"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 could no longer keep doing that to my body, so I went back to school and got a CS degree.
I sometimes get depressed and miss physical work, but then I remember how shit it was and how an injury would prevent me from working. As a dev I think I'm going to be able to earn money as long as I'm alive and have a functioning brain.
I guess once you have enough money then maybe someone might find that work fun? Obviously it helped the writer with depression. However, if he ever gets permanently hurt and it affects his daily life I have a feeling depression will come back in full swing. Office work is much much safer.
There are ways to help people through tech and have much bigger affect then moving boxes for a shitty company.
Edit: What helps my depression is connecting with people outside of work, helping people in my community, doing projects around my house and spending time with my son. Additionally, I try to make good choices when spending my money and limit my spending on stuff I don't need, as I dislike excessive spending.
Edit2: Some great comments below. This is very much poverty/shit job tourism, which the writer can escape at any moment. This is some BlackMirror type of content. Guy makes it big in tech, retires, now works shit job people are trying to escape to cure his depression. He then writes about it on a blog. Now, other non-aware devs might be reading it contemplating leaving their jobs to do a REAL job.
> 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" fallback option: Doesn't pay as well as the hard physical labor jobs, but it's also viewed as the safe, comfortable option. Obviously, someone coming from a 20-year desk job is going to have a different perspective when thrust into a job with any physical demands.
I also have people in my extended social circle who are in jobs that involve a lot of physical labor. As we all enter our late 30s-early 40s give or take, and they realize what a toll it's taking on their bodies, most of them are trying to get out of it, or have gotten out of it. They realize they aren't going to be physically able to do it another 25 years, and their bodies are going to get increasingly wrecked.
From what I've heard (including from acquaintances who have worked there), a job at an Amazon Warehouse takes a toll on your body for sure. For sure it's hardly alone in being like that.
(The people in my extended social circle who are in jobs involving physical labor are perhaps more likely than most physical laborers to have people in their social circle who sit at desks, and to be able to access networks and resources to shift out of physical labor to make a living).
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 :)
Perhaps, but the epidemic of sedentary lifestyle has lead to a large suite of problems, ranging from miserable back pain to cardiovascular problems to diabetes. The average office worker can barely run a mile, do a pullup, squat below parallel with their bodyweight, or climb a flight of stairs without panting.
Some of us spend hours a week compensating for this. If lifting boxes and carrying them around all day long paid a fraction of the salary I have, I think I would take it in a heartbeat. It sounds delightful. You prefer to be in meetings for 6 hours a day and scramble to code in between them? And let me guess, no neck pain and daily headaches for you right ?
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 cousin who worked as a electrician near SF mentioned to me one of his co-workers was a former sr. director at Oracle who got burned out and wanted to try something new. I asked him how they liked the new career and he said she loved it. That job payed well and didn't require the forced degradation seen at amazon warehouses, plus you get to interact with interesting people and travel to different locations frequently.
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 code books that non-master-electricians are required to memorize (and pass tests on.) He likely didn't have to worry about health insurance, wasn't carrying any debt, had a reliable car, etc.
Dear everyone in this discussion: stop pretending like people working Amazon Warehouse jobs can just switch gears, and especially stop citing examples of rich, educated, privileged people doing it as "proof" it can be done.
It's pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps nonsense. These sorts of jobs are so physically demanding that you end up exhausted at the end of a shift and there's not much energy for other things unless you're pretty young....and unlike wealthy connected people, they don't have the personal/professional network.
I used to do landscaping. One morning I pulled my then-girlfriend out of bed by the legs because I was dreaming about dragging a tree into a hole. I moved a lot of heavy trees and shrubs in that job. Haha, memories!
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.
Definitely. My dad always recalled working on the Navy Ship yard and how cold it was before saying to himself, "F--- this" and going to college to become an accountant.
> If I had it my way, tech workers wouldn’t take sabbaticals just to climb Machu Picchu or see Antarctica — some subset of them, the set for whom the malaise I’m describing resonates, would instead take their sabbatical at an Amazon warehouse.
It's not sustainable for amazon-ish [1]. They offer higher wages than competitors because they need to keep accumulating new employees or convincing old ones to come back.
