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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

There's something so insidiously, backhandedly condescending about tech workers pining for the simplicity of an honest day's job that drives me nuts.

Yes, there are almost always jobs with less strenuous requirements on time, fewer requirements and late nights. But the average tech worker has a pretty good gig. And if they don't they can go down the street in 2022 and get one.

Trades scratch a similar itch to development in some ways - you're working with a set of tools and generally always building or working on the same projects. Yes, it's tactile, it gets you something palpable in the end. Yes, like software development you get that dopamine hit when you've built something nice. But there are late nights, big jobs that go too long, crappy coworkers and clients, because ... it's a professional job.

Did this behavior start with the coda of Office Space or has it always been a thing?

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It’s only condescending, because you’re assuming a social hierarchy where software development is more prestigious or desirable than one of the trades and that physical labor is harder than non-physical labor. The implication then is that a software developer wishing to become a plumber is ungrateful for their “better” job and naive for wanting a “harder” and “worse” job mistakingly believing it to be easier.

Would you feel the same way about a plumber wishing for the job software developer? Would you call out a plumber for being condescending in wishing for the “easy” job of a software developer?

The more accurate interpretation is that all people have frustration with their job and start to imagine an alternative that would eliminate the frustrations.

To be honest yes I would consider it a little condescending. No doubt they would be similarly creating a utopian vision of what our jobs entail and come at it from the angle of “boy wish I could just sit around all day doing nothing”

> It’s only condescending, because you’re assuming a social hierarchy where software development is more prestigious or desirable than one of the trades and that physical labor is harder than non-physical labor.

I'm very confused by this because I'm arguing the exact opposite: that people in tech romanticize these "simple" trades of the people.

> Would you call out a plumber for being condescending in wishing for the “easy” job of a software developer?

Absolutely. If they treated it like something you can just step down into without putting in the work, which is precisely how it's positioned when devs daydream about it.

> I'm very confused by this because I'm arguing the exact opposite: that people in tech romanticize these "simple" trades of the people.

I live in a climate where normal (I.e. not extreme) temp fluctuates between -25C and +30C. You can add 5-10C to either end for the above/below average days. There is absolutely nothing romantic or glamorous about working outside in those temps. This “romanticism” you speak of, while very real, often comes from a place of ignorance and inexperience. I’ve done enough physical labour in my time in reasonable weather than I see no reason for me ever want to make a career out of it. Similar goes for interior work, I’ve done the “good” and “mediocre” jobs as DIY enough to know I would not want to do it for a living.

Your overly focused on the perception that any job is simple. What’s really going on is people see the stress and difficulty of their current job and underestimate other jobs. It’s not condescending, it’s just self focused and naive.

I am pointing this out because by understanding why people actually complain it will deepen empathy for the complaining person and also avoid creating a pseudo classist framing of the situation which is actually not only inaccurate but harmful for understanding the people involved.

> I am pointing this out because by understanding why people actually complain it will deepen empathy for the complaining person and also avoid creating a pseudo classist framing of the situation which is actually not only inaccurate but harmful for understanding the people involved.

You misinterpreted my original point and when I attempted to clarify you're now telling me what I'm "too focused on," as if I don't understand that all people have stress.

So I'm finding this reply a bit ironic. Maybe it's supposed to be and I'm just not picking up on the bit.

You ascribed some malice to my original post that wasn't there and are now doubling down. Why?

> There's something so insidiously, backhandedly condescending about tech workers pining for the simplicity of an honest day's job that drives me nuts.

Agreed. SO recently left a career in academia to get a job in tech as an entry level software developer. Says this is the easiest job they've ever had in their life, and wondered why they didn't start sooner.

Developers have no idea how difficult even other white collar jobs are, let alone blue collar work that involves physical labor and the outdoors.

For a couple of years I worked at a rental shop at night and on weekends after my full-time IT job. It was the best thing ever because I got the feeling of actually getting something done, even if it was repetitive work. Not using my brain and not worrying about anything was nice.

