Strangely enough, this idea has gone through my mind a couple of times, for a completely different reasons though.
Mortality is closely connected with the hours we spend sitting each day. So that's one reason.
The other one is that after working so hard and saving up enough for the rest of your life, you need something that is much more stress-free. And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.
While sitting is correlated with mortality, I don't think it's been proved that it causes it. I suspect the relation between the two is more complicated than that.
As far as stress free... Interacting directly with many customers can be a trying experience. I think it can be a lot more stressful than an office job for many people.
I'm not saying you'll be dead in 5 years time if you spend more than 12 hours a day sitting on a chair programming. But it adds up if you're doing that your whole lifetime and neglect healthy food and physical activity. Of course it differs from person to person but I think you see my point.
Regarding stress free comment... I guess it depends on the person in question. Besides, when you finish for the day, you really finish for the day and that's the most important thing. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.
Smart people will put health before entrepreneurship, especially if it prolongs their life and not just in the sense how many years will they have to life.
> And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.
There is very little that is as stress free as being a programmer. Certainly not the food industry. My wife's cousin is a chef. Her job is terribly interesting, but she works 80 hours a week to make 1/3 as much money as a programmer and has to deal with tremendously demanding situations (cooking at peak dinner service).
> And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.
I dare you to take a food safety course. I sweat bullets just thinking about what might happen in the tiny chance that a customer gets sick from eating my food even after all the ten million precautions that were taken. Then I dare you to run a reasonably high volume restaurant during peak lunch/dinner hours. :)
Forget all the other stresses like how it's really hard to find good burger flippers in the bay area, even for $14/hour plus tons of overtime 3x meals and more. And the health inspector breathing down your neck giving you a 99/100 for something that has nothing to do with the safety of your restaurant.
Compared to my development work, running a restaurant is a whole different set of stresses and just as bad, all the time.
Bear in mind that while selling food worked out well for the guy in the article, most game programmers don't need to make a move that drastic. For most game programmers, the right move is to just get out of the game industry and get a programming job in some other sector where the ratio of supply to demand is healthy enough that you can stick to reasonable working hours and have some time to spend outdoors.
Mortality is closely connected with the hours we spend sitting each day. So that's one reason.
The other one is that after working so hard and saving up enough for the rest of your life, you need something that is much more stress-free. And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.