Just Your Handyman
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But even if the AI technologies we're so nervously excited about replace all our jobs, the handymen, plumbers, and electricians of the world will be mostly unaffected. Their work is hard to automate. I hesitate to say we'll change places in terms of economic status—more likely, all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries and drive down the prices.
Regarding AI technologies, I agree that it's extremely unlikely that AI will take over the work. It's possible that may help in some diagnostic cases. I strongly disagree with "all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries". Why? Many (perhaps most even) software engineers that I've worked with are too lazy or too proud to do handyman type work. Some of the handyman work can be physically quite taxing and some of it can be quite humbling. Examples of taxing work - when you're doing a gate rebuild/repair in 107 degree temperature in direct sun. Example of humbling work - opening up p-traps under sinks and having some of the smelly, dirty water splash on you.
An important distinction that comes up for me a lot is that it's much harder to fix mistakes with physical stuff. I can rapidly iterate on software, try stuff, see what works, play with a concept. But if I do that with wood and nails, I'm going to be in for trouble. Each idea costs material, and if it's a repair, there can be no going back. "Iterative development" really isn't a thing. This has gotten me in trouble - my instinct is to explore a problem, but I find that physical stuff requires more intellectual planning up-front, counterintuitively.
I also think other disciplines will inevitably move more in this direction. Once things can be accurately modeled and tested with computers, the iteration cycle becomes similar. You do have to eventually build the "machine", but I think that will become more and more automated, sortof like a compiler.
Once you've built something yourself, you start seeing problems like "Oh, this assembly has multiple parts that all need to be done in place, how can I change it so I can build it all in the shop and just screw it in".
But with software, we try as hard as we can to make it impossible to mess up.
With physical goods, we seem to prefer things that can be messed up, things that only look good with expensive materials, etc. Things that by their existence, demonstrate the skill of the maker, and the wealth of the buyer.
We don't really know what the limits of pocket screws joinery and cardboard tabletops are, because... nobody is trying to make something out of cardboard that lasts a century, they just assume it will be thrown away.
With software, we start with the assumption that no programmer is up to the challenge, nobody will ever understand a large system, no user will ever be competent, etc, and figure out how to make amazing things anyway.
That's what I think is so great about software - almost nothing is irretrievable and even if it is it's not that big a deal to redo, other than for whoever paid you to make those mistakes!
But software is also ephemeral and for all but a few of us it's hard to point to something and say 'I made that, it's works, and it's really cool' and have other people get it. When you drive off on the steam loco you just finished it has a bit more impact! Even my teenage son said "it's pretty cool to build something that moves under its own power".
Oh, for sure. I was a dev for many years, then switched to product design. What I left out of my first comment was that my older brother is a maintenance guy for a hospital—basically a handyman with an office in the basement. Growing up, it was clear that he was at least as smart as me, but at a certain point he went one direction and I went another. Cut to 25-30 years later: his body is a wreck, mine is okay (modulo poor diet and lack of exercise), he's always broke, and I'm doing alright.
When I said that our jobs are very similar, I just meant that, like a handyman, much of what a SWE does is basically attaching one thing to another thing while cursing. That's a joke, but you get what I mean. My point was that neither are rocket science, but we shouldn't think we're especially smart for being programmers just because we get paid too much for it. Add the physical element of handyman work to that and that just underlines the point I wanted to make.
> I strongly disagree with "all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries.
This is timely. I said that because I was thinking about it yesterday, when talking to some friends about what they'd do if and when AI obviated their current jobs (which is in the realm of possibility). A common answer was that they'd become electricians. I think there are at least two problems with that: one is the physical aspect of being a tradesman, which nobody thinks about. The other is that there would certainly be more people going into the trades, not less, if those industries became a safe harbor from AI. Many of these people would wash out, sure, but at least some of them (like yourself) wouldn't. That, combined with all the upper-middle-class people being suddenly broke, would probably drive down wages for people who work with their hands. I can't imagine anything else happening, though of course I could be wrong.
This number will be very difficult to achieve, but that does mean that being an electrician should continue to be a good job for quite a long time, even if lots of new people go into it.