I also temporarily quit my IT job because I felt burned, got a job cleaning floors and washing clothes. Again I loved the work.

If it weren't for the pay I wouldn't work in this field. I'm hoping to quit for good in a few years, switching careers doesn't make much sense at this point.

Will have to third this. I have friends and acquaintances I talk to regularly from all walks of life - from construction workers to tradesmen/mechanics, all the way to bankers and the like.

Out of all of them, I have the "best" job in terms of what's expected of me on a day-in-day-out basis. The biggest problem I feel us tech-workers have is that we compare our "bad" with their "good".

On a good day, a construction worker may get there, do their work for the amount of hours stipulated, and leave the work at work. That's our perspective. What we do not often see is the time they spend worrying about the weather conditions (if you're painting outside, can't do it in the rain), or whether this or that material will be on time/to spec, or that you sprained something yesterday and you really need to haul heavy stuff around today, and it cannot be delayed because people are relying on it being done, and this might mean your injury will worsen and you might not be able to work for a while.

We can get bad days. And our bad days can get pretty shitty. I won't begrudge anyone who'd love to leave the tech sector; I've often thought about it myself. But from hearing my friends in other professions talk about their bad days? Mine don't occur so often, and when they do, are often not as bad.

It's very difficult to deny our privilege when we talk to someone who works all day in the searing heat, and our day consisted of turning on our laptop at 11, running some Terraform scripts, making it to our favourite restaurant for sushi, enjoying an extended lunch while monitoring some deployments on our work tablet, and having a meeting while walking on a nearby park to negotiate internal deadlines. I've often been embarrassed to describe my day to some of my friends.

> I've often been embarrassed to describe my day to some of my friends.

Nearly every bad day at work I had ended with beers + sometimes a huge (and expensive) party. This is lifestyle comparable to high-level directors in other fields. No wonder it's totally unrelatable experience to them - they usually find the boss of their company relatable too.

* don't find the boss relatable.

It may be easy for some but lots of people try a coding boot camp and realize it’s hard and they hate every moment of it.

My father was a corporate finance executive for 25 years. He hated the political drama, attention to detail, mundane routine, long hours and being indoors all day. He quit and started roofing. And loved being outside.

> There's something so insidiously, backhandedly condescending about tech workers pining for the simplicity of an honest day's job that drives me nuts.

I worked with the county doing road construction and logging for seven years, then was a teacher for a couple years after that. Now I work at a cushy FAANG job.

I still miss both of my previous jobs often. Construction wasn't super meaningful, but there was a focus on making quality artifacts that isn't really the same in software. (Software is too complex, too large, and has too many constraints.) Working with physical implements is nice. I miss knowing the weather more intimately, and being physically exhausted at the end of the day.

Teaching was very meaningful, but emotionally exhausting. If the pay hadn't been terrible and if I had found a supportive administration, I'd probably be happier teaching. I miss working with children, being a part of a community.

Having worked these sort of jobs and having enjoyed them, I don't think it's condescending at all. I think there may be a bit of ignorance there. If you didn't grow up doing physical labor (I grew up on a farm) then you likely will have a hard time adapting to physical exertion/pain. And you have to recognize that you'll likely encounter physical injuries, especially later in your career. (In my shortish stint, I managed to injure my shoulder, and it still affects me). But if SWEs still like the idea, then they should give it a shot for a year. Software will still be there.

> Trades scratch a similar itch to development in some ways - you're working with a set of tools

I'd say the major difference is that in the trades, the tools actually work.

Having just had fun with replacing a bathroom door knob that involved far more power tools than expected I'm not sure I can agree.

The tools might work. But then you discover the plumber from 20 years ago did something crazy. Or the wiring makes a left turn in the space between 1st and 2nd floor for some reason. Thee dimmer switch that was $15 and should have taken 10 min to install actually does not have enough clearance behind it because a drain pipe is there, and so you need a special smaller size electrical box or you need to cut holes in the wall. Etc, etc.

Just another day in the life of a legacy enterprise project maintainer.

