
The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees - fahd777
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/workplace-killing-people-nobody-cares
======
osrec
Work has become a strange thing. I see people foregoing their best years stuck
in an office, in the hope they can enjoy their later years. What utter
nonsense. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but society has got something
very wrong, as our work culture seems to surgically remove the wonder and
enjoyment from our days. Hardly surprising that it drives people to ill
health. Glad I broke out of that cycle a long time ago and quit my corporate
job. The job was torture, quitting was scary and bumpy, but looking back it
was an excellent decision.

~~~
DeusExMachina
I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia
and only now we have to work.

For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might
be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil
all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live.

It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating,
electricity, technology and a sea of information at our fingertips. These
things all exist and keep functioning because people work.

And yet some think that "society has gone wrong", as if the past was paradise.

Work has been a human universal through history. There is surely an argument
to be made about the fact that now we are so productive that we might not need
to work as much as we had to.

At the same time I think we should be grateful that we live in the best life
conditions ever seen by humanity.

~~~
JDiculous
This is actually false. The average American worker today works more hours per
year than a 14th century peasant ([http://blogs.reuters.com/great-
debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie...](http://blogs.reuters.com/great-
debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you/)).
Hunter-gatherers only worked 2-3 hours per day.

Despite technology allowing us to work less, we work more. Yes we should be
grateful of technological advancement, but too many people are unnecessarily
depressed and suicidal, and it doesn't have to be this way.

~~~
terryf
I work my ass off. Lot more hours than would be technically necessary. High
tech as well.

I've also gone hiking in the mountains in California. Been on the beach in
Italy. Walked around in the center of Munich.

As a 14th century peasant I probably never even knew those places existed.

I can also get pain medication if I have a headache. I can go to a doctor to
fix my broken bones if I happen to get one. Oh, and the likelihood of dying of
a random infection or chicken pox is exceedingly low.

Is is worth spending more time in a nice, warm, comfortable office to be able
to do all of those things? Hell yes. Is it all shits and giggles all the time?
Of course not.

~~~
andrepd
But that is a false dichotomy. Your working long hours in an office in no way
helps or correlates with the ability of being able to travel, or to have
headache medication.

~~~
terryf
Technically, you're probably right.

Realistically I also like to live in a nice house, do have to (well, by choice
obviously) take care of three kids and like to enjoy a luxury here and there.

That takes money. I have tried multiple times to build my own companies, but
sadly haven't been successful in that.

So that's for the travel argument.

As for the headache medication argument - I have that only because thousands
of people have spent a lot of time in offices and labs developing those drugs
and treatments.

Personally, my work mostly revolves around making wind turbines more efficient
at producing energy by helping with data analysis. I also like to think that's
my small way of offsetting the environmental damage I do by travelling. It's
probably not enough, but still. something. So yeah, I'd say spending time at
the office correlates quite nicely.

~~~
ace_of_spades
If you care about offsetting environmental costs of travelling, etc. consider
donating to coolearth.org! About 70$ can offset an average carbon footprint
for a whole year I think... It‘s one of the most effective charities against
climate change and comes recommended by people such as Will MacAskill and
Peter Singer who have founded a movement concerned with effective charity or
„doing good better“. [https://www.effectivealtruism.org/doing-good-
better/](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/doing-good-better/)

~~~
krageon
It's kind of sad to realise reading a comment like this now makes me instantly
suspicious about whether or not this is "true" enthusiasm or something
motivated by profit. It's a fundamentally hard problem to solve, but IMO it is
one of the bigger hurdles facing places like this now.

~~~
p1esk
Even when you're not doubting the recommendation enthusiasm, it's hard to not
be suspicious of the charity itself, given how badly most of them are managed.

------
remar
I've had the chance to see the toll that a stressful environment (big tech
company) can have on physical and mental health - I've experienced it
personally and noticed it in others that I work with.

The part about a big tech company being a stressful environment isn't the
thing that surprised me, but rather people's responses to how they react to
either being on the receiving side of the stress, and management's failure to
respond to this or even try to talk about it.

The thing that bugs me the most about the entire situation is that most of the
stress that seems to exist, mostly exists because of people who have no idea
what they're doing, make decisions they have no business making. Then you have
engineers that either come from cultures that are high in agreeableness, or
they've never been very assertive themselves and just accept these decisions,
thinking it's a situation of "if I don't do this I'm going to get fired".

