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As a burned out founder with ADHD, I took a break from tech and did a year as a personal trainer at a big box gym. It was such a great difference from tech work: physical movement, human interaction, paper-based, etc. The high levels of accountability (in addition to physical movement) were extremely satisfying.

I dream of a future of tech work that is more similar to the gym, rather than sitting at a desk. Some kind of augmented reality work space where you intentionally add physical friction (reaching, pulling, pushing), physical objects, human interactions, etc and lots of standing. I imagine the mental rewards of this approach would be really interesting, and you might finish the work day feeling physically energized.

This. So much this. Over quarantine I found myself spending increasing amount of time cooking after coding time. Just because the difference of doing something productive with your hands is so sorely missed.

If something bridged those two, like Minority report but with even more movement, it would be gold.

Someone ITT mentioned warehouse jobs and workout endorphins coloring our view, but I think its more missing just moving things around with your hands.

This is a great comment, I've found myself wishing for a work environment that provides us with these human elements. We are animals that are designed to move!

Walking meetings, some type of AR technology so we can perform email responses/research while moving, and physical interaction with digital systems is the future I want.

Check out this post that Stephen Wolfram did re: walking meetings and working.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...

I'm in tech and work from home. I own the home. I get heaps of physical exercise gardening and maintaining the house. Cutting back plants that are too big, putting new planets in. Mowing the lawn. Painting here and there. I have a leak in one of the bedroom ceilings. I built a deck out the back - that was a big job. You know there is also just normal chores around the house that keep me moving. Doing the laundry. Cleaning.

Anyhow, I say embrace your chores. Don't pay somebody to do them for you.

Putting new planets in does sound like heaps of physical exercise!

I agree, as a child I was mostly indoors and non-practical. Typical techie nerd reading a lot of books. Having a home now, I've started learning to fix so many things. Today I just replaced 2 shower taps (washers and valves) for a leaky shower. Was a little short on time and had some issues unscrewing the spindle so reached out to a plumber and was quoted $350 so screw that, I finished it myself. Anyone can do this with the help of a YouTube video. For all its faults, YouTube is an absolute treasure for DIY.

Cooking is another one I really leaned into during COVID. I think it's important to scratch a creative itch in these activities since many of my hobbies are consumption-oriented e.g. video games.

Doing non-tech/physical things is a lifesaver: https://technicallychallenged.substack.com/p/do-non-tech-thi...

Sounds like you do gardening and home improvements during work hours?

I have flexible hours so can take breaks. As long as I do 8 hours, nobody cares when they are.

This is such a fascinating story, I was literally thinking about this a few months ago when Equinox randomly contacted me. Also identify as an (ex)founder with ADHD. Would love to hear from you and hear about this journey if you're interested in connecting. jason @ jasonshen

The best work experience I ever had was working in a warehouse where I just unpacked and repacked lumber all day. It was a lot of nonstop lifting. I felt happy when I went home because I felt like I worked hard and got stuff done and it was really good exercise too. I did that work because I didn't know what I REALLY wanted to do after quitting my job (disillusionment and naive startup dreams without knowing what it took to succeed) and I wanted to experience hard work that wasn't in an office (i.e. work in the trenches).

Someone I knew told me I could work in his warehouse. It's too bad that it was so low pay. If the pay wasn't the issue, I wonder if staying at that kind of job would actually be really good for me. I would be physically healthy, my mind would be clear and refreshed all the time, and I would feel good about having worked hard every day. Would the positive effect still last if I did that work for years, or was the positive effect only temporary because it was a novel experience to me at the time (and I didn't care about the low pay at the time)? Interesting to consider.

I did a bunch of warehouse jobs when I was at uni. Some of the most depressing and soul crushing jobs I've ever had. The worst ever one I had was pulling a massive roll of sandpaper to a line and then another guy pressed a button to cut it. Then we lifted the cut sandpaper on to a pile. Repeat for 8 hours.

I didn't stay in that one past one day, far too boring.

Let's not romanticise these jobs. I think you're confusing the endorphins from exercise, which most warehouse jobs don't need, with the job.

