this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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About 7.5 hours out of an 8 hour shift. I work a job where I am physically actually working the entire day except for my breaks. I work in healthcare.
Sometimes I wish I had an office job because I hear things like this and sometimes get a bit jealous. But I am still satisfied with my job and I feel that I am compensated well.
I have an office job and I work 8 hours a day programming. It's nice to be able to clock out consistently at 5 but I really don't get much down time. I rarely get my full hour for lunch.
It's not bad work and I like my job but working 3 hours would get you fired here.
Yeah my brother also has an office job and seems to work for the majority of his shift too. He works in finance. I guess it's dependent on what sort of office job you have then. I hope you are compensated well.
I'm compensated extremely well. 0 complaints.
It depends on how "efficient" the company is (ie how much work they can squeeze out per person).
If I was paid less I'd definitely work slower.
I have no idea how you can do that consistently for 8 hours straight and not burn out
Idk man. Maybe not many office jobs are that way, but there are many other types of jobs that have always been that you work for the duration of your shift. Factory work, many healthcare jobs, restaurant work, etc.
Those jobs don't use as much of your brain as software dev. Software development isn't meant to be a factory worker's grind, it's meant to be about thinking of the right way to implement something and then seeing it through.
Look I've done both factory work and programming and those same points in your brain that you use for programming are tickled when the very complicated machine your running malfunctions or breaks down and needs to be fixed immediately
I'm not sure you could be more condescending if you tried.
It's not condescending. Some jobs are about using your brain, some are about using your body. Some are about both. Software dev is not about both.
Yes, it is condescending as you belittle the 'brain' role for the aforementioned jobs in retail, hospitality, healthcare, etcetera.
I don't think they were trying to belettile it. It's not to say that you don't need to use your brain or solve problems in a factory or in a shop. I think what they were trying to say is that those jobs are often quite a lot of physical tasks that take time whereas programming is nothing physical but almost entirely problem solving
I didn't belittle anything. Some jobs are more mentally taxing, some are more physically taxing. I'm not claiming one is "better" than the other.
The jobs you think are not mentally taxing? They actually are very mentally taxing. AND physically taxing.
You're just trying to make it sound "fair" in your head. But it's not. You don't work as hard. And that's good, you're lucky, enjoy your good fortune.
I mean, my healthcare job involves a lot of mental problem solving depending on the caseload I have that day.
Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude
I make good money and just really, really like building things in code.
I'm the son of a programmer who is the son of a programmer...
At the end of the day I'm often tired but not burnt.
Office jobs also vary greatly. I work an office job and yesterday I worked about 12 hours with a 1-hour break to drive from one office to another. I typically work through lunch and still find myself overwhelmed with too much to do.
But the one hour "break" isn't really a break. It's traveling time
Yep, and that's how I log it in my hours, too.
On a personal level, I just find driving very relaxing because it's one of the few times I feel like I can just be alone, so it always feels good having to drive somewhere for work knowing I'm just running the clock (which...I usually end up exceeding anyways...)
Personally I find driving exhausting. Especially in a car and in a city.
Curious what field exactly, from rotations in residency and previous experience it seems to vary wildly.
The ED is non-stop action, sometimes more work than you should reasonably be doing probably. But in regular wards it seems that I had my work done about 3-4 hours into the shift most days and then I was just sitting around waiting for an admission or some results back.
Similar experience doing nursing in neuro before I got my MD, of the 24h hours I would reasonably work like 1/3 of that and most of the rest was downtime, usually I would sleep through most of the night too.
I'm not a physician. I work in the laboratory grossing surgical specimens. Our work never stops. There are almost always cases to complete, except for some rare days where there is a lull in cases before the end of my shift (typically the night before certain holidays if they stop doing surgeries...or sometimes a bunch of surgeons will take their vacations at the same time lol). This does also mean that I get to have standard holidays off, unlike a field like nursing or any role in the ER.
It varies, though. Some labs are very slow where you actually do get a fair amount of downtime and some are even busier and more bustling than mine. I'd say we are a fairly busy lab, but we don't generally get ultra complex surgical resections like hospitals even larger than mine do. We still do get large cases, just not things like pieces of people's faces, etc.
It's an interesting field.
You mention that you had a lot of down time in nursing, but I'd say I depends on the field and facility with that too. My mom is a nurse and has had nursing jobs similar to how you described. She said she would get a lot more downtime when she worked in large hospital settings and worked overnight. Usually overnights seemed to be the quietest. But then she was worked other types of facilities where she really hardly has time to sit down and take much of a break.
Even at my hospital, some of our pathologists will manage to fly through their cases and head out early (our director manages to make it so he always has a lighter caseload than the rest lol)...while others are always working late into the night working on additional duties like tumor boards.
So ymmv depending on what role and what type of facility you're at yeah.
Even though I work all day, I think I have a good work-life balance and really enjoy being at work with my coworkers.