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First, to quote the Drive By Truckers: "If you want to feel old after 42 years, keep dropping the hammer and grinding the gears" My dad did blue collar labor

First, to quote the Drive By Truckers: "If you want to feel old after 42 years, keep dropping the hammer and grinding the gears" My dad did blue collar labor his whole life and his body hurt. He would take something like 6 ibuprofen every morning with breakfast. To do that kind of work requires you putting your family above yourself, which is a noble thing. I think what people miss in the old "you could support a family doing this" was that it was very much you actively harming yourself so that your family could be better off. It's the same thing with coal miners. They get all sorts of terrible health consequences from the work, but it is a noble sacrifice to them. My dad was adamant that we were going to college and living a more comfortable life than he did. So here I am, a software engineer with plenty of worries in the world, but at least a job that won't leave me broken and in pain after I do it for twenty years. I didn't read this article word for word, but it seemed to have a bit of an agenda to it. The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if you're working class is how driven you are. If you are lazy, you'll struggle your whole life. There isn't any family safety net to keep you ignorant of that. It's important to give people access to opportunity, but it's up to the individual to be self-motivated enough to take it. Education isn't some magical panacea.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
la_barba 7y ago
On a meta-level, maybe part of being educated, is being educated about the various possibilities and opportunities you might have if you pursued certain career paths. Its fuzzy whether you can get to that stage without a well rounded formal education.
hinkley 7y ago
> at least a job that won't leave me broken and in pain after I do it for twenty years. There are no guarantees. There's ample opportunity in this field for atrophy or strain to take its toll. Take care of yourself, pay attention to the complaints and do something about them.
- war1025 7y ago
  The ability to do something about it is the key difference.
mainliningfbs 7y ago
Bad ergonomics can destroy you body. Sitting all day doesn't guarantee that you won't be a broken physically.
- m463 7y ago
  Don't know why you were downvoted. A sedentary lifestyle is a health risk, and all engineers should 100% learn ergonomics (balance your body, don't force it to keep position) I expect there are jobs that are "medium duty" that are actually health-enhancing. Somewhere between back-breaking labor and sedentary engineer. Maybe being a mail carrier and walking most of the day.
  - Symbiote 7y ago
    A friend says the healthiest he ever was, was delivering mail during his PhD. - Wake up early -- not too many chances for late-night drinking then feeling bad about it. - Walk a long way, whatever the weather. The post office supplied excellent waterproofs (this is Denmark). - Walk up so many stairs. Many apartment buildings have the letter boxes in each apartment's door. - Occasionally run away from a dog.
chrisdhoover 7y ago
No joke. A construction career of 12 years was enough for me. Even with automation/labor saving tools its backbreaking. Three aspirin the morning and another three in the afternoon. Your alarm goes off before dawn and it starts to seem like groundhog day
- dbancajas 7y ago
  what's your story? Did you learn to code and now you're in bay area?
Unklejoe 7y ago
I think it depends just how grueling the physical work is. My dad is 71 years old (I'm 28) and has been doing autobody repair work for 55 years (still working to this day). He has mild arthritis, but he's in remarkably good shape. On the other hand, I'm starting to develop a gut after 7 years of full-time programming. I genuinely believe that if I were to keep up my current lifestyle, I'd be in for a bad time by the time I hit 50. Ideally, I should be doing more physical exercise, but the difference is that it's a choice that I have to make whereas it's not a choice for my dad, and it's hard for me to find motivation to go to the gym. So, in terms of health, I suspect that: Desk job + gym > Physical labor job > Desk job with no physical activity
- wil421 7y ago
  The difference is the work is actually hurting your dad (arthritis) and your choice of sedation is doing it to you. The past few offices I’ve worked in all had gyms. Healthy food options are a must for office jobs. I’m saying this as a office worker who’s lost 15 pounds by diet change small walks. Looking to add some days at the gym soon.
- war1025 7y ago
  Autobody work probably doesn't cause the same repetitive stress injuries that working on an assembly line does. I have an uncle who is a plumber of a similar age and is in pretty great shape for his age. My understanding is that most of his aches and pains are related to a car accident he was in when he was young and reckless.
- darkarmani 7y ago
  > I genuinely believe that if I were to keep up my current lifestyle, I'd be in for a bad time by the time I hit 50. That's mostly diet. With a better diet and 20 minutes of working out a day, you could make yourself healthy. Hell, run just a mile a day, and do pushups, pullups, and planks every other day. It's amazing how short workouts done consistently can actually keep you fit.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  I work in metal fabrication and my I'm lithe. I don't have any trouble at all keeping my weight under control, but in order to stay strong and flexible I still need to work at it constantly. To that end, I have a weight bench, barbell and dumbbells in my lounge room, and a pull up bar hung between two door ways in the hall. I find 'working out' tedious, incredibly boring. But I'll walk by the pull up bar and do 10 pull ups multiple times a day, or grab a couple dumbbells and do a few sets here and there.
thebigspacefuck 7y ago
To quote Neal Stephenson: "Software development, like professional sports, has a way of making thirty-year-old men feel decrepit."
throwaway-9-2-5 7y ago
The difference being: are you working hard, or hardly working? The linked picture always makes me giggle, a guy carrying drywall, captioned: "Your back hurts from sitting at your desk? Let me put these sheets down and get you a Midol." https://img.fireden.net/v/image/1534/88/1534880458592.png https://img.fireden.net/v/image/1534/88/1534880458592.png
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Most of the metal fabricators I know are incredibly unfit. I've worked in metal fabrication on and off for over 20 years, and my observation is that's a cultural thing combined with long running fatigue from working too many hours standing up. That and metal fabricators aren't known for their diet being particularly great. I'm fairly active, both mentally and physically, never really drank much, and never smoked cigarettes. I could kick most of the guys I work with in the head, whereas most of them wouldn't be able to lift a foot above their hips. People usually guess my age between 6 and 10 years below my actual age. Metal fabrication doesn't have to be hard on the body. I entirely agree with you that the number one determining factor of how far you'll get in life--and by that I mean how well you'll do setting and achieving your own goals--is how driven you are. And highly driven people tend not to hang around the workshop floor for very long, so the workshop floor tends to suffer a driven-person-drain by attrition as the highly driven people drive off to greener pastures.
WalterBright 7y ago
> The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if you're working class is how driven you are. In my experience it's much more about how you manage the money you make, i.e.: 1. live below your means 2. invest the difference - put your money to work for you For example, in the last week there was a bank that accidentally deposited $120,000 in the account of a couple. The couple immediately went on a spending spree, buying all kinds of very expensive items. By the time the police got involved, the money was gone. https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank-accidentally-deposited-couples-account-they-spent-most-it-then-got-charged-with-theft/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank-acc... Criminality aside, the "gee I have some extra money, let's go shopping!" is how one remains poor for life.
- dmix 7y ago
  This is underrated. Not to mention people are encouraged to do zero planning for the student debts and get pressured by family to buy new cars. There’s so much of wealth that comes down to lifestyle and educating people on personal finance which would go way farther than just telling people to get a $100k degree and ‘study hard (for rote testing)’. Here in Canada where I live the debt levels are still insane and didn’t decline like the US did, even without the healthcare bills excuse. Politicians love blaming external factors and rich people/big corporations for all our upward mobility issues, which obviously play a roles but it’s hardly the full story, I’m curious how far we could improve things through culture and how we teach our kids to spend money. This was a personal finance culture that was far more popular in the west in the recent past eras which we people constantly romanticize about and point to different single things to explain it all away (ie unions). My girlfriend is amazing with money and saves everything, both her parents do the same, which is the opposite of me in my early 20s before I read into it and my parents growing up too. I’m convinced parenting combined with culture (she’s Han Chinese and they tend to be thrifty similar Scottish people and Jugaad in India[1], among others) has a significant impact on these trajectories. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad
  - alvah 7y ago
    "thrifty/crafty like Scottish people" This stereotype hasn't been true for at least a generation.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

