I think that is more a testament to the lives we now live as Software Developers more than anything else. It's not uncommon to find anecdotes of others on HN talking about how they maybe work 2-3 hours a day and take home 150k+ a year.
I started working my freshman year in high school in 2008 as a busboy at a local restaurant making $4.50/hr + tips from the servers working that night. I couldn't even drive yet so I pocketed most of that money and was grateful for the opportunity. (This ultimately allowed me to build my first PC and I allowed me to get into programming.)
I moved from there to another local restaurant with a similar job title, but quickly moved up into working in the kitchen as a line cook. I think I made $8 or $9/hr when I got the "promotion". After graduation I wandered around some and eventually ended up as an asst. manager at a Burger King.
Now, over a decade later, I can sometimes look back nostalgically at my time in food service, but I don't know that I would ever go back, for any amount of money.
The things I am nostalgic for are structure, a defined start/end time, and being able to leave work at work. The pay was awful, the people were generally nice enough, but there's always a rude customer at some point or a manager with a power trip. I don't miss waking up at 5am to man the drive-thru, or going home after midnight smelling like grease.
If I woke up tomorrow with no qualifications to write software, I would sooner go into a back breaking trade than go back to retail.
I think we will see automation really start to take over these retail spaces in 2022. In my city (Dallas), pretty much every single fast food restaurant has mobile ordering or a kiosk available. My local Kroger expanded their self checkout lines and after 10pm, there are no more manned checkouts open. I've frequently had to scan and bag a full cart of groceries using self checkout (which sucks).
The past two years have opened up a lot of time for these giant corps to invest in R&D as the labor pool shrinks. Through the perfect storm of chip shortages and labor shortages, we haven't seen a large scale roll out, but I'm confident it's coming as soon as parts and installers are available.
Oh, I definitely feel like I'm working in the top 1% of jobs now.
Full time WFH since significantly before covid, it's B2B so even though I'm nominally on call, that's just a nice chunk of extra pay for maybe 1-2 calls a year. I do work hard when required, but it's not as required any longer, so I end up with a lot of free time when there are no issues to solve and I use that to go the extra mile to keep my customers happy.
I started working my freshman year in high school in 2008 as a busboy at a local restaurant making $4.50/hr + tips from the servers working that night. I couldn't even drive yet so I pocketed most of that money and was grateful for the opportunity. (This ultimately allowed me to build my first PC and I allowed me to get into programming.)
I moved from there to another local restaurant with a similar job title, but quickly moved up into working in the kitchen as a line cook. I think I made $8 or $9/hr when I got the "promotion". After graduation I wandered around some and eventually ended up as an asst. manager at a Burger King.
Now, over a decade later, I can sometimes look back nostalgically at my time in food service, but I don't know that I would ever go back, for any amount of money.
The things I am nostalgic for are structure, a defined start/end time, and being able to leave work at work. The pay was awful, the people were generally nice enough, but there's always a rude customer at some point or a manager with a power trip. I don't miss waking up at 5am to man the drive-thru, or going home after midnight smelling like grease.
If I woke up tomorrow with no qualifications to write software, I would sooner go into a back breaking trade than go back to retail.
I think we will see automation really start to take over these retail spaces in 2022. In my city (Dallas), pretty much every single fast food restaurant has mobile ordering or a kiosk available. My local Kroger expanded their self checkout lines and after 10pm, there are no more manned checkouts open. I've frequently had to scan and bag a full cart of groceries using self checkout (which sucks).
The past two years have opened up a lot of time for these giant corps to invest in R&D as the labor pool shrinks. Through the perfect storm of chip shortages and labor shortages, we haven't seen a large scale roll out, but I'm confident it's coming as soon as parts and installers are available.