Plumbing is gross and wet but you clearly know where the bullshit is from the beginning. In software it is creeping from everywhere, changing patterns every coouple of years as well. I probably wouldn’t want to be a real plumber but I hear the people who would. And I definitely get the urge to find something else but generally trading off for something else is problematic as well and generally comes with its own type of bullshit.
You get those from coding too. Sitting in a chair all day wrecks your neck and back, mouse and keyboard use causes carpal tunnel as well. Standing still instead of sitting causes other issues. You have to move around, not remain fixed. There's a balance somewhere between being a dev and being a plumber.
If your idea of physical abuse is carpal tunnel from using a mouse + keyboard, don't go into the trades. Seriously. Go to Home Depot, buy a stick of 1" copper pipe, a Ridgid (wheel) pipe cutter, and some sandpaper. Now go to your backyard, in the cold, kneel on some bricks/concrete, and spend 30 minutes cutting off little portions of the copper stick, and then clean the ends with sandpaper. For bonus points, consider reaming the insides too.
Now tell me how your wrists and hands are feeling. How about your knees? Imagine that everyday, plus an array of powertools such as impact drivers + drills, rotary hammers, sawzalls, band saws, and crimping tools that can weigh 20+ lbs.
That mouse & keyboard will start to look very, very comfortable.
Truth be told people itt are talking about “trades” when the ideal physical profession for them is probably something like building boutique artisanal furniture or glassware for wealthy clients. A comfortable middle ground between office work and construction.
It's hard to compare aches before acclimation to physical work with chronic conditions that develop over years of long, daily sedentary periods. The keyboard being more comfortable on day one isn't the point, right?
Carpal tunnel isn't about being sedentary, is it? It's about repetitive movements (from people I know who suffer from it, vibrations also exacerbate their conditions, which is why I brought up power tools) - just like the common plumbing activities that I mentioned. This isn't about aches. If your body can't handle sitting at a computer, then you are out of your mind thinking that working a trade will somehow 'be better.' Buy a standing desk, ergonomic keyboard + mouse, and go for some walks.
You keep mentioning carpal tunnel but I don’t think that was his main point.
It’s true that white and blue collar work have ergonomic and health hazard mitigations. I saw from another comment of yours that you mostly had to work on unsafe and inconsiderate commercial crews with no decision-making ability, which understandably colors your view of physical labor. You’re also right to point out a novice would likely fare similarly, especially if approaching a career change romantically.
I reckon both these jobs plus general building work, are much better than working on computers. We have bodies and _need_ physicality in our work, not just theory.
Those sort of trades do present problems like coding does - your brain is still engaged (a bit). However, I think you are also adding/improving people's lives.
Fix someone's dirty toilet? That is clearly a good thing. I can't think of one thing in my computing career that has been as positive..
This is a very shallow view of what it means to be working as a plumber...
As someone who spent a couple years doing commercial plumbing:
1) You are lifting very heavy 10-20ft long sticks of cast iron pipe, often 10+ ft in the air. There is technology to aid with this (scissor lifts) but it is brutal work.
2) You spend a lot of time in the air - on ladders or lifts - often overhanging the edges. You are constantly drilling hangers in the ceiling, breathing in dust that will ruin your lungs permanently. And again, you are also fitting cast iron pipes in this environment. You will feel the sway and it's pretty easy to hurt yourself. OSHA is a joke. I've been caught in the middle of a huge storm, since the foreman didn't want to let us off early, and we had to run down 8 stories of scaffolding while heavy material is being thrown around like ragdolls.
3) People on job sites generally don't give a @$%^. Toxic fumes? Check. Concrete/cement dust? Check. Crazy welders that don't care that they can potentially ruin your eyesight? Check.
4) Your company will track you with apps, often not pay you until you arrive on the jobsite, but you still need to be at the shop @ 6AM to help load materials. Unpaid.
5) Depending on where you live, you can expect to listen to nothing but conservative talk radio on that morning ride. I've worked with people from all paths, so this didn't really bother me, but something to consider if you have spent most of your life doing white-collar work. You can expect to be around some hateful ignorance.
6) If you're not doing new construction, you can expect to be in the ceiling, crawling among ducts, trying not to fall through. This is generally with copper pipes, which is another ball game as far as cutting, soldering/brazing, or crimping. Otherwise, you are often trying to do this standing on a 12ft ladder.
Commercial plumbing pays better than residential (fixing a dirty toilet) and is often in more demand. It is also a pretty good way to wreck your body. Most of the older/senior plumbers that I worked with spent their time trying to do as little work as possible, and were drunk after lunch. Addictions are very common.
IME, people who often are shouting "get in the trades!" are the exact people who have never once worked in one (or they own a business in it). It ain't all that.
I hear you. Sorry you think its a shallow view! but I thank you for your thoughts. I have done some plumbing of my own - I can personally verify that I never felt comfortable - always contorted!
Managers/foremen etc are asses the world over. I was really addressing the work. And I thought I picked a pretty unpleasant example in dirty toilets!
I contrast the work you do with work I have done. I was making a moral point.
I have worked in financial and other institutions. I really see no value in what I have contributed. If I achieved something, its that the shareholders of those institutions were happier in being able to squeeze a bit more life-force for themselves from others. I helped the fat cats get a little fatter.
BTW - I think you wreck your body sitting in front of a machine all day. I accept that coding is not as overtly dangerous though!
I think that is just the way of the world, especially in America. Even though I have worked in fields that produce a more "tangible" product, I can't say that I have contributed or helped much of anything. And now I'm in my 30s without an education and I only have experience doing things that I never want to do again.
Bosses are always terrible, but it's a little different when your life is literally at stake. I've had "old school" foremen who want to sit and call you a pu$$y because you don't want to stand (without a harness) on a flimsy piece of wood over a six story shaft, cutting and then brazing 8" copper pipe. It's also harder when you don't have dedicated recruiting networks and the ability to WFH like many do in tech/SWE.
(Just my perspective! I appreciate the discussion.)
I for one fancy doing something totally different - producing some of my own food, in a more natural environment. No deferred joy - more immediacy, living closer to nature, etc. Your user name makes me wonder if you would find that more fulfilling too? :)
Have you considered taking some time off and going WWOOFing? It can be a fun experience.
Personally, I believe that knowing how to navigate this (increasingly) digital world is an essential skill. I'm enjoying trying to build foundational knowledge about computing & networking for these reasons - and I also just feel like there is _so much_ to learn, and that is both exciting and overwhelming at times. I have some negative views towards the way technology has trended in the last decade or two (bordering on tin-foil hat territory :P) but I think that is all the more reason to understand it.
I don't have any interest in pursuing SWE, esp. for financial reasons. But I am enjoying learning about programming. I'd be happy if I could hack on things at home & contribute to some OSS projects. I'm hoping to land a junior position at a NOC in a year or so, but who knows? I've given up on the idea of any career giving my life meaning or purpose, so I'd be happy with an education + skillset that makes me employable, especially with remote opportunities. Not having to destroy my body is a bonus!
Still involves a surprising amount of carpentry. And finding where the hell the wires were run in other people's "wtf were these fools thinking?" grade framing. and other fun stuff.
Similar physical demands to plumbing. The proper cables are not light. Installation is still pain and involves hard to reach places. And fun stuff like crawling in crawl spaces sometimes etc.
I suppose telco might be most reasonable. Or if pay isn't important electronics. And even there is problems.
Honestly, it isn't even the poop. I do my own sink faucets and whatnot, and hate every minute of it. I wouldn't survive framing, but making fancy furniture has some appeal. But then... finishing is also gross and wet. And sticky.
On the other hand: about once every 3 years, I shut my computer down and get the dust out. I even hate that. The only nasty wet messes I don't mind dealing with come from my child or the refrigerator. All else, I'm happy to pay somebody else.
I'm close to finishing a 50sqm pole barn solo build in my sparetime around my tech job that has taken about 4 months from ground works starting.
The carpentry was easily the best part, and the part that I really enjoyed. The concreting and steel roofing/cladding parts were pretty brutal though. Admittedly a pro could justify spending on better tools than I had but still it has taken a toll on my aging body.
But even the carpentry would be hell trying to do that work under commercial pressure on other peoples projects - never mind that carpenters are generally worse paid than most other trades despite usually taking on the bulk of the project responsibilities.
As sick as I am of tech, I would rather stick to carpentry as a 'hobby'.
Yes, I have planned to become a carpenter or some other profession many times.
But, I have been blessed/lucky to be a one man show for many years and I had to stick with one tech stack and my learning only added not shifted out from under me. So when I made massive changes it was on my own terms.
The cost is mentally going against the trends/grain in the industry. My LAMP stack is now back in style, and I am grateful I never dumped it for something trendy.
