This makes no sense as staying cognitively active has been shown to delay dementia: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-physical-or-cognitiv...
Key excerpt:
> These studies are important because they show that, despite an equivalent amount of Alzheimer's pathology (measured at autopsy in the first study and by blood in the second), individuals who were more cognitively and physically active were able to delay their clinical Alzheimer's disease diagnosis and cognitive decline. This means that even if you are likely by family history — or bad luck — to develop Alzheimer's disease at some point in your life, you can delay the onset of the disease by staying cognitively and physically active, and you can start at any age.
As for physical activity, that's a lifestyle choice and has nothing to do with working in tech. At least for me, working in tech is keeping me cognitively active. It's hard for me to even imagine a scenario where that wouldn't be true in tech.
That's not entirely true. A lot of jobs have some degree of physical activity, be it walking around or lifting things. In tech, employers would be happy to strap me to a chair physically if they could, instead they keep me so busy I might as well be strapped to a chair.
There's the other extreme with roles that require regular heavy lifting and bending over that leads to long term health problems like back issues, say home electricians crawling around or construction workers.
There's a lot of in-between with jobs that have a healthy amount of lifting and moving around. Tech isn't one of those. That means you have to make up for it by exercising on your own time, not during time you're getting paid. Things like extra cardio you might not need otherwise.
The benefit is that since you're so sedentary, you get almost full control over the choice and amount of exercise you want. The one downside is its all on your own time. For me I don't mind it, other than the cardio I have to do I wish I didn't.
Why?
> working in tech limits your understanding of things around you, essentially making you captive in a job with no life
What?
I'm not saying we can't make things better - we can and should - but the only thing "atrocious" about working in tech is listening to coddled techbros whose first job was an $80k/yr internship talk about how hard it is to be in tech.
I started well before internships and other worker type of practices creeped into the tech world. Modern tech work is the old day factory work.
> > by the time you retire you will be dementia ridden
> Why?
Retirement age is usually set as the age where most people stop being useful to society as active workers. You'll see the argument in abundance in debates on raising the retirement age.
You personally might avoid dementia, and you might actually enjoy your retirement time a lot if you had a fortunate life, but by definition most people won't be in the same boat.
Now, our jobs (IT engineers) is often cited to have higher rate of depression and mental disorders [0], and we sure have our fair share of toxic working culture at large scale [1] and smaller scale (startups).
A lot of advice is exchanged openly about desk setup, posture and avoiding carpal tunnel. Which is fine. But my best advice to newcomers would be to look hard for non shitty companies that won't let them burn out in 3 years.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9664232/
[1] https://www.dice.com/career-advice/depression-tech-pros-comm...
Get out while you can, indeed.