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Comment by GuardianCaveman | Hacker News Reader

So by your logic you can work 80 hours a week but because you’re inside an office and not a barn you lose you’re right to want a better work life balance? Where is the cut off for not being able to complain or is it like a spectrum? 20k wage with kids is bad you say what about 30k with 1 kid? Is that too easy? Cop in a good neighborhood? How good does the neighborhood have to be before you can’t complain anymore? You said a few hundred cows at 6 am is rough? What about 99 cows at 7am?

People can be overworked in all kinds of jobs. Who are you the complaint police?

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Right? This didn’t read at all like a whiney blog post, to me. 40 hours per week really leaves little else to do. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing for those 40 hours, because they’re not doing chores, socializing, etc.

Consider that there are 168 hours in a week, and even accounting for 8 hours of sleep a day that's 112, subtracting 40 for work and you get 72. Lets call it an hour commute each way, that brings it to 62.

So you actually have 62 hours of personal time every week to the 40 you spend at work. In other words, you could be getting 22 more hours of productive work done in your free time than you get done at work every week.

This suggests that it isn't really a time problem.

But you need some of those 62 hours to cook, eat, shower, shop, do chores, etc.

> Where is the cut off for not being able to complain or is it like a spectrum?

Wherever the cut-off happens to be, software developers are far past it.

That's absurd. I've worked in call centers, as a mover, and as a software engineer. There are perfectly valid reasons to complain across the spectrum. Worker rights are not some limited good that only need to go to the most vulnerable, and even white collar workers should be aware and proactive about fighting for better treatment in the workplace. Being well paid has not prevented me from seeing egregious workplace interactions across many of my past jobs, or observing that workers could likely get a more generous slice of the tradeoffs we give our employers without in any way being inequitable.

Sure, worker rights shouldn't be limited to tge most vulnerable. This post however wasn't about work ethics, but about having too little time for yourself if you are working 40hrs/week. It's actually not even about work/life balance, but rather work/chores/hobbies balance. In my opinion you can't blame the 40hours of work.

As an 1800s sweatshop boss, the idea that anyone other than a dying child in a third world country would try to negotiate for better conditions is appalling to me. 40 hour work week? They should be glad they don't have malaria.

Everyone is entitled to talk about their subjective experience. Nobody has to listen to it. And it feels a little rude to go all Four Yorkshiremen on people and tell them they don't really have it hard.

.. unless they're recommending some action be taken, of course. And this blog post isn't. It's not a demand for policy, it's just talking about life.

>Everyone is entitled to talk about their subjective experience.

Maybe that's part of the problem. Not that everyone is entitled to talk about their subjective experience, but that everyone feels entitled to talk about their subjective experience -- and many are socially blind and comically out of touch when doing so. That's where memes like "first world problems" came from...

Everybody should be able to talk about their subjective experience. But many should have the social awareness, grace, and decency, not to.

Those who disagree still laugh and sneer at the richer 0.1% people when they say something comically out of touch with everyday life. But they just can't fathom that they themselves can be a richer 1% of people for a huge majority, and that their complaints can sound comically out of touch to most.

It's not like there aren't real problems to complain about that are shared among people and don't make someone look like self-absorbed (health issues, family issues, divorce, financial trouble, trauma, and so on).

I don't know why you have this misguided idea that being a software developer is as big of a jump from the median as being in the richest 0.1% is from being a software developer. Having started at the very bottom of the economic ladder, I can tell you that it's really not that different.

60+ hour weeks can really mess with your health, no matter what you're doing. I definitely have different injuries than I had when I did intense physical work. But working more than 40 hours is still not healthy. You're trading pulled muscles and joint stress for carpel tunnel syndrome and cardiovascular disease.

Misguided? Someone who is earning >80K is in richest 1% of the world population.

In the United States, the median household income is over 60k. Income is not the same thing as wealth.

I will say that there is a significant reduction in stress and jump in wellbeing between 30k and 40k. Beyond that, there is very little actual difference. As my income increases, all it does is reduce my time until retirement.

>the median household income is over 60k

Household income is not the same as one person's wage. The media household income includes tons of couples where both are working.

And while "income is not the same thing as wealth", still making 80k in income (not wealth) puts you at the top 13%. You get into 1% of USA is 300K.

As for the world, 80K (net) income put you at 0.1% globally.

http://graphics.wsj.com/what-percent/

So they will have high net worth when they die prematurely due to stress and poor lifestyle.

Yeah, "prematurely" as in a good 2-3 decades later, and in much cushier positions, that people working their bones out every day in the developing work or working class jobs in the first world, making 1/50 to 1/5 the money.

> It's not like there aren't real problems to complain about that are shared among people and don't make someone look like self-absorbed

I think this approach to suffering is problematic. Feelings are not a contest. When I talk about things that hurt me, I don't care if someone else thinks that I'm "self-absorbed." The point of expressing myself and being vulnerable about things I'm dealing with is not to make me look good.

It's to sort out my thoughts so I can better understand what I'm feeling, it's to connect with other people who understand me and can offer solutions, it's to find other people who are going through the same things so I don't feel like I'm alone, and it's to show other people who are going through the same things that they're not alone.

Expressing yourself to other people is healthy, even for rich 0.1% people. It only becomes an issue when it causes you to stop caring about other people or dismissing their problems as irrelevant. I don't see any obvious indication in this post that OP has done that. OP can simultaneously say, "this is a hard thing I'm struggling with" and "other people have it worse" at the same time. They're not exclusive concepts.

And not to poke fun, but the framework you propose is honestly just silly if you start to break it down: is it uncouth for the middle-class to complain about rising health care costs, given that many US prisons don't even offer adequate health care at any cost? Is it a problem for the homeless to complain about eating food out of trash cans when poorer people in other countries are mixing dirt into their flour? You mention divorce as a shared issue, but really that just shows how out-of-touch you are with the plight of modern sex-slaves in ISIS controlled territories.

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