Comment by banana_maker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by banana_maker | Hacker News Reader

Occasionally that thought pops up. Then I remember I’m making insane amounts of money, from the comfort of my desk in my house. At 25 I’m making more than my parents ever did, with a fraction of the physical effort.

If I really hated it, I could save up for some time and do something else, because again… I’m pulling insane amounts of money for software work.

Trades like plumbing, electrical work etc are -hard- work. I recognize that I have the privilege of not sacrificing my body and health for my income. My biggest concerns are making sure my posture is correct and that I take enough walks. Such a hard life.

I’ve noticed that some programmers tend to romanticize things like farming or plumbing, and generally speaking not understand the hard physical work those people have to go through. It can be quite patronizing.

Edit: sitting a desk is not “sacrificing your body”. Comparing that to the labor that people in trades do is completely detached from reality. Obviously there are things like standing desks and working out. But in life you have to sit or stand regardless.

> I recognize that I have the privilege of not sacrificing my body and health for my income.

Sitting for longer periods in any amount is incredibly bad for one's health long term, every study on the subject has confirmed this.

You are sacrificing your health, just in a different way.

Eh didn’t it turn out that most of that was drummed out in the 2012 era by a few doctors selling books and partnering with exercise and standing desk companies? I feel like most of the more recent stuff I have read has said, yes get your exercise in but sitting itself isn’t actually bad, certainly not the whole ‘1 hour of sitting reduces your life by 1 day’ sort of stuff we heard a decade+ ago.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/21/health/sitting-study-partner/...

My confusion is that "sitting" is confounded with "never exercising". If you exercise 5m/hr for 16hrs (and sleep 8), you have accumulated a huge amount of sitting time, but also a really big amount of exercise time. Nobody does that, but what if we did?

I read somewhere that somebody did some study with god knows what methodology (people like to use current-world HG communities, not representative of ancestry) and decided that our ancestors walked about 12mi/day. That's about 3-4h of walking daily. We have like 280k years of that selection criteria. But also we came from apes, so we're sorta shitty at this upright stuff.

An aside: I also just loathe ergonomic design, I'm never comfortable in anything other than a recliner or laying on a couch or bed. I'm wholly convinced that chairs are the way they are because "they've always been that way" with tables and desks following suit. It's unfortunate that better designs haven't caught on, aren't readily available, and tend to be inordinately expensive. What I'd really like to see is a practical true to form holistic ergonomic design instead of this weird traditionally inspired clusterfuck with its productivity centric model.

> It's unfortunate that better designs haven't caught on, aren't readily available, and tend to be inordinately expensive.

Do you have any links to examples of these different designs? After using a bunch of different chairs, I'm seriously considering just repurposing my piano stool, even though I'll lose all the back support.

I just can't find anything sustainably comfortable and supportive.

HAG has the Capisco, which I've eyed. There are also kneeling chairs, they tilt the pelvis forward, they can be had cheaply, but I'd hate to buy one just to throw it out. Of course there are the ball based chairs and such.

I sit seiza-style on my chair currently to enforce good posture by tilting the pelvis, but it's taxing after a while, and it took me a long time to adjust to seiza, I use a standing desk in complement.

https://store.flokk.com/us/en-gb/products/hag-capisco?model=...

"The trades" each come with occupational hazards of their own. These occupational hazards are sometimes much worse than sitting down. Besides, op clearly stated the intent to walk more.

For example, would you accept a 1.4x (+40%) chance of brain cancer? Vs sedentary peoples who have 2x chance of diabetes and +14% cardiovascular disease? (and sedentary means sitting + not exercising after work!).

I'd argue diabetes is easier to avoid through other life changes. I"m confused about whether "sitting" means "never exercising", and articles that talk about "sedentary" lifestyles are not very helpful.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1035250/

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M14-1651

Comparing construction or plumbing work to sitting is absolutely ludicrous.

I also use a standing desk anyways, but I am not sacrificing my health like my grandfather or father did who had/have back/knee and other health issues in their 50s from physical labor.

Being able to earn a nice living while sitting at a desk is an enormous privilege, and I also get money and healthcare to routinely visit doctors anyway.

No kidding. I did concrete for a single summer. Software engineering barely counts as work compared to that.

I set a timer that goes off every 45 minutes. At which point I'll walk around for a couple of minutes and do some push ups and pull ups.

In the mornings I walk my daughter to school: 25 minutes exercise.

At lunch time I'll take a 30 minute walk.

There's no reason to be unfit as a software developer.

> I recognize that I have the privilege of not sacrificing my body and health for my income

Oh, sitting in a chair in front a screen for hours on end does wonders for the body. It's still early, you'll appreciate it in ~10 years.

But you don't have to to ruin your body. You can get a standing desk and a gym membership (remember, you have money) and stay perfectly healthy. Crawling in tight spaces, on the other hand, will ruin your body and is not necessarily avoidable.

You and the other commenter have got to be joking.

My point was that office-work is far away preferable to daily physical labor. I’ll take sitting over throwing out my back, blowing out my knees and having constant pain. Not to mention the hazards of working with chemicals or industrial equipment or electricity, and so on.

Of course there are options that I use like exercising and standing desks. My point was that this is a significantly better situation health-wise than working in trades. And that I have the privilege of doing that.

> My point was that office-work is far away preferable to daily physical labor.

It's not. I've never been fitter than when I was doing physical work. The problem was the pay and the powerlessness at the workplace (e.g. awful hours with no notice, management compromises on safety, the expectation that you'll keep silent when management cuts corners or cheats the clients/customers, etc.)

The reason I stopped doing physical work is because physical workers are disrespected by the world, and your bosses would rather shut down and leave the industry than to pay you a dollar more. After I decided I would never work with my hands again, jobs paid a lot more. The less you actually do, the more holy you get. One day I'll just sit in the lotus position, floating two inches above my prayer mat, giving cryptic pronouncements about what other people should be doing. By then, I'll have billions.

It is better. All humans have to sit or stand regardless. I exercise at my discretion instead of having to do difficult labor in order to get paid.

You're describing social/interpersonal problems which happen regardless of the type of industry or work. That has nothing to do with the objective fact that working in an office is better than having physical labor take a toll on your body in the long term. I never stated that doing nothing but sitting is healthy.

Sitting in a seat day after day is sacrificing your body and health for work. You may not notice this now but you will in 10 years time.

https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/sitting-time-linked-to-hi...

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