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Do you guys now understand why I've said it's a sad life?

We are so "important" to mankind, yet the best we can do is to buy Noise-cancelling headphones.

Fair point, but to be honest nearly all modern work is borderline dystopic, regardless of how "important" it's deemed by society.

If you think being a programmer in BigOrg, Inc. sucks, then take a summer and work on a construction site or with a landscaping crew. Trust me, you'll yearn for that loud, open-plan office soon enough. Modern society would quickly implode without plumbers, yet actually being a plumber and crawling around under houses in rat shit is not very fun.

This doesn't work for me. It seems depressing as hell that we have to put in earplugs and pipe distracting media into our brains just to make work tolerable. How is cutting off one of our senses from our environment a solution?

Surely evidence of the declining mind share of unions.