21 ms·

Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?

• bee_rider 5y ago
  I shifted away from EE toward programming stuff because physical objects are kind of a pain in the butt. You plug in the wrong wire and the magic smoke permanently escapes. No way to put it back in. I'm sure plumbers have a similar problem, except it involves poop water everywhere. No thanks.
• blobbers 5y ago
  I believe the basic gist of this is that the person feels unfulfilled and burnt out. We all get that way after too much screentime. Take a break, get a little more balance in your life, and perhaps the desire to program will come back. Maybe it won't.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I often think of becoming a farmer.
• klyrs 5y ago
  No. Plumbing is gross and wet. Carpentry, on the other hand...
  • tartoran 5y ago
    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.
    • aldebran 5y ago
      Thank you for the morning laugh. And yes, I do agree.
    • xeromal 5y ago
      You can't catch ecoli from software at least though
      • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Joint and back issues?
        • grumple 5y ago
          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.
          • lokalfarm 5y ago
            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.
            • Apocryphon 5y ago
              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.
            • 1123581321 5y ago
  • verisimi 5y ago
    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..
    • lokalfarm 5y ago
      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.
  • kurthr 5y ago
    Carpentry is brutal and pays badly... but I agree, poop is gross. Electrician, on the other hand?
    • h2odragon 5y ago
      > Electrician, on the other hand? 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.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      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.
    • klyrs 5y ago
      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.
  • antod 5y ago
    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'.
• civilized 5y ago
  Very enjoyable comments here, no sarcasm intended. "Other jobs are even worse". In my experience, yeah, they are. 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.
• Vanderson 5y ago
  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.
  • waynesonfire 5y ago
    that is awesome. These are the types of dividends that I strive for. Well done.
    • Vanderson 5y ago
      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...)
• version_five 5y ago
  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
• jrib 5y ago
  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
• umvi 5y ago
  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).
  • Freestyler_3 5y ago
    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.
    • 01100011 5y ago
      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.
  • candiddevmike 5y ago
    Being an electrician sounds great until it's the middle of summer and you have to go in an attic or under a trailer.
    • spicybright 5y ago
      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.
• inglor_cz 5y ago
  Plumber, no. Too dirty. But being an electrician would probably suit me just fine.
  • akemichan 5y ago
    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.
• adityavsc 5y ago
  No, I want to become a house painter or a gardener. I watch those super long house painting videos. And I'm ready to do it for FREE :)
  • hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    Come on over to my place I have the painting gear ready ;)
    • adityavsc 5y ago
      haha - an invitation I cannot refuse :P
• xzc 5y ago
  • emadabdulrahim 5y ago
    This made me chuckle
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  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.
• mostertoaster 5y ago
  Yes.
• Kalanos 5y ago
  yes!!! i thought it was just me. it's probably subliminally mario related
• supernova87a 5y ago
  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...
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    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.
• 988747 5y ago
  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.
  • thaw13579 5y ago
    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.
• watmough 5y ago
  No way. 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.
• lawn 5y ago
  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.
  • polishdude20 5y ago
    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.
• cjbgkagh 5y ago
  The tech domain is so expansive that there is an inability to master it which is a core tenant for job satisfaction. 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.
  • andrewzah 5y ago
    So no engineers are satisfied because they can’t master the entire domain of engineering? Of course you can attain mastery over certain sections of computer science/engineering.
    • cjbgkagh 5y ago
      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.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      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).
• banana_maker 5y ago
  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.
  • arbol 5y ago
    Sitting in a seat day after day is sacrificing your body and health for work. You may not notice this now but you will in 10 years time. https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/sitting-time-linked-to-higher-risk-of-death-from-all-causes.html https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/sitting-time-linked-to-hi...
  • dsego 5y ago
    > I recognize that I have the privilege of not sacrificing my body and health for my income 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.
    • Sebb767 5y ago
      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.
    • banana_maker 5y ago
• lolinder 5y ago
  This comment and its top reply are dead on: https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/sm54ri/anyone_else_feel_the_constant_urge_to_leave_the/hvupqke/ 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.
  • civilized 5y ago
    • Tijdreiziger 5y ago
      That's why I don't own a car. :P
    • rudasn 5y ago
      There's a study for that : https://www.scrapcarcomparison.co.uk/blog/which-drivers-are-most-likely-to-be-psychopaths/ https://www.scrapcarcomparison.co.uk/blog/which-drivers-are-...
      • civilized 5y ago
        Damn, I nailed it. I had no idea, this was purely based on personal experience.
    • artemonster 5y ago
      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)
• xdennis 5y ago
  > plumber/electrician/brickie 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TcARfChhbE ). But I'd never do it because I'm greedy and don't take risks.
• PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  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.
  • it_does_follow 5y ago
    > 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.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      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.
• xeromal 5y ago
  When I retire, I want to have a little coffee truck or stand and just go around making random coffees.
• throwaway135711 5y ago
  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.
  • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "also be paid eye-watering amounts of money." Thats not really true outside US
    • barbazoo 5y ago
      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.
      • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        "We're so incredibly lucky it's hard to fathom." But we are not, in UK developers are slightly above average office workers, they have no advantage on lawyers, bankers, doctors, etc.
        • barbazoo 5y ago
          Personally I would still consider that lucky in the grand scheme of things. I'd never compare myself or the work I do to that of a doctor. Is there some logical reason I'm missing why it should be any different than it is?
    • HL33tibCe7 5y ago
• mikewarot 5y ago
  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.
  • blobbers 5y ago
    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?
    • mikewarot 5y ago
      >How does one "jump" into Pascal? 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.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Plumbers need to stay up to date, too (and they make great money). I know several.
• austincheney 5y ago
  I have written many such comments on HN myself and seen many such comments from others. The motivation is generally universal. Software is an immature industry with many beginner experts that believe themselves to be experts but cry about how hard life is when standards are set and/or enforced. Fortunately, I have a part time director level job as a soldier for my backup plan.
• TillE 5y ago
  I enjoy solving problems, and software is an interesting place to be. Learning should be fun, not a miserable chore; I typically have one or two software/hardware hobby projects going in fields totally unrelated to my work, just to solve a little problem, and because it feels really good to expand your knowledge. There are plenty of crappy boring jobs though (I never want to do typical web dev), so try to find something better if you're stuck there.
• marginalia_nu 5y ago
  I've considered it. What grates with CS I feel the combination of never being challenged and not doing anything that furthers humanity. If I fix toilets then at least I'd be squandering my resources on something meaningful. What frustrates me is I know I could do so much more, I could do good things. In the same time period of roughly a year it's taken a team of like 8 people at work (myself included) to develop a prototype for a stupid crud-application that exists entirely because Conway's law doesn't permit team B from talking to team C without going through my team, that has basic MVP-functionality of being able to process some simple requests and change a few fields in a database; in the same number of days I've developed a fully function search engine the scale of late 1990s google in my spare hours.
• vmception 5y ago
  > I’m a data scientist/software developer and I keep longing for a simpler life. Reminds me of how Stardew Valley starts off with that premise and within 2 days you are mining for crystals in a dungeon.
• praptak 5y ago
  My constant daydream is machining. So far I learned the basics of FreeCAD, watched a shitton of machining videos on YouTube and researched some lathes and mills. Unfortunately it is a hobby that requires lots of space to keep the machines and tools.
  • convolvatron 5y ago
    its true. i live in a medium-size american city and you can find a corner in a warehouse if you look hard enough. i started out trying to build a little mini-shop. that turned out poorly. working with the small tools seems to require alot more expertise and patience than working with the normal-sized toolroom machines. space aside its pretty much free. old machine tools are great learners and can be had for not much more than scrap price. steel is dirt cheap.
  • polishdude20 5y ago
    What about 3d printing?
    • praptak 5y ago
      I got a 3d printer at work. I'm not saying it's worse, just less appealing to me personally.