Seriously. I bought a house to renovate and the painting turned into a drywall refactoring thanks to the chemical peel used by the previous owners…I fixed up one bathroom that actually needs a tear out just to make a deadline for move in…bath tear out was pushed out to the next major update planned…

Sure, and they can also chop your hand off or otherwise seriously harm you.

Fuck up something handling PII and the GDPR fines can seriously harm you...

The fact that everyone is breaching the GDPR left and right and that Equifax is still around suggests the opposite.

Looking at all the documented (not that many) large GDPR fines, I haven't noticed any that are the result of a company (much less a developer) accidentally 'fucking up' - they are all the result of an intentional policy or an unethical management decision intentionally screwing people.

If you simply fuck up during your development, the most you'll get in practice is a letter from the regulator requiring you to change the fucked up thing; Fines arrive when management refuses to change the fucked up thing and tries to invent a loophole instead.

Comparing the permanent loss of a limb to a possible fine to a corporation for mishandling data is a bit out of touch.

Ever since their power tool accident they’ve been all out of touch…

Not really. They’ll harm the company, if anyone notices, but not you personally.

I had a manager who once abandoned software engineering to become a jeweler. There’s definitely a patronizing romanticizing of the trades in threads like this, but the yearning to switch to physical work doesn’t have to be fulfilled only by plumber/carpenter/electrician roles mentioned here. There are plenty of other jobs that require more physical work, from aestheticians to dentistry.

No doubt. I think that sitting in room all days drags on some people the way climbing up a pole with equipment all day might drag on another.

And sometimes you just want something radically different. But don't pretend it's simple enough that we - the brilliant computer and maths people - could easily just start doing it. I think that's where the patronizing comes in. Any professional job requires training and experience.

Sure, but the point still stands is that people seem to be yearning for an alternative to computer-only work, and there are perhaps more feasible alternatives out there to the Office Space ending ideal.

As far as training goes- software engineering doesn’t seem particularly rigorous in providing it compared to other disciplines.

I think it's a manifestation of the inherent feeling that many of us developers are doing something mostly useless compared to others. We know that the world could be different and we could be working jobs that are physically and/or mentally difficult but also fair and useful. Ursula K. Le Guin puts it thus, from her novel "This Dispossessed":

"A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and of sociality as a whole."

I can't understand that one. Software fascinates me since I was a child by how universally useful it is. Even for the more manual stuff, computer is still a hyper-useful tool.

Carpentry is useful, but if you are spending months making a small part you think no one uses or cares about for a lot of money, you might feel useless.

Same things goes with anything really.

I think it's much, much more common in the world of software to build things that either no one uses, or fades out pretty quickly.

There's a world of difference between taking a week to ship a new button to Chrome at Google (low impact, but at least high visibility) and creating a project from scratch over the course of months for it to be killed off by or not work out for the stakeholders (no impact AND no/low visibility). This happens with most projects.

On the other hand, building or fixing something physical you know that at least you're solving a real problem for someone, and it will probably last them a while.

Software is constantly churning and evolving precisely because such evolutions are not limited by tools, materials, or constraints of the physical world. Way better for creativity, but rarely leaves us devs feeling proud of the work we've done

A similar idea was expressed by Marx, who referred to it as estranged labour. Forgive the lengthy quote:

> the object which labor produces – labor's product – confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which has been embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. Labor’s realization is its objectification. Under these economic conditions this realization of labor appears as loss of realization for the workers; objectification as loss of the object and bondage to it; appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.

> [...]

> the worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts...

Very ironic that the USSR ended up forcing most people into state-chosen jobs. I think it's nice to think of some ideal future where everyone works on what they want to work on but society needs people to do the dirty work that nobody wants to do. Janitor, garbageman, sewer maintenance, warehouse worker, etc. A lot of Marx's ideas are just ideas, not anything that could ever be realized in the real world.

Whatever you can say of his prescriptions, many of his descriptions and diagnoses are relevant.

In said hypothetical world, the crappy jobs would come with the highest prestige, because nobody would want to do them, so the payoff would need to be something other than reducing the risk of starvation.

