15 ms·

Sitters and Standers

426 points by feross 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hatthew 2y ago
Interesting how drivers and healthcare workers are outliers in a lot of metrics. Did anyone else notice other common outliers?
- mylesp 2y ago
  Software Developers were the most obvious outlier in Asian workers and non-citizen workers. It is surprising how much of an outlier it was, even compared to other similar white collar jobs.
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    If you've spent time in San Francisco or Seattle, it ceases to surprise. I worked for a while on a 120-person project, and we couldn't scape together 10 US citizens to form an on call rotation for a government contract bid...
    - Der_Einzige 2y ago
      This is because of John Hughes films and a US bullying culture. Our stem shortage is a choice and directly connected to bullying culture in US schools having ran rampant. Most other countries, the “nerds” are popular because folks know that they are going to earn big money shortly after. Here? They’re treated like little versions of the United CEO.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    And nail techs!
  - hatthew 2y ago
    Yeah it's impressive how far it is on that graph. It seems like they tend to be on the left end of the main sequence for most plots.
throwaway519 2y ago
That escalated quickly.
oceanparkway 2y ago
The presentation of data was nice (slides with a constant format) and the measured amount of labeling was great
cxr 2y ago
This is a worthwhile read, but I think it would be better if it offered not just interactive exploration or a video, but a conventional document, too—ideally as the primary form of presentation. This is by the same creator who made the This Is A Teenager exploration. Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40053774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40053774> In that presentation, I was happy with how succinctly they were able to get down to what makes environments "high-risk", and I found the classification of "a quiet place to study" as a basic necessity (and its relationship to the prevalence/absence of "chaotic routines") as being particularly striking and memorable: > Researchers determined risk by asking lots of questions. For example, they asked whether the kid has basic necessities, like electricity or a quiet place to study. > They also asked about factors that could destabilize the home environment – chaotic routines, parents who have disabilities, or relatives struggling with substance abuse. (So many environments nowadays, even the ones that are ostensibly created to fulfill this sort of thing, are just total failures at actually providing them. I'm thinking of things like public libraries. I live in Austin and have a major axe to grind about the public libraries here, which are nothing like what you'd get if you were actually interested in the pro-social goals that you'd think a public library would have in its charter. A teenager looking to escape their high-risk environment or an adult who's had their feet knocked out from beneath them basically stands no chance at getting out of their predicament if their only option were to use the public libraries here, which would unfortunately act more like a vortex to ensure they stay in the suck. But this is all beside the point.) I suspect but cannot prove that there's a similar link to the presentation of information—that the best presentation is simple static media, ideally printed, that is supplemented by these types of exploratory environments so that you can make the main resource come to life. Failing that, you'd want the printed presentation, sans interactivity, and then finally as a last resort, just dumping the person into these kinds of presentations. cf: the widely felt phenomenon of handwritten notes being better than notes typed on a laptop + Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.
- kla-s 2y ago
  Have you considered a tablet with pen to not cut down so many trees (transflective is the new cool kid on the block i hear, ipad works pretty well ime)? By now i actually prefer its better searchability with ocr and miss pinch to zoom on real paper ;) Or do you think that the paper being wobbly is important? I mean i get missing the indentability. My experience as a student is its more important to move your hands and have an intuitive sense for location on a sheet of paper (more intuitive/faster navigable than with a typed word processor) to easily form deep memories with what you are dealing with (+spaced repetition!!). So in total tablet works great (for me) once you get used to it. :) Please indulge me on your short tangent on Austins public library, how can they improve? Same budget?
JoshTriplett 2y ago
This is, very directly, a supply-and-demand problem. (That is not to say that it's a simple one, or that naive economics trivially applies here or will necessarily give correct answers, or especially that either the supply or demand are straightforward to change, just that it's a reasonable reasoning framework to start with.) The more people willing to do a job, the lower the standards of the lowest bidder. Solving this problem requires one or more of: 1) Raising the minimum standards of the lowest bidders on the worker side. This could be done through collective bargaining or regulation, making it so nobody is willing to "defect" (in the prisoner's dilemma sense) and work for conditions below a certain standard, which means there's little to no supply of such workers. 2) Raising the standards on the demand side. This could theoretically happen if consumers are willing to preferentially purchase from places that provide higher standards for workers; effectively, coordinate and collectively bargain on the purchasing side. This seems unlikely to happen as consumers are even more likely to "defect" and purchase from the least expensive company. This is one case where a simplistic model breaks down: consumers' ability to collectively demand higher standards for how companies treat their workers is limited by the fact that consumers are getting their income and ability to afford higher standards from the work they're doing. 3) Lowering the supply of labor across the board. This would happen if fewer people are willing to do the job, such as if people didn't have to work in order to survive (e.g. UBI). If there isn't an endless supply of workers who have to tolerate whatever conditions get them paid enough to survive, satisfying demand for labor requires substantially higher standards for pay and working conditions. (Conversely, if everyone in a workplace wants to be there, it's easier to get quality output.) 4) Raising the demand for labor across the board. This isn't going to happen, as it'd run counter to some of the primary defining qualities of an improving society; even if it did, it would be likely to ultimately result in similar stratification between groups of workers. 5) Raise the mobility from one category of labor to another. Constantly being worked on in many different ways, but will inherently never be able to fully solve the problem because not enough people can take advantage of this option to avoid stratification. The feasible alternatives here feed back both positively and negatively into each other. Personally, I think implementing (3) via UBI is the one most likely in terms of feasibility. (Not politically in terms of passing it, but practically in terms of how monumentally effective it would be compared to the rest.) (3) is the option here most immune to the prisoners' dilemma defection problem.
turbojet1321 2y ago
This seems like a great demonstration of basing arguments on a dependent variable. Every slide I've seen so far would be better explained by white collar vs blue collar rather than sitter vs stander.
- jp0d 2y ago
  I don't think white collar vs blue collar comparison is necessarily better. There are heaps of ways to slice and dice data and this one of them. I'd argue that it's a rather interesting perspective.
  - turbojet1321 2y ago
    My point is that it isn't really a different slice, though. The vast majority of the "sitting" occupations are white collar; the vast majority of the "standing" ones blue collar.
    - Nevermark 2y ago
      So think of it as a concise objective way to settle what is blue color from white color, for purposes of a study. No definition will be perfect, but this one does pretty well as you point out. It also naturally provides an objective gradation, which many definitions that stand in for blue collar” or sit in for “white collar” won’t provide.
