"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.