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Comment by jib | Hacker News Reader

Shittier jobs I've had than a desk job:

5-6 hours a day biking in -15C snow with wet feet (Mailman).

8 hours a day moving chips one by one in and out of an EPROM writer because it was cheaper to have me do that than pay the extra 2c to have them preprogrammed. The chips were 25c without programming and 27c with. (Ericson subcontractor).

And I am privileged as hell, coming from Sweden with a good education and a family I can rely on.

I think the point of burning out on work is relatable still. It is not fun to work long hours of anything, and it is even less fun when something you used to do for entertainment turns into a chore. But I'm pretty happy with my desk job in the software industry because the other jobs Ive seen have been a lot less nice.

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I'm a developer and still a mailman in Canada in the freezing rain and snow because that indexed pension is just too good to give up, plus they let you do awesome things like bank all your overtime so you can take more days off. I had one month off paid this year in addition to my regular 5 weeks off. Before my shift these days I program for a university medical research lab, which isn't highly paid but it's satisfying work where you are always learning something, and they keep writing me letters of recommendation so I keep picking up new research contracts when one ends. Very casual environment, coworker post-doc's are helpful to bleed for information, no performance bonus paperwork to fill out or bosses harassing me with nonsense the lead researchers thankfully take care of that.

Before I was working remotely for various companies and hated it as the unpaid hours kept growing with ridiculous meetings and paperwork. Their management kept sending me these surveys to fill out and very long emails and slack distractions that always required immediate attention so the job became more trouble than it was worth and I quit. My criteria for work these days is "Will they lay me off in X years?" and "How much mandatory overtime is there?" nothing else really matters including the pay being below average.

> I'm a developer and still a mailman in Canada.... Before my shift these days I program for a university medical research lab.

So your mailman job is a full-time job and the programming job is part-time? Or is it the other way around? Or are both part-time?

Asking because part-time jobs in software engineering are quite hard to come by, atleast in the US.

Check universities, because P/T developer work is in abundance here usually weekends or remote once you get to know the researchers you work with, showing up on odd weekends. These contracts pay less than industry but the education you receive working with post-doc's imho makes it worth it and it's still more than a livable wage. CompSci dept students don't often apply for whatever reasons, I suspect it's because they are chasing internships at big money corps.

Yep, this is true. In fact the only software dev work I've been paid to do in 2 years has been part-time a uni in Manitoba working with a post-doc there. It's way more rewarding overall than anything I've been fired for doing in an office somewhere accounting for my story points.

Do I know you?

> 5-6 hours a day biking in -15C snow with wet feet (Mailman).

As a Swede, aren't you familiar with the saying "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes"? :-)

I did spend one summer planting trees in Sweden. It was miserable, but in a good way: I'd sleep well every night. I'm not sure how well I'd put up with something like that over an extended period of time though.

Hehe, yeah. It is a pain in the ass to try to cycle in anything other than sneakers though imo. Especially when you need to get off the bike and run up stairs fairly often. Better to be cold and wet than be on the bike in boots.

It was actually a good job most days. Certainly made me more fit than before. I think most work is like that right? Some crappy things and some cool things. But like you say, doing that for 20 years or more I am not sure about.

I did it for a year and a half full time and then part time for two years while working on a CS degree.

Another Swede, was very fun to see that you got a job at Blizzard Entertainment. :D Childhood dread come true?

:). Yeah I grew up on Blizzard games, so it has been cool to get to work for a company I respect and admire.

Typo or intentionally funny? Good either way.

"It is not fun to work long hours of anything, and it is even less fun when something you used to do for entertainment turns into a chore."

This is exactly why I quit photography: it was a passion in which I indulged in my own time that became a job when I didn't say no to friends (and then their friends, acquaintances, and sometimes strangers) who wanted me to photograph their wedding or similar "on your feet 12 hours" types of events. Fortunately I have this programming thing on which to fall back. :-)

Also the fact that the market is over-saturated and nobody needs a photographer because literally anyone can point an iPhone at whatever they like and get a perfect photo.

Photography was hard in the 80s when you had to do your own lighting and process and develop film. Not anymore.

I held a similar opinion until I saw an amazing wedding photographer work her magic. That was a highly skilled job with a lot of work and effort and knowledge at play.

Easy to do, but hard to do well. And as a layperson in the photography world it's hard to know what you're missing until you compare an amateur and a professional side-by-side.

I don't see how the 2c saving per chip, multiplied by any reasonable number of chips a person can swap in and out could pay for the work (in the so-called developed world, at that)? There are other good reasons to be doing that, like nearly instant turnaround time if a change in the firmware occurs in early production runs.

Yeah there was a sizing thing to it too. It was for a specific build of headsets that didnt go out in huge numbers each batch, so buying in bulk was risky and the lead time from Taiwan was significant.

You can do a lot of chips in a day though, I did around 10k per day if I remember right, so there was still some profit.

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