I for one work for 7 days a week for ~8 weeks now, and just sat and watched a wall to relax yesterday night because my brain and body refused to do absolutely anything.
Every work is exhausting when overdone or just done with sufficient care.
I try to be extra nice to these people, try to release the burden on them, when I can. When chatting with my SO, we sometimes talk about these people and how bad I feel about their circumstances.
I want to reiterate that I think that they need to earn more and live better.
Similarly, on my current job, I have worked off-site, in hazardous sites, in off-hours (including all-nighters), in movement restricted conditions (think as soft imprisonment inside a building) or extremely stressful circumstances. These weren't "Oh, there's a deadline, so let's crunch!" stuff. It was against all odds, against the clock rescue jobs where nobody including your teammates were believing that it's possible, but we (me and a friend) have prevailed.
On the hardware mounting stuff, it was not again "let's playfully install" this stuff too. 100+ servers, left in boxes in front of the building. Carry, unbox, install rails, mount, make all the cabling (incl. electricity, from distribution boxes if req'd) and make them work, in 2 days most.
Yesterday, I was carrying servers to make some part replacements on them.
I never expect not to become one of these laborers. I never think of them as servants or invisible people. On the contrary, they are forming the backbone of some of the stuff that we never see consciously. These systems become invisible because of their hard work. They deserve a lot of respect.
Trash is picked up 1am in my street. I always think of the man, their families and circumstances.
Similarly, when I go to a carrier's office, I try to prepare all my answers and papers before to take their time less (they're literally drowning in packages to ship, so if I'm faster, they can finish their other work faster). I actively try not to reflect myself onto them since they see hundreds of people every day. I try not to be one of the people which makes them feel like a useless/replaceable cogs.
Just because I can play with a lot of cutting edge servers, not sweat everyday and wear my body down to earn a bit of money, it doesn't mean that I can not or don't want to understand and romanticize the burden they're going through.
Similarly just because I have a nicer job, it doesn't mean that all my friends or people I know and care are in the same circle or in higher places.
Just because I know how to manage an OS and write high performance code, it doesn't mean I live isolated in my high castle.
I agree that there are other factors (far more important ones) than just job/earnings. For example, a star developer making millions with a terminally ill spouse or child would easily trade places with manual laborer if doing that made a difference in their outcome. Silly example but it does illustrate how money is really not at the top of everyone’s list.
Thank you. I really appreciate them. Yes, manual labor is a part of our job and we (as the group) do not whine about that. On the contrary, we like the thing TBH.
> For example, a star developer making millions with a terminally ill spouse or child would easily trade places with manual laborer if doing that made a difference in their outcome.
That's not a silly example. It's spot on. I did similar choices (not drastic as the example, and luckily not based on health issues). Rejected higher pay or prestigious titles or shiny companies to be able to stay closer to my family and people I love, to be able to live a simpler and more free life.
I'm not a money oriented person. I do this job because I like computers, I worked a lot and I was definitely lucky up to a certain extent.
However as I said, I don't keep my job as a crown or title about myself to pretend to be more precious and important than other people. We're equal on this little blue dot and everyone and everything deserve respect IMHO.
Also, I still do not agree on earning sevenfold with 1/7 amount of effort (a 49 fold difference). Neither being a sysadmin or a developer is that easy when a single click of your mouse can affect research of 500 people who have deadlines.
It's not "just a walk in the park" when you're working with a lot of projects with deadlines, entering meetings and try to finish everything on time and not being able to see straight due headaches induced by overloading yourself and sleeping 3-4 hours continuously.
No job is easy, they're different. All of them worthy of respect. Also it's always greener on the other side.
Office work is not comparable at all.
We install our own datacenter hardware. Hundreds of servers. Carrying. Mounting. Cabling. I'm no stranger to hard, manual work.
I feel tired, but I feel no pain. That's a different kind of being exhausted. Mental exhaustion cannot be compared with physical exhaustion. Both are hard, both are crippling, however one is not better than the other.
It's also very satisfying to install a new fleet and bring it up while drinking tea with muscle tingling all over your body.
Thank you.
I mean “higher performing” according to the people who pay them.
> I often remind my colleagues that we are very lucky to have such easy and well paid jobs by asking the simple question, “how many bags of sand did you carry yesterday?”
I’ve been a welder/fabricator, machine operator, and forklift driver. Programming and web development isn’t easy although it isn’t physically arduous. Whats more relevant to our discussion is that a high performer is not as easily replaced. Physical work is honorable and demanding. Its also something a lot of people can do.
I agree that a high performing developer is hard to find, but so is a high performing manual worker.
Conversely in my experience retaining a high performing developer at market rates is easier, because the job is more rewarding (that’s what I think makes the job easier to do).
I think what you are talking about is scarcity driving the market salary rates for developers, not performance.
Personally I think a union with members including the scarce developers and the abundant manual workers would be a good thing for all the employees.
I expect 20 years from now there will be no scarcity of developers, and the vast majority of them will not be paid nearly as much as US manual workers - primarily because they will be working in poorer countries with labour laws that favour the employer.
high performing manual workers negotiate superior wages unless they are restrained by a union
> I think what you are talking about is scarcity driving the market salary rates for developers, not performance.
So they are related but the key concept here is that a low performer is more easily replaced, and so does not have the negotiation power to negotiate a higher wage. So these workers benefit from a union.
> Personally I think a union with members including the scarce developers and the abundant manual workers would be a good thing for all the employees.
It would be a good thing for the replaceable workers and a bad thing for the less replaceable workers.
It’s not easy to replace a low performing worker with scarce skills or domain specific knowledge.
It not difficult to replace a manual worker that requires limited training or domain knowledge.
Developers are paid way more than an equitable share of the salary share in organisations like Amazon because their skills are currently scarce.
This will not be the case in 20 years.
I’m defining “high performance” to include those sorts of persons.
> Developers are paid way more than an equitable share of the salary share in organisations like Amazon because their skills are currently scarce.
It is equitable precisely because those skills are scarce.
My point is that you may be confusing the ability to perform a function efficiently with the ability to perform a function that less people can do.
I don’t think many here would define a VBA/Excel analyst that knows the data model and how to access a bunch of legacy platforms to produce a criterial report each month as high performing - but they’re scarce and difficult to replace.
>It is equitable precisely because those skills are scarce.
My use of the use of equitable was as a synonym for fair.
I don’t think it’s fair that those who work in higher risk or less fulfilling jobs should be paid half as much. There are credible arguments about why it’s justified , but I don’t think there are any tenable arguments that it is fair.
I didn’t mean to debate semantics with you and I can see how my language provoked that. My claim is that a scarce, difficult to replace employee deserves more money because of their scarcity and difficulty in being replaced.
> I don’t think it’s fair that those who work in higher risk or less fulfilling jobs should be paid half as much. There are credible arguments about why it’s justified , but I don’t think there are any tenable arguments that it is fair.
I believe its fair. In fact I believe its unfair not to do so. Rather than debate the fairness, I’m more interested in if you think fairness is objective or intersubjective?
It’s unlikely either of us will change the others view, and HN is not the forum to attempt to do so.
Do you mean the ones that sit at their keyboards earning a multiple of the salaries of those who do the actual physical work necessary to serve customers.
I often remind my colleagues that we are very lucky to have such easy and well paid jobs by asking the simple question, “how many bags of sand did you carry yesterday?”