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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?

#181

Post by ianai »

Apocryphon wrote: post #146
enraged_camel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I genuinely do not understand what it is that drives people like the reddit OP to think that tradespeople somehow have it better than software folks. It's like they have never actually paid attention to how absolutely grueling plumbing/roofing/fencing/etc. is. "Constant need to stay up to date" is actually one of the things I really like about this field, because it's one of the things that prevents the work fr…

I don’t think they want to be tradespeople. I think they want to be artisans.

I’d say they already are artisans. Guy talks about needing to constantly study up to stay current. I imagine an artist just through creating is constantly getting more comfortable with their tools. Hokusai has a famous quote to this effect - basically saying he would have to live to 100+ to really practice enough to be proud of his work.

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

#183

Post by JKCalhoun »

mcbishop wrote: post #125

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, el…

Good for you. Once I had a family, I decided I didn't want to rock the boat, kept the comfy(ish) coding job so I could afford to take them to places abroad, pay for their college.

I sensed you could make good money in the Bay Area in any contractor-type field: electrician, plumber, etc. When we needed an electrician it was often hard to find one (and that didn't, for example, only do commercial electrical work).

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

#184

Post by candiddevmike »

spicybright wrote: post #82
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.

You could just not take jobs like that. It sounds like a semi-retirement job means you'd be financial stable enough to not need to take every request you get.

I'm not sure what electrician work you think you'd end up doing that doesn't involve some kind of shitty situation, aside from maybe some types of new construction. On top of that, AFAIK in the US, to become an electrician you need to start out as an apprentice working under a journeyman or master. Which means you get the shit jobs (sometimes literally, like septic wiring).

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

#185

Post by granshaw »

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.)

Not sure if that was a sarcastic reply but if not You’re missing the point - which was that these fools will often be better paid and more well off than you :)

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

#186

Post by Cederfjard »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #56
it_does_follow wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Out of curiosity, what programming work do you do that’s both so free and pays the bill? Do you sell a successful indie product or something?

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

#187

Post by grumple »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #102
xeromal wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't catch ecoli from software at least though

Joint and back issues?

You get those from coding too. Sitting in a chair all day wrecks your neck and back, mouse and keyboard use causes carpal tunnel as well. Standing still instead of sitting causes other issues. You have to move around, not remain fixed. There's a balance somewhere between being a dev and being a plumber.

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

#188

Post by djur »

Apocryphon wrote: post #146
enraged_camel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I genuinely do not understand what it is that drives people like the reddit OP to think that tradespeople somehow have it better than software folks. It's like they have never actually paid attention to how absolutely grueling plumbing/roofing/fencing/etc. is. "Constant need to stay up to date" is actually one of the things I really like about this field, because it's one of the things that prevents the work fr…

I don’t think they want to be tradespeople. I think they want to be artisans.

It's just the masculine-coded, "left-brained" equivalent of "I wish I could quit my office job and do arts/crafts for a living", a sentiment I've heard a lot from friends outside the tech industry.

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

#189

Post by TheCoelacanth »

artemonster wrote: post #71
civilized wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I like how in our progressive society it is absolutely frowned upon to invoke any association between observable societal statistics and, say, race/gender, but its okay to bash BMW/audi drivers. So, user civilized, why is it okay for you to generalize? And why exactly you were sorry? (I am aware that this is a tangent discussion to the original post, but it may be an interesting one)

There's a big difference between stereotyping based on something someone was born with and stereotyping based on something they chose to buy.

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

#190

Post by chime »

mcbishop wrote: post #125

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, el…

Props to you my friend. This is a great way to leverage your past skills and experience, get into a new field, and help improve things at a national level, while getting personal satisfaction. The binary view of 'white collar' vs. 'blue collar' prevents growth. Just like farm work has been modernized and companies like Leaf and FarmLogs are bringing the efficiency of tech/automation to millennia old practices, coders branching into EV, grid-based projects is fantastic!
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