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I feel like my life and career as a software guy is pretty cushy. I work probably 35 hours a week on average, remote, on a schedule I prefer. I have a ton of time left over for socializing, hobbies, TV, games, etc. But, this was a deliberate progression for me.

And it could even get easier. I could do 20 hours a week of consulting work and still get by. I don't think I'd want to do that, but I could.

I don't know where you live or what area you work in, but I think the thing you want actually is achievable, maybe with a pay cut, or maybe not even. The fact that you're having to learn to use Rust because it's all the sudden getting used on projects says to me that you're working at some place where people put way too much of themselves into work.

Yeah, there are so many entirely separate "software industries" where life is so completely different, it's crazy.

If you hate your job, don't just accept "this is how the industry is". Look around a bit and you might find a corner of it that's more to your liking.

Of course, some of the nicer parts are "by invitation only". Once you've proven yourself to the right people, you might get invited to work on the saner and more fun projects.

How long have you been doing this? Did you keep working during big downturns & have your skills changed over time? I see way to many people thinking the job market of the last 5 years is normal.

6-7 years. Totally acknowledge that the gravy train could come to an end and make life harder. Hopefully that doesn't happen or most of the folks on here will be worse off!

> And it could even get easier. I could do 20 hours a week of consulting work and still get by. I don't think I'd want to do that, but I could.

I'm assuming this is because you have built up a good contact list? Because as I understand, a lot of time spent in consulting is finding clients.

Yeah, I really just have a couple of former clients that would give me as much work as I asked for. Not the most rewarding work, which is why I don't do it anymore.

I'm having the exact same experience. It took me about 10 years to figure it out.

I'm still kind of a workaholic, but I could do way less and it'd be fine. It's also super nice to have a safety net of more and more remote jobs now. Even if the whole economy melts down, people somewhere in the world will still need software built and maintained remotely.

Remote work is so much closer to feeling like it's not a job than office work, which is a huge deal for me.

And you can move to a lower cost of living area, avoid state income taxes, and still have a competitive salary to your city-dwelling peers.

I honestly don't know why everyone isn't remote.

Because most companies don’t want remote...

and even fewer clients

Obviously making people travel half way around the country to sit in different offices (in the same building) somehow makes sense to management ...

Maybe that's still true, but it's a big market. Any time I look at remote job listings, I see lots of good companies to choose from. Whenever a friend tries to recruit me, I ask them if they hire remote and they mostly do.

Where do you look for remote positions?

Blue collar work isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Blue collar workers often have to pull forced overtime on weekends or weeks on end if the job needs it. I worked in a factory for the longest year of my life, and we had a rule in place that you could not be forced or voluntarily work more than 15 days in a row without a day off. And people regularly hit that limit of 15 days working 12 hours a day during busy season, sure they were getting paid overtime but it wears on you. And then if you ever need to switch jobs, you might end up on the bottom of the seniority totem pole and stuck on 2nd or 3rd shift on a non-traditional work week. We only shut down on 2 days of the year and that was Christmas day and Thanksgiving day for 24 hours.

Here in Germany, thanks to the agreements with the works council, there is no forced overtime without proper agreement and the respective compensation.

Naturally not every company has such agreements in place, but even then, you are free to search for help on work law.

Same applies to several other countries.

Of course, the extent that people seek for help, depends on how much they can afford for support, or the consequences at the current employer if they eventually win. But all in all, most European law tends to be on employees side.

Counterpoint: he is destroying his body. He's pretty commonly lifting heavy things and exposing himself to hazardous chemicals. Depending on what kind of welding he's doing, he's breathing smoke from all kinds of different paints and oils. There are fume extractors/ventilation, but they don't remove everything.

My dad and grandpa are both plumbers. My grandpa destroyed both his shoulders. He's had one replaced, and needs to have the other one done. My dad is well on his way to destroying his shoulders too.

I'm kind of tired of the trades "break your body" argument.

I think just as many bodies routinely get destroyed in office environments—especially in tech. You know the trope. Sitting all the time under artificial light breathing nasty "inside" air staring at screens in open office environments with a lot of mental stress. Etc.

