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Comment by seizethecheese | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, so you took one job and feel like that is enough of a basis for making conclusions?

- Have you tried being a commercial dishwasher? I have. That's 8 straight hours of monotonous, yet highly demanding work attention-wise. $9/hr.

- Have you been a line cook? I have. That's 8 straight hours of monotonous, physical work plus a pretty painful burn at least once a day. $10/hr.

Okay, fine I take your point that programming requires heavy dedication to skill. Have you ever worked in accounting? My fiancee works as an accountant and is constantly pushed to work over 70 hrs per week and her job is extremely demanding. (She's the only one at her company that can figure out certain processes, hence the long hours and pressure. She currently is doing the work of 4 people.) $20/ hr.

I'm sorry, but calling your $100/hr occupation as a programmer a "coal mine of its own sort" is beyond absurd, and downright foolish.

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I think you're contrasting hourly payments for a freelancer (unless OP is getting $100/hr for 40 hours/week, 48 weeks/year) and the accountant getting paid regardless of workload in a full-time role. And in a very particular environment (overworked, etc).

A freelancer, especially if they're working out of a shared office space, has overheads - rent, utilities, etc. What I bill and what I take home are very different, and even more so for my employee.

A couple of those jobs you listed would have the employees heading home and free to unwind. I run a small business and I am never free of it. The calls and the emails and the pressure and the queue of issues never stops. I envy those that go home and can throw away an evening watching a movie or TV guilt-free.

At one point while travelling, I worked as a barman in the UK earning under $10/hr. I could do one hour of freelance work in the morning and make more then than in the 10-12 hour shift I did that afternoon. But I had never been a barman before, had about 10 minutes of training before I started, and didn't really do anything particularly taxing. It was draining being on your feet all day, but it was very simple work. Almost anyone could do it and thus the wage on offer was low.

He is a programmer at $100/hr who has to tax his brain a lot in near-total isolation. The aspects of how this is bad for you may be different from those of a dishwasher or a line cook. Some therapists charge more than $100/hr for just listening to people's mental problems for an hour and suggesting new ways of thinking about stuff. But we don't see said therapists telling each other, "Oh, our jobs are so cushy and luxurious. Try being a line cook!"

Programming is monotonous, socially isolating, and probably leads to a higher risk of things like heart disease and diabetes from all the time we spend sitting around. These aspects of it shouldn't be neglected because a dishwasher or a line cook makes less money for more immediate physical risk.

"Okay, fine I take your point that programming requires heavy dedication to skill. Have you ever worked in accounting? My fiancee works as an accountant and is constantly pushed to work over 70 hrs per week and her job is extremely demanding. (She's the only one at her company that can figure out certain processes, hence the long hours and pressure. She currently is doing the work of 4 people.) $20/ hr."

This is replying to an anecdote with yet another anecdote, which I don't think is terribly helpful. As a sincere suggestion, has she tried negotiating for a raise? Seems like their reliance on her as a single point of failure should make for a good negotiating position.

> This is replying to an anecdote with yet another anecdote, which I don't think is terribly helpful.

Yes I do think this is illustrative that there are many highly skilled and heavily demanding jobs that make considerably less.

> Programming is monotonous, socially isolating, and probably leads to a higher risk of things like heart disease and diabetes from all the time we spend sitting around.

And how is this unique to programming? Sounds a lot like a call center position I once held. $12 an hour.

Seriously, nobody is arguing that programming isn't grueling, but a little perspective and respect for people who are MUCH worse off seems warranted.

> But we don't see said therapists telling each other, "Oh, our jobs are so cushy and luxurious. Try being a line cook!"

First of all : you don't know that.

Second of all : there are rigors to therapy, and every profession, that aren't obvious from the outside. The same holds true for programming.

The concept of 'works X hours on job Y so deserves Z' is totally bogus. You have to reveal how much Y is in demand, what kind of risks are involved and what kind of predictability exists in in the results doing Y.

An accountant working 70 hrs a week at $20/hr will take $1400 a week. A start up guy will take $0 if it things go sour. That is the difference. Do you wish to settle for $1400/week without risks or take a risk and make $100 million working 3-4 years? Note if things go bad for the entrepreneur(and that's the most common case) the accountant is still significantly richer than the start up guy.

If you look at it that, way the accountant is having it way easier than the start up guy. A lot of predictability in results, measurable productivity, guaranteed pay etc.

Apply that definition and you see why programming is actually "coal mine of its own sort".

You're confusing "start-up programming" with "programming," I probably that seems to be endemic on Hacker News.

He's pointing out the risk factor, a severely (and deliberately?) overlooked aspect of the "income inequality" rhetoric. Consistency of income has it's own significant non-monetary value. There's more to benefits of a job than just the paycheck, such as not worrying month-to-month whether you're going to make your mortgage/rent payment vs getting evicted. Many lower-paying jobs remain consistent regardless of whether you're sweating hard for 8 hours or watching TV for hours waiting for a customer to show up & need you for 10 seconds; that vs higher-paying jobs which are deeply connected to the actual value of every second of productivity ... everyone would like the profitability of the latter, but the assurance of income of the former can make it the better choice (given common circumstances).

Sure, but he implies that the "start-up guy" reflects "programmers" in general, and it really doesn't. There are a lot of programming careers that are as reliable as anything is in this day and age. The kind of programmer who moves to San Francisco to work 90-hour weeks for peanuts in hopes of becoming a billionaire at 25 is wildly overrepresented on Hacker News. He really doesn't represent the average code monkey just trying to put in his 40 hours and get home to his family.

I worked as a dish washer and then line cook for several years. It is true, that is way 'harder' work than programming. It was actually money (or, lack of money) and a work related injury that made me make myself a hirable coder. It's hard to say if my world view changed or if it's normal for people who do this work to become this way, but that first year was so hard that it fucked with me. Brain is different. I guess the trade off is ok though so it's cool ( not poor, homeless, in prison, or hungry :D ).

Oh and by the way, if you think working 8 hours a day as a cook or dishwasher is a lot LOL don't move anywhere where there is any job competition at all you will be instantly fired.

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