more things that some times also are rejuvenating:
(c) physical exercise
(d) a relief from decision fatigue: "I did not want to be asked to make a lot of decisions everyday. . . . I wanted literally to be told what to do every day and I wanted that structure to be rigorous." This can get old after a while too, but routine can be a nice change for a while, if every day you at your old job you had to be a creative or always solve new problems, like if you were a designer, director, etc.
There are a lot of people who have given up on a) and instead spend all their time trying to tear the stuff other people build down because they got bored.
interesting that he's so programmed to work that just relaxing for a bit made him depressed. hard to see how working 11 hours a day is going to make it easier for him to still not have to put his kids on the calendar.
on a side note, i wonder if the actual therapy was just doing something physical. sitting down not moving for hours and hours is not what we were built to do. i always found working out, brazilian jiu jitsu, hiking, anything physical to be very therapeutic if i've been inside an office all day.
More than just doing something physical, something group/team/class based like BJJ would also give the camaraderie and socialization that satisfied him.
I hear a lot of retired people say "I miss working", but when probed, they'll say things like "I miss the routine", "I miss the people I saw all the time", "I miss the structure". Work is not the only place you get these! Going to BJJ, kickboxing, clay studios, adult sports leagues, walking groups, some volunteer opportunities, etc., all fit the bill. I think some people put so much of their life/identity into work that they can't even imagine something else...
If anyone is interested in trying Brazilian jiu jitsu, just know it’s common to be completely confused for a while before the different positions/techniques start to click. It’s like a huge flowchart, and you’re randomly jumping into the middle somewhere.
I think this is partly a story of retiring without having enough in your life to replace work. I understand how that's possible, as full days of work leave me not wanting to do much in the evenings (I don't have kids, so I can't imagine where parents find the energy) - that said, it's probably important for your mental health post-retirement to find things outside of work to engage in well before your retirement date comes.
I work in FAANG and enjoy Costco. Sometimes in the food court I day-dream of working there. You know what you are doing, you use your body, you go home and don't think about it.
I told my friend. He thought it sounded a lot like larping.
If you work in a FAANG (presumably as some sort of knowledge worker) you have a unique opportunity to never have to work again within just a few years of saving.
If you are able to get a job at a FAANG, you should also be able to take a look at your expenditures and determine what you actually need in life. Maybe getting a smaller living place will be the stumbling block for most, but think of the freedom you gain. If you find yourself fantasizing about working in Costco during your daily life, chances are the things you spend on aren't that effective at bringing you satisfaction anyway. Yet unlike the vast majority of people you actually have the means to escape and build the life you want i.e. a massively well remunerated job with remote working options. So why not do it?
I once took a "down shift" job and it didn't work well.
After only a few days I started seeing inefficiencies, some people slacking like crazy while others had to work for two, management that was really incompetent and could not be convinced to improve anything.
I mean, people were nice and everything and I enjoyed the social aspects of the job, but I learned that I was too competitive to function in a less demanding job
Inefficient for the company maybe, but if you are not going to be paid more for extra work or diligence, and the work you are doing is not particularly meaningful or helpful to others (could be wrong as I don't know what we're talking about) why would you work hard unless you are larping?
It'll depend on your personal factors, but the median salary at FAANGs is nuts at $220-250k. Let's say you are an average FAANG person in Washington state and are paid a bit less than the median with 200K as your starting point. That's probably going to be in the 150K take home range. Save 70% of that at $105K your first year, and it only speeds up from there since the salaries reach 300k-400K in just a few years. This is just the raw salary, and if you take into account all the FAANG perks, generous healthcare package, stocks, social capital, connections, even the free food, etc. it just snowballs like crazy unless your priorities revolve around conspicuous consumption.
Based on the 4% rule, you can then determine how much you need to retire, sell your house (because you'll have a mortgage instead of rent at those salaries) bounce to a lower COL area and then enjoy the rest of your life. You don't even need to stop working if you don't want to, but can downshift to part time and earn much more than the median full-time salary. If you are a SWE you'll have offers, many of them remote.
There were many times in my programming career when I wanted to take a mental break and just do some kind of menial job for a few months. There are many routine jobs that don't require much training so it should be easy to do one for 6 months. The problem is generally that most people's career paths do not allow for this kind of thing. It looks bad on your resume to have 'truck driver' or 'shelf stocker' in-between tech jobs.
