23 ms·

From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

• rabuse 4y ago
  I have had many moments in my life as a dev where I'm so stressed out and tired of it all, where it sounds like heaven to just go work on a farm, and plow some fields.
• odysseus 4y ago
  Wonder if this guy was influenced by the ending of the movie Office Space.
  • carimura 4y ago
    Ya Peter Gibbons figured this out (modulo the podcast) a long time ago. So did Lawrence.
• barbariangrunge 4y ago
  I sometimes miss my old job hauling around boxes. It’s great exercise and you never have to take stress home with you. Good coworkers often times too It just doesn’t pay enough to retire off of. Can’t easily build savings. Can’t easily pay for the dentist or other emergencies Being a lead programmer pays a ton better. I just wish I wasn’t as stressful as it is
  • htrp 4y ago
    You're getting paid for the extra stress .... markets in everything.
    • moonchrome 4y ago
      Often the tradeoff is not worth it (as in I've seen situations where people were working way more stressful situations for like 20%-30% pay bump), not just talking values, but if it's really high stress it better be paying enough to be able to retire in 10 years because constant stress will kill you faster than repetitive physical labor.
  • fn-mote 4y ago
    > Can’t easily pay for the dentist or other emergencies Work a union job, not Amazon? UPS benefits will easily cover your medical and dental problems. (Once you qualify.) I don't know anything about Amazon's worker coverage.
    • xedeon 4y ago
      From a quick Google search: - https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/employer-brand/AMZ_2022_PaycheckContributions.pdf https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/employer-brand/AMZ_20... - https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us - https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us-copay https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us...
    • pxx 4y ago
      Amazon's medical coverage is no UPS but it is extremely competitive against plans that union members try to tout as better. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753455 as an old discussion where the thread creator thinks their plan is a lot better "due to unions" but it's actually a lot worse.
  • notesinthefield 4y ago
    I left devops behind to go back to an IT help desk. Around a 20% paycut but I never even have to have email on my phones, no on call, no weekends, I barely have to think much. Good benefits and still above average pay for my area and I can return to grad school part time. I realized I just dont deal well with stress and it easily spills over into my personal life, my stress started effecting my spouse so I had to go.
    • forsythe_ 4y ago
      Are you able to talk about what you're doing in help desk that still pays so (relatively) well? This honestly sounds like a dream to me.
  • sharkweek 4y ago
    Graduated in 07, was working middle office for a bank, economy tanked so I left to go travel in a low cost of living area (Central America) for a bit. Came back, couldn’t find a job so worked at a grocery store for two years throwing freight. Honestly kinda loved it. No stress besides the occasional surly coworker, but it felt very peaceful making a customer-ravaged shelf look whole again. Couldn’t afford the low wages now but at the time not sure I would have traded it for much.
  • jdwithit 4y ago
    I have a friend who works in finance at a huge bank. He makes a killing, but absolutely despises his job. His stated goal is to make enough to retire early (we're ~40 now, so soon-ish) and then work part time at a hardware store just for something to do. Pretty much for the reasons you said, meet people, low responsibility and stress, the job ends when you punch out. I think I'd get bored pretty quick, but I do understand where you're coming from.
• helen___keller 4y ago
  > For me, a lot of my meaning comes from two things. One is doing something in the world that feels like it's actually making things a little better somehow. And so contributing to society in some meaningful way. > But the other thing is socialization with my coworkers is a huge part of my daily satisfaction in a job. You might be free Monday through Friday but all of your friends are working when you want to grab coffee. I can't relate to many of the author's life experiences, but this quote really hit home. I think we're all wired to want to (a) make something better and (b) share our life and experiences with other people. How (a) and (b) manifest varies greatly depending on life background and opportunities, but I can say most of the mental healthy difficulties I've had previously in life can be related to those two points.
  • fjfbsufhdvfy 4y ago
    There are a lot of people who have given up on a) and instead spend all their time trying to tear the stuff other people build down because they got bored.
  • combatentropy 4y ago
    I came here to say the same thing and was glad to see someone else already did. So I simply upvoted you. I might add that also he was looking for two more things that some times also are rejuvenating: (c) physical exercise (d) a relief from decision fatigue: "I did not want to be asked to make a lot of decisions everyday. . . . I wanted literally to be told what to do every day and I wanted that structure to be rigorous." This can get old after a while too, but routine can be a nice change for a while, if every day you at your old job you had to be a creative or always solve new problems, like if you were a designer, director, etc.
• fffobar 4y ago
  BTW, a highly disturbed sleep like he is describing is a common sign of burnout/depression/anxiety disorder. Do not ignore it! There are drugs and therapy, it is worth it. It is double worth it if you have the money to stay unemployed or have other ways of getting some extended rest, at least 3 months. BTW, there is even some chemical signalling pathway explanation for that connection. Or maybe it is hypothesized? IDK, it's above my knowledge level. But the correlation surely is real and strong.
  • kirbys-memeteam 4y ago
  • P_I_Staker 4y ago
    The issue is that then you have to deal with a fascist machine that's hellbent on destroying your life for profit.
  • P_I_Staker 4y ago
    Sorry for the double comment, but I think you may be wrong about burnout. There's reasons to think that long pauses won't help with burnout. Once people return to the original conditions, they often wind up right back where they started. You bring up financial means, but the issue that it puts you into a lower caste of citizen, entitled to fewer rights. This position may be temporary, mitigable, or you may be in a position talent / career wise where it doesn't matter. The fact remains that in the eyes of our society you have become less valuable as a person. Lots of people can't take that hit.
