Across ~10 jobs or so, mostly as a employee of 5-100 person companies, sometimes as a consultant, sometimes as a freelancer, but always with a comfy paycheck compared to any other career, and never as taxing (mental and physical) as the physical labor I did before I was a programmer, and that some of my peers are still doing.

Of course, there is always exceptions, like programmers who need to hike to volcanos to setup sensors and what not, but generally, programmers have one of the most comfortable jobs on the planet today. If you're a programmer, I think it should come relatively easy to acknowledge this.

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SkyeCA an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Comfortable and easy, but satisfying? I don't think so. I've had jobs that were objectively worse that I enjoyed more and that were better for my mental health.

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RHSeeger an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> never as taxing (mental and physical) as the physical labor I did before I was a programmer

I find it... very strange that you think software development is less mentally taxing than physical labor.

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kalaksi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sure, it's mostly comfy and well-paid. But like with physical labor, there are jobs/projects that are easy and not as taxing, and jobs that are harder and more taxing (in this case mentally).

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embedding-shape 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, you'll end up in situations where peers/bosses/clients aren't the most pleasant, but compare that to any customer facing job, you'll quickly be able to shed those moments as countless people face those seldom situations on a daily basis. You can give it a try, work in a call center for a month, and you'll acquire more stress during that month than even the worst managed software project.

	▲	kalaksi 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		When I was younger, I worked doing sales and customer service at a mall. Mostly approaching people and trying to pitch a product. Didn't pay well, was very easy to get into and do, but I don't enjoy that kind of work (and many people don't enjoy programming and would actually hate it) and it was temporary anyway. I still feel like that was much easier, but more boring.

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etrautmann an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That sounds ideal! I used to be a field roboticist where we would program and deploy robots to Greenland and Antarctica. IMO the fieldwork helped balance the desk work pretty well and was incredibly enjoyable.