6 ms·

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever. Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood struck me to try it out for like a month. I realized something huge about our jobs versus a lot of other jobs: I make more than $100/hr sitting in my pajamas, and I'm totally blessed. But I work my fucking ass off. My brain is fully engaged, and when I charge you $125 for an hour of my time, you got more than that value, because I was working, firing on all cylinders. What I realized in this other job was that even though I worked like 10 hours, it felt like I didn't do much because... I didn't. My coworkers and I, we did some stuff, chatted, laughed a bit, did another bit or piece, took lunch, etc. We spent a lot of time just socializing, having down time, not thinking too hard. I also noticed that there wasn't really room to do "better". The nature of the job sort of set a cap on how productive you could be during a given time period, so the culture just grew around that. Think of a gas station attendant sitting around watching TV most of the day, the night audit at the hotel, or the guy flipping burgers when it's not lunch time. That's when I really got the distinction between $10-20/hr work and $100+ -- we, collectively do difficult, mentally taxing work that requires long hours of intense focus, and a dedication to craftmanship that most other jobs just don't require. And we do that job under mostly under unreasonably tight deadlines, often for employers that don't understand what we're doing and therefore undermine us in many ways. Yes, it's luxury in many ways. But it's also a coal mine of its own sort.

zhemao 13y ago
What kind of job was it, retail? Even that job is probably a luxury compared to, say, manufacturing. I don't think you'd have that much down time if you were working in a factory. You wouldn't be thinking a lot, since it's repetitive manual labor, but I'm sure you'd be pretty tired at the end of the day (physically, not mentally).
- ry0ohki 13y ago
  That's what I was thinking. Mentally taxing work is usually more rewarding at the end of the day than physically taxing work.
- Natsu 13y ago
  It depends very much on the job. I'm currently working from home and loving it, but I know far too much about jobs that suck. Factory work can look very much like Lucy from I Love Lucy working at the chocolate factory, for example. It may not be very mentally engaging, but 12 hours (or more) of that are enough to wear down anybody, especially when you get busy seasons with no weekends.
mgkimsal 13y ago
"and when I charge you $125 for an hour of my time, you got more than that value, because I was working, firing on all cylinders." No, I don't. I might. But what you value your time at is different from the value I can derive from using your time.
- chc 13y ago
  Unless pmichaud is contracting for you, you don't seem to fall into the precondition of "when I charge you $125 for an hour of my time." He presumably sells to people who value his time that highly and doesn't sell do people who think his price is unworkable, so it is almost tautologically true.
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    "presumably" - didn't really come across in his post. He(?) seems to justify the $125 "because I was working, firing on all cylinders". I don't care what your effort is. I don't particularly care if it takes you all your effort, or if you can do it in your sleep. The justification is the value delivered, not the effort expended. He probably does sell to those sorts of people, but again, I doubt they care what effort he's putting in to it. And again, the written justification was "I'm firing on all cylinders". Some people firing on all cylinders manage to pull in $10/hr. Others pull in $10k/day firing on all cylinders. Your effort doesn't matter to someone - what value they can derive from your deliverable is all that matters.
- acoleman616 13y ago
  You're right. If he's doing his job right, you should be getting MORE than ($125 * # hrs) in value in return.
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    See my post above. But it's really only partially his(?) job. I can 'do my job' right, but if the other party fails to derive value from what I deliver (incompetence, whatever), then it wasn't worth it to them, regardless of how well I did or how much effort I put in. PART (a big part) of my job is to qualify people up front to make sure I'm as unlikely as possible to be wasting each party's time.
seizethecheese 13y ago
Hmm, so you took one job and feel like that is enough of a basis for making conclusions? - Have you tried being a commercial dishwasher? I have. That's 8 straight hours of monotonous, yet highly demanding work attention-wise. $9/hr. - Have you been a line cook? I have. That's 8 straight hours of monotonous, physical work plus a pretty painful burn at least once a day. $10/hr. Okay, fine I take your point that programming requires heavy dedication to skill. Have you ever worked in accounting? My fiancee works as an accountant and is constantly pushed to work over 70 hrs per week and her job is extremely demanding. (She's the only one at her company that can figure out certain processes, hence the long hours and pressure. She currently is doing the work of 4 people.) $20/ hr. I'm sorry, but calling your $100/hr occupation as a programmer a "coal mine of its own sort" is beyond absurd, and downright foolish.
- parennoob 13y ago
