"10/[20]00-10/[20]00: counterperson, mcdonald's" Does that mean he worked there for one month or less?
I checked his Linkedin, the job isn't listed. Jan 2002 he started a new photo startup ("50M+ members posted a billion photos"), then co-founder&CEO of meetup.
It's a good time capsule of what his thinking was in 2000 but I wonder if it was more than a break. At my office job I, too, often think I should drive an Uber or deliver food for a month as a break.
I used to work in software sales in a call center. I hated my job and the highlight of my week was the Monday burrito special down the street at a place where the employees shouted "Welcome to Moe's!" whenever customers entered. When thinks ultimately fell apart at that job, I went to Moe's and somehow managed to get a job despite a lack of food service experience. I lasted a while—months, I think—but eventually got fired.
I don't know that there's a moral to that, but I guess I tend to look at the urge to bail and go to unskilled (or really, differently-skilled) labor less as a virtuous thing and more a sign that some in-place re-evaluation is needed with mental health in mind.
I still occasionally say "I should become a farmer" but take it more as a sign that there's something I probably need to address within my current situation and/or I need to get back on the wagon of going on morning walks.
Bit of a tangent; I switch between knowledge work and labor a bit, and the biggest mistake I see people make is not altering their caloric intake or sleep schedule.
Could you elaborate on that? Altering caloric intake and sleep schedule as a reaction to what? And how would you change between the two regimes? Increase/decrease how much? etc.
Not GP, but being on your feet all day will lead to needing more calories and sleep for proper recovery.
I can't speak to sleep, but you are wrong about the calories.
Kurzgesagt has a really interesting video on it: https://youtu.be/lPrjP4A_X4s
The caloric part quite blew my mind. I know its not the most scientific source but digging deeper in it it does seem to match up.
Herman Pontzer, an anthropology professor, talks quite a bit about a study he did on the calorie needs of people who are highly active on this podcast: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/examining-energy-evoluti...
Spoiler alert: you burn basically the same number of calories per day sitting on your butt as you do being quite physically active.
No, that's wrong.
Somebody else burns the same number of calories being active as you do sitting.
The article does not compare the the same individuals performing sitting vs. being active.
It says that members of hunter-gatherer tribes such as the Hadza on average consume as much energy per day as US-Americans sitting on their butt at home. It says the Hadza's bodies have adapted to perform a more exhausting task with less energy expenditure than US-Americans need.
But the same person (being a Hazda or US-American) will still need more energy being active than being inactive.
(Source: Read from "here's what we know so far" in the article.)
This is similar to finding that from N calories, an obese person may only run 1km while a professional marathon runner will run 5km.
Edit:
The Kurzgesagt video refers to the same Hazda people, and states that if you start working out after being sedentary for a while, you burn a lot more calories, until your body eventually adapts: https://youtu.be/lPrjP4A_X4s?feature=shared&t=212
You can call us just "Americans". The US is unnecessary, thank you.
Cannot hear "US-Americans" without remembering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww
The tone of this comment makes me question if it was made in good-faith. But I will add my perspective. I see this debate all the time, I've seen it since I was young, and not just on the internet.
It stems from a language difference, in Latin American Spanish, words like america and its relatives like americano, latinoamericano, panamericano, etc is inclusive of North and South America.
In English, globally, America refers to the USA. It is context dependent, but to describe the continents you would normally say "the Americas."
This distinction naturally annoys native Latin American Spanish speakers, especially because it is compounded by historical, geopolitical, and economic dynamics.
If someone chooses to be over-explicit in English, it's better to let it pass. Correcting the language can come off as dickish, especially when you consider the historical context. Additionally, the person on the other end is sometimes making this mistake on purpose, trolling for a pointless argument.
If it were up to me, I would add this topic to the list of things HN mods should ban.
Can you provide more evidence for this, because it sounds entirely bogus. Perhaps you mean one's base metabolic rate? If you are physically active, you will consume more calories than sitting all day - because, you know, you are exerting yourself.
Also, an anthropology professor is not a credible source on diet, exercise, fitness and health.
https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-busts-myth...
Your citation is to another piece by the same guy?