- esperent 2y ago
  It seemed to me that it was using the dependant variable intentionally so that it could build up to the twist: actually it's all about race. To be fair, the twist did get me. I thought it was leading up to discussing injury rates, or health in old age. Since I'm not from the US, the pivot to discussing race wasn't very interesting/relevant to me.
  - erikerikson 2y ago
    I have the thought that racial divisions are even more stark elsewhere, although in cases across different lines. I would, for example expect a lot more Chinese in to positions in that country alongside far lower diversity. Is it not this way? How about where you are from, since you're "not from the US"?
Fokamul 2y ago
If I compare our work in EU to US, every job is basically slave labor. Even sitters. Eg.: I have 30 days of paid vacation, now I'm taking month off. Don't need to worry about my job, they cannot fire me. As I understand in US, if you take vacation longer than week, you're in the fear you will be fired. Is it true? Job, IT, of course.
- pram 2y ago
  A week? Nah. I’ve routinely taken two weeks to burn off PTO. A month straight is probably a hard sell though, yes.
  - gotaran 2y ago
    Yeah this is why I always take more than a month off between jobs. Besides parental leave and the very rare even for FAANG companies who offer month long sabbaticals once every five years, a month is a hard sell.
- rhmw2b 2y ago
  It depends on the job. I’ve had jobs where you couldn’t get approval to take a week off and a week off at my current job is no big deal. Generally PTO is more generous as you become harder to replace.
- slibhb 2y ago
  > As I understand in US, if you take vacation longer than week, you're in the fear you will be fired. Is it true? I have a coworker who takes off 3 weeks in a row every year. Never been an issue. In general in the US, tech companies have excellent benefits -- including plenty of vacation. Not as much as Europe but it's not bad.
- kaashif 2y ago
  I believe slaves are usually not compensated for their work and cannot leave their jobs.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
jp0d 2y ago
This is really well done and was eye opening for me as I'm predominantly a sitter.
paulpauper 2y ago
Interestingly, I have not noticed lower rates of obesity among the standers compared to sitters. I'm sure we've all seen obese/overweight people in retail, doing road work, or construction , but then also plenty of thin guys who do office work. When I was having work done on my home, the 4 people who were working on it were all overweight/obese. Bill Gates was wire thin in his '20s despite his job entailing sitting at a computer all day. I suspect this has to do with metabolic differences (with people with higher IQs having faster metabolisms relative to body mass due to more NEAT or other factors) than just diet and exercise.
- flocciput 2y ago
  Good observation; but I think metabolic differences leading to higher/lower IQs is a stretch (and smells weirdly eugenicist! but that's just my personal opinion). It seems obvious to me that being poor makes it harder to be healthy. Stand all day and you're too tired to cook or exercise after work. You end up eating calorically dense, ultra processed foods because they're quick to prepare and easy to come by. The stress takes a toll on you physically, but there's no time to see a doctor, and your health insurance sucks. Even if you wanted to exercise, and found a cheap gym, you're more likely to develop something like a repetitive use injury that makes movement painful. And you're probably not getting good sleep, which affects your metabolism as well. I'd be interested in whether the poverty/obesity correlation holds outside the US or if it's unusually high here. My guess is that it's mostly an American thing.
  - CRConrad 2y ago
    > I think metabolic differences leading to higher/lower IQs is a stretch (and smells weirdly eugenicist! I read it the exact other way around: Wasn't GP saying that higher IQ leads to a slimmer body? (Presumably because the brain is burning more calories; not that I know what "NEAT" means in this context.)
    - flocciput 2y ago
      Ohh good point! I admit I also didn't bother to look up NEAT, but looks like non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which aligns with your interpretation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-exercise_activity_thermogenesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-exercise_activity_thermo...
beeflet 2y ago
Programmers sit more than Software developers. Programmers, stand up!
tejohnso 2y ago
Nursing assistants are some of the most likely to be injured or ill. Similar to corrections officers and much more so than meat cutters ore tire changers. I found that surprising.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  Not really surprising. Nursing is a physical job, people are heavy! Also: exposure to disease, violent patients (especially in psychiatry), slippery floors, sharp instruments, used needles...
- lazide 2y ago
  They move heavy, often non-compliant patients. Many with dementia or other diseases that make them dangerous and unpredictable. Deal with bio hazards all day, every day. Work long shifts, often with insane overtime.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Meat cutting might be dealing with sharp objects, but it is also highly repeatable work and designed to be generally acceptable safety. Same goes for tire changing, you are very often using lifts and then you can use proper lifting techniques. In both jobs the work environment can be designed to be ergonomic enough. Which does not apply to more variable work.
- idunnoman1222 2y ago
  Ill because women have families and are the ones who take a day off when their kids are sick Additionally, jobs, where the workers have more rights can take more sick days. There’s a culture of not taking a sick day when you’re a construction worker.
gerdesj 2y ago
"This story is about two kinds of workers in America" Very pretty and very dark and totally impenetrable.
jcalabro 2y ago
"A man who sits for something stands for nothing" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqjUlmkYr2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqjUlmkYr2g
jaimex2 2y ago
Interesting little site. Born in a latin american country I was taught by my parents to always aim for the least amount of work for the most amount of pay. Basically avoid any standing job like the plague even though thats what they both did. My mother yelled at me when I got my first job as a waiter and pressured me to find something else every month. Eventually I got a IT desk job that paid minimum wage and worked my way up from there to software development. A lot of standing job people do tell me they could never do what I do, sitting on a desk daily.
- cxr 2y ago
  > A lot of standing job people do tell me they could never do what I do, sitting on a desk daily. They're trying to insult you, not provide you with anecdotal information so that you can have a broader view of the world.
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    After this election, I’m more than happy to ratchet up resentment towards the top from the bottom. Oh you want to elect a “populist” who hates the “elites”? I’m going to give you something to resent then!
jonathanQ 2y ago
I will always remember that, for my parents' generation, the idea of a "good job" was synonymous with "sitting in an office."
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  It's true right now in China. A job in an office is a good job. A job not in an office is a bad job. Doesn't matter what you're doing in the office.
  - jonathanQ 2y ago
    You are absolutely right.
- paxys 2y ago
  Has that changed?
  - jonathanQ 2y ago
    Yes, it has changed a bit, but not much.
  - umeshunni 2y ago
    Nowadays it might be 'standing at your home office desk'
paxys 2y ago
Cool visualization, but it is ultimately 20 slides that are saying the exact same thing (white collar workers are more privileged than blue collar workers). And not adding anything new to something everyone already knows.
- Noumenon72 2y ago
  I spent ten years in a plastics factory before switching to programming. I used to grab a roll of paper to sit on even though it made me look lazy compared to everyone else there, because standing is hard. So I feel that finding any new way to remind people every few years that we are sitting because others are standing is virtuous. We also spend too much time on sympathy for people at the very bottom of the income tables, often there out of laziness or crime, compared to people who have twice the stress by being both low income and working hard for a living. They deserve more visibility.
