An Honest Living

One of the great things in being a parent is that I can once more forget myself for hours when building snow castles or burrowing tunnels into a snow mountain at the end of the street, and no one bats an eye 'because kids'. Having kids also changes you in a way that you once more remember how awesome that was in the first place.

Frack, you're winning at parenting. I'm a dad and have never ever even once thought of it in those terms. I've never once thought, "thank goodness I'm a parent, it gives me something physical to do."

This reminds me of that write-up that tried to put a price on a stay-at-home parent by listing all the activities they do, looking at the price of a specialist, and adding it up. I'm bookmarking yours for future conversations like that since it's shorter, has more activities, and is more fun to read. :)

Parenting is absolutely a vocation, and your perspective toward it is quite refreshing.

https://gizmodo.com/you-can-pay-to-watch-strangers-eat-on-th...

Why would a person suggest to another that if they can't be happy where they are, they wouldn't be happy anywhere? Is "a sedentary office job" the summit of all work for all people? Do we not accept that people can have preferences?

I'm going to start a dating website called "The grass is always greener". Customers get matched with one person, ever.

Too bad it paid, you know, a tenth of what I make programming.

It was great. No screens, just a normal-ass cash register to work from time to time. No sitting unless I wanted to, no meetings, golf cart to drive around once or twice a day. Firewood to carry. People to talk to. Plenty of time to read or write and no-one remotely interesting in claiming the copyright anything I did then, let alone during time I was off the clock. Pretty much nothing about the job was evil, while so many tech jobs are at least a little. None of that general soul-grime of corporate life.

I'd do that for a whole career if it paid anywhere near what software dev does. I'm only in software because 100% of the things I actually want to do pay half as well, at best, and some of them require a lot more up-front spending and time for education. Programming's great when I need to do it for a personal project. As a career, it blows, compensation aside. It's not even high status, for the most part, despite the comp.

As an aside, I'm floored by the wholesomeness of this whole thread. It's inspiring.

I say this in no way to discredit your argument against the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. It's possible to be critical of Zionism without being antisemitic.

But that's the thing. Any criticism of Israel requires a 2-page disclaimer in order to make it perfectly clear your criticisms do not in anyway support antisemitism. I have not found a clear criticism of Israel on Twitter that did not require, at least, 10 additional tweets.

It's a poor medium for any academic to use. I fail to understand why he would in the first place. Intellectual debates are quite dry and nuanced. 2 things that microblogs do really poorly.

This is in Australia where tradespeople often do quite well so it's not uncommon.

It really isn't as great as it sounds or looks. The pay is about what you'd expect (ie - tiny).

Lugging around jugs of water, trying to find a nearby working (and accessible) hose bib to fill them, or having to carry your own water in your vehicle (and hoping nothing leaks)...it was grueling work for her.

The upside was you didn't have to talk to many people, not even your employer. She did the work, logged the time, and got paid. But the physical stress was insane, and has left her with more than a few issues (back and joint pain).

I look at software engineering differently; when I'm down in the weeds, yeah it sucks - but I know that things could be much worse for me, for much less pay, and what I am experiencing really isn't that big of a deal.

I get paid a lot of money for doing something that I find very easy to do; something that is almost second nature for me (I've been programming in some form or another for about 35 years, since I was a kid). I enjoy going into my work, I don't dread it. Many, many people would love to have that. I enjoy the fact that I do.

I wish more could say the same about their own work.

On the other hand you are spending your life putting out fires. Software breaks. It always does. You day by day job is finding the flaw in the system. Not to mention that you will program other peoples requirements not the fun stuff one does at home.

I started doing this with people. Debugging people. It is not fun and has started to make my life not as pleasant as it used to be.

Perhaps you already know all this and in that case please forgive my unsolicited advice.

Not a landscaper, school teacher, or electrician, but that's my anecdote for you.

I lost it. I was done. That was it. I couldn't get past the lies (the documentation was outright lying about this behaviour). My entire career had been in the Windows stack, almost 20 years from VB3 to C#, but I was done. I loved coding, but this... this was bullshit... this had to change.

The next day I installed Linux and started again, learning web development properly and eventually finding Go, which I still code in to this day. I have never touched C#, or developed anything on Windows, since that day (roughly 8 years ago now).