HN is not the place to discuss diet, exercise, fitness, or health. Every thread is the same: the human body ackchuwally runs on magic. Diet is really, really complicated. In fact, nobody burns calories at all. The body just does it's own thing. Watch this Youtube video about it. They quote an anthropologist.
I think I’m missing your point. How do you explain weight loss from exercising?
People tend to lose weight from dieting, not exercise. Unless you're training for a marathon or something, even vigorous exercise tends to burn so few calories that an hour at the gym can be erased with a single trip to McDonald's.
Probably accurate. The amount of exercise needed for effect is less than a hour per day (less than 30 minutes if intensive) but this is a not done by most.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556592/
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/exercise.htm
What kind of reference is a "Kurzgesagt" video please? Not only has the this channel been in more controversies than needed, they seem to also spread missinformation
As I understood, kurzgesagt is produced by scientific consensus from a large number of scientists.
As a big fan, I'd be interested in hearing more about the controversy and misinformation.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI
Someone already linked the actual research in this post thread a few hours before you responded, which you willfully ignored just to.. try to score some cheap contrarian points?
I'm not going to engage with that, go troll somewhere else. Bye :)
This is one in a long list of reasons why I continue to view calories as a useless measure. I don't really give a damn about how much water I can heat up by burning my food, that's not how my digestion system works. It was a reasonable enough analog when we had a very rudimentary understanding both of what's really in food and how digestion and the metabolic process works, but its horribly outdated today.
I can say having recently gone from coding at a desk 8 hours a day to working full-time on a farm with no heavy equipment, your food intake absolutely should increase. As long as I'm staying busy I can eat basically whatever I want and not feel sick or gain weight. That's not to imply that I don't still need to eat the right kinds of food as well, but volume and calorie count has no noticeable effect on me like it did when I had a sedentary job.
Yeah I think people are missing the transition phase of this equation.
I can help fill in the blanks at least on my own anecdotal experience. What are the missing gaps you're interested in?
Oof, never become a farmer. Farming is generally something you (reluctantly?) inherit along with the farm. It's insanely expensive to buy your way in. Even if you inherit the land, the cost of buying and upkeep of machinery is extremely expensive. Everything you invest after that point (in livestock, seed, fuel, time) is a risk. Bad luck or bad weather can ruin a crop. The hours are long. The stress is monumental - suddenly you really care about the weather. And unlike some small tech startups you absolutely have to employ people, but the people who end up working as farm labourers "fall" into it because they can't do anything else (kinda like the building trade). Not that you'll be complaining when you have to pay their wages. No you'll complain when the umpteenth stupid costly mistake is made.
Unless you're thinking about larping as a farm labourer, runaway.
I think when tech people think of becoming a farmer they're thinking of doing something small like this https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/gourmet-farmer and maybe something like Clarkson's Farm (Series on Amazon Prime) rather than going to build and manage a modern industrial farm.
In some ways this idea of becoming a farmer can be thought of as rich people cosplaying at being a farmer rather than actually running a for-profit farm. For some this might work out and be an actual career that they are good at, but for others it might just be a hobby.
Though both the TV shows I mentioned show how much hard work there is in actually running a farm and producing food.
Worth noting that Clarkson's farm would have been a catastrophic failure but for the money pumped into it by the TV show.
I think it's made clear in the show that just running the farm by itself would not be profitable, and if lucky would break even. Other farmers in the area are in far worse situations financially as they do not have a TV show as a sponsor.
Granted he did go and try things which seemed nice but were ultimately unprofitable - big tractor, sheep farming, etc.
Yeah, it's a good show. I just mean that regarding the original point (tech workers fantasising about farms are deluding themselves) the counter "they are thinking of something like Clarkson's farm" still conforms with them deluding themselves.
Hence the term "hobby farm". It is a retirement dream: buy some land, hire some locals to do the lifting, and spend a few months each year pretending to be a farmer ... but one not fettered by financial concerns. Such people toy with various farm-related schemes but invariably settle in to a low-work pace with a few farm animals as pets, a back acre strewn with the various implements they bought and discarded after a season or two. Clarkson seems pretty open about this. I'm not sure whether he means to be entertaining, to show the absurdity of the process, or whether he actually enjoys it.
He has made a career out of his behaviour. He seems to have mellowed now, and hasn’t punched anyone in the face lately.