I solved this by simply getting hobbies that involve manual labor. You get the physical exertion and the ability to see the results of the work of your hands--without the drudgery of a job and the pressure of having your livelihood depend on not wrecking your body. If you're not feeling up to it today, just don't go out to the garage. Need extra zen time to forget your JIRA queue? Spend a few extra hours hobbying.
Started with auto mechanics, learned basic maintenance, moved on to minor, then major auto repairs. Then tried woodworking, built a few pieces of furniture for the house, then moved on to sheet metal. Finally ended up building a two-seat airplane. Physical hobbies are both satisfying AND low-pressure. Plus, you shouldn't have to quit your tech job to get a hobby.
I got deep into homebrewing beer for a while for this reason. It was extremely satisfying to make something tangible and physically taxing after spending all week tapping on a keyboard. Not to say that software isn't "real", but having a physical thing you can show off and share and enjoy hits differently.
Unfortunately having dozens of gallons of good beer on hand at all times led to some pretty bad habits so I had to get out of that game (plus I had kids, so RIP to both hobby time and frequent drinking). Still looking for the next hobby that really clicks with me, the intersection of science and creativity and engineering and socializing that is brewing was pretty perfect.
Genuine question, why does it look bad? I don't think this would be a problem at all where I live (Australia). Worst case you could just leave it off your resume.
Working in an Amazon warehouse can be refreshing and restorative when you can quit after 10 weeks and have millions of dollars in the bank. Not so much when you get tendonitis after 6 weeks but have to stare down another 30 years of this and still won’t have any savings.
Yes and we are all aware of that. Are you saying that his experience and blog cause harm to those people who have to do it?
There's been countless posts about Amazon warehouse conditions on Hackernews and other news sources.
The takeaway is more that one of the contributing reasons the world is so dystopian is that people at the top literally have no awareness or understanding or what life is like at the bottom.
"Harm"? Not really. But this guy is not much different from a millionaire pretending to be homeless and bumming quarters at the train station. Might he find it an interesting experience? Sure. But it's fundamentally just a form of "class vacation" as rich people often do.
I have a sense of guilt when I compare myself to my high school friends who have to work longer, work harder, and get paid significantly less. They are just as smart, they just made different choices. And this sense of guilt and of feeling like I don't deserve it just compounds the imposter syndrome to the point I can't even enjoy what I have because I think that at any moment I'll be "discovered" and lose everything. I think it stems from my inability to appreciate what I have because I have this instinctive belief that if I let myself, then something will happen for whatever reason.
Now that I wrote this I realize it has little to do with the original article (which I read, both parts actually), but hopefully someone has some good advice, so I don't have to resort to quitting and going to an Amazon FC to feel better about myself.
I have had this experience. Sometimes its important to remember that money is just a proxy. For example, I have paid for 10 friends from High School to spend a week in a 3,000 SQ FT cabin in Colorado and just relax.
I'm going to say a few things that I normally wouldn't, just to better illustrate my point. A few of my friends make less than $30k a year. One is 1st grade teacher (male) and one is a full time math tutor. They are great people who go to work and make a difference. I wouldn't feel the same if they just laid on their couch and drank everyday...but still.
Remember money is really for experiences. I paid for the Cabin, 10 sking passes and sent each of them $2,000 for the trip to cover air fairs and transportation.
The whole thing was maybe $30,000 and it's one of my better memories.
I would say -- be intentionally generous and look for ways to help your life long friends. Yes, it helps them. Yes, it helps you too. You would be shocked how much purpose it brings to your life.
Most 40 year olds have less than 2 people in their life that would lend them $10k. Be that friend and never keep track.
This is the reason you work hard and are paid more than you should be - to be a better friend than you otherwise would be able to be.
Out of curiosity, did this create any weird dynamics with your friends, or expectations for the future? Also, how did you decide how much to give everyone? If one person makes $80k and one makes $30k, did you send the same amount to everyone?
Thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds like a blast!
I sent he same amount to everyone. Its funny because those with no money, really appreciate it but they dont want to be a burden. They really couldn't come without it. I know it and I dont want money to be the reason and I dont want them to have to acknowledge it at all.
Those with money are surprised. " I know Ben needs some help, but you really didn't need to get mine too?". In someways I think it blessed one who is well off ( maybe makes $175k ). He said he couldn't remember the last time someone paid for something above $100 for him. He was genuinely touched.
I have done a few different versions of this trip. I also went deep sea fishing and to Yellowstone national park of which I paid for those as well.
The only potentially weird dynamic is that I get emails from time to time from that group suggesting our "next big adventure" and usually it's implied I am paying, but it hasn't been that weird really.
