Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

I am a master diesel engine mechanic by trade, and $100/hr is the lowest shop rate ive seen for a journeyman mechanic. I havent earned less than $150/hr since getting my ASE certs.

That having been said, it (like floor cleaning) is not easy work. Personal protection and safety is critical. Slips, trips, and falls are the #1 killer in these jobs

The video talks about de-greasers and gloves but shows the guy wandering around in a pool of degreaser with tennis shoes, no gloves and short sleeves, so im guessing he hasnt had a major accident yet. Degreaser is a base, so it is very slick. It reacts with fats to form soaps, so it only gets slicker. Do not wear keys on slick surfaces, or youll be picking them out of your leg after a fall.

The idea that any of these blue-collar jobs "print money" is laughable. We get overtime, sure, but we can also get canned quickly if we dont agree to take it on. Expect to work nothing but third shift as a floor cleaner. expect guys like me to yell at you when you move a rack or a tool chest and dont put it back exactly where it was before.

To anyone whos thinking of doing this, Scrub your driveway every day for a week and see if its still appealing.

I don't think you have to take it so literal and more importantly I think there is a bigger point than printing money.

It's the same point that's made in Fish https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&key... which is that you can turn things that sound really boring into a labour of love and make a profit along the way.

In other words there are opportunities all around us which can be turned into a more interesting business even though they sound really unattractive.

Now apply that to technology (something like Pingdom.com as an example) and you might just have changed your perspective enough to get an idea you didn't have before.

Scrubbing your driveaway for yourself isn't really comparable to supporting yourself financially scrubbing clients floors. 80% of jobs aren't sitting in front of a computer and most of them are not a joy to do for most people either.

I think it is very interesting that many people see the dollar per hour ratio and think easy money. Sometimes the pay is high because you are sacrificing your health to earn that money and to do your job. Safety is important but it doesn't make the job any easier, you are just reducing the risk of sacrificing even more of your health. There are some seriously tough jobs out there and I applaud those who have the willpower to do them.

The lesson here is to do your job with passion. This man loves his job, otherwise he wouldn’t be posting and making videos about it.

It’s the same in tech. If you don’t have passion, you’ll bounce around tech companies, never moving up, always making money, but never enough. But it’s the passion that gives you the edge to deliver something 1% better than the next guy, and so you get the big bucks.

Be passionate and the money will follow.

Edit: uhh did I say something wrong? Why the downvotes?

My highschool job was at a smallish mom and pop grocery store. I took care of the floors every night; sweep, mop, buff. There's a real zen to doing this kind of work, I really enjoyed it.

I found the same thing with farming. During my first few University years, I financed myself working on a dairy. A couple of four day weekends each month I would drive around 150km to the job and also the same work for three months solid over the summer holidays.

While I wasn't crazy about the 05:00 starts and shifting hundreds irrigation pipes twice a day isn't a whole lot of fun (but great fitness training), I did find tractor work to have a zen of its own. Around and round and round a paddock ploughing, sewing or mowing was pretty therapeutic and allowed my mind to think on all sorts of things.

At one point I seriously considered following a more agricultural focused career. Ultimately I didn't go this route, but still often wonder about my life if I had of made that choice.

Worked in an office with a hall overlooking a couple acre field.

Everytime the guy was mowing it, there would be someone taking a break looking out the window watching the guy. It was sort of our Koi pond.

Passion gets you shitcanned when your desire to get stuff done conflicts with office politics. Unless you are a founder, and actually are a unicorn or can provide a much needed service, fuck passion. Do it for the money.

which is why you should work for yourself.

I’ve never experienced that. If you’re passionate, you can leave a poor environment like that behind and pick up new work easily.

I think that has more to do with competence than passion. If you are good (and good at interviewing) getting a new job is easy. If you have passion... losing your current job over differences in how to do things is... common.

If you're good AND good at interviewing AND have a personality the hiring manager really likes AND have a background the hiring manager really likes AND HR doesn't intervene AND there are few other qualified candidates in your market AND you have literally everything else go your way... getting a new job is easy. Otherwise you're in for some struggle, and definitely financial hardship for the months you'll be unemployed.

right. I mean, getting a new job has always seemed easy for me? but I don't think that disproves anything you say. (Another big part of why I think finding a new job is easy is 'cause I kinda like interviewing, and can do it a lot before it starts feeling hard.) but I'm just saying that passion, at least as I define passion, seems to be more of a career hindrance than a career help; I know several people who are fairly technically competent who are un/underemployed because they have a lot of passion and can't stand to see their work being used except in exactly the way they think is best, and that attitude really only works if the power imbalance is hugely in your favor or if you can do the whole project yourself.

That depends on what you're passionate about.

I started out with that attitude and had major passion and a real serious interest, but so far the alienation and exploitation of salary work in my last two corporate fortune 100 jobs has me wanting to end tech all together. I don't even enjoy tech anymore due to work, even in my personal time. Burn out is real.

Thinking about another career.

What alternative career options are you considering?

You're probably getting downvoted because the idea that a passionless developer can't deliver good solutions is stupid. Lots of developers are passionless about software development and deliver software "better than the next guy".

Passionless developer here. Can confirm. All that matters is that I'm the best available option. I grew up with the Linux community and agree with Stallman on pretty much everything, but I still generate a mountain of proprietary software for pay.

Feels bad, but I gotta eat.

I didn't say that at all. I said that a developer with passion has an edge.

That's not what he said though.

I don't think that you just have to be passionate and the money will follow. Making money depends on many other personality characteristics than just passion.

It’s easy to quantify physical health ailments which is a common side effect of physical jobs. Desk jobs can have negative menta health impacts, and their effects can be much more difficult to measure.

A lot of research has been done to quantify the physical health ailments caused by sedentary desk jobs. Common problems include: back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, obesity, and hypertension.

how diesel mechanics make so much more than regular (gas) mechanics?

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