      • polishdude20 5y ago
        Yeah you don't get that same feeling by letting a machine do all the work.
  • dv35z 5y ago
    You ought to see if there is a makerspace/hackerspace in your area. I just joined one - it's got a full woodshop, machine shop, CNC router, welding, laser cutter, 3d printers, even an auto bay - so you could work on your car. They do regular classes on the tools. It's been fun coming up with fun ideas and seeing how quickly I can "MVP" them. Most recent project was making an old-timey saloon sign for a friend's birthday. Found some fun pictures on Google Images, traced them as vector shapes, and etched / cut the design into some scrap wood using the CNC laser. It was a lot of fun. Just wandering around the tools watching people - you can come up with new little project ideas. The other great thing is meeting all the tool experts, they're always willing to help out & show some tips. To those looking to increase your ability to express yourself - this is a very satisfying interest. Making besutiful & helpful stuff for the people in your life is quite interesting ... People tell you their life dreams - when you work on those projects, there is a lot of learning & fun. And for anyone who's interested in this stuff, a question- what is considered the "GitHub" of makerspace projects, plans, 3d models, stock designs etc? I'm looking for that open-source feel good sharing vibe... "Is there an HN for that"?
• drewcoo 5y ago
  I've considered going back to school to learn a real engineering profession. Something where people solve real world problems based on accrued group knowledge instead of faking it til they make it, constantly reinventing themselves and everything else, living the future they want to exist. But I think I'm too tainted by software to really be any good at any of that.
• amcoastal 5y ago
  Seems like something who has never been a plumber would say. If they love plumbing so much, I bet there's a ton of pipes in their house they could replace, but would rather live in a fantasy world instead where they imagine their job is worse than being a plumber to aid their self victimization.
• plutonorm 5y ago
  I used to feel like this before I started working from home. Soooooo much less stressful, open plan offices are hell. Commuting is exhausting. For the first time in my life I feel like I have a sustainable lifestyle that isn't hell to live
• fullshark 5y ago
  Of course, grass is greener effect. I will say this urge has been growing now it appears we are past the peak of the web2.0 business cycle and the next proposed ones (web3.0 / metaverse / self driving cars) seem less inspiring to me for a multitude of reasons.
• RoboRy 5y ago
  As someone who left carpentry and bartending to become a programmer, I must say, respectfully, many of you have no clue how good we have it.
• burnt_toast 5y ago
  I left software shortly after college to start an auto detailer business due to not liking the job. 3 years later, I'm back in software and couldn't be happier. Sometimes you can't appreciate the good aspects until you're missing them.
• rdiddly 5y ago
  It's unclear whether that post is based on multiple similar job experiences, or just the single job they're currently in. But the last time I felt like that person (constantly considering what else to do instead) it was actually just the one job (and specifically that manager), not the career.
• MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  And increase my social surface area for interacting with entitled and stupid people while literally having to deal with their shit? Nah, I'm good.
• maxbaines 5y ago
  Why a plumber? If as I suspect it’s an example of a simpler trade, I would suggest you read up on the skills, problems and challenges required to be a plumber. It ain’t easy.
• sodapopcan 5y ago
  At an old job, we were next to a window that looked out onto a crossing guard who was there most of the day. We used to say, "That's it, I'm becoming a crossing guard," when work got tough. But ya, I agree, I wouldn't pick anything over tech, no matter how rough it gets. In terms of "constantly staying up to date", that's a large reason I moved to a tech stack with less moving parts and slower-moving major change. It helps a little.
  • MrAbstract 5y ago
    > I moved to a tech stack with less moving parts and slower-moving major change. Could you please share what tech stack is this? Frankly speaking, I also consider finding something more stable and slow-paced as a continuation of my software career at this point.
    • sodapopcan 5y ago
      Elixir. It's a bit hard to find jobs that actually use LiveView (which would relatively shield you from the world of NPM) but they're out there and pay pretty well. It isn't a silver bullet and not without its problems, but I'm incredibly happy with it.
• mrweasel 5y ago
  Not a plumper, but I noticed a guy driving around washing self-service gas stations. Might not be that great during the winter. More realistic: I often look at “IT guy” wanted job postings, or “programmer wanted” from companies that shouldn’t need a programmer. One I regret not applying for was a programmer for an auto-parts company.
• malshe 5y ago
  OT but still tangentially relevant - In the cold wave a couple of weeks ago in Texas, our pipes froze and the tap on the outside of the house burst. We were not sure about the extent of the damage so we called a plumber. He charged a cool $350 to simply replace the tap. Took all of 15 minutes.
  • RHSeeger 5y ago
    > We were not sure about the extent of the damage > He charged a cool $350 to simply replace the tap No, he charged you $350 for his knowledge that replacing the tap was the right solution in this case. If all you had to do was replace the tap, you could have done that yourself and saved a bunch of money. But you didn't know that was all that needed to be done; he did. You paid for his knowledge, not simply the act of replacing the tap. See also: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-man/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-man/
    • malshe 5y ago
      I’ve seen this argument a lot. It’s was just changing a tap. I don’t have to pay $350 to just someone look at it and tell me your don’t have any damage.
      • gwern 5y ago
        You just wrote, "We were not sure about the extent of the damage". So yes, you did need to pay someone that.
• hickimsedenolan 5y ago
  In contrast with everyone in this thread, I absolutely love being up to date with the current and the bleeding edge techstack, because I love programming. I chose to be a SE because I knew I'd have fun doing so, and I advise the younger generations to have a similar approach.
• Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
  If you do, can you come and fix my boiler please?
• ryandvm 5y ago
  Sure, you hate your boring, safe, lucrative job in software development until you become a plumber and find yourself on your hands and knees beside a disassembled toilet for the 87th time. Splattered in fetid wastewater, pulling stuck condoms out of the floor while the idiot renter stands above you dragging on his Juul, and you realize, maybe I didn't have it so bad after all. The "grass is always greener" is probably the most repeated aphorism for a reason.
  • hodgesrm 5y ago
    Somebody really needed to write this comment. The HN community thanks you.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • firstplacelast 5y ago
    So I get it, but also people are way overhyping software development in this thread (which is expected on a tech website). The only thing going for it is an insane salary and lots of us don’t have those. I’ve worked in biotech/healthcare and have never had anything close to a FAANG salary even in a HCOL area. I burned out and am just now taking a month off to just exist. I have had the same thoughts about going blue-collar as the OP, but taking a month to figure out if it’s just general burn out or if I need a career change. I’ve been working since I was very young and have had all sorts of jobs: door-to-door sales, lifeguard, retail, waiting tables, property maintenance, cleaning homes from flood/fire damage, and on and on. I loved a lot of those jobs, though I didn’t do any for more than 2.5 years (or even just a summer). I don’t know if it was the pandemic or what, but never been so miserable at a job in my life and can’t imagine staring at a computer 40+ hours/week right now. I was literally staring into the Taco Bell drive-through window 6 weeks ago thinking I’d rather be working there and learn how to make a quesadilla in 1min than sit at a desk, which was the last straw for me. Plus with software it’s all about the skills. So if I drop out for awhile and decide to get back in a few years later, I should be fine after a couple months of self-study.
    • TheCoelacanth 5y ago
• zeckalpha 5y ago
  As someone who had an air gap spewing all over their kitchen yesterday… no
• jedberg 5y ago
  This last summer/fall really put things in perspective for me. We did a major outdoor renovation at our house, which involved landscapers, plumbers, electricians, and carpenters. Every day these guys would show up at 8am and long sleeves and jeans and hard hats, work super hard, pee in a port-a-potty, and be exhausted by the end of the day. They worked out in the 100 degree heat as well as the rain as the job got near the end. Luckily the bosses were pretty cool and provided them with decent food for lunch and plenty of drinks (but I still offered them food and drinks too). I on the other hand was working at my desk in my air conditioned house in comfortable clothes. A few times a day I'd put on my flip-flops and wander around outside to check on their work, ask a few questions, and then head back in when it got too hot. And a couple of times the plumbing sprung a leak just as they were getting ready to leave, despite their best efforts to get all the risky work done early, and they they had to stay super late. Once the plumber was here till midnight after arriving at 8am. I used to have thoughts about how it would be nice to have a job with totally spelled out requirements that end at 5pm and then you have the rest of the day off. But no more. I'd much rather work at my comfy desk inside and deal with the occasional call at 9pm on a Saturday than deal with what they all went through.
  • JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Your contractor, on the other hand, may well have got a few rounds of golf in during the day time. A neighbor owns a painting company. He goes around the various job sites in the morning, sees that everyone has their marching orders for the day, returns in the afternoon to check in on the progress. In between the morning and afternoon though? He does what he pleases. I believe he started the company with a buddy, the two of them doing the painting. Things grow though, you hire guys, your role changes (and your income too).
    • ReactiveJelly 5y ago
      I don't really want to be a manager, though. I want to be retired.
      • bruce343434 5y ago
• spicybright 5y ago
  One of the best jobs I've had was working part time at a pizza place in my early 20's. I made just enough for rent, food, and fun. The job was easy to be good at, but rewarding because I was helping actual people. Most of the time it was slow so you got to joke around with the other employees. But sometimes you'd get slammed and have to organize your crew to work efficiently for a few hours, which was stressful, but very fun to figure out and do well at. I think about that a lot when my current software job becomes really boring or difficult. EDIT: Oh, and I was certainly less sedentary being on my feet all day. I slept really really well after a long shift.
  • lokalfarm 5y ago
    This is more a reflection on that period of your life than the work itself. Part time at a pizza shop in your teens/20s? Time of your life! Doing that exact same work in your 30s when you're trying provide for a partner and potentially kids? When you have bills stacking up, rent is shooting through the roof, and your hopes of one day owning a home are slowly circling the drain? What do you do now, when that is your sole skillset to fall back on? Being on your feet doesn't feel nearly as nice as it did when you were in your early 20s. Those slow times become stressful because you know it means you could be out of a job like that. Sure, people might always want to eat pizza ("there's always work") but that doesn't mean your quality of life is going to increase _at all_ because of that. Your only hope out - opening your own pizza shop - is an incredibly fragile & stressful undertaking. You're much more likely to lose all the money you borrow/invest into it than ending up with a successful restaurant that provides for you financially.
• trentnix 5y ago
  If you do decide to become a plumber, be sure to remember the two golden rules of plumbing: 1. $#!7 flows downhill. 2. Don't bite your fingernails.
• homie 5y ago
  absolutely not
• soheil 5y ago
  I think what this comment hints at is the tight coupling of money and working in tech. I think for most of us it all started as fun and curiosity. We were gravitated to computers not because of money, but because of passion. Then suddenly we realized there is immense amount of money to be made with our skills. Naturally we started benefiting from that by getting a job in tech. Then we became addicted to the money and since now we didn't learn any other skill than programming we didn't have a choice but to continue working in tech. What was once a passion now turned into shackles that we can't wait to get rid of. It's sad, ironic and extremely frustrating.
• Apocryphon 5y ago
  I think the sentiment behind the OP and agreeing comments are twofold: 1. The desire to create tangible, physical products and improvements rather than abstract ones- some of which never see the light of day outside of the sprint. 2. The desire to expend physical labor and use one’s body rather than only one’s mind. I think the trades would fulfill that but maybe more software engineers who experience this anxiety would be happier if they pursued some sort of skilled craftsman hobby, or even career. Being a construction carpenter is one thing, becoming an artisan who makes bespoke wooden products is probably closer to the lifestyle (and compensation) that’s being idealized here.
• manishsharan 5y ago
  I do occasional plumbing repairs like replacing faucets and toilet fixtures at my home using YouTube video. I hate the experience. The water is cold. My knees hurt when squatting and crouching for long stretches of time. I do end up using plumbers putty and plumbers tape and I am terrified at the thought of accidentally flooding my home. I have a lot of urges but becoming a plumber is not one of them.
• barbazoo 5y ago
  For me it's trying as much as possible to get my happiness/satisfaction from something that's under my own control as much as possible. Being in a trade is the exact opposite of that because you're 100% dependent on people telling you what they need done. As others have pointed out, every job sucks to some degree. And unless you're truly operating in isolation you'll always deal with people, most of whom you don't share any common ground with. Try being in a trade as a woman, a person of color, trans, etc and you'd quickly realized what a privileged cushy field we're in. Not saying there isn't discrimination among us but our field in my experience tends to be on the more progressive, tolerant side of things. None of what we're doing here matters at all in the grand scheme of things. At least the vast majority. We're not contributing to anything useful only a broken economic system, we're not making the world a better, more sustainable, more peaceful place. It's the opposite, the people that contribute more division, get paid the most it seems. Once I realized that I was able to steer my attention to opportunities that at least contain a sliver of something positive, be it supporting movements, clean energy, something that on your death bed you could argue didn't make the world a worse place. Personally, that's all I think I can do because at this point in my life I'm not in a position to make any larger positive change by myself on a societal level. I'm sorry if this is too ranty, I'm just in a very negative headspace these days with everything that's going on.
• kosyblysk666 5y ago
  yes
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jka 5y ago
  A lot of it depends, I think, on what it'll be like for people to look back on past achievements at age 65+. If it's a case of "oh, in fact most of my career was (re)building things that weren't really required in order to consolidate power and to reduce the strength of democratic society and institutions", that could be a bad time. If it's more along the lines of "I genuinely helped to improve the lives of a large number of people by assisting them in doing what they want to do day-to-day, extending opportunity, access and freedom" that could be better. Plumbing, baking, carpentry, etc seem to be more likely to unambiguously fall into the latter, happy category -- although I think software can, too. Regardless, for many of us, a way to opt out of the moral quandary is simply to say "oh, well it pays the bills well and is not physically demanding".
• tibbydudeza 5y ago
  My best mate is a plumber - it is very hard work. Laying sewage pipes - fixing sewage blockages - replacing hot water cylinder in the roof in the heat of summer (our homes don't have basements). Dealing with staff issues - people not paying their accounts.
• 999900000999 5y ago
  >The grass IS greener on the CS side of things though. There literally is no denying it. We see a hyper focus of the bad on here but if I'm being frank, many people on here went into CS as their first Job and have nothing to compare it to. You're not going to find another broad career field that gives you the same financial freedom for time invested in learning your field. Pick up a hobby if you're missing that salt of the earth feeling too much. Doing that shit to barely live in many instances is not the same feeling as having it as a hobby. I'm positioning myself to be able to take a 3 month vacation once every 2 years or so. Since I really want to travel outside the US working remote outright is a bit harder, but I could live in the US Virgin islands, or Hawaii right now while keeping my amazing job. Not having to move, even after getting a major pay bump last year was a giant perk. I also make enough so I can just not work , i'd move into a cheaper place but I don't need to work for a good while. Compared to real America, where working class people skip medicine. I can explain it this way, I have a very treatable illness. For a very nominal amount of money, less than I spend on a night out, I'm able to stay healthy. If I was poor I wouldn't be able to afford my meds. Even with Medicare, how do I get to the doctor ? That means taking time off work, that means spending 100$ on an Uber round trip. Software Development is VERY VERY easy.
  • redisman 5y ago
    A lot of engineers also fail to see that they could just do less and leave on time every day and actually use their “unlimited” vacation! You won’t get rewarded for the extra stress and effort so just stop doing it and set expectations accordingly.
• jbirer 5y ago
  I have worked as a steel worker in a construction site. The pay was shit but I got a really nice toned body, good skin, girls looking at me, all day banter in the workplace and parties afterward, I went from being a depressed anxious nerd to a talkative hot dude in about 7 months. Sometimes I wonder if I should go back but I am earning 10 times more than the people around me which allows me to travel (before covid) and have almost anything I want, it's a hard decision.
