Hacker News Reader

Comment by specialp | Hacker News Reader

There is another aspect too. It completely breaks your body. Electricians get carpal tunnel worse than information workers by constantly squeezing lineman pliers, knees get shot. Your career path is work like that and hopefully before you get older, start your own company and hire younger people to do the body breaking work. But not everyone in the field will end up doing that so many end up in bad shape

View on HN

And you have to go do it. I love working behind a computer. I sit in a chair. Waking up at 5am to go to a client site to do some physical labor 40+ hours a week for my entire life sounds like hell. Even if the money was incredible it would suck.

Perhaps it's a case of "the grass is always greener", but before I became a software engineer, I felt much healthier doing a physical job.

It may feel better at the time but repetitive motions in most physical jobs will eventually catch up with your body. In an office job you can exercise on your own terms and without long term chronic pain.

I don't know, when I used to work on farms, the old guys were a lot healthier than most of the people I see in tech nowadays. Although, most of that work isn't unhealthily repetitive, like jack-hammering or something, so perhaps not a great example. But, use-it-or-lose-it is a real thing.

>when I used to work on farms, the old guys were a lot healthier than most of the people I see in tech nowadays.

Right, I think you would need to check stats on how many people dropped out over the years due to health issues leaving behind these super healthy old guys to get an accurate picture.

I think that's a bad comparison. Farm work is a lot more varied than the repetitive tasks that most trades work involves. It's not like jobs requiring, for example, wearing a hazmat suit and/or respirator all day, or constantly being around extremely loud noises.

Nah you've got it right and there are a shitload of studies that prove it: the most effective way for a human being to wreck their health is sitting on their ass all day.

Maybe a balance can be achieved.

Someone can be a part time office worker, part time tradesman.

This part-time aspect was one of the appealing aspects of ride-sharing apps when they first appeared. People with cars could have 9-5 jobs and before and after the job, exactly during rush hour, give a lift to a few people. Of course, they turned into the new taxi but controled by multinational corps and almost impossible to hail without a smartphone.

We are speedruning Tolkien's law of decay.

In theory. But in practice, the tradesman hours would be so underpaid compared to SWE hours that I'd either want back into SWE full-time or to have those hours completely free of work as personal & family time. The opportunity costs here don't work out. Spending time away from my family for less money is not a good deal.

Health is the opportunity cost otherwise, but it's hard to price health. And I don't mean that it's priceless; the price is ambiguous - is my health worth less or more than what half my salary buys me?

For software engineers, this is a difficult question to answer. If I were working an entry-level job, my health would be more valuable to me. If I were at the peak of professional development (a figurehead at a massive company or someone whose work changes the world), my work would be more important. SWE work makes a lot of money, but somewhere in the range of where I value my health.

How much $ a year is your health worth to you? Not a rhetorical question, would be interesting to see some answers if anyone can come up with a figure.

You are correct and that is why what I suggested doesn't broadly happen. There is value in specialization. Yet we can't help but ponder whether there might be a better way and what it might involve.

I would be interested in reading such studies.

Please don't take that as "Citation needed!" but rather genuine interest.

I worked on a hay farm for a few years, and I constantly had injuries to my back muscles. Other employees had constant knee pain and neck pain. Nobody that worked there looked healthy. I was always tired and hated going to work. I feel way healthier working in tech.

I'd believe it. The Amish are very healthy.

https://time.com/5159857/amish-people-stay-healthy-in-old-ag...

Could one of the factors for the Amish be teamwork? Tradesmen are often competing with their peers and working very fast, sometimes too fast and at risk of injury. All of the documentaries I have seen watching the Amish work, they work as a team following the mantra slow and steady wins the race. They work hard, but as a group.

Are you sure they were "more healthy" rather then "good muscle and I don't know whether they had health issues"?

There have been studies about Amish. Granted they have some other lifestyle factors involved, but it seems like this is as close as you can get.

https://time.com/5159857/amish-people-stay-healthy-in-old-ag...

Survivorship bias.

IIRC it's not so much repetitive motions (RSI is a misnomer) but constant tension and constraining of blood vessels and nerves. Carpal tunnel syndrome for example is nerves being constrained from permanently swollen tendons.

Ideal career would be a split between office and physical work. 3 days coding, 2 days carpentry etc.

the 'chess boxing' of careers.

I lift weights, walk, or hit some golf balls at the golf range every day during the week, about ~1h / day. Over the weekend I'll play some golf, go for a walk or squeeze in an extra workout.

It might not compensate all the sitting and typing fully but it's pretty good - I don't miss doing a day of physical labor.

Or cycle commute 20 miles a day to work.

It’s cold and I work from home :/

Literal Utopia.

I felt healthier stacking boxes but I really felt better when I moved close enough to work to cycle every day.

I do bjj 4 days a week with two of those days being on my lunch break, the other three days I walk my dog during lunch, I do 6 sets of push ups, squats, or pull ups on work days, and I using a standing desk in the morning. Just bought a little floor tredmill that I can walk on during meetings as well.

I would probably be in better shape if I was moving all day everyday but I'm pretty sure my body would start to break down as well. I know not everyone has as much freedom but if you work from home it isnt that hard to squeeze in a pretty decent amount of exercise during the work day.

As a >20y software engineer who feels a lot of my age and several years of very physical burnout symptoms, I get a lot of relief from the more active parts of my life (mostly having fun with my pup, but I feel similarly about just physical chores and whatever manual labor comes along).

This is why I like automation (actual robots, not scripting and AutoHotKey stuff). You start out in the field doing sparky things (so you get some exercise, you get to travel, and you get first hand experience of a range of industrial stuff) and then if you do the job right, by the end you're sitting in an airconditioned office watching the machine run itself.

Sitting in a chair my entire life also sounds like hell and has its own risks (mostly cardiovascular related).

