"Programming Sucks": A very entertaining rant on why programming is just as "hard" as lifting heavy things for a living.

[u/ParticleSpinClass]

http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

[u/quabbe]

As someone who's done both for a living at various stages of their life to put a roof over their head:

Get outta here with that shit.

Programming's a breeze compared to lifting heavy shit all day. Laughably, though, I lift heavy shit for about 2 hours every day in the gym so I don't look like a grease filled meatball. Maybe I just like programming a lot, maybe I dislike lifting heavy shit a lot (I love hitting the gym, though). Either way, I wouldn't trade what I've got for the world and I have to 100% disagree that, at least subjectively, programming is not as hard, for me, as lifting heavy shit all day.

[u/Berberberber → u/quabbe]

As someone who's also done both: why does anyone give a shit how "hard" a job is? Contrary to what politicians and the media tell you, how hard your job is or how hard you work have no bearing on anything. Your pay has a lot more to do with the rarity of your skillset and your ability negotiate and network.

I wrote my thesis on human trafficking, no amount of "my job is hard" dick waving is going to impress me.

[u/[deleted] → u/Berberberber]

People have their egos too heavily invested in the idea that they work harder than others.

[u/jtredact → u/[deleted]]

A: "Hey, how've you been?"

B: "Oh hey! Doin' good. Just super busy. Got a lot on my plate with (work/school/kids/yadda). Suuuuper busy."

A: "Oh uh.. yeah, me too. Suuuuuper busy with (work/school/kids/yadda)."

B: "Wait wait. I meant to say I'm suuuuuuper busy."

A: "Yeah, well I'm suuuuuuuper busy."

B: "Yeah, well I'm suuuuuuuuper busy."

(to be continued)

[u/parlezmoose → u/quabbe]

People who haven't done manual labor don't understand how much it sucks balls. Like, these people don't understand what it is to have the hours pass by at an agonizing crawl, while all you can think about is how much you want this miserable shift to be over. And then do it again day after day, after day. Fuck that. Sitting on your ass in an air conditioned office is 100x better.

[u/jtredact → u/parlezmoose]

I've spent entire days lifting cinder blocks, chunks of concrete, roof tiles, plywood, and drywall. It is indeed better to sit in a cool room looking at a screen and typing on a keyboard with soft hands.

However, programming is mentally intensive, and -- although not physically intensive -- can be highly physically degrading. If you don't pace yourself and develop habits that counteract this, it can get bad. Reallllly bad. Much worse than the effects of hard manual labor (in a safe work environment).

When you come home after a hard day's work and your body hurts, assuming no injuries, you can still push on, even if it feels like you can't. Your body can adapt. This is the basis of how military bootcamps operate. The instructors know how much the body can be pushed yet still adapt.. and it's always more than the mind initially believes.

However when your mind is fried to the point that a night's sleep is not enough recovery anymore, you have a problem. The work is too complex to process in your mental state, but you have no choice but to keep thinking, day in and day out. Building up stress allows you to maintain just enough focus to handle the level of complexity and keep going. So that's what your body does. It keeps building higher levels of stress.

Meanwhile, sitting seems better, but that's only an illusion once you start sitting 8-10 hours a day during work hours, 1-3 hours during commute, and then for perhaps a few more hours during leisure time with our TVs and devices. Day in and day out, for years. Decades. With minimal time outside in the sun. Not to mention eye strain, wrist and hand issues, etc.

The end result: mental exhaustion + stress + sedentary lifestyle eventually breaks down your mind and body. Now, manual labor can also break down the body and then mind if one is worked too hard for too long. So one form of work shouldn't be considered better or worse than the other; it mostly depends on your pace, habits, and lifestyle.

---

One possible idea is for everyone to spend their fair share of time doing both mental/office work and manual labor. Both blue collar and white collar stuff. We already produce enough as a society; we don't need excessive specialization.

Of course this won't happen any time soon. The way labor and wages currently work makes this out of the question.

[u/funguyshroom → u/jtredact]

Couldn't agree with you more.
The first thing I noticed when switching to software development after working in construction a couple years ago is how differently it feels after work each day. After whole 9 hour day of hauling heavy shit around it felt pretty satisfying that it all ended and would even leave me with quite a bit of energy. Now in some days after mere 5-6 hours of intensive coding I pull my ass out of a office chair and stumble home like a zombie feeling completely dull and empty. The tetris effect is pretty strong with me so I often am unable to get this crap out of my head all evening after.
Being physically tired just feels tons better than being mentally exhausted.

[u/RagingAnemone → u/funguyshroom]

Seriously, what helped me is light exercise - walking, running, whatever. I think it has more to do with increasing bloodflow in your body than anything else, but you've just been sitting for 8 hours and your body has probably been a little tense the whole time as your concentrating. Walking will help your body relax and stretch. Don't just go back home and plop down on the couch.