Thank you. It was really hard to deal with when all the new code stuff was Node based. But since I stuck with a principle to keep things as simple as possible and this balanced my concerns some.
Results are what mattered and I think we've seen massive shifts in perspective in our industry over the past 20 years. Changing everything from code versioning systems, databases, back and front end languages, all the mix of build systems. There was a lot to avoid changing to for the sake of change.
And sometimes you wonder if you are missing something because you can't see the value in changing. (ie, GIT was obvious from SVN, PHP to Node not so obvious...)
If it helps, I had such a "1/4 life crisis" at around 29.
Tldr, trades can be fun, but are also physically demanding, get boring, don't pay as well as it might appear, and have a pretty low ceiling on growth unless you want to manage a fleet of tradesmen or something.
Sometimes I do still wish I was a carpenter. But realistically, software has so many of the same aspects as trades, but is changing so quickly there is always something to learn, it pays better, and doesn't depend on having peak physical health.
The biggest difference in terms of satisfaction I think might be that plumbers et al are more likely to be entrepreneurs, while well paid software engineers mostly work in big companies. Consider entrepreneurship within software before bailing to a completely different trade
I fantasize about taking 6 months off before starting my next job and being a barista for a while. My guess is I'd appreciate my current situation a lot more :D
I actually think it would be fun to "retire" and go to trade school to become an electrician. Not forever, just long enough to learn the trade. I practically have an EE degree, but since I only ever worked with low voltage, mostly digital circuits I still have poor electrical intuition for things like residential AC.
Realistically though, I think my secondary post-retirement career will end up being a teacher of some sort (high school or community college -- I'm mainly interested in teaching, not research, so university is largely out of the question).
The amount of knowledge you need for residential is minimal, there is only one voltage (ok maybe multiple phase) and you should only have to think of load per circuit.
Don't know what kind of intuition you really need for new install.
A lot of the knowledge is just practical stuff like knowing how to correctly use a wire nut, where to buy the best brands of equipment for good prices, and lots of rules of thumb. The other half is code. The code can be surprisingly complex. There are all sorts of things to know like how much you can legally stuff in a junction box.
I have an EE degree but find there is little overlap between that knowledge and electrical work.
You could just not take jobs like that. It sounds like a semi-retirement job means you'd be financial stable enough to not need to take every request you get.
I'm not sure what electrician work you think you'd end up doing that doesn't involve some kind of shitty situation, aside from maybe some types of new construction. On top of that, AFAIK in the US, to become an electrician you need to start out as an apprentice working under a journeyman or master. Which means you get the shit jobs (sometimes literally, like septic wiring).
Leaving aside problems with heat, it really helps to be small. One of our electricians was about 5' 2" and previously served on submarines in the US Navy. Another job where being of small stature is a benefit.
A plumber can be similar. In a craw space, I've soldered a coupler where I couldn't get the torch to light in the small space I had. Yep, there wasn't enough oxygen to sustain combustion.
I have worked as an electrician. It's not particularly a clean trade and you get spaghetti too, in the form of hundreds of wires of the very same color and air conditioners connected to the lights circuit.
Seems like OP should just go to a place like the government for a fairly slow paced retirement friendly job.
They could definitely use skilled people and while there can be the same crazy expectations and conflicting missions, you can say no a lot more easily.
Navigator or maybe some kind of specialist for a cargo ship? Or maybe harbor pilot (if you could break into that closed industry to make bank)
Forest fire water bomber pilot?
On a side note, I always thought it would be a very cool thing if there were some kind of exchange program for people with good skills wanting to try them out in another field, kind of as a rotation. (I originally thought this for academia -- researchers who would love to see another field getting to visit for maybe 3 months or similar) But I guess, what company would be willing to participate in such a thing and let their people do it, having to pay for the cost...
In general being at sea means long shifts and being away from home for long periods. The ships run 24 hours a day, apart from when they are waiting or loading and unloading. And pay isn't great unless you are at top as Westerner.
I'm turning forty this year. My original dream was to get rich quick and retire at 30. Then I pushed that to 40. Now I think I will need to push it another 3-5 years...
In general I agree with the sentiment: high salary is the only nice thing about working in IT. It's simply too much pressure. Best you can do is to make your fortune quickly (joining FAANG helps, becoming a freelancer is a reasonable alternative in Europe), build a house, set up a college fund for kids, and then retire, or find yourself a job as a carpenter, of scubadiving instructor, or whatever you like, as long as it has nothing to do with computers.
I wonder why avoid computers in early retirement? Is it burnout from the grind or a lack of pleasure in the work itself? I imaging there are a ton of cool and worthy charitable causes that would benefit from the expertise, which they couldn't afford to get otherwise.
Sometimes I feel the urge of becoming a teacher, teaching math or maybe even programming.
But then I'm reminded of how prviliged I am and how much better the working conditions are as a work from home developer is compared to a teacher... And the feeling goes away.
Maybe the best is if I could FIRE and then just hold evening classes for those who are interested, but I'm not there yet.
I was a teacher at a local tech institute for mechanical engineering. The social contact with the students and the variety of things I got to teach was really fun and rewarding. Unfortunately, the pay was bad and I couldn't see myself staying there for long and in such a high cost of living area.
Anecdotally it certainly feels like many engineers are experiencing dissatisfaction, often because of lack of mastery within their section (cue the “web development moves too fast and cycles through too many frameworks and fads” articles).
I think there are degrees of scope, complexity and variability. A software engineer is more likely to have the world constantly changing under them at a pace that is difficult to keep up with.
Occasionally that thought pops up. Then I remember I’m making insane amounts of money, from the comfort of my desk in my house. At 25 I’m making more than my parents ever did, with a fraction of the physical effort.
If I really hated it, I could save up for some time and do something else, because again… I’m pulling insane amounts of money for software work.
Trades like plumbing, electrical work etc are -hard- work. I recognize that I have the privilege of not sacrificing my body and health for my income. My biggest concerns are making sure my posture is correct and that I take enough walks. Such a hard life.
I’ve noticed that some programmers tend to romanticize things like farming or plumbing, and generally speaking not understand the hard physical work those people have to go through. It can be quite patronizing.
Edit: sitting a desk is not “sacrificing your body”. Comparing that to the labor that people in trades do is completely detached from reality. Obviously there are things like standing desks and working out. But in life you have to sit or stand regardless.
But you don't have to to ruin your body. You can get a standing desk and a gym membership (remember, you have money) and stay perfectly healthy. Crawling in tight spaces, on the other hand, will ruin your body and is not necessarily avoidable.
You and the other commenter have got to be joking.
My point was that office-work is far away preferable to daily physical labor. I’ll take sitting over throwing out my back, blowing out my knees and having constant pain. Not to mention the hazards of working with chemicals or industrial equipment or electricity, and so on.
Of course there are options that I use like exercising and standing desks. My point was that this is a significantly better situation health-wise than working in trades. And that I have the privilege of doing that.
> My point was that office-work is far away preferable to daily physical labor.
It's not. I've never been fitter than when I was doing physical work. The problem was the pay and the powerlessness at the workplace (e.g. awful hours with no notice, management compromises on safety, the expectation that you'll keep silent when management cuts corners or cheats the clients/customers, etc.)
The reason I stopped doing physical work is because physical workers are disrespected by the world, and your bosses would rather shut down and leave the industry than to pay you a dollar more. After I decided I would never work with my hands again, jobs paid a lot more. The less you actually do, the more holy you get. One day I'll just sit in the lotus position, floating two inches above my prayer mat, giving cryptic pronouncements about what other people should be doing. By then, I'll have billions.
It is better. All humans have to sit or stand regardless. I exercise at my discretion instead of having to do difficult labor in order to get paid.
You're describing social/interpersonal problems which happen regardless of the type of industry or work. That has nothing to do with the objective fact that working in an office is better than having physical labor take a toll on your body in the long term. I never stated that doing nothing but sitting is healthy.
Eh didn’t it turn out that most of that was drummed out in the 2012 era by a few doctors selling books and partnering with exercise and standing desk companies? I feel like most of the more recent stuff I have read has said, yes get your exercise in but sitting itself isn’t actually bad, certainly not the whole ‘1 hour of sitting reduces your life by 1 day’ sort of stuff we heard a decade+ ago.
My confusion is that "sitting" is confounded with "never exercising". If you exercise 5m/hr for 16hrs (and sleep 8), you have accumulated a huge amount of sitting time, but also a really big amount of exercise time. Nobody does that, but what if we did?
I read somewhere that somebody did some study with god knows what methodology (people like to use current-world HG communities, not representative of ancestry) and decided that our ancestors walked about 12mi/day. That's about 3-4h of walking daily. We have like 280k years of that selection criteria. But also we came from apes, so we're sorta shitty at this upright stuff.