Most of the people I work with don't even consider the option of just taking
an extended period of time off to prevent being burned out because they're
basically tied to their employment due to work visas (you guessed it, Indian
and Chinese workers) and a lot of them are trying to support family back home.
So even leaving their job and taking extended time off isn't a viable option.

Don't even get me started on how I've seen people's physical and mental health
completely deteriorate. I know lots of people in my organization that are
extremely depressed and wouldn't even be the least bit surprised if I heard
they ate a bullet tomorrow.

This whole industry has just motivated me to work to achieve financial
independence/early retirement as soon as I can just so I never have to think
about working with incompetent people in my life again, or at least, have the
financial freedom to cut those relationships once they do arise. It sucks
because I know I'll be working on tech related projects for the rest of my
life, but I have to ignore the desire to work on things that will actually
make a difference so that I can build up that nest egg to have the financial
freedom and peace of mind to actually pursue it.

~~~
oceanghost
At some point, you have to admit that the stress is intentional. That it is a
part of a misguided strategy to extract maximum value from employees, while
minimizing managements political exposure.

~~~
mancerayder
I think you nailed a large part of it, in this modest short paragraph. It's a
little strong to say that it's ALWAYS intentional -- but frequently management
has a very high emotional IQ and they're not oblivious to the effects of top-
down policies.

If anything what was once intention for one person, turns into
style/culture/rationalizations for many others. Let me try to turn the
abstraction into an example. Have you ever heard a manager say about someone
who works very very hard, "(S)he is passionate about technology"? My favorite
one in the world is, "This is a startup, what do you expect." "This is a
startup, if you want a 9 to 5 this is not the place for you."

As an older but still young enough (I hope) techie, I've learned to see that
the platitudes and promises, the myth about changing the world or bullying
about working hard (because what you describe reminds me of bullying) affects
YOUNG PEOPLE the most.

And those young people, maybe a small percentage will make a lot of money at a
young age. I know a few and I'm not even in Silicon Valley. Many others will
piss their 20's away working long hours and drown their livers with company-
sponsored drinks.

------
retrac98
I’ve always found it very effective to use a “just say no” policy to out of
hours work or more work than I can handle comfortably.

People stop taking advantage when you stop letting them. More than you might
expect actually respect it. I don’t think this way of working has hurt my
career progression, and it’s certainly done wonders for my mental health.

~~~
ghettoimp
Yep yep yep.

I've had to fight numerous battles with my boss, along the lines of, "I don't
care who scheduled the meeting, I already have plans tonight, and it's not
reasonable to make me change them with no notice."

This mentality has turned out to be (a) well worth it for my marriage, and (b)
not actually a big deal in the scheme of things.

~~~
mrguyorama
>" I already have plans tonight, and it's not reasonable to make me change
them with no notice."

I find the fact that you even feel you need to include this part disgusting.
I'm paid for 40 hours a week. You are not required to pay me overtime. You do
not get a second extra of my time

~~~
ghettoimp
Well, yes.

I am salaried, and they do pay me well, so I'm willing to work more than 40
hours from time to time, when schedules are tight.

I think that for me, my criteria for being OK with more-than-40 are probably
something like: (0) it had better not be _that_ much more than 40, (1) it had
better not be an exception, not the rule, and (2) it had better be something I
can plan for, so I'm not jerking around my family/friends.

~~~
CaptSpify
Additionally, if the company gives you other perks, it's often worth it.

If I can generally set my own hours, and you give me a ton of vacation time,
pay me well, and give me other good incentives just for working there, I'm
_much_ more likely to put in a few extra hours every now and then if something
comes up.

------
JDiculous
Having a boring office job is really depressing, and it's a shame that you're
not allowed to complain about it because there are people in third world
countries worse off. Rather than comparing ourselves to impoverished
countries, we should take the lead in using our technological advancement to
create more humane societies that don't tie people to jobs they hate living
paycheck to paycheck.

Europe certainly has a better model here than the US (more vacation,
unemployment benefits), but there's room for improvement (eg. basic income).

Personally I left my office job in NYC about 4 months ago and have been
traveling for the last 2 months (in South America). Being here and meeting
other travelers (especially European), digital nomads, etc. has really made me
realize how toxic American rat race work culture is. One Colombian I met who
spent time living in the U.S. summed it up the best - Americans only seem to
think about money.

