For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live.

It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricity, technology and a sea of information at our fingertips. These things all exist and keep functioning because people work.

And yet some think that "society has gone wrong", as if the past was paradise.

Work has been a human universal through history. There is surely an argument to be made about the fact that now we are so productive that we might not need to work as much as we had to.

At the same time I think we should be grateful that we live in the best life conditions ever seen by humanity.

Despite technology allowing us to work less, we work more. Yes we should be grateful of technological advancement, but too many people are unnecessarily depressed and suicidal, and it doesn't have to be this way.

Also, the idea of the high-leisure hunter gatherer is false. This is ideology masquerading as archaeology/history, and it confirms the biases of people who have genuine criticisms of modern life. http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gathere...

It's only after you remove every modern convenience and distraction that you begin to appreciate how important these slow, repetitive, indoor tasks were to human psychology. They allowed one to make good use of their time indoors while distracting from the crushing boredom of having nothing to do and affording time to socialize with family and neighbours.

Now, I'm not saying this is an idyllic lifestyle. It was certainly one of the factors that drove so many people to the squalor of early industrial cities where they might be poor, filthy, and poisoned but at least they had light, drink, and entertainment. But I think it's important to point out that our ancestors managed to get by with a great deal less than we do today while still finding comfort and fulfillment and potentially expending much less effort and suffering a great deal less stress than we experience. It's something to think about at least.

How do we measure this? I've been less well off in the past, having to spend more time doing chores like that, and not having a 9-5 job filling up that part of my day. Compared to now - working more, but with more money - I was more stressed and less fulfilled and very aware of all the effort I was expending because I couldn't afford all the conveniences I would've wanted.

It was not a bit of both. It was work. Yes, they could chat while doing some easy repetitive tasks, the same way as worker in work now chat while doing repetitive tasks. However, this was not low effort hobby you do whenever you feel like and can take random amount of time. It was work that needed to be done whether you feel like it or not. And preferably fast while keeping quality, because there was a lot of work like that. It also had to be done whether you are nine month pregnant or not and whether baby wake you up at night or not.

I don't know why you think it was supposed to be slow work. That makes sense only insofar you see and treat it as a hobby instead of as actual task that needs to be done, because you need result of it.

Fun fact: washing cloth without washing machine took whole day once a week. It was physically hard tiring work that required you to beat the thing to beat the mess out of it in cold water. If you want meat (which they definitely did not ate often), you gotta kill chicken. And clean it. Again, messy work that takes a lot of time.

Edit: 100% support a focus on archaeology. There's some really cool stuff waiting to be uncovered, like the new LIDAR findings in South America. Still, it's absurd to think that ancient hunter-gatherers lived in bliss, except when natural conditions were exceptionally good (not worth the consequences of droughts).

I've also gone hiking in the mountains in California. Been on the beach in Italy. Walked around in the center of Munich.

As a 14th century peasant I probably never even knew those places existed.

I can also get pain medication if I have a headache. I can go to a doctor to fix my broken bones if I happen to get one. Oh, and the likelihood of dying of a random infection or chicken pox is exceedingly low.

Is is worth spending more time in a nice, warm, comfortable office to be able to do all of those things? Hell yes. Is it all shits and giggles all the time? Of course not.

For all that we have issues with a culture where people check work emails at home and are otherwise on-call, we've moved remarkably far from a culture where work was truly pervasive, where it formed the backdrop of everything else.

All of which is to say that both the quality, as you point out, and the purity of our recreation have improved quite a lot. Counting up a nebulous "time off" value seems to seriously misunderstand the changes in how we live.

Sounding pretty attractive to me right now.

Realistically I also like to live in a nice house, do have to (well, by choice obviously) take care of three kids and like to enjoy a luxury here and there.

That takes money. I have tried multiple times to build my own companies, but sadly haven't been successful in that.

So that's for the travel argument.

As for the headache medication argument - I have that only because thousands of people have spent a lot of time in offices and labs developing those drugs and treatments.

Personally, my work mostly revolves around making wind turbines more efficient at producing energy by helping with data analysis. I also like to think that's my small way of offsetting the environmental damage I do by travelling. It's probably not enough, but still. something. So yeah, I'd say spending time at the office correlates quite nicely.

So yes, it does correlate.

The reason we have all these advances that increase our quality of life is because generations have worked their ass off to build them

Or, that everyone who works hard reaps the rewards, ignoring the ever-increasing disparity in compensation?