In each case, blue collar or white, proper care can be taken to avoid these injuries. Especially in blue collar trades.

I think your last point holds true, but it's really not an equivalent amount of stress you're putting on your body in an office. You can always go outside more after work and remain physically active to counteract the damage you're doing by sitting in an office all day, but if you're in a physically intensive trade, you can't avoid the damage you're doing by remaining less active after work.

Also you're going to have less energy to do the physical activity you want to do.

I paved roads for a summer at 18 and even though I was a very young energetic kid, I was barely getting anything out of my evening workouts or soccer games with friends after 10 hours outside shoveling asphalt.

Sure I might get some RSI, but my welder friend has to contend with someone on site accidentally creating phosgene gas. I don't feel like the two levels of potential self harm are in the same ball park.

Your welder friend could also end up with RSI- depending on how much grinding he does in a day. That was the main reason I quit being a mechanic, it's actually easier to prevent RSI in an office environment by careful selection of equipment, whereas running a grinder for an hour with your wrists at a funny angle since it's the only way to get the tool into the work is sometimes just required.

My dad passed away a couple of years ago of some weird cancer after a career working in nuclear power (we got a class action settlement from the DOE).

There are definitely some careers that are more dangerous than others.

Never mind that work conditions have improved since the days of GP’s grandpa.

Plumbers pick their own work conditions as they are often self employed. So uh kinda? Mostly not. Heavy things are still heavy and still need to be lifted. You're probably not going to bring in a jack.

My best friend was a HVAC repairman and is a programmer now. He's happier as a programmer. Some people are happier as an HVAC repairman, and more power to them. However it's not the norm for people who have done both.

Plumbing isn't the only kind of blue collar work, but I expect even there the work safety has improved considerably. Many things that used to be heavy are now light (copper and lead vs PVC and other plastics), many things that used to be toxic are no longer required or have safer alternatives (e.g., solders), and in general the cultural expectation for a plumber to risk life or limb for a job is far lower.

And if you're working in a factory, conditions have improved far more drastically. Worker safety is serious business given OSHA and legal liability associated with workplace injury.

Happy to hear about your best friend; I doubt it extrapolates, but it doesn't matter much to me--I don't have a dog in the fight.

Office dangers: carpal tunnel, rounded shoulders, and undesirable weight gain to name a few.

Sure but you don't get carpal tunnel from screwing up once, you get it by screwing up over and over for a decade. Trade injuries are often one shots. Being said if you don't have the discipline to avoid posture injuries you might not have what it takes to survive a trade.

Sounds like you should spend some time in a trade. It's still worth doing don't get me wrong but there are more risks, they are harder to avoid, and with worse consequences.

Then again, safety is probably much better several decades later.

I know for painters, it's a completely new world with paints that don't dissolve your brain anymore.

Not to mention steel coming in that's radioactive from India and China.What a way to get rid of radioactive waste.

I'm not sure I've heard this before. Do you have any reputable sources on this?

I follow a You tuber his handle is Ave, He went into detail about it , I don't have the video title off hand. Being a former welder it really caught my attention. He was testing scrap he brought into his shop with a geiger counter. Commentor's below mentioned they had to test all steel coming in because it could set off sensitive monitors and halt the production line.

To counter your point: there's just not enough data on modern day software industry jobs to really understand the physical and neurological harm it can bring to your body. I can see entire arms being replaced just from the phone syndrome alone.

One interesting comparison that is likely to become highly relevant over the next couple of decades is long term viability. In software you're getting pretty old by your late 30s. By your 40s you're edging towards obsolescence. Beyond that? Of course there are exceptions but I think it's safe to say that they're the exception.

The is only something that's not such a big deal yet because the rapid growth of software is very young, and consequently so are most software developers. By contrast the average age of a welder in the US today is 55. [1] It'll be quite interesting to see how this plays out. You have people increasingly living well into their 80s, yet they start to lose their place in the job market after after a couple of decades? Maybe the bias against older workers will simply fade as the industry matures alongside its workers, but if it doesn't then there's going to be quite a spectacle over the next couple of decades.

[1] - https://www.lincolntech.edu/news/industry-news/need-skilled-...