Experienced both sides too. Some physical jobs suck and some bosses really suck, but some are also great and massively rewarding even though pay may not reflect that. Really depends on the company, the match of body+job, and importantly the Country - worker protection laws.
I met a young software developer who got a night job loading UPS trucks instead of joining a gym. It seemed to work for him, although it's probably not sustainable.
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.
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.
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.
Not to mention the perverse association you develop with the computer being a requirement for getting work done. My dopamine is so tied to ticking off boxes by finishing computer work that tasks like cleaning the kitchen have an empty feeling.
My son in law was visiting the other week and asked me about my tech job. I told him that it is like taking a calculus exam everyday of the week, where I am not exactly sure what the course material is that day, or that it is a chapter I have not seen yet.
I was thinking this too while reading it. Good for him I guess but there's sort of an eat pray love tone deafness to writing an article about the experience.
The author was pretty clearly self aware of their unique context:
"I am not going to bill an Amazon job as some sort of upper-middle-class panacea, something you go do just like you go enroll in survivalist camps or silent retreats. The job can be dehumanizing, physically wearing if not outright painful, and mind-numbingly boring if you can’t invent little games for yourself while lifting 300 boxes an hour for eleven hours straight."
It doesn't invalidate their experience.
Something I've started trying to do more consistently when reading stuff on the web is instead of asking myself, "How can I discredit or discard this author's point?" Instead, I try to ask, "What can I take of value from their writing?"
There is always ample reason to disagree with something you read. There's an edge case the missed, an exception they overlooked, a tragedy even worse than theirs, a privilege they failed to properly check, a mistake they made in their past, etc. It's not interesting to poke holes in what you read because you can do it in almost everything. Any property that is true of all writing is essentially meaningless.
Instead, I try to seek out what is true and useful in it and just ignore the parts I don't agree with. (And I certainly try to comment on those parts less.) In this case, we have an upper-middle-class successful software person who still found themselves struggling with depression despite "winning" at all the things our culture says we're supposed to do. And this person had a real, true experience where a shitty job at Amazon dramatically improved their mental health.
That's clearly telling me something interesting about our need for structure, for work that feels grounded and tangible, and likely to spend more time using our bodies.
I 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/ charmed and privileged existence compared to the average American tech worker, and going to work at an Amazon warehouse to get a reality check seems... patronizing somehow. I am glad he got a reality check, but I feel like there's another way to do this, or at least how to write about it.
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 know) with deference, assuming that their lives are truly miserable and their dignity is on the line every day they work such jobs. The expectation is that we must feel sorry for them and treat them better than other people because of it, or treat them with kid gloves.
When you adopt such a stance, the idea of someone willingly going and doing one of these terrible no good jobs does seem patronizing -- it's masochistic even, and so is viewed as suspect and "touristy". When someone does such a thing they are "disrespecting themselves" by people with this view. If anyone ever tries to provide and alternative view and tell us that most people's lives in these positions aren't so bad by going and experiencing it themselves, however partially, we heap scorn on them. "They don't know what it's really like, it's horrible what these people have to do." "They have millions of dollars in the bank so their experience can be dismissed." Etc.
I just don't think you can provide an accurate view by working a job like this for six weeks and leaving right as it starts getting bad. I also think it is fair to dismiss anyone with millions in the bank who reports about their stints in a warehouse as an alternative take.
I'm not offended by the piece because I don't actually think the author is trying to give a critical take about manual labour. It didn't sound like he thought critically about the experience at all besides feeling good about himself. Instead this piece reads more like somebody recommending a trip to Bali.
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.
> this guy lived a /very/ charmed and privileged existence
His experience in tech doesn't sound so charmed to me. He was obsessed with climbing the corporate ladder. He slept in the office and woke up early every morning to start grinding again. He worked so much he didn't even have time to play a game with his son.
He tried another kind of work to see how it compared, and he learned stuff. There's nothing patronizing about that.
A) that’s how Microsoft functions I had a director comment on how productive I was when I worked 60-70 hour weeks, how unproductive I was when I worked 40 hours. Coworkers would regularly work 6am-6pm plus respond to messages overnight.
