From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate(jasonshen.com) |
From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate(jasonshen.com) |
I am curious to hear stories from HN folks here who have been through similar trajectories
Advice: Make an effort to slow down by 10-20%, and then take it from there.
You know what is funny, coding, security, linux, etc... were my escape from the misery of those jobs.
I am so grateful for my job, it is better to die or something than to go back to those jobs. Glad that guy found solace but man, the politics is always 10x worse than office jobs, everyone has little to lose so they act like it, you get over the physical stuff fast but it still takes a toll, very very little time off, always struggling with money but I never fell into the "credit" trap so I was ok, but anyone that did credit if any kind (car payment, credit cards, etc..) or had kids worked a second job. You could get fired for sitting down.
I had manual labor job once, my coworkers were illegal immigrants and felons on probation. I was "laid off" (so i can get unemployment -- but I've never been on it) because I didn't look busy enough, although I finished all the work fast, never sat down and kept cleaning all the already clean stuff to look busy.
Even the nicer blue collar jobs are ruined by tech. GPS and microphones everywhere so they can squeeze every last sweat out of you. But then when they burn you out and lose out on their training cost or can't replace you they wonder why.
Dana is also noted for predicting in 1834 that the San Francisco Bay would become economically important.
Alternatively a hobby farm or vineyard can give you plenty of opportunities to do manual labour and have varying amounts of responsibility; and I imagine it would be quite a bit more enjoyable than an Amazon warehouse.
To each his own I suppose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From a physical and mental stand point, the work can be quite a lot. Amazon doesn't take it easy on you. However, after gaining some conditioning I enjoy being paid to spend time outside. It's confirmed that I need to take more serious look into fields that let me work outside.
To sustainably preform at my optimum, nutrition and recovery are essential. During "peak" (highest volume of pkgs moved) my watch will record anywhere from 10 - 14 mi a day of walking with over a +1,000 calories burned.
Navigating streets with tourist, delivering on hills with significant grades, abnormal addresses and entrances (it's never quite as straightforward as one might think), numerous not up to code unique hazards, and what can be daily route changes - [one day delivering to skyscrapers in the Financial, the next to apartments in the Tenderloin) makes for a stimulating week of work.
It's not for everyone but can be rewarding while allowing a more focused split between work/life rather than where you're never really "off" from work.
> I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. I skied on weekdays, shopped at Target at 11am with nobody there, and played video games. But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I became unmoored, set adrift in a sea of theoretical possibility only to drown in unbounded optionality. Novelty and excitement turned into a spiraling vortex of depression as I began to wake up sometimes at noon, sometimes 2pm, and on the rare occasion even getting out of bed at 6pm.
Though I've since gone back into the technology industry, I spent a couple of years happily doing what many in the tech industry might consider "grunt jobs-" physically demanding, low pay, often dirty.
The first thing that I realized is that there is something deeply satisfying about hard manual labor, and the absence of that satisfaction in much of the tech industry is probably the source of some of the industry's most insidious mental health challenges. Many tech workers try to fill in that gap with "extracurriculars" like the gym, running marathons, or weekend camping trips. While all of those things are good and healthy and have their place, I can promise you that they don't fill the same psychological space as a full day of hard manual labor for a paycheck. As such, I make it a point to regularly take my PTO now to spend a day doing labor-intensive side jobs. That might sound crazy, but I can promise that it does wonders for mental health.
The second thing that I've learned is that there's an entire industry built up around trying to ease office workers' mental health issues, and it is both highly profitable and arguably predatory. If one so much as whispers about ditching a gym membership in favor of actually getting paid to do landscaping, or of selling that expensive treadmill in favor of walking dogs for several hours on weekends, be prepared for a veritable army of people to tell you that you're crazy. Surely millions of people can't be wrong, the argument goes. I can promise that you don't need to put a tenth of your paycheck back out into your extracurriculars to get that accomplished, tired-but-rewarded feeling.
However, I think being a Tech CEO is at the opposite end of the spectrum from being an Amazon Warehouse Associate. Being somewhere in the middle seems very compelling.
In essence, Crawford talks about this feeling extensively in his book (Shop Class as Soulcraft). Here's the essay that started it all: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-so...
