Hacker News Reader

Comment by purple-leafy | Hacker News Reader

I’ve had the same thoughts lately, I think AI has made software lose its “magic” for me. That and the stress of delivery.

Here’s what I did: I switched from 5 day weeks to 4 day 32 hour weeks. That has helped immensely. So you could consider that, or even a partial career break.

If you do want to quit cold turkey, heres some roles you could transition into in the same ballpark:

- DevOps

- Tester

- Firmware/embedded Engineer

- Technical Writer

- Data Engineer

- Data Scientist

- Statistician

- Business Analyst

- CAD architect

- Startup founder (easier than you think to start a startup and get funding)

Things I’ve considered that play well with a software mindset but require re-skilling

- Electrical Engineer

- Electrician

- Carpenter

- Gardener

- Farmer

- Welder

- Barista

What reasons have you found that make you want to stop being a Software Engineer?

View on HN

> What reasons have you found that make you want to stop being a Software Engineer?

this is an excellent question. each individual may give different reasons, and the reasons could suggest completely different occupations as a good fit. this requires a bit of self-reflection to unpack what exactly is motivating a change.

dislike being on call? struggle with delivery pressure? don't pick a new job with on-call responsibility or a "real time" delivery aspect.

dislike having low autonomy? don't pick a new job that also has low autonomy. pick something where you're the boss or have some well-defined responsibility.

dislike being stuck in a cube farm? don't pick another job where you wear a different hat but end up stuck in an equivalent cube farm.

dislike not being able to see real world results of your work in less than a year? don't pick another job in an sector with very slow feedback loops.

(i'm revealing a bit about my preferences with the above example questions, but hopefully the general idea comes through... )

Electrician generally requires a number of years working under supervision in order to get your apprenticeship, journeyman and then master status. A not so insignificant part of that supervised work is just digging trenches or other hard physical labor and not actually running circuits or wiring things and you're not really allowed to do solo work until you're a master electrician so starting your own company takes a while at relatively low pay, long hours and hard labor. It's tough to transition to later in life.

Sorry, but in what country are electricians digging trenches?

I am an electrician, technically. (I do high voltage testing for a living.)

In the US it's common for entry level or apprentice to be the ones making a trench on residential jobs. It's part of the hazing culture, my best guess, that the older workers pass down. I hired electricians and they did the trenchwork with shovels.

Anywhere that builds houses

Not at all. I have never seen electricians dig a single trench here in Europe.

Who digs them then?

I'm in similar shoes as OP, want to do something else. I think I'm burned out, and don't have the way to fix it (e.g. taking a year long sabbatical)

I was looking into a lot of these things you mention here, problem is the "golden handcuff" from software engineering. I could only start doing anything new by taking a HUGE pay cut for many years, and I simply can't do that in my current life situation.

Let me know if you have a solution to that :D

I'm not sure Barista is going to hit the 200k / year or whatever US engineers are used to earning! Elec engineer is what I started doing, but moved out of quickly, and requires probably a 4 year time investment. If I was more practical I'd definitely consider a trade (plumbing, electrician) but they can be hard work as you get older. Tree surgeon seemed to be a popular route for outdoorsy problem solvers here in the UK. You also missed off anything in the project management, coaching, agile space - possibly for a good reason!

Plumbing, instead of electrical engineering?

You have to be joking.

Plumber's pay is about on par with that of software engineers in the Pacific Northwest of the US. Job satisfaction, anecdotally, seems to be a bit better than software engineers, too.

I talk to a lot of both parties. I'm personally in a jack of all trades job that has me doing everything from occasionally using shovels in dirt and other manual labor, as well as higher-end stuff, like programming. It's pretty nice, mental health-wise.

The problem with manual labor is, they are really paid peanuts unless you have the education and the certification and whatever, which takes X years.

I'm actually thinking about getting into home demolition. I had to remove every piece of floor and plywood underneath and cut off the bottom 4 feet of the dry walls of the basement due to flooding and I found it extremely satisfying. I don't need a license to do that too. I'd be happy to do it part-time for maybe $25/hour.

The person that “demolished” the house on a property I bought did it for free and made a nice profit. Before going with them I got an estimate from a “house recycler” that wanted $45-50,000, plus disposal charges for anything they couldn’t use for resale, to remove the house. That was a ridiculous ask in my opinion.

The person that did the “demolition” carefully extracted anything of value (timber, fixtures, hardware, etc.) and resold as they went. It was a mid sized house from the 80s and had good bones (but significant issues) and some nice updates. It was a great deal for us both. He cleared about $10k per week (after his costs) for two weeks and I ended up with a pristine lot.

Plumbing is so much more than manual labor.

I guess I tend to view things from the perspective of top performers, because I am a person who tries to excel. That said, technology people are usually paid peanuts unless they have the education, skills, and sometimes certifications.

I agree, demolition work is very fun and a very nice foil to working with technology, especially after a difficult week.

Barista is a fun job but it's about being on your feet while multitasking and talking to strangers. It's an endurance sport. When I was a barista I burned so many calories at work that I became underweight.

Interesting. I don't speak the official language of my city so that's not doable. But just curious, wouldn't you eat a lot of food?

You get free food yeah but you get tired of eating the same limited menu every day. And it's simply hard to eat as much as you burn. At an 8 hour shift, I burned the equivalent calories as walking 10 miles. (Not that many steps but that many calories from adrenaline and whatever.) You'd have to basically eat an extra large meal a day on top of your normal diet to make up for it. Plus you're flat out working for those whole eight hours, so you're too tired to cook dinner when you get home.

How did you manage to switch to a 4 day 32 hour work week?

Just asked to

Reply on news.ycombinator.com