B) in my early years I too worked my butt off in a very similar manner thinking this was The Way(tm) until I realized I was burning myself out (though if I was making Microsoft money back then I’m sure I would have accepted it) so maybe this is a rite of passage. Or maybe I’m still harboring completely unacceptable norms
Life is fundamentally unpleasant and once you have your basic daily needs met you have time to develop mental issues. In the west basically everyone including the homeless don't have to worry about being eaten, murdered, starving or dying from exposure. This leaves a lot of leeway for everyone to think how bad they have it while historically being in the top 1%.
It's rather hard to have empathy for someone who has it better than you. But I've found it helps to also remind yourself that the majority of people who ever lived will feel the same way about you.
Why deny his experience, though? Not everything needs to be viewed through a lens of privilege. I hope the author gained an appreciation for those less fortunate or less ambitious. At least they have experienced the "other side," so to speak.
He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives.
Good on him for having an epiphany, but I'd wager that he'd have a different perspective if he had to do that job long past his soft-handed tendonitis episode in order to feed his family that he barely mentioned in his interview.
Imagine having built so small of a life for yourself and your family that in order to get a reality check, you have to check yourself in to rehab with the "common folk" in order to rescue yourself from your "depression".
It's lamentable, not commendable. It has all happened before, and it will happen again.
This is not a salvation story; it is a cautionary tale. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Maybe it's less patronising, and more just blindingly obvious to those of us who have had crap jobs in the past?
Having grown up adjacent to upper-middle class people (I'm arguably entering that sphere now, but I definitely didn't start there), I think a bunch of them could benefit from hearing this story from one of their peers.
Instead of moving geographically, the author moved social-economically to experience something different.
I think it's great, we crave authentic experiences on the road, this should also be something more common. If more people (on the top) do this, we'll have a lot less of those out of touch just eat cake stories.
> 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 at. Instead, he was trained to respond to the approval of authority figures. So the true north of his internal compass pointed to whatever the person in charge at the time thought of him.
Fast forward to 2021:
> I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. I skied on weekdays, shopped at Target at 11am with nobody there, and played video games. But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I became unmoored, set adrift in a sea of theoretical possibility only to drown in unbounded optionality. Novelty and excitement turned into a spiraling vortex of depression as I began to wake up sometimes at noon, sometimes 2pm, and on the rare occasion even getting out of bed at 6pm.
With no authority figure to send the positive vibes he craved, the author felt adrift. This is where the gig at Amazon comes in. Authority figures galore and a clear sense of what a job well done meant.
Some are chalking this up to poverty tourism. Maybe it's something else.
> 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 at. Instead, he was trained to respond to the approval of authority figures.
I also read that section and thought it unfortunate the author missed that realization as being the likely root cause. External validation seems to be a major driver of his unhappiness. There's nothing wrong with finding solace in structured work but I think if he returns to his old job he's likely to reach burn out unless he can identify this as a root cause.
I made that connection for myself as I've had a strangely similar recent experience to his, albeit without the Amazon warehouse job. I burned out, took multiple months off of work, didn't implement any lasting structures, and became depressed. But I did spend a ton of time in therapy to evaluate my mental health and what drove me to burn out. Practicing self-awareness and emotional awareness has made me more optimistic about finding routines and habits which will bring more fulfillment.
I’ve taken a similar path. Have always been super anxious at work, left my job. That was almost 2 years ago. I’m finally getting to the point with self awareness and emotional awareness that I feel I can return and succeed.
This person seems like they are suffering from typical tech bubble non-awareness disease. They always strive to make the world a better place as… a director of Facebook. Debatable. Early retirement is such a nightmare for me that.. I became an Amazon Warehouse Associate out of boredom? I’m not sure how any of this narcissism is making the world a better place.
Did you actually read the article? He's probably the one person in tech that is directly aware of what it's like to work at a warehouse because he actually did it for real. He's not claiming to be "making the world a better place" by working at Facebook. He's telling the story of how he got burned out from that world and sought out a real "honest labor" job that he'd heard a ton about in the media to snap out of it and get real.
What more could someone possibly do to wave off the label of "tech bubble non-awareness disease," in your opinion?
