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.

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).

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.

That’s the whole 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.

But till then I actually would like a healthy balance of mental and physical work.

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.

https://olympics.com/en/featured-news/michael-phelps-10000-c...

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.

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 ?

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.

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.

How did we possibly get to this and what shareholder or customer thinks this is a good idea?

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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 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

Sure it is, as soon as you realize employees are replaceable commodities that get used up like break pads.

Sustainable for the individual? Obviously not. Sustainable for amazon. Of course, which is why it won't be changing.

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+run+out+employees+to+...

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.

1. old folks getting joint replacements 2. young athletes 3. middle aged construction workers or laborers

You don't know how much work it entails. You have no idea

Actually working at AMZN is easier than a Farm. Hands down.

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.

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.

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.

Heck you could do it in 5 years if you are a FAANG employee.

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.

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.

Of course there is never a guarantee.

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.

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?

Devs can get by working few hours a day, some barely do any work at all.

I refuse to stare at a screen 8+ hours a day. I take healthy breaks and create boundaries.

I rarely have to solve puzzles at work. The grunt of the work is almost the same thing over and over.

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.

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?

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.

https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

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.

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.

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)

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.

  "Office work is much much safer"

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.

"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.

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.)

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.

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.

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

Your high salary isn't "justified" by anything except current market supply and demand.

Which is to some extent, very much the natural case in point: a software developer is no value to me if what I need is a carpenter.

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.

[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.

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'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.

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.

This is just a straw man. Who cares who pays him? I could say the same thing for:

Typescript. It's literally bankrolled by Microsoft, insert quip that says Typescript devs can't have good intentions here

Tensorflow. It's literally bankrolled by Google, insert quip that says tensorflow devs can't have good intentions here

React. It's literally bankrolled by Facebook/Meta, insert quip that says React Framework devs can't have good intentions here

Etc.

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?

> not just the mouthpiece of some think tank ad campaign.

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?)

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.

Wiki says: <<He is known for his work on the Discovery Channel series Dirty Jobs and the series Somebody's Gotta Do It originally developed for CNN.>>

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Rowe

Plenty of non-physical jobs that are low pay as well.

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.