I hear you, but the negative health effects of working insane hours developing in a high stress "start-up" environment for many years should not be understated.
Last time I heard about a violence against a taxi driver they were shot in the back in a carjacking, and then the assailant was not able to bypass some interlock device to actually restart the cab. So the cab company makes it hard to actually get away with the car, but the driver is probably carrying a lot of cash.
In contrast, being software developer will probably get you heart attack, or problems with your spine, or eyes, or hands or all of the above.
You think the added risk of heart attack from software development is greater than the risk of death in construction?
You think the rate of spine, eye, or hand injuries from typing all day is greater than the risk of bodily injury in construction?
I find it difficult to find stats for this about software development, but 899 construction workers died on the job in 2014, and construction workers do get these small RSI issues in their shoulders and hands like you were describing for software development, but they are also regularly injured, but not killed, by falling, being crushed, and being cut.
I would love someone to try and complain about RSI to someone who's been a construction worker for 20 years. "But you get fresh air and exercise!" Ha! According to this source, 8.2% of construction workers have carpal tunnel: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4476336/ And CTS is generally the least of their worries!
Actual construction work == Moldy crawlspaces. Hot attics. Slippery roofs. Muddy trenches. Asbestos & fiberglass dust (yay for silicon fibrosis!). Lead paint. pneumatic paint sprayers, heavy equipment, nail guns, projection injuries, cuts/scrapes/falls/broken bones, temperature range extremes, noise (hearing loss), eye injury due to projectiles, etc. etc.
Run a belt sander for an hour. Numb hands for the next half hour. Or a jackhammer for "just" 15 minutes. makes Carpal tunnel seem tame.
Spend a year doing HVAC work bent over in crawlspaces. Or try working as a brick mason standing in a muddy ditch or climbing scaffolding with thousands of pounds of block and mortar. Or roofing. Or framing straddling a rafter. It's no health tonic.
My guess is that most desk jockeys would beg for the safety of an Aeron chair and a mouse after just one week.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of satsifaction to having a hands-on job and getting things done, being able to show actual achievements per day. However, it is TOUGH work aAnd I think all those aches and pains are the reason so many construction workers self-medicate with alcohol.
I had to help with dad's business every school break from age 13-21. Mainly renovation, a spec home, some sheds, rarely roofing. Small town stuff. I'm sure I was a terrible worker, but it was shocking and alienating that my first job out of college I made triple what my dad did. And maybe from my own children I will hear comments like these in this thread, which I think are a bit disconnected from the reality of labor.
And I guess that's fine, just don't quit programming for construction if you are trying to avoid injury. My dad is in great shape in terms of cardio and strength for 60, but he can't raise his shoulder, or move some fingers, but the overall joint pain isn't bad most days, and he thinks he's gotten off pretty lucky. If he had fallen off that scaffold slightly differently when I was 5, he might be dead.
Also, another small satisfaction is if you can get the radio tuned to a good station, and do something straightforward, like, uh, nailing a subfloor or something. You can just sort of get into a groove with good music or interesting talk and have your day fly by, whereas I mainly get nothing done with the radio on while programming.
There's a pretty significant risk of DEATH (guys falling off from scaffolding, someone accidentally driving over you with an excavator etc.), you need to be on your toes a lot of the time or you'll hurt yourself, you work in heat, in cold, in dusty or moldy environments, in noise, with chemicals. On top of that, your boss is often an asshole (there's none of the white collar world politeness). Consider that construction work can pay pretty well even to people who hardly speak the country's language and have only moderate skills - I think it's largely because it's just shit.
Roofers, on the other hand, have extremely high risk of severe injury and death. Those guys are nuts! If I was in charge of OSHA regulations for roofers I'd make sure that no one was allowed to get on to a roof without being attached to some kind of harness that would catch them if they fell. Or surround the home with airbags or something. It seems far too easy to slip, trip, or just plain ol' fall in that job.
I've personally witnessed a young man (roofer) fall from a roof once (on to a big pile of bricks). I found out later that he wound up paralyzed.
Electricians and plumbers are also relatively low risk depending on the work they do. You'd think working with high-voltage electricity would be higher risk than it is but with modern (insulated) tools and training it's quite safe.
Being an asshole has very little to do with crude language.
There's plenty of programming/IT jobs that aren't in start-ups.