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i think stress really just depends on the kind of work, and the expectations of your customers. yes, most restaurants fail, but most businesses fail, because p
by beachstartup 10y ago
i think stress really just depends on the kind of work, and the expectations of your customers.
yes, most restaurants fail, but most businesses fail, because people think of it as some kind of paid vacation rather than an actual job.
getting up at 5am and making croissants is a very different thing than getting up at 5am and dealing with people screaming at you because an api endpoint isn't functioning.
- sedachv 10y agoIt is very easy to fail as a restaurant because you signed the wrong lease/for the wrong place/at the wrong location/in the wrong neighborhood, or any combination thereof. Everyone I personally know in the food services industry works harder than anyone I know doing computer programming. Every task that happens in back and front of house has a very specific start time and a very specific duration allowance - there is no flexibility and no opportunity for pacing or giving yourself some slack.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- beachstartup 10y ago> It is very easy to fail as a restaurant because you signed the wrong lease/for the wrong place/at the wrong location/in the wrong neighborhood, or any combination thereof. this applies to any business. > Every task that happens in back and front of house has a very specific start time and a very specific duration allowance - there is no flexibility and no opportunity for pacing or giving yourself some slack. you've clearly never worked in ops or SRE. or working in a mine, on an oil rig, or on an airplane, or a squad car. not everyone lives the life of a spoiled computer programmer which seems to be your baseline for evaluation.
- sheepmullet 10y agoThe difference is the type of stress, the mental effort, and the expectations. At the end of a hard day in the kitchen I'm ready to go hang out with friends and enjoy my free time. At the end of a hard day as a software dev I can hardly string a sentence together and want to go be by myself. Likewise in the kitchen I didn't get given completely unrealistic timeframes. As long as I focused and worked hard it was all good. As a software dev I constantly have pressure to perform miracles and hit unrealistic deadlines from all sides. And the pressure is cumulative. If I have a bad day today I'm going to have to work extra hard and under more pressure the rest of the week to catch up. If the food services industry paid as well as software dev I'd go back in a heartbeat.
- skybrian 10y agoSeems like you're describing the experience of being a worker? I expect someone starting their own restaurant has a whole new set of worries.
- beachstartup 10y agowe're talking about workers, not management/ownership. e.g. like at apple, vice president in your title means the excuses stop mattering. it's your job to fix it, or you're fired, end of story.
- agumonkey 10y agoThat's most of what I tried to express earlier about the difference between dev/eng and "production" work. Being in the blur and under pressure, without moving targets around and under your feets that creeps in your life seems to be prevalent in the former way more than in the later (even though https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12987866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12987866 tells a different story too).
- rhizome 10y agoA piece of fish cooks in 6 minutes regardless whether it's plain or encrusted in black pepper.