81–90 of 141 posts
Love the work but hate the pay and toll it took on my body.
Carpentry is fun too but metal is better.
I could imagine being a car mechanic or a welder. Repairing my car is a little hobby of mine and I could imagine doing that full time, if programming work would stop paying my bills.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ford CEO says he has 5,000 open mechanic jobs with up to 6-figure salaries from the shortage of manually skilled workers: https://fortune.com/2025/11/12/ford-ceo-manufacturing-jobs-t...
"Up to" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Labor Rate at dealerships around me are over $200/h. Granted the mechanic doesn't get 100% of that but 200 * 52 * 8 is nearly 600k. It seems like you could go somewhere else and get the same amount of money as Ford (or more) and don't need to worry about future salary increases not occurring.
And once I had gotten over the anxiety and low self-esteem that I'd develop by engaging in these activities, probably become some kind of tech artist or simply be creativity for the sack of creating something.
No insta, no facebook, no twitter, more a reflection of what these technologies are doing to our "societies" or rather our "individualised groups of humans collectively doom-scrolling into global disaster of one kind or another".
I'm still building it out. Going for my Repair Station license next year and hoping to add pitot-static and transponder calibration to my services menu. I wrench on my own plane, but the liability exposure is insane, so I won't sign work for others.
It's really odd, but I think when I disclose this to my tech masters, there is something of a novelty value, and they appreciate that I can sling code... and also other things. That old "well rounded" trope I guess.
Many of us have to do this job(personality quirks, ASD, etc). I remember talking to a nerd friend(Verilog/VHDL guy) 25 years ago, in the time before Google salaries when engineering wasn't a job most people desired. He shared that thought and it rang true with me. I've met many folks who I don't think would have done well outside engineering. Myself, I have a good brain for engineering but have a marked lack of commo…
- Music producer
- Video director
- Astronomer/Physicist/Biologist
Probably something blue collar like electrician, plumbing or auto repair.
Can't seem to escape from the tech gods.
Unfortunately blue collar labor takes its toll on bodies — probably best-left to hobby grunt work (and not full-time) unless you like back/knee/hip pain =D
I'm currently attempting to transition back into white collar tech (early 40s) but we all know how that's going (in this economy). Fortunately twisting wires together for decades has allowed me to stack enough savings that I'm not in a rush / desperate for re-training/employment.