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Just Your Handyman

plough.com

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Re: Just Your Handyman

#41

Post by natnatenathan »

karaterobot wrote: post #25
neverartful wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you. I've been a full-time software engineer for the past 28 years and a part-time handyman for the past 5 months. One of the biggest differences that you don't mention is the use of your body. Software engineering is purely intellectual -- often to the detriment of your body (or mine, anyways) since it's often the case where I sit at the keyboard for hours on end, day after day. As a handyman, yo…

> One of the biggest differences that you don't mention is the use of your body. Oh, for sure. I was a dev for many years, then switched to product design. What I left out of my first comment was that my older brother is a maintenance guy for a hospital—basically a handyman with an office in the basement. Growing up, it was clear that he was at least as smart as me, but at a certain point he went one direction and I…

I think it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we deserve the insane wages of tech because we earn them. I have a friend who is a school principal and what she does is easily as complex, ambiguos and impactful as what I do, for a fraction of my salary. Maybe what she lacks in income is made up for in the satisfaction of contributing to the world in a positive way? There certainly is a hollowness I feel in tech. I started because I loved technology and how it helped in so many ways — image processing to help my astronomy classmates glean new insights from data. Tech today is about locking in customers, driving additive products and maximizing profitability. That said, I don’t have the courage to leave.

Re: Just Your Handyman

#42

Post by teddyh »

karaterobot wrote: post #15

Neat article. If you squint, I don't think there is a ton of difference between what most handymen do and what most software engineers do: they both have some generalizable skills, and when they get asked to do something they say 'yes' and then figure out how to do it. I don't think the challenge level of most day-to-day software tasks is any harder than the "where'd that water stain come from" puzzle he described in…

“The reason is that, in other fields [than software], people have to deal with the perversity of matter. You are designing circuits or cars or chemicals, you have to face the fact that these physical substances will do what they do, not what they are supposed to do. We in software don't have that problem, and that makes it tremendously easier. We are designing a collection of idealized mathematical parts which have definitions. They do exactly what they are defined to do.

And so there are many problems we [programmers] don't have. For instance, if we put an if statement inside of a while statement, we don't have to worry about whether the if statement can get enough power to run at the speed it's going to run. We don't have to worry about whether it will run at a speed that generates radio frequency interference and induces wrong values in some other parts of the data. We don't have to worry about whether it will loop at a speed that causes a resonance and eventually the if statement will vibrate against the while statement and one of them will crack. We don't have to worry that chemicals in the environment will get into the boundary between the if statement and the while statement and corrode them, and cause a bad connection. We don't have to worry that other chemicals will get on them and cause a short-circuit. We don't have to worry about whether the heat can be dissipated from this if statement through the surrounding while statement. We don't have to worry about whether the while statement would cause so much voltage drop that the if statement won't function correctly. When you look at the value of a variable you don't have to worry about whether you've referenced that variable so many times that you exceed the fan-out limit. You don't have to worry about how much capacitance there is in a certain variable and how much time it will take to store the value in it.

All these things are defined a way, the system is defined to function in a certain way, and it always does. The physical computer might malfunction, but that's not the program's fault. So, because of all these problems we don't have to deal with, our field is tremendously easier.”

— Richard Stallman, 2001: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-mec-india.html#conf9>

Re: Just Your Handyman

#43

Post by whartung »

neverartful wrote: post #19
karaterobot wrote: post #15

Neat article. If you squint, I don't think there is a ton of difference between what most handymen do and what most software engineers do: they both have some generalizable skills, and when they get asked to do something they say 'yes' and then figure out how to do it. I don't think the challenge level of most day-to-day software tasks is any harder than the "where'd that water stain come from" puzzle he described in…

I mostly agree with you. I've been a full-time software engineer for the past 28 years and a part-time handyman for the past 5 months. One of the biggest differences that you don't mention is the use of your body. Software engineering is purely intellectual -- often to the detriment of your body (or mine, anyways) since it's often the case where I sit at the keyboard for hours on end, day after day. As a handyman, yo…

For me the biggest difference is that handyman mistakes tend to tangible, and potentially worse to repair than the original problem. Software is easy to reset back and clean the slate for another go.

It's this kind of thing that deters me from taking on tasks, fear of making things worse, digging the hole deeper, etc.

Then there's the whole losing focus, leaving it half done, etc. issue.

