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Comment by Zenzero | Hacker News Reader

As someone who crossed over from medicine, I can attest that software engineers have it very very good. Appreciate what you have.

I accept everyone's personal experiences with bad management, unreasonable timelines, and uninspiring projects, but those things are everywhere. Now add in patients and their families having the worst days of their lives in your presence day after day, high-pressure decision making, not getting even the chance to sit or go to the bathroom for nearly a whole shift. To top it off, if you have an "off day", that can earn you a lengthy investigation +/- a court case.

While it may sound insensitive, software engineering is nowhere near as complex or stressful as many (but not all) medical roles. It is both mentally and physically less taxing.

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And at the end of the day this is exactly the attitude that prevents people from asking for a day off. It's wrong in medicine and it's wrong here.

The attitude we should have is: yes, Mr. Successful Boss Man, you are a better human than me: you are more disciplined, don't have a problem with anxiety while dealing with a lot more stress, make more money and even look better. But these facts do absolutely nothing to change that I am crumbling and need a break. If you are so good at dealing with stress - write the software (or stitch up that patient) yourself, surely it would be easy for you, the superhuman?

But we won't do that. Instead we'll pretend we are 10x engineers or genius doctors until we either mess ourselves up, or make a big enough mistake. The realization needed to wake up is: the people pushing us to work harder need us. They actually couldn't have their successful business empire or their big fancy hospital without our work.

> It's wrong in medicine and it's wrong here.

This can be said so many times over regarding so many unproductive comparisons. Two wrongs, I've heard all my life, don't make a right. Nevertheless, people insist on dismissing wrongs that aren't, as it were, up to snuff.

Well, we as a society can both walk and chew bubblegum. If the OP isn't in here begging us for scarce resources, then he's wrong to interrupt our exchange of lived experiences.

I think stressors in the medical industry should be talked about. That seems important. And when they are, I won't be in the comments whining about software on-call.

Maybe whining about on-call would be OK ;)

The insane hours are actually counterproductive, but many people view them as a badge of honor. It's an odd metric to compete on (I can work more hours for the same pay!), and yet the competition is definitely there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Zion_Law was enacted only after the daughter of a somewhat famous author died due to an egregious medical error made by severely sleep deprived residents. One has to wonder how many less famous people and their relatives have died prior to that, and what exactly is the benefit of having exhausted doctors running the show. And yet after the law was enacted many hospitals figured out workarounds to keep residents working insane hours (usually by requiring paperwork to be done after hours, unofficially), and many supported the insanity as a necessary rite of passage.

You should always be advocating for better hours and more of the rewards from your work. I support that.

What makes me take it less seriously is framing it as a crisis in mental health. As much as people don't like comparisons the marketplace for our labor is inherently comparative, and people will optimize for the most money with the least hours/stress. I get that I'm providing anecdata but like I've said in previous comments, the stuff that software engineers I know complain about is from a much more privileged position than other occupations. Burnout is real, but if your version of burnout is someone else's idea of a mildly challenging day (which is my experience) it doesn't have the impact you want it to have. You may not realize it but there are roles in medicine where the work itself is inherently stressful regardless of how many concessions your employer provides.

If your goal is to argue that software engineers deserve higher compensation and better hours and more autonomy given the value they provide, it would garner more sympathy from someone like me. Proclaiming your suffering is at a boiling point feels like a lack of awareness.

Excluding this one sentence in the article

> Software Engineers and Tech co-founders, like us, are more prone to hitting the lows.

I don't see where anyone was comparing software engineering/engineers to another profession. I certainly don't see where it was proclaimed a crisis.

I don't think it's productive to tell people others have it worse when they are promoting a discussion around mental health. I also don't think being well paid and having what appear to be great working conditions preclude you from having mental health issues.

I remember taltking to some of my friends about who has it better. When I ask "would you like to work like me?" typical answer is "Sitting 8h staring at a screen? I couldn't do that!". When I was summer-working at home construction 8-19, I was tired after a day of work, but pretty happy. Now when I'm sitting so long programming, I have headache and feel tired constantly. There is something about moving all day which makes us a little happier than sitting or lying.

A key difference is that most tech workers have the freedom to insert physical exercise/hobbies into their work day, work flexible hours, walk on a treadmill at a standing desk, etc. and someone in a physically laborious job makes no such choices. Not all tech workers avail themselves of this flexibility as much as they should, but that's on the individual.

There’s a certain type of person that always has to comment whenever anyone says they have it hard by pointing out how actually those problems are nothing compared to X. It’s like a weird obsession with having to win the suffering competition.

It's a counterbalancing perspective that leads to healthy moderation.

If you live in a bubble of 16 year olds gifted new brand new cars and you complain openly how yours got dented, it's only fair that everyone else outside of that bubble rightfully calls you out and tells you to appreciate what you have.

You are the worst kind of person when it comes to mental health. Pretty insufferable “as a doctor, it’s harder!”

You’re wrong about the mentally taxing bit because you’re comparing Apples and Oranges. Most doctors are not spending solid 4hr blocks in flow focusing on a highly complex problem (surgeons being the obvious exception) but instead dealing with a sort of multi-tasking complexity which is a completely different type of mental taxation.