I wonder if maybe modern bodies aren’t built for manual labor?

I’d love to talk with any of the millions of voluntary and involuntary manual laborers from the past 200 years and learn about how they made it through their lifetimes working in fields and factories in stress positions under substandard conditions.

To be honest, I guess we could just interact with and ask present day laborers across the globe cranking out products for Western mass consumption.

It’s got to be about the same I’d guess 1822 to 2022, no?

Modern mass production (iirc 1900s and later) where each person basically hyperspecializes in one job on an assembly line tends to cause repetitive strain injuries as people are doing the same handful of movements quickly thousands of times a shift. A good factory will shift people around to different parts of the assembly line to try and delay injuries as those will cause more efficiency loss than the hit you get from moving someone from one position on the line to another (sometimes it's even just as small as just having them be on the other side of the conveyor doing the same job).

All the time at work I wonder if it's a novel modern expectation that aging not contain an accumulation of progressive injuries leading to everpresent chronic pain.

Human bodies aren't built for decades of high intensity repetitive manual labour. They're built for lounging around and running, and occasionally climbing trees and fighting things.

I do quite intense manual labor. The most striking thing to me is that you have to treat it like a training program, then when you do, everything the bean counters say and want turns into complete nonsense. Their thinking in 8 hour blocks is hilarious.

Lets imagine a hypothetical a job like unloading 50 kg bags from trucks and say you carry them up stairs to the 3rd floor. Or let them be 20 kg bags, 1 floor.

You can find a person who can do one 50 kg bag + 3 floors, lots of people can do multiple 20 kg bags. But how many can you expect an employee to do in a day? How fast is a reasonable demand? The answer is simple if you look at it from a training program perspective: If you can do 1 bag (of either kind) you keep doing it until you are tired or until it starts to hurt ever so slightly. You do this 3 days per week. You grow and grow until eventually you can hurl bags easily for hours. You could in theory keep training until you can comfortably do 50 kg bags, 3 floors, 8 hours long. It would take forever ofc. 20 kg, 1 floor is doable. You train until you can do a whole shift 3 days per week. Keep at it for a while then add a 4th day and eventually a 5th.

If you however push yourself a bit harder than you should, by not quitting when you had enough and/or going for 5 days to early you don't grow! You just destroy your body and if you destroy your health sufficiently you wont get used to the work in this life time. One slightly to long vacation might break you.

The moral of the story is that in some places you see these seemingly impossible mountains of men do absolutely insane amounts of absolutely insane work and it doesn't seem to bother them.

The bean counters understand non of this. They want 8 hours, preferably on a salary that doesn't afford a perfect diet and adds extra units of stress that should be subtracted from the training results or added to the injury list.

In many countries you cant even take employees blood pressure, measure heart rate or test their blood for nutrients. Some guys driving a desk decided that is a violation of peoples privacy.

Manual laborers 200 years ago spend a good amount of time outside and got a good amount of vitamin D.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15050-vitamin... > Vitamin D deficiency is a common global issue. About 1 billion people worldwide have vitamin D deficiency, while 50% of the population has vitamin D insufficiency. Approximately 35% of adults in the United States have vitamin D deficiency.

If you are looking to push the human body to the limit the year round getting out of the deficiency zone is not enough. About 100% gets insufficient D the year round.

I tell our bean counters that if they want to see more work done they have to give us a solarium with UVB lamps and pay people to use it.

There is nothing like seeing people hold 2 contradictory thoughts at the same time. They all know I'm 100% right and they know it 100% cant happen.

Unless ofc they subscribe to the official pseudoscience: https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/indoor-tannin...

Good level D is positively correlated with endurance performance, muscle strength and with a lower rate of injuries. Anything less and you become fragile or a jellyfish. If you see someone do hard work your limbs snap off.

I also suggest they serve the employees meat (protein) during work to avoid them eating something stupid like sandwiches during lunch then a pizza or mcdonalds after work.

It honest to god feels like talking to a different species.

Recently they tried to explain to me the concept of working harder because they cant find employees. I tried to explain them being unable to find employees means I'm going to do less work and go home early. We all have our tasks. I did a great job. They couldn't find employees? It seems so simple? Give me more money, I will do more work, others will come if the price is right?

It's a lovely job, I bust my ass, pay is crap but my thoughts are my own and the employer has to put up with my bullshit. I can just walk away, there is plenty of grunt work and I can jockey a desk too! I drive a really fast desk. It's lovely to see a plan come together or to slap a bunch of code together and see it do its thing. It's all the same really, you get to be impressed by your own abilities, accomplishment or if both fail by the compensation :)

Whenever tradesmen come to my house for a job, the ones who are my age, 59, are hobbling and broken. A couple other things come to mind: Places where trade work pays more, are probably also more expensive to live in. And the trades are at the mercy of the construction cycle.

I could imagine the trades being more attractive in countries with better labor laws and social safety net.

Nope, most western European countries have extensive labor laws & social safety net and still struggles to find tradesmen. More often than not, they have to rely on immigration (portugal, poland, turkey, african nations, etc.)

They even joke about having to learn portuguese if you want to work in construction due to the massive number of portuguese tradesmen across Europe

Proven fact is that carpal tunnel is a product repeat motion injuries. Changing equipment and regularly exercising against repeat motions prevents carpal tunnel.

Other fact fewer kids are getting born with muscle area which forma carpal tunnel. Evolution in progress.

Skilled trades are not limited to back breaking labor. Some and most of it is labors of love like farming. You have the right equipment it isn't back breaking.

> Other fact fewer kids are getting born with muscle area which forma carpal tunnel. Evolution in progress.

I'm pretty sure not enough people have died/failed to reproduce due to carpal tunnel syndrome for that to be true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com