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Comment by cheez | Hacker News Reader

I've never been a coal miner, but there is some sort of satisfaction in working with your hands that you don't quite get being a corporate coder.

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There's also the black lung that you don't quite get being a corporate coder.

I think it's very easy for people who aren't working with their hands every day to sit back and talk about the 'satisfaction' you get. You may get that if you go and do it for a day. When you're doing it every day you're destroying your back, knees, your hands end up cut and calloused, and you're exhausted. And the 'satisfaction' probably doesn't make up for the lower pay manual labour jobs typical come with.

> destroying your back, knees, your hands end up cut and calloused

+ your hearing, it can be very noisy in a mine.

I'm from a coal mining region and some of the miners hate the job with passion and curse it every day as they get on the comutter's bus. Others are more indifferent about it and even enjoy some aspects of it (mostly camraderie). I'm pretty sure the majority of them would switch for ANY office job that pays the same.

My general thoughts on the "I'm unhappy doing CRUD" sentiments is that people generally tend to get bored with what they're doing and the dream of one day doing something else, something more fulfilling, relieves the pain somewhat. Funnily, for pretty much all the alternative careers that devs talk about, there are internet threads where people working those jobs are discussing how to retrain as a software developer.

Plus if you've made $150-250k for the past 8-10 years, it's easy to have that retirement buffer and that money in the bank and think that working in a mine might be "satisfying" for six months even if you did it for $15k.

It's totally different when you can barely afford your mortgage, you're in debt, and you have no chance of getting a better job.

Sure, I was thinking more along the lines of other, less life threatening "working with hands" type work. I knew an IT admin who used to be a lumberjack and the guy missed being in the wilderness for months at a time.

Don't forget about the threats of cave ins and poisonous gas...

I worked a manual labor job (installing industrial epoxy flooring). I distinctly remember being too tired to go to a friend's barbecue on a Friday after working a job 9 days straight, and dust boogers can surely not be a healthy indicator. I'm not sure it's something I'd want to do for years on end (I worked it as a summer job during college), but there's something to be said about the satisfaction. There's less stress involved on a day to day basis. Nearly every day you go home tired, but satisfied you did something tangible. Only very rarely did things go wrong to the point where little or negative progress was made on a project- which I don't find to be the case in software. Seeing a 60,000sqft floor I'd help complete turn out perfect after sweating for a week is comparable to solving a particularly vexing bug, only more tangible. And I made about the same amount as a union laborer as I did in my first developer job.

Whilst nowhere near as bad as black lung, RSI and lower back pain caused by sitting all day are real things. Programming isn't without its own physical risks.

That's why I enjoy doing small-medium landscaping projects and yard work. You start with something in a substandard state (yard, grass, leaves, snow, etc) and you end with something looking much nicer, all within the span of a couple hours.

Compare that to releasing code 4 times a year. The stuff I'm working on now won't be in production until September.

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