Now I know some of you will say "but Colombia is poorer than us!" That may be
the case, but it doesn't dispute the fact that our culture has become toxic -
money/work obsessed, 2 weeks/year vacation, usurious amounts of student loan
debt, etc.

If you need an example of a country with a bit more sense - I met a 28 year
old Finnish guy here in Colombia in the middle of a multi-month vacation. His
job back in Finland? Working in the deli section of a supermarket selling
sausages. Completely blew my mind. If he were born in America and in the same
occupation, he would probably not have the time or money for a 2 month
international vacation. I've got friends the same age in professional
occupations (eg. economist for the government) forgoing vacations until they
pay back their 6-8% interest student loans. Europe in general has a much
healthier attitude when it comes to work/life balance than America. Though on
the bright side, at least we have it better than Asia (minus the student loan
and healthcare part).

~~~
gfarah
As a Colombian myself who studied and worked in the US in the past, I can
confirm how the focus on money as the principal mean of finding happiness is
specially strong in American culture. This distinction I believe, makes it
very hard for people in the US when things don't work out the way they wanted.

------
jasonkester
There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get _away_ from work in an
age of 4g connectivity everywhere.

I'm doing a bit of consulting with a startup at the moment, and one of our
team members recently disappeared off on vacation. Good for him, I thought.
Two days later, he popped back up on the company slack, working away from his
tropical beach.

To be clear, this is not a case of digital nomadding. This is 10 days of
vacation time that they somehow guilted him into throwing away after he had
actually flown halfway around the world.

20 years ago, there was an expectation that when you left the office, you were
unreachable except in an emergency. I don't see any hint of that expectation
anymore. It's a combination of employers with serious boundary issues, and
empoloyees fearing the ramifications of pushing back.

You really need to stand up for yourself these days. But at least I've found
that if you do so, it generally works.

~~~
mieseratte
> There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an
> age of 4g connectivity everywhere.

You can. Get rid of your phone. Most of us don't have a job that actually
requires a phone, and it's really as matter of your work willing to take
advantage of the fact that most of you won't push back when pressed. You can
take advantage of the fact that they won't pay for you to carry a phone.

I finally got rid of my phone about a month ago. Started off deleting all the
apps, stopped carrying it. Finally, took a roofing hammer and smashed it to
bits. I may purchase a pay-as-you-go "brick" and leave it in the trunk of my
car for emergencies, but otherwise I will never have an internet connected
device that I carry on me at all times. It's needless for most of us.

You can talk about how convenient it is to have things like Maps at all times,
and to be sure that is convenient. Just requires a little forethought and
planning. Don't give into the FOMO, smash your phone.

~~~
shoo
Well done.

Perhaps a middle ground is having a dedicated work phone, and then turning
that off when you are not on the clock and not rostered to be on call.

~~~
mikelward
Android Work Profile can help with this. You can turn off the work profile,
which completely disables your work account, apps, and notifications.

[https://support.google.com/work/android/answer/7029561?hl=en](https://support.google.com/work/android/answer/7029561?hl=en)

------
someone7x
> I see a workplace that has become shockingly inhumane.

A thousand times this. Very few of the lessons my parents taught me apply in
the corporate world. Be honest and straight with people, assume good intent,
take responsibility, etc.

All that behavior will do is paint you as naive. Sure there's room for honesty
and responsibility, but only when used appropriately (strategically). Strikes
me as acutely inhumane every time my career is rewarded for suppressing those
behaviors.

I am not even allowed to tell a candidate (another human being that probably
NEEDS a paycheck) why I didn't hire them and what they can do to improve their
viability.

Just because the company has discarded this person it also means I must
discard them as well? It kills me every time, but I NEED my paycheck more than
I prefer to help my fellow human.

~~~
onezerozeroone
Not really the company's fault here. Policies like this exist because
candidates have and will sue the shit out of you for any flimsy accusation of
discrimination they can cobble together.

Companies didn't create these policies arbitrarily and unprovoked. They became
necessary because of some people who took advantage of the legal system to get
settlements. It's in the company's best interest to protect itself from
frivolous lawsuits, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

Which isn't to say that there aren't people who actually are discriminated
against, but in this example it's not a company "discarding" someone as much
as it is covering its bases.