I believe I've done 6 trips. I always pay for the lodging and have paid for the flights a few times and maybe half the food.
For me, If Im going to work hard and sometimes alone on projects that are hard to feel the sense of purpose in a practical way, I like the idea that once a year I do a family vacation and once a year I try to do a good friend trip. I put usually one picture in my room next to my computer as a reminder of how what I'm doing makes a practical difference.
My friends absolutely love it. Most adults ( myself included) have such little time weekly for relationships. Its just much more important that we tell ourselves. You think friends aren't important, until something bad happens. That's when you realize work isn't the most important thing.
hope the story helps.
invest in your friends -- be a giver in a world of takers.
> They are just as smart, they just made different choices.
Most people fall within a similar range of intelligence, and where they end up in life is far more a result of the choices they made than how smart they are. So you made a bunch of choices, like learning tech, etc, and they made a bunch of choices, like maybe partying instead of studying, and now you get to enjoy the rewards.
You shouldn’t feel guilty about that, you earned it by making better choices.
I don't think guilt is helpful, but this logic has some issues. You obviously cannot have everyone be a coder. And becoming a coder takes many intervening steps of which choices are only one factor. Being born in a developed country (heck only the US has those truly insane salaries), having a natural interest for it, having universities and the means to study, living in a safe home etc. these are all unearned yet make up 90% of the end result.
The feeling should be that they deserve more, not that you deserve less. It's not that you're an imposter, it's that they need to be "discovered" and given more. Or they should go make different choices if they want. Nonetheless, while they "give up" some things, they gain other things with their choices, which you don't have. For example, they might have clear work hours, they might not take work home mentally, they might have more time with the family, etc.
This may not feel like a serious enough problem, but paying someone (like a therapist) to listen and advise can really help clarify one’s thinking. Lots of therapists meet virtually now too.
Worked in different big tech for 7y, and took a sabbatical because I could, and so why not?
Well after a year of travelling and working on my own ideas and a bit of contract work, I entered a complete pit of depression. I mean contemplating ending it all to stop the pain. Instead big daddy Bezos was handing out tech jobs like candy so I took one begrudgingly just to have someone else to be accountable to, because I found it completely impossible to live with only my own expectations.
It helped. I'm halfway good again (or perhaps just a different, darker normal), with a different outlook on what and why I do things. But goodness.. I will never retire again. Not without kids to raise, or something/someone else to be accountable to.
Can you help me understand this perspective? Was there really nothing you wanted to do with your life that you had to resort to getting a corporate job to keep yourself sane? A guy a used to work with went through the same thing recently after his startup was acquired. I’m not sure how much he made, but I’m pretty sure he’s set for life. He stayed retired for about six months before getting bored and getting another job. It’s just completely baffling to me.
I want to sail the world. That is my one and only dream in this life. If I made enough money to retire, that’s what I would do. I would never dream of getting another job just to fill the time.
Granted, I’ve never been retired and probably won’t be for a very long time, so I don’t know for sure what it would feel like. But this perspective that retirement is boring and/or soul crushing just doesn’t compute with me. Maybe I’m missing something.
In my experience when you leave something you carry “doingness” inertia. If you carry that into a motivated and structured activity then you might have a great time, especially if you find others who want to do the same
thing.
If you dump your “doingness” into something that doesn’t feed back into your social connection or reputation, like playing video games alone in the middle of the day while everyone else is working, and expect Gandalf to drop in and send you on an epic quest, you’ll find yourself adrift at best.
From what I’ve seen, most people who find themselves lost do not have a “one and only dream in life.”
> expect Gandalf to drop in and send you on an epic quest, you’ll find yourself adrift at best
Oof, too true. It's a dangerous expectation that I had/have (and try to break) that purpose will present itself TO me. Probably because it did throughout my younger life, but only because I was inside of an institution which provided this (often with it's own motive).
(semi)retirement removed me from the institutions, and not being part of the regular rhythm of the work day can alienate you from your usual social network. Without a family demanding something of you, adrift is accurate.
Sure. I would offer two ideas which may resonate or not. They aren't provable facts, but experiences from my life and others'.
1. Part of your desire to sail the world is having it as a dream. It's the scarcity of being able to sail that gives it such high value. When you remove that scarcity with complete time and money freedom (and after some time, normalize yourself to it), the reality of sailing the world might change your perspective.
Now you have to acquire a boat, gain a shitload of knowledge, care for and repair it, invest significant effort to plan and prepare a trip, take significant risk being out on the ocean, be alone for months or recruit people to come with you, can you be alone with just them for months, is the opportunity cost of being away from family and friends for so long worth it... etc. It's no small feat.