But the only thing I'm saying is to not over romanticise the past. The life of a 14 century peasant was not good compared to mine.

I also realise that a lot of the comforts I enjoy are because lots of people spent time in boring offices before me. The article sounds quite dismissive of that.

I'm forever grateful and do my part to help. Nobody owes me a good life.

We should always strive to improve, but the article had the tone of "oh look how bad everything is" while implying that it hasn't always been like that. Things are far better now in almost any quantifiable measure than they have ever been in human history. Not enough people talk about that.

None. How many do you know?

And it's nice that 14th century peasants didn't work much, but as the article you linked to says, that happened to be a time of particularly high wages because the Black Death greatly reduced the supply of labor. In other words, it was not at all representative of the general lifestyle of a peasant.

That's not quite true. Farming is heavy, all day long work during sowing and harvest seasons, but other than these, which take a few weeks out of a year, it's not all that much work really. Keeping animals on the other hand requires some work every day (taking them in and out of the pasture, milking, cleaning sheds etc), but it's not all day long, it's really on the order of 1-2 hours a day.

Keep in mind also that for most of the history, farmers didn't really have all that much land to farm, and each farmer would work on much smaller plot than he and his family was physically able to. The reason for this is really Malthusian. If there's excess food, you have population growth, which makes you hit the carrying capacity only in a handful of generations. Look at American colonies for example. After they were founded, the population grew mostly through natural growth, further immigration being relatively unimportant -- foreign born population rarely exceeded 10%. Yet the population increased 20-fold in only 100 years.

This means that throughout most of the history, the farmer parents only had barely enough land to sustain themselves and 2 children -- only 2 children of each parent reproduced on average, otherwise you'd have population growth, which meant war or famine (or both). The farmer didn't have a lot of farming to do, because he just didn't have enough land to plow and sow.

If you are European, talk to some old people who grew up farming. My mother grew up on a farm in Eastern Europe, and her village only got electricity in early 1980s. When I talk to her, or my grandparents, or their neighbors, and I ask them if the life was poor back then, and what was the thing they needed the most, everyone always says that they had too little land. In America it was of course much different, for obvious reasons.

My father-in-law grew up on a very small farm in Poland. I know from my wife that when she would visit her uncle (who inherited the farm) in the summer, they would work long, hard days. I'll ask my father-in-law about winters. Something tells me there was plenty of work to be done in the winter as well.

He said that winters are definitely less work than summers, but that means that work days are more like 10 hours instead of 14. He said they still have to tend to the animals (milk cows, feed chickens, feed and cleanup after cows, horses and pigs), gather firewood, pump water from the well, clear snow, etc. Plus they do stuff that they simply don’t have time for in the summer. Repair things, spin wool and hemp, pluck geese for down, etc.

That being said, when he was growing up in Eastern Poland, 7 years of school were mandatory and he said basically all families adhered to this requirement. This indicates that there was some level of surplus generated by this lifestyle, because children become pretty useful by 5-6 years old, so having them spend 7 years being non-productive at school is a big deal.

They were also dead by 35.

When you do manual work outdoors, there is a sort of physical element that allows you to get "in the zone" and it really feels like true work. But for white collar tasks like accounting, programming, and filing papers, there's not as often a moment for meditation or getting "in the zone". And there's something much more alienating about doing comfortable work that is held up, not because of the winter frost, but because of some corporate inefficiency.

Likewise, blue collar assembly-line labor, in which your entire day is spent building a single part for a huge machine, is much the same. The carpenter can feel delighted from finishing an entire chair, and a weaver might enjoy seeing many completed baskets, but the factory worker never knows rest, never knows any satisfaction, because the modern species of work never ends.

"Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Genesis 3:18-19)

An annoying aspect of software is that it takes a life of its own. It is never done, but there are feature requests, bugs, and updates.

You make a table, and that is it. It's done. Sure, you have to clean it, but mostly it will last a while until it breaks down.

I’m working on a SaaS service that does one thing really well, and I think it’s pretty close to being done. The code is very solid, and I rarely see any bugs or error reports (thanks to React, Immutable.js, and Flow.) The infrastructure is autoscaling and requires very little maintenance (thanks to convox.)

There’s always more features and integrations I could add, but I’m getting enough customers without them. It will require some ongoing work (e.g. updates for security vulnerabilities), but I’m not too interesting in trying to turn my table into a house. I'd rather follow the Unix philosophy and build a lot of very nice tables.