• _trampeltier 5y ago
  I think the software world has to slow down anyway. Now there is software anywhere build in and has just to work. Things could last for 50 years before software. Now everything need updates all the time because things are unfinished. I'm in industrie automation and everything with software gets worse really update by update
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• blowski 5y ago
  A few weeks ago, I had a plumber round and he wanted to become a programmer.
• Kaibeezy 5y ago
  I’d go back for the PhD in land use economics I turned down and get to work on smart ideas for dealing with relocating soon-to-be-submerged populated areas. It’s effectively similar to plumbing or anything else — a trade off to a different scale of problems and pressures.
• duncan-donuts 5y ago
  I started my career in trades so no I don’t long for that. I do think about leaving it all behind to be a musician tho. I look at my circumstances of stupid salary, never leave the house if I don’t want to, and my level of comfort and compare to all my musician friends who make nothing, always working a side job or on the road, sleeping and eating like shit, and I 100% don’t want to trade. If I never had to think about money again I’d write a lot more music tho
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• AlbertCory 5y ago
  When you're walking around with your dog, or in some other situation where you're not their employer: Chat with the plumbers (and other tradespeople). Nothing deep or profound. Don't even bring up these work topics unless they do. The weather, the Super Bowl, your dog, what they're doing right now... I could enumerate the benefits, but let's leave it as "you'll feel better, and so will they." And you'll get a gut feeling about them as people.
• laxatives 5y ago
  A professor of mathematics noticed that his kitchen sink at his home leaked. He called a plumber. The plumber came the next day and sealed a few screws, and everything was working as before. The professor was delighted. However, when the plumber gave him the bill a minute later, he was shocked. "This is one-third of my monthly salary!" he yelled. Well, all the same he paid it and then the plumber said to him, "I understand your position as a professor. Why don't you come to our company and apply for a plumber position? You will earn three times as much as a professor. But remember, when you apply, tell them that you completed only seven elementary classes. They don't like educated people." So it happened. The professor got a job as a plumber and his life significantly improved. He just had to seal a screw or two occasionally, and his salary went up significantly. One day, the board of the plumbing company decided that every plumber had to go to evening classes to complete the eighth grade. So, our professor had to go there too. It just happened that the first class was math. The evening teacher, to check students' knowledge, asked for a formula for the area of a circle. The person asked was the professor. He jumped to the board, and then he realized that he had forgotten the formula. He started to reason it, and he filled the white board with integrals, differentials, and other advanced formulas to conclude the result he forgot. As a result, he got "minus pi times r square." He didn't like the minus, so he started all over again. He got the minus again. No matter how many times he tried, he always got a minus. He was frustrated. He gave the class a frightened look and saw all the plumbers whisper: "Switch the limits of the integral!!"
  • malshe 5y ago
    Haha never heard this one before!
  • jeffrallen 5y ago
    Upvote for LoL.
  • ant6n 5y ago
    That's a sovjet era joke about professors working as plumbers, because back then blue collar labor was more respected than intellectual endeavors.
• ramoz 5y ago
  I should’ve been a cowboy.
  • TigeriusKirk 5y ago
    My brother considered doing that in his 20s. A lot of demand where he lives. I was surprised to learn it was still a real job, but of course it is. Someone has to ride the fences and herd the cattle.
• mcbishop 5y ago
  After 15 years doing software development, I started training to be an electrician a month ago (in the Bay Area). The two people I work under are chill / patient. Sometimes when dragging myself and wire though tight rat-shit crawl spaces... I yearn for my nice little home office. But, overall, I enjoy the work. It feels good to do work in the physical world. A lot of electricians are nearing retirement. Meanwhile, electrification is picking up steam. The National Electrical Code 2020 is letting distributed / behind-the-meter software do a lot more heavy lifting (e.g. its letting software manage loads so that (expensive, delaying, and grid-taxing) utility service upgrades can be avoided)[1]. There's already big demand for electricians, let alone when EVs (and level-2 EV chargers), solar + batteries, and other flexible loads become mainstream. My aspiration is to spend one week a month in the field, leading an electrical project (and taking all or most of the profit). With a low-cost lifestyle, I think I'll be able to spend the other three weeks improving processes / tooling around that electrical work. And working on related FOSS and education resources. 1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/klt1zzc7zxqwrfe/IAEI_Bill-Brooks_2020_March-April.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/s/klt1zzc7zxqwrfe/IAEI_Bill-Brooks_2...
  • Denzel 5y ago
    Are you still doing software while training to become an electrician? I'd like to become a licensed electrician. After completing a few successful projects around the house, and studying the 2020 NEC inside out, I looked into becoming licensed. The required 4 year apprenticeship, before I'm able to take the exam, turned me off. How would I ever be able to satisfy that requirement while keeping my day job. It's like a forced pay cut to become licensed. What's your arrangement look like?
    • mcbishop 5y ago
      I do field work 3-4 days a week. In the other 1-2, I set aside time to do software. Relying on electrical work for income, the pressure is off to monetize the software work. ...This has made it more fun. Yeah, people learn / master at different rates so it's too bad they require so many hours to qualify for a license. Once you're a journeyperson and have your chops, you could arrange a profit share (or something) under a licensed electrician. ...Where you're pretty much "owning" the project, but they're available to answer questions and review you work. And take liability.
• celim307 5y ago
  As a web dev who glues together api’s and json, I’d call myself a plumber. Instead of shit, I shuttle data from the frontend to a database and vise versa.
• tester756 5y ago
  Software Engineering is probably the most privileged job, so switching to anything else would be not that easy
• brandonmenc 5y ago
  No. The work is hard, dirty, and you need to go through a half-decade apprenticeship program before you can even start making the big bucks (which are still nowhere near what a programmer makes.) And good luck finding someone to take you on as an apprentice. I remember one of my buddies desperately pounding the pavement to get an on-the-job apprenticeship as either a plumber or electrician. It took him a couple years to find one. 20 years later and he's a successful industrial plumber, but that first decade was a lot of hard work - even before he got his first job. Also, just about everyone I know who does even a skilled trade for a living has a body full of aches and pains and injuries. That's why the smart guys become foremen or start their own business - but they've all got at least a ten year head start on anyone reading this. Just keep sitting in your home office cashing giant checks for screwing around on the computer.
• cablexl 5y ago
  This is just anti-work sentiment, nothing more.
• davewritescode 5y ago
  When I was 15 my dad got me a job where he worked, a trucking business where the work was dirty, hard and not well compensated. Moving equipment and large Diesel engine parts was incredibly tough. I made more money than I would have working in retail. At the time my parents were worried that I was getting paid enough doing that kind of work that I might consider not going to college. If anything it solidified my view that college was my only option. I do occasionally miss working with my hands but I’m thankful for what I have now as a software engineer. I’ve never seen anyone get sprayed in the face with hot coolant or hurt their back sitting at a desk programming. I don’t have to worry about punishing my body for 30 years. White collar work can be exhausting, unfulfilling and stressful but it has to be put into perspective.
• ggcdn 5y ago
  Well, I guess I should rethink my constant urge to leave structural engineering and become a software developer. “The grass is greener…” fallacy seems to be prevalent in most people. It becomes most intense when encountering obstacles, frustrations, boredom, and stress in the current situation, which makes sense I suppose. And it’s so easy to gloss over all the privileges that come with the current situation. When I was broke and busting my ass in university, I couldn’t wait to start my coop jobs. Then half way through coop, I couldn’t wait to get back to class. Now I have the luxury of living a comfortable life and there are no abrupt changes unless I decide to implement them. Yet the dissatisfaction creeps in…
• mkl95 5y ago
  I feel a relatively frequent urge to run away from my stressful job and spend some time working on passion projects. After a while I remember the industry has made me a relatively privileged citizen, that I never expected to be making so much money at my age, etc. Tech has a way of trapping you in if your work ethic is remotely decent and you are not wealthy.