Yes! I’m rereading this now. That book is an endless wellspring of reminders about what truly matters.

The Dispossessed was a fantastic book but you're taking away the wrong thing if you're using Anarresti propaganda to sum up the work. The full title of the book is "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia" and Anarres has many problems.

Good point! Though, I wasn't trying to sum up the book nor was I endorsing the quoted sentences as gospel

"Half of my software budget is wasted, I just don't know which half."

I suppose there's a sense in the trades that you know somebody wants something before you do it, because they've asked for it. And you can usually see where it fits into the bigger picture because the interconnected pieces are visually and physically connected.

I get a similar satisfaction from being a part time musician. When I show up to play music, it's because somebody has hired me to play music, and within the band there's a specific part that's filled by my work. I also know the quality of my own work instantly as I do it. I love music as an art, but on the bandstand, I'm a tradesman first and an artist second.

Working in a tech field, it can be hard to know if what you're making is ever going to matter to anybody, and it's possible to do negative work in the sense of costing more than what it returns. That can be frustrating.

I would not call it condescending.

Frankly, I hold a few roles and have for years. Some of those involve flat out making stuff, wielding tools, taking a shower at the end of the day type stuff. Others are business, development, some engineering electronics, software.

For me, the variety is good, and it reflects how I came up in rural America, where basically you learned how to fix your own car, help on the farm, do what it takes because few had the money to spend to solve problems. And no judgement on those who have that. I have that today. It's just that I didn't then, and the skills came along with the scene.

I'm writing this because there are plenty of times where I look for something I'm not currently doing, or involved with. The reasons vary too:

Less stress

More structure

Right now: less liability / risk though I expect a reward for that happening

More people

Less people

No people.

Any of us, whether we are in construction, software, electronics, plumbing, mechanics, all reach a point where we can nail it. If we are lucky, we are exposed to a few different disciplines and can reach that point a few times in our lives.

If anything, I would call said "pining" boredom, or seeking perspective of some kind, just a change up, if nothing else.

Personally, I feel that is OK, and encourage it in my peers, help them where I can.

Stretch a little. Feels good sometimes. Sometimes it's regrettable too.

You are better for having done it though.

Ah yes, the common misconception that trades are simplistic!

Most trades (!including plumbing!) have VASTLY more stringent requirements than tech, are often more mentally stimulating, and yes, quite rewarding.

Disclaimer: I've worked in software for ~9 years and worked in trades before that. ASE master certified auto technician, father is a master electrician, uncles are contractors. I'll probably become a plumber.

I feel tech was more fulfilling before all the bullshit agile rituals and related nonsense. The past 10 years things have really gone downhill.

I don't see why it's condescending. If you have worked in tech your entire life, in an office in front of a computer then it's completely okay IMO to wonder what it would be like working a trade.

For instance, my entire family works in mining, some riggers, some electricians and others environmental surveying. I am the only one that works in front of a computer all day. When they get home from work, that's it they switch off, no emails, no calls, no reports to write late at night due to a delayed project. Their work shifts to another group of employees to continue or finish. They come home tired and sleep way better than I do.

I think about it all the time and what it would be like to work with my hands in a trade, sure we all work late sometimes and that's not industry specific. But its the feeling of working in a field with your hands as opposed to your words.

It's also easy for tradesman to look at what we do and think its easy too. But at the end of the day there's no perfect job and some appeal better to others.

> it's completely okay IMO to wonder what it would be like working a trade.

That's not the issue. The issue is assuming it's something you could "just do" to remove the stress in your life, as though the job is trivial.

It may be self-selecting tech workers who feel excessive stress from their job, or, really are disastisfied and ready for a change.

I can confess to passing the person holding the STOP and SLOW sign at a construction site, and even saying out loud, "Now that's a job I could do."

But when the fog clears, and the paycheck lands in the bank, it's, well... nah. I'd rather put up with the stress or ennui and have the cash.

Sometimes I consider going back to the trades (I have enough experience I could easily do so), but no way would I want to be a flagger. The boredom would kill me by noon the first day.

