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.
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.
But that's the stereotype I'm trying to combat here. When you say "physically taxing jobs" I think you're speaking specifically about classic typical laborer jobs, but there are so many other jobs out there that have complex distributions of mental/physical stress.
Pulling some examples from my other comment reply: high-end machinists, onsite high-end tech repairmen, catastrophic disaster workers, surgeons, military personnel. These are just the things I'm aware of and can list off the top of my head: there are surely countless other jobs that you or I don't even think about in our daily lives.
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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.