• avgDev 4y ago
  "The experience was physically taxing, he was diagnosed with tendonitis after moving hundreds of boxes a day, but it pulled him out of his depression and helped him gain perspective and a deeper sense of meaning"....... I have mixed feelings about this. What this has proven is working at amazon warehouse sucks, and is not sustainable. I've had many physical shitty jobs in my 20's. Then, I had some health issue and could no longer keep doing that to my body, so I went back to school and got a CS degree. I sometimes get depressed and miss physical work, but then I remember how shit it was and how an injury would prevent me from working. As a dev I think I'm going to be able to earn money as long as I'm alive and have a functioning brain. I guess once you have enough money then maybe someone might find that work fun? Obviously it helped the writer with depression. However, if he ever gets permanently hurt and it affects his daily life I have a feeling depression will come back in full swing. Office work is much much safer. There are ways to help people through tech and have much bigger affect then moving boxes for a shitty company. Edit: What helps my depression is connecting with people outside of work, helping people in my community, doing projects around my house and spending time with my son. Additionally, I try to make good choices when spending my money and limit my spending on stuff I don't need, as I dislike excessive spending. Edit2: Some great comments below. This is very much poverty/shit job tourism, which the writer can escape at any moment. This is some BlackMirror type of content. Guy makes it big in tech, retires, now works shit job people are trying to escape to cure his depression. He then writes about it on a blog. Now, other non-aware devs might be reading it contemplating leaving their jobs to do a REAL job.
  • subsubzero 4y ago
    I too had many shitty jobs in my early 20's and reading this article kinda triggered those job's bad memories and how much I hated working at those places. I remember even after getting into tech many years later I would sometimes have dreams where I would be back in one of those jobs having a minor case of PTSD. That being said there are other ways to do the type of career shift that the author wants. My Wife's cousin who worked as a electrician near SF mentioned to me one of his co-workers was a former sr. director at Oracle who got burned out and wanted to try something new. I asked him how they liked the new career and he said she loved it. That job payed well and didn't require the forced degradation seen at amazon warehouses, plus you get to interact with interesting people and travel to different locations frequently.
• rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Fuckin A
• smallerfish 4y ago
  I think this is partly a story of retiring without having enough in your life to replace work. I understand how that's possible, as full days of work leave me not wanting to do much in the evenings (I don't have kids, so I can't imagine where parents find the energy) - that said, it's probably important for your mental health post-retirement to find things outside of work to engage in well before your retirement date comes.
• EricE 4y ago
  Traditional jobs are often referred to as honest work for good reason.
  • 77pt77 4y ago
    No. For no good reason.
• djhworld 4y ago
  Working in a warehouse for 6 weeks is gruelling, and from the interview it sounds like he got a taste of that experience, but I think there's a marked difference between working for the novelty of it and working because you're living paycheck to paycheck. Saying that though I think he's right in the sense that having experience of working in an environment like that does give you the appreciation for the relative comforts of a tech job. I've worked retail jobs when younger, and sitting on your butt all day writing code is way easier...
  • virtuous_signal 4y ago
    I agree absolutely. One of these people can stop whenever the experience stops being fun and the other has few other options. It's about as inspiring as poverty tourism or an episode of Undercover Boss.
• deleted 4y ago
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• darod 4y ago
  interesting that he's so programmed to work that just relaxing for a bit made him depressed. hard to see how working 11 hours a day is going to make it easier for him to still not have to put his kids on the calendar. on a side note, i wonder if the actual therapy was just doing something physical. sitting down not moving for hours and hours is not what we were built to do. i always found working out, brazilian jiu jitsu, hiking, anything physical to be very therapeutic if i've been inside an office all day.
  • dfxm12 4y ago
    More than just doing something physical, something group/team/class based like BJJ would also give the camaraderie and socialization that satisfied him. I hear a lot of retired people say "I miss working", but when probed, they'll say things like "I miss the routine", "I miss the people I saw all the time", "I miss the structure". Work is not the only place you get these! Going to BJJ, kickboxing, clay studios, adult sports leagues, walking groups, some volunteer opportunities, etc., all fit the bill. I think some people put so much of their life/identity into work that they can't even imagine something else...
    • germinalphrase 4y ago
      If anyone is interested in trying Brazilian jiu jitsu, just know it’s common to be completely confused for a while before the different positions/techniques start to click. It’s like a huge flowchart, and you’re randomly jumping into the middle somewhere.
      • darod 4y ago
        yup, baby steps (black belt 2nd degree)
• betwixthewires 4y ago
  As someone who's worked almost the full gamut of work types, from warehouse to sales to manufacturing to software development, even service and call center work, I can say that there's something rewarding about physically demanding work, taxing though it may be, that you just don't get sitting at a desk. And there's something you get building an abstract machine with your mind at a keyboard that you can't get in a warehouse or a factory. These days I try to balance those things, I make sure I do things that are very tactile and physical and alsp sit at my workstation at least a few hours a week to make progress on my projects. I'd say having a bit of both feels pretty good.
• WesternWind 4y ago
  It's interesting that he developed tendonitis. I've read that the rate of injury at amazon jobs is incredibly high, which is not good practice in my view. Article says amazon rate of serious injury 80% higher than competitors https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57332390 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57332390
  • samstave 4y ago
    Amazon will be the first to adopt the exo-skeleton-assist for factory/warehouse workers, which the unit is registered to you and any damage will result in a docking of your medical coverage/pay.