Take, for example, Crusader Kings II, a game released in 2012 that's still getting DLC and free patches subsidized by DLC sales to this day.

And there's also this infographic about day-one DLC that's been going around for a few years now: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/DLCWor...

If you hear someone sing in an office it's because they're either crazy or have been fired.

But there is also something to be said in favor of repetitive, low-qualification work. It frees the mind while you're doing it: you can think about something else, or even, yes, sing -- and most importantly, it doesn't follow you home.

Modern mid-level office jobs where you're constantly tethered to the company, at all hours and even during "holidays" (if you can get any) are the worst of the worst.

Between all that garbage and a commute which was a little too long & dangerous for my mental health, I quit.

To make ends meet, I ended up cleaning offices much like the ones I previously worked in. No one cares if I'm a few minutes late, as long as the work gets done. My goals are literally visible and easily measurable. When I'm done, I'm done, and as you say, I don't take my work home. People universally appreciate what I'm doing and tend to smile at me. I can confirm I have spare brain cycles for new ideas, as well. I definitely think people benefit from having some kind of tangible, repetitive work like this in their lives.

Yeah, the pay sucks, and I'm still trying to find that holy grail of a 'good developer job', but I am doing it on my terms now. In the mean time, my day to day life is significantly happier and more manageable. Sometimes, if the office is empty, I even sing.

Often people forget the mental stress modern work places on us. I remember my Dad working hours but he was tired from physical exhaustion and not mental. He didn't have email or messaging that would distract him from a weekend of relaxation.

I was addicted to checking my email every once in a while and found my mind switching to thinking about work instead of enjoying the moment. Thankfully I broke that habit.

Today, I try and impress this upon other people who do this.

The mind and the body are meant to be worked together.

I think that jobs like programming which minimize physical movement and maximize mental work are unnatural.

I've worked as a programmer, but before that I worked farm labour.

My meals and my sleep have never been as good as those days when I did a full day on the farm, feeding animals, milking cows and taking in the hay.

This isn't strictly due to modern agriculture, either. Poor timing/freak weather events in the past wouldn't just cause farmers to lose their livelihood, it would also mean there was a very real risk of starvation. While losing your job and comfortable livelihood can certainly be stressful, there seem to be quite a few people who believe that work in the past wasn't just as, if not more, stressful.

The passage can be read her for anyone interested. http://www.bartleby.com/316/304.html

Do you guys in America even know how it is in Sweden for example? We don't have this competitive culture, and companies are trying hard to make their employees feel good at work. Nobody really works full 8 hours at big companies and nobody is stressed very much. Bosses never blame anyone directly for anything since it's not allowed, culture wise. People are very relaxed.

When I read about American culture, it seems insane.

I think you're quite correct that it's insane, but you can also view it through the lens of class war. There are some people in charge who have an unthinkable amount of capital, and they would like it to be this way everywhere.

'Culture' is led by leaders. Company culture comes from the top down. If you had a company leader who earnestly thought hunting down and murdering workers in rival companies was the best way to be a company, AND he was allowed to pursue that unregulated and unrestrained, you'd see a 'culture' straight out of the darkest cyberpunk because others would play copycat and it'd become the new normal. You'd have to deal with it on its own terms.

Of course it's insane, and of course it's killing people: in a sense that's a feature. This is the operating system on which we run. There's only workarounds, or changing the OS out from under the 'culture' it produces.

EDIT: To be more precise: typically ~20 days in the summer and additional ~5-15 days in the winter. Averages by country, Sweden 26 days: https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/highlights/which-countr...

34 days (minimum?) when you include the 16 paid public holidays such as Christmas, New Year, Easter, Midsummer: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-...

I'm a consultant and work roughly 35h/w in Sweden. I often find this a bit too much, given that the work I do is disconnected from anything "real". Sure, my clients are always happy and I do fun things, but my family and friends is what's real.

I truly believe we should automate everything and let humans decide by themselves if they feel like working. If not, something like UBI should exist.

That's said, I will point out that most people posting on this site are in desirable enough roles that US work culture is a choice, not a requirement, even when you're living in the US. It just seems to be a choice that most don't consider.

I could easily find a position which makes 25% salary than my current position. Instead I took one where I never work more than 40hrs, where I have essentially 7 weeks PTO starting and it'll go up if I stay here long-term.