There is bias against tech workers who haven’t learned anything in the last 10+ years. I’m less certain that there’s bias against workers over a particular age per-se.

I wonder about that - is it that tech sheds older workers, or that tech just seems to skew young because it's a young "industry"? There weren't a lot of older programmers in the 90's because there weren't that many young programmers in the 70's. The "older programmers" today are the ones (like me) who were young programmers in the 90's, and today, at 45, I've never felt any real age pressure. I think it's just a bit harder for me to find jobs now than it was when I was in my 20's, but I don't think that's because I have a few gray hairs and more wrinkles than I used to, but because I'm asking for 3 times as much money.

Or maybe I'm just being unrealistically optimistic and life is about to get really difficult for me.

I think you hit on the key point. Like you mentioned, you're expecting 3 times as much as you were initially. On top of a better understanding of your own value, you're also going to have a better understanding of the employer:employee relationship. In other words you're not going to bend over backwards solely in in hopes of proving yourself, achieving some sort of recognition, or other such things. I don't think companies are choosing not to hire older developers because of any form of discrimination or even a belief that older developers have less skills. Instead, it's just a value measurement no different than e.g. outsourcing. It's the same reason that I think most large tech companies are pushing hard for 'get [anybody with a heartbeat] into computer science'. Increase the labor supply, lower labor costs, increase profit margins.

This would also explain why other industries don't suffer from a similar problem. In software development companies collect software developers by the tens of thousands. This results in extremely high labor costs and so reductions on this front can see tremendous savings. As an example Google has about 100,000 employees. That means reducing their average salary by just $10 per year is worth a million dollars of 'free' revenue (yeah, ignoring taxes etc). Really amazing to think about those numbers! By contrast even very large companies in other fields will have relatively small numbers of engineers. For instance petroleum engineering is critical in the fossil fuel industry which is an extremely large industry, yet there are only a total of 33,700 petroleum engineers in the entire country.

[1] - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/petrole...

I wonder how much of this is actually about how we take care (or don't take care) of our body and just expect it to take care of itself.

For example, I work in an office job. Over 50% of us either have serious injuries (like joint replacements) or are pending surgery.

> As someone who did the software route, there are days I deeply wish I had done this sort of thing instead.

Don't. As an office worker, you have to worry about carpal tunnel syndrome, your back going and cardiovascular disease from sitting.

Manual labor means repetitive strain injuries and working in an environment that's conducive to hurting one's self.

Those who do manual labor and aren't able to stack capital, become their own boss and hire others will have to worry about all of those things, and the effects of aging on their ability to do their job. Bodies deteriorate with time, and a single injury might prevent them from ever being able to work again when they hit their 40s, 50s or 60s.

> I daydream about taking a pay cut just to be able to go live in like... Cheyenne, WY or something and not be a part of the tech rush

Find an agency or consultancy to work for. There are plenty of them using decades' old tech, maintaining their clients' projects, and "new and shiny" is actively avoided in favor of what's worked for years.

I’m right there with you, there’s this weird insecurity that follows you around throughout your career, and it’s exhausting trying to satisfy it.

That said, the trades just don’t pay as much as software does. I’ve thought once or twice about making a career change to that world, but it’s not nearly the kind of money we like to think it is. Sure, there’s a skill shortage, but a cursory look on indeed paints a less glamorous picture

Not in the tech epicenters they don't, but they absolutely do in most of the country.

I know an electrician that made 75k a year plus as much overtime as he possibly could want (also to show this isn't just a rare anecdote, the top 25% electricians make a median salary of 71k). If you are a solid tradesman or tradeswoman that knows how to a. show up on time, b. communicate well, c. do the job, congrats, you are already in high demand. That's at least equal if not more than most software devs get paid around where I am. I bet if we counted off hours worked and oncall time, and added hours to hours, the electrician would make more. That's 75k working a proper 8 hours a day and not a minute more.

>top 25% electricians... median salary of $71k.

Hold on. I’m not even sure what percentile this is referring to. It sounds like it has to be at least an 80th percentile salary among all electricians. If that’s the case, then 80% aren’t making $71k, so this sounds a lot worse than you make it out to be.