~~~
sjg007
This fear is overblown in my opinion. If people really want to sue then they
will sue based on the fact that companies hire H1Bs into the position that
they applied for. Then the company would have to prove not that the H1B was
the better candidate but that the American was not qualified. Who decides on
that qualification? Well a judge/jury based on the job description. If your
resume matches those qualifications and it's truthful then you may have a
case. I think that is a bigger risk than giving feedback. Giving objective
feedback may actually help you since you communicated the specific lack of
qualifications. However, I do think that you can implicitly derive the
feedback based on the interview questions anyway.

~~~
zdragnar
I worked for a company who was sued because a candidate told us he was the
second coming of Christ. We didn't really address it, and ended up not hiring
him. He used The fact that he mentioned it as grounds for religious
discrimination.

He didn't win, but we still had lawyer costs and what not. It is not an
overblown fear at all.

~~~
phkahler
If he sued with representation this illustrates another point. His lawyer took
on a stupid frivolous case, probably because he also needed the money.

I think the real problem is that people today are on an economic treadmill.
That need to survive economically is what make people willing to put up with
all the other things.

~~~
vageli
This is exactly it. The thirst for the dollar makes us more willing to swallow
bullshit with a (feigned) smile. But what can we do about it? That's the worst
part. To dismantle the machine requires the coordination of a significant
number of cogs.

~~~
mathgladiator
First, stop the thirst within. I am going to try an experiment and live in
nature on land that I buy. Why do we need so much junk?

~~~
jjeaff
You don't have to be so extreme as to live off the land. If people would just
love below their means and save, they wouldn't be in an absolute crisis the
moment they lose their job.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
How many of us are really in a position we can do that?

~~~
Noumenon72
Given that we have material wealth 5-50 times higher than most people who have
ever lived, virtually all of us.

Given that we are on a status treadmill with legally created artificial
scarcity -- well, I still don't think it should be that hard, but apparently
it is.

------
crystalmeph
I wonder if part of this is due to the ever-increasing push towards creating
metrics for every aspect of human behavior.

It’s not uncommon when applying for a job that you take a “personality test”
that measures not just technical knowledge, but also scores you on
traditionally “soft” traits like assertiveness vs. agreeableness, with the
hiring manager getting a readout of where you fall relative to the “ideal”
range of that metric for the job you’re applying for.

We recently had an open position, and I know for a fact that we turned down
multiple perfectly qualified people with successful track records in this
exact role because they didn’t pass a personality test they received after the
interview process - the reasoning for giving them the test after was that this
personality test is particularly expensive. The “solution” was not to ditch
the expensive personality test, but to bite the bullet and give all the rest
of the candidates the test beforehand. But my eyes were opened.

I’m very worried that applying metrics to people, not performance, is creating
a homogeneous culture that goes along to get along, resulting in silent
acceptance of the situation described in the article.

~~~
Futurebot
"Market forces are also intensified by intensifying assessment, a development
especially visible on the labour market. Even within a contract period, an
employee will be subject to continuous assessment. The use of specialised
software in call centres has provided some extreme examples: the time
employees spend at the toilet is measured in seconds: this information is used
to pressure the employee to spend less time away from the terminal. Firms with
contracts are also increasingly subject to continuous assessment procedures,
made possible by information technology. For instance, courier services use
tracking software and GPS technology, to allow customers to locate their
packages in transit. This is a typical example of the new hyper-provision of
business information, in neoliberal economies."

From "Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition"

[http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.htm...](http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html)

------
FlyingSideKick
How can workers change corporate culture from within to demand work-life
balance? I asked an executive VP this at a one of the worlds largest company’s
here in Seattle and she said “If the young talent we need coming out of school
across the board demanded shorter days and more vacation we would have to
comply. But they don’t instead they are awed by an extra $10k on a hiring
bonus they might or might not get after two years and they’ll work 60 hour
weeks because that’s what they think ‘normal’ is because their peers are doing
it.”

So how from the ground up can we make corporate culture in America more
focused on the social health of their employees?

~~~
wmeredith
Unionize. That’s how we got things like the 40 hour work week.

~~~
rwmj
Yes I was very surprised there is no mention of unions in the article. The
writer has supposed to have thought deeply about this issue, but doesn't come
to the (to me) obvious conclusion?

------
chaseha
Dealing w/ RSI has been an eye opener for me. What makes it worse: working on
a laptop, working on the plane, having to do long hours in poor ergonomic
conditions. What do I have to do to be good at my job? Basically, that. What
happens if it gets worse and I can no longer use a computer for at least eight
hours a day? That is my livelihood

~~~
mancerayder
It WILL become a problem.