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    Correct. The left tries to reach out to the proletariat but often only actually seems to speak to the lumpenproletariet. Marx thought the absolute bottom of society was scum, naturally fascist, and might as well not exist. Having been around your average bum on the west coast, it’s hard not to agree.
- xerox13ster 2y ago
  I have known since before the election that Trump is planning to deport all of the immigrants. I’ve been angry about it. I’ve talked to the people about it. I have argued with people about it, but I haven’t truly cognitively processed it. When I got to the slide about immigrant workers, I broke down, crying, sobbing tears—no no no no that can’t happen here tears. I already knew. It was something I already knew. The reality of such a thing is so horrible to contemplate that even if you can attach the faces of people you know to the coming horror, you’re more likely to think of it in abstract terms. 20 million people is a number we can’t fathom. But data allows us to process it in an abstract way, and can connect the abstract to something cognitively meaningful. When I saw the data arranged that way I was forced to confront the abstract representation of this category of people that drove home cognitively what could be coming.
dzink 2y ago
Brain work for me is like muscles for others - if I don’t squeeze out every ounce of energy from my brain with problems all day, I feel like I haven’t lived a full day. Many people prefer good workouts instead, if they don’t their body is punitive with restlessness and sleeplessness. Code is my infinite playground but others won’t touch it - despite me trying to convince them for years. They would rather work in the sun, or with other people, or in a busy environment. People filter themselves into jobs they would rather do, when they have awareness of the possibilities. With social media that awareness is increasing. I’ve had friends who had the definition of blue collar standing job and chose to transition to nursing, which is another standing job. Immigration status and lack of language skills may tie you to standing jobs, but if people want to learn and grow out of them, in the US there are pathways. If someone curates a course on career pathways via youtube and spreads them through immigration centers and schools and social programs that will help even more people find their way. I find healthcare workers to be an interesting mix in this discussion. Their work is extremely physical and mental, and emotionally draining. Demand for it will only go up. Compensation for it will likely go up. Who picks up the jobs will be enlightening. Yes you have the bottleneck for doctor and nurse training, but CNA and PA are not as limited. Doctor liability is an extreme source of stress, but that somehow doesn’t apply to nurses as much, so even doctors recommend their kids become nurses.
- Swizec 2y ago
  > Brain work for me is like muscles for others - if I don’t squeeze out every ounce of energy from my brain with problems all day, I feel like I haven’t lived a full day. Many people prefer good workouts instead, if they don’t their body is punitive with restlessness and sleeplessness. I need both. Too little brain work and my thoughts are racing (unproductively) and my sleep needs fall down to ~4h (happens on vacation) which isn’t actually enough to make me feel rested. Too little physical activity and I’m restless and can’t focus, can’t sleep, and generally stuff falls apart.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    I, too, was surprised by this part: > Many people prefer good workouts instead instead -- as if this was a binary case: either/or. The secret to understanding exercise is knowing that there are both physical and mental benefits.
_thisdot 2y ago
There is just one problem. It'd have been good if they asked for your country before the questionnaire. $30,000 salary for a Software Developer seems less in America, but that is huge in some other countries
- j7ake 2y ago
  I think the questions assumed USA
unnouinceput 2y ago
Quote: "America got rich selling cotton picked by enslaved Black people" I stopped there. I am here to read news about tech, not propaganda lies. Also flagged this.
- lelandbatey 2y ago
  The south literally tried to secede over exactly that state of affairs, starting the USA civil war. Not particularly controversial...
  - Danieru 2y ago
    The issue is that only the south got rich. Not "America". The north got rich off factories and wage earning labour. To equate the wealth of America to the south is a falsehood. And not a helpful one. It misleads you into missing the travesty of slavery: it did not build a nation. It gave leisure to a couple lucky families at the expense of hundreds per plantation. The industry and wage earning of the north is what built America.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      So the South produced cheap goods… where did they go? Who benefitted from being able to buy underpriced agricultural products?
      - hirvi74 2y ago
        Predominately England though France did benefit some as well.
        relaxing 2y ago
        Well yes, because the South supplied the majority of the world’s cotton, and the European powers were larger economies at the time. But the textile mills in the Northern states also got their cotton predominantly from the South. Not to mention the tobacco, rice, etc.
PeterStuer 2y ago
Do they include burnout and depression as injuries?
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Reminds me of: > Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: “Bro, you don’t work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver.” > They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it’s certainly more physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard unless you’re an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome to programming. https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
  - ericmcer 2y ago
    I did a year of landscaping and did 6ish years at grocery stores. Those jobs are 100% less stress and much more enjoyable imo. If they paid the same I would switch in a heartbeat. When you get to the Senior+ level in software, the buck often stops with you, and if you can't figure something out it can be a big ego hit. I never woke up or went to sleep wondering if I would be able to do landscaping or stock shelves the next day, but I often fall asleep stressed about how to architect something at work. Ownership of problems is worth a lot of money, thats why CEOs get paid so much. In most other jobs you can blame a chain of managers and processes, but with engineering if you fail the blame falls straight on you.
    - CRConrad 2y ago
      > Ownership of problems is worth a lot of money, thats why CEOs get paid so much. But CEOs don't seem to "own" any problems, do they? However bad they fuck up, they still get to sail away into the sunset on their "golden parachute" separation deal.
- trabant00 2y ago
  The reason they don't is they have a narrative they want to push. The entire thing is deeply flawed, from sitting vs standing when in fact it's white vs blue collar. There's plenty of sitting blue collar jobs that are brutal. Then not differentiating qualified vs unqualified blue collar work. These days qualified blue collar has similar pay to white collar and arguably more job security. But in the end there's no point digging to deep, it's just another race bait.
ramon156 2y ago
When you do office work you get the "you're not really working" When you do blue collar you get "you should've studied harder" We never win, and sometimes accepting that is the right decision. To not be loved is a simple mistake, to not love one another is a fatal mistake.
- ozim 2y ago
  Issue is “you should have learned harder” is always from office workers. Conversely “you’re not really working” comes from blue collar workers. Both sentences are the same and they are usually used by assholes from one or the other side that either feel attacked or feel superior. There is no intrinsic value in any of those statements besides what it is saying about person using it - that person is an asshole.
  - amaurose 2y ago
