Hacker News Reader

Comment by he_is_legend | Hacker News Reader

I'm not disagreeing, but having worked for 20+ years now as a web dev, and also on and off on farms (parents, relations, neighbours, friends, and 30 acres behind my house), I'd move to a farming job that offered the same income in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

There is something much more comforting about having worked yourself to physical tiredness and a feeling of having accomplished "something useful" instead of having fried your brain yet again over some bizarre node.js ritual for the benefit of some capitalist ecommerce overlord.

I'm willing to admit that there are fulfilling jobs in software development that aren't directly feeding the capitalist beast, but they seem to be few and far between.

View on HN

where are you going to get a farming job that pays the same as tech without also feeding the corporate beast?

perhaps if agriculture and food generation was priced more in line with its value to humanity, rather than along the lines of cheapest product wins, there would be more feasible careers in homesteading, simpler lives and farming.

but in a world where NFT based companies are claiming to be worth billions what hope is there of that? :)

NFTs backed by real fungible property. Own not only the picture of the zucchini, but the zucchini itself, which can be transferred or used independently as an asset.

I am joking of course, but stranger things have happened. You can own a farm, but have conveyable mineral rights, and land use rights, that render the whole of the property unusable by the owner.

The same could probably be said for software.

You can't make any money homesteading software either. Get a half rack 22 u servers, install the os (set up a pxe boot server and golden images plus a bootstrap script). Build out your storage, app server database server, load balancer, write your app, get customers, do support, fix bugs, release features.

You could probably break even with a well targeted market and not hire anyone else (maybe keep it in the immediate family) but you're constantly competing against products whose costs are built on economies of scale. Even if your not up against a giant corp, your up against someone with funding that's probably using giant corp tech.

Even if you do use giant corp tech (which isn't a thing you can do with physical land so I didn't factor that in) bootstrapping a boutique software company has some long odds and long hours. Bits tough work to know and do everything. That's why people specialize and companies hire specialists.

I get your point (i think), but people don't need software. Software is great to have and enhances life to no end, but you could live without it. They do need food though.

Why does working to make software pay so much? Yet working to make food pays so little?

Honestly? Because anyone with a strong back can make food but it takes time and education of some sore to make software.

The same could be said with medicine. Everyone needs medicine as much as food but one makes significantly more money.

They exist. I know several small farmers who are HNWIs in the low 8 digits, not counting their real property. I'd say that's comparable to what you'd expect someone in tech to accumulate over around a 30 year career. They achieved that through a combination of savvy, connections, and growing relatively high margin niche crops instead of trying to compete with corporate gigafarms.

But it's extremely hard work, and depending on what one grows, one can expect to have maybe 2 weeks off a year. Nature is a boss that doesn't accept excuses.

This can absolutely be done. But it's hard work and you have to be very self-sufficient. I've done quite well for myself with my farm as a side project but I can weld, program, do HVAC, mechanic work on out machines, pluming and building upkeep. Then you also have to be able to farm, and to top that off, you have to be ready to work when it's time, which is not unlike tech but you also won't have a backup for your oncall rotation.

I spent Christmas afternoon in the snow digging drainage ditches around a new field after a water retention pond burm broke and started washing seed out of the field. Because it was so wet, we couldn't move any machines into the field so myself and father in law dug the basics by hand with shovels around the whole field.

It's not just something you do cause you watched a YouTube video. It takes a certain type of person. It's not unlike bootstraping any other startup.

This is a fair comment and some days I admit I feel the same way.

Tell me though haven't you questioned your choices? When you were repairing the broken machines or digging that ditch on Xmas, doubt never crept in?

I am at the point where I am wondering if the doubtful times are outweighing the joyful ones these days.

But I will admit, I posed the question at a particularly "Whoa Es Me" time, still I understand what your getting at, When the going gets tough...right!?

I wouldn't say that I question my choices. Before going into tech about 10 years ago, I spent 15 years in construction, farming and mechanic type work.

I love welding, (I went to welding school out of high school but decided it would be a better hobby than job).

I love the crops we make. The whole thing started when we couldn't buy what we wanted in the quantity and quality we wanted.

My whole family lives around the farm so while I didn't enjoy digging a ditch on Christmas, I did do it with my father in law, and then we went in and had Christmas dinner and a stiff whisky with the whole family. It's not something I'm doing alone, and lots of it is stuff I love doing.

I'll often stay up till 2AM+ on the weekends just building random shit in the shop and listening to music. I'm working on soil moisture and temperature sensors to put into the fields to target watering and start collecting some data. I'm working on turning one of the old 70s fords into a battery motor, I've got the old tractors all tuned up and running and to me this is my idea of taking a break from my desk.

I'm not sure what to tell you. Have you done farming and gardening and other types of manual labor before? If you wanna hit me up and chat a bit about this I'd love to understand a little more and maybe I have tips or perspective that can help out here.

I think the point here was about preferring one type of work over another, not actually about the income.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com