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Comment by Bakary | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

>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.

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"

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

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.

Should I feel bad for Amazon?

I don't understand what you are referring to.

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