    I dont think it is as simple as that. Throwing everyone into the a-hole pool is a rather simplistic approach, and a very dismissive one at that. In particular, the first sentence is often a reply to someone lamenting their situation, while the second sentence is often a statement ment to insult upwards. Context is important.
    - bumby 2y ago
      Maybe not assholes, but it is a pretty blatant status play. By denigrating someone else’s work you raise yourself up by comparison. And while a lot of our psychological health is tied to our relative status in society, that doesn’t make it healthy behavior. Edit: it's also telling from a status standpoint that you characterized the blue collar comment as "insulting upwards." It would probably go a long way to avoiding those types of comments in the first place if people didn't implicitly think blue collar work is "below" white collar work.
    - pc86 2y ago
      Why is one of those better than the other?
eru 2y ago
I solve this dilemma with a standing desk. (But I've yet to upgrade to a treadmill desk.)
- mavamaarten 2y ago
  I have a standing desk. I seriously need to force myself to use it, though. The last time it's been moved up is about a month ago.
  - greenie_beans 2y ago
    my trick: start the day standing and try to stand for as long as i can. i usually stay standing til my lunchtime walk and when i get back from my walk i still have energy to stand. if i sit then my focus wanes.
    - eru 2y ago
      When I first started with my standing desk, I found it particularly useful to combat lunch coma.
amaurose 2y ago
From about: > Visual storytelling makes ideas more accessible From an a11y standpoint, that statement is very ironic. Because for visually impaired people, the effect is the opposite of what the sentence claims.
- lexlambda 2y ago
  Accessible as in "better to understand", helping with bringing the idea to a more general audience. A lot of people are uninterested in long texts or in this case parts of the expected audience might also have literacy issues.
shark1 2y ago
They forgot to mention that the number one cause of death is a disease associated with by a lack of physical activity or prolonged periods of sitting or inactivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
internet_points 2y ago
> Standers are more likely to be exposed to the outdoors — something that will become more and more dangerous as our planet warms. Feels almost absurd to see that framed as (just) a bad thing. (I would think Sitters are more likely to be exposed to the indoors, which includes a lack of sunlight and fresh air, possible exposure to mold and bad ventilation, and heated arguments over hot-desking.)
- AlfredBarnes 2y ago
  I was getting consistent headaches at work, and attributed it to my coworkers being obnoxious. Then I brought in an air quality monitor, turns out my building had some serious ventilation issues, and there was not clean air at my desk.
- lexlambda 2y ago
  Thought the same. It is clear that this presentation is definetely biased towards showing the problems of standing workers, as there haven't been any negative options about sitting presented. Unfortunately, while medically known and even legislated (forced breaks), problems of sitting workers are still widely ignored (often by themselves too) until too late or trivialized.
nmeofthestate 2y ago
I felt like I was being preached to by an ideologue, with some meh animated charts thrown in to sweeten the pill.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
putzdown 2y ago
There is one other analysis that would, I suspect, adjust the OP’s conclusions: age. Hypothesis: sitters vs standers, and other measures of the quality of the job (danger, flexibility…) correlate substantially with the age of the worker. As you go from your teens to 20s to 30s and beyond you tend on average to get better jobs. It’s not absolute, but I bet it’s a very strong trend, perhaps stronger than racial factors. That’s a hypothesis I wish this analysis examined.
- pc86 2y ago
  They were too busy making weird barely coherent points like "someday it will be too hot to venture outside" and "America is rich because of black people and the Chinese."
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - gruez 2y ago
    Source? The two claims you listed have some elements of truth behind them, so without seeing the exact claim made, it's impossible to tell whether you're giving an uncharitable summary, or they're actually making absurd claims.
    - madebylaw 2y ago
      The source is the actual FA dude.
      - gruez 2y ago
        Are you talking about >Standers are more likely to be exposed to the outdoors—something that will become more and more dangerous as our planet warms. and >America got rich selling cotton picked by enslaved Black people. America built the Transcontinental Railroad with Chinese immigrant labor, only to ban Chinese immigration a few decades later. And America feeds itself with animals killed and processed by Black and Hispanic meatpackers. ? If so, I'm not sure how either of those points are "barely coherent", and the characterization made by the gp is a gross misrepresentation of site's claims.
golol 2y ago
All I see is trivialities.
layer8 2y ago
So this is not about male toilet use.
- CRConrad 2y ago
  100% what I too thought it would be about.
mouse_ 2y ago
I hate how everything on this site is constantly and slowly moving.
spongebobism 2y ago
Why are speech pathologists more often injured or ill than ambulance drivers, police officers and freight agents? That does not at all match my idea of that line of work.
- tristor 2y ago
  Because speech pathologists are generally working with patients that have mental issues, speech issues are generally neurological, and those patients may not have the same emotional self-regulation and self-control as the average person and may act violently. That said, I wouldn't consider it a particularly "dangerous" job. It's just that, despite the popular discourse, jobs like being a police officer are also really not that dangerous either. When the effect size is small it doesn't take much difference to be amplified in the data. Being a roofer is far more dangerous than being a police officer, even though that's not the typical mainstream narrative, as an example.
claytongulick 2y ago
I think a more objective analysis would have been for skilled vs unskilled labor, supply/demand and age stratified. It seems like a pretty series of infographics that are oriented towards some sort of narrative the creator is trying to impress on folks, something about guilt and unfairness? It seems like the author put in a lot of work in order to demonstrate a thing that most people intuitively understand: There's a large supply of unskilled or low skilled labor, so wages are less and the jobs are crappier and more physically demanding. If you age stratify it, I feel pretty confident that you'd also see a trend that shows that most physical labor is performed by younger folks, and the percentage of their day spent doing physical labor mostly decreases as they progress in their lives and become more skilled. I'm not talking just about desk jobs, I'm thinking (for example) of an apprentice electrician vs master electrician. One of those is going to get stuck doing the more physically demanding work while the other is in more of a supervisory role.
l0t0b0r0s 2y ago
cool website, but I dont appreciate the false notion that " America got rich off of selling cotton picked by enslaved Black people" Also the people who created the philosophical concepts that made the United States possible were all sitters.
m_herrlich 2y ago
Great visualization but lost me at the end when it got a bit too preachy. Turning socioeconomic issues into race issues doesn't help anyone.
hyeonwho4 2y ago
Interesting that the reader is ranked in 2D space on dimensions for which the reader provided a single bit of data ("Able to pause work"). I wonder how those dimensions are inferred.
tetnis 2y ago
thanks for injecting race into this!
- m_herrlich 2y ago
  Some people like to show off their creativity by making tenuous claims that every single thing is racist
m3047 2y ago
Very nice. My favorite definition of "blue collar vs white collar" is whether you wash your hands before or after you use the toilet. Not entirely true, but that's the gist of it.
elendee 2y ago
this is a ridiculous graph which mistakes temporary behaviors for entire human beings. I worked about 10 years doing handyman work, and now 10 years doing web development, often both in the same day.

