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Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

The proportion of people who work corporate jobs vs the assembly line has surely changed though. The latter work their hours, go home and forget about work until next morning.

The percentage of single-earner households was also higher back then. Having a wife who handled the domestic front lessened the load on the people working demanding corporate jobs. Nowadays it's common for both of the couple to have that type of job.

And like, with all due respect, there were also a lot of mentally undemanding desk jobs back then. People got hired into them with just high school degrees. There are no "paper-pushers" anymore because there is no paper.

Subsistence farmers have never been prolific producers of art or literature. That kind of proves my point.

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> Subsistence farmers have never been prolific producers of art or literature.

Almost every human group I've ever encountered has been prolific in the production of art. I think you may be confusing a certain conception of culture with culture itself, in a way that ensures certain social classes will seem more artistic than others, which I believe to be false.

> And like, with all due respect, there were also a lot of mentally undemanding desk jobs back then. People got hired into them with just high school degrees.

A lot of those jobs remain unchanged, with a college degree now required as essentially an empty gatekeeping step.

> Subsistence farmers have never been prolific producers of art or literature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_music

"A lot of those jobs remain unchanged, with a college degree now required as essentially an empty gatekeeping step."

This is simply untrue. Huge numbers of data entry and switchboard style jobs have disappeared due to automation. Just grab "9 to 5" and see how much paperwork went into jobs before computers.

> And like, with all due respect, there were also a lot of mentally undemanding desk jobs back then. People got hired into them with just high school degrees.

TBF back into the 1970s most of the F500 company CEOs had only high school degrees.

> The latter work their hours, go home and forget about work until next morning.

I mean, you should also do this when you work a corporate job. I work as a team lead in my org, and outside office hours unless something is actively on fire, I am not responding to anything. If I see a Slack notification, I'll check it, and if it's something that absolutely 100% needs me and I'm able and not already committed, sure, I'll jump on. But anything short of that, nope. 9AM Monday I'm on it.

> And like, with all due respect, there were also a lot of mentally undemanding desk jobs back then. People got hired into them with just high school degrees. There are no "paper-pushers" anymore because there is no paper.

Also this is categorically not true. In tons of bigger, older corporations, there are more paper pushers than there have ever been. Academia too. Administrative jobs have been growing for decades now, absolutely ballooning in corporate America. Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber covers this in hilarious and tragic detail.

> If I see a Slack notification, I'll check it

That's already a mental tax that previous generations never had.

> In tons of bigger, older corporations, there are more paper pushers than there have ever been.

Consider the qualifications needed to land those jobs today. The amount of posturing, scrapping, backstabbing, and drama that goes into them. Bullshit jobs surely drain cognitive surplus.

It is, but it's a minor one. I read it in notifications, if it's not urgent, swipe. Takes 5 seconds.

How many of those do you get a day, as well as a proportion of daily notification number? I know that any kind of notification is a significant mental tax for me, especially if i feel compelled to check it in case it's a fire. It forces a context switch, demands you enter a completely different mode which to me is wholly incompatible with the majority of modes i enjoy taking in my free time.

Personally, I'll never willingly enter an on call channel ever again. Nearly every night there was some thing i had to read and understand while i was in the middle of deep thought or creativity. Sometimes when they start they'll ping endlessly for hours. It's as if this dead claw of work is reaching in and eating away at my brain.

> If I see a Slack notification, I'll check it

Why? Are you on-call?

Because I check all my notifications, work and otherwise. It would be more effort to remember to not check Slack in particular.

How does that actually happen, though? Have you signed into your work accounts on your personal machine? If so, why did that seem necessary?

It takes me no effort to ignore work Slack notifications, because I don't open my work laptop until it's time to work. This seems obvious to me, yet many people complain about being distracted by their notifications, so I wonder what they are doing differently, and why.

Personal phone. I have separate computers for work and personal stuff but it's too much of a fuckabout to have more than one phone and watch, so I don't. I regularly use my phone both to test our products and to communicate with coworkers. My phone is mine, my work computer belongs to my employer.

I know some people do the work phone thing and more power to them, but for me, I found it grating and irritating to have to have two handsets on me.

That being said, while my email and Slack access are shared to my personal phone, again, unless something is actively on fire, I don't answer, and, in those rare instances, it's always appreciated by my leadership is a favor I'm doing them, not an expected/demanded part of my job. I don't think that's an unreasonable way to do things.

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