I work in engineering for construction - when we were building Bertha's rescue shaft in Seattle the crews worked 5 months straight drilling holes and placing concrete with two crews on 12 hour shifts with only July 4 and Memorial Day off. When we excavated the shaft and repaired the machine we switched to three 8s and ran for almost another year.
Rain or shine, hot or cold, day or night. We worked that job every day. Nobody left until we switched to 8s because guys wanted to work 10s on another job - that's just blue collar work. In fact, that's the type of blue collar work that guys want because the OT pays the bills so you're right about that. The management on the project? Worked 1.5x as many hours as the crew because they would normally cover a shift and a transition. Every one salaried. Nobody left.
What the tech industry complains about for working conditions makes me laugh.
Another way to look at this is that people are underpaid just enough to get them to work longer, but the knock-on costs of that (impact on health etc.) won't manifest until later and will likely be borne by someone else rather than the current employer. This is equally true for bricklayers and coders.
For context I also did many years of construction and manual work, I'd guess my life has been about 50-50 physical and brain work (of course they're not mutually exclusive). The above is an observation from experience rather than theory.
Obviously blue collar work is going to be harder than white collar, but that doesn't change the fact that working conditions for each job can still be terrible relative to the type of work it's located in. It's the same for blue-collar work where not all blue-collar work is going to be equally difficult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_(tunnel_boring_machine)
I’m not the OP but I read the comment as not saying burnout isn’t a thing or that it pales in comparison to blue collar struggle. It was more that the common gripes you may hear at an office—especially from folks whose work history is only office work—tends to make you reflect. At least that’s my experience.
Might not even be a bad idea for larger companies that have the logistical range to get their staff swap collars a week a quarter.
A guy recently joined my team whose father was a mechanic and mother a health aide. He said he went into software because he didn't want to hurt and be exhausted like his parents.
Factory line workers and truck loaders are trying to get into software, accounting, etc., not the other way around.
But it seems dismissive to say a dev can't claim burnout because they aren't doing something physical. When a junior dev, I once went into the office 23 days in a row and was usually there until 11 pm or midnight, sometimes later, sometimes earlier. I got burned out and left. It wasn't good for my health or relationships. I bet if you worked hours like that loading a truck you at least would have gotten overtime.