426 points by feross 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Interesting how drivers and healthcare workers are outliers in a lot of metrics. Did anyone else notice other common outliers?

mylesp 2y ago
Software Developers were the most obvious outlier in Asian workers and non-citizen workers. It is surprising how much of an outlier it was, even compared to other similar white collar jobs.
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  If you've spent time in San Francisco or Seattle, it ceases to surprise. I worked for a while on a 120-person project, and we couldn't scape together 10 US citizens to form an on call rotation for a government contract bid...
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    This is because of John Hughes films and a US bullying culture. Our stem shortage is a choice and directly connected to bullying culture in US schools having ran rampant. Most other countries, the “nerds” are popular because folks know that they are going to earn big money shortly after. Here? They’re treated like little versions of the United CEO.
- relaxing 2y ago
  And nail techs!
- hatthew 2y ago
  Yeah it's impressive how far it is on that graph. It seems like they tend to be on the left end of the main sequence for most plots.

throwaway519 2y ago

That escalated quickly.

oceanparkway 2y ago

The presentation of data was nice (slides with a constant format) and the measured amount of labeling was great

cxr 2y ago

This is a worthwhile read, but I think it would be better if it offered not just interactive exploration or a video, but a conventional document, too—ideally as the primary form of presentation. This is by the same creator who made the This Is A Teenager exploration. Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40053774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40053774> In that presentation, I was happy with how succinctly they were able to get down to what makes environments "high-risk", and I found the classification of "a quiet place to study" as a basic necessity (and its relationship to the prevalence/absence of "chaotic routines") as being particularly striking and memorable: > Researchers determined risk by asking lots of questions. For example, they asked whether the kid has basic necessities, like electricity or a quiet place to study. > They also asked about factors that could destabilize the home environment – chaotic routines, parents who have disabilities, or relatives struggling with substance abuse. (So many environments nowadays, even the ones that are ostensibly created to fulfill this sort of thing, are just total failures at actually providing them. I'm thinking of things like public libraries. I live in Austin and have a major axe to grind about the public libraries here, which are nothing like what you'd get if you were actually interested in the pro-social goals that you'd think a public library would have in its charter. A teenager looking to escape their high-risk environment or an adult who's had their feet knocked out from beneath them basically stands no chance at getting out of their predicament if their only option were to use the public libraries here, which would unfortunately act more like a vortex to ensure they stay in the suck. But this is all beside the point.) I suspect but cannot prove that there's a similar link to the presentation of information—that the best presentation is simple static media, ideally printed, that is supplemented by these types of exploratory environments so that you can make the main resource come to life. Failing that, you'd want the printed presentation, sans interactivity, and then finally as a last resort, just dumping the person into these kinds of presentations. cf: the widely felt phenomenon of handwritten notes being better than notes typed on a laptop + Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

kla-s 2y ago
Have you considered a tablet with pen to not cut down so many trees (transflective is the new cool kid on the block i hear, ipad works pretty well ime)? By now i actually prefer its better searchability with ocr and miss pinch to zoom on real paper ;) Or do you think that the paper being wobbly is important? I mean i get missing the indentability. My experience as a student is its more important to move your hands and have an intuitive sense for location on a sheet of paper (more intuitive/faster navigable than with a typed word processor) to easily form deep memories with what you are dealing with (+spaced repetition!!). So in total tablet works great (for me) once you get used to it. :) Please indulge me on your short tangent on Austins public library, how can they improve? Same budget?

JoshTriplett 2y ago

This is, very directly, a supply-and-demand problem. (That is not to say that it's a simple one, or that naive economics trivially applies here or will necessarily give correct answers, or especially that either the supply or demand are straightforward to change, just that it's a reasonable reasoning framework to start with.) The more people willing to do a job, the lower the standards of the lowest bidder. Solving this problem requires one or more of: 1) Raising the minimum standards of the lowest bidders on the worker side. This could be done through collective bargaining or regulation, making it so nobody is willing to "defect" (in the prisoner's dilemma sense) and work for conditions below a certain standard, which means there's little to no supply of such workers. 2) Raising the standards on the demand side. This could theoretically happen if consumers are willing to preferentially purchase from places that provide higher standards for workers; effectively, coordinate and collectively bargain on the purchasing side. This seems unlikely to happen as consumers are even more likely to "defect" and purchase from the least expensive company. This is one case where a simplistic model breaks down: consumers' ability to collectively demand higher standards for how companies treat their workers is limited by the fact that consumers are getting their income and ability to afford higher standards from the work they're doing. 3) Lowering the supply of labor across the board. This would happen if fewer people are willing to do the job, such as if people didn't have to work in order to survive (e.g. UBI). If there isn't an endless supply of workers who have to tolerate whatever conditions get them paid enough to survive, satisfying demand for labor requires substantially higher standards for pay and working conditions. (Conversely, if everyone in a workplace wants to be there, it's easier to get quality output.) 4) Raising the demand for labor across the board. This isn't going to happen, as it'd run counter to some of the primary defining qualities of an improving society; even if it did, it would be likely to ultimately result in similar stratification between groups of workers. 5) Raise the mobility from one category of labor to another. Constantly being worked on in many different ways, but will inherently never be able to fully solve the problem because not enough people can take advantage of this option to avoid stratification. The feasible alternatives here feed back both positively and negatively into each other. Personally, I think implementing (3) via UBI is the one most likely in terms of feasibility. (Not politically in terms of passing it, but practically in terms of how monumentally effective it would be compared to the rest.) (3) is the option here most immune to the prisoners' dilemma defection problem.

turbojet1321 2y ago

This seems like a great demonstration of basing arguments on a dependent variable. Every slide I've seen so far would be better explained by white collar vs blue collar rather than sitter vs stander.

jp0d 2y ago
I don't think white collar vs blue collar comparison is necessarily better. There are heaps of ways to slice and dice data and this one of them. I'd argue that it's a rather interesting perspective.
- turbojet1321 2y ago
  My point is that it isn't really a different slice, though. The vast majority of the "sitting" occupations are white collar; the vast majority of the "standing" ones blue collar.
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    So think of it as a concise objective way to settle what is blue color from white color, for purposes of a study. No definition will be perfect, but this one does pretty well as you point out. It also naturally provides an objective gradation, which many definitions that stand in for blue collar” or sit in for “white collar” won’t provide.
esperent 2y ago
It seemed to me that it was using the dependant variable intentionally so that it could build up to the twist: actually it's all about race. To be fair, the twist did get me. I thought it was leading up to discussing injury rates, or health in old age. Since I'm not from the US, the pivot to discussing race wasn't very interesting/relevant to me.
- erikerikson 2y ago
  I have the thought that racial divisions are even more stark elsewhere, although in cases across different lines. I would, for example expect a lot more Chinese in to positions in that country alongside far lower diversity. Is it not this way? How about where you are from, since you're "not from the US"?

