111–120 of 470 posts
It’s effectively similar to plumbing or anything else — a trade off to a different scale of problems and pressures.
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…
I worked in a daycare for a while when I was young; I really liked being a scout leader and figured I might want to do something like this for a living. I didn't like it very much: turns out that a few hours on saturday is not quite the same thing as 8 hours every day. I think in general "doing this for a hobby and fun" and "doing this for a living" are two entirely different things. Many people love to cook as a hob…
A few years rolled by and I found myself doing construction stuff for friends. "See you in the morning" I would say as I left, and then find myself returning a week later. There's even a situation now where I've left an absurdly simple final task helping one of my neighbors with some minor repairs ... I think I told her 3-4 months ago that I'd be back in 2 days.
I don't really understand why this happens, but it did give me some insight into a whole extra layer that is required from you when doing work for other people: you have to go back, tomorrow, even, over and over until it is done.
Now this certainly applies to any regular (well, contract?) employment too, but there is something different about construction that I think requires a different kind of personal character to enable you to fulfill the implicit obligations.
Take a break, get a little more balance in your life, and perhaps the desire to program will come back. Maybe it won't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey! What's wrong with BMWs? We have two of them. Both diesels. The gas mileage is slightly below amazing. (Though my lawyer says you should always buy them used, never new. He's very good on life advice in general.)
BMW’s are great cars, used to have one. But somehow their turn signals never seem to work.
Chat with the plumbers (and other tradespeople). Nothing deep or profound. Don't even bring up these work topics unless they do. The weather, the Super Bowl, your dog, what they're doing right now...
I could enumerate the benefits, but let's leave it as "you'll feel better, and so will they." And you'll get a gut feeling about them as people.
Sure, you hate your boring, safe, lucrative job in software development until you become a plumber and find yourself on your hands and knees beside a disassembled toilet for the 87th time. Splattered in fetid wastewater, pulling stuck condoms out of the floor while the idiot renter stands above you dragging on his Juul, and you realize, maybe I didn't have it so bad after all. The "grass is always greener" is probabl…
In fleeting moments of madness, maybe. But aside from that, of course not! We're so unbelievably lucky to be able to do things that we're good at, most of us enjoy (to some extent), and also be paid eye-watering amounts of money. It's pretty easy to forget how low the median income really is when one's social group is exclusively tech or other professional occupations (lawyers, doctors, etc). Meeting somebody who's d…
"also be paid eye-watering amounts of money." Thats not really true outside US