That sounds... high. There are about 350 million people in the USA (from memory, so this figure is probably low), so even if there were just 10 million electricians, it would mean 1 in 35 people needs to be an electrician. If you exclude children and retired people, that proportion will go up further.
I wish people would stop propagating this idea. The opposite is true.
You could argue that they aren't paid enough, rather than that we're paid too much, but I certainly feel there's an imbalance.
I think it's folly to compare the intelligence of a tradesman to a software developer (or anyone for that matter). But there is SOMETHING, that not everyone has (or maybe just doesn't want to obtain), that's required to do software development at any kind of capacity.
But I do think you need an interest in the practice and a certain mindset, just like any other job. I do it because I quite enjoy writing certain types of software, which I often don't get to write.
I've never been paid all that much for it, never more than about 90K US, and not even that for very long. I think all those FAANG salaries are obscene and there's no way even a small fraction of the people making that money are worth it, or earning it, especially with how they're not making society any better.
It's interesting talking to tradespeople and learning about what they do. There's a lot of math involved in some trades like machining and electricians where I live learn a lot of it too while training. A good tradesperson has to be every bit as clever as your normal software developer.
My old man was a diesel mechanic, then a fitter and turner and finally did a mech eng certificate at night school and became a draftsman. What he learned was way more difficult than anything I ever had to learn.
It's this kind of thing that deters me from taking on tasks, fear of making things worse, digging the hole deeper, etc.
Then there's the whole losing focus, leaving it half done, etc. issue.
This cannot be understated. You can tell if a person has never cleaned a toilet in their life- you can hear it in their voice.
It’s funny, when I started in ML 10 years ago people said the same thing about writers, artists, musicians. And yet here we are today. Robotics is just the next thing to be “solved” in AI field, the same way computer vision or NLP got solved - after decades of hard effort and little progress. Once the algorithms are ready people will build robots who will be much better than humans at any physical tasks: faster and more precise.
And so there are many problems we [programmers] don't have. For instance, if we put an if statement inside of a while statement, we don't have to worry about whether the if statement can get enough power to run at the speed it's going to run. We don't have to worry about whether it will run at a speed that generates radio frequency interference and induces wrong values in some other parts of the data. We don't have to worry about whether it will loop at a speed that causes a resonance and eventually the if statement will vibrate against the while statement and one of them will crack. We don't have to worry that chemicals in the environment will get into the boundary between the if statement and the while statement and corrode them, and cause a bad connection. We don't have to worry that other chemicals will get on them and cause a short-circuit. We don't have to worry about whether the heat can be dissipated from this if statement through the surrounding while statement. We don't have to worry about whether the while statement would cause so much voltage drop that the if statement won't function correctly. When you look at the value of a variable you don't have to worry about whether you've referenced that variable so many times that you exceed the fan-out limit. You don't have to worry about how much capacitance there is in a certain variable and how much time it will take to store the value in it.
All these things are defined a way, the system is defined to function in a certain way, and it always does. The physical computer might malfunction, but that's not the program's fault. So, because of all these problems we don't have to deal with, our field is tremendously easier.”
— Richard Stallman, 2001: <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-mec-india.html#conf9>
I will actually then think that all this AI stuff is not smoke and mirrors, the way it currently appears to be.
I'm not building sky scrapers (next triple AAA game engine), I'm fixing the leak in the ceiling (bug with some in-house corporate gui). It can be a little soul-draining, but do it for the kids.
Through COVID, I’ve had a lot of obvious gains. I used to commute four hours a day, and now I work from home. I’m paid more. I’m working with more interesting technology. Despite all of that, I still alternate between putting a lot of effort into finding my next step to a bigger career or feeling bad about not putting enough energy into it.
The handyman must be less restless.
Why? They may not have the next step as clearly "defined", but there are endless ways to "level up"
Cecil's purpose is a bit different, but beyond the obvious theme of using the building of a house for philosophical reflection, I do think there's some cross-over in insights, if not in focus.
I recommend it to anyone, ESPECIALLY anyone thinking about, or in the process of, building a house. And his channel in general is excellent fun.