Fokamul 2y ago

If I compare our work in EU to US, every job is basically slave labor. Even sitters. Eg.: I have 30 days of paid vacation, now I'm taking month off. Don't need to worry about my job, they cannot fire me. As I understand in US, if you take vacation longer than week, you're in the fear you will be fired. Is it true? Job, IT, of course.

pram 2y ago
A week? Nah. I’ve routinely taken two weeks to burn off PTO. A month straight is probably a hard sell though, yes.
- gotaran 2y ago
  Yeah this is why I always take more than a month off between jobs. Besides parental leave and the very rare even for FAANG companies who offer month long sabbaticals once every five years, a month is a hard sell.
rhmw2b 2y ago
It depends on the job. I’ve had jobs where you couldn’t get approval to take a week off and a week off at my current job is no big deal. Generally PTO is more generous as you become harder to replace.
slibhb 2y ago
> As I understand in US, if you take vacation longer than week, you're in the fear you will be fired. Is it true? I have a coworker who takes off 3 weeks in a row every year. Never been an issue. In general in the US, tech companies have excellent benefits -- including plenty of vacation. Not as much as Europe but it's not bad.
kaashif 2y ago
I believe slaves are usually not compensated for their work and cannot leave their jobs.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

jp0d 2y ago

This is really well done and was eye opening for me as I'm predominantly a sitter.

paulpauper 2y ago

Interestingly, I have not noticed lower rates of obesity among the standers compared to sitters. I'm sure we've all seen obese/overweight people in retail, doing road work, or construction , but then also plenty of thin guys who do office work. When I was having work done on my home, the 4 people who were working on it were all overweight/obese. Bill Gates was wire thin in his '20s despite his job entailing sitting at a computer all day. I suspect this has to do with metabolic differences (with people with higher IQs having faster metabolisms relative to body mass due to more NEAT or other factors) than just diet and exercise.

flocciput 2y ago
Good observation; but I think metabolic differences leading to higher/lower IQs is a stretch (and smells weirdly eugenicist! but that's just my personal opinion). It seems obvious to me that being poor makes it harder to be healthy. Stand all day and you're too tired to cook or exercise after work. You end up eating calorically dense, ultra processed foods because they're quick to prepare and easy to come by. The stress takes a toll on you physically, but there's no time to see a doctor, and your health insurance sucks. Even if you wanted to exercise, and found a cheap gym, you're more likely to develop something like a repetitive use injury that makes movement painful. And you're probably not getting good sleep, which affects your metabolism as well. I'd be interested in whether the poverty/obesity correlation holds outside the US or if it's unusually high here. My guess is that it's mostly an American thing.
- CRConrad 2y ago
  > I think metabolic differences leading to higher/lower IQs is a stretch (and smells weirdly eugenicist! I read it the exact other way around: Wasn't GP saying that higher IQ leads to a slimmer body? (Presumably because the brain is burning more calories; not that I know what "NEAT" means in this context.)
  - flocciput 2y ago
    Ohh good point! I admit I also didn't bother to look up NEAT, but looks like non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which aligns with your interpretation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-exercise_activity_thermogenesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-exercise_activity_thermo...

beeflet 2y ago

Programmers sit more than Software developers. Programmers, stand up!

tejohnso 2y ago

Nursing assistants are some of the most likely to be injured or ill. Similar to corrections officers and much more so than meat cutters ore tire changers. I found that surprising.

GuB-42 2y ago
Not really surprising. Nursing is a physical job, people are heavy! Also: exposure to disease, violent patients (especially in psychiatry), slippery floors, sharp instruments, used needles...
lazide 2y ago
They move heavy, often non-compliant patients. Many with dementia or other diseases that make them dangerous and unpredictable. Deal with bio hazards all day, every day. Work long shifts, often with insane overtime.
Ekaros 2y ago
Meat cutting might be dealing with sharp objects, but it is also highly repeatable work and designed to be generally acceptable safety. Same goes for tire changing, you are very often using lifts and then you can use proper lifting techniques. In both jobs the work environment can be designed to be ergonomic enough. Which does not apply to more variable work.
idunnoman1222 2y ago
Ill because women have families and are the ones who take a day off when their kids are sick Additionally, jobs, where the workers have more rights can take more sick days. There’s a culture of not taking a sick day when you’re a construction worker.

gerdesj 2y ago

"This story is about two kinds of workers in America" Very pretty and very dark and totally impenetrable.

jcalabro 2y ago

"A man who sits for something stands for nothing" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqjUlmkYr2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqjUlmkYr2g

jaimex2 2y ago

Interesting little site. Born in a latin american country I was taught by my parents to always aim for the least amount of work for the most amount of pay. Basically avoid any standing job like the plague even though thats what they both did. My mother yelled at me when I got my first job as a waiter and pressured me to find something else every month. Eventually I got a IT desk job that paid minimum wage and worked my way up from there to software development. A lot of standing job people do tell me they could never do what I do, sitting on a desk daily.

cxr 2y ago
> A lot of standing job people do tell me they could never do what I do, sitting on a desk daily. They're trying to insult you, not provide you with anecdotal information so that you can have a broader view of the world.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  After this election, I’m more than happy to ratchet up resentment towards the top from the bottom. Oh you want to elect a “populist” who hates the “elites”? I’m going to give you something to resent then!

jonathanQ 2y ago

I will always remember that, for my parents' generation, the idea of a "good job" was synonymous with "sitting in an office."

thaumasiotes 2y ago
It's true right now in China. A job in an office is a good job. A job not in an office is a bad job. Doesn't matter what you're doing in the office.
- jonathanQ 2y ago
  You are absolutely right.
paxys 2y ago
Has that changed?
- jonathanQ 2y ago
  Yes, it has changed a bit, but not much.
- umeshunni 2y ago
  Nowadays it might be 'standing at your home office desk'

paxys 2y ago

Cool visualization, but it is ultimately 20 slides that are saying the exact same thing (white collar workers are more privileged than blue collar workers). And not adding anything new to something everyone already knows.

