So much this. My dad was a school caretaker, recently retired. He said how relieved he is because the work was grinding him down so much. My partner is a nurse and actually dreads going to work on a regular basis. I never dread going to work. Far from grinding me down I feel like I'm growing. I would honestly still do it even if I didn't need the money. My job gives me an outlet for something I really enjoy. A way I can apply my skills to make myself useful and other people really happy. And on top of that I get paid like 3x as much as dad and partner.
So many of these HNers are in a bubble. I've said it so many times here. They have no idea what the world is like outside. How could they? They've essentially been treated like royalty. And no matter where people are in life one thing is constant: you can't take anything away and they don't want to go backwards. Doesn't matter if they've started beyond where some people will finish.
All these people complaining. Really? You don't think programming is useful? You don't think there are businesses out there who could use your skills? Yeah you won't be working in a tech company making addictive shit to sell ads. The owners of those are just chewing the fat now. But you'll work in an actually useful business that actually contributes to society.
Glad to see you have a healthy perspective on this and I hope your wife will eventually find a healthcare job with better conditions. Its really quite amazing how much we depend on these people yet treat them so poorly.
> you can't take anything away and they don't want to go backwards.
I'm considering switching occupations and becoming a registered nurse (in my country in europe).
The demographics here are so bad, I don't think we will need a large STEM workfore in ~15 years. Your shiny Vision-GPT model is useless when there is no one that wipes the asses of the elderly.
And I don't think Silicon Valley has the capabilities to solve this problem, no matter how often Sam Altman assures that it does.
When I stayed in the hospital for 2 weeks without being able to move, nurses where doing everything for me. I remember how much I cried over that when I left the hospital, how much grateful I was. They all just looked like angels to me.
Nurse is one of those occupations with pretty much guaranteed employment unless you burn yourself out (which is a real possibility unfortunately), but as long as you are able to and want to work there will be plenty of work for the reasons you've just said.
If/when humanoid robots are a thing (probably not this decade or the next) then yeah we can all pretty much retire, but nurses will be the last to go.
So many of these HNers are in a bubble. I've said it so many times here. They have no idea what the world is like outside. How could they? They've essentially been treated like royalty. And no matter where people are in life one thing is constant: you can't take anything away and they don't want to go backwards. Doesn't matter if they've started beyond where some people will finish.
All these people complaining. Really? You don't think programming is useful? You don't think there are businesses out there who could use your skills? Yeah you won't be working in a tech company making addictive shit to sell ads. The owners of those are just chewing the fat now. But you'll work in an actually useful business that actually contributes to society.