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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

>Its higher than people with real stress like physicians, policemen and firefighters.

The thing is with most non-office professions like that, especially those involving physical instead of cognitive work, it's much easier to disconnect and relax mentally after work than with software engineering where even once you're done for the day you can end up mentally ruminating about critical bugs or issues throughout the evening, especially if you have a lot of responsibility and you know people/business is counting on you.

SW dev work can be very stressful.

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> it's much easier to disconnect and relax mentally after work than with software engineering

Each profession brings its own challenges but I'm skeptical tech workers experience more stress than lawyers or accountants. And when we talk about physicians, nurses or policemen there's no way in mind we experience more stress than those guys. You're thinking about a critical bug which I respect. Those guys sometimes ruminate about matters of life and death. Their jobs are extremely difficult and burn out causing. A "critical bug" for them could be that they misdiagnosed someone and severely compromised their health...I don't really envy their jobs.

>> Its higher than people with real stress like physicians, policemen and firefighters.

> The thing is with most non-office professions like that, especially those involving physical instead of cognitive work, it's much easier to disconnect and relax mentally after work

I wouldn't say being a physician, police or firefighter is non-cognitive work. What you say might apply to some other professions, though. But the mentioned professions definitely see stuff that will haunt you and stay with you, and won't let you disconnect.

I'm not so sure you can easily de-stress as a policeman. When you're involved in a high-stress or even high-risk situations on a daily basis (say, people shouting at you or cursing at you in a threatening manner), this is absolutely something that stays within your body for the remainder of the day or more. There's a reason so many cops drink in the evenings to be able to "unwind".

Would police officers ruminate about mistakes they may have made during a shift? My suspicion is 'generally not', and if that's true, maybe they should?

But police - and most physicians, etc - don't have a WFH option. More and more tech folks working from home don't have an automatic 'mode switch' when you leave and come back. I know it's been talked about to death, but some separation between 'non-work life' and 'work life' is easier when there's a physical separation.

> Would police officers ruminate about mistakes they may have made during a shift?

Hmm why wouldn't they, they seem to be made of the same DNA as you and me. They want to make good impression on their boss, colleagues etc (the politics and who gets ahead bullshit seems to be very high in their field) and are also exposed to very high stress situations - solving murder cases or patrolling the streets doesn't sound too chill to me. Most cop shows depict them as a bunch of alcoholics with failed marriages ... I don't know how accurate that is but it wouldn't surprise me.

There may be a bigger pressure to 'switch off'? dunno - I'm not a police officer. But there is a different work environment, and being 'at home'... you can replay issues in your head, but to what end? You can't go back and make any changes, compared to dev/code work, where you can be thinking about something and ... just go make a change (iow, 'keep working').

My neighbor was a firefighter for 20 years, and from his telling, that's what triggered his alcoholism. Drink a few to relax, later drinking to forget what you've had to witness - death/destruction/tragedy on a regular basis. I would not be at all surprised if alcoholism (or similar substance abuse) was not higher in professions like police than the regular population.

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