The biggest issue with RSI and other repetive-use injuries (which happens in
many professions and even athletics, especially with bad form) is that it
happens slowly, then suddenly. It's so slow that it's discomfort. And you
ignore that discomfort, especially as your concentration is on a computer
monitor with important stuff to worry about being displayed on it. Also,
sometimes inflammation happens later (later that night, later that week,
etc.).

Start now to reduce your RSI (and RSI isn't your only problem, more on that
below):

Get an external keyboard either that has an ergonomic design is is comfortable
for you, and a mouse too. A Mac keyboard will be nightmare, don't use it. A
Mac 'Magic Mouse' or trackpad will cause damage. It's not made for serious
long-term work (there might be a lawsuit one day).

Pro tip: this may sound crazy, but get two mice, one left, one right. Change
often. Learn to use the lefty even if you're right-handed, or vice-versa.
You'll be surprised at how quickly you get used to it (and you'll laugh when
someone tries to show you something on your workstation).

Get a desk that moves up and down. Spend some time standing, some time
sitting. Again, change often.

Next, other than RSI is your neck and back. As your rhomboids get stretched
and weak from forward rotation of the shoulders, the rear neck muscles get
stretched and weak, the serratus goes unused, the chest and front-neck muscles
get short and tight... You arch your head forward which causes your head
(which already weighs about 8 pounds) to exert a lot more than 8 pounds of
force on those muscle groups. And you also look at your phone all day, which
you hold down below you. Well you're in for a world of nightmares and
headaches that'll make the RSI a distraction by comparison.

Start early to avoid these things, before it becomes too late.

Sincerely,

A guy with some greying and screwed up wrists/hands and neck.

~~~
jupiter90000
I used to get blinding pain in my right shoulder and neck and thought I might
have to change careers because it kept getting worse and worse. Tried all
kinds of stretching and stuff, some helped, but nothing took the pain
completely away.

I was in so much pain one day I couldn't use the mouse with my right hand, and
began using it with my left hand. The pain gradually went away and I've never
had problems since. I think I had a bad habit of some kind when mousing with
my right hand I never developed when using my left. Now almost exclusively
mouse left handed.

That said, physical exercise, especially hiking and yoga, have helped my neck,
back, arm, leg stiffness & pain, etc. considerably. It's as necessary as
brushing teeth for me to feel physically ok to be able to keep working in an
office.

~~~
mancerayder
For me it's weightlifting, specifically strength training (not bodybuilding)
which includes mobility exercises and certain types of exercises that
strengthen the muscles that are underworked when sitting for long periods. On
example is the serratus anterior. Having a serratus that doesn't work properly
leads to numerous shoulder-related problems and back pain. It's all sort of
connected.

Stretching is only half the battle. One must stretch the correct muscles (the
ones that are too tight, like the pecs and scalenes) and strengthen the ones
that are loose and weak (like the rhomboids, serratus and others).

If pursuing weightlifting, which I highly highly recommend, I recommend a real
trainer (not most half-baked ones you see in gyms), and spending a lot of time
specifically nerding out on exercise physiology, even physical therapy. There
are some very good YouTube channels - one of my favorite is Calisthenics
Movement.

One simply cannot work in an office or at a computer workstation and expect
not to have the body pains of a coal miner by the time you hit your 40's
without balancing out muscular strength and joint mobility that you lose by
doing this.

Much of strength training, a lot of people are surprised to know, involve
neurological connections created simply using muscles in movement patterns
that are new. It's very similar to the way you learn proprioception (standing
on a skateboard, surfboard, or a subway car without holding onto anything). In
the same way, muscles get stronger simply because more fibers are recruited,
due to repetitive motions. In the early stages, this is much and perhaps most
of the 'gains' in strength.