Depending on how you are wired, your body might MUCH prefer to sit at home, eat tasty food, and submit to the youtube algorithm. Now that you have time and money freedom, you don't HAVE to do anything! I think your body knows it, and will optimize for risk reduction and energy conservation.
caveat: if there's something more here, like your late father taught you how to sail and you grew up on a boat, or your best friends are entering an international organized race, then for sure you will likely sail.
2. What happens after you sail the world? Do you sail it twice? Maybe you find it enough to just be at sea forever, but likely you come home to your apartment/house and .. do what exactly? The next thing on your list after "sail the world" perhaps, and repeat. If my first point doesn't terminate the loop for you, you can chase your next desire and next desire. Is that a life well lived?
Lots of people absolutely retire and live happy lives. But my sense is that they are much older, and so are still motivated by time scarcity, just in the fatal sense. Or they invest themselves deeply into something meaningful outside themselves like community, charity, teaching, caregiving.. or WORK! Then you'd be back to where you are, with some new experiences under your belt. Totally worth it. But I'd guess that almost no one puts their feet up and happily sips a mohito on the beach for 50 years.
This is just poverty tourism. And it reeks of a publicity stunt of a sort for his podcast.
People work these jobs for years. Taking one of these jobs for six weeks is interesting - but you’re effectively a tourist having a completely different experience than the person that actually needs that job to live.
Found the article very interesting and, loved reading. We find fulfillment in different things, and there is no one single best for many people.
PS: I found the snarky responses and accusations of "poverty tourism" to be amusing. It looks like there are a lot of bitter people who sees only their way and demonize anyone else who dont see it.
Live your life, if you find physical work a therapy, do you... if you find seating and staring at a screen your own therapy.. do you!
Hopefully, we stop trying to justify perfectly clear articles to people are only interested in making other as miserable as they are.
> Slum tourism, poverty tourism, ghetto tourism or trauma tourism is a type of city tourism that involves visiting impoverished areas.
> The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word slumming to 1884. In London, people visited slum neighborhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch to observe life in this situation. Wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points, Manhattan on the Lower East Side, neighborhoods of poor immigrants, to see "how the other half lives".
> Slum tourism has been the subject of much controversy, with critics labelling the voyeuristic aspects of slum tourism as poverty porn.
> A primary accusation that the advocates against slum tourism make is that it "turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from".
Having worked those kinds of hard jobs whenever I complain about my job in tech I remind myself of those jobs and find solace in my relatively cushy job.
You know what is funny, coding, security, linux, etc... were my escape from the misery of those jobs.
I am so grateful for my job, it is better to die or something than to go back to those jobs. Glad that guy found solace but man, the politics is always 10x worse than office jobs, everyone has little to lose so they act like it, you get over the physical stuff fast but it still takes a toll, very very little time off, always struggling with money but I never fell into the "credit" trap so I was ok, but anyone that did credit if any kind (car payment, credit cards, etc..) or had kids worked a second job. You could get fired for sitting down.
I had manual labor job once, my coworkers were illegal immigrants and felons on probation. I was "laid off" (so i can get unemployment -- but I've never been on it) because I didn't look busy enough, although I finished all the work fast, never sat down and kept cleaning all the already clean stuff to look busy.
Even the nicer blue collar jobs are ruined by tech. GPS and microphones everywhere so they can squeeze every last sweat out of you. But then when they burn you out and lose out on their training cost or can't replace you they wonder why.
I'm surprised he didn't dedicate himself to volunteering, I assume he doesn't need the job because of money, and volunteering should provide a lot more connection to community and a feeling of "making a difference" that so many seek.
Alternatively a hobby farm or vineyard can give you plenty of opportunities to do manual labour and have varying amounts of responsibility; and I imagine it would be quite a bit more enjoyable than an Amazon warehouse.
It resonates with me working as a delivery driver [opinions are my own] (contracted, pretty much all Amazon drivers in the field) in SF that previously had a decades long office job. I was burnt out and needed an immediate change from spending years mostly inside.
From a physical and mental stand point, the work can be quite a lot. Amazon doesn't take it easy on you. However, after gaining some conditioning I enjoy being paid to spend time outside. It's confirmed that I need to take more serious look into fields that let me work outside.
To sustainably preform at my optimum, nutrition and recovery are essential. During "peak" (highest volume of pkgs moved) my watch will record anywhere from 10 - 14 mi a day of walking with over a +1,000 calories burned.