An aside: I also just loathe ergonomic design, I'm never comfortable in anything other than a recliner or laying on a couch or bed. I'm wholly convinced that chairs are the way they are because "they've always been that way" with tables and desks following suit. It's unfortunate that better designs haven't caught on, aren't readily available, and tend to be inordinately expensive. What I'd really like to see is a practical true to form holistic ergonomic design instead of this weird traditionally inspired clusterfuck with its productivity centric model.
> It's unfortunate that better designs haven't caught on, aren't readily available, and tend to be inordinately expensive.
Do you have any links to examples of these different designs? After using a bunch of different chairs, I'm seriously considering just repurposing my piano stool, even though I'll lose all the back support.
I just can't find anything sustainably comfortable and supportive.
HAG has the Capisco, which I've eyed. There are also kneeling chairs, they tilt the pelvis forward, they can be had cheaply, but I'd hate to buy one just to throw it out. Of course there are the ball based chairs and such.
I sit seiza-style on my chair currently to enforce good posture by tilting the pelvis, but it's taxing after a while, and it took me a long time to adjust to seiza, I use a standing desk in complement.
"The trades" each come with occupational hazards of their own. These occupational hazards are sometimes much worse than sitting down. Besides, op clearly stated the intent to walk more.
For example, would you accept a 1.4x (+40%) chance of brain cancer? Vs sedentary peoples who have 2x chance of diabetes and +14% cardiovascular disease? (and sedentary means sitting + not exercising after work!).
I'd argue diabetes is easier to avoid through other life changes. I"m confused about whether "sitting" means "never exercising", and articles that talk about "sedentary" lifestyles are not very helpful.
Comparing construction or plumbing work to sitting is absolutely ludicrous.
I also use a standing desk anyways, but I am not sacrificing my health like my grandfather or father did who had/have back/knee and other health issues in their 50s from physical labor.
Being able to earn a nice living while sitting at a desk is an enormous privilege, and I also get money and healthcare to routinely visit doctors anyway.
No job is going to get you away from unreasonable people with unreasonable expectations, and most trades introduce a bunch of other unpleasant things that you'd have to deal with.
It's all tradeoffs. Someone may legitimately prefer the stresses of a trade to the stresses of working in software, and that's great for them. But it's not an objectively easier path: if it were, plumbers would be much less expensive.
I like how in our progressive society it is absolutely frowned upon to invoke any association between observable societal statistics and, say, race/gender, but its okay to bash BMW/audi drivers.
So, user civilized, why is it okay for you to generalize? And why exactly you were sorry?
(I am aware that this is a tangent discussion to the original post, but it may be an interesting one)
Ah, allright, I think I got the pattern. Next time someone wants to:
"""Everywhere you go, there will be {insert derogatory but also statistically backed pattern}
Disproportionately they will be {insert your -ist qualifier}"""
You just have to say sorry and it will be okay?
I personally believe in statistics and I believe you cannot use them to make derogatory generalizations. I mean racists REALLY love to pull out crime statistics out of their pockets in justification of their views. And, frankly, its not about my beliefs right now and enforcing of societal rules, its about you making derogatory generalizations and thinking that its okay, because "statistics" and because you've said sorry.
Well, I don't believe what you believe. I think you have an overly general moral rule that you think is necessary for consistency, but it's not really, and it's just your personal belief.
Your belief implies it is improper to use statistics to describe morally salient human behavior in any way, unless the conclusion is that there is no variation. I think that's silly and intellectually impoverishing. Groups have different average behavior and I don't see the point in blinding myself to that.
We all know that averages don't determine an individual, and we all know that some generalizations should be avoided, but that doesn't imply some broad fatwa, completely irrespective of context, against noting broad variations in group behavior.
The prosecutor attitude is very entertaining though. Feel free to keep doing that.
I personally dont require that consistency, I was merely asking WHY there is a difference in treatment of the same method (making generalized statements about group behaviour) when applied to different qualifiers. And yes, just as you've said, maintaining that consistency does imply that you suddenly can't use any statistics at all.
Point taken on "prosecutor attitude", sorry about that. riding "moral high horse" got to my head.
It sounds like you don't believe what you just said you did? I'm genuinely asking what you believe, as opposed to what you assert for the sake of argument.
For me, it's not an easy topic but I would say when negative generalizations escalate to exclusion and dehumanization, that's probably where to draw the line.
I know some people with Audis and I don't think worse of them or anything like that. It's just a funny thing that's hard to ignore after a while on the road.
Thank you for the insight on where you draw the line, that explains a lot. Still, a hard terrain to navigate on when you can say something and when you can't, even if you make correct statements backed up by data. Just to be clear we're on the same page: I've made absolutely same observation about other bmw drivers. and we, humans, do exactly that: observe and generalize.
Regarding my personal beliefs, as I've stated above "I personally believe in statistics and I believe you cannot use* them to make derogatory* generalizations"
1. regarding "use": you cannot use specifically statistics/data to justify any *-ist remark. "I hate bmw drivers because most of them are assholes on the road", an example of that (not what you said!)
2. regarding "derogatory": you can(and should!) use statistics to do (just) generalizations, i.e. in a context of talking about group behaviour. "most of bmw drivers are agressive and dangerous drivers, as shown by this data" is a perfectly fine statement.
My problem is that you can say that sort of statements about certain group of drivers, but if you would have pulled up a similar argument and used (for example) PoC and crime rates, you would have been torn to pieces by everyone. And for me, on the surface, the statement and the structure would be absolutely the same (and it is STILL not escalated to exclusion and dehumanization). So whats the difference? And why different treatment? People above are arguing that buying BMW its a choice and using inherent (immutable) properties (i.e. race/gender) is different for the case of stereotyping, but I cannot see the key difference that makes okay to do one and not okay to do another.
On the difference between making these generalizations along racial lines vs other things - it mostly comes down to the fact that our ancestors ruined the fun. After humanity had used certain type of statements to justify mass dehumanization, slavery, Holocaust, etc., people don't want to see that happen again. Then it's just a question of how big a red circle we want to draw around that kind of talk. Most people found a simple ban on racial generalizations relatively intuitive and practical. I'd prefer a more freewheeling culture but it's above my pay grade at this point.
Side point - in general an important thing to remember here is the big, big difference between P(A|B) and P(B|A). It could be the case that all aggressive drivers I ever encounter are BMW drivers, and yet the rate of aggressive BMW drivers could be very low and of little practical predictive value on any individual BMW driver (e.g. 1% of BMW drivers versus 0% for non-BMW drivers).
People are already bad at distinguishing an implication and its converse, and they're quite a bit worse at the statistical version of the same.
Arguably this is a reason we should keep our generalizations to ourselves, even if they're accurate. A lot of people will take them to mean a lot more than they do.
I do think that's a pretty interesting point. It's a weird move to sweep under the rug. I guess you could argue that having a BMW is a choice, and it has associated stereotypes, which we can infer is sort of like joining a club.
race/gender are probabilistic and unalterable, one doesn't necessarily elect to inherit the stereotypes associated with race/gender. You're essentially being delegated expectations that may or may not be in alignment with personal values.
There are definitely double-standards in play though, a sort of socio-cognitive warfare, I suppose.
I am unsure whether the (im)mutability of a qualifier plays a role. For example, religion is a choice, but making generalized derogatory statements about certain religious groups is not okay either. You can try it with the pattern of "civilized" user: """Everywhere you go, there will be _men hitting their wivers_. Disproportionately they will be ..." and say sorry afterwards.
You will be making a statistically correct statement, but you will be flagged and IRL punched in the face for saying that. But somehow saying that about BMW drivers is still allright?
Religion is a choice in the same way citizenship is a choice. Sometimes it is a choice, often you’re born into it, and you often have to meet qualifications to change it, and some of those may be impossible to meet. And your social environment may impose some significant expectations on you.
now you're trying to argue about a specifics of the example I've given. Its tangent to the main question: whether stereotyping on something that is a choice or inherent is different? If you say that it is, can you please elaborate?
Yes, it is different, but not in a boolean sort of way. It is impolite to make fun of people for something that is not their fault... and generally speaking, the degree to which it wasn't a choice (and the degree to which it impacts someone's life experience) contributes to the degree of impoliteness.
making fun of a group != inferring generalizing statements about a group. I am completely with you about "making fun" part, but this concrete example is different
The comedic term is "punching up" [0]. It's generally more acceptable to make jokes about the (presumably) wealthy owners of BMWs and Audis, versus "punching down" by making fun of people who comparatively face more disadvantages.