Most warehouse jobs completely suck.

I think you can both have true experiences when it comes to this. Some people enjoy the monotony of repetitive tasks, whereas others want to gargle glass after 10 minutes of it. I certainly know I don't want to work a job that physically exhausts me every day, but some people do enjoy that. I don't think it's romanticizing to say that good-paying warehouse work with proper benefits would be a boon to a LOT of people.

The thing with hard working jobs is that you need to consider pension. Probably you wont bei able to do heavy lifting stuff fulltime in your sixties. What then?

I think their point is about rich people who don't need a job or money, but now treat hard labor jobs as gym work.

These sort of people can always go back to what they were doing after they got fit from the gym work, and of course they can always do another gym work sort of job at will.

This is far different than somebody working these jobs to put food on the table.

I'm a software developer, but I did these kind of jobs when I moved to New Zealand under the Working Holiday Scheme. The minimum wage what I got for these jobs was more than what I earned as a software developer back in Hungary. It wasn't just free gym as we needed the money to support ourself, but it was still relaxing to not care about the big picture and only do what I was told to do without any responsibility.

I had a similar experience in my teenage years working in Dell factories (back when they still ran them out of Austin/Round Rock). One of the jobs they had me do for a week was to simply unload trucks that came in and put the computers/monitors/whatever onto a conveyor than sent them on their way. It was surprisingly satisfying, not to mention some of the guys I worked with were absolute riots. Kinda miss those days...

Interesting. Were you paid by production or you have a fixed salary?

Interesting. And did you have a fixed salary? The dopamine released by the physical work was your main motivation?

It was pay by the hour. No, the main motivation was being able to feel like I reliably accomplished something each day and hung out with a nice group of guys throughout the process. Hard work, visceral daily achievement, and camaraderie. The physical work was a part of it, but I wouldn't say it was the core thing.

Thanks for replying me. Did you have autonomy (like did you feel you could execute your job in the way you think it was right)? Did you have a mission (the feeling that your job was part of something bigger) ?

Nope and nope. Just clear instructions, clear tasks, and clear outcomes. Monotonous work and no sense of vision at all. No sense of responsibility either.

I can't speak for Amazon but I had an order picking job at a Volvo warehouse in college, and despite having to hit a certain number of picked items every day it was oddly relaxing.

Once you got good at it you could zoom through your day on auto pilot. Drive to aisle X, pick up N boxes at rack Y, rinse and repeat.

I think what the person is asking for specifically is some kind of responsibility to an external force that will force them to keep a schedule.

The thing in my life that most rigidly enforces a schedule on me is definitely not my job. It's my dog. No weekends off there, and I haven't slept past 6:30am in years.

I have found myself day-dreaming about a manual labor job for many of the same reasons. I am supremely jealous of my friends who work these types of jobs and can "leave it at the door" when they come home. I can't do that as well, even when I try to enforce boundaries. Slack, emails, my home office, etc... make it impossible to shut it all out. I'm considering tearing down my home office and working solely from a coffee shop because of it.

This is one of the biggest benefits to working from the office, at least for me. The mental shift between home and work is so much easier when they are very distinct physical places.

I genuinely miss working in an office because of this, and am looking to return to one soon, but right now it seems that just about every company has a hiring freeze in place for the foreseeable future.

A hybrid 3-4 in office / 1-2 out of office per week seems to be prime for my personal and social values at work.

Why are you on your work PC/phone after work? Or is it all the same? I notice a lot of people do not have personal computers anymore... like back in the 90s.

For home office I shut off the work PC and turn on the gaming PC where I am not logged in on work accounts. Work phone on disturb mode.

Or go take a walk.

Its not "impossible to shut it all out"

This reminds me of a fairly insightful meme: Tired of looking at Bad screen, can't wait to get home to look at Good screen

Back when I worked my last job. I’d find that when work was scarce (pretty common mostly thanks to an impenetrable bureaucracy) My brain would wake up and I would suddenly feel motivated to think about and work on new projects, then I’d get home and for some reason not have the energy and just pass out instead.