• renewiltord 5y ago
  Never even thought about it. The constraint solving is what I find interesting. I revel in being able to adapt as the circumstances change. Sometimes, I even tire of writing the code once I know how to solve the problem. But you sort of have to do that to get the next problem.
• lifeplusplus 5y ago
  I think what we really miss agency to build what we want and how we want, instead of scrum master wanting to credit us for our work
• tamaharbor 5y ago
  My friend was a plumber for the NYC Housing Authority. He retired at 41 (after working 20 years) with a 1.5x full pension.
• _joel 5y ago
  The grass is always greener. I have friends who work in trades and they constantly say how I have it easy for being able to work from home and not exert myself too much physially. On the other hand it'd be nice not to have meetings, deadlines and operational work (at least I don't have to do on call anymore) and constantly try to keep up with the times skillwise (which tbf I find really fun, but still). I'm quite happy though. Remote work has definitely made a massive difference, for me, in that respect.
• mgh2 5y ago
  The grass always seems greener on the other side
• cxf12 5y ago
  Software Development is a sedentary life. It is in and of itself a risky career health wise, especially into the later years.
• spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Slightly off topic but does it really feel difficult to keep up with tech skills? I find it's extremely easy. Front end guys seem to have it harder, but as a data scientist I don't feel I need to learn much at all. In the past couple years it's been... shap... and that's it? I don't feel the need to bother with any of the neural net stuff.
  • redisman 5y ago
    Even on the frontend it’s kind of overblown. If you’re at a stable-ish company you learn react and a few missing pieces from the JS stdlib but most other stuff is already set up or you Google how to set it up and move on.
• cletus 5y ago
  It's worth noting that these skilled trades (eg plumbers, electricians, carpenters) have wildly different experiences in different countries. In the US they aren't actually paid that well, particularly compared to software engineering (in the US). But go to Australia and you'll get a vastly different experience. For one, just being a plumber is strictly government controlled. You need a license that requires a four year apprenticeship. There are pros and cons to this system but you will generally find that the base level of skill and competence of any Australian tradesmen will be far higher than that of many other countries. I had a Australian friend who was a plumber in the UK where you can be a plumber by just calling yourself a plumber. The stories of incompetence he'd tell were shocking. Trades in Australia earn more than software engineers do and will generally have a much better standard of living, straight up. It's one reason why I, as a software engineer, moved from Australia to the US. If you want to be a plumber, you may want to go the other way, assuming you're willing and able to get certified.
• chrisdhoover 5y ago
  I started in the trades 45 years ago. Worked as a deck hand, low voltage installer, cabinet maker, and service tech. Climbing in a ceiling at 30 years old I asked my self what the hell am I doing? I have a hard upper bound in salary. I’m sore, I had stitches on several occasions, I’m a bit battered from physical labor. The after work drinking was a short term analgesic but a long term killer. I realized a life time of labor is back breaking and will leave me a broken old man long before I should be. I decided at that moment to move on to engineering. My days of labor provided me with a great foundation for problem solving and understanding how projects are executed in the field. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, it was incredibly rewarding. My office life has been equally rewarding. I worked as hard wearing a dumb tie everyday as I did wearing Carhartt. The balance I struck was earning in the white collar world while keeping busy at home on blue collar pursuits. For example I took my contractor special condo from plain to fully executed trim. All of the doors and windows are cased, there is crown and picture rail. Some areas have wainscoting, the knock down wall finish is now level 5. There is 4 color paint. I have since begun maintaining an old sports car. For me it would have been hard to start on an office and then transition to a shop. The reverse worked best for me.
• numbsafari 5y ago
  Let me be frank: That shit ain’t worth it. Go be an electrician instead.
• abeppu 5y ago
  > Instead of my current career path where I’m having to constantly re-prioritize, put out fires, report to multiple leads with different agendas, scope and build things that have never been done, ect. > Maybe I’m misguided but in other fields one becomes a master of their craft over time. In CS/data science, I feel like you are forever a junior because your experience decays over time. I get where this person is coming from, but: - Improving at the things in the first list is part of mastery, unfortunately. - A lot of old experience is still valuable. But one needs to be able to transfer/translate the important lessons to new contexts as tools, frameworks and languages change.
• matthewaveryusa 5y ago
  So yes, I bought a fixer upper 2 years ago at the beginning of the pandemic because I had an existential moment where I was fed up with the seemingly futility and abstractness of software development. Turns out physical labor is even more futile after the novelty wears out.
  • redisman 5y ago
    I used to clean the office/locker rooms of a concrete prefab factory while in school for some income. Talk about existential. Literally the same thing every night and a seemingly pointless task since it would be the same mess within minutes when the next shift walked in.
• pessimizer 5y ago
  Only because of all the moral hazard in programming, being completely wrapped up in rent-seeking, surveillance, dark patterns, and marketing in general. The problem is that the trades are hard as hell to learn and get into unless you're connected. It's easier to become a programmer than a plumber/carpenter/electrician.
• teunispeters 5y ago
  I took a year out and worked as a forklift driver (and general "haul things around") at a warehouse. It was a much-needed "vacation", and the social company was good. The pay was rough though .... ... but the experience awesome. The fact I told HR (and coworkers) that this was my vacation really helped keep some silly inspiration going, especially as I could keep up with them with everything I needed to do. (I'd also snap to attention, military style, for the HR lead, the only non-military person in management .... got a lot of laughs that way) No I never served, wasn't permitted. I did go through years of cadet training though... Anyway, went back later to say thank you and complain that my vacation was over. It was a cheerful hello. The work itself was back-breaking hard but ... it felt good. The only regret about the job itself is I should have done work like that a lot earlier in life (instead of 30s).
• JediPig 5y ago
  yes, unfortunately I have golden handcuffs and ever since the great resignation happened, it has gotten worse. I said 4 years, and they said ok, and my payout is very never work again.
• deleted 5y ago
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• lcvw 5y ago
  The other thing that is wrong about this post, that I haven’t seen anyone mention, is that jobs like be a plumber also require constant upskilling to remain competitive. My plumber learned how to install ductless heat pumps, and now that is a huge part of his business. New types of boilers and other systems also require him to get certified. He listens to plumbing/building podcasts, reads different sources, and regularly has to do more training. On top of that he is on a 2-3 person oncall rotation —- where being oncall means being woken in the middle of the night by an outraged or panicking customer, driving to their house, crawling or climbing into whatever hellhole their pipes reside in, and doing a hard, dirty, and sometimes disgusting job. There is no getting away from updating your skills, or sometimes doing work outside of the 9-5 if you want to stay competitive in ANY profession. Especially if you want the 200k+ comp so easy to get in software.
• lettergram 5y ago
  There’s a lot between leaving your high paying comfy job and working full time cutting trees or something. One of my former co-workers left to become a lumberjack. I don’t blame them, I spend a day or two cutting trees on my property and it’s enjoyable. That said, you won’t make six figures doing that. Without fail, the people I see making complaints (1) lack a family with kids and / or (2) don’t own a home / property. We’re very much predisposed to having a family and having something to build (physically). If people feel this way, try a decent sized garden (150+ square feet). Or build some furniture. It’ll be fulfilling and you’ll learn to love your job lol
• satisfice 5y ago
  I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay I sleep all night and I work all day
• christkv 5y ago
  Gardner for me. Fresh air everyday and making things grow.
