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.
Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
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Re: Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
#42No. Plumbing is gross and wet. Carpentry, on the other hand...
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..
Re: Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
#43I 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
Re: Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
#44Of 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.
Re: Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
#45As 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.
Re: Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
#46I 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.
Re: Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
#47I'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 time…
> 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.
Re: Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
#48This comment and its top reply are dead on: 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…
I opened comments to reply the same comment from Reddit. Grass always feels greener on the other side.
Re: Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
#49It'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.
Re: Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?
#50And increase my social surface area for interacting with entitled and stupid people while literally having to deal with their shit?
Nah, I'm good.