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Comment by ronnier | Hacker News Reader

Yup, 7 days a week with my grandfather. I'm 44 now, he's 96 and still going strong but without the farm since he got too old to run it and simply retired.

But yeah, 7 days a week I'd tend to the turkeys, cattle, dig potatoes, pick tomatoes (we grew a lot of vegetables) , cut hay, rake hay, fluff hay, etc. Being 7 years old on a tractor cutting hay all day was extremely fun. We'd also make the square bales of hay and being 7 or 8, I wasn't strong enough to lift them, so I'd drive the truck with a trailer and my grandfather would be behind loading the square bales. We'd do this for hours in the heat (I had the easy part), he had pure raw strength. We had almost 200 acres of land.

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Thanks, sounds different and would certainly instill a certain work ethic.

I'm similar age and have been in paid employment since the age of 13, a lot of different things through farming, manufacturing, retail and catering before I started in tech.

I was always grateful for the work ethic but also important was the experience of being the most lowly employee being made to do the grunt work. I think that gave me the confidence to get on with the job without complaint or too much assistance, I feel that especially helped me progress early on in my tech career.

Still, I'm not sure how I'd feel about my own kids working so young. And in all honesty, don't really think those opportunities would be there for them now anyway.

> And in all honesty, don't really think those opportunities would be there for them now anyway.

Modern governments actively endure that working before 18 is like chilf exploitation or something which is ridiculous as you learn much more by doing than by watching videos or reading books

I'm quite astonished to see people promoting intense child labour. No government in the world completely prohibits light child labour (in the household/farm, and from usually around 14 also light work outside as long as it doesn't affect school hours). Anything beyond this can and will affect them negatively as established by pretty much all research out there. You seem to have luckily made it through that, but many kids never recover from intense childhood labour.

> All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, > All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.

That's not quite true. The EU, US, UK, Japan all have legal minimum ages for employment ranging from 13-15.

I don't think the laws have changed that much from when I was young.

There's more focus on remaining in education sure (which is generally a good idea but often poorly implemented) but I think there's wider societal explanations as to why you see far fewer kids working outside school hours than you once did.

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