[1.1] https://youtu.be/GDg194s5tnQ
I've long observed that modern culture and media seem to be really stuck on this idea that kids everywhere are having their dreams held back by evil adults who just want to crush their dreams, for no good reason in particular. The archetype in many movies is that some adult is telling some kid to abandon his dreams.
I always found this interesting because no one ever attempted this with me. As suggested, they attempted the opposite, and told me that I could be whatever I wanted. Ultimately I think this was well-intended, but harmful advice. Most of the things I like or care about aren't just infeasible careers -- they're not jobs at all. The things I'm "passionate" about are just not career-worthy. I like reading books, playing video games, doing house chores while listening to podcasts, and talking to friends. It might sound stupid, but as a younger adult (18-25) I really had the mistaken impression that I didn't enjoy work because I hadn't found a good job yet. Really, there was nothing I enjoyed in my life which could actually survive the transition to a career. What I just described is really all leisure, and can't count as work.
Yes, you can technically make a career out of the things I listed, but they cease to bear much resemblance to how I participated in them. Casually playing a video game occasionally is much different from developing or writing, or reviewing games. Occasionally reading a good book is much different from being able to write a book, or reviewing books for a living, etc. And a proclivity towards enjoying a book every so often says nothing about one's ability to make a career out of books. I suppose the point I'm trying to drive at is that there is a wide berth between what someone is interested in, and their ability to make that into a career.
I would have benefited from being forced into the workplace sooner so that I could realize that all jobs out there are "work," even if there are some enjoyable aspects to them. ie, that there are fundamental differences between work and leisure, and that a kid who enjoys some hobbies is totally incapable of identifying his "passions." But, no one really seems to want to tell that story, at least in popular media. They want an easy good guy and bad guy. They seem fixated on the idea that as a child I truly knew myself, and in some sense was pure -- and that the world was an adulterating influence, bitterly set on holding me back. The opposite was true: as a child I barely know myself, and the world was ready to teach me important lessons, but mentors and media kept trying to protect me from learning about the world.
Educators and parents don't do a great job of saying "if you want to be A, then you should work on your V skills" or "while you may be passionate about C, it is not a career.. have you considered D,E,F?".
And also for those going off to college it would be useful to have the hard conversation early "while it may be fun to live in G HCOL city for 4 years, if you want to make a life there, you are going to need a HCOL paying job like H,I,J.. so maybe don't pursue low ROI degree K".
I definitely interacted with a lot of younger millenials/GenZ in my career who were constantly changing jobs laterally because nothing was a "good fit". So they spent the first 5 years of their career churning water instead of doubling their salary. This is the kind of thing that sets a person back for life.
To me it's like "wow yeah you don't find working on a CRUD app / BI analytics / retail website to be the most life affirming thing in the world?" Guess what, as Mad Men said.. "that's what the money is for". People can have hobbies!
> We do what we have to so we can do what we want to
I think a lot of "follow your passion" types also miss that a lot of passion businesses are 90% business (sales/marketing/accounting/leasing/HR/administrative/paperwork/phonecalls/BS) and 10% the thing you were so passionate about.
It's important to at least like what you do, and to find some purpose in how you fill your time. But it's a rare person who actually finds doing their job more pleasant than sitting on a beach / reading a book / watching a film / scrolling HN / etc. I've worked with some, and I don't really envy them.
There are limits in each direction.
Play with any retirement calculator and shift your retirement age forward even 5 years. The problem is 5 years less new saving, 5 years less returns on peak nest egg, 5 years more spending down the nest egg, (and also not collecting social security yet because too early).
For someone who didn't already have strong passions and hobbies that don't have high burn rates, filling 50 hours/week without spending down savings extra fast is hard.
You can also become alienated from those around you and the ordinary rhythms of life.
Our collective approach to education reflects this new economic situation.
It’s even harder to give any advice to children now, with AI massively disrupting everything in few short years.
I think the guy is underselling himself. He's running his own successful business, something I cannot imagine doing. He's hitting new (even if similar) problems every day with real world settings and real world consequences, and helping people. Sounds pretty impressive to me. When it comes to DIY I don't stretch beyond fixing tap washers or replacing power switches with obvious problems for fear of causing expensive damage.
The fact he can do it while battling on going mental health hassles is impressive too.