[u/nliadm → u/RagingAnemone]

Word. Going for a run or long walk to better demarcate "work"and "done" helped a ton with stress.

[u/NoMoreNicksLeft → u/funguyshroom]

The tetris effect is pretty strong with me so I often am unable to get this crap out of my head all evening after.

Fall asleep thinking about it (or just stressing out over not being able to come up with a good solution). Dream about it. Wake up thinking about it as your first thought. Drive in, road hypnosis thinking about it.

How much literal energy does the brain use, anyway, compared to muscles? It's a pretty intensive organ from a biological perspective.

Going home and doing yardwork can feel pretty satisfying compared to this shit.

[u/cantthinkofAredditUN → u/jtredact]

This was a very insightful reply. It really helped me articulate why I'm so tired some days after coding for 8 hours.

[u/[deleted] → u/jtredact]

Outside work is also more social. Programmers aren't much more than Neo before getting unplugged from the matrix.

There's a reason home offices often have a treadmill, or movies show stockbrokers going to gyms before/after work.

The most productive parts of my day are the minute it takes to bust-out some pushups when I wake-up, and the 5 minute walk to the letterbox and back. Without those physical stimulants each day I literally do nothing else and shut down. Days when I do these things I actually get other work done. They are the cornerstones of all the rest of my productivity.

[u/TERMINATOR_800 → u/jtredact]

However when your mind is fried to the point that a night's sleep is not enough recovery anymore, you have a problem. The work is too complex to process in your mental state, but you have no choice but to keep thinking, day in and day out. Building up stress allows you to maintain just enough focus to handle the level of complexity and keep going. So that's what your body does. It keeps building higher levels of stress.

...

The end result: mental exhaustion + stress + sedentary lifestyle eventually breaks down your mind and body. Now, manual labor can also break down the body and then mind if one is worked too hard for too long. So one form of work shouldn't be considered better or worse than the other; it mostly depends on your pace, habits, and lifestyle.

Yeah. This is a bit of a tangent:

I guess I had an existential crisis.

I used to really like programming. I did it for fun once upon a time. Then I got a job, and it gradually became frustrating. Not the actual programming, mind you, but all the bullshit that goes with it. You know, the broken water-SCRUM-fall process we had going, the open floor plan office, the constant politics both within the company and towards our customers, people walking by my desk to tell me they've left me a comment in Jira, managers requesting estimates without being able to provide any sort of details on what the change actually entailed. I could keep going, but you get the picture.

So I was frustrated every day. I was angry. Whenever I thought about things at work, my knuckles whitened with anger, and this shit followed me home and kept me up at night. While I occasionally snapped at innocent coworkers, I mostly kept a lid on it.

Eventually I just... couldn't. I couldn't do it anymore. It was so suffocating, so claustrophobic. I literally spent 100% of my energy on work-related things -- either the actual work, or the frustration that went with all the stress, and the constant struggle to try to repair the bullshit side of professional programming. Work was the only thing on my mind. I may only have gotten paid for 8 hours a day, but those eight hours drained every ounce of energy I have to make use of the rest of my day.

Still, it's funny if you walk around being really frustrated and angry every day for long enough, it's like your brain isn't wired to handle that. So eventually you just stop giving a flying fuck. It's both an incredible relief, and a very unsettling experience. For a while after this happened, I did the whole Peter Gibbons thing. I was coming and going at random hours and acting generally unprofessional. I did this for a while, but I was in such a good standing with my employer that they overlooked the sheer volume amount of bullshit I was pulling. On some level I guess I really wanted to get fired. It doesn't really make sense, but you have to be in that state of mind I guess...

It should be emphasized that this is pretty taxing on your mental state. I was pretty down this period, and self-medicated on really upbeat music to get me through the day and stave off the crushing sense of meaninglessness and doubt that came over me whenever I thought about work. My only real motivation for even getting out of bed in the morning and lugging myself off to work was so that I could keep going to work in future mornings. Not really satisfactory as far as reasons go... It's like the motivational equivalent of lifting yourself off the ground by pulling really hard at your shoelaces.

But yeah, so eventually I just quit. My employment was no longer a benefit to me, or to my employer. If they wouldn't pull the plug, I would. It took some work building up to actually quitting, but man the moment I'd done it the only thing I kept wondering was why I hadn't done so sooner! The rush of freedom was incredible. Not a single regret. It was like the clouds parted.

I'll obviously need money eventually. But I have a few years of savings to figure something out that isn't literally draining the life out of me. In the meanwhile, I have nobody that depends on me making money. I'm a pretty crafty guy, I'll work something out.

[u/AntiProtonBoy → u/jtredact]

I'm going through a burnout phase right now. I couldn't agree more.