    • scrlk 4y ago
      > "Alexa, open the exo-skeleton, I need to go to the bathroom" > "I'm sorry, your exo-skeleton has already been opened for the allotted 15 minute break, it will not open again until the end of your shift"
      • foobarian 4y ago
        Heh if you go through the trouble of building an exo-skeleton might as well build in the toilet facilities.
        • scrlk 4y ago
          > "Warning: Your exo-skeleton waste container is full." > "Warning: You have ran out of your free waste container quota for this shift. If you require a new waste container, it will be deducted from your pay" > "Alert: High stress levels detected. You are required to report to an AmaZen(TM) Mindfulness Practice Room [0] for 30 minutes after your shift" [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57287151 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57287151
      • renewiltord 4y ago
        Imagine doing all this and not installing a condom cath at least.
• curiousDog 4y ago
  Hey Peter Gibbons already did this. Time to burn the whole damn warehouse down, Milton.
• gnrlst 4y ago
  I have a sense of guilt when I compare myself to my high school friends who have to work longer, work harder, and get paid significantly less. They are just as smart, they just made different choices. And this sense of guilt and of feeling like I don't deserve it just compounds the imposter syndrome to the point I can't even enjoy what I have because I think that at any moment I'll be "discovered" and lose everything. I think it stems from my inability to appreciate what I have because I have this instinctive belief that if I let myself, then something will happen for whatever reason. Now that I wrote this I realize it has little to do with the original article (which I read, both parts actually), but hopefully someone has some good advice, so I don't have to resort to quitting and going to an Amazon FC to feel better about myself.
  • orev 4y ago
    > They are just as smart, they just made different choices. Most people fall within a similar range of intelligence, and where they end up in life is far more a result of the choices they made than how smart they are. So you made a bunch of choices, like learning tech, etc, and they made a bunch of choices, like maybe partying instead of studying, and now you get to enjoy the rewards. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that, you earned it by making better choices.
    • theteapot 4y ago
      Or maybe he was just lucky. Just saying.
    • Bakary 4y ago
      I don't think guilt is helpful, but this logic has some issues. You obviously cannot have everyone be a coder. And becoming a coder takes many intervening steps of which choices are only one factor. Being born in a developed country (heck only the US has those truly insane salaries), having a natural interest for it, having universities and the means to study, living in a safe home etc. these are all unearned yet make up 90% of the end result.
  • gamechangr 4y ago
    I have had this experience. Sometimes its important to remember that money is just a proxy. For example, I have paid for 10 friends from High School to spend a week in a 3,000 SQ FT cabin in Colorado and just relax. I'm going to say a few things that I normally wouldn't, just to better illustrate my point. A few of my friends make less than $30k a year. One is 1st grade teacher (male) and one is a full time math tutor. They are great people who go to work and make a difference. I wouldn't feel the same if they just laid on their couch and drank everyday...but still. Remember money is really for experiences. I paid for the Cabin, 10 sking passes and sent each of them $2,000 for the trip to cover air fairs and transportation. The whole thing was maybe $30,000 and it's one of my better memories. I would say -- be intentionally generous and look for ways to help your life long friends. Yes, it helps them. Yes, it helps you too. You would be shocked how much purpose it brings to your life. Most 40 year olds have less than 2 people in their life that would lend them $10k. Be that friend and never keep track. This is the reason you work hard and are paid more than you should be - to be a better friend than you otherwise would be able to be. Blow someone away with your generosity
• spacemadness 4y ago
  This person seems like they are suffering from typical tech bubble non-awareness disease. They always strive to make the world a better place as… a director of Facebook. Debatable. Early retirement is such a nightmare for me that.. I became an Amazon Warehouse Associate out of boredom? I’m not sure how any of this narcissism is making the world a better place.
  • carlosdp 4y ago
    Did you actually read the article? He's probably the one person in tech that is directly aware of what it's like to work at a warehouse because he actually did it for real. He's not claiming to be "making the world a better place" by working at Facebook. He's telling the story of how he got burned out from that world and sought out a real "honest labor" job that he'd heard a ton about in the media to snap out of it and get real. What more could someone possibly do to wave off the label of "tech bubble non-awareness disease," in your opinion?
    • spacemadness 4y ago
      “For me, a lot of my meaning comes from two things. One is doing something in the world that feels like it's actually making things a little better somehow. And so contributing to society in some meaningful way.” Yes, I read the article.
      • LtWorf 4y ago
        I loved the "silicon valley" show, where every single shitty startup was saying that they'd make the world a better place.
      • ckemere 4y ago
        To be fair, his most recent job after Microsoft and FB was a Gates- foundation funded startup building tools for healthcare in underdeveloped contexts. I think that might be what the phrase refers to?
    • et-al 4y ago
• spoonjim 4y ago
  Working in an Amazon warehouse can be refreshing and restorative when you can quit after 10 weeks and have millions of dollars in the bank. Not so much when you get tendonitis after 6 weeks but have to stare down another 30 years of this and still won’t have any savings.
  • themitigating 4y ago
    Yes and we are all aware of that. Are you saying that his experience and blog cause harm to those people who have to do it? There's been countless posts about Amazon warehouse conditions on Hackernews and other news sources.
    • Bakary 4y ago
      The takeaway is more that one of the contributing reasons the world is so dystopian is that people at the top literally have no awareness or understanding or what life is like at the bottom.
    • svnt 4y ago
      He is just slumming it for kicks but taking the position of someone who needed the job to eat and pay rent.
