Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 470 posts

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

#151

Post by JKCalhoun »

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…

Stresses of a trade? Never "plumbed" professionally, so I can't speak from experience. But from other non-software jobs I have had, I know it was easy to "leave work at work".

Software development followed me home, lived in my brain 24/7. It also caused a good deal of stress I was unaware of at the time.

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

#152

Post by sneakymichael »

01100011 wrote: post #131
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…

An old, cynical engineer I once worked with left me with two indelible quotes: - If it was fun they'd charge money at the door. - If you can't write it down you can't do it. You can argue about the accuracy of those ideas, but more or less I've found them to be true.

"If you can't write it down you can't do it." - elaborate?

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

#154

Post by jjcon »

cpsns wrote: post #108
banana_maker wrote: post #22

Occasionally that thought pops up. Then I remember I’m making insane amounts of money, from the comfort of my desk in my house. At 25 I’m making more than my parents ever did, with a fraction of the physical effort. If I really hated it, I could save up for some time and do something else, because again… I’m pulling insane amounts of money for software work. Trades like plumbing, electrical work etc are -hard- work.…

> I recognize that I have the privilege of not sacrificing my body and health for my income. Sitting for longer periods in any amount is incredibly bad for one's health long term, every study on the subject has confirmed this. You are sacrificing your health, just in a different way.

Eh didn’t it turn out that most of that was drummed out in the 2012 era by a few doctors selling books and partnering with exercise and standing desk companies? I feel like most of the more recent stuff I have read has said, yes get your exercise in but sitting itself isn’t actually bad, certainly not the whole ‘1 hour of sitting reduces your life by 1 day’ sort of stuff we heard a decade+ ago.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/21/health/sitting-study-partner/...

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

#155

Post by jvanderbot »

cpsns wrote: post #108
banana_maker wrote: post #22

Occasionally that thought pops up. Then I remember I’m making insane amounts of money, from the comfort of my desk in my house. At 25 I’m making more than my parents ever did, with a fraction of the physical effort. If I really hated it, I could save up for some time and do something else, because again… I’m pulling insane amounts of money for software work. Trades like plumbing, electrical work etc are -hard- work.…

> I recognize that I have the privilege of not sacrificing my body and health for my income. Sitting for longer periods in any amount is incredibly bad for one's health long term, every study on the subject has confirmed this. You are sacrificing your health, just in a different way.

"The trades" each come with occupational hazards of their own. These occupational hazards are sometimes much worse than sitting down. Besides, op clearly stated the intent to walk more.

For example, would you accept a 1.4x (+40%) chance of brain cancer? Vs sedentary peoples who have 2x chance of diabetes and +14% cardiovascular disease? (and sedentary means sitting + not exercising after work!).

I'd argue diabetes is easier to avoid through other life changes. I"m confused about whether "sitting" means "never exercising", and articles that talk about "sedentary" lifestyles are not very helpful.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1035250/

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M14-1651

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

#156

Post by brightball »

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…

Yep. I got burned out at one point and got my real estate license. I was going to go into commercial real estate and build a residential website in my spare time.

Good grief what a scheme that entire field is. If I wanted access to residential MLS data I was going to have to be a residential realtor. To be a residential realtor you have to work for a broker who will charge you monthly for the pleasure. You have to put the name of the brokerage on any site that uses the data even if you pay for it yourself. You also have to pay for each MLS you want to access.

If you want to start your own brokerage you have to get a brokerage license. To do that you have to have your real estate license for 3 years and take the brokerage class. There’s nothing you actually have to do during that 3 years other than maintain your license.

Seeing the profession from the inside was eye opening and I’ve been extremely happy getting to enjoy being in an unlicensed profession ever since.

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

#157

Post by openknot »

01100011 wrote: post #131
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…

An old, cynical engineer I once worked with left me with two indelible quotes: - If it was fun they'd charge money at the door. - If you can't write it down you can't do it. You can argue about the accuracy of those ideas, but more or less I've found them to be true.

>- If it was fun they'd charge money at the door.

I'm not sure if 'fun' is the right descriptor, but certain fields of work with relatively high prestige and supply of applicants but relatively low credential requirements (in comparison to credentialed professions like law or medicine) pay little or almost charge money.

Examples include journalism (very low paying, limited jobs in North America), museum curation (requiring many years of low-paid, unpaid internship; most people can't afford it), and many creative fields (e.g. graphic designers are, in my view, paid very low comparative to the skill and creativity they bring; creative writers often have to pay to submit to a literary journal; and video game developers are notoriously overworked/underpaid, compared to other types of software developers).

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

#158

Post by spywaregorilla »

Slightly off topic but does it really feel difficult to keep up with tech skills? I find it's extremely easy. Front end guys seem to have it harder, but as a data scientist I don't feel I need to learn much at all. In the past couple years it's been... shap... and that's it? I don't feel the need to bother with any of the neural net stuff.

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

#159

Post by smileysteve »

hodgesrm wrote: post #84
candiddevmike wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being an electrician sounds great until it's the middle of summer and you have to go in an attic or under a trailer.

Leaving aside problems with heat, it really helps to be small. One of our electricians was about 5' 2" and previously served on submarines in the US Navy. Another job where being of small stature is a benefit.

A plumber can be similar. In a craw space, I've soldered a coupler where I couldn't get the torch to light in the small space I had. Yep, there wasn't enough oxygen to sustain combustion.

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

#160

Post by [deleted] »

hodgesrm wrote: post #76
civilized wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

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.)

[deleted]
Post reply on HN