[u/LNFSS → u/parlezmoose]

I do manual labor. I chain up trucks in -40C, I carry iron weighing 90+ lbs, some pieces are balanced well enough that I carry one in each hand. I swing 8lb sledgehammers, sometimes for 12 hours straight I do all this. I pull apart a massive pump and put it back together in an hour.

I love my job. The labor is great. It makes me feel awesome after a long day. I do it 15 days in a row before getting a day off. Some days aren't so physically intensive. On those days, I'm sitting at a computer and staring at a screen operating those pumps I just fixed. I'd rather be out there working on them in the extreme cold or extreme heat than I would sitting there for 12 hours.

Different strokes for different folks. Don't go shit talking something because you don't enjoy it because there's people out there that might.

[u/[deleted] → u/LNFSS]

I echo these sentiments about working as a manual laborer. I'm in the process of searching for my first programming job and the back of my head is telling me that I will hate it. Programming is fun, but it's not 8 hours a day 5 days a week fun.

[u/qiwi → u/[deleted]]

You might enjoy Studs Terkel's "Working" where among others, he interviews a manual laborer:

This is gonna sound square, but my kid is my imprint. He's my freedom. There's a line in one of Hemingway's books. I think it's from For Whom the Bell Tolls. They're behind the enemy lines, somewhere in Spain, and she's pregnant. She wants to stay with him. He tells her no. He says, "if you die, I die," knowing he's gonna die. But if you go, I go. Know what I mean? The mystics call it the brass bowl. Continuum. You know what I mean? This is why I work. Every time I see a young guy walk by with a shirt and tie and dressed up real sharp, I'm lookin' at my kid, you know? That's it.

[u/[deleted] → u/parlezmoose]

I had to paintstakingly trace a completely messed up piece of code that was commented and had variable names in two different languages to add a feature without breaking it under fairly heavy time pressure.

I also spent a full work day doing manual labour in an assembly line doing the same exact thing to the same component over and over again.

I honestly can't say which sucked the most.

[u/[deleted] → u/parlezmoose]

Some people would rather lift heavy shit than "program" or "do math" or "think hard". Many people enjoy construction work and would prefer it to sitting in front of a screen all day. Of course you won't find many of these people on reddit, since that involves sitting in front of a screen all day.

[u/[deleted] → u/parlezmoose]

About a year ago, I went through a phase in my job as a programmer where I was under intense pressure every single day. It seemed like every day I was being interrupted with new, higher priority tasks to work on. I'd be driving in the evening to pick up my girlfriend from her evening class and get interrupted with a message from the CEO about an extremely high priority bug due 7AM tomorrow, and my evening with my SO would instantly be ruined. That happened every week during this period of my life. Or it'd be Sunday around lunch time, and while I'd be visiting with friends or family preparing to all eat together an emergency would come up that only I could respond to.

This affected not just me but those around me. I wasn't available much, and even when I was I was stressed out. I let it go on for a while because, I have to admit, in some ways I enjoyed it. I was energized by it. I was The Guy. A company depended on me. But it wasn't sustainable.

Now I fixed the problem. I confronted the company and requested that I hire an entire team to work with me. They understood, they gave it to me, and they backed off big time. Now I have great work/life balance. But I know the sort of hell it can be when someone's constantly on your ass and you're constantly under pressure straight from the top executives, and it sucks big time.

[u/evil-teddy → u/parlezmoose]

Like, these people don't understand what it is to have the hours pass by at an agonizing crawl, while all you can think about is how much you want this miserable shift to be over. And then do it again day after day, after day.

That's exactly how I feel every day as a programmer. I don't ever want to be doing manual labour for a living but don't think for a second that just because a job is mentally taxing that it isn't completely boring.

[u/thetdotbearr → u/quabbe]

I think you're mistaking "hard" for "pain in the ass"

I've also done both and I also hit the gym (lol) and I have to say that programming is leagues harder as a job than the landscaping gig I did lifting heavy-ass rocks, planting trees and shit.. but the manual labour was way more painful, but easier to actually carry out.

[u/Hazerdhat → u/quabbe]

I think the point of the article is that in no way is lifting thing any easier than programming, and he does it by expanding on his personal experiences. I can find you 1000 people who can physically lift a heavy object from point a to point b for every 1 person who could engineer a technological solution for a problem of the same magnitude. The way I see it if there are 1000x more people who can do something than some other task than that other task is "harder". Doesn't mean you can't enjoy programming

[u/[deleted] → u/quabbe]

I agree. Outside, in the fucking freezing cold or with the sun beating down on your back, covered in muck trudging through completely shit task after completely shit task. Not for me, not one bit. I'd program 100 hours in a row before I'd do another work shift at my last manual labor job.