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

Instead of telling me that it will be better, he says that sometimes he contemplates buying a bar and just serving people and listening to their stories.

On that day I realized that not tech, but the idiotic company processes and the people I had to put up with were what got me into that state. I was hired as a Python backend developer, but I was also working as a Postgis expert (and I was no expert, I had no idea what I was doing), Go+gRPC integrator, Kube and Docker Swarm ops guy, frontend debugging person and I was in charge of the dev experience internal tools. It was simply too much to keep up with.

That same month I resigned and started working on selling my own product. 3 long months later, I launched the paid version of Lunar (https://lunar.fyi/) and I again discovered why I like being in tech.

There’s a kind of freedom that you can rarely find in other domains. You can be creative, start ideas on a whim, go into rabbit holes of satisfying curiosity, learn to use languages and tools that allow you to do in 3 lines of code what you needed 300 lines for yesterday. It feels like earning super powers sometimes.

And after all that, you can also make enough money to live comfortably in a nice apartment, small house, or just sleep in the woods if that’s your thing.

Since that day, I never considered being an employee, and just continued on doing my thing and creating stuff. This lead to the creation of https://lowtechguys.com/ and writing about my tech journeys on https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/

I’m still contemplating about building a house in the forest and start making Kaval flutes some day, but I think my tech skills will be a helpful aid for that goal, not something I want to leave by behind.

Personally, I believe that knowing how to navigate this (increasingly) digital world is an essential skill. I'm enjoying trying to build foundational knowledge about computing & networking for these reasons - and I also just feel like there is _so much_ to learn, and that is both exciting and overwhelming at times. I have some negative views towards the way technology has trended in the last decade or two (bordering on tin-foil hat territory :P) but I think that is all the more reason to understand it.

I don't have any interest in pursuing SWE, esp. for financial reasons. But I am enjoying learning about programming. I'd be happy if I could hack on things at home & contribute to some OSS projects. I'm hoping to land a junior position at a NOC in a year or so, but who knows? I've given up on the idea of any career giving my life meaning or purpose, so I'd be happy with an education + skillset that makes me employable, especially with remote opportunities. Not having to destroy my body is a bonus!

I suppose there's a sense in the trades that you know somebody wants something before you do it, because they've asked for it. And you can usually see where it fits into the bigger picture because the interconnected pieces are visually and physically connected.

I get a similar satisfaction from being a part time musician. When I show up to play music, it's because somebody has hired me to play music, and within the band there's a specific part that's filled by my work. I also know the quality of my own work instantly as I do it. I love music as an art, but on the bandstand, I'm a tradesman first and an artist second.

Working in a tech field, it can be hard to know if what you're making is ever going to matter to anybody, and it's possible to do negative work in the sense of costing more than what it returns. That can be frustrating.

For example, plastering, when having to plaster a ceiling, the effort would be good for boxing, ie arms above the head dragging the board and plaster over for a whole day does wonders for the shoulders & arms! Walls & surrounds are easier, but you have the usual dust and mixing mess which if an indoor job means some tidying up to do, obviously men dont always like cleaning up and their Henry vacuum cleaners are not a Dyson. Some also do ornamental styles of plastering, but I think this was more popular 100+yrs ago as there were less different jobs around unlike today where new sectors exist like this one. Building regs dictate what you can and cant do as well.

General building, like new houses or extensions, lots more mess indoors and out, more planning involved. Bricklaying, cant be below 3DegC because the mortar wont set, and you can only lay so many rows of bricks in a day otherwise the mortar gets squashed out. Building regs dictate what you can and cant do as well, but many home owners and trades people dont know the regs!

Plumbing, fiddly job, you could be digging up gardens, drives, ripping up floorboards working in tight spaces. Biggest risk is plumbing and central heating leaks damaging carpets, plasterwork, blowing electrics. Building regs & plumbing certification dictate what you can and cant do as well.

Electrical, again a fiddly job like plumbing, most of the products that can be fitted in a house setting already have the regulations built into the product, so its a bit of a no brainer, biggest mistakes come from choosing wrong product like dimming lightswitch which doesnt work with dimmable LED lights, or choose the wrong cable for laying underground. Building regs and electrical certification dictate what you can and cant do as well.

In terms of mental thought processes, local and national govt regulations control what you can and cant do. For example here in the UK, there are next to no regulations for laying driveways and patios so that those not academically qualified, ie cant read/write but maths never seems to be a problem, can still work, even for themselves.

General building, the building regs can be a pain, I ended up spending a week going through the UK combustion appliance regs, spoke to some of the authors and found, to use a software term a number of "unhandled errors" which had to be referred back to the planning authorities for clarification but they wouldnt commit, so I ended up making my own decisions!

Generally the more lethal something becomes the more rules and regulations. Gas & electricity seem to be the most heavily regulated, then plumbing then building. These are in a non commercial setting.

Commercial jobs, like infrastructure, much much more regulations & qualifications required but these are bigger projects like building schools & hospitals, roads, etc etc, and there is a hell of a lot more planning & paperwork with multiple external entities.

Work ethics varies, I've seen some turn up early, like 7am and do 7 hours, others will do dawn till dusk weather permitting.

Quite a variability in price quotes for a job, it can be hard to get stuff written down with trades, dont forget many cant read and write well, but the ideas to do a job can vary from just using expanding foam, to taking a few bricks out and filling holes in walls with bricks & mortar properly, even using the write matching colour mortar.

The quality of workmanship is all over the place even when they may be part of a govt recognised trade body, but I think this is also a way trades get at people to eek out the job or just mess someone over. Its very clique.

Dont get me wrong they can have a strong work ethic just not know how to do something properly and vice versa and somewhere in between.

Fall out with them and they can mess up stuff which you wont know about for years, like leaving flux on copper pipes which slowly develops a pinhole where water drips out and then slowly ruins studwork and plaster work.

Where jobs interfere with other domains like plumbing interfering with electrical jobs, generally they will take a flyer and do the other domain job even when not qualified. Property owners will be put on the spot in these situations and if the owners doesnt know the regs, they can end up with expensive problems if things are not done properly which is madness considering the price of property in the UK and wider world today.

Overall if you want a job where you can do it with out much thought, do a trade job, if you want something more mentally challenging stick in IT, with coding being the most challenging.

Edit.There is also alot more superstition and stereo typing in the lower skilled trades, but this isnt unlike what you see with nurses and doctors.

This might be unpalatable for some, but I think anyone who does want to go into a trade could wipe with floor just by providing detailed written quotes, because that bit of paper is worth much to many people, although some insist on only word of mouth trades people. Like I said its very clique.