He learned what a grueling job was for a few weeks. He did not learn what it means when that grueling job is your past, present, and/or future. The part about the takeout food seals that impression
“For me, a lot of my meaning comes from two things. One is doing something in the world that feels like it's actually making things a little better somehow. And so contributing to society in some meaningful way.”
How dare he find meaning in things that are different from you. Congratulations on figuring out how to find fulfillment and a balanced life before the rest of us. Philip's journey toward that is clearly different from yours.
I just find it kind of worrisome that he finds meaning in work that other people are exploited for for a lack of better options. Why would a financially independent person choose to help enrich a large corporation over, say, voluntary work to help underprivileged people, animals or whatever else you can think of?
He describes exactly what things he finds meaning in:
> For me, a lot of my meaning comes from two things. One is doing something in the world that feels like it's actually making things a little better somehow. And so contributing to society in some meaningful way.
The parent is commenting on how Philip's previous (and new!) work positions apparently fulfilled those criteria in no small way, in Philip's view. They are noting that it is striking that this is the case, as from the perspective of an outsider looking in, it does not appear that a director at facebook, nor an amazon warehouse worker, fulfills the stated criteria.
But it's not just a tech bubble thing; it's more of a 6-figure yuppie thing. I knew a doctor making $500k/year in L.A. who insisted on taking vacations in disaster zones, etc., as a tourist (not with Doctors w/o Borders) so he could "experience human suffering" and "become empathetic" to his fellow men through their "shared suffering" of being in the same approximate location as people who were starving or seriously wounded.
He doesn't actually do anything with this "increased empathy." He just feels like it makes his EQ super high or something silly like that.
Yep, the guy never reflects on his privilege not needing this job. Bad on the blogger too for not prompting them on this - it could have been an interesting article..
I would encourage you to listen to the podcast, because he definitely does reflect on this, but it wasn’t the focus of my interview, because this was focused on ways in which burned out tech workers try to find meaning in their life, not an analysis of low paid jobs.
I left devops behind to go back to an IT help desk. Around a 20% paycut but I never even have to have email on my phones, no on call, no weekends, I barely have to think much. Good benefits and still above average pay for my area and I can return to grad school part time. I realized I just dont deal well with stress and it easily spills over into my personal life, my stress started effecting my spouse so I had to go.
Graduated in 07, was working middle office for a bank, economy tanked so I left to go travel in a low cost of living area (Central America) for a bit.
Came back, couldn’t find a job so worked at a grocery store for two years throwing freight.
Honestly kinda loved it. No stress besides the occasional surly coworker, but it felt very peaceful making a customer-ravaged shelf look whole again. Couldn’t afford the low wages now but at the time not sure I would have traded it for much.
Amazon's medical coverage is no UPS but it is extremely competitive against plans that union members try to tout as better. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753455 as an old discussion where the thread creator thinks their plan is a lot better "due to unions" but it's actually a lot worse.
I have a friend who works in finance at a huge bank. He makes a killing, but absolutely despises his job. His stated goal is to make enough to retire early (we're ~40 now, so soon-ish) and then work part time at a hardware store just for something to do. Pretty much for the reasons you said, meet people, low responsibility and stress, the job ends when you punch out.
I think I'd get bored pretty quick, but I do understand where you're coming from.
Often the tradeoff is not worth it (as in I've seen situations where people were working way more stressful situations for like 20%-30% pay bump), not just talking values, but if it's really high stress it better be paying enough to be able to retire in 10 years because constant stress will kill you faster than repetitive physical labor.
My parents post-retirement after not working for 10+ years both found roles at an Amazon Fulfillment Center - one at the ship dock and the other in returns. They are both in their 70s and built a nice nest for themselves, neither need it for the money. In fact, my dad was a machine learning professor, multiple publications, and they ran a small medium sized business for 20+ years (at their peak they were running 80M USD annual revenue). They both do it for the mental health and for the physical exercise. They meet a lot of people just like them, some of the workers are living in 3M+ USD homes - although most are not, it’s mostly kids that went to state schools and climb the FC ladder.
But then why enable such a shitty company actively working at eroding human dignity at work and make a billionaire asshole even richer instead if doing actual good like working at, say, a food bank or ant other charity?