  He is a programmer at $100/hr who has to tax his brain a lot in near-total isolation. The aspects of how this is bad for you may be different from those of a dishwasher or a line cook. Some therapists charge more than $100/hr for just listening to people's mental problems for an hour and suggesting new ways of thinking about stuff. But we don't see said therapists telling each other, "Oh, our jobs are so cushy and luxurious. Try being a line cook!" Programming is monotonous, socially isolating, and probably leads to a higher risk of things like heart disease and diabetes from all the time we spend sitting around. These aspects of it shouldn't be neglected because a dishwasher or a line cook makes less money for more immediate physical risk. "Okay, fine I take your point that programming requires heavy dedication to skill. Have you ever worked in accounting? My fiancee works as an accountant and is constantly pushed to work over 70 hrs per week and her job is extremely demanding. (She's the only one at her company that can figure out certain processes, hence the long hours and pressure. She currently is doing the work of 4 people.) $20/ hr." This is replying to an anecdote with yet another anecdote, which I don't think is terribly helpful. As a sincere suggestion, has she tried negotiating for a raise? Seems like their reliance on her as a single point of failure should make for a good negotiating position.
  - seizethecheese 13y ago
dylandrop 13y ago
> Yes, it's luxury in many ways. But it's also a coal mine of its own sort. Except you won't die from sitting home in your pajamas. You will, however, be very to die for a multitude of reasons in a coal mine. I'm a programmer. Yes, my brain is engaged constantly. But that's fun to me. It's not like I rue the day I became a programmer and I had to perform the terrible labor of sitting around with friends/acquaintances, sip free coffee, and make web apps. However, if you're in a sweatshop, forced to work many hours a day and likely suffer a variety injuries, you aren't doing as well.
- parennoob 13y ago
  > Except you won't die from sitting home in your pajamas. Not sure this is true. Working alone from home in a sedentary job probably raises his risk for diabetes, heart disease, and depression and related diseases; and contributes to an earlier death. I don't have any data as to whether the average life expectancy of a programmer is less than the average life expectancy of a coal miner. Do you?
  - adamdavis 13y ago
    I don't have any of that data either, but to suggest that the life as a programmer working from home is as dangerous as the life of a career coal miner seems a bit absurd to me. edit: Certainly no one's making the claim that a sedentary lifestyle doesn't have its own risks - but being a programmer working from home doesn't insist you live a sedentary lifestyle, however, the risks involved with being a coal miner aren't optional.
    - parennoob 13y ago
      > to suggest that the life as a programmer working from home is as dangerous as the life of a career coal miner seems a bit absurd to me. As it does to me. But the idea that coal-mining jobs are dangerous is probably due to stuff you read, or the recent media coverage of trapped miners in Chile (well, a few years ago). Anecdotally, I also hear of a lot of people in desk jobs just dropping dead of heart attacks at relatively young ages (mid-60s), so I'm trying not to be influenced by that either. I'm trying to keep a completely open mind. I do not know for sure what the risks of my job are, but I shouldn't assume that it's definitely in the low-risk region, because doing so would be unscientific. It could be that being a programmer is one of the jobs that leads to higher life expectancies, and if that were proven statistically, that would be great. Also, you have to distinguish between a job being dangerous, and leading to a lower life expectancy. It could be true that the average miner needs to be on guard against life threatening situations 100% of the time, but could have a higher life expectancy than the average programmer who sits around all day and doesn't have any immediate dangers, but often dies earlier due to a myocardial infarction from all the Cheetos, soda, and pizza he consumed.
mgkimsal 13y ago
"hours of intense focus"? really? Most software developers I know - highly paid ones - rarely put in more than 4 hours at stretch ever. The 'pomodoro' technique popular a few years ago focused on getting people to work for 25 minutes at a stretch. I'm not saying the work is not sometimes mentally taxing - it is. But so are other jobs. CPAs trying to juggle way too much info days before tax day - and tax day doesn't move - you can't push that back - the pressure mounts and there's nothing you can do about it. MANY software projects get pushed back days/weeks just because of any number of factors (some big, some trivial). And... it's not mentally taxing to some people. There are things I sweat in development that other people do with their eyes closed. And vice versa - I've cleaned up projects in a few days that a small team of people "fired on all cylinders" to get done (and failed). As I replied elsewhere effort and value are pretty disconnected.
GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
"But it's also a coal mine of its own sort." Go work a physically taxing job for a couple weeks then come back and say that.
- prawn 13y ago
  "...of its own sort." i.e., not making a direct comparison about the physicality of the work... I remember reading about a guy who gave up the freelance web game to become a lumberjack and loved it. Physically hard, but easy to switch off and relax at the end of the day. I think it was on HN a few years back when I first joined.
datalus 13y ago
Austin used to be such a chill place, now we've got these bros... Comparing coal mining to working in your pajamas for $125/hr. Jesus.
conanbatt 13y ago
