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This is basically office space but for the modern era. Peter found happiness in construction work, but when something physical like that is your job… I don’t kn

This is basically office space but for the modern era. Peter found happiness in construction work, but when something physical like that is your job… I don’t know. A lot of those guys have back pain, inflexible schedules, working in extreme weather, and the pay isn’t even that good. Is tech so bad? Or is the world of work broken?

pc86 1mo ago
> A lot of those guys have back pain, inflexible schedules, working in extreme weather, And a lot of them don't? A lot of people who work on a computer all day also have back pain and inflexible schedules. Hell, I'm sure a lot of knowledge workers in other countries work in places with no air conditioning, for example - not exactly "extreme" but not climate-controlled, either.
- __rito__ 1mo ago
  Dude... It's totally, completely, fully different. Have you ever worked as an electrician/plumber, etc.? The amount of physical stress, sweat, exposure to bad weather, etc. are orders of magnitude higher than what you get as a tech worker, even in 38°C heat even without an AC. Your comment reads like it's coming from someone who never ever worked physically even as a volunteer/for fun. Any non-trivial amount of physical work will tell you that it’s many orders of magnitude tougher than working with computers. The worst part is you gotta show up and work your ass off even when you have flu, or something like that, or you lose a day's wages.
- jonahrd 1mo ago
  There are definitely downsides to office work, but this post really implies to me that you don't actually personally know anyone who works in the trades. The amount of body pain/damage, extreme conditions, and ridiculous scheduling (as in, last minute decisions that you must be on site at 5:30am the next day, not as in overall hours) are pretty much incomparable to tech work.
  - pc86 1mo ago
    I didn't say they were comparable. But there is a common refrain that every single person who works in the trades has their body basically destroyed by the time they're 40, which isn't remotely true, and that nobody who works in an office (or a number that is essentially a rounding error) has any physical effects directly caused by that, which also isn't remotely true.
    - phainopepla2 1mo ago
      That's not a common refrain, that's you interpreting reasonable statements in the most extreme possible way.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1mo ago
  It's not for nothing that de facto founder of the Singaporean state Lee Kuan Yew wooed top men and women into working government jobs by ensuring the government buildings had A/C. I would far prefer an inflexible air conditioned 9 to 5 than a flexible perpetual sauna.
nancyminusone 1mo ago
Office workers get chronic conditions from sitting around all day too. Yet vary few jobs provide any such balance.
- dec0dedab0de 1mo ago
  The only tech job that had that balance was a network engineer at the headquaters of a global company in a skyscraper with 3 offices and a datacenter in walking distance. Most of the time I was sitting around writing code or configs, but at least once a week I would have to walk to a different floor or building to wire up a switch or rack a new DNS server or whatever. That bit of required physical activity and interaction with others was always a highlight.
- KellyCriterion 1mo ago
  Actually the only job without all those problems (err,any problems?) is to b a fitness instructor or personal trainer; not on an extreme level,8h a day, but let say you have 2 clients or maybe 3 clients a day, this would be enough movement / workout to never ever run into these problems, I guess?
dec0dedab0de 1mo ago
Physical labor is bad for the knees, but good for the soul.
mawadev 1mo ago
I have no idea why we go down the route of "us" vs "them" type of thinking. Have you considered both sides to be an abstract kind of hell?
- dan_q 1mo ago
  The "us" vs "them" thought pattern is the essence of "Western" (read: white, European, colonialist) culture, dating back to Plato's Republic. Marimba Ani's seminal work Yurugu is a sociological study of this culture from a non-western perspective. I can't recommend it strongly enough if you want to understand the nexus of social/psychological/epistemic factors that sustain the "us" vs "them" thought pattern and its corresponding cultural manifestations. https://archive.org/details/yuruguafricancen0000anim/page/n3/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/yuruguafricancen0000anim/page/n3...
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - burnte 1mo ago
    > The "us" vs "them" thought pattern is the essence of "Western" (read: white, European, colonialist) culture, dating back to Plato's Republic. No, us vs them is an innate aspect of human psychology going back tens of millions of years. It is found in literally every single group of humans that numbers more than 20.
    - prime_ursid 1mo ago
      Source: it was revealed to me in a dream

pc86 1mo ago

> A lot of those guys have back pain, inflexible schedules, working in extreme weather, And a lot of them don't? A lot of people who work on a computer all day also have back pain and inflexible schedules. Hell, I'm sure a lot of knowledge workers in other countries work in places with no air conditioning, for example - not exactly "extreme" but not climate-controlled, either.