I mean, most doctors are spending their entire shifts trying not to inadvertently kill or disable anyone. Yeah that's a completely different type of mental taxation - one far worse IMO than any highly complex problem I've ever encountered in software engineering (and quite frankly, the problems aren't that complex most of the time. If anything, personally the SE stuff that's actually hard is fun and the rest is rather mind-numbing).

> Most doctors are not spending solid 4hr blocks in flow focusing on a highly complex problem

I'm sorry but this is exactly what I meant by my original post. You don't realize that 4hr blocks in flow is an enviable luxury.

Granted my time was in a high acuity setting but let me cast it in more relatable terms.

Software 1 is brought to you with a complaint of the billing system dropping occasional transactions over the last 4 months. Now it is dropping 1 in 100 transactions. They use the Stripe API. It's your job in the next 15 minutes to debug and determine if there will be a complete service outage occurring within the next couple hours. If there will be an outage, you are expected to push a temporary fix to prod immediately and refer for continued review. If not, you must determine which parts of the billing system require referral for revision. Mind you that every decision you make can be reviewed years after the fact and can be litigated as they please.

Your assistsnt comes over with softwares 2 through 5 that were just submitted for your review. Software 2 has issues with a simple deadlock that could have been handled by someone other than you, but now it's your problem to deal with. Software 5 has been inexplicably ported from Delphi to Angular, and they've seen 2 others before you about why some of their native functionality broke, but now it's a big problem and they need you to look at it. There were some patches made by other devs but the stakeholders don't have access to them right now.

As you are looking into software 4,the assistant tells you "Dr zenzero, devops is on line 1 for you". They tell you that software 1 has more problems than described and it looks like it needs to be refactored in multiple areas. Software 3 keeps complaining to your assistant that you're ignoring them.

So no, "Most doctors are not spending solid 4hr blocks in flow focusing on a highly complex problem" because they don't get that luxury.

I get to do that now and it's bliss.

What are your goals with this comment? What, do you estimate, has been your outcome?

If you want to bring medical profession stressors to light, go right ahead. This is an article about a real phenomenon. Not every complaint must be universal or superordinate.

You don't sound "insensitive," you sound juvenile. If your profession is harmful to practitioners, perhaps attempt to cultivate solidarity instead of actively working to demolish it?

As someone who's familiar with artisanal cobalt mining in the DRC, I can attest that medical practitioners have it good, but I won't because that would be unconstructive in a conversation about the latter's working conditions. Grow up.

Their goals are to self insert themselves and how oh so hard they have it.

Remember anything you experience, there will always be some wanker trying to one up you or dismiss you

> While it may sound insensitive, software engineering is nowhere near as complex or stressful as many (but not all) medical roles. It is both mentally and physically less taxing

As much as I respect your personal experience, I think you make a mistake in assuming that it is universal. Further, you are also making the mistake of invalidating other people's individual experiences based on your perception of what the average worker does.

In other words, it is trivially easy to find software engineers who are burnt out to a much nicer crisp than the average doctor, and your dismissal of their suffering won't change a thing for them.

This isn't a contest to see which profession is most toxic to its workers. Our aim should be to find ways to prevent and mitigate these situations.

I hear what you're saying, but I don't feel I said it was universal in the sense that you're describing it. On the whole I would rate the average software engineer as having a less stressful life than the average doctor. I acknowledge that there are outliers and individual experiences that go against the average.

That said, I would argue that you underestimate the number of people in medicine who are burnt out. Many of my colleagues stay because it is a sunk cost financially/time-wise/reputatationally. You can pull up the numerous studies on burnout rates that have been done.

I'd anything it affirms my statement that you don't realize how much worse it could be. Like I said, there's a difference between taking down prod for 6 hours and getting sued for accusations that you killed a living being. This isn't intended to be a competition but it does become a bit absurd to watch people in the software world act like burnout from a micromanaging PM, unrealistic stakeholders, etc is the pinnacle of human suffering.

So… in conclusion, it could be worse. That’s some valuable insight. Obviously somebody out there always has it worse. How can doctors even complain when there exist 3rd world subsistence farmers?

Which studies? I've checked a few Google results and none of them showed health-care even near the top, which is suspiciously surprising to me.

>>> I can attest that software engineers have it very very good

> On the whole I would rate the average software engineer as having a less stressful life than the average doctor

Those are very different statements, and I don't even disagree with the second.

Consider the possibility that the software engineers complaining the most about burnout are likely not experiencing the average amount of stress, so your casual dismissal of their suffering is really rather misplaced. Just as an example, a coworker of mine committed suicide, leaving behind his wife and two kids under ten. He didn't have it very very good.

I think software engineering is just as complex as medicine, both endeavors try to utilize human cognitive ability to the maximum extent possible.

I do entirely agree about software engineering being a lot less stressful though.

> invalidating other people's individual experiences

It's called "disagreeing". It doesn't "invalidate" anything.

They weren't disagreeing, they were minimizing other people's suffering and one-upping them. It's not a friendly thing to do and doesn't lead to an open curious conversation.

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