If we use the punching metaphor, in either case one is committing an act of "violence", which I think most people would acede is negative at least in the large scheme of things.
Violence has different definitions, according to the Oxford English Dictionary [0].
One is: "1. a. The deliberate exercise of physical force against a person, property, etc.; physically violent behaviour or treatment; (Law) the unlawful exercise of physical force, intimidation by the exhibition of such force." Another definition is: "4. Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion."
That the first definition is inherently negative is a separate philosophical discussion (as quick counter-examples where violence may not be negative, consider the violence of a fencing or martial arts match). However, it is clear that "punching up" in this case refers to definition four. I believe that most would agree that intensity of emotion or language is not inherently or necessarily a negative behaviour.
[0] Current quoted version is paywalled, but older 1989 edition for reference (may have differences from the quoted version): https://www.oed.com/oed2/00277885
That is my problem: I don't see that difference. Its still stereotyping. Can you explain how it makes different to stereotype based on choice or some inherent immutable property? Its the majority of asshole careless drivers (inherent immutable property) that _choose_ to buy a BMW that make up a statistic. Still the stereotype selects that group, not by their choice but by and because of their property (being an asshole careless driver).
I can afford a BMW, I've chosen not to buy one. In 08, I technically bought one in a Mini. But it was better MPG (very good for the time), fun, and cute. My buddy has a fast BMW, 2x the price. He got real mad when he drove the mini when he realized that the grand tour guys are right, hot hatches are pretty fun. He was blowing through $1500 in tires every year or so as well. I told him he got the bmw cause he's a dbag and a defense lawyer. He agreed that he is a dbag and he needed to show off as a lawyer. Every one of my friends who has a BMW would agree they care about appearences and are a bit of a dbag, I have about 10 from college/highschool/the neighborhood. So I'd be making fun of myself or my friends.
Personally I want multiple fun to drive vehicles. But I'd also rather have a CNC mill sharing space a motorcycle in the garage instead of a car I'm wiping with a diaper for the same price.
It's also quite common and a source of fun in many communities to make fun of the other brand. Many of these jokes are great at summarizing why people buy a thing. Ford vs Chevy. It can also get bit annoying and detract from what would otherwise be a useful conversation. "Fix Or Repair Daily" isn't very helpful. However "yamaha bike owners ask which valve head shims to buy, bmw owners ask which dealer is the most reputable" is a good description of the mindset for those respective brands, and the what the owners are looking for. Case in point, many BMWs only have an oil low sensor. How low? drain it and measure the volume, no dip stick. This carried over to my mini (bmw made), when the low oil light came on it was at .75 of 4 quarts, basically empty and damaging itself, and the dipstick is almost unreadable except in bright sunlight, but it's sure stylish.
Wow. You're all over the place with this comment dude.
> "Every one of my friends who has a BMW would agree they care about appearences and are a bit of a dbag, I have about 10..."
I would seriously reconsider who is the dbag among your 10 BMW friends. The people that care about what car someone drives are the ones venting about their buddies spending money on tires and quarts of oil online. Unless I missed the part where they made fun of your self-described "cute" Mini Cooper. Some people like quick cars, or cars that look nice.
Almost of these comments are from my friend about the his own driving habits with the car. It's his money he can blow through tires if he wants. He's the one calling himself a dbag. I think he's got redeeming qualities and some insecurities, it's why he's still a friend.
Me to one of the others when looking at college photos: "is that an affliction shirt"... Them "yeah I was kinda a dbag post college till I got married". me "wait is that a wristband, were you watching UFC pay per view"... them "actually, yes".
Do you need me to enumerate all of them for you? :)
Hey! What's wrong with BMWs? We have two of them. Both diesels. The gas mileage is slightly below amazing. (Though my lawyer says you should always buy them used, never new. He's very good on life advice in general.)
They’re incredible, in slow traffic I have no issue fitting into a space which is only 12” bigger than the BMW is in length terms, and everyone around me is impressed, particularly the driver behind, they often gesture congratulations about these feats
In all seriousness though after a few years driving a Tesla it is a stark contrast, the BMW’s are actually well-manufactured, very quiet in the cabin, tactile controls instead of touchscreens. I’d forgotten what a good car behaved and looked like instead of an early-adopter plastic-fantastic interior and technology stack. Really do think with “Big Auto” starting to figure out bEV and things like F-150 Lightning, BMW iX and more coming to the market, Tesla is not looking like a solid safe equity to be holding in a 5 year time horizon.
Not sure if that was a sarcastic reply but if not You’re missing the point - which was that these fools will often be better paid and more well off than you :)
I know it's anecdotal but I found that I turned into an arsehole when I owned a german car.
The cars are generally quiet and comfortable, they insulate you from the outside world. The dealership will treat you better than the typical garage because they can afford to. Your work colleagues will fawn over it even though they think you are a bit of a knob. You will get more attention from the opposite sex because they think you have more money. I even read that estate agents find selling houses with a german car in the drive easier.
From that it's easy to slip into thinking you are a very important person and that the plebs should just get out of your way.
The levels of stress aren't that much different, but there's something more practical about the stresses of labor jobs that make them a bit more manageable in my experience. Only in software jobs have I had persistent, constant stress that never seems to let up and consumes my weekends. It's a skill to manage it, but it's definitely part of the job.
I agree. I work in tech and, outside of work, I'm refurbishing my house. I'm enjoying the refurbishment but would I do a trade as a full time job? Hell no.
Crawling around in my loft sistering joists is satisfying work but also, if it were to become the kind of thing I did over a long period of time, would 100% wreck my knees.
And that's just one downside. There are plenty more: e.g., all the ancillary guff you have to do (same as you have with contracting really), and then dealing with the general public and having people phone you at all hours of the day and night looking for estimates and quotes. No thanks.
Thanks for the recommendation. Believe it or not I have a pair of exactly those but unfortunately I hate them because they rub my knees nearly raw when worn for prolonged periods. In the end I've bought an old skool rubber kneeler, which seems to work better, but of course you have to continually move it around, which isn't always convenient (or even possible).
I share your view about making estimates and quotes.
I get contractors to my house to help me renovate. It's just standard practice to get multiple tradesmen (>=3) to make a quote for the same job. I do that whenever the job is above $5000. I assume they must have a lot of other clients who do the same for lower thresholds too. I don't know the margins in each trade but I guess at least half of the quote is costs?
For the transport, the time on-site, the time to make a quote (depends a lot on the job).. I believe they each spend at least half a day on this. Then you add various time-consuming items like phone calls, people canceling appointments, people changing their minds about what they want, time to chase unpaid invoices, dealing with other tradesmen on some projects... All of this for a 1/3 chance of getting the job ?
Clearly some tradesmen are doing very well, but let's not pretend it's easy. As a contractor in software, I realized quickly I could and would only bill on a time-based approach. I've gone through the hassle of making a quote for a project with a lot of uncertainties and spanning over multiple months. At the end the client played with my weakness of being still quite young. He was older and much more experienced in legal & contract matters so he kept adding items pretending my contract was not fulfilled otherwise.. I ended up OK but would never go back to that anymore
Now I only have to negotiate once or twice a year (with my latest and ongoing client it's been multiple years so even better) when tradesmen have to do that multiple times a week
Ditto on the contract experience you had where you gave a rough project-wide estimate. I had the exact same position. I didn't end up finishing the contract because the client refused to fulfill their end of the first, and only, contract.
If I ever get another contract I'll be doing it your way: time-based via a settled hourly rate.
I've done the same time. Spent nights and weekends remodeling my home over 5 years. It was never 'finished', and the quality was never as good as the bits that I did hire out. The entire time I felt like I was living in a construction site.
When I got my 2nd home, I hired pros. The pros tell me they want their kids in my job.
I did a maths degree with the Open University. Most of the students are adults and sometimes it seemed half were programmers wanting to become teachers and the other half were teachers wanting to become programmers.
I've told people that at my work and had it said back to me later.
"If it was fun, it wouldn't be work." Also, I leave after 40 hours each week because there will never be a day when the work ends early. If we run out of work, it's because the company is sinking.
I think this might have two, maybe more meanings. The first is that if the person asking you to do something won't put it in writing, then it's probably not legal and therefore you can't do it. The second is that if you haven't thought through something well enough to write it down (the problem and the solution) then you haven't thought about it long enough to have found a solution.
I'm not sure if 'fun' is the right descriptor, but certain fields of work with relatively high prestige and supply of applicants but relatively low credential requirements (in comparison to credentialed professions like law or medicine) pay little or almost charge money.
Examples include journalism (very low paying, limited jobs in North America), museum curation (requiring many years of low-paid, unpaid internship; most people can't afford it), and many creative fields (e.g. graphic designers are, in my view, paid very low comparative to the skill and creativity they bring; creative writers often have to pay to submit to a literary journal; and video game developers are notoriously overworked/underpaid, compared to other types of software developers).
