For me it wasn't nearly as bad. For one thing, there was so much less schoolwork than job-work. And, while in school, you never had to pretend to the other chil

For me it wasn't nearly as bad. For one thing, there was so much less schoolwork than job-work. And, while in school, you never had to pretend to the other children that you cared. Also, in school, there weren't many layers of management, product owners etc. all giving unclear and contradictory directions - schoolwork was downright trivial compared to a serious project in a large corp. And this is all coming from a privileged software worker - my family members (the ones saying that childhood and adolescence are the best) were all semi-skilled manual workers. In their cases, I just don't see how sitting at your desk 40 hours a week doing the same thing (say, routine testing methane analysers) over and over again for 40 years, while worrying about making ends meet or being fired, can be better than some school work and oceans of free time.