I was freelancing, and doing OK at it, and that was hard, but I picked up some JS work and some prototype work for local startups (and tried a few of my own). I joined all the meetups and made friends who I could ask questions of.

Now I'm pretty much back to where I left off, and much happier for it.

I know that most people wouldn't consider this to be a "career change" story - after all I stayed a software developer. But I did have to throw most of what I knew out of the window(s) and start again from scratch, and which was hard but incredibly enjoyable. I fell in love with coding again, and it took me years to rebuild my career on my terms again.

I don't know what your circumstances are, but if you're burned out from 5 years of professional development, maybe try changing what you hate about it?

Basically as an engineer you put some creative effort - or at least try to - in what you do thinking it’s some sort of one-of-a-kind artifact, and therefore touch your aesthetic sense.

Management doesn’t give 2 f*cks, they’re just into producing output (not necessarily profit) and CYA, and they’re hell bent into turning you into a predictable blue-collar. It’s not because they’re evil, in a corporate org eventually everyone’s purpose gets optimized away.

We’re lucky the software factory model crashed and burned in the ‘00 but we’re still craftsmen (and women), so we need to think like one.

Become a contractor, do what you’re asked for with the best of your skill but that’s it. Don’t let that “mission”, “purpose”, “we’re a family” rhetoric fool you. Build a wall between yourself and them . Be a carpenter, make it flat and level, invoice and bye.

When the conversation came to me, I didn't know what to say. Here were men who spent 14-16 hrs a day in some of the worst conditions, and that's when they weren't on strike-- there I was, the guy who gets to work from home and sits at a desk all day. Its hard to think of a place where you could feel more alone than at a table with family who share nothing in common with you but DNA.

I love what I do. Well what hasn't been whittled away in the name of efficiency or productivity, but I would consider giving it all up.

In the past I have also taken sabbaticals. Probably about the same time as you, I quit my job (it was a terrible job) and decided not to get another one until I understood what I wanted. I knew I was unhappy for a long time, so I saved up for this event. After I quit my job, I ended up writing free software every day. I loved it. "I am a programmer after all", I thought. And then I went back into the industry with a renewed vigour.

I wrote this years later: http://mikekchar.github.io/portfolio//UsefulAndBeneficial

It might be useful to you. To give you a more concrete impression, I used to get caught up doing things that I thought were important (like trying not to let the company I was working for die a horrible death). After I quit my job I realised that there were things about my job that I hated. They were things like chasing people about following process, trying to get my idiot boss to do his job, etc, etc. Some of these things were in my job description (I was in charge of the software process for a group of about 60 people). But the most interesting thing was that if I looked at all the things I hated doing, they matched up exactly with all the things that other people hated me doing.

Then I looked at the things I liked doing. Programming. Well, pretty much it. I hated endless "discussions" about what technology to use or how we should do things, etc, etc. I just liked writing code and solving problems. And then I realised that if I picked some code that nobody else wanted to touch (because it stank to high heaven), I could do anything I wanted and everybody would be ecstatic.

So I tried it in my next job. I put my head down and just wrote code. I declined to offer any opinions on anything I wasn't actually working on. I just wrote (as it turned out) a shit-ton of code. And they loved me, of course. In fact, my boss loved me so much he started to privately ask for my opinions about stuff. So I cautiously told him and he went away and tried it for me. It turned out to be successful. "Oh... That's why you want a manager", I thought. "Someone who is good at not getting into arguments and persuading people and doesn't mind spending their whole day in meetings".

Anyway, from there it was pretty good. But I have to say that I loved quitting my job in the end. I even emailed RMS and said, "I now understand what you meant when you wrote, 'Not everybody needs to be a professional programmer'". Because you really, really don't. When I was teaching, I wrote so much more code for myself than I ever did when I was a programmer. If you really want to be a programmer -- a free programmer, then write free software. You can be a landscaper, school teacher, electrician or even a waiter and write free software. That's what freedom means.

Being a programmer is a job. It's a good job (kinda boring and you have to get good at those interpersonal skills, but at least you aren't hauling nuclear waste around). You don't have to do it, though. You can do any job. All jobs suck in different ways and are good in different ways. But you have a choice. You have freedom and that's a massive blessing.