My quality of life is fantastic and I still make more than enough for a very nice lifestyle (and proper retirement/long-term goal savings).

I'm sure I could live even more luxuriously or retire a couple years sooner if I made even more money, but I don't think that would be remotely worth what I get by not going that route. Not to mention the people who just die or develop debilitating ailments before they ever really get to enjoy that retirement.

Sounds lovely, though.

The promise of the modern society was that everyone being "equal", we would all become aristocrats. In fact we all became slaves.

(And of course, hunters gatherers lived, to the best of our knowledge, in classless groups where each individual worked very little each day).

1. Working outside (as mentioned) just doesn't compare with office job, i.e. it provides physical exercise, fresh air, being close to nature/animals. Now we're simulating all these things with gyms/vacations/zoos (I think the quality of such simulation is out of question?)

2. Work had to be done with your family, now there is no simulation for this in our society at all. And I would guess it was much better option than running as fast as we can (as most corporate people do) at 6:00PM, away from these annoying faces :)

Has nothing to do with the OP's comment, and it attempts to shift the conversation to justification.

>For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live.

Again, why are you doing this?

>It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricity, technology and a sea of information at our fingertips. These things all exist and keep functioning because people work.

Who is arguing against work in general? The article and the OP are discussing working conditions. Work doesn't have to be torture. America has a very unhealthy relationship with the idea of work and what it means. No pain no gain, right?

>And yet some think that "society has gone wrong", as if the past was paradise.

In the last 40-50 years, American society has taken some significant steps backwards, and the workers have felt it. If you're comparing conditions to hundreds or thousands of years ago, why? What is your goal?

>Work has been a human universal through history. There is surely an argument to be made about the fact that now we are so productive that we might not need to work as much as we had to.

At the same time I think we should be grateful that we live in the best life conditions ever seen by humanity.

You finally brushed against the point in your penultimate paragraph.

In the past work and exercise were nearly identical, now work looks something like sitting in a desk all day under fluorescent light.

Nutrition was once a result of simply eating what was available, but now has changed to a daily fight, something that requires constant effort and discipline in order to maintain as we are completely bombarded by those that seek to exploit our instinctive responses.

We've traded these and other things for safety, comfort, and reproductive success.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130122102110.h...

However, they are a predator. Look at mice or other small creatures, and you realize their entire existence is the search for food.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37775622

Though if we weren't so damn focused on having so much crap maybe a few of those animals would still be around.

For example:

- If I want meat, I perform task X

- If I want heat, I perform task X

- If I want cothes, I perform task X

In previous generations (more recent than you might assume) many of these desired outcomes had totally different tasks.

Its also a false dichotomy that things are work _OR_ play. Many things are a blend of Work/Play/Hobby or more simply just "living".

It would have been an evolutionary advantage to be interested in and inclined to perform various types of tasks for early humans. Modern work suppresses this human need. This is why we have hobbies and people are depressed.

More "free" time to watch Netflix may not be the pinnacle happiness and fulfillment. This is not to suggest that life was "easy" in the past.

Between 1950 and 1980, the average wage of the lower 90% of the economy rose by 75%. Between 1980 and 2010, it rose by 1%. And during 1980 to 2010 we experienced the introduction of computers into the workplace. Average worker productivity skyrocketed at an absurd rate. Yet, every penny of that advancement and more was scalped by employers and shareholders. People are not being greedy in expecting more. They are intuitively sensing that they are being exploited more and more heavily every single year. No increase in productivity is ever reflected in increased earnings or free time or anything like that.

The notion of the New Deal was that 1 person working only 40 hours a week should be paid enough that they could raise an entire family on it comfortably. Do you think that could be done today? No, it couldn't. If you've got a couple kids, and you only have 1 40 hour job providing the income you are completely boned. You're poor. We have been racing backwards, and we have gained literally nothing for it.

What metrics did you use to determine this, other than life expectancy? A zoo animal may have a longer life expectancy, but a free animal arguably leads a more satisfying life according to their nature.

Something is definitely wrong.

No. There's been societies based on slavery or indentured servitude and industrial societies treating workers much like slaves and there's been also almost idyllic, often agrarian, societies far removed from war, exploitation and hunger.

Furthermore, given the incredible amount of energy and natural resources that the average person in rich countries is consuming we should all be living happy and meaningful lives and work one our per week.

We should instead ask the difficult question - why are even the richest societies so unhappy?