    • spoonjim 4y ago
      "Harm"? Not really. But this guy is not much different from a millionaire pretending to be homeless and bumming quarters at the train station. Might he find it an interesting experience? Sure. But it's fundamentally just a form of "class vacation" as rich people often do.
      • themitigating 4y ago
        Since vacation is defined as positive and fun I wouldn't call it a class vacation.
• asim 4y ago
  Whoa that really sucks. I met Philip Su a really long time ago when he was at Facebook. I think he came to our office in London to give a talk. Sad to hear he's been through such a difficult time. Hope life continues to improve for him and maybe he makes his way back to tech at some point.
• 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  I heard the higher-level positions around the Warehouse (like Operations Manager) are often 16 hour days.
• kvee 4y ago
  I thought it was pretty interesting to read from the guy himself on his own site. This one is quite well done: https://peaksalvation.com/socioeconomic-bends https://peaksalvation.com/socioeconomic-bends
• ravedave5 4y ago
  Has this dude never heard of hobbies?
  • LuisAPI 4y ago
    This tech bro actually tried tho > I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. I skied on weekdays, shopped at Target at 11am with nobody there, and played video games. But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I became unmoored, set adrift in a sea of theoretical possibility only to drown in unbounded optionality. Novelty and excitement turned into a spiraling vortex of depression as I began to wake up sometimes at noon, sometimes 2pm, and on the rare occasion even getting out of bed at 6pm.
• deleted 4y ago
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• skadamat 4y ago
  I can empathize to be honest. There's something awesome about doing physical work. You get to use your body to think and move, and feel concrete progress. However, I think being a Tech CEO is at the opposite end of the spectrum from being an Amazon Warehouse Associate. Being somewhere in the middle seems very compelling. In essence, Crawford talks about this feeling extensively in his book (Shop Class as Soulcraft). Here's the essay that started it all: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-so... He used to be a manager at a political think tank but went back to the trades because he found the latter not only more satisfying, concrete, and tangible, but also more mentally taxing, creative, philosophical, etc.
• didgetmaster 4y ago
  There were many times in my programming career when I wanted to take a mental break and just do some kind of menial job for a few months. There are many routine jobs that don't require much training so it should be easy to do one for 6 months. The problem is generally that most people's career paths do not allow for this kind of thing. It looks bad on your resume to have 'truck driver' or 'shelf stocker' in-between tech jobs.
  • ryandrake 4y ago
    I solved this by simply getting hobbies that involve manual labor. You get the physical exertion and the ability to see the results of the work of your hands--without the drudgery of a job and the pressure of having your livelihood depend on not wrecking your body. If you're not feeling up to it today, just don't go out to the garage. Need extra zen time to forget your JIRA queue? Spend a few extra hours hobbying. Started with auto mechanics, learned basic maintenance, moved on to minor, then major auto repairs. Then tried woodworking, built a few pieces of furniture for the house, then moved on to sheet metal. Finally ended up building a two-seat airplane. Physical hobbies are both satisfying AND low-pressure. Plus, you shouldn't have to quit your tech job to get a hobby.
    • jdwithit 4y ago
      I got deep into homebrewing beer for a while for this reason. It was extremely satisfying to make something tangible and physically taxing after spending all week tapping on a keyboard. Not to say that software isn't "real", but having a physical thing you can show off and share and enjoy hits differently. Unfortunately having dozens of gallons of good beer on hand at all times led to some pretty bad habits so I had to get out of that game (plus I had kids, so RIP to both hobby time and frequent drinking). Still looking for the next hobby that really clicks with me, the intersection of science and creativity and engineering and socializing that is brewing was pretty perfect.
  • octodog 4y ago
    Genuine question, why does it look bad? I don't think this would be a problem at all where I live (Australia). Worst case you could just leave it off your resume.
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• tristor 4y ago
  I read the article, and... I get it. But something about this just seems weird to me. I grew up mostly on a family farm, worked every day of my life in some capacity since I was 9 or 10 years old, and did shit jobs to pay for college (which I eventually dropped out of right before graduation). I don't think my route into tech is that different from many of the other folks I've worked with... this guy lived a /very/ charmed and privileged existence compared to the average American tech worker, and going to work at an Amazon warehouse to get a reality check seems... patronizing somehow. I am glad he got a reality check, but I feel like there's another way to do this, or at least how to write about it.
  • nathanaldensr 4y ago
    Why deny his experience, though? Not everything needs to be viewed through a lens of privilege. I hope the author gained an appreciation for those less fortunate or less ambitious. At least they have experienced the "other side," so to speak.
    • eckza 4y ago
      > Why deny his experience, though? Because it was an option. He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives. Good on him for having an epiphany, but I'd wager that he'd have a different perspective if he had to do that job long past his soft-handed tendonitis episode in order to feed his family that he barely mentioned in his interview. Imagine having built so small of a life for yourself and your family that in order to get a reality check, you have to check yourself in to rehab with the "common folk" in order to rescue yourself from your "depression". It's lamentable, not commendable. It has all happened before, and it will happen again. This is not a salvation story; it is a cautionary tale. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
      • Aperocky 4y ago
        > He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives. "mission trips" are not real poverty tourism though. Kids don't go live in real poverty on those trips. They live in hotels, eat prepared food, so on. The author did move 300 boxes per hour for a whole month.
• tpmx 4y ago
  I wonder what this guy's blood pressure level is. Advice: Make an effort to slow down by 10-20%, and then take it from there.
• oldsklgdfth 4y ago
  I work in FAANG and enjoy Costco. Sometimes in the food court I day-dream of working there. You know what you are doing, you use your body, you go home and don't think about it. I told my friend. He thought it sounded a lot like larping.
