cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15205399
Really cool blog post with beautiful photos and starts with a fun and interesting intro, here captured in an image for the the tl;dr but-want-to-comment-anyway among you :
One of my coworkers and I often discuss quitting our stressful-stupid IT jobs and going to work at Home Depot or Costco or even Arby’s.
Today I took my car in for routine service. A place I use all the time. Major chain.
The poor guy checking me in had to click past about 50 stupid pointless prompts on his workstation. He had serious muscle memory going on. The man was impressive, the software was not.
I can just imagine the asshole midlevel manager who made some beleaguered coder write all that pointless popup shit, to make sure “they don’t forget to upsell the customer” and god knows what other inane nonsense .
It’s embarassing how bad software is in 2024. Especially point of sale systems and medical records.
+1 to Point Of Sale systems - POS as the acronym is. Every single one of them.
Most people aren’t actually that good at their jobs, only good enough.
Most people aren’t actually that good at their jobs, only good enough
Most jobs don’t come with good pay.
They get what they pay for.
Check out the current Luddite movement, this is their main complaint
I used to be a POS tech. It’s such a gross, mismanaged walled garden.
Currently I spend a lot of time advising against pop ups like that :^)
Thank you.
If I could keep my salary I’d find another line of work. Something outside maybe? Whatever lets my brain go home at night.
Working outside sounds great when you’re working indoor all the time. And at first it will be refreshing.
However after a few years (months?) of working outside, in the cold, the rain, the heat, you’ll envy the office workers and their perfect temperature open space with a nearby coffee corner.
It’s not gonna be hard labor ;) there has to be a job where I go around to parks and manage stuff. Tree supervisor? Bush Boss?
It doesn’t pay well, but “park ranger” is exactly that.
Heard over at reddit that walking dogs should be pretty viable cash.
I hear they also tip you in avocados
Fuck. That’s exactly it.
I feel this. At my last job, there were many meetings I didn’t think were useful in addition of software change just for the sake of change. Package.json errors everywhere. Small issues with docker to fix all day.
Left IT for flying. Figured it’d be a great change to my indoor-centric lifestyle.
My whole life I’ve seen people that are or became masters of their craft and I’ve always admired them. I’m in my 30s. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be a master of anything but I was far closer in IT than I am as a pilot lol
I started in software and moved on to physics, which has a lot of programming and is similar in many ways. Still, it’s different and I like that I made the choice. I will soon have contributed to physics in a small but meaningful way, which was my reason for switching. I plan to stop after that and just go back to programming. Posts like these make me think I should switch again but to an even more orthogonal subject.
Anything with your hands, really. I do cross stitch and used to build scale models
Same energy: this legendary comment in an issue on the Docker github repo (by the issue OP, no less)
https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149477
Check this out https://github.com/dylanaraps
For a period i worked in assisted living tech, testing prototypes together with staff and patients in nursing homes. That was a very rewarding type of IT/tech job with a short feedback loop that you’re actually helping a real person.
Huh, I’m using technology as an escape from woodworking. Lack of space/tools and a few times when I tried to do something the wood was too seasoned (last thing I tried was whittling hoping to do it in my room anytime and not have dust as an issue, cheap folding knife probably didn’t help)
Well not fully true on the escape part, I just drop things really easy when I run into issues like that. Well that and I haven’t done anything noteworthy with technology or woodworking.
I will never understand why burned up people in IT is so intent of changing a work where you may have intellectual challenges but you don’t need to make strenous physical effort for extreme physical labor. I wouldn’t be caught dead doing one of those jobs, and the idea of wanting them is unfathomable to me.
There’s satisfaction to be found when labour results in a tangible and lasting result.
Some of the people I know who quit the IT industry did so because they felt all of the effort they put in never seemed to achieve anything. Too many jobs at startups who exist only to be bought and shut down by bigger fish for some IP etc.
For some work is not just about wages or challenges, it’s about building something useful and meaningful, whether figuratively or literally.
There’s satisfaction to be found when labour results in a tangible and lasting result.
There is also a satisfaction in a task that has a clear goal and end point.
There’s satisfaction to be found when labour results in a tangible and lasting result.