His views on climate change, race, homosexuality and probably anything else you can name were aimed at being funny or offensive, depending on your perspective.
My farmer near-equivalent is, "I hear janitorial work can be rewarding." No, I do enjoy software work, but sometimes I do just want to turn my mind off or not deal with all the politics
This happened to me, and I actually did it. I burned out of an IT job and joined an intentional community where I worked with people with disabilities on a farm. There was also a vegetable garden and a craft shop. I lived there for two years. It was an Americorps position, and I made $150 a month (although housing and food from the organic farm were all free). Probably the most formative two years of my life, although afterward it was definitely hard to explain to employers why I decided to take an Americorps position in my 30s. I never went back to work in IT, although I still read about programming/the IT world almost every day.
Maybe you needed to work with your hands for a while.
Customer service jobs are great because you feel useful and you never wake up stressed wondering if you will be able to do your work well that day.
I did 5 years at Trader Joe’s, would easily do it for 30 if they paid 150k lol.
Farming is a pretty big thing though, if you want to get into that it might be better off buying property and slowly turning it into a smallholding. Or work at a farm as a farmhand.
Anyway, not parent commenter specifically, but if you're in a situation where you have loads of money but don't know what to do with yourself, volunteer work is always an option, and there's loads of things you could do, be it formal volunteer work (e.g. homeless shelters, retirement homes) or informal (set up IT classes at your local library, go around your neighbourhood and pick up trash, pick up a conversation with a random lonely stranger)
He worked there for a few weeks:
https://www.businessinsider.com/scott-heiferman-startup-care...
Well that explains why he felt nobody appreciated his efforts. The first few weeks at a job like that you are pretty much just in the way. It takes some time to learn the routines and operate the equipment so you can work quickly without thinking.
Agree that’s kind of *^%% move, I’d have too much self respect to start working somewhere for a few weeks than bail.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a food service job or a FAANG. McDonalds was doing him a solid by offering some kind of employment for a person presumably down on their luck with zero experience. Hiring people is a huge expense and risk even for a small franchise.
McDonalds can fire you for any reason in my state. At any time.
When you're renting yourself to authoritarian institutions like corporations, there is no "self respect" required for you to always take the best deal for yourself whenever possible.
Yeah but if you show up for your scheduled shifts and are on time, sober, don't steal, and are moderately competent, they won't.
The crossover between people with those qualities and the people who find themselves in a position where McDonald's is a good deal is quite small. Often times these people have been failed by society on a number of fronts and have a very different perspective on the arrangement. This isn't to absolve people of personal responsibility, but we are much more of a product of our environment than most of us realize.
Those are the minimum expectations for any job. If you can't do those things you will forever be dependent on others to take care of you unless you were born into very fortunate circumstances.
I would say stealing is the only of those that would exclude you from any job. Lots of stuff requires intermittent random periods of competence on your own schedule. For instance you could buy a dilapidated house and drunkenly fix it during moments of clarity and make a fat profit. Or fix and flip cars. Really anything involving independently flipping stuff.
That may be a career, but it's not a job.
Very few jobs are happy for you to show up whenever, in whatever state you want, with intermittent or stably low competence.
Well that is kind of my point. Society, including you and me, has failed these people on so many levels that they lack the most basic ability to function within said society.
We can ostracize these people, or we can sympathize with them, take care of them and dismantle this classist service-based economy in favor of one that is more humanistic and kind and provides for as many people as possible.
Of course, that isn't going to happen because people need their big macs and coffees.
And you aren't mouthy with other workers, managers or the customers.
If labor history in any place where firing is at will should have taught anyone anything, it's that many, many companies, for all kinds of stupid, greedy or sometimes necessary internal reasons do indeed often fire employees in droves despite their rigorously showing up for their scheduled shifts, sober, honest, and competent...
What cloud landscape do you live in?
The have sacked hundreds in recent months, people with decades of experience and a good record.
Not front of house people though, the cynic in me says that laying off hundreds of minimum wage earners wouldn’t really alter the bottom line.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/mcdonalds-lays-off-hundreds-cu...
FTFY
Even just in the US that's not the case in Montana AIUI.