Perhaps a contributing factor is that when stuck at work you have a limited range of options that don't include passing out whereas at home you have fewer restraints and more competition from the easy solutions

That’s probably exactly it.

> Its not "impossible to shut it all out"

I think this highly depends on the person. For me, it wasn't just about enforcing separation of equipment.

For a time, I was using the same desk for work during the day and then switching inputs on my screen to use my personal gaming PC in the evenings. I still shut off notifications, never had notifications on my phone, etc.

This wasn't enough.

So I set up a small desk in another part of the apartment and made that the work desk. It was better than using the same desk.

This wasn't enough.

I've realized that a lot of my emotional states and memory recall are very anchored to where I am physically. Just being in the same physical space after a stressful workday was the problem. Glancing at the plant in the corner that I was staring at while contemplating a challenging problem earlier in the day immediately made me start thinking about work again.

> Or go take a walk.

Walking is one of the best ways I've coped. But I also live in a four seasons climate, and this isn't always possible.

As much as I dislike the idea of going back to a physical office space, I think this is one of the hidden costs of WFH.

It's not insurmountable, but neither is it easy.

>For a time, I was using the same desk for work during the day and then switching inputs on my screen to use my personal gaming PC in the evenings. I still shut off notifications, never had notifications on my phone, etc.

I mean yea I have this too but I don't actively look at notifications. I'm constantly "on" and nervous but Ive just been that most of my life.

And now I'm in office. I do not know if its gonna get better.

For me, work from home didn't really change the hardest things about shutting down. It has never been (again, for me) the equipment or the emails or the messages, but that the mind doesn't stop chewing on things. I can put away the computers and go for a walk and still have my mind working over whatever problems I was trying to solve. I think it's an example of the mind working against itself, because I enjoy solving problems but I also enjoy putting work aside after hours.

> But I also live in a four seasons climate, and this isn't always possible.

Kind of curious what season it’s impossible to walk in, and how it’s related to 4 seasons?

I’ve lived in 4 season climates my whole live, and the only time I can think of it would be inadvisable to take a walk (though not impossible) is in the middle of a thunderstorm/typhoon.

I don't think it's about "advisability" per se, but desirability. I probably shouldn't have used the word "possible". I guess possible relative to my ability to deal with it.

Sure, you can walk in a snowstorm, when it's -15F, when it's downpouring, when it's 100F, but these are hardly a refuge from the inside environment in many cases.

Don't get me wrong. I've spent plenty of time doing exactly this, but my underlying point is that it's not a consistent or low friction option.

I have heard of someone who got dressed up, walked around the block, then arrived at work (at home). And the same in the evening.

Commutes can be terrible but they do serve an important role in decompressing and separating spaces in our brains through a repeated ritual.

This is disturbing on a deep level. A person taking on such a job for self-discovery as if it were tourism. Most workers in that warehouse need those jobs, including those 60 year olds the ex-CEO felt sorry for. It reads like a parody of tech culture.

You know there’s probably an opportunity to offer this as an “experience” to SV types, a la dude ranches.

Please don't suggest this, it might end up happening!

I’m disgusted to say you could probably make A LOT of money with this idea.

Should I feel bad for Amazon?

I don't understand what you are referring to.

>It reads like a parody of tech culture.

I don't know, I feel like this is just a retread of "Office Space" and office employees yearning to do construction work.

The important distinction is the much larger financial and professional freedom of the person in question than the Office Space characters

It reminds me more of Kevin Spacey's character from American Beauty. After quitting his job in advertising, he takes an (explicitly) non-managerial job in fast food: "I'm looking for the least possible amount of responsibility"

It isn't disturbing on a deep level, there is just inequality on many levels. Most people who get an unequal share of the wealth are probably also taking on way more stress than the average person undergoes.

An ideal world would be one where someone was able to do focused creative work for a few months and then mindless manual labor for a few months and trade back and forth as desired. That will never happen but I would love it.