Stresses of a trade? Never "plumbed" professionally, so I can't speak from experience. But from other non-software jobs I have had, I know it was easy to "leave work at work".
Software development followed me home, lived in my brain 24/7. It also caused a good deal of stress I was unaware of at the time.
I think the ease of leaving work at work is probably a better proxy for age and commitment to your job. If you know it is a short term job or career, it is easy to leave there.
If you need the job, you start to care. Even with manual labor, there are problems that didn't get solved that need to be worked out before 7 AM tomorrow. I would say it is even harder to leave it at work. If a pipe breaks, and water is pouring out, sleeping on it isnt an option
Yep. I got burned out at one point and got my real estate license. I was going to go into commercial real estate and build a residential website in my spare time.
Good grief what a scheme that entire field is. If I wanted access to residential MLS data I was going to have to be a residential realtor. To be a residential realtor you have to work for a broker who will charge you monthly for the pleasure. You have to put the name of the brokerage on any site that uses the data even if you pay for it yourself. You also have to pay for each MLS you want to access.
If you want to start your own brokerage you have to get a brokerage license. To do that you have to have your real estate license for 3 years and take the brokerage class. There’s nothing you actually have to do during that 3 years other than maintain your license.
Seeing the profession from the inside was eye opening and I’ve been extremely happy getting to enjoy being in an unlicensed profession ever since.
100% this. I have been renovating my house for the past few months, room by room. It is fun on some days and not so much on other days. It can even be stressful when you can't figure out certain corners, or end up with leaks etc. I have contemplated started renovation as a side business, but having spoken to independent contractors I have figured it isn't all that much lucrative. There are even assholes who won't pay you at all.
I'm a software engineer who does his own plumbing and his own electrical. Example projects:
* rewire 1920's three story house with romex instead of knob & tube
* install 6.6kW ground mount PV arrays and connect to grid
* replumb two kitchens and three bathrooms
* install water softener (all copper, dozens of required brazed joints)
I love doing that stuff (carpentry and cabinet building too). But ... a couple of times I've made the mistake of agreeing to help others on projects like the one's I've done for myself. Mistake? Well, absolutely. Doing work like this for other people is completely and utterly different from working on your own projects. Despite loving the work itself, I would never, ever want to do this for other people, even for good income.
> Doing work like this for other people is completely and utterly different from working on your own projects.
To be fair this same logic likely is the source of stress for a lot of software engineers. Loving to program and programming for other people for a living initially seems like a brilliant way to make a living. For plenty of people it is, but for some what programming for money looks like and programming for passion look like can be so different as to be depressing.
The hardest part of software engineers in this situation is the money is really good and, all things considers, the job is quite cushy. However having your passion drained by your profession still can be an awful feeling, and that can be magnified by the fact that there's no easy solution.
For me personally I resolved this by realizing and fully embracing that the programming projects I like to do need to be in a completely separate part of my mind that the ones I'm paid to do.
By day I sling mediocre code on arguably useless things because I need to pay the bills, by night I work on a separate set of interesting problems that are related to the day time ones only insofar as they technically involve writing code. If I get a cool insight at work, great, but I've learned to leave my passion at home when I check into work.
I suppose I am both lucky and rare: I get to experience the "I do what I want to when I want to how I want to" for both my programming and construction work. A useful insight, I hadn't connected them in that way before.
To bring it back to the premise of this entire website: this is a reason why entrepreneurship becomes a recourse for some dissatisfied engineers. Startups, small-scale consultancies, side projects are all ways to code the programs they want to code.
I don’t think that’s a good escape. I tried owning my business and I hated it 10x more than being just a engineer. Instead of spending 70% of my hours doing what I like it became more like 30%
I worked in a daycare for a while when I was young; I really liked being a scout leader and figured I might want to do something like this for a living. I didn't like it very much: turns out that a few hours on saturday is not quite the same thing as 8 hours every day.
I think in general "doing this for a hobby and fun" and "doing this for a living" are two entirely different things. Many people love to cook as a hobby, but being a chef in a restaurant is a completely different thing. Years ago I had a friend who loved to drive trucks as a hobby; I never understood the appeal myself, but he just loved the feeling of driving a truck. He left his teaching career to become a truck driver and in a matter of months ended up hating it (and he ended up going back to being a teacher).
Some years ago I had a friend who agreed to do some tile work for some other mutual friends. Midway through, I was at the "client's" house talking with them, and they were complaining (not bitterly, but perplexedly): "We just don't get it, Steve finishes and says he'll be back in the morning but then he doesn't show up for 5-10 days". I shared in their amazement - it seemed so rude, so unnecessary. Why would you do that?
A few years rolled by and I found myself doing construction stuff for friends. "See you in the morning" I would say as I left, and then find myself returning a week later. There's even a situation now where I've left an absurdly simple final task helping one of my neighbors with some minor repairs ... I think I told her 3-4 months ago that I'd be back in 2 days.
I don't really understand why this happens, but it did give me some insight into a whole extra layer that is required from you when doing work for other people: you have to go back, tomorrow, even, over and over until it is done.
Now this certainly applies to any regular (well, contract?) employment too, but there is something different about construction that I think requires a different kind of personal character to enable you to fulfill the implicit obligations.
Yeah - I wonder about the age / experience level of commentors in this thread. If you had told me in my 20's about burnout (and I'm pretty sure people did tell me), I'd have said I love tech too much and it'll never happen to me. Now in my 30's it's a struggle. I think the last decade was pretty rough too, perhaps if I was a bit older and gotten into tech professionally in the 90's it might have been more of a fun ride, but it's also possible that's just nostalgia.
In fleeting moments of madness, maybe. But aside from that, of course not! We're so unbelievably lucky to be able to do things that we're good at, most of us enjoy (to some extent), and also be paid eye-watering amounts of money.
It's pretty easy to forget how low the median income really is when one's social group is exclusively tech or other professional occupations (lawyers, doctors, etc). Meeting somebody who's doing physical labour 40-60 hours a week only to make 25k USD or whatever puts things into perspective really quick.
It obviously depends on where you live and what you do in your job and how much you work and how hard. I'd argue though that, to say it in OP's words, most of us should get watery eyes every time we see our paychecks given how much time we spend actually working, what the work environment is and what that work entails. We're so incredibly lucky it's hard to fathom.
What makes you say that? Outside of contracting and a few elite firms in London, being a developer in the UK is like being an accountant -- nothing special.
I took a job making gears in a job shop. I learned quite a lot of interesting things. However, the pay and commute were both horrible. I caught Covid in March 2020, and have been dealing with Long Covid ever since.
Now I find myself needing to jump back into programming, and my strongly preferred language is Pascal. It's going to be an interesting ride.
If you do this yourself, make sure you have planned for contingencies like long term disability, should you be injured on the job, or get sick. Having a large nest egg of tech worker pay is a very good idea to secure before making the leap.
Hope your covid gets better. How does one "jump" into Pascal?
I used Pascal in 1992 programming in high school on a Mac LCiii, and never really thought about it again. Do modern compilers even exist for this language?
What genuinely curious what you could possibly want you to program in Pascal let alone prefer using it for anything meaningful?
It's not pascal that I was talking about into, it was the job market. I haven't been a full time programmer in decades. I've written quite a few things since then, but not full time.
As for Pascal, I learned it back around 1985, when Turbo Pascal first came out. I followed through version 7, then into Delphi for Windows. It was at Delphi 5 that I took a non-programming job.
I also tried out Borland's C++, but all the non-editable boilerplate, case sensitivity, and non-counted strings really seemed like antipatterns to productivity.
A few years ago, I had used python for some small projects, and so I figured I'd try it out for a GUI project that came up. I figured in the 2 decades since I had used Delphi, things had surely gotten way better.
What a disappointment. There were no open source 2-way GUI builders that offered IDE support for python. I wasted a year trying to support the project building a shim between wxBuilder and python 2.x. It worked, but was so brittle that I ultimately gave up on it.
I was able to rewrite it all in Lazarus in less that two weeks of part time effort.
I still think it's one of the best programming languages available, despite its failure to overtake C/C#/C++ in the market, which I blame mostly on Borland/Inprise/Embarcadero management.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 325 ms ] threadNow tell me how your wrists and hands are feeling. How about your knees? Imagine that everyday, plus an array of powertools such as impact drivers + drills, rotary hammers, sawzalls, band saws, and crimping tools that can weigh 20+ lbs.
That mouse & keyboard will start to look very, very comfortable.