It's getting late and I've fallen into a rabbit hole. In short, do weight
training or SOME sort of mobility work (yoga, pilates, whatever) if you work
at a computer for a living. These random HN messages can save you thousands of
dollars of future medical bills / PT bills and incalculable discomfort.

~~~
ILikeConemowk
Very interesting comment, just wanted to thank you for it.

I've been meaning to get into calisthenics and have had to push it due to
other responsibilities.

One of the problems is that we are all very good at finding excuses.
Exercising, hover, even if it's a bit here and there during the day must not
take a big chunk of your time. When I managed to stick to my schedule in the
past I actually started to enjoy the "grind" the challenge of lasting longer,
improving form and so on.

I'll go back at it, thanks!

------
tboyd47
Honest question. How much of this is cultural or psychological? Can people be
trained not to take so much shit from bosses or automatically make the
company's problems their problems?

I ask because at my current job, a lot of work is explicitly motivated by the
threat of getting yelled at or publicly shamed in some way. I often wonder if
these stressful interactions could just be handled politely but in a way that
doesn't automatically turn into work that gets handled invisibly or passed
down the chain to some other poor sap.

~~~
cyberpunk0
"Not take shit from your boss" = "get fired by boss for 'insubordination' "

~~~
tj-teej
I disagree, from most of my experience, toxic managers take advantage of the
people they feel they CAN take advantage of.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's spiteful managers like you're hinting at,
but from my experience at two major tech companies, a healthy two-way respect
is earned by pushing back on management when they're out of line, as I think
they know a lot of the time that they're being out of line but they can get
away with it.

~~~
tboyd47
That's what I'm getting at. In my own experience, unhandled grudges against
people end up being a major source of stress. Some people (my past self
included) don't know how to stand up for themselves at a company. It's a
combination of knowing what lines people can't cross with you, and what sorts
of authority different people at work can have over you, because when someone
crosses a line, how you correct them will differ according to their relation
to you. For example, if a manager is rude to you, you can often excuse
yourself but can't completely drop the issue, whereas, if a fellow
collaborator is rude, sometimes you can just stop dealing with them
altogether. Sometimes just looking perturbed without saying anything is enough
to make people change how they deal with you. A lot of developers I see don't
pay any attention to these things and nurse grudges against people for entire
years.

------
minikites
As I type this comment, there are 46 other comments, not one of them using the
word "union". That's the only feasible method I can see to enact large scale
change. CEOs and other executives aren't going to change out of the kindness
of their hearts, as evidenced by the fact that they could start at any point
and still choose not to.

~~~
bobzibub
I think that people must move past the belief in "heroism" as a job function
and understand that many companies (not all) are parasitic creatures which
finagle to charge economic rents, not saviours of Western democracy that
provide value added as is commonly assumed.

I got the opportunity to apply for my current job yesterday. I expect an offer
letter and threats to sign within two days or lose the job I have next week.
My future company is a lowest bidder and was selected from around thirty
applicants.

------
odyssey7
> You know what might change this? I gave a talk on this to Stanford alumni
> and afterward a lawyer came up to me and said there are going to be
> lawsuits.

This won't happen as long as the worst offenders can push individual
arbitration agreements. The Supreme Court heard arguments about them recently,
and a decision on whether they are legal is expected soon.

On the other hand, electronic health records should make it easy to show with
statistics if a workplace causes chronic disease, relative its peers. We just
need to add employer information to the standard information that hospitals
collect. Certainly a group of university hospitals would be interested in
seeing this data, and could organize an initiative to collect it.

Edit: Actually, a way to link massive amounts of healthcare data to patients'
employers might already be available. Medical records often store insurance
information, which can be used to figure out a patient's employer if they are
the subscriber.

------
ProxCoques
Don't worry, wage slavery is just a phase we're going though because right now
we can't see out of the capitalist bubble we're in.

It doesn't have to be like this, and we will find our way out one day, be it
through UBI, AI or other post-capitalist mechanism. Might take a few hundred
years though, mind you. Once Trump has been flushed through at least.

~~~
glup
As I was reading this I was thinking "uh oh, here comes the techno-utopian
nonsense", but then I got to the "few hundred years" part. Yup, sounds about
right. Cheers to dialectics.

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bitL
If you are flooded with stress, I recommend Finnish sauna a few times a week
with continuous adjustment to cold immersion after a few minutes you leave the
hot area (try to stay in cold longer every next time until you hit 2 minutes).
Try to repeat it 4-5x a session in like 90 minutes. After I started doing it,
it usually clears my head completely and makes my evenings absolutely stress-
free and happy, and I can tackle the most difficult tasks next day.