He used to be a manager at a political think tank but went back to the trades because he found the latter not only more satisfying, concrete, and tangible, but also more mentally taxing, creative, philosophical, etc.
My experience as well, though the awesome part lasted more like 3 months and decayed slowly till about month 6 when I started to feel listless and aimless. Soon after that I hit the realization (and this is the part that's most depressing, I think) that while I wasn't happy working I was also not happy not-working. Not just depressing, a little frightening.
However - he worked there for all of six weeks. I can see how it's helpful to have this option available for someone who needs income in the short term to make ends meet. It's the same with driving for Uber or Doordash, etc.
However, we are too dependent on Amazon as a society (USA). Partly this is because suburbanization and zoning requires driving out to the edge of town to shop at big box stores, and expensive urban real estate means smaller stores with limited variety of products.
Things like woodworking and metalworking can give you a physical and also a mental excerise, and feels much more rewarding than playing he's or shopping. It can also be quite social as there are tons of people with similar hobbies, maker fares and meeting places.
And yes, if you like it but miss being able to support yourself financially you can probably turn it into a business
*Restrictions apply.
I have mixed feelings about this. What this has proven is working at amazon warehouse sucks, and is not sustainable.
I've had many physical shitty jobs in my 20's. Then, I had some health issue and could no longer keep doing that to my body, so I went back to school and got a CS degree.
I sometimes get depressed and miss physical work, but then I remember how shit it was and how an injury would prevent me from working. As a dev I think I'm going to be able to earn money as long as I'm alive and have a functioning brain.
I guess once you have enough money then maybe someone might find that work fun? Obviously it helped the writer with depression. However, if he ever gets permanently hurt and it affects his daily life I have a feeling depression will come back in full swing. Office work is much much safer.
There are ways to help people through tech and have much bigger affect then moving boxes for a shitty company.
Edit: What helps my depression is connecting with people outside of work, helping people in my community, doing projects around my house and spending time with my son. Additionally, I try to make good choices when spending my money and limit my spending on stuff I don't need, as I dislike excessive spending.
Edit2: Some great comments below. This is very much poverty/shit job tourism, which the writer can escape at any moment. This is some BlackMirror type of content. Guy makes it big in tech, retires, now works shit job people are trying to escape to cure his depression. He then writes about it on a blog. Now, other non-aware devs might be reading it contemplating leaving their jobs to do a REAL job.
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).
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 ?
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.
> 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.
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+...
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.
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.
"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.
It sounds like the author never got a chance to figure out the intersection between what he liked to do and what he was actually good at. Instead, he was trained to respond to the approval of authority figures. So the true north of his internal compass pointed to whatever the person in charge at the time thought of him.
Fast forward to 2021:
> I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. I skied on weekdays, shopped at Target at 11am with nobody there, and played video games. But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I became unmoored, set adrift in a sea of theoretical possibility only to drown in unbounded optionality. Novelty and excitement turned into a spiraling vortex of depression as I began to wake up sometimes at noon, sometimes 2pm, and on the rare occasion even getting out of bed at 6pm.
With no authority figure to send the positive vibes he craved, the author felt adrift. This is where the gig at Amazon comes in. Authority figures galore and a clear sense of what a job well done meant.
Some are chalking this up to poverty tourism. Maybe it's something else.
It just doesn’t pay enough to retire off of. Can’t easily build savings. Can’t easily pay for the dentist or other emergencies
Being a lead programmer pays a ton better. I just wish I wasn’t as stressful as it is
My mom spent the better part of her life as the “COO” of their business, so after being retired for so long, she seeks the mental stimulation of work. They’ve never worked in a corporate office, so seeing the structure and thinking behind Amazon amazes her. They’ve always had their own warehouses, distribution centers, trucking, etc. but they built that from the ground up and never scaled because they were “learning on the job”. Never seen what good looks like.
They both keep to themselves. No one in their section know about their backgrounds.
Saying that though I think he's right in the sense that having experience of working in an environment like that does give you the appreciation for the relative comforts of a tech job.
I've worked retail jobs when younger, and sitting on your butt all day writing code is way easier...
I've read that the rate of injury at amazon jobs is incredibly high, which is not good practice in my view.
Article says amazon rate of serious injury 80% higher than competitors https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57332390
But: don’t think that you are one of them and able to advocate as a representative if you aren’t, a la Pulp’s Common People.
