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by hellllllllooo 2419 days ago
Really, you can't understand it? You've never had to work long hours at an unfulfilling, repetitive job you hate just to pay the bills and survive without being able to save anything? You're lucky, a lot of people in the US are not so lucky.
2 comments

Saying "just to pay the bills and survive" implies you are barely scraping by. We're still talking about 6 figure IT incomes correct? I think that's a little dramatic.
>Really, you can't understand it? You've never had to work long hours at an unfulfilling,

I've literally dug graves for a living.

I've thrown trucks for a living in 90F heat in 80%+ humidity.

I've worked 40 hours for a company and 40-50 hours a week for myself trying to get ahead some.

I've been working since I was 12 years old just to help make ends meet. Sitting at a desk doing 'unfulfilling, repetitive' work is the easiest thing I've ever done and I'd take it over every single other job I've ever had without hesitation. I get to sit in a temperature controlled office all day, I can go to the bathroom when I need to, I'm not in the heat/cold all day getting sun poisoning anymore, I have set hours with a reliable schedule and steady pay. It's amazing.

Have you ever dug two or more graves for one dead person, then filled in the ones that didn't actually get used for the interment?

Probably not. You wouldn't want to waste time on back-breaking labor that has no productive purpose, would you?

But the white-collar desk job does that every time it says "work 8 hours every day" while the worker consensus is that the 7th and 8th hour is mostly useless, and subsequent hours in the same day are often counterproductive.

If you spend 8 hours digging a grave by hand with a shovel, your muscles get tired. But if you do it long enough, the muscles get stronger, and you can dig graves for longer before getting fatigued. If you spend 8 hours a day thinking about difficult problems, your brain gets tired. If you do it long enough, you get smarter, but also burn yourself out, go slightly insane, and lose the ability do the job at all any more.

They're different kinds of cells. They have different physiological processes for maintenance and repair. Muscles don't sleep and flush with CSF; brains don't bulk up and add additional nuclei.

i think your argument of "just be happy that you're not in grueling conditions of working hard labor outside" doesn't really apply to the argument of "work less and be more efficient."

its the same argument of saying "yeah well someone in a insert 3rd world country has it way worse than you so your problems dont matter."

you need to step back and understand that people in white collar jobs are allowed to be miserable regardless of whether theyre breaking their back or not, and if that misery can be subsided by having an alternate schedule to work to produce efficiency, then why is that such a crazy ask? because that's just "the way things have always been done"? when was the last time that argument has ever worked out well?

>"work less and be more efficient."

This doesn't apply to MANY jobs, unless you're talking about replacing humans with robots with superior strength and agility that do not need to rest.

The majority of HN, and silicon valley types in general, are incredibly myopic. The vast majority of people here automatically assume everyone else in a thread works in CS, they assume everyone has a degree, they assume everyone hammers away at code in a comfy office all day.

The vast majority of the world is not sitting at a computer coding for 6 figure salaries with great benefits and profit sharing.

FYI im not downvoting you, but a large portion of the modern workforce (at least in the US) do have their asses in seats 9-5 at a desk. whether its administrative tasks, finance, law etc. there's a giant world out there aside from CS peeps, and im not even approaching it from the tech angle. either way, you havent addressed anything i mentioned except immediately indirectly attacking the people that visit these forums.
That makes sense, I can see why you appreciate your current job.

Why does that mean other people should feel the same way you do?