Don't confound price with value! Software programmers and Engineers work an inmense amount to build things that are commercially unsuccessful. In fact, most projects are botched completely, let alone those that run at a loss, before you get the big wins. There is a definite disproportion of price/value across all professions, and programmers are today in the spectrum where the expectations are rather low. 20 years from now, we could have so many engineers that there wont be much advantage in comparison with accountants, operations managers, sales or retail etc. It is a priviledged position, albeit not as priviledged as lawyers or bankers (whose salary can vastly outpace their value). Classical service jobs dont have that luxury: you serve x burguers, u sell x products, you build y chairs.
- Akujin 13y ago
  I don't really see us getting many more IT/CS engineers anytime soon. The amount of businesses that actually need a programmer / tech person on staff keeps increasing while the amount of engineers out there stays relatively the same. That's why we can charge so much for our hours. It's a seller's market. Even if the country decided to make programming part of the elementary school curriculum it wouldn't necessarily translate into more engineers because computer science & IT people tend to be nerds/geeks who like to tinker in their free time and as a percentage of the population they stay relatively the same from year to year. If anything the kind of programming curriculum that most programmers dream of might actually create more of a demand for them because finally everyone who's not a programmer will realize the potential value of having a good programmer on staff. The amount of office drones I see messing around with giant Excel sheets for hours doing the same task day in day out that could easily be automated by a simple application is astounding.
  - vostrocity 13y ago
    >computer science & IT people tend to be nerds/geeks who like to tinker in their free time and as a percentage of the population they stay relatively the same from year to year Why do you say that? I think you may be thinking too much in the short-term. I was actually wondering what programmers in their mid-20s today are going to be doing when they're, say, 70. How many programmers in their 70s do we have today? Very little, because computing was in its infancy 50 years ago. With every generation, more and more are being exposed to computing/programming at an early age. You also have to remember that there are tinkerers in not just the computing field. Think about the weekend woodworkers, car guys, model aircraft enthusiasts; could many of them be tinkering with software if they were exposed and educated in it at the right age? I say yes. On the macro scale, we are only at the dawn of computing and the internet, and there are going to be MANY more people working on it in the future.
benched 13y ago
Absolutely yes. I always have to be really polite to my friends who don't have technical jobs. Programmers have to offer up complicated things, that have to hold up when tested. A lot of jobs are mostly talking, or moving things around, or just whatever. Look at family physicians. I've seen them just look up stuff on Wikipedia on their netbooks, that everybody sort of knows anyway. Anything more demanding, they write down the name of a specialist. I used to have a customer service job that was like that, but I only made $14 (1998) an hour.
- jtoeman 13y ago
  FWIW those people "talking" or "whatever" are quite likely creating some of the business opportunities for your code to sit in and make you the money. The number of times when coding=(lots of)money without some of the "whatever" involved is fairly rare.
  - benched 13y ago
    I'm just saying, few jobs have analogs to "accountability to logic", "accountability to the compiler", "accountability to the unit tests" and so on. Surgeons have it. Engineers have it. Even people who do sales have it. But you know there are a lot of service, middle-management, and executive jobs where no rubber meeting road really occurs.
    - jtoeman 13y ago
      yes, and there are a lot of programmer jobs where the same is true as well - maybe as a percentage it's less than in a sales role, but it still exists. but it actually doesn't really matter - you choose to be a programmer, so you choose to put yourself into a role that requires such accountability. i'm sure you are quite qualified to be a barista, but would you get satisfaction? doubt it.
jtoeman 13y ago
You related to Tom Perkins?
jckt 13y ago
Try cheffing. Up to 16 hours a day at a high-end place with only a 5 minute breakfast break, 5 minute supper break. Mind's constantly working. Certainly not solving world hunger, but creativity and concentration are required all the time. Shit job if you don't really care much about food, and even if you do, the job itself is still not that great.
- aestra 13y ago
  It is interesting that in some places there are mandatory break times, where I grew up you had to have a half hour break per 8 hour shift or something like that, even with these laws, those working conditions still persist. Some employers might not even be aware of them. I worked for one that was super not-breaking-the-law type and one that was who-the-hell-has-time-to-research-that-shit? type. Both in food prep and service.
2arrs2ells 13y ago
"Think of a gas station attendant sitting around watching TV most of the day, the night audit at the hotel, or the guy flipping burgers when it's not lunch time." I've been thinking about this a bit lately... What can we build to help people make the most of these spare cycles? Duolingo is perfect for this. What else could people produce/learn in spare time on their phone?
- DanBC 13y ago
  There are a million things they could do. Gamify things and help science - http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23635094 http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23635094 Or set up a course and learn math etc. Sadly, many bosses don't want this. They want a body at work and to look like they're working even if there's nothing to do.

