Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

jasonshen.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 352 posts

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#331

Post by wnolens »

svnt wrote: post #175
hnuser847 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my experience when you leave something you carry “doingness” inertia. If you carry that into a motivated and structured activity then you might have a great time, especially if you find others who want to do the same thing. If you dump your “doingness” into something that doesn’t feed back into your social connection or reputation, like playing video games alone in the middle of the day while everyone else is work…

> expect Gandalf to drop in and send you on an epic quest, you’ll find yourself adrift at best

Oof, too true. It's a dangerous expectation that I had/have (and try to break) that purpose will present itself TO me. Probably because it did throughout my younger life, but only because I was inside of an institution which provided this (often with it's own motive).

(semi)retirement removed me from the institutions, and not being part of the regular rhythm of the work day can alienate you from your usual social network. Without a family demanding something of you, adrift is accurate.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#332

Post by mikrl »

rs999gti wrote: post #321
gnu8 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Heh, business insurance is one thing. Some of the guys I’ve worked with are another. One swore up and down he couldn’t be functional before a toke and getting lifted was safer for us all.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#333

Post by themitigating »

spoonjim wrote: post #238
themitigating wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Harm"? Not really. But this guy is not much different from a millionaire pretending to be homeless and bumming quarters at the train station. Might he find it an interesting experience? Sure. But it's fundamentally just a form of "class vacation" as rich people often do.

Since vacation is defined as positive and fun I wouldn't call it a class vacation.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#334

Post by kirillzubovsky »

Reading this and finding it amusing that Amazon, out of all places, is still operating the warehouse in a traditional way. Seems like a big win for the employees would be to have an Amazon Work app on their phone, which tracks their in/out time. Schedules could operate on rolling basis, so no one comes at exactly 6am, for example. You get 900 people funnel in from 5 to 8am, in 20 min increments. Everyone gets to park in peace, and no one is losing 20 minutes just waiting in line to leave the building. It's probably a more hectic scenario for the employer to operate.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#335

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#336

Post by didericis »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #160
BurningFrog wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I think the takeaway is none of us is getting out of this alive.

That's something I think we need to spend a lot more time acknowledging. The preeminent idea makers that have created a lot of our modern framework of thinking about the world were not very good at answering the question "what's the point?"

Slow loss of ability to function and then death is inevitable. People are not going to be optimal workers their whole lives. We still need to keep the machines running, which is incredibly difficult and probably always will be due to the majority of us being limited bumbling morons, and the safeguards we need to put in place to prevent the morons who think they aren't morons from messing up the efforts of the minority of competent productive people hiding out there. But being the best worker for as long as you can is not the point of life.

This sounds trite to most modern thinkers, but it's not: genuine, actual, familial support, acceptance and loyalty between you and your tribe is something that can transcend the trials and tribulations of life and our inevitable death. Another ingredient in acceptance of the human condition is acknowledgment of the mysteries of the world and the strangeness of human perception and consciousness. Neither of those are sufficiently reflected upon in any organized manner like they used to be.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#337

Post by thrown_22 »

ElfinTrousers wrote: post #320
thrown_22 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply and demand only work in the short term as an explanation why something costs the amount it does _right now_. Once enough time has passed for the markets to adjust then there is something fundamental that causes them to be stuck at a given level. Software development is applied autism. There aren't many people on the spectrum and the ones of us lucky enough to be interested in computers (instead of say model tr…

> Supply and demand only work in the short term as an explanation why something costs the amount it does _right now_. Once enough time has passed for the markets to adjust then there is something fundamental that causes them to be stuck at a given level. [citation needed] > Software development is applied autism. [citation needed] > Or to put it another way: there are no other professions that can make 10 million for…

The financial industry doesn't make money out of bits and bytes. They make money out of other money and lose all of it every 10 years or so. We're seeing it real time today hilariously enough.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#338

Post by ninkendo »

Bakary wrote: post #236
ninkendo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure you could do it in 5 years at a FAANG even if you saved every penny (literally zero living expenses.) Because if you start a career at 22, that means you retire at 27, and have to have enough saved up for something like 40 years before social security kicks in. That’s a long time to be living off of savings. Can you have enough that you can live off the interest in your investments? Depends. You’d need n…

I'll admit 5 years was hyperbolic and unrealistic, perhaps something reserved for the most promising workers at those FAANGs. But if you are 10 years into your FAANG career, you should be earning at minimum in the 300K net/210k take home range, and have done so for years. At this point you must be trading freedom for creature comforts or status goods if you are not financially independent.

What’s financially independent mean at age 35? Say you saved 200k every year (which isn’t even technically possible given that the typical tax rate for 300k means a smaller net than that.) You have 2 million in the bank. Can you live off 2 million for 30 years (social security age) while supporting a family as the sole earner, for that long? You gotta be really confident in your investments to take that plunge.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#339

Post by ninkendo »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #274
ninkendo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure you could do it in 5 years at a FAANG even if you saved every penny (literally zero living expenses.) Because if you start a career at 22, that means you retire at 27, and have to have enough saved up for something like 40 years before social security kicks in. That’s a long time to be living off of savings. Can you have enough that you can live off the interest in your investments? Depends. You’d need n…

The premise is you only need about 20-25 years of expenses saved up and have like a 90+% success rate given history. That's what the FIRE ideology started with. Anything beyond 25 years is security/luxury. For a single person not having others depend on them and willing to locate away from any expensive mega-/metropolis, FAANG did make that doable in 5-10 years. Of course there is never a guarantee.

> The premise is you only need about 20-25 years of expenses saved up

What happens in 20-25 years, if you’re 35 now? Your net worth hits zero right when you turn 55-60, and have years left until you get social security? All so that you can live with zero luxuries for the best years of your life, and have no family to pass anything onto?

I’m sorry but it just seems like a huge misplacement of priorities to me, to forego so much potential to retire that early.

To me, the priority is the ability to simply say “fuck off” to my boss if I’ve had enough one day, and have enough saved up to absorb the mistake, if it turned out to be one. Having that fallback in the back of my mind means I’ve basically already won, I’m just racking up the score until that day comes. But until that day, there’s zero reason not to continue banking everything I have. Deciding “that’s probably enough, I should walk away now” at age 35 seems like one of the biggest mistakes you can make. 50? Maybe. 45? Maybe not. But 35? Huge mistake IMO.

Re: From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate

#340

Post by mbrodersen »

ElfinTrousers wrote: post #318
KennyBlanken wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not just the mouthpiece of some think tank ad campaign. Uh huh. Here's his "worker's pledge." It is literally "be a good little peasant worker drone" bullshit: I believe that I have won the greatest lottery of all time. I am alive. I walk the Earth. I live in America. Above all things, I am grateful. I believe that I am entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing more. I also understand that "ha…

"I believe that I have won the greatest lottery of all time...I live in America." And this is the point where my bullshit detector overheated and exploded.

You have to understand that most Americans are indoctrinated to believe that America is “the best” from the moment they are born. I have lived and worked in the US, Europe, and Australia and can truthfully say that you have won the lottery if you are born in any of the rich western democratic country. And I personally don’t put the US as #1 on that list.
Post reply on HN