• nilkn 5y ago
  In the FIRE community, this kind of topic often comes up. Are there any enjoyable full-time or part-time jobs to do in semi-retirement? Invariably, the conclusion is that low-wage or part-time jobs almost always come with enough baggage to outweigh any perceived benefits as a semi-retirement gig. A job is a job -- anything that produces a consistent income is going to involve dealing with unreasonable people or expectations or situations. [0] The most efficient path is to get into the most lucrative role possible early on and simply do that until you don't need to work at all anymore. If you like carpentry or machining or driving around or landscaping or gardening, you're going to enjoy these activities a LOT more if you're doing them on your own terms in proper retirement for your own satisfaction. As soon as someone else is paying you to deliver these types of services for their benefit and not yours, you're in the same situation you're in as a software engineer, just with far less income and thus less potential to ever truly retire. [0] I'm sure some "unicorn" jobs do exist. So I'm speaking in generalities here. There probably do exist some gigs out there that are genuinely great for semi-retirement; they're just going to be surprisingly difficult to find, they may not be stable over a long period of time (decades), and it may not be possible to find one for yourself.
  • jeffrallen 5y ago
    I worked as a volunteer in a food pantry's warehouse for a while when I was "early retired", and it was great. Satisfying real work with real outcomes that were visible ("pallet is restacked", check!), in the service of a mission I believed in.
    • deleted 5y ago
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• mattlondon 5y ago
  This is why I like frontend development - you get to see the results of your work. It's satisfying to start with a blank screen or perhaps a times new roman mess, and leave it as something that looks great and works well. Backend development can sometimes be a tedious death march where all you get at the end of the day/week/sprint is not-an-error or perhaps just wiring up RPCs, or maybe if you are very lucky upgrading to a new point-release of a library with no other visible changes. Don't get me wrong, refactoring and fixing backend bugs can be satisfying, but I often find it is not as genuinely enjoyable as being able to actually see the results of your work.
  • thex10 5y ago
    This is me. And honestly, as a full stack web dev who skews front-end, I've never felt this strong urge mentioned in TFA.
• simpsond 5y ago
  One summer in college I worked with my Dad as a timber faller. I had the luxury of getting paid for writing software before that (being paid to learn). On one hand I enjoyed the work… I was outside, getting great exercise, and I gained a ton of respect for my father. But by the end of the summer, it became pretty repetitive, extremely hot, and I was physically exhausted every day. Nearly 20 years later, when I feel like I am burning out for whatever reason, I reflect on that one summer and ground myself a bit. I have it really good. I’m extremely fortunate to have found interest in this world at a young age, and even more lucky to have hard working parents that supported my interest.
• jhallenworld 5y ago
  I'll say this for the trades: there is infinite work. The population is getting older, leaning towards old ladies. Who is going to keep their oil-fired steam heat working? Maybe you..
• syndacks 5y ago
  I see this not so much as, “let me quit my swe job to become a plumber” but more so a fundamental alienation from labor (on behalf of OP). I think we can all agree that using intelligence to create abstract flows in code is engaging and rewarding. It’s the everything else that makes us feel alienated: the politics/pressure of the company, the “mba types”, the mission of the company itself to solve a problem that isn’t even all that real or impactful ie optimizing video advertising — and the perverse ways management tries to sell it as world changing work — m that makes us look to the other side and wonder if say using our hands to make physical structures might being a closer relationship to our work. A rejection of cognitive dissonance or something. Marx touches on this concept of alienation of labor [0]. Not pushing Marxism at all here, just using one of his lesser known theories to tease out this topic.
• honkycat 5y ago
  not at all. I respect trade work, but I also don't idealize it. It sucks in a lot of ways that are very similar to how software engineering sucks. As a SWE I get respect from my peers and family for having a "smart job", make 4x what most plumbers make, work from my home office, and do not have a boss breathing down my neck. I do not destroy my body by constantly kneeling over and getting into awkward positions.
• ramesh31 5y ago
  I've noticed people in this industry who took the typical high school -> college -> professional job route with no time in their life spent struggling at all or doing manual labor have some kind of weird romantic notion about it. Working manual labor sucks. It destroys your body, forces you to work terrible hours and often in brutal conditions, and pays awful. I spent years of my life being homeless and working menial labor jobs for years before getting into software development. You guys have absolutely no clue how insanely privileged we are. I think about it every single day.
• jeffrallen 5y ago
  No, but I left the field once to be a humanitarian aid logistician, and another two times to be a dad at home. Both were more useful and fulfilling, but paid less.
• dghughes 5y ago
  I'm getting more into home repair since my Dad died I help my mom with the house I don't own a house. Really I think it's interesting and could do it as a job. My Dad was a blue collar worker who did almost everything. I combined the two and I am making a 3D CAD of the family house. I'm learning a lot about foundations, sill plates, rim boards, insulation, sheathing, plumbing. electrical etc. FYI Matt Risinger has a great channel on YouTube for general home building science. And I watch fellow Canadian Got2Learn on YouTube for plumbing.
• throwaway1966 5y ago
  I've decided that I will soon be done with tech after 35 years. I find the tech industry exhausting and disappointing. It is really hasn't gotten any better than it was when I started and in some significant ways it is worse. The whole practice of software needs [citation needed] and [condemned by the board of health] notices slapped on it. Ignorance reigns and there is new ignorance every day lest anyone ever learn anything. Cliquishness, fetishism and cargo culting are rampant and that is not even commenting on the fringes like cryptocurrency. The scabrous larcenous fucks who want to take over the internet with "web3" might likely succeed because the investor class is filled with rapacious sociopaths and grifters who will happily ally themselves for another quick buck. It is all shit and it is not fun any more. Having spent several summers working manual labour and others spent working as a school janitor I certainly don't long for those jobs. I will probably spend my time on personal health and volunteering including tutoring. I will presumably continue to write software for my own enjoyment but I am indifferent about even participating in open source as it has become, too often, a cudgel used by one company or faction against another rather than a societal good.
• rowanajmarshall 5y ago
  For me it's becoming a barista. Something social, where I'm not sitting all day. Something with an artisanal bend to it, that can be appreciated by more people than a handful of your coworkers.
  • Trasmatta 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, have you worked a service job in the past? If not, you might underestimating how much of an absolute nightmare they can be.
    • rowanajmarshall 5y ago
      I have, but in a very small town where everyone knew everyone so it wasn't as bad as I've heard it can get. I fully get it's not realistic and would have massive downsides, but still.
• runjake 5y ago
  I work with tradesmen daily. They put up with the same, as well as job-specific BS, just like we do. It’s a pipe dream to think it’s some career utopia. Unless you want a change of flavor in the BS you put up with, for a while.
  • redisman 5y ago
    People need to listen to more George Carlin. Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.
    • john1633 5y ago
      Supposedly it was Drew Carey who said this.
• agentultra 5y ago
  I don’t think the OP is insane. Sure, the trades are physically demanding and in a lot of cases will pay less than a software developers’ salary. But one thing the responses are missing is that simply because you can’t physically see the damage done doesn’t mean it’s not there. Bad back and shaky hands from years of hard labour? Sure. How about years of stress and gaslighting? Is chronic depression and learned helplessness any less bad? “Don’t worry buddy, you’re getting paid enough to hate yourself and not see the point in living anymore. Just keep at the grind and enjoy your comfy chair and latte.” If you’re starting to feel that way I would look into starting therapy first before making big life decisions like that. You might find the root cause of your discomfort and treat the cause rather than run away from it. And if it is the right move for you you will go in with eyes wide open.
• _wldu 5y ago
  Every time I call a plumber it's a least 600 USD. I have learned to do many things myself such as rebuild the innards of toilets, repair broken drain pipes, install sinks and new drain lines, but some things are too much for me (don't have the time, tools or knowledge). I just had an old 2 inch steel drain pipe descaled ($600) because it was causing the washing machine to backup and overflow. I had had it power cleaned/jetted before (several times) but that did not work. The rust corrosion had constricted the pipe to about 1.25 inches. Descaling seems to have really opened it up. I used to hate drywall. It would get wet and need replacing after plumbing problems, but I recently came to realize that as messy and time consuming as drywall is to replace, it's a good thing because it allows you to spot water leaks early and absorbs a lot of water. A more water resistant surface would hide the problem and only allow it to grow much bigger before someone noticed it. If you have enough space, drop ceilings are the best thing since sliced bread. Also, when you are not using your washing machine, turn the water off at the wall. That will prevent a washer water line bursting (while everyone is at work) and ruining an entire room/floor of the house. And when you buy replacement water hoses for your sinks and washing machine, buy the best you can afford and replace them every 3 to 5 years. You'll save yourself a lot of money and trouble by doing this. If you ever own a house, you'll learn to fear and respect water (and chipmunks) more than anything else.
