Comment by mikewarot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikewarot | Hacker News Reader

I decided to study electrical engineering instead of computer science because I was dead certain there was no money to every be made writing software.... in the 1980s!

I chose the wrong school because they accepted me, and my high school counselor thought I had zero chance. I couldn't afford it, and dropped out. I would have gone much farther studying computer science at Purdue Calumet, and could have had it all paid for.

Once I had the Windows NT 3.51 server drive mapped as D:, and got confused thinking it was a local drive. Had to drive 25 miles and rebuild things in the middle of the night, sweating bullets. We were a small ISP with 200 customers, I was the tech staff.

My next to last big mistake was staying at a system administrator job far longer than I should have.... they really didn't need someone full time, and it zapped my drive to get things done.

Then I took a job making gears... the pay and commute sucked, but I liked doing it. 5 years away from technology, then Covid hit, I got sick... and I've been tired ever since.

You clearly have important and valuable software and engineering skills that our industry's recruiting ability has a hard time activating; I hope that you get healthy soon and, if you chose to, are able to find a job that uses, and rewards these skills appropriately.

Making gears, like literally assembly line work? Or do you mean modeling/designing them in solidworks or similar?

Job shop work... it takes 2-4 hours to set up a machine to make a type of gear, and anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 days per gear depending on how big they are. I made almost all the drive bandwheel and pinion bevel gears for Marvel 18" Bandsaws for 4 years, along with a variety of other bevels, along with some spur and helical gears.

It turns out that gears have a rolling contact surface, never sliding (unless you did it wrong), which is why they can last decades. I learned a ton of interesting things about small scale manufacturing. I want to make them on the small scale (4" or less) as a hobby, once I get employed again.

long haul covid-19?

Yes, as far as I can tell. I had some co-workers who had Covid really bad last March. My case wasn't that bad, but I've been short of breath, and haven't really been able to focus on things ever since. Unfortunately, testing really wasn't a thing back then, and by the time I did get tested as part of my workup, it was negative for an active infection. If I talk for an extended period, walk a block or two, or just go up/down the stairs, I'm winded and have to rest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com