Noumenon72 2y ago
I spent ten years in a plastics factory before switching to programming. I used to grab a roll of paper to sit on even though it made me look lazy compared to everyone else there, because standing is hard. So I feel that finding any new way to remind people every few years that we are sitting because others are standing is virtuous. We also spend too much time on sympathy for people at the very bottom of the income tables, often there out of laziness or crime, compared to people who have twice the stress by being both low income and working hard for a living. They deserve more visibility.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  Correct. The left tries to reach out to the proletariat but often only actually seems to speak to the lumpenproletariet. Marx thought the absolute bottom of society was scum, naturally fascist, and might as well not exist. Having been around your average bum on the west coast, it’s hard not to agree.
xerox13ster 2y ago
I have known since before the election that Trump is planning to deport all of the immigrants. I’ve been angry about it. I’ve talked to the people about it. I have argued with people about it, but I haven’t truly cognitively processed it. When I got to the slide about immigrant workers, I broke down, crying, sobbing tears—no no no no that can’t happen here tears. I already knew. It was something I already knew. The reality of such a thing is so horrible to contemplate that even if you can attach the faces of people you know to the coming horror, you’re more likely to think of it in abstract terms. 20 million people is a number we can’t fathom. But data allows us to process it in an abstract way, and can connect the abstract to something cognitively meaningful. When I saw the data arranged that way I was forced to confront the abstract representation of this category of people that drove home cognitively what could be coming.

dzink 2y ago

Brain work for me is like muscles for others - if I don’t squeeze out every ounce of energy from my brain with problems all day, I feel like I haven’t lived a full day. Many people prefer good workouts instead, if they don’t their body is punitive with restlessness and sleeplessness. Code is my infinite playground but others won’t touch it - despite me trying to convince them for years. They would rather work in the sun, or with other people, or in a busy environment. People filter themselves into jobs they would rather do, when they have awareness of the possibilities. With social media that awareness is increasing. I’ve had friends who had the definition of blue collar standing job and chose to transition to nursing, which is another standing job. Immigration status and lack of language skills may tie you to standing jobs, but if people want to learn and grow out of them, in the US there are pathways. If someone curates a course on career pathways via youtube and spreads them through immigration centers and schools and social programs that will help even more people find their way. I find healthcare workers to be an interesting mix in this discussion. Their work is extremely physical and mental, and emotionally draining. Demand for it will only go up. Compensation for it will likely go up. Who picks up the jobs will be enlightening. Yes you have the bottleneck for doctor and nurse training, but CNA and PA are not as limited. Doctor liability is an extreme source of stress, but that somehow doesn’t apply to nurses as much, so even doctors recommend their kids become nurses.

Swizec 2y ago
> Brain work for me is like muscles for others - if I don’t squeeze out every ounce of energy from my brain with problems all day, I feel like I haven’t lived a full day. Many people prefer good workouts instead, if they don’t their body is punitive with restlessness and sleeplessness. I need both. Too little brain work and my thoughts are racing (unproductively) and my sleep needs fall down to ~4h (happens on vacation) which isn’t actually enough to make me feel rested. Too little physical activity and I’m restless and can’t focus, can’t sleep, and generally stuff falls apart.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  I, too, was surprised by this part: > Many people prefer good workouts instead instead -- as if this was a binary case: either/or. The secret to understanding exercise is knowing that there are both physical and mental benefits.

_thisdot 2y ago

There is just one problem. It'd have been good if they asked for your country before the questionnaire. $30,000 salary for a Software Developer seems less in America, but that is huge in some other countries

j7ake 2y ago
I think the questions assumed USA

unnouinceput 2y ago

Quote: "America got rich selling cotton picked by enslaved Black people" I stopped there. I am here to read news about tech, not propaganda lies. Also flagged this.

lelandbatey 2y ago
The south literally tried to secede over exactly that state of affairs, starting the USA civil war. Not particularly controversial...
- Danieru 2y ago
  The issue is that only the south got rich. Not "America". The north got rich off factories and wage earning labour. To equate the wealth of America to the south is a falsehood. And not a helpful one. It misleads you into missing the travesty of slavery: it did not build a nation. It gave leisure to a couple lucky families at the expense of hundreds per plantation. The industry and wage earning of the north is what built America.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    So the South produced cheap goods… where did they go? Who benefitted from being able to buy underpriced agricultural products?
    - hirvi74 2y ago
      Predominately England though France did benefit some as well.
      - relaxing 2y ago
        Well yes, because the South supplied the majority of the world’s cotton, and the European powers were larger economies at the time. But the textile mills in the Northern states also got their cotton predominantly from the South. Not to mention the tobacco, rice, etc.

PeterStuer 2y ago

Do they include burnout and depression as injuries?

Terr_ 2y ago
Reminds me of: > Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: “Bro, you don’t work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver.” > They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it’s certainly more physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard unless you’re an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome to programming. https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
- ericmcer 2y ago
  I did a year of landscaping and did 6ish years at grocery stores. Those jobs are 100% less stress and much more enjoyable imo. If they paid the same I would switch in a heartbeat. When you get to the Senior+ level in software, the buck often stops with you, and if you can't figure something out it can be a big ego hit. I never woke up or went to sleep wondering if I would be able to do landscaping or stock shelves the next day, but I often fall asleep stressed about how to architect something at work. Ownership of problems is worth a lot of money, thats why CEOs get paid so much. In most other jobs you can blame a chain of managers and processes, but with engineering if you fail the blame falls straight on you.
  - CRConrad 2y ago
    > Ownership of problems is worth a lot of money, thats why CEOs get paid so much. But CEOs don't seem to "own" any problems, do they? However bad they fuck up, they still get to sail away into the sunset on their "golden parachute" separation deal.
trabant00 2y ago
The reason they don't is they have a narrative they want to push. The entire thing is deeply flawed, from sitting vs standing when in fact it's white vs blue collar. There's plenty of sitting blue collar jobs that are brutal. Then not differentiating qualified vs unqualified blue collar work. These days qualified blue collar has similar pay to white collar and arguably more job security. But in the end there's no point digging to deep, it's just another race bait.

ramon156 2y ago

When you do office work you get the "you're not really working" When you do blue collar you get "you should've studied harder" We never win, and sometimes accepting that is the right decision. To not be loved is a simple mistake, to not love one another is a fatal mistake.

ozim 2y ago
Issue is “you should have learned harder” is always from office workers. Conversely “you’re not really working” comes from blue collar workers. Both sentences are the same and they are usually used by assholes from one or the other side that either feel attacked or feel superior. There is no intrinsic value in any of those statements besides what it is saying about person using it - that person is an asshole.
- amaurose 2y ago
  I dont think it is as simple as that. Throwing everyone into the a-hole pool is a rather simplistic approach, and a very dismissive one at that. In particular, the first sentence is often a reply to someone lamenting their situation, while the second sentence is often a statement ment to insult upwards. Context is important.
  - bumby 2y ago
    Maybe not assholes, but it is a pretty blatant status play. By denigrating someone else’s work you raise yourself up by comparison. And while a lot of our psychological health is tied to our relative status in society, that doesn’t make it healthy behavior. Edit: it's also telling from a status standpoint that you characterized the blue collar comment as "insulting upwards." It would probably go a long way to avoiding those types of comments in the first place if people didn't implicitly think blue collar work is "below" white collar work.
  - pc86 2y ago
    Why is one of those better than the other?