We should encourage resilience, but be sympathetic about its absence. Everyone should choose to learn to shake off a punch to the face, but that doesn’t negate the real trauma of someone getting assaulted who didn’t have that lesson.
I don't see how the author did that. He advocated a change of mindset by dialing to an extremely different situation to solve his own issues/or other people with the same issues, not that the situation is great or perfect.
I don't see where he advocated for it. For what it's worth, his effort in the warehouse is already more than 99% of more privileged folks who has never needed to do that. I fail to see why this is being criticized.
The comments criticizing him as patronizing is in turn incredibly patronizing of the warehouse workers themselves, the irony.
You bring up financial means, but the issue that it puts you into a lower caste of citizen, entitled to fewer rights. This position may be temporary, mitigable, or you may be in a position talent / career wise where it doesn't matter.
The fact remains that in the eyes of our society you have become less valuable as a person. Lots of people can't take that hit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33070986
Life takes all of us in different directions, I thought HN readers would find this path instructive.
> But the other thing is socialization with my coworkers is a huge part of my daily satisfaction in a job. You might be free Monday through Friday but all of your friends are working when you want to grab coffee.
I can't relate to many of the author's life experiences, but this quote really hit home. I think we're all wired to want to (a) make something better and (b) share our life and experiences with other people.
How (a) and (b) manifest varies greatly depending on life background and opportunities, but I can say most of the mental healthy difficulties I've had previously in life can be related to those two points.
I might add that also he was looking for two more things that some times also are rejuvenating:
(c) physical exercise
(d) a relief from decision fatigue: "I did not want to be asked to make a lot of decisions everyday. . . . I wanted literally to be told what to do every day and I wanted that structure to be rigorous." This can get old after a while too, but routine can be a nice change for a while, if every day you at your old job you had to be a creative or always solve new problems, like if you were a designer, director, etc.
on a side note, i wonder if the actual therapy was just doing something physical. sitting down not moving for hours and hours is not what we were built to do. i always found working out, brazilian jiu jitsu, hiking, anything physical to be very therapeutic if i've been inside an office all day.
I hear a lot of retired people say "I miss working", but when probed, they'll say things like "I miss the routine", "I miss the people I saw all the time", "I miss the structure". Work is not the only place you get these! Going to BJJ, kickboxing, clay studios, adult sports leagues, walking groups, some volunteer opportunities, etc., all fit the bill. I think some people put so much of their life/identity into work that they can't even imagine something else...
I told my friend. He thought it sounded a lot like larping.
On a serious note, how does one do that? It doesn't "feel" that way, but I know that's lifestyle inflation.
Started with auto mechanics, learned basic maintenance, moved on to minor, then major auto repairs. Then tried woodworking, built a few pieces of furniture for the house, then moved on to sheet metal. Finally ended up building a two-seat airplane. Physical hobbies are both satisfying AND low-pressure. Plus, you shouldn't have to quit your tech job to get a hobby.
Unfortunately having dozens of gallons of good beer on hand at all times led to some pretty bad habits so I had to get out of that game (plus I had kids, so RIP to both hobby time and frequent drinking). Still looking for the next hobby that really clicks with me, the intersection of science and creativity and engineering and socializing that is brewing was pretty perfect.
Now that I wrote this I realize it has little to do with the original article (which I read, both parts actually), but hopefully someone has some good advice, so I don't have to resort to quitting and going to an Amazon FC to feel better about myself.
Worked in different big tech for 7y, and took a sabbatical because I could, and so why not?
Well after a year of travelling and working on my own ideas and a bit of contract work, I entered a complete pit of depression. I mean contemplating ending it all to stop the pain. Instead big daddy Bezos was handing out tech jobs like candy so I took one begrudgingly just to have someone else to be accountable to, because I found it completely impossible to live with only my own expectations.
It helped. I'm halfway good again (or perhaps just a different, darker normal), with a different outlook on what and why I do things. But goodness.. I will never retire again. Not without kids to raise, or something/someone else to be accountable to.
You’re amazed that they exist, and they burn so bright that you can only wonder why?”
