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Comment by blinkingled | Hacker News Reader

I don't about others but based on past experience if one really attempts to do their $240k software / IT job well they ought to encounter similar if not in some ways worse challenges - some just realities of the tech industry/stack/complexity and some injected by bureaucracy, incompetence, mismanagement and not to mention the ever hanging sword of change in technology and possibility of layoff for no fault of yours. It adds up.

When you are signing up for a job it's not just the money and the physical things you do - it's also the intangibles, the time spent in unproductive meetings, time spent afterwards feeling unproductive and worried, the resulting stress you have to manage etc, it all adds up and takes away something more than the money. I would argue that well managed jobs with some semblance of stability, human connection and predictability/routine are quite pleasant and easier to do compared to Software/IT.

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No. Your job as a software developer may be stressful (as every job is) but her everyday challenges are way worse than yours. She has hundreds of actual people to manage, mentor and motivate, many with little education and lacking resources. Which means lots of absences, low-effort work, health issues, high turnover, and sometimes even theft. Plenty of issues dealing with customers as well. And then the managerial issues related to meeting revenue targets, implementing health care plans, managing inventory, putting on a good face for the bosses, as well as intense competition to be elevated to regional manager against a bunch of other colleagues in the exact same role. And her salary is only $120, there's a whole lot of stress when half your annual comp is bonus-driven.

Oh for sure, the intangibles kind of /are/ the job once you're past a mid-level position. But think about her job in the context of your description.

You think she doesn't have useless meetings she's invited to that every manager in the region needs to attend even though it could've just been an email from the regional director? The stress from the lights busted in the parking lot brought on by worries that a darkened parking lot and a random crime that night might trigger a spurious lawsuit? Doomscrolling about physical retail being replaced by online? That she's falling behind in understanding where robotics might move? That if that particular store was shut down in a strategic shift, she's wedded her entire marketability as an employee to a single company on a single ladder and that she can't really just easily grab a job from a company across the country?

We're not so unique!

Yeah, I used the word similar but sure! Just to be even more clearer I wasn't at all saying her job wasn't hard - I was merely saying IT jobs paying that can be equally hard.

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