I can’t speak for their intent. It has less to do with the altruism or the “mission” and more on their personal well being. My dad survived multiple cancers and after he got his strength back, he wanted to build back up his strength. It’s the structure of the system that helps him. He was telling me about their productivity KPIs, and he sees them as fitness goals - as he builds pallets per hour, etc.
My mom spent the better part of her life as the “COO” of their business, so after being retired for so long, she seeks the mental stimulation of work. They’ve never worked in a corporate office, so seeing the structure and thinking behind Amazon amazes her. They’ve always had their own warehouses, distribution centers, trucking, etc. but they built that from the ground up and never scaled because they were “learning on the job”. Never seen what good looks like.
They both keep to themselves. No one in their section know about their backgrounds.
My parents had to close their jewelry store that they ran for 35 years during the pandemic. My mom has been working the night shift at an Amazon fulfillment center and she loves it.
Working in a warehouse for 6 weeks is gruelling, and from the interview it sounds like he got a taste of that experience, but I think there's a marked difference between working for the novelty of it and working because you're living paycheck to paycheck.
Saying that though I think he's right in the sense that having experience of working in an environment like that does give you the appreciation for the relative comforts of a tech job.
I've worked retail jobs when younger, and sitting on your butt all day writing code is way easier...
I agree absolutely. One of these people can stop whenever the experience stops being fun and the other has few other options. It's about as inspiring as poverty tourism or an episode of Undercover Boss.
The other way to look at this is that Amazon actually reports injuries. My brother worked at a "mom & pop" carpet warehouse and they wouldn't report anything unless it resulted in a hospital visit i.e. broken bones, high blood loss, concussion, etc...
yeah I always found the public, but especially tech's industries interest in Amazon's warehouse conditions somewhat dubious.
Where I used to live there were tons of people who worked at normal warehouses and switched over to Amazon b/c the pay was better and things were basically the same.
Amazon gets tons of, at least somewhat deserved, heat for what they do, but compared to the truly horrific things done by something like the meatpacking industry? idk if the amount of shit they get is equal to the actual on the ground conditions.
Working for a mom and pop manual labor gig generally sucks wayyyy more than a big corporate one. (Lower pay, shittier if any benefits, longer hours, much more nepotism, no recourse for issues etc.)
When I was in a warehouse slugging cast iron and black steel all day I could barely walk by the time I got home.
Spending all day on your feet, loaded with a large mass going up and down, and wearing the least shitty boots you can afford does a number on you. I still feel it in my foot and calf to this day and it’s been years.
The old guy I worked with must have been going on 65 and slugged harder and faster than me with less bitching. He hated the company, but not the work he did. Absolute trooper.
Amazon will be the first to adopt the exo-skeleton-assist for factory/warehouse workers, which the unit is registered to you and any damage will result in a docking of your medical coverage/pay.
Qantas has for decades been one of the safest airlines. During this period, it was also the airline with some of the highest minor incident rates. I believe I read this in The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error by Sidney Dekker.
You may find it a useful thing to consult on the subject.
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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 could no longer keep doing that to my body, so I went back to school and got a CS degree.
I sometimes get depressed and miss physical work, but then I remember how shit it was and how an injury would prevent me from working. As a dev I think I'm going to be able to earn money as long as I'm alive and have a functioning brain.
I guess once you have enough money then maybe someone might find that work fun? Obviously it helped the writer with depression. However, if he ever gets permanently hurt and it affects his daily life I have a feeling depression will come back in full swing. Office work is much much safer.
There are ways to help people through tech and have much bigger affect then moving boxes for a shitty company.
Edit: What helps my depression is connecting with people outside of work, helping people in my community, doing projects around my house and spending time with my son. Additionally, I try to make good choices when spending my money and limit my spending on stuff I don't need, as I dislike excessive spending.
Edit2: Some great comments below. This is very much poverty/shit job tourism, which the writer can escape at any moment. This is some BlackMirror type of content. Guy makes it big in tech, retires, now works shit job people are trying to escape to cure his depression. He then writes about it on a blog. Now, other non-aware devs might be reading it contemplating leaving their jobs to do a REAL job.
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" fallback option: Doesn't pay as well as the hard physical labor jobs, but it's also viewed as the safe, comfortable option. Obviously, someone coming from a 20-year desk job is going to have a different perspective when thrust into a job with any physical demands.
