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Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much of this is also that the solutions feel less tangible and more abstract, and fundamentally less satisfying.

In carpentry or Plumbing for example, you can point to something being completed.

The valve was either replaced or it wasn’t. The water is either leaking or it isn’t. (Sorry I can only think of residential plumbing issues, I know it’s more complicated than that).

But in software it’s way more amorphous. Every feature has endless discussions, the product is less tangible, and you don’t often see people actually using what you built.

But that’s just me projecting why a career in software (while very comfortable and I genuinely enjoy programming), can feel a lot less satisfying.

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I used to find the solutions satisfying, but it's so hard now. I think it's the combination of endless technical debt, bikeshedding, discussions that go nowhere, needing sign off from a million people to do anything, other developers favoring dogmatic design patterns over pragmatism, etc, etc.

Yeah all the bike shedding is definitely a thing.

When I was starting out, I was solving problems for co-workers constantly with mini programs/tools (often 1-2 page websites), and I could see them use those tools to solve their daily tasks, and it was highly satisfying.

On one hand, that doesn't explain, as the article points out, that many of us also code in our spare time.

But at the same time, that does explain why many of us (raises hand) do woodworking or other "constructive" hobbies outside of coding.

Totally agree. 10 years ago the hot thing for programmers was photography. Now (or the last few years) woodworking and other similar DIY pursuits seem to be all the rage.

I'm a systems person and I really miss the days where you actually got to go and rack servers, cable them up, and power them on. Having all your infrastructure in the cloud is unsatisfying on a few levels.

I wonder how the happiness of plumbers has evolved.

I see plumbers who come in, do something, leave and send the bill. Except their something didn't fix the problem.

How can you be happy in that case?

> I wonder how much of this is also that the solutions feel less tangible and more abstract, and fundamentally less satisfying.

Karl Marx called this "Worker Alienation".

As in alienation from their work in a fundamental sense, and the inability to not only get the full, market value of their labor, but in the basic inability to even get satisfaction of the work, and the eventual alienation of self-image that eventually follows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

Comparing programming with plumbing seems comparing apples and oranges. In such jobs people probably dream of the worst imaginable IT micro managers. Such companies are typically lead by a bunch of furious old guys that do nothing. It's hard to take such an assessment seriously made by people who never worked in a similar job.

Yes, I am willingly comparing apples to oranges.

I'm comparing the idea is that most IT work (like a lot of white collar work in general) is abstract, and less well-defined.

Whereas with a lot of the trades in the physical realm, a lot of it is repetitive and you complete it.

It's the same with plumbers, mechanics, etc. Yes there's the occasional problem that will escape you and bother you for weeks. But most of the work is repetitive, and has a definite start and an end. And you seldom have a feeling like you wasted a whole day and got nothing done.

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