zhemao 13y ago

What kind of job was it, retail? Even that job is probably a luxury compared to, say, manufacturing. I don't think you'd have that much down time if you were working in a factory. You wouldn't be thinking a lot, since it's repetitive manual labor, but I'm sure you'd be pretty tired at the end of the day (physically, not mentally).

ry0ohki 13y ago
That's what I was thinking. Mentally taxing work is usually more rewarding at the end of the day than physically taxing work.
Natsu 13y ago
It depends very much on the job. I'm currently working from home and loving it, but I know far too much about jobs that suck. Factory work can look very much like Lucy from I Love Lucy working at the chocolate factory, for example. It may not be very mentally engaging, but 12 hours (or more) of that are enough to wear down anybody, especially when you get busy seasons with no weekends.

mgkimsal 13y ago

"and when I charge you $125 for an hour of my time, you got more than that value, because I was working, firing on all cylinders." No, I don't. I might. But what you value your time at is different from the value I can derive from using your time.

chc 13y ago
Unless pmichaud is contracting for you, you don't seem to fall into the precondition of "when I charge you $125 for an hour of my time." He presumably sells to people who value his time that highly and doesn't sell do people who think his price is unworkable, so it is almost tautologically true.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  "presumably" - didn't really come across in his post. He(?) seems to justify the $125 "because I was working, firing on all cylinders". I don't care what your effort is. I don't particularly care if it takes you all your effort, or if you can do it in your sleep. The justification is the value delivered, not the effort expended. He probably does sell to those sorts of people, but again, I doubt they care what effort he's putting in to it. And again, the written justification was "I'm firing on all cylinders". Some people firing on all cylinders manage to pull in $10/hr. Others pull in $10k/day firing on all cylinders. Your effort doesn't matter to someone - what value they can derive from your deliverable is all that matters.
acoleman616 13y ago
You're right. If he's doing his job right, you should be getting MORE than ($125 * # hrs) in value in return.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  See my post above. But it's really only partially his(?) job. I can 'do my job' right, but if the other party fails to derive value from what I deliver (incompetence, whatever), then it wasn't worth it to them, regardless of how well I did or how much effort I put in. PART (a big part) of my job is to qualify people up front to make sure I'm as unlikely as possible to be wasting each party's time.

seizethecheese 13y ago

Hmm, so you took one job and feel like that is enough of a basis for making conclusions? - Have you tried being a commercial dishwasher? I have. That's 8 straight hours of monotonous, yet highly demanding work attention-wise. $9/hr. - Have you been a line cook? I have. That's 8 straight hours of monotonous, physical work plus a pretty painful burn at least once a day. $10/hr. Okay, fine I take your point that programming requires heavy dedication to skill. Have you ever worked in accounting? My fiancee works as an accountant and is constantly pushed to work over 70 hrs per week and her job is extremely demanding. (She's the only one at her company that can figure out certain processes, hence the long hours and pressure. She currently is doing the work of 4 people.) $20/ hr. I'm sorry, but calling your $100/hr occupation as a programmer a "coal mine of its own sort" is beyond absurd, and downright foolish.

parennoob 13y ago
He is a programmer at $100/hr who has to tax his brain a lot in near-total isolation. The aspects of how this is bad for you may be different from those of a dishwasher or a line cook. Some therapists charge more than $100/hr for just listening to people's mental problems for an hour and suggesting new ways of thinking about stuff. But we don't see said therapists telling each other, "Oh, our jobs are so cushy and luxurious. Try being a line cook!" Programming is monotonous, socially isolating, and probably leads to a higher risk of things like heart disease and diabetes from all the time we spend sitting around. These aspects of it shouldn't be neglected because a dishwasher or a line cook makes less money for more immediate physical risk. "Okay, fine I take your point that programming requires heavy dedication to skill. Have you ever worked in accounting? My fiancee works as an accountant and is constantly pushed to work over 70 hrs per week and her job is extremely demanding. (She's the only one at her company that can figure out certain processes, hence the long hours and pressure. She currently is doing the work of 4 people.) $20/ hr." This is replying to an anecdote with yet another anecdote, which I don't think is terribly helpful. As a sincere suggestion, has she tried negotiating for a raise? Seems like their reliance on her as a single point of failure should make for a good negotiating position.
- seizethecheese 13y ago