These days I wonder about staying in this field. I like my boss quite a lot (amazing guy). I like my colleagues quite a lot. I like my work... kinda... I'd rather be doing my own thing, but it's still kind of fun. I like my situation. I don't get paid anywhere near what I would in the SV or the like, but it's still multiples of working as an assistant language teacher. I'm still not sure, though. Who knows what the future will bring.

1) Programming as a lone skill is essentially meaningless, in the same way being a master at using hammers is meaningless. The skill has to be applied to some domain in order to became useful for people. A hammer skill + steelworking skill = forging stuff. A hammer skill + carpentry skills = making furniture. Similarly, programming + medical knowledge = improving people's health by software. Programming + orbital mechanics knowledge = making space ships go where they need to. Etc.

(And by knowledge/skills I really mean knowledge + experience + being recognized in the community of practitioners.)

I remember when I first started to learn to program, I felt I can do anything with that skill. Only lately I come to realize that I can't do shit with that skill alone, and maybe I should've picked a different major.

2) Building things for sale != building things that're useful. There is a correlation between marketability and usefulness, but it's generally weak. At high level, there's plenty of ways to boost sales other than delivering actual value in exchange for money. Products that win tend not to be the best at their stated purpose; they're the ones best marketed. On low level, I see constant pressure towards reducing functionality, reducing interoperability, dumbing down the UI, which all makes software less useful, but better at making first impression and/or hooking people up.

I'm not likely to leave software, but right now, I'm focusing on acquiring knowledge, experience and contacts in other areas, so that I could do something with software that I also find worthwhile, instead of just settling on fighting to avoid jobs that are about maintaining the adtech machinery.

For me, technology is attractive because I see its potential too improve lives, to remove tedium, to entertain, to teach, and to empower. But that isn't what the tech industry is about. I hesitate to say that it was different when I was growing up only because I'm aware of the rose-colored glasses through which we are prone to viewing our childhood.

The tech industry isn't about empowering people, it's about addicting people, selling them crap they don't need, un-informing them, constraining them, and turning them into cattle for advertisers. And it isn't just the industry. Even many open source developers have a culture of viewing people as mere animals to be herded.

You can't connect what you're building with real tangible benefit on the world. It is meaningless.

If you are very visual-spatial, passively taking in scenery while driving feeds the same need as website design, basically.

Try watching some videos of reversing semis. Then try reversing with a trailer.

My dad’s cousin was a truck driver. I once saw him reverse a car with a trailer at full speed for 200 meters. Dead straight. Trailer never even twitch.

It was the most impressive feat of hand-eye coordination I’ve seen my whole life.

I'm currently mostly at home with kids, but the general feeling is that I just would not want to work indoors any more. For my preferred hand labour the wages are tiny around here (IMHO not so when you're OK working with brush cutters, although some might disagree with that). But the mental and physical balance I get from being in the forest every day, rain or shine, tends to outweigh that. So as a parent it's surely a complicated decision as to what to do after we send our youngest off to kindergarten.

In particular, planting trees or cleaning treelings from weeds using a scythe could be a damn perfect job for every physically fit loner-introvert.

Here's a movie about tree planting in Canada (where this is a huge industry, isn't it?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxR02N-Sauk&t=870s

And here's an inspiring guy, forest keeper, scythe mowing enthusiast and witty documentary film maker Simon from the UK. Yep, I want to be just like him when I grow up. If you're interested in traditional tools and manual labour in the wilderness, be sure to check out his entire Youtube channel. Great movies about scythe mower vs tractor competition etc. :)

https://youtu.be/yvRJAtPWBCY?t=307

Ah, wonderful things, considering the current shitty-dirty-snowy March-like weather in Estonia.

Obesity epidemic, bad posture and other current issues are a reminder that our current lifestyle is way out of control. Technology evolved much faster than our bodies during the last 200-300 years. It's all fun and games when we're young but when we'll hit 40-50 we'll feel it.

If you don't actively try to exercise you can go literal months during which your physical activity will be: get out of bed, open a few doors, sit in a car, open a few doors, sit all day, open a few doors, sit in car, open a few doors, lay in bed.

That's killing us mentally and physically.

So what's stopping you from doing this on the weekend?

Set up a home workshop, or find somebody or someplace (a maker's shop or a hacker space?) who has such tools available.

If you don't own a home, let me tell ya that if you want a lot of physical labor, maintenance on a home is where it is at, every weekend if you want it.

I do this as a part of one of my hobbies (robotics).