I agree with this a lot. It's the shakeup, I think. I've wondered in the past about companies pulling their skilled knowledge workers out of their usual roles and saying, "you're working in HR now" or "you're working in the warehouse now (if you want)". Let them do that from 3 weeks up to 3 months, and then go back to regular work. Or maybe inverted 20% time: Monday–Thursday in the warehouse, and Friday at your desk inside your IDE. I'd be really surprised if all the "obvious" reasons why this experiment wouldn't work actually showed up in the data at the end. My expectation is positive gains in productivity.

The lack of self-awareness is the disturbing part, or that the person interviewed failed to understand the actual lesson about the nature of working a shit job for your whole life like those presumed 60 year olds.

That’s not unique to this person. I imagine this is within the means of any white collar professional making 500k/year.

If anything it’s amazing that he stuck it out for 1.5 months without a financial incentive to do so.

On a deep level? I once worked at UPS loading trucks for a winter season just because I was in between jobs. It was just about the hardest I ever worked and was an interesting experience. Are you implying that I should be forced to work tech jobs for the rest of my life just because I qualify for them? Should I view my specialized skills as chains?

It's a free country (the U.S. is at least) and by working in one job you are always implicity creating an opening in whatever other jobs you have opted not to take. I do understand your argument, and theoretically you are right: he perhaps took a job from someone who needed it more. But I can make the same argument about the service economy: if I mow my own lawn, am I taking money away from landscapers? If I cook at home, if I learn to fix my own bike, etc. etc. That kind of think is deeply disturbing to me. We each have to live our own lives at the end of the day.

I didn't mean it at all in the sense that he's stealing those jobs, but that he is seeing it as personal development where most people in this situation have little choice but to bear this sort of profession over the course of their lives. He gleefully recounts how he now saw takeout food in terms of the manual labor he had to do, but sees it as a fun life lesson as opposed to the crushing realization that your life-force is seeping away with every bill. The poverty tourism is what I find sick. He can, and did quit the experience as soon as he was tired with it.

I think intention matters here and his was not to demean or "sight-see" the life of poor people. _You_ are choosing to view this from the most unfavorable angle.

I've worked tech jobs, bio lab jobs, warehouse jobs, call centre jobs, and been unemployable for long stretches while depressed.

Working manual labour jobs is deeply humbling and in my opinion actually builds solidarity with the working class in ways you simply can't by intellectualizing from afar. If more people in privileged positions did this, I believe the world might be better.

Your judgement doesn't feel helpful.

Maybe you are right with the idea that more people should at least try these jobs. I agree it would be helpful. However what frustrates me is that they seem to draw all the wrong conclusions about this sort of work, and see it as character building which draws back to the directly unhelpful ideology of characterizing harsh labor for low pay as morally constructive. It is constructive in the sense that it gets you used to hardship, but it is still your life seeping away for little gain, which is the raw fundamental fact from which working class solidarity germinates the strongest.

Some time ago, John Stewart made the observation to Bezos that people would not want to just spend their working lives doing errands for the wealthy and would rebel. I suppose it's mindset like that of Bezos or the person in the post that made me react with disgust. I am failing to propose a solution, but the problem seems to be in part a lack of awareness from the well-to-do of this world that has dangerous consequences for the rest. After reading the post, I can't even think of something to suggest to the interviewee because the mental and class distance to be bridged seems so vast.

I totally want the employment system from Ursula Le Guin's The Disposessed. People cycle through jobs and everyone gets a feel for everything. Of course, it's not perfect...

Now imagine a writer did the same thing.

"I took a warehouse job at Amazon". Then 1 year later they wrote a fascinating tale of the subcultures that develop within an Amazon warehouses, the stories and aspirations of people who arrived at that job, and how this quiet army of faceless people enable a service that even kings 100 years ago would have killed for.

Would that not be equally as bad since at the end of the day they took a job from someone that needed it?

I'm not talking about the availability of the job, but the difference between poverty tourism and having to do those jobs for 40 years as opposed to 6 weeks.

When I was an intern I did a lot of boring work in data centers now and then. Unloading servers from boxes, labeling everything, making connections, installing stuff on racks, etc...

It was almost therapeutic.

I remember Philip! Wow. That's some story. Thanks for sharing it.