Hacker News Reader

Comment by Antoninus | Hacker News Reader

I'm a developer like many people here. One thing that people who don't program don't realize is that its a laborious job. It seems like its a fun job with lots of 'hanging out' but its more like 4-5 hours a day / 5 days week looking at a text editor and a terminal trying to focus and not be distracted. At the end of the day, I'm exhausted

View on HN

I've done all kinds of jobs. I'd take a 14 hour physical labor job over a 8 hour mental labor job anytime. Mental labor is painful... in the form that stalling the main thread of something is.

But that's data entry. Development is much less mental labor, and I'd agree with the 4-5 hours/day assessment.

Most people can't actually do this, which is why a lot of people hate math. Math class is dealing with intense focus on a poorly documented thing. Development has little to do with it, but it's the same soft skill.

I have done all kinds of jobs too, and I will take a programming/middle management job (no matter how soulless) over a 14 h, or even 8, physical job, every single time. Most of the blue-collar workers will tell you the same. Your skin suffers, your knees suffer, your lower-back suffers, honestly I doubt you have done it for a long time, it is people in that category who naively fantasize about how cool is to work 14 h under the sun or in a plant/warehouse/construction site.

Second this. I barely made it a week at a construction site when I was younger, and I was convinced the experienced shaved a few months off of my life expectancy. I was also just as exhausted coming home from work as I would be from an equivalent amount of time spent thinking about hard mental problems. At least for me, it wasn't even in the same universe as sitting down in an air-conditioned office and writing code all day.

>I'd take a 14 hour physical labor job over a 8 hour mental labor job anytime.

No you wouldn't. Physical labor varies in difficulty somewhat depending on the type of work, but many blue collar jobs are hell. Forget the anecdotes you read here; they are the exception and not the rule.

That's not to say that coding can't be difficult. But physical labor can be much, much worse.

I'd put the desirability hierarchy something like this, best to worst:

1) mixed labor (mental, physical)

2) moderate, varied physical labor

3) jobs that are mostly just being present and don't make you pretend to work most of the time

4) mental labor

5) jobs that are mostly just being present but do make you pretend to work most of the time

6) repetitive moderate physical labor

7) repetitive sedentary labor

8) hard physical labor

With 8 being at the bottom mostly due to typically being high-risk and coming with major mid-term harm to health.

Yeah, I think the repetitive part is what drives us crazy.

The worst jobs are probably done by prison labor and slaves. 8, I would actually classify as dangerous labor, things like how prisoners are made to peel garlic which corrodes their fingernails and teeth.

> Math class is dealing with intense focus on a poorly documented thing.

I like this and think it's accurate. Funnily enough, it gets better if you go on to major in maths. The quality of pre-university maths teaching is just unconscionably bad. (Then it gets bad again as you reach graduate-level maths, but this is because you're expected to be able to deal with that at that point.)

IMHO, there are two problems:

1. You are expected to work 8 hours, while your body/brain is just made for 4 hours of extensive mental work. Afterward, concentration and productivity plunge.

2. Office cultures are rarely made for Deep Work. Instead, you are expected to participate in meetings, communication and presentations.

I think both problems are somewhat solvable, but in many companies, the office culture doesn't make it easy to fit in while solving those factors.

Related to that: On many people's mental maps, programming seems to be closeby other things like installing a driver, changing configuration and such. That it is an powerful tool for anything that you do with your mind completely escapes the bystanders.

What if the part I find most fun is looking at the text editor and not the social signaling games?

I find the programming part Ok. It's the meetings and constantly being interrupted by managers that sends me batty.

But it is a fun job

I have been saying for a while now that "programming" is basically a blue collar job. The vast majority of programming jobs these days are just brainless CRUD duct-tape programming positions that have no need for thought or creativity. Corporations literally just need a monkey that can sit in a chair and churn out code for hours on end.

You should consider switching or quitting. It should not feel like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com