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I went the other way into programming from the trades.

Sometimes, especially when I read about people leaving this industry to go work in the trades it makes me nostalgic and miss working with my hands and building real things.

But I also have enough bad memories of shitty work conditions and waking up sore day after day to give me a gut check to stay put for a little longer.

> I don't think programming is the probkem. Anything you do 40 hours a week for other people will get to you just the same. Programming is a pretty sweet gig, all things considered.

Turning my hobbies in jobs killed off a lot of fun I used to have. I think it's pretty universal and why it should probably be more common to switch industries a couple times at least through your career to keep things fun and not stay in a burned out mentality forever.

I also went from residential/commercial framing and remodeling into systems engineering/sysadmin. There are moments that really stand out on both sides, as you said. I distinctly remember packing the tools up one day and thinking about how the second floor of that house wasn't there that morning. It was a good feeling that has stuck with me for 15 years. But I also remember the days our crew was trying to eke out a few hours of work with a hurricane coming in because we needed the money. We had the walls and roof mostly up on a beach house so we could do some interior work without being directly in the rain. However, the end of one of our extension cords, the one running the skil saw, was sitting in a puddle of water that completely encircled the cutting bench. I remember being told to unplug it to pack up and having to move it out of the puddle with the handle of my hammer since it bit me a couple times.

I think what it boils down to is that, generally, software engineers/coders/sysadmins like to build things. When we don't get to build the things we want, the way we want to, it leads to a desire to get into woodworking. It's building things; its success is purely merit-based; and it's building the things that you want to build. I wouldn't recommend anyone go into construction (especially not commercial construction a la Office Space) from coding. It's joy is fleeting and infrequent and it ruins your body.

Framing seems a bit like a race to the bottom, because it's invisible to most people. Lots of software gigs are the same. Furniture is the opposite, and maybe some software is too

Yeah I did the same. I went from being an avionics/aviation electrician to college and then to being a software engineer. I hated being in the elements all the time so I wanted to have an officer job. Overall it's been good for me but I do miss working with my hands more.

> Turning my hobbies in jobs killed off a lot of fun I used to have.

Yep. I haven't really worked on any of my hobby projects like I had before.

> Turning my hobbies in jobs killed off a lot of fun I used to have.

Thank you. I have nothing else to add. I just needed to read that today.

> I think it's pretty universal and why it should probably be more common to switch industries a couple times at least through your career to keep things fun and not stay in a burned out mentality forever.

Isn't that years of education and work to start at the bottom again? If one has a family to support doesn't seem terribly feasible.

I've done over 10 years in the trades, and now 10 years in dev and am coming to the close of this chapter. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do, but I've been looking at a few projects that would be an intersection of the two.

I'd like to have another couple careers before I retire. The best part of a career is learning, getting it, then doing something as a journeyman and looking at your work and thinking, 'I got it'.

Welcome to this beautiful hobby! I'm sure you'll love it for a long time to come (as you said, it helps to not _have_ to do it for 40hrs a week).

I want to add to your description and say that the design part of the work can also be hugely satisfying! I found that there is something similar to software engineering: you can make it as simple [1] or complicated as you want, but there is something magical about finding the simplest solution that gets the job done.

Consider posting some photos on the woodworking subreddit if you make something cool!

[1]: a minimalist piece that I'm personally proud of: https://www.juricho.me/zurich-table/

Those are some fancy joints

Thanks :) I take little credit, because nowadays a lot of this is very achievable to learn with youtube and a bit of patience.

It's really incredible how much tacit knowledge transfer is made possible because of youtube. Definitely one of the purely positive aspects of the platform and the internet in general.

"but there is something magical about finding the simplest solution that gets the job done"

if only software were written that way...

I love the table! Nice minimal design on it.

Hit the nail on the head. Work is work and it drains passion out for most people. Obviously not all cases, but at least I feel of you are looking for purpose and joy from work you may be looking in the wrong spot.

Agreed. Loving something and it turning into a real job with all the added fluff/protocols/whatever (things like talking to customers, having to do marketing, having to meet deadlines and such) will suck up everything you think you love about it and make it feel bad once it's in the real world with actual constraints and dependencies. It's no longer only you and it, it's no longer exploring and playing in the sandbox.

From what I've heard from other sources, it's kinda like what people call being a grown up.

As a current CS student on his last year, I've heard this a lot and it's taken some time to come to terms with. I've always seen people saying they can get work down by their work, which was really scary to me at first. How could I ever become tired of the think I've loved most since I was 8?

Yet, this happens to everyone, including me to a small extent during my last internship. I think everyone can grow tired of anything given enough of it, and I think coming to terms with that is easier for some than others.

I've mentally prepared myself to branch out into different pastimes, and for some reason, it seems we all land on wood working.

