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Comment by bennysomething | Hacker News Reader

This is partly why I keep thinking I should have become an electrician or a carpenter: the only real competition is local, there is always demand in cities. I knew a very wealthy electrician who started his own business and it seems to be a common path. Unlike programming where the common path is work for someone else and burn out.

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As someone who grew up on construction sites before escaping to cushy office work, I can tell you that there are a lot of negatives that many don't consider when romanticizing the trades. Physical work means physical risks: From injuries to long term issues with knees, backs and shoulders. From constant exposure to toxic materials to the ever enjoyable dust boogers.

There's a reason that tradespeople get paid what they do. (and IMO, it is still very underpaid)

Correct

Electricians have to work in less than desirable conditions (dusty attics, outdoors, etc). Most of the material is your responsibility.

Accidents can and do happen. The days where you are less than 100% but you would be able to WFH don't exist.

Think it's annoying to plug a network cable under your desk? It's like that but 7hrs per day or more.

Electrical is like plugging in a network cable through the wall and up the ceiling, then down a really slim corridor to another wall, before finally placing the cord in the PC (all while trying to not pump another cord going the same route.) I worked beside a couple of electricians in my early 20s and it was fun but frustrating (like programming.)

And developers don't have the risk of death by electrocution even with low voltage - when you work with Medium and High voltage its a lot more dangerous

From what I've seen, the smart ones with good business sense are the ones who make real money in the trades, and they're mostly doing sales, supervision, training, and maybe personally handling some limited amount of the trickier bits of the actual labor (or cases where they have to come back to fix things, if they really care about customer service), by some time in their 30s. They may acquire some minor, persistent aches and pains from the work in their 20s or early 30s, but are mostly out of the rougher side of the job before it seriously harms their QOL. Like a lot of business, the real money's in selling other people's labor at a markup, not in selling your own labor.

Quite correct, but I would add that a necessary skill is also in being able to herd cats with a high turnover workforce that is made up with a high percentage of semi-functional addicts and/or flakes.

> Like a lot of business, the real money's in selling other people's labor at a markup, not in selling your own labor.

I hate that this is true, and am glad I found a way to make a living that avoids both, but congratulations on getting to the core of the matter with great clarity.

What do you do? Looking to do the same.

Funnily enough I actually grew up on building sites too, my dad was a builder / small time property developer. Out of all the trades I noticed the electricians had it easiest. I distinctly remember holding plaster board above my head while standing on scaffolding while a joiner (USA speak: carpenter) nailed it to the ceiling. And him telling me "see this is why you should pass your exams so you don't end up doing this". However it was obvious who the smart guys were they had their own businesses and directed their guys rather than do the dirty work. When I was 16 I said to my parents I was thinking of doing electrician apprenticeship, my dad said it would be a shame to miss out on the fun and adventure of university, so I did that instead. Think it was a mistake.

I can understand programmers romanticizing "the trades", where effort is more justly rewarded. All of us have had sleepless all-nighters where that bug just didn't get resolved (or, worse, the solution didn't end up being necessary). Compare that to an engineer staying at the job site after hours to keep wiring or returning to the office to process paperwork/respond to inquiries/strategize. It's still hard, but at least the work will be fruitful.

In Software Development, you can "get by" with an effort between 2-6 (where 5 is an average worker) or you can "excel" with an effort of 9-10, but putting in a 7-8 just stops being be worthwhile after a few years. Compare that to a local business owner, where greater hustle always appears commensurate to a greater reward.

... but the greater effort is more or less all "hustle" and not the actual work. Not really comparable, I think, to most programmers' experience of work.

Never too late to switch. Maybe this remote working trend will lead to outsourcing of programmers and we’ll see a rise of electrician and carpenter bootcamps as people flee software development. You’ll just be ahead of the curve.

Or be the one that sells the bootcamps, or even the one that sells a prebuilt platform that creates bootcamps to those that are selling the bootcamps. Picks and shovels so to speak. But wait now you're developing software again.

That's not developing software, that's selling it.

Its like a platform for platforms but on the cloud yes?

You're still working for someone else in the trades. All your clients are basically mini-bosses and your performance ratings are public on Yelp and Angies List.

I believe this has something to do with the statistical distribution of compensation - normal-like for electricians, dentists, and more power-like for coders and people from highly creative or sports fields.

It's all about leverage. There are certainly less good and better electricians and dentists, but at the end of the day they can only string so much wire and drill so many teeth in a day at rates that are pretty much set by the market. They have some leverage if they set up a business and employ people but there are still both lower and upper bounds.

Whereas a Pro Bowl quarterback or A-list movie star is worth maybe $100s of millions to a team or studio relative to players/actors who are "only" very competent. Coders are somewhere in between.

People run out of teeth, there is no limit to code. And if your dentist runs late you don't hire three dentists to make them run even later.

Compensation for coders is probably closer to normal distribution than power. Otherwise the stuff on glassdoor/levels.fyi won't make sense.

Productivity (or impact of code written) though, it might as well be closer to the power law distribution

1. You still can. 2. Could be good, could be bad.

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