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Comment by barbariangrunge | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes miss my old job hauling around boxes. It’s great exercise and you never have to take stress home with you. Good coworkers often times too

It just doesn’t pay enough to retire off of. Can’t easily build savings. Can’t easily pay for the dentist or other emergencies

Being a lead programmer pays a ton better. I just wish I wasn’t as stressful as it is

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I left devops behind to go back to an IT help desk. Around a 20% paycut but I never even have to have email on my phones, no on call, no weekends, I barely have to think much. Good benefits and still above average pay for my area and I can return to grad school part time. I realized I just dont deal well with stress and it easily spills over into my personal life, my stress started effecting my spouse so I had to go.

Are you able to talk about what you're doing in help desk that still pays so (relatively) well? This honestly sounds like a dream to me.

Graduated in 07, was working middle office for a bank, economy tanked so I left to go travel in a low cost of living area (Central America) for a bit.

Came back, couldn’t find a job so worked at a grocery store for two years throwing freight.

Honestly kinda loved it. No stress besides the occasional surly coworker, but it felt very peaceful making a customer-ravaged shelf look whole again. Couldn’t afford the low wages now but at the time not sure I would have traded it for much.

> Can’t easily pay for the dentist or other emergencies

Work a union job, not Amazon?

UPS benefits will easily cover your medical and dental problems. (Once you qualify.) I don't know anything about Amazon's worker coverage.

From a quick Google search:

- https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/employer-brand/AMZ_20...

- https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us

- https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us...

Amazon's medical coverage is no UPS but it is extremely competitive against plans that union members try to tout as better. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26753455 as an old discussion where the thread creator thinks their plan is a lot better "due to unions" but it's actually a lot worse.

I have a friend who works in finance at a huge bank. He makes a killing, but absolutely despises his job. His stated goal is to make enough to retire early (we're ~40 now, so soon-ish) and then work part time at a hardware store just for something to do. Pretty much for the reasons you said, meet people, low responsibility and stress, the job ends when you punch out.

I think I'd get bored pretty quick, but I do understand where you're coming from.

You're getting paid for the extra stress .... markets in everything.

Often the tradeoff is not worth it (as in I've seen situations where people were working way more stressful situations for like 20%-30% pay bump), not just talking values, but if it's really high stress it better be paying enough to be able to retire in 10 years because constant stress will kill you faster than repetitive physical labor.

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