That would be the 87.5th percentile figure.

What an absurd way to say it too. So bad, in fact, it may be intentionally dishonest.

I realized I have worded it badly, I was pulling the figure from here: "The best-paid 25 percent made $71,430". I don't know why I added median there.

https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/electrician/salar...

If you note here, there also seems to be cost of living adjustments just like you would find in tech centers as well, so California and New York averages seem higher. A lot of Electrical work is also unionized, so I don't know if that is a factor in any of this, but it seems like some tech workers seem to think unionization is better so there's that. The IBEW (http://www.ibew.org) for example seems to claim their workers on average make 37.69/hr which is right at 75k. The statistic is a bit outdated, but if anything it remained flat, if not slightly increased.

That sounds like 75th percentile is $71k. The IBEW number is more convincing (I also can’t imagine it’s gone down since 2016).

I still have to wonder how much of that is location dependent. $71k in most parts of the Midwest is quite comfortable. In the most expensive urban areas, it’s “livid with 5 roommates and never being able to save much” levels. It would be good if some of these stats were broken down by region, at least, if not MSA.

It's also more than most electricians get paid around where you are. Like 90% of them.

Doesn't seem to be the case. Average starting electrical work salary is right around on par for average starting web developer salary in my area (45k-50k for both)

https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/electrician/salar...

Also, at least according to this union, you can make 10 more dollars an hour being in the union http://www.ibew.org

Unfortunately a large number of states are very anti-union

also in the event of an apocalyptic scenario I wager the tradespeople would fare better than the devs

I think that comparing the trades to software is a bit too coarse; there's a huge range of skill/experience/compensation variation in each.

Last week, I hired a gasfitter to do something that was straightforward, but needs to leave a paper trail. The job he did roughly equates to setting up a static website or similar - basically "turning the crank" for half a day; no fancy skills or tools. His billable rate is about twice what I made at my last local tech job; I was doing fairly fancy DSP firmware, he's got more work available than time to do it. And his rate is substantially lower than another quote I got to do the same job.

I think you're right that this is largely a "grass is greener" situation, but it's also important to look at the externalities of the options. It seems possible to have a successful trades career that rarely involves going over 40 hours/week, but it's hard to do the same in skilled software development. There's also the physical cost; working at a computer all day is super unhealthy.

Just FWIW your experience doesn’t sound anything like the software jobs I’ve had. In fact all my programming jibs have been pretty close to your ideal. I’m currently in an enterprise job, but have done startups and consulting agencies as well. Only the startup had any long hours.

I’d encourage you to get a new job. These days programmers are in extremely high demand, and you sound like you’ve gotten stuck working at a place with a non-ideal culture.

If your company requires interview to transfer _internally_, you should consider leaving. Microsoft was like that (maybe still is, I don't know), and it was easier to get a job elsewhere than to go to a desirable team.

Microsoft definitely still did as of late 2017, when I was still there. You're absolutely right, it was easier to just get a job elsewhere and that was what I did! Hah. I'm trying to avoid that here, because I like the company, just hoping to work on a different product.

Is a transfer interview not common elsewhere? Anyone know if Amazon or Google requires something like that?

Google and FB aren't like that. The benefit of the uniformly high hiring bar I guess. Don't know about Amazon.

Up to the team. I've "interviewed" for 4 internal transfers there, and I've had:

- Three 1hr interviews, coding/system design/behavioral

- Portfolio review

- Talk to senior engineers on the team for a couple hours

- None (I had people on the team vouch for me)

EDIT: This is about Amazon, in retail and AWS.

Yandex does, and they're known for very long multi-stage interviews too. Instead of transferring, I left and doubled my salary.

Alternatively, I know blue collar folks that are working crazy overtime, odd hours, sometimes 60-70 hours weeks to make close to software engineer salaries. I also know talented software engineers that work 40 hours a week and make x3-x4 what anything blue collar could pull in.

It's hard to generalize an entire industry.

99% of the software industry isn't like that either, of course. You're just paying the cost of working in the glamorous bit that funds landlords the best.

You're probably right. Any recommendations on where I might look that's not as glamorous? Not being facetious (in case it sounds that way), just curious to have some recommendations.