My understanding of primitive agrarian societies are that they have hard work, hard lives, poor diet, and a population that is generally at the edge of starvation. (In good times, population grows. In bad times...) You might want to read Guns, Germs and Steel as an example of a reference backing this view up. Or read through random snippets of history like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%931... and get a sense for the very real struggles that people faced.

"Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's"

https://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief-econ...

https://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/the-prince...

Whilst preindustrial societies did see variable subsistence, the floor tended to be higher than today (Clark's introduction, available online, notes that the poorest people who've ever lived, live now, and in great numbers), and cycles tended to be long-term -- decades or centuries, not years. Whilst life expectancy at birth was low, from age of majority it was generally far less abbreviated. Disease was far more prevalent in cities (London was a net population sink well into the 19h century), and major instances of famine and plague something experienced perhaps only by occasional generations within an area, though wth mortality rates from 10-90% (far more typically in the 10-30% range).

You're familiar with Laurie Garrett's wwork on healthxare, and the fact that 85% of mortality decline since 1850 materially predates modern medical practice, including antibiotics, vaccines, and organ transsplants. The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City chart highlights this:

https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uplo...

And wars exist also, and especially, among tribes.

Growing food without modern technologies, fertilizers and pesticides was also an extremely hard job. It’s not like growing tomatoes in your back garden.

I saw footage of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah. My reflexive thought is -- how unimaginably horrible. Here is an animal which is evolved specifically to hunt you down and kill you. And every moment you spend trying to live is a moment lived in fear of this awful creature. What a life! My horror does not even compare to the horror of this life.

But, watching the gazelle slalom and jump with incredible precision and grace, there is another thought: that the gazelle was also born to run. It uses its God given abilities to the absolute maximum possible extent. During the chase, it is in a state of complete flow, more complete than any Olympic athlete could ever hope for. The sheer concentration required, the exertion, the split-second decision-making required to avoid getting caught. To master this state is to escape the predator, and it must feel incredible to outrun a cheetah. Incredible in a way that is impossible for a human living a modern lifestyle to fathom.

To fail means to die, of course, and that cannot feel good to a gazelle. But it's just death. We all die anyway. Human beings, gazelle, cheetahs. It is a simple fact that you will die.

So, then, whose life is better? The gazelle's, whose time is spent performing in the most integrated and pure way possible? Or the human's?

The human's life, which is spent doing activities its body was not designed for, in social situations his brain is not built for, eating things his stomach was not designed for? And then, we die. Just like the gazelle.

Interesting to think about for sure. I myself have no option — synthetic insulin keeps me alive.

Perhaps a higher-dimensional being would also see some beauty in our life that we cannot comprehend currently - like the gazelle can't comprehend it's Olympic flow, a human can't comprehend the long-term beauty of how they toil and work against the odds.

> whose life is better? If by better you mean, which being feels more emotion/happiness/satisfaction, it's an open question. But if better implies more progress and safety/longevity, then humans it is.

If you attempt to quantify life in such terms you may run into issues, our longevity is meager when compared to a giant tortoise or a simple koi fish, for all of our progress and the safety it grants us we still succumb to the same fate, we still suffer and all of our works are washed away by rain and time.

This is a popular assertion about animals, but I've yet to see someone prove it.

Also we shouldn't overestimate how self aware the average human is.

Much of our lives are lived in a disconnected fog, disconnected from our bodies, our feelings and our minds.

But, watching the cheetah cut off its prey and pounce with incredible precision and grace, there is another thought: that the cheetah was also born to eat. It uses its God given abilities to the absolute maximum possible extent. During the chase, it is in a state of complete flow, more complete than any Olympic athlete could ever hope for. The sheer concentration required, the exertion, the split-second decision-making required to avoid dying of hunger. To master this state is to capture the prey, and it must feel incredible to finally catch a gazelle. Incredible in a way that is impossible for a human living a modern lifestyle to fathom.

To fail means to die, of course, and that cannot feel good to a cheetah. But it's just death. We all die anyway. Human beings, cheetah, gazelles. It is a simple fact that you will die.

There are millions and millions of people out there in their 20s and 30s who work part time and do whatever they want with the other time, because that provides "enough" money for the life they want to live.

I personally work roughly 50% time. I work a few years, then a quit and do whatever I want for a few years. Right now I'm driving around Africa, have not gone to work since mid-2015, it's fantastic.