Re: Just Your Handyman

#44

Post by rfrey »

pards wrote: post #6

> My kids get regular doses of “No limits!” and “You can be whatever you want!” in school, and I resent it because it simply isn’t true. You cannot actually be whatever you want. That’s harmful, sentimental garbage. Fact is, the real world is chock full of limits. This is the danger of participation awards. It's how people end up in careers they aren't suited to. As a society, we owe it to our children to be honest w…

Like remedial math, those messages might not be targeted at your kids, or any kids who get meaningful support at home. There are a lot of kids who are constantly told they are useless and will never be good for anything.

Re: Just Your Handyman

#45

Post by steveBK123 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #24
steveBK123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. Educators and parents don't do a great job of saying "if you want to be A, then you should work on your V skills" or "while you may be passionate about C, it is not a career.. have you considered D,E,F?". And also for those going off to college it would be useful to have the hard conversation early "while it may be fun to live in G HCOL city for 4 years, if you want to make a life there, you are going to n…

He didn't mean it in this way at all (it was really a reference to how to live in a racially discriminatory society) but I always liked James Farmer's > We do what we have to so we can do what we want to

Yeah, exactly.

I think a lot of "follow your passion" types also miss that a lot of passion businesses are 90% business (sales/marketing/accounting/leasing/HR/administrative/paperwork/phonecalls/BS) and 10% the thing you were so passionate about.

It's important to at least like what you do, and to find some purpose in how you fill your time. But it's a rare person who actually finds doing their job more pleasant than sitting on a beach / reading a book / watching a film / scrolling HN / etc. I've worked with some, and I don't really envy them.

There are limits in each direction.

Re: Just Your Handyman

#46

Post by steveBK123 »

ponector wrote: post #40
cwalv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surprising thing, tho, is that even if you win the lottery, so that you end up not really having to do anything, you'll still find out that "work" is a requirement for a fulfilling life.

Work is a requirement for fulfilling life, not job. Winning lottery you can do any work, not just grinding 9-5 pointless job.

Yes and no. Found money is easily lost. And when a savings rate turns into a burn rate, the nest egg quickly evaporates.

Play with any retirement calculator and shift your retirement age forward even 5 years. The problem is 5 years less new saving, 5 years less returns on peak nest egg, 5 years more spending down the nest egg, (and also not collecting social security yet because too early).

For someone who didn't already have strong passions and hobbies that don't have high burn rates, filling 50 hours/week without spending down savings extra fast is hard.

You can also become alienated from those around you and the ordinary rhythms of life.

Re: Just Your Handyman

#47

Post by [deleted] »

teddyh wrote: post #42
karaterobot wrote: post #15

Neat article. If you squint, I don't think there is a ton of difference between what most handymen do and what most software engineers do: they both have some generalizable skills, and when they get asked to do something they say 'yes' and then figure out how to do it. I don't think the challenge level of most day-to-day software tasks is any harder than the "where'd that water stain come from" puzzle he described in…

“The reason is that, in other fields [than software], people have to deal with the perversity of matter. You are designing circuits or cars or chemicals, you have to face the fact that these physical substances will do what they do, not what they are supposed to do. We in software don't have that problem, and that makes it tremendously easier. We are designing a collection of idealized mathematical parts which have d…

[deleted]

Re: Just Your Handyman

#49

Post by georgeoliver »

That the author describes himself as a self-taught handyman may not sound like much to USA readers like myself, but it's my understanding that Canada has a much more widespread formal trade apprentice program than what's available in the states (through unions). I've always wished something like that was developed here, since it doesn't seem like union labor will ever make inroads on the USA residential market.

Re: Just Your Handyman

#50

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

steveBK123 wrote: post #45
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't mean it in this way at all (it was really a reference to how to live in a racially discriminatory society) but I always liked James Farmer's > We do what we have to so we can do what we want to

Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of "follow your passion" types also miss that a lot of passion businesses are 90% business (sales/marketing/accounting/leasing/HR/administrative/paperwork/phonecalls/BS) and 10% the thing you were so passionate about. It's important to at least like what you do, and to find some purpose in how you fill your time. But it's a rare person who actually finds doing their job more pleasant than…

I like the word "dignity". It is important that as a society, we allow people to experience dignity in their work, no matter what it consists of. This is different from the question of how much they like it and how much they get paid. All jobs, no matter what they pay, should bring sense of dignity to whoever does them (and in our current economy, most jobs should pay more than they do).
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