[samsonradu]

> Also, when you have a mostly physical demanding job, you can easily socialize with your friends afterwards, with dev work you're brain dead by the end of the day.

This worries me, happens to me lately also. It's probably a pattern that our brain learns from programming, to optimise and simplify everything and actually ignore what does not matter. Probably this translates into our behaviour outside work, where your socialisation skills suffer. What I noticed is that the brain can be resurrected (partially) by exercising. Perhaps we could use the experience of more socialising jobs every once in a while but ... we have our golden-handcuffs.

[RossM]

I think it's down to open-offices - when you condition yourself to ignore and blank out the conversations and noise 3 feet away, it's no wonder it's difficult to snap out of it (it certainly is for me). That said, my experience of open offices has been of the condensed, touching-elbows variety.