My brother just built a house and had his first child with his wife. He works 4 days a week, looking to get down to 3. When his wife goes back to work she will work 3, maybe only two. They don't have a lot of money, but they have "enough" for the life they want and they spend a lot of time surfing, walking on the beach etc. They're both early 30s.

Right. and what happens when they get old? how will they ever be able to retire?

It's sort of like most people turning their noses when someone (used to; now it's different) said they were starting a business: "Oh, well what happens when you fail and can't get a job? How will you ever be able to live then?" People find a way and it sounds like the people the poster was referencing, know themselves well enough to make their decisions. While on the other hand, comparing people to the "norm" many times comes from someone who doesn't know themselves and their wants well (or ignores them), and uses the norm as their gauge for "success," or what have you. For a subset of people, retirement isn't something they want or even need. One of the sentiments I hear often from those still working in older age, "What, retire? Now? I've been working my entire life, what the hell am I gonna do in retirement besides die?" or "60 years of doing shit I didn't want, so I could enjoy 15 doing only the things my body allows now."

Life's short. If you want to do things, do them. The only reason you don't is because you live in fear. There will always be drawbacks to going against the status quo, but that's the price you pay to get what you want.

Because they are currently living on not a whole lot, they are not going to need a whole lot in retirement either, because they will be accustomed to having less money.

Before you get all uppity about healthcare costs, just remember there is only one developed country on the entire planet where anyone would even think about that. They don't live in it.

As a reference point, I was reading a very detailed write-up of what a single person would spend in retirement per year, and it was more than double what I was living on working full-time as a Software Engineer.

Food and water can be quite cheap: the grocery stores are filled with healthy foods you can get for less than 1$ per lb in most of the US: corn, whole wheat flour, bananas, apples, grapes, onions, beans, rolled oats, etc.

The biggest problem with living cheaply is Housing, Healthcare and Tax. for the most part these are mandated by the gov regulations to be really expensive. Once those are solved, we'll be able to live quite cost effectively. I've seen some people get around that by living in a camper van, traveling the world - not for everyone, i know. But, the tiny house movement shows us we can get a tiny house for just 20K.

What you are suggesting would lead to a generation that saves more and consumes less.

When GDP seems to be the only success metric that matters, I often wonder if such education is omitted intentionally.

So taxation on a massive scale doesn't work. The problem isn't that the super rich are too wealthy. The problem is life is too expensive for most people. That's the problem we should try to address. In order to do that you'd have to reduce the cost of housing and healthcare.

Funny how that importance is never 'serving people the best way', and is always 'thousands of times more powerful and wealthy than you could even imagine and consuming the blood of young servants in order to live forever'. With some of the most successful Silicon Valley capitalists, the latter is literally true: consuming the blood of the young in hopes of living longer.

I'm not sure how much more on-the-nose it can even get. It's kind of nice to see these things openly talked about. It's legitimate to ask, "This is possible, indeed is happening. Is this good?"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...

[2] http://www.er-doctor.com/doctor_income.html

[0] https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

I myself, went to the cheapest college in my area, even though I could have gotten into a far more expensive/prestigious college. I chose not to because I knew it would put me a great economic disadvantage to have so much debt. Software engineering careers and many other careers don't always benefit from more prestigious schools.

If more people shopped for colleges based on price then maybe universities will start competing on price and we can finally see them planning ways to make college cheaper instead of adding yet another good for nothing expensive wing to the campus.

"I am so dedicated to my work that I willingly turn my home and outside-of-work life into the smallest possible monastic box, using less resources than the average Joe. Plus I'm so classy that it's a beautiful box, and it can't be cluttered by bourgeois garbage because my experience outside work is a stark void and doesn't generate things that would require space."

Whoa, that looks good on your performance review. All you need to add is 'and I'm never there because I work all the time. The only person who sees my house is Merry Maids, and they only have to send one person with featherdusters all over her. She twirls, and that's her job done for the week' ;)

Also see, the resurgence of Hookworm in Lowndes Al.

How many musicians do you know that play in clubs? Most are working two restaurant jobs, renting a room, and scraping money together to buy strings, just for the chance to entertain a crowd for little or no pay.

It's all perspective, really.

Don’t forget your commute. And you’ll still need your wife to get the kids to school and pick them up. Hope you earn enough for that and she’s happy st home. And you should help out with dinner and the lunches and homework. And when you get the kids to bed it’s 8 and you’re exhausted.

Enjoy your weekend.

