Part 1 reads like a rich lifestyle tourist taking a job for the poors and finding it “transformative”. Part 2 was much better.
From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
181–190 of 352 posts
Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you work in a FAANG (presumably as some sort of knowledge worker) you have a unique opportunity to never have to work again within just a few years of saving.
That's what I thought too, but then the stock price imploded.
If you are paid these absurd 250K+ salaries that does not matter. And it's not like the stock is at zero either
Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
#183Working in an Amazon warehouse can be refreshing and restorative when you can quit after 10 weeks and have millions of dollars in the bank. Not so much when you get tendonitis after 6 weeks but have to stare down another 30 years of this and still won’t have any savings.
Yes and we are all aware of that. Are you saying that his experience and blog cause harm to those people who have to do it? There's been countless posts about Amazon warehouse conditions on Hackernews and other news sources.
He is just slumming it for kicks but taking the position of someone who needed the job to eat and pay rent.
Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
#184> I had what I would stereotype as a traditional Chinese upbringing in America, which meant my parents very much expected straight A's. Anytime a B happened, something had gone wrong. The explanation was never like you lack the talent or whatever, but that you didn’t work hard enough. It sounds like the author never got a chance to figure out the intersection between what he liked to do and what he was actually good…
Insightful take.
I’m going with ”yes/and.” He could have taken up martial arts.
Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
#185I read the article, and... I get it. But something about this just seems weird to me. I grew up mostly on a family farm, worked every day of my life in some capacity since I was 9 or 10 years old, and did shit jobs to pay for college (which I eventually dropped out of right before graduation). I don't think my route into tech is that different from many of the other folks I've worked with... this guy lived a /very/ c…
I think part of that feeling is coming from how we've been socialized in the middle/upper classes to perceive people with lower incomes working more physical jobs than us. It's no longer acceptable to be snooty towards people in these positions, but we haven't dropped the stigma totally, and now the acceptable way to view + interact with them is to act (in the performative sense, because many of us don't actually kno…
Of all the comments in this thread, I think this one most accurately captures the mentality of those disparaging the author. It certainly aligns with how I reflexively reacted, before taking time to consider more deeply.
Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you work in a FAANG (presumably as some sort of knowledge worker) you have a unique opportunity to never have to work again within just a few years of saving.
I could do that and then go work at the Costco food court. Somehow that doesn't feel any less like larping. On a serious note, how does one do that? It doesn't "feel" that way, but I know that's lifestyle inflation.
If you are able to get a job at a FAANG, you should also be able to take a look at your expenditures and determine what you actually need in life. Maybe getting a smaller living place will be the stumbling block for most, but think of the freedom you gain. If you find yourself fantasizing about working in Costco during your daily life, chances are the things you spend on aren't that effective at bringing you satisfaction anyway. Yet unlike the vast majority of people you actually have the means to escape and build the life you want i.e. a massively well remunerated job with remote working options. So why not do it?
Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
#187My trick is to make my knowledge work physical so that work is an entire mind body experience. Helps my sleep at night.
Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
#188"...extracting some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done..." - Zima Blue from Love, Death + Robots
Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the author is recommending their experience. He's merely talking about what he did and what happened. We've known for millennia that physical work sucks. That's why the lowest echelons of society always end up doing the worst of it. This, I think, is why previous generations were so emphatic about college education. In their experience, it was a ticket out of doing physically taxing work.
Overly taxing and dangerous physical work sucks. Working in a professional kitchen is some of the most fun and (non-monetary) rewarding work I've ever done.
Maybe Amazon should take a cue from the service industry and have a lot more sex and drugs in their warehouses. Right now it's all misery and desperation.
Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
#190Guy who doesn’t need to work slums it with the poors to self actualize. Fuck this guy.
> Slum tourism, poverty tourism, ghetto tourism or trauma tourism is a type of city tourism that involves visiting impoverished areas.
> The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word slumming to 1884. In London, people visited slum neighborhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch to observe life in this situation. Wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points, Manhattan on the Lower East Side, neighborhoods of poor immigrants, to see "how the other half lives".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism
> Slum tourism has been the subject of much controversy, with critics labelling the voyeuristic aspects of slum tourism as poverty porn.
> A primary accusation that the advocates against slum tourism make is that it "turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from".