  • Bakary 4y ago
    If you work in a FAANG (presumably as some sort of knowledge worker) you have a unique opportunity to never have to work again within just a few years of saving.
    • oldsklgdfth 4y ago
      I could do that and then go work at the Costco food court. Somehow that doesn't feel any less like larping. On a serious note, how does one do that? It doesn't "feel" that way, but I know that's lifestyle inflation.
      • Bakary 4y ago
        If you are able to get a job at a FAANG, you should also be able to take a look at your expenditures and determine what you actually need in life. Maybe getting a smaller living place will be the stumbling block for most, but think of the freedom you gain. If you find yourself fantasizing about working in Costco during your daily life, chances are the things you spend on aren't that effective at bringing you satisfaction anyway. Yet unlike the vast majority of people you actually have the means to escape and build the life you want i.e. a massively well remunerated job with remote working options. So why not do it?
      • kramerger 4y ago
        I once took a "down shift" job and it didn't work well. After only a few days I started seeing inefficiencies, some people slacking like crazy while others had to work for two, management that was really incompetent and could not be convinced to improve anything. I mean, people were nice and everything and I enjoyed the social aspects of the job, but I learned that I was too competitive to function in a less demanding job
• avidphantasm 4y ago
  Guy who doesn’t need to work slums it with the poors to self actualize. Fuck this guy.
  • lioeters 4y ago
    > Slum tourism, poverty tourism, ghetto tourism or trauma tourism is a type of city tourism that involves visiting impoverished areas. > The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word slumming to 1884. In London, people visited slum neighborhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch to observe life in this situation. Wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points, Manhattan on the Lower East Side, neighborhoods of poor immigrants, to see "how the other half lives". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism > Slum tourism has been the subject of much controversy, with critics labelling the voyeuristic aspects of slum tourism as poverty porn. > A primary accusation that the advocates against slum tourism make is that it "turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from".
  • westoncb 4y ago
    Alternately: guy suffering from mental health issues finds symptoms partially alleviated by demanding physical labor.
• imwillofficial 4y ago
  This is kind of awesome
  • deleted 4y ago
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• throwie_wayward 4y ago
• purplezooey 4y ago
  This sounds nice, but the guy is already rich. That makes it a lot less interesting.
  • themitigating 4y ago
    Why?
    • svnt 4y ago
      William Shatner answered this in 2009: https://youtu.be/ainyK6fXku0 https://youtu.be/ainyK6fXku0
• jarek83 4y ago
  I did the other way round. After 5 years in Tesco warehouse somewhere in the UK, I went back to Poland to learn web development. Picking jobs are cruel, I'd advise anyone against taking it and trying hardest they can to avoid it. It gives you problems with your back, your legs, gets you bored about life. You get back home physically tired and mentally numb each freaking day, that's because you wear your arse out there forced to ignore any safety rules just to get on time with all tasks and you still get some angry manager calling you every now and then because his managers always push him to achieve more 'picks/hour'. If you see warehouse job ad - run.
• giantg2 4y ago
  Ostensibly he could just retire.
• carabiner 4y ago
  Sell your back, or sell your brain. There is no other way.
  • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
    Be born to rich parents.* *Restrictions apply.
• antiterra 4y ago
  The worst of poverty tourism is when it is done impersonally without recognition of the inescapable circumstances of others. Do see how real people live and work, connect with them to their faces. Recount your difficult escape from a low-income origin. But: don’t think that you are one of them and able to advocate as a representative if you aren’t, a la Pulp’s Common People. We should encourage resilience, but be sympathetic about its absence. Everyone should choose to learn to shake off a punch to the face, but that doesn’t negate the real trauma of someone getting assaulted who didn’t have that lesson.
  • Aperocky 4y ago
    > But: don’t think that you are one of them and able to advocate as a representative I don't see how the author did that. He advocated a change of mindset by dialing to an extremely different situation to solve his own issues/or other people with the same issues, not that the situation is great or perfect. I don't see where he advocated for it. For what it's worth, his effort in the warehouse is already more than 99% of more privileged folks who has never needed to do that. I fail to see why this is being criticized. The comments criticizing him as patronizing is in turn incredibly patronizing of the warehouse workers themselves, the irony.
• vukadinovic 4y ago
  When you're so rich and bored so you start doing regular jobs lol
• jjmorrison 4y ago
  For those judging this guy - let's remember most of us are pretty similar. Might be an opportunity to look inwards.
• elzbardico 4y ago
  There's something strangely satisfying in hard physical labor. When I do stuff at home, like renovations, installing stuff, gardening, or doing car stuff, even house cleaning, I get a strange kind of euphoria that I don't get even when doing stuff like working out in a gym or cycling, at least, not at the same degree.
• princevegeta89 4y ago
  Interesting story. I can easily see how the responsibilities of being in charge of a decent-sized company can wear you down..however I do not personally believe there would be so much fatigue though. I am curious to hear stories from HN folks here who have been through similar trajectories
• wnolens 4y ago
  Similar story with me. Except I ended up in AWS! Worked in different big tech for 7y, and took a sabbatical because I could, and so why not? Well after a year of travelling and working on my own ideas and a bit of contract work, I entered a complete pit of depression. I mean contemplating ending it all to stop the pain. Instead big daddy Bezos was handing out tech jobs like candy so I took one begrudgingly just to have someone else to be accountable to, because I found it completely impossible to live with only my own expectations. It helped. I'm halfway good again (or perhaps just a different, darker normal), with a different outlook on what and why I do things. But goodness.. I will never retire again. Not without kids to raise, or something/someone else to be accountable to.