I really wish part time work was more of a thing in this industry...

I could argue that $25k/year is still very high compared to my experience, but I have no idea how much daycare, healthcare and education cost in the US. It probably makes no sense to compare costs to a country where I would earn over double my current income...

Yes, kids require a lot of things that cost money and a lot of time from the parents. Yes, they make you significantly less productive at work when something is wrong. Yes, life is much easier without kids.

But having and raising children is literally one of the most natural things to want to do with your life. A culture that views children mostly as inconveniences is a sick culture.

Modern society literally worships children, so you don't have to worry.

Or, as George Carlin puts it, "bunch of diaper sniffers."

"Natural" is not good. Life in nature is nasty, brutish, and short.

Some other things that aren't natural include eyeglasses, prosthetic limbs, vaccines, antibiotics, air conditioning, cooked food, and electronics.

I worship artifice, and I find the idea that natural things are laudable to be repugnant in every possible way.

I'm also a proud trans woman, and that's sure as hell not natural either. I utterly detest nature.

All of those artificial things you praise came about through the intense study of nature.

We can learn from nature and appreciate its great beauty without being a slave to it.

But true, I didn't add in family.

Can you share your story? How did you make it?

I always wanted my own business as I saw it as a route to mental and financial freedom. I was under no false impressions of the difficulty involved as I've seen my family struggle (and prosper) while running their own businesses.

Anyway, I started by building a little product on the side whilst working. I sold the product to a few hedge funds and investment bank divisions that I could get into via my contacts (both from university and work). That little product turned into this: https://osrec.co.uk/products/heavymetl and provides good recurring income.

I then put together a SaaS product for bookkeeping/accounting/invoicing: https://usebx.com/app . It was rather well received, and we even got a few corporate clients to sign up. We're working on version 2, which I think will be even better! We tend to pick up customers that have become irritated by quickbooks/Xero/Sage.

Then there's the consulting piece, which is ongoing. We basically help institutions get out of sticky tech situations that your average developer might struggle with without specific financial regulation knowledge. E.g. helping an investment bank prove that their implementation of a data store for financial greeks is in accordance with BCBS239. Not easy to do unless you know the regs, and can suggest ways in which they can become compliant if they are not.

Random tips that I picked up along the way:

- Tenacity and passion are important - A healthy bank balance is important, primarily to keep anxiety away - Don't ever appear desperate for business. Big turn off for a client. - A well defined product sells better than a poorly defined one - A good product sells better than a bad one (i.e. don't believe the ship rubbish early mantra - it does have its place, however, if you are going into a mature market, users want something good and reliable first time or they bail) - Build things often and well. Don't be lazy with quality control. Have the guts to build without a framework! It can really bolster your technical prowess. - Be nice to people. A friendly interaction has often turned into business. - Be assertive with difficult clients. Often this applies to the non-techy clients that come out with sarcastic remarks such as "you charged us £50k for pressing a few buttons. Why can't we have XYZ as well as ABC?" or "I thought this was included in the original contract?". Make it clear to them that if they don't see the value in the service or can't deal straightforwardly, then we don't need them as a client. They soon come around, when they have to go back to their manual error-prone ways.

So that's it, in a nutshell! Sorry if I rambled. All the best :)

Pay: A little less. But I'm working about half the hours. I've had time to start a little side company and to work on another I'm most of the way through, as well as explore other maybe-careers (photography, videography, audio) without impacting my cash flow. I spend a little less money, but some of that is willing: I'm not at work, I don't have to pay $10 for lunch, I can make a small salad. I've had no trouble keeping up my retirement accounts. If I retire.

Stress: much lighter overall, but the occasional terror-spike. Finding work is challenging, and there have been dry spots that made me very antsy, but I enjoy it, and the company I do most of my work through is good at keeping me busy without having to spend my time on sales. I'm moving in with my girlfriend, and that'll just about halve my expenses while placing me in a much more convenient/walkable area, so this should go down further. (She is sometimes a little miffed that I work so little. But I cook, and I cook pretty well, and I'm paying rent, so.)

If you have an in-demand skillset, you can do very well. For me, it's devops, but it's devops informed with the way that I've done everything else in a tech group, from web and mobile to databases, so I'm not approaching it either from a sysadmin point of view or some dogmatic Agile-esque one, and I can help in a lot of ways.

Also, shameless plug: i'm always willing to chat with new prospective clients. ;) Email's in my profile.