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reality_czech
The part which really makes me angry is that this guy probably also employs
graduate students who make minimum wage, have terrible health care, and no job
security. But he doesn't feel like that's important enough to mention.

~~~
internetman55
My wage at some random school is roughly 2k/month for 20 hours work, ignoring
free tuition.

~~~
deathanatos
And mine was $10/hr, for computer science. _Peanuts_. My last year there they
dropped that to $0/hr, and then complained that they couldn't find enough TAs.

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crawfordcomeaux
I think the familial boundaries defined within most societies promotes us-vs-
them mindsets and a more inclusive, integrated framework is needed for
peaceful coevolution within within sectors of life.

> Dying for a Paycheck, published by HarperBusiness and released on March 20,
> maps a range of ills in the modern workplace — from the disappearance of
> good health insurance to the psychological effects of long hours and work-
> family conflict — and how these are killing people.

Thought experiment: How can the world be different if we changed the
understood definition of family from "home life" or "family of current origin"
to "family of choice"? What then happens if the majority chooses humanity as
its family, followed by collectively choosing to meet the needs of all in the
family?

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dfsdfdsfds
It makes it sound as if work was more healthy in the past. Was it? When? I
know hunter gatherer times were supposed to be paradise, but anything since
then? Farming sounds rather arduous. Or what about mining, or working in
factories where safety measures have not yet been invented?

~~~
derefr
The present population of workers the article is referring to with "work
culture" are _white collar_ workers. Comparing like to like, these wouldn't be
people working in factories or mining. The equivalent jobs in previous eras
would be those of priests, monks, and scribes; of surveyors, navigators, and
architects; of military officers; and of nobles tinkering around in the
sciences.

Compare the working conditions of _those_ jobs to those of current white-
collar work.

~~~
1787
I wouldn't be surprised if priests or monks had quite long work hours; imagine
the RSI one might get from copying out whole books by hand.

You could reframe as underemployment a lot of the extent to which jobs in the
past were less stressful (if they actually were). Trading stress for fantastic
material wealth is a highly popular option afforded by technology.

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derrekl
I'm a CTO at a YC grad Care Revolutions. There's a lot of comments on what
kind of work environment is bad. What do y'all suggest a startup with limited
resources do to be an incredible place to work for while also being a highly
productive environment? I'm especially interested in suggestions as it relates
to your health both physically and mentally!

~~~
kdamken
Base your entire company culture around 40 hour work weeks. If you find people
are needing to work more than that to get things done in time, it’s a
planning/work load problem, and you need to hire more people.

~~~
Sileni
And recognize that any work people do while stressed and tired is probably
adding enough back end technical debt that you'll be double paying for those
hours without a long term gain in progress.

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lsc
I'm sure work is pretty bad for a lot of people, and sure, something should be
done with that.

I personally think the biggest thing we could do is to just add a reasonable
safety net. I get treated well because my employer knows I have a choice of
jobs; if we gave the people on the bottom some minimal safety net so they
wouldn't go homeless or starve without working, then employers would have to
treat them well enough that working was better than living off the minimal
government benefits. And that's a good thing, though it would need to be
balanced with how much wealth we have as a society. Certainly, though, we can
afford public housing and food for everyone right now, and we should. "Work or
starve" is only morally justifiable when society has so little that someone
must starve.

But... on the other hand, I do think that in some ways a lot of us (especially
a lot of us on hn who are in the top half of computer technicians and software
engineers) have it pretty good. For me? I know I had a lot of negative
feelings about management when I was younger. I thought they were stupid and
evil. I became a lot happier as an employee after I blew a whole lot of time
and money trying to run a business myself.

And it was ramen profitable, but god damn did I work hard for that ramen. I'd
be most of the way to retirement if I had lived on what I lived on and worked
for someone else, investing the difference in index funds. But I think running
that business really helped me be a happier employee; I mean, I am not saying
I understand the business bullshit... I don't know what to do about all the
moral dilemmas at that level, about negotiation, about hiding information,
etc... some of it still _does_ seem kind of stupid and evil. But I understand
that business bullshit exists, and that _I don 't understand it_ \- I ran the
experiment, and the data showed that I really had no idea what management and
business development was all about.

Because of my time running the company, I'm much more laid back about letting
management manage than I was before I ran my own company, because I tried. I
gave it my best shot, and I'm just not very good at it. I'm a pretty good
technician, though, and I really appreciate that I'm in a world where that
means I get a well-paying and comfortable job where all I have to do is be
that good technician, and not be too rude to anyone else. I don't have to
worry about not saying this or that or the other (well, with some exceptions.
As a general rule, I can tell my boss anything with the door closed... if
that's not true, I get another job, because clearly they want someone with a
different skillset.)