The problem with programming for a job is that you don't get to do it on your own terms. If you really focus on it and have a bit of luck, you can align your job with the stuff you wanted to do anyway, but even then every 40 hours is probably 30 hours of not particularly interesting work and 10 hours of the stuff you loved when you first fell in love with programming.

"I built a website that pays the bills, and now I have a lot of time on my hands."

Okay.... I assume you're not going to talk about this because then you'll have so much competition you won't be able to pay the bills anymore, but do you have any generalized background information about this?

You can find it in my post history. I help people settle in my country, in plain English. It's just not the main point of this conversation.

How do you monetize the site? It looks really useful, but I don't see any ads or payment options.

Some of the guides have affiliate links.

> "This guide contains affiliate links. When you click those links and buy something, I make a little money. The income allows me to work on All About Berlin full time. All my recommendations are genuine. I want to keep this website useful and neutral."

https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/moving-to-berlin

Usually this means dropshipping, but it could be something different.

Nope. https://allaboutberlin.com

Isn't dropshipping extremely overcrowded since The 4 Hour Work Week popularised it?

I heard dropshipping still "works" if you know both the marketing and the dev work for it, but I'd say it is getting more rare.

Good to hear I was wrong :)

What you really need is some level of exclusivity, if you can drop ship someones stuff into a different market or bring a new customer base to it. If 50 other people are doing the same thing it probably won’t work.

A decent portion of our business used to be dropshipping onto Amazon against others that were doing the exact same thing with the same terms. Margins obviously ended up tiny and the whole thing was at the whims of Amazon. Glad we don’t do that anymore.

Count me as one switching my "hobby" from programming to woodworking (even with the astronomical lumber prices these days). I started with some outdoor tables, and now I'm building a woodworking shop in my garage... and LOVING it. It so much more satisfying than figuring out another distributed TX compensation mechanism!

But, I also don't want to start a business doing woodworking. The last thing I want are clients yammering for "seven red lines"; this is something I'm doing as a hobby.

I may offer-up a few furniture items on a local for-sale app or a craft show app... but I will try and resist the urge to create a better local craft show app, or a wood inventory/cut-list app, or a simple CAD app, etc.

I'm a software developer by trade. I have a lot of woodworking experience by choice. I am a strong believer in that every developer should learn how to work with wood, or metal or other physical materials that require you to slow down and think about the next step.

But then I also believe that technical interviews should consist of putting software developers in a woodshop (experienced at woodworking or not) with a bunch of power tools and telling them to build anything they like. Those that still have all their fingers attached we automatically hire. Everybody else we write a glowing reference so they get a job with our competitors.

P.S. This is a joke.

You may enjoy Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford. It made sense of the permanent vague anxiety I've always had while working in a digital medium.

I work with wood as a hobby. It's interesting how creating basic objects or furniture is actually really easy.

But making those things really well and flawless is so very, very difficult.

For example, I can whip together a new drawer, no problem. But making that drawer fit perfectly on all sides and open and close perfectly smoothly. Now that takes a whole other level of skill.

And don't even get me started on paint and varnish.

> A clumsy movement can dent a piece of wood you spent an hour sanding

Dents can be somewhat fixed by getting them wet and ironing them.

> I built a website that pays the bills, and now I have a lot of time on my hands.

It's also pretty impossible to build a website that pays the bills indefinitely without maintainence or upgrades. If your website becomes popular enough to pay your bills you WILL eventually have competitors, as well as new mediums of technology, and you'll have to constantly keep up to date.

> Add me to the woodworking ex-developers (...) I have a lot of time on my hands.

Be careful with that table saw...

SawStop for the win!

After the way they went after Bosch, I have no interest in ever buying a SawStop. Good for them for making safe technology, but shame on them for going after someone else who made better technology. The world needs safer options for tools like these, and being litigious bastards helps no-one.

I've heard that SawStop's patents are expiring soon, so it seems we'll have some competition in the next 5 years. In the meantime, since there are no other saws which protect your fingers from being sliced off, it's the best insurance policy for a software developer who needs them the most.

For those transitioning from programming to woodworking, if you don’t understand how to use your table saw, you’re not supposed to design and build your own table saw because you think you can build a better one.

This made me chuckle and then suddenly realizing that you caught me: often enough, this is how i(t) work(s) . E.g. "i don't understand (crypto) algorithm $XYZ, fuk it, i'll write my own crypto!"

*in not-so-serious side projects

Yes, heed the scary warning of the complete stranger on the internet. You might want to quit the hobby altogether. I heard that there was risk involved. Eeks!

That would increase the time:hands ratio.

One of the authors of "The Pragmatic Programmer" was also a woodworker.

> It's pretty scary to work without an undo button.

sawing wood these days too I cannot keep laughing alone in my beard thinking how software people just don't understand how the world used to be and how much had to be designed to work before trying .. there's no way back, or to be precise, every wrong turns costs dearly.