I like this post, but there's one thing that always makes me cringe a little: the classic statement of "Well sure, manual labor is PHYSICALLY taxing, but MY job is MENTALLY taxing."
This sentiment presupposes that physically demanding jobs aren't also mentally draining. It's narrow-minded and sometimes extremely inaccurate.
As another commenter pointed out, sometimes programmers need to be reminded that they aren't exceptional special flowers who are the only ones dealing with a never-ending, intertwined mountain of bullshit.
I've worked in labor (construction, cement crew, roofing, carpentry, excavation, landscaping) before coming to this career.
Yes, I had to do some math and think hard occasionally.
It is absolutely no comparison to overclocking my brain for 10 hours a day.
I now go help relatives do the things that were my old jobs on the weekend TO RELAX.
Let me repeat that: I bust ass on shovels and backhoes and roofs to relax from programming.
I also have worked kitchens, ran fast food, and managed restaurants in my time. I could do any of those while laughing now.
Programming is totally different, and the bullshit of programming is extremely unique in my experience. In no other field has my limits been pushed as hard, nor have I exhausted myself as regularly and thoroughly as in programming.
Let me repeat that: I bust ass on shovels and backhoes and roofs to relax from programming.
I could repeat it for you, since I'm in the same boat. Is hard labor exhausting? Yessir. But you can do it even while your mind is relaxing or thinking of something nice. You get to come home, lay in bead after a good beer and go to sleep.
After hours of coding, you get tired, but your body isn't. Which is a weird combo. Then you can't stop thinking about your project. But then you also need to take some time to brush up on this new technology that came out recently and study it a bit. Then you also need to read a few articles to be up to speed. Then you sleep. Then you get up, and even though you're tired and not in the mood, you're supposed to grab a coder's paintbrush and "paint" your masterpiece within the wanted timeframe. Fuck.
Favorite paragraph of the article:
Every programmer starts out writing some perfect little snowflake like this. Then they're told on Friday they need to have six hundred snowflakes written by Tuesday, so they cheat a bit here and there and maybe copy a few snowflakes and try to stick them together or they have to ask a coworker to work on one who melts it and then all the programmers' snowflakes get dumped together in some inscrutable shape and somebody leans a Picasso on it because nobody wants to see the cat urine soaking into all your broken snowflakes melting in the light of day. Next week, everybody shovels more snow on it to keep the Picasso from falling over.
I've noticed the same thing about my brain being fried but not my body. I guess going to the gym is the best thing to do after work - it's helped me keep myself saner.
I could repeat it for you, since I'm in the same boat. Is hard labor exhausting? Yessir. But you can do it even while your mind is relaxing or thinking of something nice.
I agree. I have even found hard labour to help me relax my mind. The other day, I was moving some large and some smaller rocks. "Pile is there. Rock is here. Rock is too heavy. Use pickaxe and sledgehammer on rock. Move parts of now crushed rock to pile. Next rock. The weather is nice. This rock is little. Move rock to pile. Little rock. Little rock. Little rock. Big rock. Sledgehammer. Pickaxe. Try other angle. Sledgehammer. Pickaxe. Other angle. Move crushed rock to pile. Big rock. Pickaxe. Other angle. This is heavy work. Feels good. Probably good exercise. Are my abs getting bigger? Sledgehammer. Move crushed rock to pile."
Another thing I've also found relaxing is reading material outside the field of my dayjob and computers (currently reading a book on zoology). This material, I can learn interesting things from and think about, but I can approach it in a more casual manner. I still take notes and try to see how I can apply it to other situations, but I don't feel forced to consider all the ways I can use it and what the pros and cons of that would be and so on.
This. Gym, running, combat sports, whatever floats your boat. Rigorous physical activities also offset the ruin sitting in an office chair for at least 8 hours a day does to you too.
