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Comment by allsystemsgo | Hacker News Reader

You could look at working remotely. You could still stay in tech but also live a healthy lifestyle.

Working remotely doesn't change either the amount of work you're expected to do or the fact that it has to be done at a computer, which basically has to be a sedentary activity.

I feel I'm a little less sedentary when working remotely. I find it easier to take a 15 min break to walk around, do my laundry, lie on the couch to read. At the office, I'm more often sitting at my desk for long period of times.

I know plenty of people that jog/hit the gym during lunch or what have you. I run almost daily after work.

If your work is busting your ass so hard you feel it's literally impossible to move at any point during the day, get a new job. That's not SV as a whole.

True, but few people would argue watching TV for 6 hours every day is part of a healthy, active lifestyle. Physically, that's about the same as writing software.

Consuming vs. producing, even if sitting still, is different physiologically.

Do you have some evidence to back that up?

Its just an intuitive hypothesis. And point to note is that ever since we started doing agriculture, and that was around 20,000 years ago. We started to have more idle time for creating tools and arts, in general more sedentary than hunting/gathering. Even the works of mathematicians since several centuries ago, I can imagine, would have implied being sedentary while they worked. So software is just the latest in that chain of things since we started doing agriculture.

Certainly, we can start with the neurological effect of watching TV.

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/5jcl/5JCL59.htm

Standing desk? I mean there may be easier paths the health than leaving the industry.

Every industry has its own health hazards -- we're just now learning what they are for the computing industry. If these issues are as widespread as the article implies, it's something that needs to be attacked on a company- or industry-wide scale instead of by individuals trying to hack their way around the system.

As an individual, on the other hand, leaving the industry until they get their act together could be the best course if your circumstances allow it. Altering your own work practices and lobbying your company to pay more attention to these issues are also worth considering.

That really depends on how detrimental the effects actually are and if "altering your work practices" can negate the effect then we probably shouldn't be quitting our jobs.

Latest data says that standing desks don't improve health by all that much. It's movement that counts.

Great iteration. I would argue that moving requires a lot more will power and induces more decision fatigue than just standing.

I don't think a treadmill as a desk is a great solution.

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