I dunno. Sounds like you've never bitten off more than you can chew. I have found myself in a situation before, where my continued participation would be an immediate low-grade harm and my rate of improvement was slow because I had volunteered for something well out of my wheelhouse. So I had a dilemma: give up and disappoint today, forcing my replacement; or carry on in my incompetence and risk the whole endeavor.
Quitting early did bruise my self-respect: people were depending on me! But hanging on, just to protect my feelings, would have been a much greater regret.
Are you implying that working at a McDonalds counter was more than the future founder of meetup.com could chew?
I believe I can revolutionise multiple fields. I cannot cut it working at a fast food restaurant. Ability is not one-dimensional.
I will state outright that the founder of meetup.com did not have what it takes to work the counter at McDonald's. It takes the ability to shovel shit with a smile, for less pay than it takes to afford a shithole studio apartment, and zero intangible reward. For a CEO to actually take that job, and succeed in it, would be quite the stunner.
high turnover is common. he was not doing anyone a disservice.
You also have to remember the time. The first real dot com crash and recession that quickly followed.
I went through that crash. I remember several days where FLOORS of companies in the building I was working would be let go and companies were shuttering by the dozens every day. For about three months the bar across from our building would have a dozen people sitting around a couple tables, drinking beer around noon, talking about how they almost made it and you knew another company had laid off its entire staff. You knew one day you would most certainly join them. And I finally did.
And then you realize your dreams of changing the world are gone and you need to find a job because you still have to pay rent, pay your heat bill and put gas in your car, so you just took anything as aside to keep you going. I went to work at a Pizza Delivery place for almost a year while the economy recovered and companies started to need people again.
For him, he had a much faster turn around. But at the time, when no companies are hiring, you're just looking for something that will keep you busy and bring in some money until your next move. I'm guessing he didn't really care because so many of us tech cast offs were working at fast food places after the crash. He probably felt like he would be replaced within hours of quitting, which is probably pretty accurate.
McDonalds never does anyone a solid. As long as it's legal, you don't owe McDonalds a thing.
It's the flip side of McDonalds not owing you anything under capitalism.
Is working the counter at McDs something you add to a LinkedIn profile? Do people moving from the counter at McDs to BurgerKing use LinkedIn?
Such a classist comment
Guy who makes $200,000 a year is aghast that some people actually work at McDonald's
I'm haven't worked at McDonalds for 20+ years, but I think that the top manager at each store is making $200k, and the top 4 are over $150k - it goes down fast below that though. I'm reasonable sure that if I had stayed at McDonalds I'd have never had a year where I made less than I made in tech. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be out, but they pay those they care about well enough, and there were some good things I miss.
Curious what this range is based on? According to ~3.8k self-reported salaries from Glassdoor, the McD manager salary ranges from $37k-$64k with a median of $48k.
The top manager. The shift managers make about that, but the top managers who mostly do paperwork and are rarely seen on the floor do better.
Does each store have multiple managers like that or is this equivalent to someone who manages a region of stores? I've worked fast-food in the past as a run-of-the-mill front line worker and wasn't aware of such a position (although that doesn't mean it doesn't exist). Particularly for the franchisees who own a single store, I'm not sure that is economically viable.
The franchise that owns a single store that is a bit less than what the owner will make (doing a lot of work in the store). Where the company owns the store that is what the top manager makes (from what I can tell the company makes about the same from a franchise or an owned store). Where the franchise owns multiple stores their income depends mostly on how much of the store work they do - but it isn't really possible to manager more than one so they have managers doing that work for them. Though it is possible they are underpaying the top managers and those top managers don't realize they could go elsewhere for more money (business often ignores fast food experience - which is normally correct but the top managers shouldn't be ignored because their experience is similar to other middle managers - less power point but otherwise similar enough)
This seems to be the minority of instances, though. For example, I looked up McDonalds numbers in 2021 and only about 5% are company owned, with the rest being franchises. I think the original claim could have been worded a bit more clearly by stating those high salaries are for managers of the small percentage of company-owned stores and not necessarily generalizable to most fast food restaurants.
I don’t like to speculate but I could imagine managers at some franchises receiving a bonus based on profits or sales.
Pretty sure my manager at Starbucks made $50k at most. Up from there probably higher but not at the store level
In our little IT bubble where 3+ interviews are the norm, it's fine to envy the straightforward hiring in food-service.