I was one of those ad sign kids as a teenager. It was mentally brutal. Thank God for podcasts.

These people make $90 an hour in Australia. It’s definitely tempting.

I've heard the tram drivers make $150k ...

A couple issues I see. The extremely abstract nature of software can make progress sometimes seem very ephemeral, and make those dopamine hits hard to find. Ever spend a week or two on a bug going in circles with no progress? It's maddening, can seriously impact stress levels and sleep, and be very bad for your health. I think this is why some opine for a job where you step back at the end of the day and marvel at the work you did in the physical world. I personally know I get a great satisfaction when I complete a project around my house, and it's a very different feeling from when a unit test finally passes.

Then there's also the problem of not using your body. Up until extremely recently in evolutionary history, we used our bodies and brains together. It turns out office work can be just as bad for your body as swinging a hammer or welding pipes due to inactivity. It's really a dehumanizing way to live. Certainly you can try to balance the scales by hitting the gym after work, but it can be a struggle when you're fried from the day.

Through attrition and universities pumping out CS degrees as fast as they can since the early 90's, at any given point almost half of us have less than 5 years of experience. When half the people don't know any better, it's really hard to use democracy to get anything 'good' done. Either this hasn't changed much over that interval or the people who are fond of pointing this out aren't tracking statistics. Whether it's actually true or only somewhat true, I think we deal with the consequences all the time.

What I can say is have more hobbies, and perhaps we (those who care) should be working to differentiate a genre (vertical, size, location, something) as being better, so it feels like less of a game of chance every time people are looking for 'better'.

>> .. at any given point almost half of us have less than 5 years of experience. When half the people don't know any better, it's really hard to use democracy to get anything 'good' done.

This is really a problem, there's inherent value in egalitarianism or democracy, but perhaps due to a lack of deeply technical managers it often plays as you say hard to get anything good done due to bike-shedding and not being led by experience.

Nothing condescending here. After my first twenty years in tech I did feel the urge for a change. Why be just a tech worker?

Complexity is no indicator of worth to society, nor is salary.

As someone who does/did tech jobs and manual jobs, i think it all depends. I know some people in tech who get paid insane amounts of money to sit at a desk and pretend to do something, and some of these people would not last an hour in a manual job. But i also know some developers/artists in tech industry who work 60h weeks to be paid under 2K€/mo and are on the verge of burnout, and these people would probably be very happy to find any better job, whether in tech industry or not.

I think your experience of tech workers is not representative of the tech industry in general: for every high-paid IT person, there's 2 or 3 (maybe 50?) who're getting paid peanuts and have very indecent working conditions, and i personally find it somewhat condescending to suggest it's just an isolated incident and it's so easy to just walk down the street to find better work conditions.

In fact, that very sentence was pronounced by our slaver-in-chief Emmanuel Macron and was widely derided as condescending. It's hard for people to find a job, especially if you don't have high connections. It's even harder to find a decent job: to find a quasi-slavery posting you can just walk down to any luxurious restaurant/hotel but to find lawful/respectful working conditions, i still don't know of a magic formula.

One of my really good friends dropped out of his chemical engineering degree in the last semester to be a landscape gardener, and seems to enjoy it much more. It's been nearly a decade so far. He hasn't gone back.

The tech meme of dropping out to pick up a trade is pretty funny at times, especially when it's coming from people who couldn't change a doorknob, but I don't think jobs are one-size-fits-all, and I do think some people would be happier with a job that requires doing hard work outside.

I’m a constant “I’m gonna quit this shit and go farm alfalfa” comic. Not unique, but I grew up in the trades working with family.

The biggest thing that jumps out to me about programming vs my father’s work is the agency. He goes into a home, diagnoses, and fixes an issue. No MBA / PM / Scrum Bags to needlessly insert themselves into a process and cause issues. Contrasted with most jobs where I get delivered a small chunk of an issue (as a Senior / Lead) which robs me of my agency as a professional and often time just leads to more delays and defects driven by a lack of a coherent vision passed down. Rather abstract, but infuriating when I damn well know I could have delivered higher-quality and ahead of schedule. Providing “Commander’s Intent” is a very real necessity.

