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From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

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Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#251

Post by gamechangr »

gnicholas wrote: post #220
gamechangr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had this experience. Sometimes its important to remember that money is just a proxy. For example, I have paid for 10 friends from High School to spend a week in a 3,000 SQ FT cabin in Colorado and just relax. I'm going to say a few things that I normally wouldn't, just to better illustrate my point. A few of my friends make less than $30k a year. One is 1st grade teacher (male) and one is a full time math tuto…

Out of curiosity, did this create any weird dynamics with your friends, or expectations for the future? Also, how did you decide how much to give everyone? If one person makes $80k and one makes $30k, did you send the same amount to everyone? Thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds like a blast!

I sent he same amount to everyone. Its funny because those with no money, really appreciate it but they dont want to be a burden. They really couldn't come without it. I know it and I dont want money to be the reason and I dont want them to have to acknowledge it at all.

Those with money are surprised. " I know Ben needs some help, but you really didn't need to get mine too?". In someways I think it blessed one who is well off ( maybe makes $175k ). He said he couldn't remember the last time someone paid for something above $100 for him. He was genuinely touched.

I have done a few different versions of this trip. I also went deep sea fishing and to Yellowstone national park of which I paid for those as well.

The only potentially weird dynamic is that I get emails from time to time from that group suggesting our "next big adventure" and usually it's implied I am paying, but it hasn't been that weird really.

I believe I've done 6 trips. I always pay for the lodging and have paid for the flights a few times and maybe half the food.

For me, If Im going to work hard and sometimes alone on projects that are hard to feel the sense of purpose in a practical way, I like the idea that once a year I do a family vacation and once a year I try to do a good friend trip. I put usually one picture in my room next to my computer as a reminder of how what I'm doing makes a practical difference.

My friends absolutely love it. Most adults ( myself included) have such little time weekly for relationships. Its just much more important that we tell ourselves. You think friends aren't important, until something bad happens. That's when you realize work isn't the most important thing.

hope the story helps.

invest in your friends -- be a giver in a world of takers.

ultimately you will be glad you did.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#252

Post by [deleted] »

SevenNation wrote: post #169

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#253

Post by Siddarth1977 »

antiterra wrote: post #106
kjeetgill wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not propaganda, it's a perspective. He's pretty involved in activism on the behalf of trades work, not just the mouthpiece of some think tank ad campaign.

Quoted post unavailable.

This was the first I'd heard of this and thought it sounded interesting, so I looked into it.

If I were a fact-checker, I guess I'd rate this as "mostly false". He's not "bankrolled by Koch Industries", but he runs a non-profit which publicly discloses donors and one of the Koch brothers donated some money to it.

But it did lead me down an interesting far-left rabbit hole, where the worldview is that a guy saying "respect people doing blue collar jobs" and encouraging people to keep working to improve their lives is treated as a nefarious enemy, so that was fun. A good reminder that QAnon doesn't have a monopoly an eyeroll-inducing political views.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#254

Post by jrnichols »

avgDev wrote: post #44
symlinkk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software development is taxing on your brain the same way physical labor is taxing on your body. It’s depressing, soul sucking work. You’re stuck inside, staring at a screen for 8+ hours a day.

Working at amazon as an order picker is depressing, soul sucking and can wreck your body for the remainder of your life. Devs can get by working few hours a day, some barely do any work at all. I refuse to stare at a screen 8+ hours a day. I take healthy breaks and create boundaries. I rarely have to solve puzzles at work. The grunt of the work is almost the same thing over and over.

it's all relative. a lot of jobs are depressing.

I'm a long time paramedic who has seen more people die than I care to remember.

some days I'd rather be an order picker at Amazon. It's a lot easier to clock out and not bring work home with you. I might actually make more money at Amazon, to be honest.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#256

Post by hibikir »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #72
avgDev wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working at amazon as an order picker is depressing, soul sucking and can wreck your body for the remainder of your life. Devs can get by working few hours a day, some barely do any work at all. I refuse to stare at a screen 8+ hours a day. I take healthy breaks and create boundaries. I rarely have to solve puzzles at work. The grunt of the work is almost the same thing over and over.

You might be surprised to learn that for every dev working “few hours a day” or barely doing anything at all, there is another engineer doing all their work for them - usually in a constant state of fending off burnout due to having to do other peoples’ work in addition to their own.

Is it? In my career, over 20 years by now, I've not seen that one often. When it happens, management has to be on vacation too, as it's not that hard to see that someone is doing all the work. I have seen this continue just once. It had to do with the place having very poor pay. Management wasn't firing the slackers because that's all they could hire at their rates. The hard working engineers just weren't wise enough to realize that they could often do a bit less work for a lot more pay somewhere else.

What is more common is that effort levels are similar within the same department, but wildly different across companies. I've worked at places where people considered themselves slackers when they were doing 60 hours plus on call time. I've also worked at others where entire teams did about 2 hours of actual work a day, and the rest was spent on long lunches, ping pong and retro consoles.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#257

Post by ethanbond »

BurningFrog wrote: post #141
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What this has proven is working at amazon warehouse sucks, and is not sustainable. This person went from a 23-year career sitting at a desk to doing physical labor all day. Any physical labor is going to take a toll on someone in their 40s who hasn't been doing physical labor. I have a lot of people in my extended social circle who are in physical labor jobs. Amazon Warehouse jobs are always viewed as the "easy" fa…

You can also write a very similar rant about how sedentary desk jobs are not sustainable with all the obesity related life shortening conditions it leads to :)

The solution to obesity is eating less and going on a walk or two during the day. The solution to your back getting blown out by moving boxes is… giving up your job.

That’s the whole point.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#258

Post by [deleted] »

symlinkk wrote: post #64
humanistbot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all jobs had the same salary, benefits, career path, etc, there is no way I'd trade software development for a job involving strenuous physical labor.

I would. Imagine getting paid to be outdoors in the sun getting exercise. Imagine not having to spend an extra hour each day in a crowded gym doing boring repetitive movements because your sedentary job would ruin your body otherwise. Imagine not having posture and back problems at age 30. Imagine having the output of a hard days work be a physical object you can point to your son and say “see? I made that”.

[deleted]

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#259

Post by refurb »

markdown wrote: post #59
avgDev wrote: post #9

"The experience was physically taxing, he was diagnosed with tendonitis after moving hundreds of boxes a day, but it pulled him out of his depression and helped him gain perspective and a deeper sense of meaning"....... I have mixed feelings about this. What this has proven is working at amazon warehouse sucks, and is not sustainable. I've had many physical shitty jobs in my 20's. Then, I had some health issue and co…

[flagged]

Considering how much physical jobs can pay, I’m not sure where you got “low pay” from.

Plenty of non-physical jobs that are low pay as well.

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