• jliptzin 5y ago
  The grass is always greener on the other side unless, of course, you’re a member of the idle rich
• dionidium 5y ago
  I am in my early 40s and have been a software engineer my entire career. Lately, I can't bring myself to care about this or that new framework, but I have spent hundreds of hours watching electrician videos on YouTube and have been joking with my wife that I'm going to quit my job and become an apprentice electrician. So, yeah. This resonates. But recently I watched a video where a guy had to do his ten millionth ceiling fan install and he had some particular trouble getting to where he needed to be in the customer's attic and he was filthy and hot and probably bored by this stupid task he'd done a million times and in that moment I realized I was idealizing and over-extrapolating from the excitement of learning a new skill. Learning to wire my own house was fun and interesting. I don't want to do it every day for strangers.
• spaetzleesser 5y ago
  One way to fix this urge is to leave the field and work as a plumber, electrician or in factory. Unless you have enough money to do it as a hobby most people will quickly see that this is not as great as you may think. While in school I used to work in construction and factories in the summer months. I quickly realized that an engineer job is much nicer and paid way better. But I have to admit that as a mechanical engineer now working in software I really miss touching the result of my work. Nothing better than designing something, building it and then being able to touch and see it.
  • redisman 5y ago
    I’m glad I had a real progression unlike most people who do a CS degree and then get a high paying job. I did manual min wage labor as a teen, then min wage IT work, then barely above that “programming” work in my small city, then finally my first real programming job and now I’m in the mid-echelons of software in a big tech city. Life is good! I still think work philosophically sucks for me (FIRE one day..) but I wouldn’t trade this job for any of the earlier ones - doubly so now that I get paid 20-30x more.
• mbgerring 5y ago
  For me it’s becoming an electrician, and I actually do a great deal of recreational construction work and enjoy it. But the licensing requirements are insane, and that ultimately is what keeps me writing software. Although I think that for a lot of people who feel this impulse, the problem might not be the type of work — it might be that the software you’re working on doesn’t do any real good for the world, or have any impact that you can see. You can change that without having to switch fields — just don’t go to work in ad tech.
• ant12345 5y ago
  I did it. Not being a Plummer. I changed from being a programmer to working in sustainable mobility (railways). Did an MBA in the field, got a job at one of the largest companies in the field, supposedly with a fast track into decision roles. This is my outcome: * I now work more hours than I did as a programmer * I have to deal with a lot more bullshit, politics and doing annoying tasks * In total I lost about 5 years of career, due to education and starting at a lower level in a different field (in North America this may not be so bad, in Europe they have difficulty counting years of experience in other fields) * I lost 2 years of pay (education), then started work at half what my cs peers make. Since programming pay increased a lot, but mine didn't, I'm now at a third. * Instead of a (internally) well respected expert feeling near the top of my particular field, I am sort of on the path of getting there I did it because I didn't want to code for work anymore and actually shape the real world, but it's not exactly been an easy path. It should be considered well before doing it. Ymmv.
• hpen 5y ago
  Landscaper -> retail associate -> construction worker -> software developer Would never go back.
  • hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    Funnily enough (part-time) landscaper is neat the top of my list if I would change careers from software. Being outside, dirt in your hands, physical exercise, and the satisfaction of seeing large changes and accomplishments relatively quickly compared to many trades.
    • hpen 5y ago
      Yeah but that $10 / hour doesn't compare to the $60+ / hour I make from software. What a joke.
      • hackerfromthefu 5y ago
        Yes, and software has more room at the higher end too. Our industry has built in golden handcuffs! I have already taken sabbaticals to do other things for a year three times, but always come back for the money.
• mgarfias 5y ago
  Not a plumber, but if I could earn this kind of income building fun cars I’d do it yesterday.
• golemiprague 5y ago
• Fuzzwah 5y ago
  I laboured for my Dad when I was 19. He was a master plasterer (dry waller for the Americans). We worked together for months travelling around Queensland (an Australian state the size of Texas). It was hot and draining work. Over the course of my 25 years of IT work, on the difficult days I've often looked back on those days and thought, "still better than sanding ceilings in 40 degree Celsius heat.
• protomyth 5y ago
  Well, no since I deal with enough virtual crap all day, and don't really have any desire to deal with the real thing. Plus, plumber does require an apprenticeship in the US. I, on the other hand, have thought about buying quite a bit of carpentry equipment when I am done with IT. These new CNC machines are amazingly programmable and just the thought of actually building custom furniture excites me. I did grow up in an era and place where I learned electrical and carpentry ("ok students, in order to have the photography class we need to build a dark room"). So, I do know a bit about basic techniques, but would probably take some classes to refresh my knowledge and learn the "right way".
• ykevinator2 5y ago
  "data scientist" when is that thing gonna die, it's so self elevating. I'm a hamburger scientist, I make hamburgers.
• hermitcrab 5y ago
  Move from dealing with shit metaphorically to dealing with shit literally? For less money? No thanks.
• georgeoliver 5y ago
  There surely are people who would be professionally more satisfied as a plumber than an IT worker. I definitely encourage those people to try it out. Then there are people purely fantasizing about professions like plumbing because of that 20% of their job they're unhappy with. They probably would do more for their mental health by donating 50% of their 5x plumber's salary to a non-profit of their choice.
• ArchitectAnon 5y ago
  If you think plumbers don’t have undefined requirements and random deadlines out of their control then you don’t know enough about the industry. Most plumbers are juggling about 20 different projects plus call-outs and with the chaos in the UK construction industry right now, it’s very hard for any tradesperson to predict where they will be working and what they will be doing next week. You will have annoyed people constantly phoning you all day to find out when you are going to be at their site. However, plumbers are in huge demand at the moment and can probably easily invoice more than £300 per day, it’s just a question of the building sites being ready for them to work a few consecutive days in a row to get those billable hours racked up day after day. There are a lot of inefficiencies in project scheduling, especially with the currently difficulties.
• philip1209 5y ago
  I've been thinking recently on the concept of "deadlines" in development teams, alongside roadmaps and deadlines. I wish teams asked each day "What's the most impactful thing I can do for the business today", and focused on that. Constantly acting under time-constraints removes the creativity from building. And, focusing on short-term productive gains comes at the expense of long-term fundamental progress.
• aaron695 5y ago
• alin23 5y ago
  Last year when I was working as a contractor for a US company, I mentioned to my team leader that I’m sick of tech and I really want to close my laptop for the last time ever, go outside and start making wood flutes or something. Instead of telling me that it will be better, he says that sometimes he contemplates buying a bar and just serving people and listening to their stories. On that day I realized that not tech, but the idiotic company processes and the people I had to put up with were what got me into that state. I was hired as a Python backend developer, but I was also working as a Postgis expert (and I was no expert, I had no idea what I was doing), Go+gRPC integrator, Kube and Docker Swarm ops guy, frontend debugging person and I was in charge of the dev experience internal tools. It was simply too much to keep up with. That same month I resigned and started working on selling my own product. 3 long months later, I launched the paid version of Lunar (https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/) and I again discovered why I like being in tech. There’s a kind of freedom that you can rarely find in other domains. You can be creative, start ideas on a whim, go into rabbit holes of satisfying curiosity, learn to use languages and tools that allow you to do in 3 lines of code what you needed 300 lines for yesterday. It feels like earning super powers sometimes. And after all that, you can also make enough money to live comfortably in a nice apartment, small house, or just sleep in the woods if that’s your thing. Since that day, I never considered being an employee, and just continued on doing my thing and creating stuff. This lead to the creation of https://lowtechguys.com/ https://lowtechguys.com/ and writing about my tech journeys on https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/ https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/ I’m still contemplating about building a house in the forest and start making Kaval flutes some day, but I think my tech skills will be a helpful aid for that goal, not something I want to leave by behind.