Navigating streets with tourist, delivering on hills with significant grades, abnormal addresses and entrances (it's never quite as straightforward as one might think), numerous not up to code unique hazards, and what can be daily route changes - [one day delivering to skyscrapers in the Financial, the next to apartments in the Tenderloin) makes for a stimulating week of work.
It's not for everyone but can be rewarding while allowing a more focused split between work/life rather than where you're never really "off" from work.
> I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. I skied on weekdays, shopped at Target at 11am with nobody there, and played video games. But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I became unmoored, set adrift in a sea of theoretical possibility only to drown in unbounded optionality. Novelty and excitement turned into a spiraling vortex of depression as I began to wake up sometimes at noon, sometimes 2pm, and on the rare occasion even getting out of bed at 6pm.
I'm perhaps repeating myself from the other thread but this post angered me more than I expected it to. Other commenters have picked up on it too, but many others seem not to see it. This sort of poverty tourism is actually really twisted and indicative of some very grim aspects of our world. I'm curious as to what the author thinks or whether they are aware of this.
Why does someone trying to understand something through first-hand experience get an -ism? I wish every white-collar role, especially c-suite and director level person at Amazon took the time to work on the warehouse floor, first-hand.
But there is no actual understanding. The person in question thinks it's a quaint little experience. The part about the food takeout illustrates this well: no comprehension about actually having to do this sort of labor your entire life. If this article does not seem like parody straight out of HBO's Silicon Valley I am not sure what to say
I think you’re judging this guy too harshly. It’s an entry-level job with everything spelled out and a very clear path to advancement. Anyone spending their entire life doing it knows exactly what choices they’re making. I could maybe see your point if this guy was trying to work as a carpenter or something.
Philip isn't the only one. I followed a very similar path; after a decades-long career in tech, I was completely burned out. It was caused by different issues than Philip, but not incomparable ones: the repetitive nature of the challenges, seeing the same mistakes made repeatedly, never really getting to be "off the clock," etc.
Though I've since gone back into the technology industry, I spent a couple of years happily doing what many in the tech industry might consider "grunt jobs-" physically demanding, low pay, often dirty.
The first thing that I realized is that there is something deeply satisfying about hard manual labor, and the absence of that satisfaction in much of the tech industry is probably the source of some of the industry's most insidious mental health challenges. Many tech workers try to fill in that gap with "extracurriculars" like the gym, running marathons, or weekend camping trips. While all of those things are good and healthy and have their place, I can promise you that they don't fill the same psychological space as a full day of hard manual labor for a paycheck. As such, I make it a point to regularly take my PTO now to spend a day doing labor-intensive side jobs. That might sound crazy, but I can promise that it does wonders for mental health.
The second thing that I've learned is that there's an entire industry built up around trying to ease office workers' mental health issues, and it is both highly profitable and arguably predatory. If one so much as whispers about ditching a gym membership in favor of actually getting paid to do landscaping, or of selling that expensive treadmill in favor of walking dogs for several hours on weekends, be prepared for a veritable army of people to tell you that you're crazy. Surely millions of people can't be wrong, the argument goes. I can promise that you don't need to put a tenth of your paycheck back out into your extracurriculars to get that accomplished, tired-but-rewarded feeling.
I can empathize to be honest. There's something awesome about doing physical work. You get to use your body to think and move, and feel concrete progress.
However, I think being a Tech CEO is at the opposite end of the spectrum from being an Amazon Warehouse Associate. Being somewhere in the middle seems very compelling.
He used to be a manager at a political think tank but went back to the trades because he found the latter not only more satisfying, concrete, and tangible, but also more mentally taxing, creative, philosophical, etc.
Whoa that really sucks. I met Philip Su a really long time ago when he was at Facebook. I think he came to our office in London to give a talk. Sad to hear he's been through such a difficult time. Hope life continues to improve for him and maybe he makes his way back to tech at some point.
> I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. ... But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I
My experience as well, though the awesome part lasted more like 3 months and decayed slowly till about month 6 when I started to feel listless and aimless. Soon after that I hit the realization (and this is the part that's most depressing, I think) that while I wasn't happy working I was also not happy not-working. Not just depressing, a little frightening.
Reading this and finding it amusing that Amazon, out of all places, is still operating the warehouse in a traditional way. Seems like a big win for the employees would be to have an Amazon Work app on their phone, which tracks their in/out time. Schedules could operate on rolling basis, so no one comes at exactly 6am, for example. You get 900 people funnel in from 5 to 8am, in 20 min increments. Everyone gets to park in peace, and no one is losing 20 minutes just waiting in line to leave the building. It's probably a more hectic scenario for the employer to operate.