I don’t know that tangible vs. intangible is a factor, for me at least, making web / mobile oriented systems. Hell, even a really good shell script to codify a workflow for coworkers is insanely satisfying.

Other than that, human interaction. Having a human be genuinely satisfied that you helped them with their issue they couldn’t have solved... that’s rewarding at a level rarely ever get.

The big offer is comfort (both in workplace and in salary) is the primary offer - perhaps to many friction is the spice of life.

You can get more of the agency you describe as an independent contractor working on smaller projects, or in early stage startups. There's nobody breathing over your shoulder, just a "give me an estimate, let me know when you think you can get it done" sorta deal. I do enjoy that work better, but it's not as consistent.

The scrum-driven, jira-driven "small chunk" style of development is kinda depressing to me. It wasn't always like this, and there's so many new folks in tech many don't remember it used to be different.

People inevitably develop unreasonable fantasies of what life could be in a field / relationship / situation far from their own. I feel you're being a bit unnecessarily cynical about how bad this kind of daydreaming is.

Yes, if you were an actual plumber who spent half a day tugging diapers out of a 2 inch pipe, and some dumbass hipster you run into later tells you how glamorous your job is, that might be a bit annoying. But people in all sorts of fields experience that annoyance to some degree.

Anecdotally, I have two friends I went to college with who daydreamed about quitting their desk jobs and working a trade. One of them, I worked with on construction crews during school breaks, and he'd talk about how much he preferred that to college. He ended up in an office job anyway.

The other guy didn't have that trade experience, he just felt he'd like it better. He did some white collar work after graduation, hated it. Later he went on to work in a couple trades until finding one that fit; he went through a very extensive licensing process, and now makes good money and spends very little time behind a desk. And he's very happy with that -- so it does work out for some people.

> Did this behavior start with the coda of Office Space or has it always been a thing?

No, it's such a cliche that's why Office Space chose to use it.

The movie Lost in America explores this theme much more generally.

The funniest thing about the end of Office Space is that by "dropping out" of software during the Y2k era and entering the construction field, the protagonist is just swapping one bubble for another, software for housing.

The alternate ending changes the tenor of the entire film with just one line of dialogue. Peter is probably dissatisfied on a deeper level than any job could fix. Maybe he would find meaning as an entrepreneur or travelling or dropping out...

https://youtu.be/XK43Ureuiqc

> The alternate ending changes the tenor of the entire film with just one line of dialogue.

This also happens with Kiki's Delivery Service. It makes the English dub much, much better than the Japanese original.

I think it is more than just condescension. In job's like plumbing or carpentry, it is much easier to ascertain when your work is done and if it is good. The workmen on a house remodel have a fixed(ish) scope and at the end of the day the homeowner is either happy with the work or not. The outcomes are tangible and quickly ascertained. On the other hand, when you start work on a software project, it will take months or possibly years to know if the strategy or architecture you chose pays off. The roadmap concept also means software is never done and there is always more code that needs to be written.

In the software world, you don't get the satisfaction of knowing that you have done something well in the same visceral way physical trades provide.

I don’t think it’s condescending I think most humans weren’t made to sit behind a desk all day

Did this behavior start with the coda of Office Space or has it always been a thing?

A big aspect of Marxism is that labor has been alienated from their production in the age of industrialization, so I’d say it’s been a thing for a while.

I've read a lot of Marx and I think this is ultimately less about alienation and more about guilt.

I feel like I’d sometimes like to try a job like a carpenter or builder, but simply to try building something in real life, rather than our often intangible products.

What's stopping you? You don't even have to give up working in tech.

I started learning joinery a year ago. I'm still terrible at it by professional standards, but I've made some bespoke furniture pieces for our house that would have cost 2-3x what I spent in tools and materials, and I enjoyed the process.

It's definitely something you can do in your spare time, and even if you don't decide to go pro, you've still learned a valuable life skill.

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