  • hnuser847 4y ago
    Can you help me understand this perspective? Was there really nothing you wanted to do with your life that you had to resort to getting a corporate job to keep yourself sane? A guy a used to work with went through the same thing recently after his startup was acquired. I’m not sure how much he made, but I’m pretty sure he’s set for life. He stayed retired for about six months before getting bored and getting another job. It’s just completely baffling to me. I want to sail the world. That is my one and only dream in this life. If I made enough money to retire, that’s what I would do. I would never dream of getting another job just to fill the time. Granted, I’ve never been retired and probably won’t be for a very long time, so I don’t know for sure what it would feel like. But this perspective that retirement is boring and/or soul crushing just doesn’t compute with me. Maybe I’m missing something.
    • svnt 4y ago
      In my experience when you leave something you carry “doingness” inertia. If you carry that into a motivated and structured activity then you might have a great time, especially if you find others who want to do the same thing. If you dump your “doingness” into something that doesn’t feed back into your social connection or reputation, like playing video games alone in the middle of the day while everyone else is working, and expect Gandalf to drop in and send you on an epic quest, you’ll find yourself adrift at best. From what I’ve seen, most people who find themselves lost do not have a “one and only dream in life.”
• jasonshen 4y ago
  OP here. Decided to share this on HN because it seemed relevant given the earlier article on seeking structure. A lot of folks responded to my comment about Philip sharing that they too have experienced a yearning for physical labor. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33070986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33070986 Life takes all of us in different directions, I thought HN readers would find this path instructive.
• artylerzysta 4y ago
  I found physical work very relaxing for mind.
• omega3 4y ago
  He could have just played Farming Simulator.
• Bakary 4y ago
  I'm perhaps repeating myself from the other thread but this post angered me more than I expected it to. Other commenters have picked up on it too, but many others seem not to see it. This sort of poverty tourism is actually really twisted and indicative of some very grim aspects of our world. I'm curious as to what the author thinks or whether they are aware of this.
  • rib3ye 4y ago
    Why does someone trying to understand something through first-hand experience get an -ism? I wish every white-collar role, especially c-suite and director level person at Amazon took the time to work on the warehouse floor, first-hand.
    • Bakary 4y ago
      But there is no actual understanding. The person in question thinks it's a quaint little experience. The part about the food takeout illustrates this well: no comprehension about actually having to do this sort of labor your entire life. If this article does not seem like parody straight out of HBO's Silicon Valley I am not sure what to say
      • junofan 4y ago
        I think you’re judging this guy too harshly. It’s an entry-level job with everything spelled out and a very clear path to advancement. Anyone spending their entire life doing it knows exactly what choices they’re making. I could maybe see your point if this guy was trying to work as a carpenter or something.
• vadym909 4y ago
  If physical work is too hard, you can try being an Amazon contract recruiter- mundane work, a bit easier on the body and higher pay.
• strangattractor 4y ago
  What this really shows is that it is a lot harder to do most anything other than being a CEO. Steve Jobs held CEO positions at Apple and Pixar simultaneously. Seriously doubt that either was a 20 hour a week job.
• SevenNation 4y ago
  > I had what I would stereotype as a traditional Chinese upbringing in America, which meant my parents very much expected straight A's. Anytime a B happened, something had gone wrong. The explanation was never like you lack the talent or whatever, but that you didn’t work hard enough. It sounds like the author never got a chance to figure out the intersection between what he liked to do and what he was actually good at. Instead, he was trained to respond to the approval of authority figures. So the true north of his internal compass pointed to whatever the person in charge at the time thought of him. Fast forward to 2021: > I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. I skied on weekdays, shopped at Target at 11am with nobody there, and played video games. But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I became unmoored, set adrift in a sea of theoretical possibility only to drown in unbounded optionality. Novelty and excitement turned into a spiraling vortex of depression as I began to wake up sometimes at noon, sometimes 2pm, and on the rare occasion even getting out of bed at 6pm. With no authority figure to send the positive vibes he craved, the author felt adrift. This is where the gig at Amazon comes in. Authority figures galore and a clear sense of what a job well done meant. Some are chalking this up to poverty tourism. Maybe it's something else.
  • svnt 4y ago
    Insightful take. I’m going with ”yes/and.” He could have taken up martial arts.
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  • forsythe_ 4y ago
    > It sounds like the author never got a chance to figure out the intersection between what he liked to do and what he was actually good at. Instead, he was trained to respond to the approval of authority figures. I also read that section and thought it unfortunate the author missed that realization as being the likely root cause. External validation seems to be a major driver of his unhappiness. There's nothing wrong with finding solace in structured work but I think if he returns to his old job he's likely to reach burn out unless he can identify this as a root cause. I made that connection for myself as I've had a strangely similar recent experience to his, albeit without the Amazon warehouse job. I burned out, took multiple months off of work, didn't implement any lasting structures, and became depressed. But I did spend a ton of time in therapy to evaluate my mental health and what drove me to burn out. Practicing self-awareness and emotional awareness has made me more optimistic about finding routines and habits which will bring more fulfillment.
• chachra 4y ago
  I could related to this person and article a lot. I've had similar thoughts, give up the tech job craziness and go drive Uber for a few months and not have to c check email and slack 24/7!
• Animats 4y ago
  The classic version: "Two Years Before the Mast", by Richard Henry Dana, a writer who spent two years on a sailing ship to improve his health. Dana is also noted for predicting in 1834 that the San Francisco Bay would become economically important.