It’s true that white and blue collar work have ergonomic and health hazard mitigations. I saw from another comment of yours that you mostly had to work on unsafe and inconsiderate commercial crews with no decision-making ability, which understandably colors your view of physical labor. You’re also right to point out a novice would likely fare similarly, especially if approaching a career change romantically.
Those sort of trades do present problems like coding does - your brain is still engaged (a bit). However, I think you are also adding/improving people's lives.
Fix someone's dirty toilet? That is clearly a good thing. I can't think of one thing in my computing career that has been as positive..
As someone who spent a couple years doing commercial plumbing:
1) You are lifting very heavy 10-20ft long sticks of cast iron pipe, often 10+ ft in the air. There is technology to aid with this (scissor lifts) but it is brutal work.
2) You spend a lot of time in the air - on ladders or lifts - often overhanging the edges. You are constantly drilling hangers in the ceiling, breathing in dust that will ruin your lungs permanently. And again, you are also fitting cast iron pipes in this environment. You will feel the sway and it's pretty easy to hurt yourself. OSHA is a joke. I've been caught in the middle of a huge storm, since the foreman didn't want to let us off early, and we had to run down 8 stories of scaffolding while heavy material is being thrown around like ragdolls.
3) People on job sites generally don't give a @$%^. Toxic fumes? Check. Concrete/cement dust? Check. Crazy welders that don't care that they can potentially ruin your eyesight? Check.
4) Your company will track you with apps, often not pay you until you arrive on the jobsite, but you still need to be at the shop @ 6AM to help load materials. Unpaid.
5) Depending on where you live, you can expect to listen to nothing but conservative talk radio on that morning ride. I've worked with people from all paths, so this didn't really bother me, but something to consider if you have spent most of your life doing white-collar work. You can expect to be around some hateful ignorance.
6) If you're not doing new construction, you can expect to be in the ceiling, crawling among ducts, trying not to fall through. This is generally with copper pipes, which is another ball game as far as cutting, soldering/brazing, or crimping. Otherwise, you are often trying to do this standing on a 12ft ladder.
Commercial plumbing pays better than residential (fixing a dirty toilet) and is often in more demand. It is also a pretty good way to wreck your body. Most of the older/senior plumbers that I worked with spent their time trying to do as little work as possible, and were drunk after lunch. Addictions are very common.
IME, people who often are shouting "get in the trades!" are the exact people who have never once worked in one (or they own a business in it). It ain't all that.
Managers/foremen etc are asses the world over. I was really addressing the work. And I thought I picked a pretty unpleasant example in dirty toilets!
I contrast the work you do with work I have done. I was making a moral point.
I have worked in financial and other institutions. I really see no value in what I have contributed. If I achieved something, its that the shareholders of those institutions were happier in being able to squeeze a bit more life-force for themselves from others. I helped the fat cats get a little fatter.
BTW - I think you wreck your body sitting in front of a machine all day. I accept that coding is not as overtly dangerous though!
I think that is just the way of the world, especially in America. Even though I have worked in fields that produce a more "tangible" product, I can't say that I have contributed or helped much of anything. And now I'm in my 30s without an education and I only have experience doing things that I never want to do again.
Bosses are always terrible, but it's a little different when your life is literally at stake. I've had "old school" foremen who want to sit and call you a pu$$y because you don't want to stand (without a harness) on a flimsy piece of wood over a six story shaft, cutting and then brazing 8" copper pipe. It's also harder when you don't have dedicated recruiting networks and the ability to WFH like many do in tech/SWE.
(Just my perspective! I appreciate the discussion.)
Personally, I believe that knowing how to navigate this (increasingly) digital world is an essential skill. I'm enjoying trying to build foundational knowledge about computing & networking for these reasons - and I also just feel like there is _so much_ to learn, and that is both exciting and overwhelming at times. I have some negative views towards the way technology has trended in the last decade or two (bordering on tin-foil hat territory :P) but I think that is all the more reason to understand it.
I don't have any interest in pursuing SWE, esp. for financial reasons. But I am enjoying learning about programming. I'd be happy if I could hack on things at home & contribute to some OSS projects. I'm hoping to land a junior position at a NOC in a year or so, but who knows? I've given up on the idea of any career giving my life meaning or purpose, so I'd be happy with an education + skillset that makes me employable, especially with remote opportunities. Not having to destroy my body is a bonus!
Still involves a surprising amount of carpentry. And finding where the hell the wires were run in other people's "wtf were these fools thinking?" grade framing. and other fun stuff.
I suppose telco might be most reasonable. Or if pay isn't important electronics. And even there is problems.
On the other hand: about once every 3 years, I shut my computer down and get the dust out. I even hate that. The only nasty wet messes I don't mind dealing with come from my child or the refrigerator. All else, I'm happy to pay somebody else.
The carpentry was easily the best part, and the part that I really enjoyed. The concreting and steel roofing/cladding parts were pretty brutal though. Admittedly a pro could justify spending on better tools than I had but still it has taken a toll on my aging body.
But even the carpentry would be hell trying to do that work under commercial pressure on other peoples projects - never mind that carpenters are generally worse paid than most other trades despite usually taking on the bulk of the project responsibilities.
As sick as I am of tech, I would rather stick to carpentry as a 'hobby'.
Personally as a data scientist I might as well be described as a digital plumber.
I wouldn't mind a real dirty job, but physical dexterity isn't my strong suit.
But, I have been blessed/lucky to be a one man show for many years and I had to stick with one tech stack and my learning only added not shifted out from under me. So when I made massive changes it was on my own terms.
The cost is mentally going against the trends/grain in the industry. My LAMP stack is now back in style, and I am grateful I never dumped it for something trendy.
Results are what mattered and I think we've seen massive shifts in perspective in our industry over the past 20 years. Changing everything from code versioning systems, databases, back and front end languages, all the mix of build systems. There was a lot to avoid changing to for the sake of change.
And sometimes you wonder if you are missing something because you can't see the value in changing. (ie, GIT was obvious from SVN, PHP to Node not so obvious...)
Tldr, trades can be fun, but are also physically demanding, get boring, don't pay as well as it might appear, and have a pretty low ceiling on growth unless you want to manage a fleet of tradesmen or something.
Sometimes I do still wish I was a carpenter. But realistically, software has so many of the same aspects as trades, but is changing so quickly there is always something to learn, it pays better, and doesn't depend on having peak physical health.
The biggest difference in terms of satisfaction I think might be that plumbers et al are more likely to be entrepreneurs, while well paid software engineers mostly work in big companies. Consider entrepreneurship within software before bailing to a completely different trade
Realistically though, I think my secondary post-retirement career will end up being a teacher of some sort (high school or community college -- I'm mainly interested in teaching, not research, so university is largely out of the question).
I have an EE degree but find there is little overlap between that knowledge and electrical work.
They could definitely use skilled people and while there can be the same crazy expectations and conflicting missions, you can say no a lot more easily.
Forest fire water bomber pilot?
On a side note, I always thought it would be a very cool thing if there were some kind of exchange program for people with good skills wanting to try them out in another field, kind of as a rotation. (I originally thought this for academia -- researchers who would love to see another field getting to visit for maybe 3 months or similar) But I guess, what company would be willing to participate in such a thing and let their people do it, having to pay for the cost...
In general I agree with the sentiment: high salary is the only nice thing about working in IT. It's simply too much pressure. Best you can do is to make your fortune quickly (joining FAANG helps, becoming a freelancer is a reasonable alternative in Europe), build a house, set up a college fund for kids, and then retire, or find yourself a job as a carpenter, of scubadiving instructor, or whatever you like, as long as it has nothing to do with computers.
Loving my current position(s) way too much.
But also, if I did leave the field with some cash, I’d probably go be a backwoods flight instructor.
But then I'm reminded of how prviliged I am and how much better the working conditions are as a work from home developer is compared to a teacher... And the feeling goes away.
Maybe the best is if I could FIRE and then just hold evening classes for those who are interested, but I'm not there yet.
I watch machining videos on YouTube for fun knowing that I’ll never make the jump.
I occasionally build physical things just so I can have some variety in frustrations that help me put my day job frustrations into perspective.
Of course you can attain mastery over certain sections of computer science/engineering.
If I really hated it, I could save up for some time and do something else, because again… I’m pulling insane amounts of money for software work.
Trades like plumbing, electrical work etc are -hard- work. I recognize that I have the privilege of not sacrificing my body and health for my income. My biggest concerns are making sure my posture is correct and that I take enough walks. Such a hard life.
I’ve noticed that some programmers tend to romanticize things like farming or plumbing, and generally speaking not understand the hard physical work those people have to go through. It can be quite patronizing.