eru 2y ago

I solve this dilemma with a standing desk. (But I've yet to upgrade to a treadmill desk.)

mavamaarten 2y ago
I have a standing desk. I seriously need to force myself to use it, though. The last time it's been moved up is about a month ago.
- greenie_beans 2y ago
  my trick: start the day standing and try to stand for as long as i can. i usually stay standing til my lunchtime walk and when i get back from my walk i still have energy to stand. if i sit then my focus wanes.
  - eru 2y ago
    When I first started with my standing desk, I found it particularly useful to combat lunch coma.

amaurose 2y ago

From about: > Visual storytelling makes ideas more accessible From an a11y standpoint, that statement is very ironic. Because for visually impaired people, the effect is the opposite of what the sentence claims.

lexlambda 2y ago
Accessible as in "better to understand", helping with bringing the idea to a more general audience. A lot of people are uninterested in long texts or in this case parts of the expected audience might also have literacy issues.

shark1 2y ago

They forgot to mention that the number one cause of death is a disease associated with by a lack of physical activity or prolonged periods of sitting or inactivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

internet_points 2y ago

> Standers are more likely to be exposed to the outdoors — something that will become more and more dangerous as our planet warms. Feels almost absurd to see that framed as (just) a bad thing. (I would think Sitters are more likely to be exposed to the indoors, which includes a lack of sunlight and fresh air, possible exposure to mold and bad ventilation, and heated arguments over hot-desking.)

AlfredBarnes 2y ago
I was getting consistent headaches at work, and attributed it to my coworkers being obnoxious. Then I brought in an air quality monitor, turns out my building had some serious ventilation issues, and there was not clean air at my desk.
lexlambda 2y ago
Thought the same. It is clear that this presentation is definetely biased towards showing the problems of standing workers, as there haven't been any negative options about sitting presented. Unfortunately, while medically known and even legislated (forced breaks), problems of sitting workers are still widely ignored (often by themselves too) until too late or trivialized.

nmeofthestate 2y ago

I felt like I was being preached to by an ideologue, with some meh animated charts thrown in to sweeten the pill.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

putzdown 2y ago

There is one other analysis that would, I suspect, adjust the OP’s conclusions: age. Hypothesis: sitters vs standers, and other measures of the quality of the job (danger, flexibility…) correlate substantially with the age of the worker. As you go from your teens to 20s to 30s and beyond you tend on average to get better jobs. It’s not absolute, but I bet it’s a very strong trend, perhaps stronger than racial factors. That’s a hypothesis I wish this analysis examined.

pc86 2y ago
They were too busy making weird barely coherent points like "someday it will be too hot to venture outside" and "America is rich because of black people and the Chinese."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- gruez 2y ago
  Source? The two claims you listed have some elements of truth behind them, so without seeing the exact claim made, it's impossible to tell whether you're giving an uncharitable summary, or they're actually making absurd claims.
  - madebylaw 2y ago
    The source is the actual FA dude.
    - gruez 2y ago
      Are you talking about >Standers are more likely to be exposed to the outdoors—something that will become more and more dangerous as our planet warms. and >America got rich selling cotton picked by enslaved Black people. America built the Transcontinental Railroad with Chinese immigrant labor, only to ban Chinese immigration a few decades later. And America feeds itself with animals killed and processed by Black and Hispanic meatpackers. ? If so, I'm not sure how either of those points are "barely coherent", and the characterization made by the gp is a gross misrepresentation of site's claims.

golol 2y ago

All I see is trivialities.

layer8 2y ago

So this is not about male toilet use.

CRConrad 2y ago
100% what I too thought it would be about.

mouse_ 2y ago

I hate how everything on this site is constantly and slowly moving.

spongebobism 2y ago

Why are speech pathologists more often injured or ill than ambulance drivers, police officers and freight agents? That does not at all match my idea of that line of work.

tristor 2y ago
Because speech pathologists are generally working with patients that have mental issues, speech issues are generally neurological, and those patients may not have the same emotional self-regulation and self-control as the average person and may act violently. That said, I wouldn't consider it a particularly "dangerous" job. It's just that, despite the popular discourse, jobs like being a police officer are also really not that dangerous either. When the effect size is small it doesn't take much difference to be amplified in the data. Being a roofer is far more dangerous than being a police officer, even though that's not the typical mainstream narrative, as an example.

claytongulick 2y ago

I think a more objective analysis would have been for skilled vs unskilled labor, supply/demand and age stratified. It seems like a pretty series of infographics that are oriented towards some sort of narrative the creator is trying to impress on folks, something about guilt and unfairness? It seems like the author put in a lot of work in order to demonstrate a thing that most people intuitively understand: There's a large supply of unskilled or low skilled labor, so wages are less and the jobs are crappier and more physically demanding. If you age stratify it, I feel pretty confident that you'd also see a trend that shows that most physical labor is performed by younger folks, and the percentage of their day spent doing physical labor mostly decreases as they progress in their lives and become more skilled. I'm not talking just about desk jobs, I'm thinking (for example) of an apprentice electrician vs master electrician. One of those is going to get stuck doing the more physically demanding work while the other is in more of a supervisory role.

l0t0b0r0s 2y ago

cool website, but I dont appreciate the false notion that " America got rich off of selling cotton picked by enslaved Black people" Also the people who created the philosophical concepts that made the United States possible were all sitters.

m_herrlich 2y ago

Great visualization but lost me at the end when it got a bit too preachy. Turning socioeconomic issues into race issues doesn't help anyone.

hyeonwho4 2y ago

Interesting that the reader is ranked in 2D space on dimensions for which the reader provided a single bit of data ("Able to pause work"). I wonder how those dimensions are inferred.

tetnis 2y ago

thanks for injecting race into this!

m_herrlich 2y ago
Some people like to show off their creativity by making tenuous claims that every single thing is racist

m3047 2y ago

Very nice. My favorite definition of "blue collar vs white collar" is whether you wash your hands before or after you use the toilet. Not entirely true, but that's the gist of it.

elendee 2y ago

this is a ridiculous graph which mistakes temporary behaviors for entire human beings. I worked about 10 years doing handyman work, and now 10 years doing web development, often both in the same day.