Ask HN: What's your working day like?

Would you prefer if a) the environment was quiet and no one was interrupting you. Or b) the environment was noisy and you were constantly interrupted by people talking about how they spent their weekend.

To many developers, productive work is like taking a math exam. Therefore we want the same kind of environment (a distraction free one) to do our best work.

Four things to keep in mind: first, in most US jurisdictions these days, firefighting is coupled with EMS. So if you're squeamish around trauma, it's probably not going to be a good fit. Second, it's pretty physically demanding. Even if the academic side comes naturally to you, it's a very physical job. Third, it can literally kill you. If you don't handle stress well, it's not going to be a good fit. Fourth, it's a team effort. Even on extremely understaffed departments, you're always dependent upon other people, and they are always dependent on you -- sometimes, in both cases, for survival.

Out of my academy class, roughly 1/3 the class struggled with the academic portion, roughly 1/3 struggled with the physical portion, and the last 1/3 had to work at it, but didn't really struggle.

For reference, these are some of the kinds of things we needed to do:

+ Simulated rescue of 165-pound dummy

+ Move hose lines, both charged (with water) and uncharged (no water)

+ Climb ladders until you suck the bottle dry

+ Crawl through a wire entanglement tunnel in full gear (I think we also went through one round with "blindfold" inserts in our SCBA masks)

+ Drills with time limits on almost everything (donning gear, doffing gear, bottle changes, on-air, off-air...)

And so on. My advice would be, get in shape first, and manage your expectations. Many departments will be pretty hesitant hiring someone who's 20 years more senior than all of the rest of the recruits. Volunteer would probably be a better fit, but less of a career change and more of a side project.

- [09:00] wake up. make breakfast for child, myself and dog

- [09:30] make coffee. cleanup kitchen / house. random chores

- [10:00] nanny arrives. slack, email, github

- [10:30] actual work begins

- [14:00] make lunch

- [14:15] make coffee, nap or take dog for walk.

- [15:00] resume work

- [17:15] nanny leaves

- [18:00] make dinner. wife is back from work. spend time w/family

- [21:30] child is asleep. walk dog or go for a run

- [22:15] resume work

- [00:00] sleep or time for side projects (1 hour)

Some days have more consistent blocks of work time but this has recently been the norm.

This is a longer topic, but in my mind there's a bimodal distribution on a spectrum of attitude towards programming. Some, like me, are people in love with technology, who go home to tinker on side projects. Other - like that cow-orker - treat software as a career, and they go home to socialize, play board games with friends, etc. Without judging anyone, my impression is that our industry is mostly filled with the second kind of people now[1], and they seem to predominantly feel good in open-space offices.

In the end, I figured that my preferences must be in minority, so I don't complain too much. That is, unless someone is really distracting me for longer periods of time, at which point I'll kindly ask them to stop.

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[0] - I'm not here to tell him how he should feel about his degree. For myself, looking back at the education I got, I think my feelings were best expressed by a friend of mine: "if for that I'm an engineer, then I'm afraid to go to a doctor".

[1] - I believe it used to be different in the past, but that impression might be colored by small exposure to the real software world in my teens; the kind of people you meet on-line in programming circles are usually self-selected to be tech lovers / geeks.