Edit: sitting a desk is not “sacrificing your body”. Comparing that to the labor that people in trades do is completely detached from reality. Obviously there are things like standing desks and working out. But in life you have to sit or stand regardless.
https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/sitting-time-linked-to-hi...
Oh, sitting in a chair in front a screen for hours on end does wonders for the body. It's still early, you'll appreciate it in ~10 years.
My point was that office-work is far away preferable to daily physical labor. I’ll take sitting over throwing out my back, blowing out my knees and having constant pain. Not to mention the hazards of working with chemicals or industrial equipment or electricity, and so on.
Of course there are options that I use like exercising and standing desks. My point was that this is a significantly better situation health-wise than working in trades. And that I have the privilege of doing that.
It's not. I've never been fitter than when I was doing physical work. The problem was the pay and the powerlessness at the workplace (e.g. awful hours with no notice, management compromises on safety, the expectation that you'll keep silent when management cuts corners or cheats the clients/customers, etc.)
The reason I stopped doing physical work is because physical workers are disrespected by the world, and your bosses would rather shut down and leave the industry than to pay you a dollar more. After I decided I would never work with my hands again, jobs paid a lot more. The less you actually do, the more holy you get. One day I'll just sit in the lotus position, floating two inches above my prayer mat, giving cryptic pronouncements about what other people should be doing. By then, I'll have billions.
You're describing social/interpersonal problems which happen regardless of the type of industry or work. That has nothing to do with the objective fact that working in an office is better than having physical labor take a toll on your body in the long term. I never stated that doing nothing but sitting is healthy.
Sitting for longer periods in any amount is incredibly bad for one's health long term, every study on the subject has confirmed this.
You are sacrificing your health, just in a different way.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/21/health/sitting-study-partner/...
An aside: I also just loathe ergonomic design, I'm never comfortable in anything other than a recliner or laying on a couch or bed. I'm wholly convinced that chairs are the way they are because "they've always been that way" with tables and desks following suit. It's unfortunate that better designs haven't caught on, aren't readily available, and tend to be inordinately expensive. What I'd really like to see is a practical true to form holistic ergonomic design instead of this weird traditionally inspired clusterfuck with its productivity centric model.
Do you have any links to examples of these different designs? After using a bunch of different chairs, I'm seriously considering just repurposing my piano stool, even though I'll lose all the back support.
I just can't find anything sustainably comfortable and supportive.
I sit seiza-style on my chair currently to enforce good posture by tilting the pelvis, but it's taxing after a while, and it took me a long time to adjust to seiza, I use a standing desk in complement.
https://store.flokk.com/us/en-gb/products/hag-capisco?model=...
For example, would you accept a 1.4x (+40%) chance of brain cancer? Vs sedentary peoples who have 2x chance of diabetes and +14% cardiovascular disease? (and sedentary means sitting + not exercising after work!).
I'd argue diabetes is easier to avoid through other life changes. I"m confused about whether "sitting" means "never exercising", and articles that talk about "sedentary" lifestyles are not very helpful.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1035250/
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M14-1651
I also use a standing desk anyways, but I am not sacrificing my health like my grandfather or father did who had/have back/knee and other health issues in their 50s from physical labor.
Being able to earn a nice living while sitting at a desk is an enormous privilege, and I also get money and healthcare to routinely visit doctors anyway.
In the mornings I walk my daughter to school: 25 minutes exercise.
At lunch time I'll take a 30 minute walk.
There's no reason to be unfit as a software developer.
https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/sm54ri/a...
No job is going to get you away from unreasonable people with unreasonable expectations, and most trades introduce a bunch of other unpleasant things that you'd have to deal with.
It's all tradeoffs. Someone may legitimately prefer the stresses of a trade to the stresses of working in software, and that's great for them. But it's not an objectively easier path: if it were, plumbers would be much less expensive.
Why go around being an enforcer for social rules you don't even know if you believe in?
Your belief implies it is improper to use statistics to describe morally salient human behavior in any way, unless the conclusion is that there is no variation. I think that's silly and intellectually impoverishing. Groups have different average behavior and I don't see the point in blinding myself to that.
We all know that averages don't determine an individual, and we all know that some generalizations should be avoided, but that doesn't imply some broad fatwa, completely irrespective of context, against noting broad variations in group behavior.
The prosecutor attitude is very entertaining though. Feel free to keep doing that.
Point taken on "prosecutor attitude", sorry about that. riding "moral high horse" got to my head.
For me, it's not an easy topic but I would say when negative generalizations escalate to exclusion and dehumanization, that's probably where to draw the line.
I know some people with Audis and I don't think worse of them or anything like that. It's just a funny thing that's hard to ignore after a while on the road.
Regarding my personal beliefs, as I've stated above "I personally believe in statistics and I believe you cannot use* them to make derogatory* generalizations"
1. regarding "use": you cannot use specifically statistics/data to justify any *-ist remark. "I hate bmw drivers because most of them are assholes on the road", an example of that (not what you said!)
2. regarding "derogatory": you can(and should!) use statistics to do (just) generalizations, i.e. in a context of talking about group behaviour. "most of bmw drivers are agressive and dangerous drivers, as shown by this data" is a perfectly fine statement.
My problem is that you can say that sort of statements about certain group of drivers, but if you would have pulled up a similar argument and used (for example) PoC and crime rates, you would have been torn to pieces by everyone. And for me, on the surface, the statement and the structure would be absolutely the same (and it is STILL not escalated to exclusion and dehumanization). So whats the difference? And why different treatment? People above are arguing that buying BMW its a choice and using inherent (immutable) properties (i.e. race/gender) is different for the case of stereotyping, but I cannot see the key difference that makes okay to do one and not okay to do another.
Side point - in general an important thing to remember here is the big, big difference between P(A|B) and P(B|A). It could be the case that all aggressive drivers I ever encounter are BMW drivers, and yet the rate of aggressive BMW drivers could be very low and of little practical predictive value on any individual BMW driver (e.g. 1% of BMW drivers versus 0% for non-BMW drivers).
People are already bad at distinguishing an implication and its converse, and they're quite a bit worse at the statistical version of the same.
Arguably this is a reason we should keep our generalizations to ourselves, even if they're accurate. A lot of people will take them to mean a lot more than they do.
It's not my style, but I do recognize the risk.
race/gender are probabilistic and unalterable, one doesn't necessarily elect to inherit the stereotypes associated with race/gender. You're essentially being delegated expectations that may or may not be in alignment with personal values.
There are definitely double-standards in play though, a sort of socio-cognitive warfare, I suppose.
[0] Urban Dictionary: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Punch%20Up
One is: "1. a. The deliberate exercise of physical force against a person, property, etc.; physically violent behaviour or treatment; (Law) the unlawful exercise of physical force, intimidation by the exhibition of such force." Another definition is: "4. Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion."
That the first definition is inherently negative is a separate philosophical discussion (as quick counter-examples where violence may not be negative, consider the violence of a fencing or martial arts match). However, it is clear that "punching up" in this case refers to definition four. I believe that most would agree that intensity of emotion or language is not inherently or necessarily a negative behaviour.
[0] Current quoted version is paywalled, but older 1989 edition for reference (may have differences from the quoted version): https://www.oed.com/oed2/00277885
Personally I want multiple fun to drive vehicles. But I'd also rather have a CNC mill sharing space a motorcycle in the garage instead of a car I'm wiping with a diaper for the same price.
It's also quite common and a source of fun in many communities to make fun of the other brand. Many of these jokes are great at summarizing why people buy a thing. Ford vs Chevy. It can also get bit annoying and detract from what would otherwise be a useful conversation. "Fix Or Repair Daily" isn't very helpful. However "yamaha bike owners ask which valve head shims to buy, bmw owners ask which dealer is the most reputable" is a good description of the mindset for those respective brands, and the what the owners are looking for. Case in point, many BMWs only have an oil low sensor. How low? drain it and measure the volume, no dip stick. This carried over to my mini (bmw made), when the low oil light came on it was at .75 of 4 quarts, basically empty and damaging itself, and the dipstick is almost unreadable except in bright sunlight, but it's sure stylish.
> "Every one of my friends who has a BMW would agree they care about appearences and are a bit of a dbag, I have about 10..."
I would seriously reconsider who is the dbag among your 10 BMW friends. The people that care about what car someone drives are the ones venting about their buddies spending money on tires and quarts of oil online. Unless I missed the part where they made fun of your self-described "cute" Mini Cooper. Some people like quick cars, or cars that look nice.
- BMW M4 dbag owner who drives like a normal person.
