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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?

#371

Post by redisman »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #177

So yes, I bought a fixer upper 2 years ago at the beginning of the pandemic because I had an existential moment where I was fed up with the seemingly futility and abstractness of software development. Turns out physical labor is even more futile after the novelty wears out.

I used to clean the office/locker rooms of a concrete prefab factory while in school for some income. Talk about existential. Literally the same thing every night and a seemingly pointless task since it would be the same mess within minutes when the next shift walked in.

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

#372

Post by Ekaros »

kurthr wrote: post #67
klyrs wrote: post #2

No. Plumbing is gross and wet. Carpentry, on the other hand...

Carpentry is brutal and pays badly... but I agree, poop is gross. Electrician, on the other hand?

Similar physical demands to plumbing. The proper cables are not light. Installation is still pain and involves hard to reach places. And fun stuff like crawling in crawl spaces sometimes etc.

I suppose telco might be most reasonable. Or if pay isn't important electronics. And even there is problems.

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

#373

Post by Ekaros »

supernova87a wrote: post #16

Navigator or maybe some kind of specialist for a cargo ship? Or maybe harbor pilot (if you could break into that closed industry to make bank) Forest fire water bomber pilot? On a side note, I always thought it would be a very cool thing if there were some kind of exchange program for people with good skills wanting to try them out in another field, kind of as a rotation. (I originally thought this for academia -- re…

In general being at sea means long shifts and being away from home for long periods. The ships run 24 hours a day, apart from when they are waiting or loading and unloading. And pay isn't great unless you are at top as Westerner.

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

#375

Post by georgeoliver »

There surely are people who would be professionally more satisfied as a plumber than an IT worker. I definitely encourage those people to try it out.

Then there are people purely fantasizing about professions like plumbing because of that 20% of their job they're unhappy with. They probably would do more for their mental health by donating 50% of their 5x plumber's salary to a non-profit of their choice.

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

#376

Post by Karrot_Kream »

_bfhp wrote: post #175
nkozyra wrote: post #166

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…

I think it's a manifestation of the inherent feeling that many of us developers are doing something mostly useless compared to others. We know that the world could be different and we could be working jobs that are physically and/or mentally difficult but also fair and useful. Ursula K. Le Guin puts it thus, from her novel "This Dispossessed": "A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic compe…

The Dispossessed was a fantastic book but you're taking away the wrong thing if you're using Anarresti propaganda to sum up the work. The full title of the book is "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia" and Anarres has many problems.

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

#377

Post by sodapopcan »

MrAbstract wrote: post #363
sodapopcan wrote: post #55

At an old job, we were next to a window that looked out onto a crossing guard who was there most of the day. We used to say, "That's it, I'm becoming a crossing guard," when work got tough. But ya, I agree, I wouldn't pick anything over tech, no matter how rough it gets. In terms of "constantly staying up to date", that's a large reason I moved to a tech stack with less moving parts and slower-moving major change. It…

> I moved to a tech stack with less moving parts and slower-moving major change. Could you please share what tech stack is this? Frankly speaking, I also consider finding something more stable and slow-paced as a continuation of my software career at this point.

Elixir. It's a bit hard to find jobs that actually use LiveView (which would relatively shield you from the world of NPM) but they're out there and pay pretty well. It isn't a silver bullet and not without its problems, but I'm incredibly happy with it.

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

#378

Post by DavidPiper »

brnaftr361 wrote: post #212
jvanderbot wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My confusion is that "sitting" is confounded with "never exercising". If you exercise 5m/hr for 16hrs (and sleep 8), you have accumulated a huge amount of sitting time, but also a really big amount of exercise time. Nobody does that, but what if we did?

I read somewhere that somebody did some study with god knows what methodology (people like to use current-world HG communities, not representative of ancestry) and decided that our ancestors walked about 12mi/day. That's about 3-4h of walking daily. We have like 280k years of that selection criteria. But also we came from apes, so we're sorta shitty at this upright stuff. An aside: I also just loathe ergonomic design…

> It's unfortunate that better designs haven't caught on, aren't readily available, and tend to be inordinately expensive.

Do you have any links to examples of these different designs? After using a bunch of different chairs, I'm seriously considering just repurposing my piano stool, even though I'll lose all the back support.

I just can't find anything sustainably comfortable and supportive.

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

#379

Post by Kye »

jedberg wrote: post #64

This last summer/fall really put things in perspective for me. We did a major outdoor renovation at our house, which involved landscapers, plumbers, electricians, and carpenters. Every day these guys would show up at 8am and long sleeves and jeans and hard hats, work super hard, pee in a port-a-potty, and be exhausted by the end of the day. They worked out in the 100 degree heat as well as the rain as the job got nea…

It's easy to pine for the good outcomes. The reality for most people is abusive bosses, wage theft, various exciting diseases from exposure and overwork without the health insurance or savings to deal with it.

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

#380

Post by LouisSayers »

lethologica wrote: post #346
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be self-selecting tech workers who feel excessive stress from their job, or, really are disastisfied and ready for a change. I can confess to passing the person holding the STOP and SLOW sign at a construction site, and even saying out loud, "Now that's a job I could do." But when the fog clears, and the paycheck lands in the bank, it's, well... nah. I'd rather put up with the stress or ennui and have the cash…

These people make $90 an hour in Australia. It’s definitely tempting.

I've heard the tram drivers make $150k ...
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