• svnt 4y ago
  “You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning or control, and with nowhere left to go. You’re amazed that they exist, and they burn so bright that you can only wonder why?” —- Pulp, Common People The Shatner cover is something special: https://youtu.be/ainyK6fXku0 https://youtu.be/ainyK6fXku0
  • nharada 4y ago
    Came here to post the same song: > Pretend you never went to school > But still you'll never get it right > 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night > Watching roaches climb the wall > If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah
• matt123456789 4y ago
  Part 1 reads like a rich lifestyle tourist taking a job for the poors and finding it “transformative”. Part 2 was much better.
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  My trick is to make my knowledge work physical so that work is an entire mind body experience. Helps my sleep at night.
• UltimateFloofy 4y ago
  "...extracting some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done..." - Zima Blue from Love, Death + Robots
• steele 4y ago
  Was this during seasonal labor hiring? Otherwise, playing a simulator video game wouldn't cost someone a wage opportunity and potential union contract runaway.
• UncleOxidant 4y ago
  > I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. ... But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I My experience as well, though the awesome part lasted more like 3 months and decayed slowly till about month 6 when I started to feel listless and aimless. Soon after that I hit the realization (and this is the part that's most depressing, I think) that while I wasn't happy working I was also not happy not-working. Not just depressing, a little frightening.
• _8j50 4y ago
  Having worked those kinds of hard jobs whenever I complain about my job in tech I remind myself of those jobs and find solace in my relatively cushy job. You know what is funny, coding, security, linux, etc... were my escape from the misery of those jobs. I am so grateful for my job, it is better to die or something than to go back to those jobs. Glad that guy found solace but man, the politics is always 10x worse than office jobs, everyone has little to lose so they act like it, you get over the physical stuff fast but it still takes a toll, very very little time off, always struggling with money but I never fell into the "credit" trap so I was ok, but anyone that did credit if any kind (car payment, credit cards, etc..) or had kids worked a second job. You could get fired for sitting down. I had manual labor job once, my coworkers were illegal immigrants and felons on probation. I was "laid off" (so i can get unemployment -- but I've never been on it) because I didn't look busy enough, although I finished all the work fast, never sat down and kept cleaning all the already clean stuff to look busy. Even the nicer blue collar jobs are ruined by tech. GPS and microphones everywhere so they can squeeze every last sweat out of you. But then when they burn you out and lose out on their training cost or can't replace you they wonder why.
• diebeforei485 4y ago
  Having something productive to do and a sense of purpose could definitely help in the short term. However - he worked there for all of six weeks. I can see how it's helpful to have this option available for someone who needs income in the short term to make ends meet. It's the same with driving for Uber or Doordash, etc. However, we are too dependent on Amazon as a society (USA). Partly this is because suburbanization and zoning requires driving out to the edge of town to shop at big box stores, and expensive urban real estate means smaller stores with limited variety of products.
• theGnuMe 4y ago
  Maybe he will go back and get a PhD now and work on something that might enrich humanity.
• the_cat_kittles 4y ago
  warehouse jobs are hard, necessary and useful. the solution is to compensate them appropriately
  • SyzygistSix 4y ago
    Perhaps they don't necessarily have to be that hard.
• oogabooga13 4y ago
  It resonates with me working as a delivery driver [opinions are my own] (contracted, pretty much all Amazon drivers in the field) in SF that previously had a decades long office job. I was burnt out and needed an immediate change from spending years mostly inside. From a physical and mental stand point, the work can be quite a lot. Amazon doesn't take it easy on you. However, after gaining some conditioning I enjoy being paid to spend time outside. It's confirmed that I need to take more serious look into fields that let me work outside. To sustainably preform at my optimum, nutrition and recovery are essential. During "peak" (highest volume of pkgs moved) my  watch will record anywhere from 10 - 14 mi a day of walking with over a +1,000 calories burned. Navigating streets with tourist, delivering on hills with significant grades, abnormal addresses and entrances (it's never quite as straightforward as one might think), numerous not up to code unique hazards, and what can be daily route changes - [one day delivering to skyscrapers in the Financial, the next to apartments in the Tenderloin) makes for a stimulating week of work. It's not for everyone but can be rewarding while allowing a more focused split between work/life rather than where you're never really "off" from work.
• bxtt 4y ago
  My parents post-retirement after not working for 10+ years both found roles at an Amazon Fulfillment Center - one at the ship dock and the other in returns. They are both in their 70s and built a nice nest for themselves, neither need it for the money. In fact, my dad was a machine learning professor, multiple publications, and they ran a small medium sized business for 20+ years (at their peak they were running 80M USD annual revenue). They both do it for the mental health and for the physical exercise. They meet a lot of people just like them, some of the workers are living in 3M+ USD homes - although most are not, it’s mostly kids that went to state schools and climb the FC ladder.
  • jasonshen 4y ago
    Really neat story and makes sense that Philip isn’t the only one who thought to do this.
  • carabiner 4y ago
    This is why my goal is barista FIRE. Work at an REI store 20 hours/week, the rest go outside. Like Janel said, we need structure in our lives.
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    My parents had to close their jewelry store that they ran for 35 years during the pandemic. My mom has been working the night shift at an Amazon fulfillment center and she loves it.
  • ornornor 4y ago
    But then why enable such a shitty company actively working at eroding human dignity at work and make a billionaire asshole even richer instead if doing actual good like working at, say, a food bank or ant other charity?
