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

A professor of mathematics noticed that his kitchen sink at his home leaked. He called a plumber. The plumber came the next day and sealed a few screws, and everything was working as before.

The professor was delighted. However, when the plumber gave him the bill a minute later, he was shocked.

"This is one-third of my monthly salary!" he yelled.

Well, all the same he paid it and then the plumber said to him, "I understand your position as a professor. Why don't you come to our company and apply for a plumber position? You will earn three times as much as a professor. But remember, when you apply, tell them that you completed only seven elementary classes. They don't like educated people."

So it happened. The professor got a job as a plumber and his life significantly improved. He just had to seal a screw or two occasionally, and his salary went up significantly.

One day, the board of the plumbing company decided that every plumber had to go to evening classes to complete the eighth grade. So, our professor had to go there too. It just happened that the first class was math. The evening teacher, to check students' knowledge, asked for a formula for the area of a circle. The person asked was the professor. He jumped to the board, and then he realized that he had forgotten the formula. He started to reason it, and he filled the white board with integrals, differentials, and other advanced formulas to conclude the result he forgot. As a result, he got "minus pi times r square."

He didn't like the minus, so he started all over again. He got the minus again. No matter how many times he tried, he always got a minus. He was frustrated. He gave the class a frightened look and saw all the plumbers whisper: "Switch the limits of the integral!!"

Your contractor, on the other hand, may well have got a few rounds of golf in during the day time.

A neighbor owns a painting company. He goes around the various job sites in the morning, sees that everyone has their marching orders for the day, returns in the afternoon to check in on the progress. In between the morning and afternoon though? He does what he pleases.

I believe he started the company with a buddy, the two of them doing the painting. Things grow though, you hire guys, your role changes (and your income too).

After 15 years doing software development, I started training to be an electrician a month ago (in the Bay Area). The two people I work under are chill / patient.

Sometimes when dragging myself and wire though tight rat-shit crawl spaces... I yearn for my nice little home office. But, overall, I enjoy the work. It feels good to do work in the physical world.

A lot of electricians are nearing retirement. Meanwhile, electrification is picking up steam. The National Electrical Code 2020 is letting distributed / behind-the-meter software do a lot more heavy lifting (e.g. its letting software manage loads so that (expensive, delaying, and grid-taxing) utility service upgrades can be avoided)[1]. There's already big demand for electricians, let alone when EVs (and level-2 EV chargers), solar + batteries, and other flexible loads become mainstream.

My aspiration is to spend one week a month in the field, leading an electrical project (and taking all or most of the profit). With a low-cost lifestyle, I think I'll be able to spend the other three weeks improving processes / tooling around that electrical work. And working on related FOSS and education resources.

1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/klt1zzc7zxqwrfe/IAEI_Bill-Brooks_2...

As a web dev who glues together api’s and json, I’d call myself a plumber. Instead of shit, I shuttle data from the frontend to a database and vise versa.

Yeah lol... The apartment building next to mine was having some reconstruction and the guys working on the exterior saw into my office windows (5th story). I started talking to them, had a cigarette together when I saw them lighting up, shared my WiFi password with them, etc, just being friendly. After a few days the guys asked "so, do you ever work man, or are you one of those computer pussies?". I agreed I'm a computer pussy as I'd never want to do any of what I saw them doing, in all weathers, very very early in the morning as well as very late in the evening.