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Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

I read the article, and... I get it. But something about this just seems weird to me. I grew up mostly on a family farm, worked every day of my life in some capacity since I was 9 or 10 years old, and did shit jobs to pay for college (which I eventually dropped out of right before graduation). I don't think my route into tech is that different from many of the other folks I've worked with... this guy lived a /very/ charmed and privileged existence compared to the average American tech worker, and going to work at an Amazon warehouse to get a reality check seems... patronizing somehow. I am glad he got a reality check, but I feel like there's another way to do this, or at least how to write about it.

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I think part of that feeling is coming from how we've been socialized in the middle/upper classes to perceive people with lower incomes working more physical jobs than us.

It's no longer acceptable to be snooty towards people in these positions, but we haven't dropped the stigma totally, and now the acceptable way to view + interact with them is to act (in the performative sense, because many of us don't actually know) with deference, assuming that their lives are truly miserable and their dignity is on the line every day they work such jobs. The expectation is that we must feel sorry for them and treat them better than other people because of it, or treat them with kid gloves.

When you adopt such a stance, the idea of someone willingly going and doing one of these terrible no good jobs does seem patronizing -- it's masochistic even, and so is viewed as suspect and "touristy". When someone does such a thing they are "disrespecting themselves" by people with this view. If anyone ever tries to provide and alternative view and tell us that most people's lives in these positions aren't so bad by going and experiencing it themselves, however partially, we heap scorn on them. "They don't know what it's really like, it's horrible what these people have to do." "They have millions of dollars in the bank so their experience can be dismissed." Etc.

I just don't think you can provide an accurate view by working a job like this for six weeks and leaving right as it starts getting bad. I also think it is fair to dismiss anyone with millions in the bank who reports about their stints in a warehouse as an alternative take.

I'm not offended by the piece because I don't actually think the author is trying to give a critical take about manual labour. It didn't sound like he thought critically about the experience at all besides feeling good about himself. Instead this piece reads more like somebody recommending a trip to Bali.

Of all the comments in this thread, I think this one most accurately captures the mentality of those disparaging the author. It certainly aligns with how I reflexively reacted, before taking time to consider more deeply.

> this guy lived a /very/ charmed and privileged existence

His experience in tech doesn't sound so charmed to me. He was obsessed with climbing the corporate ladder. He slept in the office and woke up early every morning to start grinding again. He worked so much he didn't even have time to play a game with his son.

He tried another kind of work to see how it compared, and he learned stuff. There's nothing patronizing about that.

A) that’s how Microsoft functions I had a director comment on how productive I was when I worked 60-70 hour weeks, how unproductive I was when I worked 40 hours. Coworkers would regularly work 6am-6pm plus respond to messages overnight.

B) in my early years I too worked my butt off in a very similar manner thinking this was The Way(tm) until I realized I was burning myself out (though if I was making Microsoft money back then I’m sure I would have accepted it) so maybe this is a rite of passage. Or maybe I’m still harboring completely unacceptable norms

Life is fundamentally unpleasant and once you have your basic daily needs met you have time to develop mental issues. In the west basically everyone including the homeless don't have to worry about being eaten, murdered, starving or dying from exposure. This leaves a lot of leeway for everyone to think how bad they have it while historically being in the top 1%.

It's rather hard to have empathy for someone who has it better than you. But I've found it helps to also remind yourself that the majority of people who ever lived will feel the same way about you.

I hear what you are trying to say but mental issues don't discriminate.

I'm saying the exact opposite.

> and going to work at an Amazon warehouse to get a reality check seems... patronizing somehow

The word you're looking for is : slumming

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/slum...

Why deny his experience, though? Not everything needs to be viewed through a lens of privilege. I hope the author gained an appreciation for those less fortunate or less ambitious. At least they have experienced the "other side," so to speak.

> Why deny his experience, though?

Because it was an option.

He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives.

Good on him for having an epiphany, but I'd wager that he'd have a different perspective if he had to do that job long past his soft-handed tendonitis episode in order to feed his family that he barely mentioned in his interview.

Imagine having built so small of a life for yourself and your family that in order to get a reality check, you have to check yourself in to rehab with the "common folk" in order to rescue yourself from your "depression".

It's lamentable, not commendable. It has all happened before, and it will happen again.

This is not a salvation story; it is a cautionary tale. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

>He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives.

He literally didn't though if you read the piece, he's very aware of the nature of a rich guy going to work a manual job

>"I am not going to bill an Amazon job as some sort of upper-middle-class panacea, something you go do just like you go enroll in survivalist camps or silent retreats. The job can be dehumanizing, physically wearing if not outright painful, and mind-numbingly boring if you can’t invent little games for yourself while lifting 300 boxes an hour for eleven hours straight. The job has been incredibly rewarding to me, far beyond what I had expected. It saved me from a downward spiral that I just could not get myself out of. But it’s no dream job. I want out of there as soon as Peak ends; I do not want to stay a minute longer."

I grew up blue collar, I'm not offended by this at all. Is he supposed to be categorically excluded from ordinary jobs just because he lucked out in life, like some reverse class segregation? This isn't Jack Dorsey meditating in Myanmar while there's riots on the streets or Zuckerberg touring Middle America, it's just some dude who felt depressed and changed his job up to get a different experience.

> He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives.

"mission trips" are not real poverty tourism though. Kids don't go live in real poverty on those trips. They live in hotels, eat prepared food, so on.

The author did move 300 boxes per hour for a whole month.

You misunderstand, these kids don't go to live in poverty, they go to watch poverty.

Same, for the full experience the author should've sold his house and lived on his salary.

To be fair, in the episode where he details the tendonitis, he spends a lot of time describing the ways that the AMZN warehouse bureaucracy is designed to abuse their workers (delay their claims, structure work alternatives to be impossible to accept, etc,) and reflects on how this affects those who rely on their warehouse jobs for, e.g., family health insurance.

Maybe it's less patronising, and more just blindingly obvious to those of us who have had crap jobs in the past?

Having grown up adjacent to upper-middle class people (I'm arguably entering that sphere now, but I definitely didn't start there), I think a bunch of them could benefit from hearing this story from one of their peers.

It almost feels like... tourism? to me?

Hard to explain, but I get what you mean.

Tourism is good though.

Instead of moving geographically, the author moved social-economically to experience something different.

I think it's great, we crave authentic experiences on the road, this should also be something more common. If more people (on the top) do this, we'll have a lot less of those out of touch just eat cake stories.

It has some extra sense to tourism it's like taking photo smiled with poor villager to pretend you are kind. "Human zoo tourism" is close to what this sense means.

I don't know? Does it? Why do you write like this?

Also, tourism is good? Getting new perspectives is good? Do you not do it? Is there anything wrong when you do it?

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