It's really not that fun: It's dirty, smelly, hot, and sometimes can be dangerous. You will get cut. You will get gouged. You will bleed. You will be burned. Not always, but it will happen occasionally. Ideally, that's all the worst that will happen.

I've never worked with a metal lathe; I haven't had the need to yet. But I do have access to one. That is the one of a metal shop's tools which you need to be very respectful and mindful about being around and working with. Depending on the size of the machine (the one I have access to isn't very large), it can do everything from maim you severely, to killing you - and it won't care. It'll barely even slow down.

Not trying to scare you about metal working, but realize it isn't roses, either. It can be very satisfying to make something out of metal and know you did that. But you need to understand what the price can be - even if you are careful and wearing all the necessary safety equipment.

Oh - and never wear gloves or rings (or necklaces, ties, long hair, etc) around things like mills or lathes - really bad to do should things go wrong.

But do wear heavy boots, denim jeans (and all natural fiber clothing period), and gloves (plus other PPE like goggles, face shield, etc) when grinding, cutting, or welding - sparks and molten slag/metal are not fun when they hit bare skin (or burn thru your sneakers - ask me how I know).

I could go back to uni, take on a ton of debt, and after retraining find few want a late fifties junior. Chances are I'd never pay off the student debts before retirement either, unless I get really lucky. A direct into the job route will probably meet just as much resistance to a mid fifties starter. Foreign Legion, Police and Air Force all think I'm too old now.

That smell is from all those burnt bridges.

Yet 40s and 50s are when many decide they've had enough and want something more fulfilling, find limited choice, and end up with a self employed micro business. I suspect this is not what they wished for in many cases, but just what's left.

Along the lines of what others have said in this thread, I hate. Hate. Hate. Sitting at a desk for my job and staring into a little box. It just seems hysterical that we will likely spend most of our working lives staring at little boxes with lots of text and images on them. This isn’t the real world. It’s all just conjured up on a screen for profit and entertainment. Computers have taken over our lives and seem to be replacing even social interaction for some people. I’m sick of it. And as soon as you turn <device> off, it doesn’t F*ing matter anymore.

I bet nearly every intellectual profession now is dominated by computer-based work. And it sucks because the old jobs - bakers, builders, mechanics, etc. - don’t pay nearly as much as the jobs that any 22 year old making shitty web apps with React can get paid. Am I flippant? Yes. Do I know where to go from here? Nope.

For physical stuff, I also play around with hobby-level robotics - which can be anything from small desktop junk and soldering, to building much larger contraptions at my friend's home metalworking shop (he has the tools and space I don't).

There doesn't have to be a reason or "need" to turn it off at the end of the day, unless you really don't enjoy it - but I would question why you are doing a job you don't enjoy (yes, I know this is something many people struggle with; most jobs aren't enjoyable - but creative jobs should be enjoyable, at least that's a hope - then again, I've heard of people being software engineers, good at their work, who absolutely hated it, but did it only for the money).

Are you being sarcastic? The "very vocal minority" has seemingly limitless power to ruin people's lives over words they don't like. Businesses are forced to close, professors are forced to resign. We're passed the point of being able to say "it's just the internet," and it's time we all acknowledged that.

But the same culture of freedom of speech that "we've always had?" Decidedly not. And without that culture, the First Amendment will wither and become eviscerated over time.

https://dwheeler.com/essays/high-assurance-floss.html

The INFOSEC field was invented by people doing such things, they solved many root issues back in 1970's-1990's, were ignored, mainstream reinvents stuff at a trickle, and niche in CompSci and government doing high-assurance are gettimg more results than ever. I stay promoting it since our critical systems and infrastructure being bulletproof is unserved need. I also design ways to approximate it at lower cost and talent required.

And it's really draining. I just do it since it's both an interesting subject that's also a social need. Seemed like right thing to do.

The company I worked for previously hired a 64 year old. He had always dreamed of being an airline pilot and went ahead and made it happen for a year.

I would imagine trucking is similar in that regard. Don’t make the jump if you don’t truly want to live on the road.

The other 1% were truly unlucky from mergers, bankruptcies, or furloughs. I imagine that happens in nearly any industry given enough time.

"Zionists: transforming anti-semitism from something horrible into something honorable since 1948."

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salaita_controversy

Can't say I've looked into it extensively though.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/professo...