—- Pulp, Common People
The Shatner cover is something special: https://youtu.be/ainyK6fXku0
> Pretend you never went to school
> But still you'll never get it right
> 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
> Watching roaches climb the wall
> If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah
People work these jobs for years. Taking one of these jobs for six weeks is interesting - but you’re effectively a tourist having a completely different experience than the person that actually needs that job to live.
This one is quite well done: https://peaksalvation.com/socioeconomic-bends
PS: I found the snarky responses and accusations of "poverty tourism" to be amusing. It looks like there are a lot of bitter people who sees only their way and demonize anyone else who dont see it.
Live your life, if you find physical work a therapy, do you... if you find seating and staring at a screen your own therapy.. do you!
Hopefully, we stop trying to justify perfectly clear articles to people are only interested in making other as miserable as they are.
> The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word slumming to 1884. In London, people visited slum neighborhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch to observe life in this situation. Wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points, Manhattan on the Lower East Side, neighborhoods of poor immigrants, to see "how the other half lives".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism
> Slum tourism has been the subject of much controversy, with critics labelling the voyeuristic aspects of slum tourism as poverty porn.
> A primary accusation that the advocates against slum tourism make is that it "turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from".
It's no longer acceptable to be snooty towards people in these positions, but we haven't dropped the stigma totally, and now the acceptable way to view + interact with them is to act (in the performative sense, because many of us don't actually know) with deference, assuming that their lives are truly miserable and their dignity is on the line every day they work such jobs. The expectation is that we must feel sorry for them and treat them better than other people because of it, or treat them with kid gloves.
When you adopt such a stance, the idea of someone willingly going and doing one of these terrible no good jobs does seem patronizing -- it's masochistic even, and so is viewed as suspect and "touristy". When someone does such a thing they are "disrespecting themselves" by people with this view. If anyone ever tries to provide and alternative view and tell us that most people's lives in these positions aren't so bad by going and experiencing it themselves, however partially, we heap scorn on them. "They don't know what it's really like, it's horrible what these people have to do." "They have millions of dollars in the bank so their experience can be dismissed." Etc.
I'm not offended by the piece because I don't actually think the author is trying to give a critical take about manual labour. It didn't sound like he thought critically about the experience at all besides feeling good about himself. Instead this piece reads more like somebody recommending a trip to Bali.
His experience in tech doesn't sound so charmed to me. He was obsessed with climbing the corporate ladder. He slept in the office and woke up early every morning to start grinding again. He worked so much he didn't even have time to play a game with his son.
He tried another kind of work to see how it compared, and he learned stuff. There's nothing patronizing about that.
B) in my early years I too worked my butt off in a very similar manner thinking this was The Way(tm) until I realized I was burning myself out (though if I was making Microsoft money back then I’m sure I would have accepted it) so maybe this is a rite of passage. Or maybe I’m still harboring completely unacceptable norms
It's rather hard to have empathy for someone who has it better than you. But I've found it helps to also remind yourself that the majority of people who ever lived will feel the same way about you.
The word you're looking for is : slumming
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/slum...
Because it was an option.
He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives.
Good on him for having an epiphany, but I'd wager that he'd have a different perspective if he had to do that job long past his soft-handed tendonitis episode in order to feed his family that he barely mentioned in his interview.
Imagine having built so small of a life for yourself and your family that in order to get a reality check, you have to check yourself in to rehab with the "common folk" in order to rescue yourself from your "depression".
It's lamentable, not commendable. It has all happened before, and it will happen again.
This is not a salvation story; it is a cautionary tale. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Having grown up adjacent to upper-middle class people (I'm arguably entering that sphere now, but I definitely didn't start there), I think a bunch of them could benefit from hearing this story from one of their peers.
Hard to explain, but I get what you mean.
Instead of moving geographically, the author moved social-economically to experience something different.
I think it's great, we crave authentic experiences on the road, this should also be something more common. If more people (on the top) do this, we'll have a lot less of those out of touch just eat cake stories.
Also, tourism is good? Getting new perspectives is good? Do you not do it? Is there anything wrong when you do it?
I also read that section and thought it unfortunate the author missed that realization as being the likely root cause. External validation seems to be a major driver of his unhappiness. There's nothing wrong with finding solace in structured work but I think if he returns to his old job he's likely to reach burn out unless he can identify this as a root cause.