From what I've heard (including from acquaintances who have worked there), a job at an Amazon Warehouse takes a toll on your body for sure. For sure it's hardly alone in being like that.
(The people in my extended social circle who are in jobs involving physical labor are perhaps more likely than most physical laborers to have people in their social circle who sit at desks, and to be able to access networks and resources to shift out of physical labor to make a living).
Some of us spend hours a week compensating for this. If lifting boxes and carrying them around all day long paid a fraction of the salary I have, I think I would take it in a heartbeat. It sounds delightful. You prefer to be in meetings for 6 hours a day and scramble to code in between them? And let me guess, no neck pain and daily headaches for you right ?
That being said there are other ways to do the type of career shift that the author wants. My Wife's cousin who worked as a electrician near SF mentioned to me one of his co-workers was a former sr. director at Oracle who got burned out and wanted to try something new. I asked him how they liked the new career and he said she loved it. That job payed well and didn't require the forced degradation seen at amazon warehouses, plus you get to interact with interesting people and travel to different locations frequently.
Dear everyone in this discussion: stop pretending like people working Amazon Warehouse jobs can just switch gears, and especially stop citing examples of rich, educated, privileged people doing it as "proof" it can be done.
It's pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps nonsense. These sorts of jobs are so physically demanding that you end up exhausted at the end of a shift and there's not much energy for other things unless you're pretty young....and unlike wealthy connected people, they don't have the personal/professional network.
> If I had it my way, tech workers wouldn’t take sabbaticals just to climb Machu Picchu or see Antarctica — some subset of them, the set for whom the malaise I’m describing resonates, would instead take their sabbatical at an Amazon warehouse.
Sure it is, as soon as you realize employees are replaceable commodities that get used up like break pads.
Sustainable for the individual? Obviously not. Sustainable for amazon. Of course, which is why it won't be changing.
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+run+out+employees+to+...
1. old folks getting joint replacements 2. young athletes 3. middle aged construction workers or laborers
You don't know how much work it entails. You have no idea
Actually working at AMZN is easier than a Farm. Hands down.
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.
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.
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I was thinking this too while reading it. Good for him I guess but there's sort of an eat pray love tone deafness to writing an article about the experience.
"I am not going to bill an Amazon job as some sort of upper-middle-class panacea, something you go do just like you go enroll in survivalist camps or silent retreats. The job can be dehumanizing, physically wearing if not outright painful, and mind-numbingly boring if you can’t invent little games for yourself while lifting 300 boxes an hour for eleven hours straight."
It doesn't invalidate their experience.
Something I've started trying to do more consistently when reading stuff on the web is instead of asking myself, "How can I discredit or discard this author's point?" Instead, I try to ask, "What can I take of value from their writing?"
There is always ample reason to disagree with something you read. There's an edge case the missed, an exception they overlooked, a tragedy even worse than theirs, a privilege they failed to properly check, a mistake they made in their past, etc. It's not interesting to poke holes in what you read because you can do it in almost everything. Any property that is true of all writing is essentially meaningless.
Instead, I try to seek out what is true and useful in it and just ignore the parts I don't agree with. (And I certainly try to comment on those parts less.) In this case, we have an upper-middle-class successful software person who still found themselves struggling with depression despite "winning" at all the things our culture says we're supposed to do. And this person had a real, true experience where a shitty job at Amazon dramatically improved their mental health.
That's clearly telling me something interesting about our need for structure, for work that feels grounded and tangible, and likely to spend more time using our bodies.
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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 know) with deference, assuming that their lives are truly miserable and their dignity is on the line every day they work such jobs. The expectation is that we must feel sorry for them and treat them better than other people because of it, or treat them with kid gloves.
When you adopt such a stance, the idea of someone willingly going and doing one of these terrible no good jobs does seem patronizing -- it's masochistic even, and so is viewed as suspect and "touristy". When someone does such a thing they are "disrespecting themselves" by people with this view. If anyone ever tries to provide and alternative view and tell us that most people's lives in these positions aren't so bad by going and experiencing it themselves, however partially, we heap scorn on them. "They don't know what it's really like, it's horrible what these people have to do." "They have millions of dollars in the bank so their experience can be dismissed." Etc.