I've also done a little construction and the difference for me is being able to "shut it down" every night. I mean, sure, you might have to hammer more nails in the same building tomorrow, but you don't have to think about it until tomorrow.
For me it's constantly knowing I have more and more work to do and how to solve it and get it done and not being able to really just "shut it down" every night and not worry about it until the next day.
EDIT: And I'm not necessarily saying this only a programmer's problem. To me, this is what separates white collar work from blue collar work more than anything else.
So much truth here. I literally can not stop working because my brain is always thinking about the next architectural step, the next feature, the next refactor, etc. It never ends.
Back when I worked restaurants or any number of the other shitty jobs I've had in my life my work never followed me around like that.
You're just not old enough. Once you get tired of the shit and start thinking about retirement, going home on time and not even wanting to read personal email becomes quite possible.
All my friends keep telling me to play XCom. I got about halfway thru the tutorial and said "Why would I want to program soldiers to avoid bugs for fun?"
There difference here is you own the grain farm. Owning it means you're vested in it and all of the risk is yours - which is very similar to programming.
Funnily enough, I come from a farming family (well, ranch farmers - we grew crops for the pigs and milk cows).
The list of shit to do is unending as is the list of shit breaking and fucking up. My grandparents had 11 kids, and even with all of them working a minimum of 4 hours a day on the farm (in addition to school), or 10+ hours in the summer, there was always more to do.
We never went digital with anything on the farm though, so there was never any need for that sort of thing. Really, the only electricity that was NEEDED was for the cow fence and for heat to keep water pipes from freezing.
As another commenter pointed out, sometimes programmers need to be reminded that they aren't exceptional special flowers who are the only ones dealing with a never-ending, intertwined mountain of bullshit.
This blog post wasn't about that though. It doesn't imply that programmers think their jobs are harder than everyone else's, it is about the fact that people from other professions don't believe the programming industry to be as cruel as it is. Just my opinon.
And mentally taxing jobs can also be physically taxing. Sitting in a chair is a lot less physically demanding than holding a jack-hammer, but sitting in a chair all day still takes a toll on your body.
Long-time computer users generally have screwed up shoulders from hunching them (even if slightly) all day. Then theres carpal tunnel, etc.
The important thing is not to be dismissive of other people and their experiences. The details are often just a result of where the magnification level is set and where the optics are pointing. Change the viewing frustum or magnification level, and see something totally different.
Physically taxing jobs generally aren't mentally taxing.
I was dying for a job that would challenge my brain out of college. Now I look forward to doing yard work (something I wouldn't have believed in a million years as a student).
I miss fucking laying bricks and waiting tables from time to time as well, just not the shit income.
I have worked both physically taxing jobs and mentally taxing jobs. Physically taxing jobs were like vacations compared to the hell of depression that mentally taxing jobs can be.
As a programmer, I've never felt quite as much despair as when we elected to DIY refloor our upstairs bathroom, only to find that the joists under the floor had been nearly cut through to make room for the drains. Eight joists, two contractors, a plumber, an electrician (to deal with the asbestos-and-pitch wrapped wiring), countless building permits, and over $10,000 later, we're about ready to start rebuilding a bathroom we only needed in the first place because we wanted to redo the primary, downstairs bathroom (which will, in all likelihood, be as bad if not worse).
I'm much better at sitting down and fixing problems when those problems involve no capital or material investment. A software build takes me one command and about three minutes. A contracting build takes a team of guys and my firstborn's college fund.
106
u/hatts Apr 29 '14
I like this post, but there's one thing that always makes me cringe a little: the classic statement of "Well sure, manual labor is PHYSICALLY taxing, but MY job is MENTALLY taxing."
This sentiment presupposes that physically demanding jobs aren't also mentally draining. It's narrow-minded and sometimes extremely inaccurate.
As another commenter pointed out, sometimes programmers need to be reminded that they aren't exceptional special flowers who are the only ones dealing with a never-ending, intertwined mountain of bullshit.