Ofc we still got the better deal overall and should only complain in hush tones
Is that a word now?
It dates back hundreds of years.
You might of heard of people like Marx and Engles and the concept predates them.
Yeah Marx definitely came to mind. Kidding aside, there’s a time and a place for the word, but it seemed a bit wacky to respond with just “such a classist comment” and leaving it at that.
The food service industry doesn’t look through LinkedIn profiles to find recruits for those jobs. The parent comment phrased a legitimate question and it was met with a sarcastic remark that wasn’t insightful or well-placed.
But it was par for the course from people that jump on any opportunity to use that word. There’s no future in taking those people seriously and you shouldn’t give them a platform.
Why not? Its a nice PR story about early life struggles.
He wasn’t struggling. He had sold his former company properly. He was just more or less taking a break by working at McDonalds.
Some people said it was a bit disrespectful at the time because he didn’t need neither the money nor the experience and was only doing it for the kick of it. I tend to agree.
Exactly. I have dozens of jobs I don’t list on LinkedIn. I wouldn’t list McDs either. Your LinkedIn is your resume. Something tailored towards the career you choose. These off jobs and hustles don’t belong in my opinion. Leave that for the story telling part of the interview when they ask.
He was founder of Meetup, acquired by WeWork for $200m in 2017, my guess is for cash. They only raised $18m so that should be a good exit for founders. I don't think he is using his LinkedIn profile to find a new job. I would expect him to use his LinkedIn as more of a bio, and include the McD's experience.
We, the internet people, should all work a regular job for 2-4 weeks year. I think far too often that I'd like to experience being a truck driver before I die.
Why there are no companies that arrange this? We need a Kidzania for adult nerds.
If you ever feel like you want to beat your body up a little, it is very easy to find seasonal work at UPS (or I guess amazon) during the holiday season.
I worked for UPS unloading trucks one holiday season. We would work 8 hours straight, and the only way to really eat was to have granola bars or something in your packets to snack on as you go. UPS hires ex-military personnel to lead the trucks, so you are yelled at if you slow down.
In the beginning it was grueling, but after about a month or so my body was used to it, and I was volunteering for overtime and worked up to 12 hours a day.
It messed with my back though. I would say it took me three years before my back felt normal again. For this reason alone, I wouldn't actually recommend it unless you are in your twenties.
I’m an MR tech. We see a lot of truck drivers and builders. Bad backs do seem prevalent in those professions.
Being overweight seems even more likely to cause trouble.
Basing views off the people I see rather than actual stats is bound to be problematic. Eg does every rugby player have a bad neck? Does every soccer/football, netball and league player have a torn ACL? Every golfer has a bad elbow?
We don’t scan the healthy truck drivers.
Therein lies the problem, as you'd expect a company to arrange for this, via just go ahead and .. do it?
But I guess as a society we are constantly inventing higher level of first world problems that's probably the result of echo chambers that has stratified the society.
I think unions and certification would largely prevent the "just do it" idea. For better or worse, it seems more difficult for a programmer to become an electrician than for an electrician to become a programmer. So yeah, if you want to LARP at some kind of trade, then you're likely going to need some kind of fixer to let you do that after you (and the people you want to inflict all the substandard work on!) sign all the appropriate waivers.
Now if you just want to swing a sledgehammer on demolition day for what is usually a construction crew, ask a friend, because it is great exercise and relieves stress and has a relatively low barrier to entry. But on the other hand while you're saving the membership fee of your crossfit, you're also taking work from someone who's unlikely to be able to switch careers on short notice, so perhaps this is not the best way to unstratify society.
I worked in bars and restaurants on the weekend when I held a full-time job during the week, so it's possible. The variety also keeps you from burning out.
If you aren't to hard-up for money, there's always volunteer work to scratch your "regular job" itch.
That's a weird expectation. But I think, for starters, that the reason you don't see it often is that when it comes to jobs working with your hands, you'll find that incredibly costly accidents by employees overwhelmingly occur within the first few months. I've seen it while a technician at Verizon and also for the local transportation agency. A new hire is an investment where you take on massive risk to start with, and you recoup costs incurred after the first few months when the risk dramatically falls.