Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's something so insidiously, backhandedly condescending about tech workers pining for the simplicity of an honest day's job that drives me nuts. Yes, there are almost always jobs with less strenuous requirements on time, fewer requirements and late nights. But the average tech worker has a pretty good gig. And if they don't they can go down the street in 2022 and get one. Trades scratch a similar itch to develop…
> There's something so insidiously, backhandedly condescending about tech workers pining for the simplicity of an honest day's job that drives me nuts. Agreed. SO recently left a career in academia to get a job in tech as an entry level software developer. Says this is the easiest job they've ever had in their life, and wondered why they didn't start sooner. Developers have no idea how difficult even other white coll…
Out of all of them, I have the "best" job in terms of what's expected of me on a day-in-day-out basis. The biggest problem I feel us tech-workers have is that we compare our "bad" with their "good".
On a good day, a construction worker may get there, do their work for the amount of hours stipulated, and leave the work at work. That's our perspective. What we do not often see is the time they spend worrying about the weather conditions (if you're painting outside, can't do it in the rain), or whether this or that material will be on time/to spec, or that you sprained something yesterday and you really need to haul heavy stuff around today, and it cannot be delayed because people are relying on it being done, and this might mean your injury will worsen and you might not be able to work for a while.
We can get bad days. And our bad days can get pretty shitty. I won't begrudge anyone who'd love to leave the tech sector; I've often thought about it myself. But from hearing my friends in other professions talk about their bad days? Mine don't occur so often, and when they do, are often not as bad.
It's very difficult to deny our privilege when we talk to someone who works all day in the searing heat, and our day consisted of turning on our laptop at 11, running some Terraform scripts, making it to our favourite restaurant for sushi, enjoying an extended lunch while monitoring some deployments on our work tablet, and having a meeting while walking on a nearby park to negotiate internal deadlines. I've often been embarrassed to describe my day to some of my friends.