Having something productive to do and a sense of purpose could definitely help in the short term.
However - he worked there for all of six weeks. I can see how it's helpful to have this option available for someone who needs income in the short term to make ends meet. It's the same with driving for Uber or Doordash, etc.
However, we are too dependent on Amazon as a society (USA). Partly this is because suburbanization and zoning requires driving out to the edge of town to shop at big box stores, and expensive urban real estate means smaller stores with limited variety of products.
If you are ever in the same situation: don't make yourself Bezos slave, instead get a damn hobby. And no, gaming does not count.
Things like woodworking and metalworking can give you a physical and also a mental excerise, and feels much more rewarding than playing he's or shopping. It can also be quite social as there are tons of people with similar hobbies, maker fares and meeting places.
And yes, if you like it but miss being able to support yourself financially you can probably turn it into a business
For the folks giving hot takes on this transcript of episode 1, I'd definitely recommend the full podcast (http://peaksalvation.com). I think Philip is genuinely motivated by the question of how someone with opportunities in the tech space can make the world better. (Hint - he's not a Mike Rowe alcolyte.)
I have seen multiple PhD students that when finished went to work on physical type of works. From fish gutting (If I used the right translation of the term) to forest works. Any of them I asked said something along the line of: they cannot take it anymore and it has been too intense to continue with anything that needs them to analyse and think.
There's something strangely satisfying in hard physical labor. When I do stuff at home, like renovations, installing stuff, gardening, or doing car stuff, even house cleaning, I get a strange kind of euphoria that I don't get even when doing stuff like working out in a gym or cycling, at least, not at the same degree.
Interesting story. I can easily see how the responsibilities of being in charge of a decent-sized company can wear you down..however I do not personally believe there would be so much fatigue though.
I am curious to hear stories from HN folks here who have been through similar trajectories
What this really shows is that it is a lot harder to do most anything other than being a CEO. Steve Jobs held CEO positions at Apple and Pixar simultaneously. Seriously doubt that either was a 20 hour a week job.
I could related to this person and article a lot. I've had similar thoughts, give up the tech job craziness and go drive Uber for a few months and not have to c check email and slack 24/7!
As someone who's worked almost the full gamut of work types, from warehouse to sales to manufacturing to software development, even service and call center work, I can say that there's something rewarding about physically demanding work, taxing though it may be, that you just don't get sitting at a desk. And there's something you get building an abstract machine with your mind at a keyboard that you can't get in a warehouse or a factory. These days I try to balance those things, I make sure I do things that are very tactile and physical and alsp sit at my workstation at least a few hours a week to make progress on my projects. I'd say having a bit of both feels pretty good.
I have had many moments in my life as a dev where I'm so stressed out and tired of it all, where it sounds like heaven to just go work on a farm, and plow some fields.
Was this during seasonal labor hiring? Otherwise, playing a simulator video game wouldn't cost someone a wage opportunity and potential union contract runaway.
jasonshen's blog is awesome! And regarging the case, that is basically what my father did. Left a corporate job to run his own small business 25 years ago and he has been much happier ever since.
I have mixed feelings about this. What this has proven is working at amazon warehouse sucks, and is not sustainable.
I've had many physical shitty jobs in my 20's. Then, I had some health issue and could no longer keep doing that to my body, so I went back to school and got a CS degree.
I sometimes get depressed and miss physical work, but then I remember how shit it was and how an injury would prevent me from working. As a dev I think I'm going to be able to earn money as long as I'm alive and have a functioning brain.
I guess once you have enough money then maybe someone might find that work fun? Obviously it helped the writer with depression. However, if he ever gets permanently hurt and it affects his daily life I have a feeling depression will come back in full swing. Office work is much much safer.
There are ways to help people through tech and have much bigger affect then moving boxes for a shitty company.
Edit: What helps my depression is connecting with people outside of work, helping people in my community, doing projects around my house and spending time with my son. Additionally, I try to make good choices when spending my money and limit my spending on stuff I don't need, as I dislike excessive spending.
Edit2: Some great comments below. This is very much poverty/shit job tourism, which the writer can escape at any moment. This is some BlackMirror type of content. Guy makes it big in tech, retires, now works shit job people are trying to escape to cure his depression. He then writes about it on a blog. Now, other non-aware devs might be reading it contemplating leaving their jobs to do a REAL job.