dylandrop 13y ago

> Yes, it's luxury in many ways. But it's also a coal mine of its own sort. Except you won't die from sitting home in your pajamas. You will, however, be very to die for a multitude of reasons in a coal mine. I'm a programmer. Yes, my brain is engaged constantly. But that's fun to me. It's not like I rue the day I became a programmer and I had to perform the terrible labor of sitting around with friends/acquaintances, sip free coffee, and make web apps. However, if you're in a sweatshop, forced to work many hours a day and likely suffer a variety injuries, you aren't doing as well.

parennoob 13y ago
> Except you won't die from sitting home in your pajamas. Not sure this is true. Working alone from home in a sedentary job probably raises his risk for diabetes, heart disease, and depression and related diseases; and contributes to an earlier death. I don't have any data as to whether the average life expectancy of a programmer is less than the average life expectancy of a coal miner. Do you?
- adamdavis 13y ago
  I don't have any of that data either, but to suggest that the life as a programmer working from home is as dangerous as the life of a career coal miner seems a bit absurd to me. edit: Certainly no one's making the claim that a sedentary lifestyle doesn't have its own risks - but being a programmer working from home doesn't insist you live a sedentary lifestyle, however, the risks involved with being a coal miner aren't optional.
  - parennoob 13y ago
    > to suggest that the life as a programmer working from home is as dangerous as the life of a career coal miner seems a bit absurd to me. As it does to me. But the idea that coal-mining jobs are dangerous is probably due to stuff you read, or the recent media coverage of trapped miners in Chile (well, a few years ago). Anecdotally, I also hear of a lot of people in desk jobs just dropping dead of heart attacks at relatively young ages (mid-60s), so I'm trying not to be influenced by that either. I'm trying to keep a completely open mind. I do not know for sure what the risks of my job are, but I shouldn't assume that it's definitely in the low-risk region, because doing so would be unscientific. It could be that being a programmer is one of the jobs that leads to higher life expectancies, and if that were proven statistically, that would be great. Also, you have to distinguish between a job being dangerous, and leading to a lower life expectancy. It could be true that the average miner needs to be on guard against life threatening situations 100% of the time, but could have a higher life expectancy than the average programmer who sits around all day and doesn't have any immediate dangers, but often dies earlier due to a myocardial infarction from all the Cheetos, soda, and pizza he consumed.

mgkimsal 13y ago

"hours of intense focus"? really? Most software developers I know - highly paid ones - rarely put in more than 4 hours at stretch ever. The 'pomodoro' technique popular a few years ago focused on getting people to work for 25 minutes at a stretch. I'm not saying the work is not sometimes mentally taxing - it is. But so are other jobs. CPAs trying to juggle way too much info days before tax day - and tax day doesn't move - you can't push that back - the pressure mounts and there's nothing you can do about it. MANY software projects get pushed back days/weeks just because of any number of factors (some big, some trivial). And... it's not mentally taxing to some people. There are things I sweat in development that other people do with their eyes closed. And vice versa - I've cleaned up projects in a few days that a small team of people "fired on all cylinders" to get done (and failed). As I replied elsewhere effort and value are pretty disconnected.

GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago

"But it's also a coal mine of its own sort." Go work a physically taxing job for a couple weeks then come back and say that.

prawn 13y ago
"...of its own sort." i.e., not making a direct comparison about the physicality of the work... I remember reading about a guy who gave up the freelance web game to become a lumberjack and loved it. Physically hard, but easy to switch off and relax at the end of the day. I think it was on HN a few years back when I first joined.

datalus 13y ago

Austin used to be such a chill place, now we've got these bros... Comparing coal mining to working in your pajamas for $125/hr. Jesus.

conanbatt 13y ago

Don't confound price with value! Software programmers and Engineers work an inmense amount to build things that are commercially unsuccessful. In fact, most projects are botched completely, let alone those that run at a loss, before you get the big wins. There is a definite disproportion of price/value across all professions, and programmers are today in the spectrum where the expectations are rather low. 20 years from now, we could have so many engineers that there wont be much advantage in comparison with accountants, operations managers, sales or retail etc. It is a priviledged position, albeit not as priviledged as lawyers or bankers (whose salary can vastly outpace their value). Classical service jobs dont have that luxury: you serve x burguers, u sell x products, you build y chairs.