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purplezooey
Not going to be fixed. The root cause is that there are a billion people in
non-western countries ready to take increasingly sophisticated jobs for
pennies on the dollar and are grateful for it.

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mykull
How naive to think we aren't just being farmed like cattle. Of course, there
is always a pressure on workers to be money makers. When the means don't
matter to investors, neither do workers.

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yters
If life sucks so much in the Western world, why does everyone come here? And
the "new rich" living in Costa Rica and other cheaper countries, why don't
they live off the land like everyone idealizes instead of in mansions?

------
dboreham
Talk to your UPS or FedEx driver about the impact of their job on their body.

~~~
tw1010
This is a common sentiment but I don't think it should be the end of the
story. So what if people from two hundred years lived significantly worse
lives than ourselves? I didn't live then and I'm not a UPS driver. I have all
the empathy in the world for people in harm, but the fact that suffering exist
should in no way act as a counterweight on levers that tries to improve
situations where relief seems possible.

------
mathattack
There is irony in this coming from a business school professor who sends his
students into jobs with terrible hours.

------
hyperbole
If people whose lives are scheduled in minutes have the ability to build
muscle tone and stay fit so do you. Think Elon Musk I imagine he doesn't sleep
much but he makes the time.

Exercise is about priorities and it's far easier to not do it and create
excuses than it is to find the time.

Eating right however in the usa is perverse it's costs more to eat healthy and
it's worse if you travel for work.

------
innocentoldguy
While I applaud his efforts, Jeffrey Pfeffer probably doesn't really want his
book to "be the 'Silent Spring' of workplace health," considering that Rachel
Carson had a bad habit of citing suspicious sources, falsifying scientific
research, and twisting words to fit her agenda. For example, egg thickness
tests done on eagles didn't support the thin-shell claim she wanted to push,
so her researchers lowered the calcium levels in the birds' diet until thinner
egg shells were achieved. Also, Carson claims in her book that when quails
were fed DDT, "few of the eggs hatched." If you actually read the research
she's citing (from an article in "Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry,"
by James DeWitt), you find that around 80% of the DDT eggs hatched, compared
to 83% in the control group, who weren't fed DDT. Since when are 80% and "few"
synonymous? In the tests on pheasants, contained in the same article by James
DeWitt, the control group (no DDT) hatched 57.4% of their eggs and the DDT
pheasants hatched 80.6 of theirs. After eight weeks, the survival rate amongst
the DDT chicks was also higher. I'm not saying we should use DDT as an ice
cream topping, and that there's nothing wrong with it, but I'd prefer actual
science on the matter rather than inaccurate sensationalism. I'd also prefer
to believe Pfeffer's research is impeccable and that he's above the sort of
consequentialism that Carson apparently embraced.

I don't have anything against saving the environment nor saving ourselves from
toxic work practices. I just don't think we need to stoop to mountebankery to
demonstrate the need for awareness and change. Such consequentialism
undermines good causes, I think.

------
swlkr
Companies large and small can suffer from this problem of what appears to be
mundane, useless work. It’s worth mentioning that instead of striving for
50,000 person companies, we might be better off with much smaller companies,
two pizza team companies or smaller.

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megamindbrian2
I was "managed out" and nobody cares.

[https://www.ft.com/content/356ea48c-e6cf-11e6-967b-c88452263...](https://www.ft.com/content/356ea48c-e6cf-11e6-967b-c88452263daf)

------
machinehermit
It is not office work's fault that most people don't take care of themselves
to counteract sitting on their ass all day.

All you have to do with an office job is actually use your gym membership and
not eat take out every day.

~~~
Joe-Z
Ooooohh, alright guys, wrap it up, finally someone came up with a solution.

And here I was, thinking it's not so simple as to just tell people what to do
and everything will fall into place...

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DimitarIbra9
I think Amazon is the perfect example that killing employees by
spreading/polluting cultural environment.

------
catnaroek
It took me half a minute to just parse the title.

Edit: I mean the title of this post here. The title of the linked article is,
of course, very easy to read.

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megamindbrian2
People don't need healthcare, they need social food experiences.