I'm not offended by the piece because I don't actually think the author is trying to give a critical take about manual labour. It didn't sound like he thought critically about the experience at all besides feeling good about himself. Instead this piece reads more like somebody recommending a trip to Bali.
His experience in tech doesn't sound so charmed to me. He was obsessed with climbing the corporate ladder. He slept in the office and woke up early every morning to start grinding again. He worked so much he didn't even have time to play a game with his son.
He tried another kind of work to see how it compared, and he learned stuff. There's nothing patronizing about that.
B) in my early years I too worked my butt off in a very similar manner thinking this was The Way(tm) until I realized I was burning myself out (though if I was making Microsoft money back then I’m sure I would have accepted it) so maybe this is a rite of passage. Or maybe I’m still harboring completely unacceptable norms
It's rather hard to have empathy for someone who has it better than you. But I've found it helps to also remind yourself that the majority of people who ever lived will feel the same way about you.
The word you're looking for is : slumming
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/slum...
Because it was an option.
He treated it like poverty tourism, like a middle-class youth group "missions trip" to build huts for third-world natives.
Good on him for having an epiphany, but I'd wager that he'd have a different perspective if he had to do that job long past his soft-handed tendonitis episode in order to feed his family that he barely mentioned in his interview.
Imagine having built so small of a life for yourself and your family that in order to get a reality check, you have to check yourself in to rehab with the "common folk" in order to rescue yourself from your "depression".
It's lamentable, not commendable. It has all happened before, and it will happen again.
This is not a salvation story; it is a cautionary tale. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Having grown up adjacent to upper-middle class people (I'm arguably entering that sphere now, but I definitely didn't start there), I think a bunch of them could benefit from hearing this story from one of their peers.
Hard to explain, but I get what you mean.
Instead of moving geographically, the author moved social-economically to experience something different.
I think it's great, we crave authentic experiences on the road, this should also be something more common. If more people (on the top) do this, we'll have a lot less of those out of touch just eat cake stories.
Also, tourism is good? Getting new perspectives is good? Do you not do it? Is there anything wrong when you do it?
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 at. Instead, he was trained to respond to the approval of authority figures. So the true north of his internal compass pointed to whatever the person in charge at the time thought of him.
Fast forward to 2021:
> I think most people who dream of retirement think that it's going to be awesome. And it was—for about a month. I skied on weekdays, shopped at Target at 11am with nobody there, and played video games. But after several months of pursuing various hobbies as my whims and interests—all the things which people who aspire to retire young might look upon with envy—I felt unfulfilled. I became unmoored, set adrift in a sea of theoretical possibility only to drown in unbounded optionality. Novelty and excitement turned into a spiraling vortex of depression as I began to wake up sometimes at noon, sometimes 2pm, and on the rare occasion even getting out of bed at 6pm.
With no authority figure to send the positive vibes he craved, the author felt adrift. This is where the gig at Amazon comes in. Authority figures galore and a clear sense of what a job well done meant.
Some are chalking this up to poverty tourism. Maybe it's something else.
I also read that section and thought it unfortunate the author missed that realization as being the likely root cause. External validation seems to be a major driver of his unhappiness. There's nothing wrong with finding solace in structured work but I think if he returns to his old job he's likely to reach burn out unless he can identify this as a root cause.
I made that connection for myself as I've had a strangely similar recent experience to his, albeit without the Amazon warehouse job. I burned out, took multiple months off of work, didn't implement any lasting structures, and became depressed. But I did spend a ton of time in therapy to evaluate my mental health and what drove me to burn out. Practicing self-awareness and emotional awareness has made me more optimistic about finding routines and habits which will bring more fulfillment.
I’m going with ”yes/and.” He could have taken up martial arts.
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What more could someone possibly do to wave off the label of "tech bubble non-awareness disease," in your opinion?
There are plenty of people in tech who didn't have the traditional four years of uni -> FAANG route. They just don't blog about it.
Going from rich to working in a warehouse until you feel like leaving is not the same experience as working a warehouse because you feel like eating.
I work in tech but previously did overnight stock at Walmart so I guess that's two people.
What's the point of using this kind of hyperbole in your comment unless you wanted to make others hate people in tech?