__rito__ 1mo ago
Dude... It's totally, completely, fully different. Have you ever worked as an electrician/plumber, etc.? The amount of physical stress, sweat, exposure to bad weather, etc. are orders of magnitude higher than what you get as a tech worker, even in 38°C heat even without an AC. Your comment reads like it's coming from someone who never ever worked physically even as a volunteer/for fun. Any non-trivial amount of physical work will tell you that it’s many orders of magnitude tougher than working with computers. The worst part is you gotta show up and work your ass off even when you have flu, or something like that, or you lose a day's wages.
jonahrd 1mo ago
There are definitely downsides to office work, but this post really implies to me that you don't actually personally know anyone who works in the trades. The amount of body pain/damage, extreme conditions, and ridiculous scheduling (as in, last minute decisions that you must be on site at 5:30am the next day, not as in overall hours) are pretty much incomparable to tech work.
- pc86 1mo ago
  I didn't say they were comparable. But there is a common refrain that every single person who works in the trades has their body basically destroyed by the time they're 40, which isn't remotely true, and that nobody who works in an office (or a number that is essentially a rounding error) has any physical effects directly caused by that, which also isn't remotely true.
  - phainopepla2 1mo ago
    That's not a common refrain, that's you interpreting reasonable statements in the most extreme possible way.
hiAndrewQuinn 1mo ago
It's not for nothing that de facto founder of the Singaporean state Lee Kuan Yew wooed top men and women into working government jobs by ensuring the government buildings had A/C. I would far prefer an inflexible air conditioned 9 to 5 than a flexible perpetual sauna.

nancyminusone 1mo ago

Office workers get chronic conditions from sitting around all day too. Yet vary few jobs provide any such balance.

dec0dedab0de 1mo ago
The only tech job that had that balance was a network engineer at the headquaters of a global company in a skyscraper with 3 offices and a datacenter in walking distance. Most of the time I was sitting around writing code or configs, but at least once a week I would have to walk to a different floor or building to wire up a switch or rack a new DNS server or whatever. That bit of required physical activity and interaction with others was always a highlight.
KellyCriterion 1mo ago
Actually the only job without all those problems (err,any problems?) is to b a fitness instructor or personal trainer; not on an extreme level,8h a day, but let say you have 2 clients or maybe 3 clients a day, this would be enough movement / workout to never ever run into these problems, I guess?

dec0dedab0de 1mo ago

Physical labor is bad for the knees, but good for the soul.

mawadev 1mo ago

I have no idea why we go down the route of "us" vs "them" type of thinking. Have you considered both sides to be an abstract kind of hell?

dan_q 1mo ago
The "us" vs "them" thought pattern is the essence of "Western" (read: white, European, colonialist) culture, dating back to Plato's Republic. Marimba Ani's seminal work Yurugu is a sociological study of this culture from a non-western perspective. I can't recommend it strongly enough if you want to understand the nexus of social/psychological/epistemic factors that sustain the "us" vs "them" thought pattern and its corresponding cultural manifestations. https://archive.org/details/yuruguafricancen0000anim/page/n3/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/yuruguafricancen0000anim/page/n3...
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- burnte 1mo ago
  > The "us" vs "them" thought pattern is the essence of "Western" (read: white, European, colonialist) culture, dating back to Plato's Republic. No, us vs them is an innate aspect of human psychology going back tens of millions of years. It is found in literally every single group of humans that numbers more than 20.
  - prime_ursid 1mo ago
    Source: it was revealed to me in a dream