la_barba 7y ago

On a meta-level, maybe part of being educated, is being educated about the various possibilities and opportunities you might have if you pursued certain career paths. Its fuzzy whether you can get to that stage without a well rounded formal education.

hinkley 7y ago

> at least a job that won't leave me broken and in pain after I do it for twenty years. There are no guarantees. There's ample opportunity in this field for atrophy or strain to take its toll. Take care of yourself, pay attention to the complaints and do something about them.

war1025 7y ago
The ability to do something about it is the key difference.

mainliningfbs 7y ago

Bad ergonomics can destroy you body. Sitting all day doesn't guarantee that you won't be a broken physically.

m463 7y ago
Don't know why you were downvoted. A sedentary lifestyle is a health risk, and all engineers should 100% learn ergonomics (balance your body, don't force it to keep position) I expect there are jobs that are "medium duty" that are actually health-enhancing. Somewhere between back-breaking labor and sedentary engineer. Maybe being a mail carrier and walking most of the day.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  A friend says the healthiest he ever was, was delivering mail during his PhD. - Wake up early -- not too many chances for late-night drinking then feeling bad about it. - Walk a long way, whatever the weather. The post office supplied excellent waterproofs (this is Denmark). - Walk up so many stairs. Many apartment buildings have the letter boxes in each apartment's door. - Occasionally run away from a dog.

chrisdhoover 7y ago

No joke. A construction career of 12 years was enough for me. Even with automation/labor saving tools its backbreaking. Three aspirin the morning and another three in the afternoon. Your alarm goes off before dawn and it starts to seem like groundhog day

dbancajas 7y ago
what's your story? Did you learn to code and now you're in bay area?