Do you need me to enumerate all of them for you? :)
In all seriousness though after a few years driving a Tesla it is a stark contrast, the BMW’s are actually well-manufactured, very quiet in the cabin, tactile controls instead of touchscreens. I’d forgotten what a good car behaved and looked like instead of an early-adopter plastic-fantastic interior and technology stack. Really do think with “Big Auto” starting to figure out bEV and things like F-150 Lightning, BMW iX and more coming to the market, Tesla is not looking like a solid safe equity to be holding in a 5 year time horizon.
https://www.financialexpress.com/auto/car-news/psychopaths-d...
The cars are generally quiet and comfortable, they insulate you from the outside world. The dealership will treat you better than the typical garage because they can afford to. Your work colleagues will fawn over it even though they think you are a bit of a knob. You will get more attention from the opposite sex because they think you have more money. I even read that estate agents find selling houses with a german car in the drive easier.
From that it's easy to slip into thinking you are a very important person and that the plebs should just get out of your way.
Crawling around in my loft sistering joists is satisfying work but also, if it were to become the kind of thing I did over a long period of time, would 100% wreck my knees.
And that's just one downside. There are plenty more: e.g., all the ancillary guff you have to do (same as you have with contracting really), and then dealing with the general public and having people phone you at all hours of the day and night looking for estimates and quotes. No thanks.
I use them all the time. Cable management under desks, tile work, electrical. I wonder how I went so long without them.
I get contractors to my house to help me renovate. It's just standard practice to get multiple tradesmen (>=3) to make a quote for the same job. I do that whenever the job is above $5000. I assume they must have a lot of other clients who do the same for lower thresholds too. I don't know the margins in each trade but I guess at least half of the quote is costs?
For the transport, the time on-site, the time to make a quote (depends a lot on the job).. I believe they each spend at least half a day on this. Then you add various time-consuming items like phone calls, people canceling appointments, people changing their minds about what they want, time to chase unpaid invoices, dealing with other tradesmen on some projects... All of this for a 1/3 chance of getting the job ?
Clearly some tradesmen are doing very well, but let's not pretend it's easy. As a contractor in software, I realized quickly I could and would only bill on a time-based approach. I've gone through the hassle of making a quote for a project with a lot of uncertainties and spanning over multiple months. At the end the client played with my weakness of being still quite young. He was older and much more experienced in legal & contract matters so he kept adding items pretending my contract was not fulfilled otherwise.. I ended up OK but would never go back to that anymore
Now I only have to negotiate once or twice a year (with my latest and ongoing client it's been multiple years so even better) when tradesmen have to do that multiple times a week
Costs are likely more 80-85% in building/construction, margins are thin.
Electricians/plumbers may have something more, but not much.
If I ever get another contract I'll be doing it your way: time-based via a settled hourly rate.
When I got my 2nd home, I hired pros. The pros tell me they want their kids in my job.
- If it was fun they'd charge money at the door.
- If you can't write it down you can't do it.
You can argue about the accuracy of those ideas, but more or less I've found them to be true.
I've told people that at my work and had it said back to me later.
"If it was fun, it wouldn't be work." Also, I leave after 40 hours each week because there will never be a day when the work ends early. If we run out of work, it's because the company is sinking.
I'm not sure if 'fun' is the right descriptor, but certain fields of work with relatively high prestige and supply of applicants but relatively low credential requirements (in comparison to credentialed professions like law or medicine) pay little or almost charge money.
Examples include journalism (very low paying, limited jobs in North America), museum curation (requiring many years of low-paid, unpaid internship; most people can't afford it), and many creative fields (e.g. graphic designers are, in my view, paid very low comparative to the skill and creativity they bring; creative writers often have to pay to submit to a literary journal; and video game developers are notoriously overworked/underpaid, compared to other types of software developers).
Software development followed me home, lived in my brain 24/7. It also caused a good deal of stress I was unaware of at the time.
If you need the job, you start to care. Even with manual labor, there are problems that didn't get solved that need to be worked out before 7 AM tomorrow. I would say it is even harder to leave it at work. If a pipe breaks, and water is pouring out, sleeping on it isnt an option
Good grief what a scheme that entire field is. If I wanted access to residential MLS data I was going to have to be a residential realtor. To be a residential realtor you have to work for a broker who will charge you monthly for the pleasure. You have to put the name of the brokerage on any site that uses the data even if you pay for it yourself. You also have to pay for each MLS you want to access.
If you want to start your own brokerage you have to get a brokerage license. To do that you have to have your real estate license for 3 years and take the brokerage class. There’s nothing you actually have to do during that 3 years other than maintain your license.
Seeing the profession from the inside was eye opening and I’ve been extremely happy getting to enjoy being in an unlicensed profession ever since.
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders
None of those. But I would like to be carpenter or machinist.
I do often dream of moving back to Romania, to a hamlet in the mountains and building a wooden house like Mr. Chickadee ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TcARfChhbE ).
But I'd never do it because I'm greedy and don't take risks.
To be fair this same logic likely is the source of stress for a lot of software engineers. Loving to program and programming for other people for a living initially seems like a brilliant way to make a living. For plenty of people it is, but for some what programming for money looks like and programming for passion look like can be so different as to be depressing.
The hardest part of software engineers in this situation is the money is really good and, all things considers, the job is quite cushy. However having your passion drained by your profession still can be an awful feeling, and that can be magnified by the fact that there's no easy solution.
For me personally I resolved this by realizing and fully embracing that the programming projects I like to do need to be in a completely separate part of my mind that the ones I'm paid to do.
By day I sling mediocre code on arguably useless things because I need to pay the bills, by night I work on a separate set of interesting problems that are related to the day time ones only insofar as they technically involve writing code. If I get a cool insight at work, great, but I've learned to leave my passion at home when I check into work.
I think in general "doing this for a hobby and fun" and "doing this for a living" are two entirely different things. Many people love to cook as a hobby, but being a chef in a restaurant is a completely different thing. Years ago I had a friend who loved to drive trucks as a hobby; I never understood the appeal myself, but he just loved the feeling of driving a truck. He left his teaching career to become a truck driver and in a matter of months ended up hating it (and he ended up going back to being a teacher).
A few years rolled by and I found myself doing construction stuff for friends. "See you in the morning" I would say as I left, and then find myself returning a week later. There's even a situation now where I've left an absurdly simple final task helping one of my neighbors with some minor repairs ... I think I told her 3-4 months ago that I'd be back in 2 days.
I don't really understand why this happens, but it did give me some insight into a whole extra layer that is required from you when doing work for other people: you have to go back, tomorrow, even, over and over until it is done.
Now this certainly applies to any regular (well, contract?) employment too, but there is something different about construction that I think requires a different kind of personal character to enable you to fulfill the implicit obligations.
This is pretty much how I feel about IT work nowadays. I've done it in the past, nowadays I repair rental houses.
It's pretty easy to forget how low the median income really is when one's social group is exclusively tech or other professional occupations (lawyers, doctors, etc). Meeting somebody who's doing physical labour 40-60 hours a week only to make 25k USD or whatever puts things into perspective really quick.
Thats not really true outside US
But we are not, in UK developers are slightly above average office workers, they have no advantage on lawyers, bankers, doctors, etc.
Is there some logical reason I'm missing why it should be any different than it is?
Now I find myself needing to jump back into programming, and my strongly preferred language is Pascal. It's going to be an interesting ride.
If you do this yourself, make sure you have planned for contingencies like long term disability, should you be injured on the job, or get sick. Having a large nest egg of tech worker pay is a very good idea to secure before making the leap.
I used Pascal in 1992 programming in high school on a Mac LCiii, and never really thought about it again. Do modern compilers even exist for this language?
What genuinely curious what you could possibly want you to program in Pascal let alone prefer using it for anything meaningful?
Although I personally don't know anyone that uses this and there probably isn't many jobs for this.
It's not pascal that I was talking about into, it was the job market. I haven't been a full time programmer in decades. I've written quite a few things since then, but not full time.
As for Pascal, I learned it back around 1985, when Turbo Pascal first came out. I followed through version 7, then into Delphi for Windows. It was at Delphi 5 that I took a non-programming job.
I also tried out Borland's C++, but all the non-editable boilerplate, case sensitivity, and non-counted strings really seemed like antipatterns to productivity.
A few years ago, I had used python for some small projects, and so I figured I'd try it out for a GUI project that came up. I figured in the 2 decades since I had used Delphi, things had surely gotten way better.
What a disappointment. There were no open source 2-way GUI builders that offered IDE support for python. I wasted a year trying to support the project building a shim between wxBuilder and python 2.x. It worked, but was so brittle that I ultimately gave up on it.
I was able to rewrite it all in Lazarus in less that two weeks of part time effort.
I still think it's one of the best programming languages available, despite its failure to overtake C/C#/C++ in the market, which I blame mostly on Borland/Inprise/Embarcadero management.
I know several.