Yes, I read the article.
Re-contextualizing into a class struggle style comment, just because he shared his experience, is not very interesting.
All blogging is narcissism if you redefine narcissism to be the most bland shade of the word's meaning.
It reads like a slap in the face
> For me, a lot of my meaning comes from two things. One is doing something in the world that feels like it's actually making things a little better somehow. And so contributing to society in some meaningful way.
The parent is commenting on how Philip's previous (and new!) work positions apparently fulfilled those criteria in no small way, in Philip's view. They are noting that it is striking that this is the case, as from the perspective of an outsider looking in, it does not appear that a director at facebook, nor an amazon warehouse worker, fulfills the stated criteria.
But it's not just a tech bubble thing; it's more of a 6-figure yuppie thing. I knew a doctor making $500k/year in L.A. who insisted on taking vacations in disaster zones, etc., as a tourist (not with Doctors w/o Borders) so he could "experience human suffering" and "become empathetic" to his fellow men through their "shared suffering" of being in the same approximate location as people who were starving or seriously wounded.
He doesn't actually do anything with this "increased empathy." He just feels like it makes his EQ super high or something silly like that.
Are you sure that is the motive?
It just doesn’t pay enough to retire off of. Can’t easily build savings. Can’t easily pay for the dentist or other emergencies
Being a lead programmer pays a ton better. I just wish I wasn’t as stressful as it is
Came back, couldn’t find a job so worked at a grocery store for two years throwing freight.
Honestly kinda loved it. No stress besides the occasional surly coworker, but it felt very peaceful making a customer-ravaged shelf look whole again. Couldn’t afford the low wages now but at the time not sure I would have traded it for much.
Work a union job, not Amazon?
UPS benefits will easily cover your medical and dental problems. (Once you qualify.) I don't know anything about Amazon's worker coverage.
- https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/employer-brand/AMZ_20...
- https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us
- https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us...
I think I'd get bored pretty quick, but I do understand where you're coming from.
My mom spent the better part of her life as the “COO” of their business, so after being retired for so long, she seeks the mental stimulation of work. They’ve never worked in a corporate office, so seeing the structure and thinking behind Amazon amazes her. They’ve always had their own warehouses, distribution centers, trucking, etc. but they built that from the ground up and never scaled because they were “learning on the job”. Never seen what good looks like.
They both keep to themselves. No one in their section know about their backgrounds.
Saying that though I think he's right in the sense that having experience of working in an environment like that does give you the appreciation for the relative comforts of a tech job.
I've worked retail jobs when younger, and sitting on your butt all day writing code is way easier...
I've read that the rate of injury at amazon jobs is incredibly high, which is not good practice in my view.
Article says amazon rate of serious injury 80% higher than competitors https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57332390Where I used to live there were tons of people who worked at normal warehouses and switched over to Amazon b/c the pay was better and things were basically the same.
Amazon gets tons of, at least somewhat deserved, heat for what they do, but compared to the truly horrific things done by something like the meatpacking industry? idk if the amount of shit they get is equal to the actual on the ground conditions.
Working for a mom and pop manual labor gig generally sucks wayyyy more than a big corporate one. (Lower pay, shittier if any benefits, longer hours, much more nepotism, no recourse for issues etc.)
EDIT: for context on the meatpacking thing.
Meatpackers will illegally import immigrants, pay them much cheaper under the table and if there's an inkling of dissent get ice to round them up and deport them. e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/29/ohio-ice...
Also meatpacking is basically a monopoly, that the feds are trying to fight.
https://missouriindependent.com/briefs/joe-biden-debuts-1-bi....
Still even if they are the same, if more than 1 in 20 workers gets a serious injury at work at any job, I think that's an issue.
Spending all day on your feet, loaded with a large mass going up and down, and wearing the least shitty boots you can afford does a number on you. I still feel it in my foot and calf to this day and it’s been years.
The old guy I worked with must have been going on 65 and slugged harder and faster than me with less bitching. He hated the company, but not the work he did. Absolute trooper.
> "I'm sorry, your exo-skeleton has already been opened for the allotted 15 minute break, it will not open again until the end of your shift"
You may find it a useful thing to consult on the subject.