I made that connection for myself as I've had a strangely similar recent experience to his, albeit without the Amazon warehouse job. I burned out, took multiple months off of work, didn't implement any lasting structures, and became depressed. But I did spend a ton of time in therapy to evaluate my mental health and what drove me to burn out. Practicing self-awareness and emotional awareness has made me more optimistic about finding routines and habits which will bring more fulfillment.
I’m going with ”yes/and.” He could have taken up martial arts.
What more could someone possibly do to wave off the label of "tech bubble non-awareness disease," in your opinion?
There are plenty of people in tech who didn't have the traditional four years of uni -> FAANG route. They just don't blog about it.
Going from rich to working in a warehouse until you feel like leaving is not the same experience as working a warehouse because you feel like eating.
I work in tech but previously did overnight stock at Walmart so I guess that's two people.
What's the point of using this kind of hyperbole in your comment unless you wanted to make others hate people in tech?
Yes, I read the article.
Re-contextualizing into a class struggle style comment, just because he shared his experience, is not very interesting.
All blogging is narcissism if you redefine narcissism to be the most bland shade of the word's meaning.
It reads like a slap in the face
> For me, a lot of my meaning comes from two things. One is doing something in the world that feels like it's actually making things a little better somehow. And so contributing to society in some meaningful way.
The parent is commenting on how Philip's previous (and new!) work positions apparently fulfilled those criteria in no small way, in Philip's view. They are noting that it is striking that this is the case, as from the perspective of an outsider looking in, it does not appear that a director at facebook, nor an amazon warehouse worker, fulfills the stated criteria.
But it's not just a tech bubble thing; it's more of a 6-figure yuppie thing. I knew a doctor making $500k/year in L.A. who insisted on taking vacations in disaster zones, etc., as a tourist (not with Doctors w/o Borders) so he could "experience human suffering" and "become empathetic" to his fellow men through their "shared suffering" of being in the same approximate location as people who were starving or seriously wounded.
He doesn't actually do anything with this "increased empathy." He just feels like it makes his EQ super high or something silly like that.
Are you sure that is the motive?
Came back, couldn’t find a job so worked at a grocery store for two years throwing freight.
Honestly kinda loved it. No stress besides the occasional surly coworker, but it felt very peaceful making a customer-ravaged shelf look whole again. Couldn’t afford the low wages now but at the time not sure I would have traded it for much.
Work a union job, not Amazon?
UPS benefits will easily cover your medical and dental problems. (Once you qualify.) I don't know anything about Amazon's worker coverage.
I think I'd get bored pretty quick, but I do understand where you're coming from.
Where I used to live there were tons of people who worked at normal warehouses and switched over to Amazon b/c the pay was better and things were basically the same.
Amazon gets tons of, at least somewhat deserved, heat for what they do, but compared to the truly horrific things done by something like the meatpacking industry? idk if the amount of shit they get is equal to the actual on the ground conditions.
Working for a mom and pop manual labor gig generally sucks wayyyy more than a big corporate one. (Lower pay, shittier if any benefits, longer hours, much more nepotism, no recourse for issues etc.)
EDIT: for context on the meatpacking thing.
Meatpackers will illegally import immigrants, pay them much cheaper under the table and if there's an inkling of dissent get ice to round them up and deport them. e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/29/ohio-ice...
Also meatpacking is basically a monopoly, that the feds are trying to fight.
https://missouriindependent.com/briefs/joe-biden-debuts-1-bi....
Still even if they are the same, if more than 1 in 20 workers gets a serious injury at work at any job, I think that's an issue.
Spending all day on your feet, loaded with a large mass going up and down, and wearing the least shitty boots you can afford does a number on you. I still feel it in my foot and calf to this day and it’s been years.
The old guy I worked with must have been going on 65 and slugged harder and faster than me with less bitching. He hated the company, but not the work he did. Absolute trooper.
> "I'm sorry, your exo-skeleton has already been opened for the allotted 15 minute break, it will not open again until the end of your shift"
You may find it a useful thing to consult on the subject.
I'm going to say a few things that I normally wouldn't, just to better illustrate my point. A few of my friends make less than $30k a year. One is 1st grade teacher (male) and one is a full time math tutor. They are great people who go to work and make a difference. I wouldn't feel the same if they just laid on their couch and drank everyday...but still.