    • bxtt 4y ago
      I can’t speak for their intent. It has less to do with the altruism or the “mission” and more on their personal well being. My dad survived multiple cancers and after he got his strength back, he wanted to build back up his strength. It’s the structure of the system that helps him. He was telling me about their productivity KPIs, and he sees them as fitness goals - as he builds pallets per hour, etc. My mom spent the better part of her life as the “COO” of their business, so after being retired for so long, she seeks the mental stimulation of work. They’ve never worked in a corporate office, so seeing the structure and thinking behind Amazon amazes her. They’ve always had their own warehouses, distribution centers, trucking, etc. but they built that from the ground up and never scaled because they were “learning on the job”. Never seen what good looks like. They both keep to themselves. No one in their section know about their backgrounds.
• tomthumb 4y ago
  Has any one felt that if you do some manual thing every day and which reduces entropy around you, it keeps you sane..
• shameful_idiot 4y ago
• firstSpeaker 4y ago
  I have seen multiple PhD students that when finished went to work on physical type of works. From fish gutting (If I used the right translation of the term) to forest works. Any of them I asked said something along the line of: they cannot take it anymore and it has been too intense to continue with anything that needs them to analyse and think.
• napolux 4y ago
  “Rich guy burns out and goes to do manual labour”
• langsoul-com 4y ago
  Being physically active, and forced to be so with external consequences, really does help with one's mental state.
• nostromo 4y ago
  This is just poverty tourism. And it reeks of a publicity stunt of a sort for his podcast. People work these jobs for years. Taking one of these jobs for six weeks is interesting - but you’re effectively a tourist having a completely different experience than the person that actually needs that job to live.
• kramerger 4y ago
  If you are ever in the same situation: don't make yourself Bezos slave, instead get a damn hobby. And no, gaming does not count. Things like woodworking and metalworking can give you a physical and also a mental excerise, and feels much more rewarding than playing he's or shopping. It can also be quite social as there are tons of people with similar hobbies, maker fares and meeting places. And yes, if you like it but miss being able to support yourself financially you can probably turn it into a business
• ckemere 4y ago
  For the folks giving hot takes on this transcript of episode 1, I'd definitely recommend the full podcast (http://peaksalvation.com http://peaksalvation.com). I think Philip is genuinely motivated by the question of how someone with opportunities in the tech space can make the world better. (Hint - he's not a Mike Rowe alcolyte.)
• ishikawa 4y ago
  jasonshen's blog is awesome! And regarging the case, that is basically what my father did. Left a corporate job to run his own small business 25 years ago and he has been much happier ever since.
• zivkovicp 4y ago
  I'm surprised he didn't dedicate himself to volunteering, I assume he doesn't need the job because of money, and volunteering should provide a lot more connection to community and a feeling of "making a difference" that so many seek. Alternatively a hobby farm or vineyard can give you plenty of opportunities to do manual labour and have varying amounts of responsibility; and I imagine it would be quite a bit more enjoyable than an Amazon warehouse. To each his own I suppose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• bnug 4y ago
• ninefathom 4y ago
  Philip isn't the only one. I followed a very similar path; after a decades-long career in tech, I was completely burned out. It was caused by different issues than Philip, but not incomparable ones: the repetitive nature of the challenges, seeing the same mistakes made repeatedly, never really getting to be "off the clock," etc. Though I've since gone back into the technology industry, I spent a couple of years happily doing what many in the tech industry might consider "grunt jobs-" physically demanding, low pay, often dirty. The first thing that I realized is that there is something deeply satisfying about hard manual labor, and the absence of that satisfaction in much of the tech industry is probably the source of some of the industry's most insidious mental health challenges. Many tech workers try to fill in that gap with "extracurriculars" like the gym, running marathons, or weekend camping trips. While all of those things are good and healthy and have their place, I can promise you that they don't fill the same psychological space as a full day of hard manual labor for a paycheck. As such, I make it a point to regularly take my PTO now to spend a day doing labor-intensive side jobs. That might sound crazy, but I can promise that it does wonders for mental health. The second thing that I've learned is that there's an entire industry built up around trying to ease office workers' mental health issues, and it is both highly profitable and arguably predatory. If one so much as whispers about ditching a gym membership in favor of actually getting paid to do landscaping, or of selling that expensive treadmill in favor of walking dogs for several hours on weekends, be prepared for a veritable army of people to tell you that you're crazy. Surely millions of people can't be wrong, the argument goes. I can promise that you don't need to put a tenth of your paycheck back out into your extracurriculars to get that accomplished, tired-but-rewarded feeling.
• deleted 4y ago
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• amachefe 4y ago
  Found the article very interesting and, loved reading. We find fulfillment in different things, and there is no one single best for many people. PS: I found the snarky responses and accusations of "poverty tourism" to be amusing. It looks like there are a lot of bitter people who sees only their way and demonize anyone else who dont see it. Live your life, if you find physical work a therapy, do you... if you find seating and staring at a screen your own therapy.. do you! Hopefully, we stop trying to justify perfectly clear articles to people are only interested in making other as miserable as they are.
• kirillzubovsky 4y ago
  Reading this and finding it amusing that Amazon, out of all places, is still operating the warehouse in a traditional way. Seems like a big win for the employees would be to have an Amazon Work app on their phone, which tracks their in/out time. Schedules could operate on rolling basis, so no one comes at exactly 6am, for example. You get 900 people funnel in from 5 to 8am, in 20 min increments. Everyone gets to park in peace, and no one is losing 20 minutes just waiting in line to leave the building. It's probably a more hectic scenario for the employer to operate.