Making things work | Hacker News Reader

Making things work

nytimes.com

38 pointsrglovejoy15 comments

What I get out of this review is that the author has come to an understanding that it feels good to work with your hands. And I agree. I like working with my hands too. I've renovated my house, built a chicken coop and shed. I've built a stone patio and change the oil in my car. These things can be difficult and time consuming but very rewarding, and you certainly develop a respect for the skills it takes to do these things professionally.

However, I would never choose to do these things as a full-time career. I like being a "knowledge worker" and manager and all of the challenges that it entails. I also enjoy the freedom it gives me to choose to do manual labor when I want to. I'm friends with a house painter, general contractor and two fisherman. The painter and fishermen have VERY demanding jobs and worry (now that they are in their 40's) about how long they can continue.

These types of articles and books surface from time to time and they always seem to romanticize blue collar work. In my opinion blue collar work makes a great hobby but in real life it is hard and physically demanding work. I'll happily keep my desk-jockey status.

This is a very interesting article. I've seen a few families I know push kids into college who were clearly better suited for blue collar work. That just frustrates the kids and the parents who don't understand why their kid just doesn't fit into the college mold. I'm hoping to encourage my children to take whatever path makes sense for them and not force them to be anything that doesn't work for them. I hope that the US starts producing things again and thus blue collar labor is valued more so that kids who aren't really meant for college always have a respected, valued place in society.

What the US needs is a really good vocational-level school system. We have a huge gap between universities and trade schools. If we were to formalize vocational/trade schools it would bring much more legitimacy to those careers.

Being a resident of Québec, Canada, I find that the CEGEP ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEGEP ) system employed here is something that other provinces and perhaps even the United States should take a closer look at.

The wiki page can describe the benefits of such a system in much more detail than I can, but I can offer one salient piece of information: the system works, and it works quite well.

I'm hoping to encourage my children to take whatever path makes sense for them and not force them to be anything that doesn't work for them.

I think you'll be a good parent if this is your attitude. I hate to say it though, but in the words of the Boss:

Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they aint coming back; to your hometown

While there is a demand - and I believe always will be - for tradespeople and skilled professionals (i.e. Electricians and Mechanics) the blue collar labour that we've known from the 20th century is dead and gone. It's good to understand this - High School and continued education matter, because nobody is getting a good union job at the factory any more.

>It's good to understand this - High School and continued education matter, because nobody is getting a good union job at the factory any more.

I think that's a very important distinction that you have mentioned.

There will always be positions for skilled professionals. I'd go one step beyond that and say that there will also always be positions for unskilled workers in fields that must remain local - construction, food preparation, etc.

Other unskilled workers need to be careful -- white or blue collar.

Timely article, after I (a mechanically disinclined person) just replaced the thermostat on my '93 Camry -- a simple job for most, but hard for me. And a very interesting read.

>The fact of the matter is that most forms of real knowledge, including self-knowledge, come from the effort to struggle with and master the brute reality of material objects — loosening a bolt without stripping its threads, or backing a semi rig into a loading dock. All these activities, if done well, require knowledge both about the world as it is and about yourself, and your own limitations.

I think that most programmers can agree that mastering programming is much of the same -- struggling with and finally mastering the known - and unknown - limitations of the tools we are using. In that regard, we are doing exactly what the mechanic does.

You could rightly argue that the knowledge the mechanic gets can be applied in far more places -- bolts hold the world together, and understanding how to properly loosen one can come in handy. That tricky LDAP bug I solved yesterday doesn't apply to many other places.

The article goes on to discuss the process of rebuilding an engine -- an intricate, hands on task. But the description also points to the mental problem solving that takes place. The mechanic must have a mental model of an engine, so that seeing a small distortion or a slight bend raises an alarm of future problems. Programmers use those same mental models on a daily basis.

My father always says that you don't pay a mechanic to fix your car. You pay a mechanic for their knowledge - their ability to recognize odd operating conditions, their ability to know the internal processes and figure out where the system is failing. That's a good mechanic, and that sounds like a good programmer to me.

I'm not trying to claim that all programmers could be good mechanics, or that the opposite is true -- I almost needed a good mechanic to replace my thermostat, and that's about as simple as it gets! I just think that much more overlap exists between these fields than we might believe.

They can’t be learned simply by following rules, as a computer does; they require intuitive knowledge that comes from long experience and repeated encounters with difficulty and failure.

It's hard to try to refute this without sounding like I'm just defending my tribe, but I have to call bullshit on this one. The person who thinks that working with computers doesn't require intuition derived from repeated failures has had very limited experience with computers.

I don't think the author was specifically targeting computer scientists, engineers and programmers. Rather I assume he was referring to the millions of jobs that rely on the computer for their every day tasks (e.g. lawyers, bankers, etc.). I hope this doesn't come across as argumentative because I agree 100% with your assessment with regards to developers.

I think you misinterpreted the sentence. I understand it to mean: These tasks can't be automated by a computer using an algorithm; the tasks require intuitive knowledge that comes from long experience and repeated encounters with difficulty and failure.

On second read, I think you're right. My bad.

The part that matters is not if the job is a blue collar job, or white collar job, but if the type of work is a good fit for you. Neither type of work is inherently more valuable, they just have a different set of trade offs that need to be considered.

Although I do appreciate the author's attempt to raise the perceived worthiness of blue collar jobs to an equal level as white collar jobs.

This extract was posted last week. Well worth a read... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html

This supports the observation that the 4 scariest words any homeowner can hear, "You have a problem," are much worse coming from your plumber than from your computer repair person.

Actually, I'd take hearing them from a plumber over any other tradesman! (Like a roofer, mason, or god forbid electrician.) :-)

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