Sadly, this guy does not sound like any handyman that I've known, but then, I have not known any handymen with a theology degree.
But I have certainly known a number of fairly incongruous folks, in unusual vocations, so I'm not surprised.
Integrity is one of my targets. And I mostly sleep well at night.
We should be thankful the US doesn’t have a system like that which artificially reduces the supply of labor.
We should make it easier for people to work in the trades. Not wrap and bunch of unnecessary formality and regulation around it.
However it's likely to increase the overall level of training, which is good for someone who needs their broken trim board replaced.
Now when it comes to stuff like building a kitchen, you could go with proper carpenters or furniture folks or a handyman. It’s good to have those different categories and know what you would be getting.
If you have to regulate industries institute a proficiency test and allow different levels of expertise. A plumber or electrician for home repair is a totally different level of complexity to one in industrial applications but it’s the same certification. The guy doing wiring in my house just does not need that level of education and I don’t really want to pay for it.
If there is a large risk when work is low quality, there is regulation. The more possible danger, the more regulation. This is OK.
But an argument for regulation that is just some hand waving and repeating "standards" is not a legitimate position. It is an attempt to build some little bureaucratic empire which will enrich a group via regulatory capture.
The government wins as they now have more employees and more power and the people already in the trade win. Everyone else loses.
A typical handyman can’t and won’t touch anything that could actually cause harm (gas, plumbing, electrical) and poor quality work will result in a negative reviews and no repeat work for the handyman.
More opportunities for training and upskilling, yes!
But you should not start some unnecessary credentialing/licensing system that restricts the supply.
This is the danger of participation awards. It's how people end up in careers they aren't suited to.
As a society, we owe it to our children to be honest with them and guide them down paths that will satisfy the aspects of life that are important to them. It's a balancing act between ability, aptitude, drive, and personality.
Doing well in math and science does not necessarily mean that the child will be happy in a career that require those skills, especially if they actually enjoy music, art, or shop class more.
Unfortunately many of these trade-offs are presented financially to kids; that doing what you love may result in a financially challenging life, and ignore the satisfaction and mental health benefits that would derive from such a choice.
Really, you can pursue anything you want to, regardless of the time horizon that you have considered it in.
Walk down the street and see something interesting over the road? then cross over and take a look. Play with the a keyboard in the shop and like the feel? buy a cheap one, get some lessons, pursue it until you no longer want to. You may drop it, you may become a rockstar. You don't need to know you want to be a rockstar though.
Children are already curious, we spend a lot of time trying to get them to formalise their curiosity into concrete plans. Life doesn't need long term planning, to be successful, or be happy.
- A girl in my class aged 11 was killed by a bus.
- A boy I knew aged 17 killed himself and girlfriend by driving into a tree.
- A competitor at work aged 27 had a bad cold, went to the doctor and was rushed to hospital due to suspected Liver cancer and died on the operating table that afternoon.
- Good friend at aged 29 A got a brain disease and died over three years.
- Good friend at aged 31 got leukemia, recovered, got it back a year later and had an allergic reaction to the chemo and died.
The last three were all high flyers - two or three degrees, published etc. They had (like me) sacrificed a lot to get where they had and were just (at that time) beginning to reap some rewards. The last fella in particular had just bought a house, got a steady girl who was good for him and had had an "inflection" type promotion. All for nothing.
Teach children to enjoy it while they can. Maybe that gives them 9 happy years, or maybe 90. (edited for formatting)
Not only is it abstract, it's uncertain. When I was in school around the 90s and early 00s, programming was nowhere near as popular as it is now. What is the job market going to look like in some 20 years? We don't know, and teachers, as part of academia, have even less of a clue.
Once you get into living paycheck to paycheck, esp. if you're supporting a family, your options are severely restricted. It doesn't mean you can't live a happy, peaceful, maybe even more purposeful life. But most people really don't understand how significant these decisions can be at 18.
Everyone’s so scared of going for something and missing, or deciding it’s actually not as fun or interesting as you thought.
Young people should have big dreams.
It's been said that "money is unit of caring", in the sense that if you're not willing to spend money on something, you're not serious about it. But in a similar sense, money is the unit of not giving a fuck - the more disposable income you have, the more soul-draining bullshit you can throw money at to make it go away.