Remember money is really for experiences. I paid for the Cabin, 10 sking passes and sent each of them $2,000 for the trip to cover air fairs and transportation. The whole thing was maybe $30,000 and it's one of my better memories.
I would say -- be intentionally generous and look for ways to help your life long friends. Yes, it helps them. Yes, it helps you too. You would be shocked how much purpose it brings to your life.
Most 40 year olds have less than 2 people in their life that would lend them $10k. Be that friend and never keep track.
This is the reason you work hard and are paid more than you should be - to be a better friend than you otherwise would be able to be.
Blow someone away with your generosity
Thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds like a blast!
Most people fall within a similar range of intelligence, and where they end up in life is far more a result of the choices they made than how smart they are. So you made a bunch of choices, like learning tech, etc, and they made a bunch of choices, like maybe partying instead of studying, and now you get to enjoy the rewards.
You shouldn’t feel guilty about that, you earned it by making better choices.
Go work on a farm or as a gardener. You'll feel much better outdoors closer to nature.
I want to sail the world. That is my one and only dream in this life. If I made enough money to retire, that’s what I would do. I would never dream of getting another job just to fill the time.
Granted, I’ve never been retired and probably won’t be for a very long time, so I don’t know for sure what it would feel like. But this perspective that retirement is boring and/or soul crushing just doesn’t compute with me. Maybe I’m missing something.
If you dump your “doingness” into something that doesn’t feed back into your social connection or reputation, like playing video games alone in the middle of the day while everyone else is working, and expect Gandalf to drop in and send you on an epic quest, you’ll find yourself adrift at best.
From what I’ve seen, most people who find themselves lost do not have a “one and only dream in life.”
1. Part of your desire to sail the world is having it as a dream. It's the scarcity of being able to sail that gives it such high value. When you remove that scarcity with complete time and money freedom (and after some time, normalize yourself to it), the reality of sailing the world might change your perspective.
Now you have to acquire a boat, gain a shitload of knowledge, care for and repair it, invest significant effort to plan and prepare a trip, take significant risk being out on the ocean, be alone for months or recruit people to come with you, can you be alone with just them for months, is the opportunity cost of being away from family and friends for so long worth it... etc. It's no small feat.
Depending on how you are wired, your body might MUCH prefer to sit at home, eat tasty food, and submit to the youtube algorithm. Now that you have time and money freedom, you don't HAVE to do anything! I think your body knows it, and will optimize for risk reduction and energy conservation.
caveat: if there's something more here, like your late father taught you how to sail and you grew up on a boat, or your best friends are entering an international organized race, then for sure you will likely sail.
2. What happens after you sail the world? Do you sail it twice? Maybe you find it enough to just be at sea forever, but likely you come home to your apartment/house and .. do what exactly? The next thing on your list after "sail the world" perhaps, and repeat. If my first point doesn't terminate the loop for you, you can chase your next desire and next desire. Is that a life well lived?
Lots of people absolutely retire and live happy lives. But my sense is that they are much older, and so are still motivated by time scarcity, just in the fatal sense. Or they invest themselves deeply into something meaningful outside themselves like community, charity, teaching, caregiving.. or WORK! Then you'd be back to where you are, with some new experiences under your belt. Totally worth it. But I'd guess that almost no one puts their feet up and happily sips a mohito on the beach for 50 years.
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.
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
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.
After only a few days I started seeing inefficiencies, some people slacking like crazy while others had to work for two, management that was really incompetent and could not be convinced to improve anything.
I mean, people were nice and everything and I enjoyed the social aspects of the job, but I learned that I was too competitive to function in a less demanding job
Based on the 4% rule, you can then determine how much you need to retire, sell your house (because you'll have a mortgage instead of rent at those salaries) bounce to a lower COL area and then enjoy the rest of your life. You don't even need to stop working if you don't want to, but can downshift to part time and earn much more than the median full-time salary. If you are a SWE you'll have offers, many of them remote.
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.
It rings true to some of my friend and is potentially very useful to people in the same situation. Brain chemistry doesn't care about rich or poor, and unprivileged here in the US could be extremely privileged in other parts of the world. Engaging in a race to the bottom is of no use to anyone and solves nothing.
I will admit that I am not sure how I feel about the article. I might be still processing it.