• julian_t 5y ago
  I once went to teach a training course to a team at some BigCo, and there was one guy who'd switched to software development from being a baker. He'd worked up to owning two shops, but the leases expired and he couldn't afford what the landlord wanted to renew them. His brother was a dev so he thought he'd give it a go. He loved it - no more being in the shop at 4am getting the day's bread ready and still being there at 8pm doing admin. He'd kept some of his gear, though, and was the go-to man for wedding cakes and fancy patisserie for the company.
• Terry_Roll 5y ago
  Its an interesting question, I've done a variety of jobs and watched a variety of trades, some are physically harder than others, some are mentally more demanding. Within a job title, you also get your range of hard and easy jobs. For example, plastering, when having to plaster a ceiling, the effort would be good for boxing, ie arms above the head dragging the board and plaster over for a whole day does wonders for the shoulders & arms! Walls & surrounds are easier, but you have the usual dust and mixing mess which if an indoor job means some tidying up to do, obviously men dont always like cleaning up and their Henry vacuum cleaners are not a Dyson. Some also do ornamental styles of plastering, but I think this was more popular 100+yrs ago as there were less different jobs around unlike today where new sectors exist like this one. Building regs dictate what you can and cant do as well. General building, like new houses or extensions, lots more mess indoors and out, more planning involved. Bricklaying, cant be below 3DegC because the mortar wont set, and you can only lay so many rows of bricks in a day otherwise the mortar gets squashed out. Building regs dictate what you can and cant do as well, but many home owners and trades people dont know the regs! Plumbing, fiddly job, you could be digging up gardens, drives, ripping up floorboards working in tight spaces. Biggest risk is plumbing and central heating leaks damaging carpets, plasterwork, blowing electrics. Building regs & plumbing certification dictate what you can and cant do as well. Electrical, again a fiddly job like plumbing, most of the products that can be fitted in a house setting already have the regulations built into the product, so its a bit of a no brainer, biggest mistakes come from choosing wrong product like dimming lightswitch which doesnt work with dimmable LED lights, or choose the wrong cable for laying underground. Building regs and electrical certification dictate what you can and cant do as well. In terms of mental thought processes, local and national govt regulations control what you can and cant do. For example here in the UK, there are next to no regulations for laying driveways and patios so that those not academically qualified, ie cant read/write but maths never seems to be a problem, can still work, even for themselves. General building, the building regs can be a pain, I ended up spending a week going through the UK combustion appliance regs, spoke to some of the authors and found, to use a software term a number of "unhandled errors" which had to be referred back to the planning authorities for clarification but they wouldnt commit, so I ended up making my own decisions! Generally the more lethal something becomes the more rules and regulations. Gas & electricity seem to be the most heavily regulated, then plumbing then building. These are in a non commercial setting. Commercial jobs, like infrastructure, much much more regulations & qualifications required but these are bigger projects like building schools & hospitals, roads, etc etc, and there is a hell of a lot more planning & paperwork with multiple external entities. Work ethics varies, I've seen some turn up early, like 7am and do 7 hours, others will do dawn till dusk weather permitting. Quite a variability in price quotes for a job, it can be hard to get stuff written down with trades, dont forget many cant read and write well, but the ideas to do a job can vary from just using expanding foam, to taking a few bricks out and filling holes in walls with bricks & mortar properly, even using the write matching colour mortar. The quality of workmanship is all over the place even when they may be part of a govt recognised trade body, but I think this is also a way trades get at people to eek out the job or just mess someone over. Its very clique. Dont get me wrong they can have a strong work ethic just not know how to do something properly and vice versa and somewhere in between. Fall out with them and they can mess up stuff which you wont know about for years, like leaving flux on copper pipes which slowly develops a pinhole where water drips out and then slowly ruins studwork and plaster work. Where jobs interfere with other domains like plumbing interfering with electrical jobs, generally they will take a flyer and do the other domain job even when not qualified. Property owners will be put on the spot in these situations and if the owners doesnt know the regs, they can end up with expensive problems if things are not done properly which is madness considering the price of property in the UK and wider world today. Overall if you want a job where you can do it with out much thought, do a trade job, if you want something more mentally challenging stick in IT, with coding being the most challenging. Edit.There is also alot more superstition and stereo typing in the lower skilled trades, but this isnt unlike what you see with nurses and doctors. This might be unpalatable for some, but I think anyone who does want to go into a trade could wipe with floor just by providing detailed written quotes, because that bit of paper is worth much to many people, although some insist on only word of mouth trades people. Like I said its very clique.
• mattlondon 5y ago
  Do people in the US do "work experience"? In the UK it is something <16 year old kids do where you spend a week working a job and is organised by schools. From what I understand, the placements are almost random, and pretty much tend to all be something pretty tedious. E.g. a postman, working in a bakery, some random office admin/assistant crap, a cinema usher, collecting trolleys/carts at supermarket/grocery stores etc. I think those were pretty educational in terms of what shit jobs are like. I am not sure if they are deliberately shit jobs to try and get you to concentrate on studies etc. But they do at least give you a baseline for how depressing and brain-dead many jobs can be
• JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  One friend quit (VP Eng, startup) and runs a Falafel joint. Another (Fortune 500 VP) a chocolate shop. A PhD in Philosophy I know was a lifelong carpenter.
• me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
  The next step is to start a software company, and hire other people to do the shit you hate. However, that's also way harder to do, but probably more satisfying when it works if other people's experiences are to be believed.
• Fnoord 5y ago
  No. I'm not handy, I have two left hands. If I were good with physical labor, I would probably fancy a trade job more. Our son (almost 1,5 y.o.) seems to like the physical stuff more than our daughter (who also lacks behind in physical development compared to curve). We joke he's going to pursue a career like plumber (there's a huge shortage for plumbers around here, so I'd wager it would earn well, too). Though there's a job shortage in general, this one stood out for longer than a few years. I just hope he finishes school, that's all. Cause without the paper, as silly as it might be at times, its gonna be more rough. Though self-employed people have to arrange their own retirement money (which is why gig economy self-employment is BS).
• maxgashkov 5y ago
  It's funny they chose a plumber as a venue to venture to. IMO it's the closest to software engineering in terms of need to use hacky workarounds for the projects that were broken beyond repair by neglect or previous contractors (especially so in countries with less strict or non-existent building codes).
• vallismortis 5y ago
  This is exactly the conversation the wealthy want us to have. A buddy of mine left a job recently. He worked in IT security for a plastics company that you would all recognize. In his last month, he had a meeting with one of the VP's, who said (direct quote from the meeting): "Biden really ruined the yachting industry." OK. What does that person do? Does he work in IT? No. Does he work in production? No. He collects seven figures a year for presenting a particular persona for a successful company. Think on that before you start comparing middle/lower class occupations. I'm not saying its wrong, I'm just trying to provide another magnitude of contrast to the issue.
• AmericanBlarney 5y ago
  Friend of mine was an apprentice plumber - was working in a tight space, bumped something and dropped his torch. I'd rather not deal with third degree burns.
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  The biggest factor for me personally was that I could not remember what I did a few days ago. I would come to into the office and start working on the current problem, and the day just went by. It was like 8 hours just disappeared into the ether. Day after day. Nothing memorable about them.
• dusted 5y ago
  Definitely not. Long-haul trucker, now there's a dream (if it was anywhere nearly as convenient and easy as $AREA truck simulator $NUMBER which it unfortunately is not).
• hogrider 5y ago
  Same. I definitely don't want to stay in this field for decades, bc companies see you as radioactive as an ilder worker instead of a venerable expert of years of experience. I don't think that'll ever change, anytging code slinging related is susceptible to be biased to older workers.