All that to say, its good to be as realistic as possible with children, and as another suggested not only focus on high time frame decisions, and as you suggested avoid casting things as merely financial decisions.
While not strictly true, it’s very much true in the general sense. Many of our passions don’t make us money. Like it or not, living in society requires quite a lot of money.
Struggling financially puts a strain on mental health, job satisfaction, relationships, etc. It dominates your experiences, your thoughts, your food, and ultimately your lifespan. It’s *hard*.
“Work hard”, “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”, “my passion is my work”, blah blah blah. These extremes taint the thought process of our children. As a society we poisoned the minds of multiple generations.
We _should_ be teaching children that their job does not define them. That “do what you love” is unrealistic. Do what allows you to be comfortable and do what you love. Will you have be able to humblebrag on social media? Probably not. Will you be in the top 10% financially? Probably not. Will you not struggle financially and have time to do the things you actually love (family, friends, hobbies, whatever)? Hopefully! That’s the goal.
In first grade, you 100% tell them they can be whatever they want, by the end of 12th (or however it works where you are) they should be honestly looking at what sort of things make money to handle that part of life. But also, you know, how to be happy and such.
In the beginning it's more "cheerleading" than "logic?"
Several parts resonated with me. This one early in the article stood out:
> But the vast majority of what I know in my work has come from continuously saying “yes” to jobs I’ve never done before – I decided I could figure them out by being careful.
I learned something like the above from my dad — watching him jump head-long into things he knew nothing about (or very little about).
When I was a teenager and travelled to Alaska to visit him he had just got a job there running the water treatment plant in Homer. He took me up to the plant where he showed me how yeti all works — the huge osmosis filtration system, the small laboratory onsite for insuring the city water quality. He showed me how he draws water out and runs various tests on it. Dipping a test tube first into a bath of HCl acid (with his bare fingers) before rinsing it, filling it with sample water, then into an ultrasonic bath to release any dissolved gases, then into a device that measures the water turbidity by shining light though the glass vial and measuring the scattered light.
I knew he had taken Chemistry in college but running a water treatment plant did not seem to be on his resumé to my knowledge. "How did you know how to do this?" I asked. He pointed to a three-foot row of binders along one counter in the lab and said, "I read the manuals they keep here."
"But how did you even get the job?"
"Told them I had worked as a chemist (true), and said I could do it...."
This was a small town in Alaska so maybe things were a little looser — but still, I admired his fearlessness. Knowing him I suspect too if I had asked him what the consequences would have been if he had failed or been "found out" I am sure he would have said, as he often did, "What's the worst thing that could happen? I get fired."
I was also amazed then to see him adding a room onto his small home in town. I was not shy to add weather stripping to a door or window but once you are pouring a footer, framing, hanging drywall you were, in my mind, firmly in pro territory. Somehow my dad just jumped into it and figured he could learn it (best to learn on your own house, I guess).
What's the worst thing that could happen? He would have to hire someone to come in and finish his mess.
Since then I have tried not to have pre-supposing mental barriers as to what I can and cannot do. And in a lot of ways the world of possibilities began to open up for me.
I mention all the above because I have found throughout my life that most people seem to be like I was before my encounters with my dad started to change my perceptions. I want other people too to be unafraid to try doing a thing themselves.
One thing you may keep in mind is that "getting fired" or "hiring another contractor" aren't, in fact, the "worst that can happen".
I have been doing a certain amount of "entertainment rigging" (suspending $100K+ stacks of speakers in the air for concerts). I didn't have as great a perception of our responsibilities for the safety of other people until I started working on things that could easily kill someone if the job is done poorly. My standard went from "would I stand under that?" to "would I let my buddy's kids stand under that"?
In many things there are plenty of "even worse" outcomes- your water system could have lead in it, for instance. Or the wall could blow down and kill someone.
I don't say that as a criticism of your father; rather there are two motivations:
a) part (perhaps most) of the skill set of being willing to try and fail is knowing when to call someone else who does "know"
b) it's good to be kind with ourselves about being a little afraid when we are doing things because often we can't know what we don't know.