> Launched a global health software nonprofit, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, focused on using smartphones to improve rapid testing in low-income countries.
Granted that is 3 years out of a 20-odd year career, but it's the stint immediately preceding the events of the blog post.
Oof, too true. It's a dangerous expectation that I had/have (and try to break) that purpose will present itself TO me. Probably because it did throughout my younger life, but only because I was inside of an institution which provided this (often with it's own motive).
(semi)retirement removed me from the institutions, and not being part of the regular rhythm of the work day can alienate you from your usual social network. Without a family demanding something of you, adrift is accurate.
Those with money are surprised. " I know Ben needs some help, but you really didn't need to get mine too?". In someways I think it blessed one who is well off ( maybe makes $175k ). He said he couldn't remember the last time someone paid for something above $100 for him. He was genuinely touched.
I have done a few different versions of this trip. I also went deep sea fishing and to Yellowstone national park of which I paid for those as well.
The only potentially weird dynamic is that I get emails from time to time from that group suggesting our "next big adventure" and usually it's implied I am paying, but it hasn't been that weird really.
I believe I've done 6 trips. I always pay for the lodging and have paid for the flights a few times and maybe half the food.
For me, If Im going to work hard and sometimes alone on projects that are hard to feel the sense of purpose in a practical way, I like the idea that once a year I do a family vacation and once a year I try to do a good friend trip. I put usually one picture in my room next to my computer as a reminder of how what I'm doing makes a practical difference.
My friends absolutely love it. Most adults ( myself included) have such little time weekly for relationships. Its just much more important that we tell ourselves. You think friends aren't important, until something bad happens. That's when you realize work isn't the most important thing.
hope the story helps.
invest in your friends -- be a giver in a world of takers.
ultimately you will be glad you did.
I think viewing every warehouse worker as a member of a lower labor caste who is merely being exploited is not a warranted view. The fact that people can easily find meaning in this labor is further indication it is incorrect.
You're also presuming a rather tyrannical existence for these people.. wherein their path through life must be dictated to them by their "best options." People make suboptimal choices for all kinds of reasons, and they don't view their circumstances as being "exploited." Probably because the companies they work for didn't _create_ the suboptimal choices for them in the first place, their employer is a matter of circumstance, not conspiracy.
> Why would a financially independent person choose to help enrich a large corporation over, say, voluntary work to help underprivileged people, animals or whatever else you can think of?
Again.. people make suboptimal choices intentionally. The explanation here is "this is a very low risk option that can be exited immediately if such a whim arises." And in all likelihood, exiting in this way wouldn't prevent you from being hired back later if your fortunes or whims reverse.
Forgive me, but you seem to be a little too comfortable looking down your nose at these people.
Retail workers and social workers dealt with the worst of it, teachers deal with this behind the scenes, and nurses and doctors became (more) exposed to this over the pandemic. People don’t put up with emotional, verbal and sometimes physical abuse, and they shouldn’t.
Which does not make me disagree with your take (I jokingly call all those kinesio tapes "doping" as well: they help tendons and muscles take loads they can't take naturally).
He literally didn't though if you read the piece, he's very aware of the nature of a rich guy going to work a manual job
>"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. The job has been incredibly rewarding to me, far beyond what I had expected. It saved me from a downward spiral that I just could not get myself out of. But it’s no dream job. I want out of there as soon as Peak ends; I do not want to stay a minute longer."
I grew up blue collar, I'm not offended by this at all. Is he supposed to be categorically excluded from ordinary jobs just because he lucked out in life, like some reverse class segregation? This isn't Jack Dorsey meditating in Myanmar while there's riots on the streets or Zuckerberg touring Middle America, it's just some dude who felt depressed and changed his job up to get a different experience.
"mission trips" are not real poverty tourism though. Kids don't go live in real poverty on those trips. They live in hotels, eat prepared food, so on.
The author did move 300 boxes per hour for a whole month.
Same, for the full experience the author should've sold his house and lived on his salary.
> "Warning: You have ran out of your free waste container quota for this shift. If you require a new waste container, it will be deducted from your pay"
> "Alert: High stress levels detected. You are required to report to an AmaZen(TM) Mindfulness Practice Room [0] for 30 minutes after your shift"
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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.