Unklejoe 7y ago

I think it depends just how grueling the physical work is. My dad is 71 years old (I'm 28) and has been doing autobody repair work for 55 years (still working to this day). He has mild arthritis, but he's in remarkably good shape. On the other hand, I'm starting to develop a gut after 7 years of full-time programming. I genuinely believe that if I were to keep up my current lifestyle, I'd be in for a bad time by the time I hit 50. Ideally, I should be doing more physical exercise, but the difference is that it's a choice that I have to make whereas it's not a choice for my dad, and it's hard for me to find motivation to go to the gym. So, in terms of health, I suspect that: Desk job + gym > Physical labor job > Desk job with no physical activity

wil421 7y ago
The difference is the work is actually hurting your dad (arthritis) and your choice of sedation is doing it to you. The past few offices I’ve worked in all had gyms. Healthy food options are a must for office jobs. I’m saying this as a office worker who’s lost 15 pounds by diet change small walks. Looking to add some days at the gym soon.
war1025 7y ago
Autobody work probably doesn't cause the same repetitive stress injuries that working on an assembly line does. I have an uncle who is a plumber of a similar age and is in pretty great shape for his age. My understanding is that most of his aches and pains are related to a car accident he was in when he was young and reckless.
darkarmani 7y ago
> I genuinely believe that if I were to keep up my current lifestyle, I'd be in for a bad time by the time I hit 50. That's mostly diet. With a better diet and 20 minutes of working out a day, you could make yourself healthy. Hell, run just a mile a day, and do pushups, pullups, and planks every other day. It's amazing how short workouts done consistently can actually keep you fit.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
I work in metal fabrication and my I'm lithe. I don't have any trouble at all keeping my weight under control, but in order to stay strong and flexible I still need to work at it constantly. To that end, I have a weight bench, barbell and dumbbells in my lounge room, and a pull up bar hung between two door ways in the hall. I find 'working out' tedious, incredibly boring. But I'll walk by the pull up bar and do 10 pull ups multiple times a day, or grab a couple dumbbells and do a few sets here and there.

thebigspacefuck 7y ago

To quote Neal Stephenson: "Software development, like professional sports, has a way of making thirty-year-old men feel decrepit."

throwaway-9-2-5 7y ago

The difference being: are you working hard, or hardly working? The linked picture always makes me giggle, a guy carrying drywall, captioned: "Your back hurts from sitting at your desk? Let me put these sheets down and get you a Midol." https://img.fireden.net/v/image/1534/88/1534880458592.png https://img.fireden.net/v/image/1534/88/1534880458592.png

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

Most of the metal fabricators I know are incredibly unfit. I've worked in metal fabrication on and off for over 20 years, and my observation is that's a cultural thing combined with long running fatigue from working too many hours standing up. That and metal fabricators aren't known for their diet being particularly great. I'm fairly active, both mentally and physically, never really drank much, and never smoked cigarettes. I could kick most of the guys I work with in the head, whereas most of them wouldn't be able to lift a foot above their hips. People usually guess my age between 6 and 10 years below my actual age. Metal fabrication doesn't have to be hard on the body. I entirely agree with you that the number one determining factor of how far you'll get in life--and by that I mean how well you'll do setting and achieving your own goals--is how driven you are. And highly driven people tend not to hang around the workshop floor for very long, so the workshop floor tends to suffer a driven-person-drain by attrition as the highly driven people drive off to greener pastures.

WalterBright 7y ago

> The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if you're working class is how driven you are. In my experience it's much more about how you manage the money you make, i.e.: 1. live below your means 2. invest the difference - put your money to work for you For example, in the last week there was a bank that accidentally deposited $120,000 in the account of a couple. The couple immediately went on a spending spree, buying all kinds of very expensive items. By the time the police got involved, the money was gone. https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank-accidentally-deposited-couples-account-they-spent-most-it-then-got-charged-with-theft/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank-acc... Criminality aside, the "gee I have some extra money, let's go shopping!" is how one remains poor for life.

dmix 7y ago
This is underrated. Not to mention people are encouraged to do zero planning for the student debts and get pressured by family to buy new cars. There’s so much of wealth that comes down to lifestyle and educating people on personal finance which would go way farther than just telling people to get a $100k degree and ‘study hard (for rote testing)’. Here in Canada where I live the debt levels are still insane and didn’t decline like the US did, even without the healthcare bills excuse. Politicians love blaming external factors and rich people/big corporations for all our upward mobility issues, which obviously play a roles but it’s hardly the full story, I’m curious how far we could improve things through culture and how we teach our kids to spend money. This was a personal finance culture that was far more popular in the west in the recent past eras which we people constantly romanticize about and point to different single things to explain it all away (ie unions). My girlfriend is amazing with money and saves everything, both her parents do the same, which is the opposite of me in my early 20s before I read into it and my parents growing up too. I’m convinced parenting combined with culture (she’s Han Chinese and they tend to be thrifty similar Scottish people and Jugaad in India[1], among others) has a significant impact on these trajectories. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad
- alvah 7y ago
  "thrifty/crafty like Scottish people" This stereotype hasn't been true for at least a generation.