I'm not going to call you a negative nancy, but I will say that you got a bad deal out of things, IMHO.

I work in the UK, I probably do a 35-40 hour week depending on the week. I work from home two days of that week. I don't spend my weekends learning new stuff unless I have an itch I want to scratch. I don't really have a boss.

I got into server-side programming from the get-go, it moves a lot more slowly in terms of tech than anything web/frontend-ish. I've picked up a lot of crypto/security knowledge along the way. I've managed to leverage that into a contract consultant-developer type of deal. I get paid well*

My only real downsides are that my commute is long because I work in London 3 days per week, but that's really down to me as I refuse to live there. I have no job security at all as a contractor, but to be honest I consider job security in permanent employment to be an illusion much of the time.

(*off the scale according to glassdoor, not sure how true that is, I know that contractors have their own scale. Compared to a silicon-valley salary it's still not that impressive, but then I don't have to put up with what you describe!)

Part of the reason you feel compelled to do all of that as a professional programmer is because you're facing intense competition from desperate people everywhere in the world. Skilled "tradesmen" aren't. There's a reason we do and they don't, but we dare not speak it's name.

Are you referring to the fact that software work is more easily outsourced than trade work? If so, that hardly seems taboo.

There are software jobs all over the country if you don't mind working for ordinary salaries (instead of whatever nutso numbers NCG's are making at FAANG these days). Cheyenne itself isn't even that far from a variety of software.

Gotta pick the right role. There are lots of software jobs where you can just coast. I would know, I'm in a startup, in San Francisco.

You should quit a job that has you work crazy overtime if that's something you don't like. I don't _ever_ work more than 40 hours, religiously. I may not be the highest paid ever but I'm perfectly okay. Saving money, enjoying my time in the hammock in a modest house with a modest car.

>doesn't work crazy hours without getting paid overtime

That's not a problem with software, that's a problem with the crazy idea of "unpaid overtime". I'm from Europe, and honestly the first time I heard about it I thought that it must just mean it's legal in US not to pay extra for overtime.

High skill blue collar work is massively underrated. It also often allows you to live in places that are not ruinously expensive.

All of this really depends on the work environment.

> I so truly just want to clock in, clock out, work about 40hrs/week and have time for my family.

Some people I worked with at HP did just that. Maybe try large, corporate environments?

As the gp said though, you can enter those trades with a couple of years of apprenticeship, and I think you could do all the fun programming you desire on the side.

Is that something you could actually do?

I feel the exact same way. I'm on a 5 year exit strategy to become a luthier.

My dad was a welder. I can speak confidently on the subject. I am a software engineer with a long academic career (PhD). I have lived in both worlds. I even weld as a hobby and used to work in his shop off and on.

For the most part, welding as a career sucks big time. It is a dirty, nasty, disgusting business and working as a welder can't possibly pay you enough to really ever get ahead unless you open your own business of some kind and have employees or something like that. It fucking blows compared to an office job writing software.

Even if you can tolerate the horrible working conditions--my dad had to crawl down pipes inside power plants barely big enough to fit into and weld internal seams. He also had to climb into ridiculously high places dragging heavy gear and spend hours up there welding in 100 degree heat of course wearing long-sleeves and heavy clothing. It was a living hell. He did this usually for about $25/hr (1980s, early 1990s).

It gets worse. Oh it get so much fucking worse: The people he had to work with were the most miserable lot on the planet. Drunks, druggies, wife beaters, guys with 20 DUI arrests, biker trash. These were his co-workers and constant companions. If you're the average of the 10 people who spend the most time around, he was doomed! Guys would go out to lunch and drink then come back and operate heavy machinery. OSHA? GTFO! They laughed at safety. No time for that on clock! People got hurt, went on Worker's Comp. I have dozens of stories from back then and I doubt it is any better today. Do you like unions? Because welders have to be in unions more often than not. Unions are just another power structure to lord over people with--the drunks run the unions. It's ugly business. They give the best jobs (foreman) to their buddies. Everyone else is SOL. Only 10 slots at a job in town? Guess you're working out of town this year. And so on.

Find any other job than welding for a living.