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From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

jasonshen.com

321–330 of 352 posts

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#321
post #189
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> service industry and have a lot more sex and drugs in their warehouses.

Nope.

The business insurance usually requires drug free or zero tolerance policies, especially with forklifts, unmanned delivery robots, trucks, conveyors, and all other hazardous warehouse conditions around.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#322
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll walk back on the five years FAANG claim as I was venting a bit. But let's say you earn $200K (you'd start with less but end up with more at the 5 year mark), $135-165K take home, $105K if you save 70% of your salary. If we count compound interest, investments, stocks, healthcare savings due to generous SWE contracts, you could definitely achieve freedom if you wanted to with the 4% rule. It would require abandon…

Ok, but then you'd have spent your entire unrecoverable youth working for a FAANG. I realize this doesn't bother some people, and I don't understand that.

Of course it bothers people. But it's better than losing the last functional decades as well.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#323
post #82
post #31

Earlier 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.

And after 5 years you start to have feet, knees and leg issues. My sister worked at (very)good restaurants for six years, there is a reason why she started college at 23. It got easier when she got to 'second', since she could reserve herself the "easy" cleaning tasks and the inventory, but still.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#324
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The trick is to avoid becoming that developer.

The trick is that everyone is both in my experience. I had weeks where i worked barely 10 hours (well, a week actually, but in my defense, the onboarding was shit), including meetings and mails. Most of the time once i understand what i have to do (and that can take some time), i'm around 20 to 30 hours. But i know i can whip myself and work 45 full hours (legal duration in my country is 35), as i did during august when the team was on vacation and we had a lot of fires to tend to, for two weeks.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#325
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…

Tendonitis is also common in SDEs, do you think IT industry also non sustainable?

The work condition in Amazon warehouse sucks not because Amazon wants it happen but just 1. because you want buy something at a mouse click not wanting to get it yourself, 2. other retailers do not want pay as much as Amazon did.

You are winning a game does not mean you get to choose the rules.

It is astonishing how people today are only think everything as one step process and just fire his/her original thoughts without the capabilities of observing the system as a whole. And particularly worrisome for a tech forum.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#326
post #202
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I as a dev earn a lot more than our order picker where I work is that the software I have built is speeding up everything. I created massive improvements in efficiency. My high salary is justified because my work has a much bigger impact on the finances. It is that simple. I interview often to get a true market rate. Nobody would pay me what I'm making if the market for devs wasn't this good.

so how much does an $avgDev make?

A pretty average number of course.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too had many shitty jobs in my early 20's and reading this article kinda triggered those job's bad memories and how much I hated working at those places. I remember even after getting into tech many years later I would sometimes have dreams where I would be back in one of those jobs having a minor case of PTSD. That being said there are other ways to do the type of career shift that the author wants. My Wife's cous…

A senior director at Oracle likely had enough money to be able to afford to take classes while not working (and not going into debt), get an apprenticeship (mandatory for electricians) working for peanuts, and then spend a bunch of money on advertising and/or leverage all his business contacts (as everyone, especially the wealthy, need electricians at some point.) He could afford to pay $$$ for all the electrical cod…

I don't think you "get" what I was trying to say. I had mentioned a actual person - this was a woman and not a man btw(I mentioned that, I guess you didn't read my post close enough), who moved out of a engineering director position and was now a electrician. They don't own their own electrical business, they are just another electrician on the job. And yes they probably are very wealthy but wanted to switch careers like the author of this post and really enjoyed going into manual labor and getting out of tech. I don't know what else there is to argue about?

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#329
Found the article very interesting and, loved reading. We find fulfillment in different things, and there is no one single best for many people.

PS: I found the snarky responses and accusations of "poverty tourism" to be amusing. It looks like there are a lot of bitter people who sees only their way and demonize anyone else who dont see it.

Live your life, if you find physical work a therapy, do you... if you find seating and staring at a screen your own therapy.. do you!

Hopefully, we stop trying to justify perfectly clear articles to people are only interested in making other as miserable as they are.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#330

Similar story with me. Except I ended up in AWS! Worked in different big tech for 7y, and took a sabbatical because I could, and so why not? Well after a year of travelling and working on my own ideas and a bit of contract work, I entered a complete pit of depression. I mean contemplating ending it all to stop the pain. Instead big daddy Bezos was handing out tech jobs like candy so I took one begrudgingly just to ha…

Can you help me understand this perspective? Was there really nothing you wanted to do with your life that you had to resort to getting a corporate job to keep yourself sane? A guy a used to work with went through the same thing recently after his startup was acquired. I’m not sure how much he made, but I’m pretty sure he’s set for life. He stayed retired for about six months before getting bored and getting another…

Sure. I would offer two ideas which may resonate or not. They aren't provable facts, but experiences from my life and others'.

1. Part of your desire to sail the world is having it as a dream. It's the scarcity of being able to sail that gives it such high value. When you remove that scarcity with complete time and money freedom (and after some time, normalize yourself to it), the reality of sailing the world might change your perspective.

Now you have to acquire a boat, gain a shitload of knowledge, care for and repair it, invest significant effort to plan and prepare a trip, take significant risk being out on the ocean, be alone for months or recruit people to come with you, can you be alone with just them for months, is the opportunity cost of being away from family and friends for so long worth it... etc. It's no small feat.

Depending on how you are wired, your body might MUCH prefer to sit at home, eat tasty food, and submit to the youtube algorithm. Now that you have time and money freedom, you don't HAVE to do anything! I think your body knows it, and will optimize for risk reduction and energy conservation.

caveat: if there's something more here, like your late father taught you how to sail and you grew up on a boat, or your best friends are entering an international organized race, then for sure you will likely sail.

2. What happens after you sail the world? Do you sail it twice? Maybe you find it enough to just be at sea forever, but likely you come home to your apartment/house and .. do what exactly? The next thing on your list after "sail the world" perhaps, and repeat. If my first point doesn't terminate the loop for you, you can chase your next desire and next desire. Is that a life well lived?

Lots of people absolutely retire and live happy lives. But my sense is that they are much older, and so are still motivated by time scarcity, just in the fatal sense. Or they invest themselves deeply into something meaningful outside themselves like community, charity, teaching, caregiving.. or WORK! Then you'd be back to where you are, with some new experiences under your belt. Totally worth it. But I'd guess that almost no one puts their feet up and happily sips a mohito on the beach for 50 years.

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