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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?

#51

Post by Tijdreiziger »

civilized wrote: post #34
lolinder wrote: post #23

This 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…

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That's why I don't own a car. :P

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

#53

Post by Apocryphon »

andrewzah wrote: post #30
cjbgkagh wrote: post #21

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.

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.

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).

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

#54

Post by cjbgkagh »

andrewzah wrote: post #30
cjbgkagh wrote: post #21

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.

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.

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.

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

#55

Post by sodapopcan »

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.

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

#56

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

it_does_follow wrote: post #47
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #25

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 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…

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.

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

#57

Post by mrweasel »

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.

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

#58

Post by malshe »

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.

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

#59

Post by hickimsedenolan »

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.

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