Akujin 13y ago
I don't really see us getting many more IT/CS engineers anytime soon. The amount of businesses that actually need a programmer / tech person on staff keeps increasing while the amount of engineers out there stays relatively the same. That's why we can charge so much for our hours. It's a seller's market. Even if the country decided to make programming part of the elementary school curriculum it wouldn't necessarily translate into more engineers because computer science & IT people tend to be nerds/geeks who like to tinker in their free time and as a percentage of the population they stay relatively the same from year to year. If anything the kind of programming curriculum that most programmers dream of might actually create more of a demand for them because finally everyone who's not a programmer will realize the potential value of having a good programmer on staff. The amount of office drones I see messing around with giant Excel sheets for hours doing the same task day in day out that could easily be automated by a simple application is astounding.
- vostrocity 13y ago
  >computer science & IT people tend to be nerds/geeks who like to tinker in their free time and as a percentage of the population they stay relatively the same from year to year Why do you say that? I think you may be thinking too much in the short-term. I was actually wondering what programmers in their mid-20s today are going to be doing when they're, say, 70. How many programmers in their 70s do we have today? Very little, because computing was in its infancy 50 years ago. With every generation, more and more are being exposed to computing/programming at an early age. You also have to remember that there are tinkerers in not just the computing field. Think about the weekend woodworkers, car guys, model aircraft enthusiasts; could many of them be tinkering with software if they were exposed and educated in it at the right age? I say yes. On the macro scale, we are only at the dawn of computing and the internet, and there are going to be MANY more people working on it in the future.

benched 13y ago

Absolutely yes. I always have to be really polite to my friends who don't have technical jobs. Programmers have to offer up complicated things, that have to hold up when tested. A lot of jobs are mostly talking, or moving things around, or just whatever. Look at family physicians. I've seen them just look up stuff on Wikipedia on their netbooks, that everybody sort of knows anyway. Anything more demanding, they write down the name of a specialist. I used to have a customer service job that was like that, but I only made $14 (1998) an hour.

jtoeman 13y ago
FWIW those people "talking" or "whatever" are quite likely creating some of the business opportunities for your code to sit in and make you the money. The number of times when coding=(lots of)money without some of the "whatever" involved is fairly rare.
- benched 13y ago
  I'm just saying, few jobs have analogs to "accountability to logic", "accountability to the compiler", "accountability to the unit tests" and so on. Surgeons have it. Engineers have it. Even people who do sales have it. But you know there are a lot of service, middle-management, and executive jobs where no rubber meeting road really occurs.
  - jtoeman 13y ago
    yes, and there are a lot of programmer jobs where the same is true as well - maybe as a percentage it's less than in a sales role, but it still exists. but it actually doesn't really matter - you choose to be a programmer, so you choose to put yourself into a role that requires such accountability. i'm sure you are quite qualified to be a barista, but would you get satisfaction? doubt it.

jtoeman 13y ago

You related to Tom Perkins?

jckt 13y ago

Try cheffing. Up to 16 hours a day at a high-end place with only a 5 minute breakfast break, 5 minute supper break. Mind's constantly working. Certainly not solving world hunger, but creativity and concentration are required all the time. Shit job if you don't really care much about food, and even if you do, the job itself is still not that great.

aestra 13y ago
It is interesting that in some places there are mandatory break times, where I grew up you had to have a half hour break per 8 hour shift or something like that, even with these laws, those working conditions still persist. Some employers might not even be aware of them. I worked for one that was super not-breaking-the-law type and one that was who-the-hell-has-time-to-research-that-shit? type. Both in food prep and service.

2arrs2ells 13y ago

"Think of a gas station attendant sitting around watching TV most of the day, the night audit at the hotel, or the guy flipping burgers when it's not lunch time." I've been thinking about this a bit lately... What can we build to help people make the most of these spare cycles? Duolingo is perfect for this. What else could people produce/learn in spare time on their phone?

DanBC 13y ago
There are a million things they could do. Gamify things and help science - http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23635094 http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23635094 Or set up a course and learn math etc. Sadly, many bosses don't want this. They want a body at work and to look like they're working even if there's nothing to do.