I'm not gonna write my life story on hn, but I have the exact opposite experience as you. I grew up in a blue collar family. No real white collar mentors or app

I'm not gonna write my life story on hn, but I have the exact opposite experience as you. I grew up in a blue collar family. No real white collar mentors or apparent options in that world. So I followed my dad into the trades. I spent my summers in high school as a plumber (apprentice) and became a full-time plumber after high school, eschewing college even though I was accepted to a number of good schools. After a number of post-high school years of being a plumber it quickly became obvious what type of life this would lead to for me. In particular, the physical toll. You are often carrying heavy equipment or supplies up or down stairs or ladders. You spend your entire day working with sharp edges, saws, and electricity. Accidents occur all the time and any of them can be debilitating. You also have to consider the risk of the impairment of others and what damage it may cause you. Let's say a co-worker in IT gets drunk at lunch and comes back to work. He may accidentally drop a table or even a database. That sucks for sure, but in the grand scheme of things, your life and ability to continue working aren't impacted. But consider being on a job site with others and the electrician gets drunk at lunch. He could accidently miswire something that could end up with a severe injury to you or someone else. The risks from the mistakes of others upon yourself is much larger in the trades. There are lot of things that seem similar. New development is akin to new construction. Both have maintenance and service. But IT is essentially a virtual environment. The data is important to many people and can even have lives depending on it. But in the trades, it is a completely physical environment. There is no undo. There is no restore from backup. Mistakes can and do result in physical injury and death. It is the difference between coming home at the end of the day sulking that you had to do some user support and coming home minus a few fingers because you or someone else sneezed at the wrong time. My dad is retired now, not by choice. He was on a rooftop holding an air conditioner panel. A gust of wind kicked up and he had the choice of either letting the panel blow off the top of the building onto others below or hold onto it. He held onto it. In the process, destroying his back. He was never the same. That doesn't happen in IT.