Nothing human is eternal. But you’re speaking in absolutes and I challenge that. Give me intellectual challenges, I couldn’t care less about making a nice chair or a sculpture.
Too many jobs at startups
That’s the problem. You can try elsewhere, maybe?
You’re probably an asshole to everyone around you if you think the only intellectual jobs are ones that are done sitting at a desk.
Please enlighten me about the deep thinking challenges involved in fabricating a chair. I’ll wait.
Yo someone else already wrote up examples. But you could look at any advanced woodworking video for custom furniture and you’ll see.
You’d be like this guy if you made furniture: https://youtu.be/dTcvmmOkqJI
I don’t click in unexplained videos, sorry.
Will go a step further and call it entitled white collar opinion. I lucked the fuck out and gotta outta food service for IT.
Not a minute goes by I’m not thankful, no matter what kinda shit day I’m having I’m not putting away truck while orders come in and the prep called out and don’t forget to clean the frier by the way how did you forget the onions?!?!?!?!?
Yeah go work that shit with no light at the end of the tunnel and then talk about how it’s wonderful.
Bonkers pov totally agree.
I tend to agree with you. I work in a retail pharmacy and literally have had nightmares about work. Some folks dont know how good they have it. But in their defense satisfaction is an unfortunately ephemeral beast. When i first switched from the floor to pharmacy i was happier than id been in years. I still wouldn’t go backwards, but god damn some days i would love a job where i can sit down and the only customer i have to worry about is my boss.
You know, there are more options than food service or IT lol
There’s something primal about making something with your own hands that you just can’t get with IT. Sure, you can deploy and maintain an app, but you can’t reach out and touch it, smell it, or move it. You can’t look at the fruits of your labor and see it as a complete work instead of a reminder that you need to fix this bug, and you have that feature request to triage, oh and you need to update this library to address that zero day vulnerability…
Plus, your brain is a muscle, too. When you’ve spent decades primarily thinking with your brain in one specific way, that muscle starts to get fatigued. Changing your routine becomes very alluring, and it lets you exercise new muscles, and challenge yourself to think in new ways.
To me it feels like people romanticising their hobbies/escape activities. If they started doing it as work soon enough they would have lots of pain points and stress. Sure you don’t have CVEs or libraries to update but the deadline for that chair or cabinet you were commissioned is coming and you can’t just get the damn thing right. At the same time you have another customer complaining that you need to check some other stuff you’ve made that isn’t working right … see where I’m going?
I know a lot of people in the trades and they have very similar or analogous pain points as me in software.
Doing it as a hobby though? It’s amazing. I don’t really need a car anymore but I’ve been learning how to fix mine and it has been great
I have another impression about romanticizing trades: there’s a deep anti-intellectualism and an exaltation of not having to think. For me that idea is pure hell.
You think people in trades don’t think at work? This is actually just classism or something idk. You really don’t think electricians, contractors, plumbers etc aren’t problem solving on the daily? We’re not talking about working on a factory line.
You really don’t think electricians, contractors, plumbers etc aren’t problem solving on the daily?
General problem solving, probably. Deep thinking? Nah.
And besides, I doubt most electricians need to apply Kirchhoff’s Law on a daily basis.
Right because IT workers are philosophizing through setting up networks okay
Who said anything about networks?
I have an outdoors job (biology/ecology), it’s not extreme lmao, although when I go hiking with my tech friends it does seem like maybe it is extreme to them. Your body adapts to what you do. I do office work some days and outdoors work others, and my mental health after more outdoors days just is like exponentially better. I feel connected to nature, I am using my body, I’m touching and smelling and seeing novel things every day. And in my case, doing something that I truly believe matters.
I enjoy my office days, I get to do planning, mapping, data analysis … but I wouldn’t be caught dead using all my mental energy to stare at a screen every day lol
I have an outdoors job
Not for me, I despise the Big Blue Room.
Why? Honestly, what do you dislike about being outside?
I don’t specially dislike it, but everybody talks about the outdoor like the thing they cannot live without. I… actually thrived during COVID, I wasn’t force to tolerate idiots and I didn’t need to leave my house. I didn’t really feel the need to see the external world.
That’s not the same thing, I go outdoors constantly and don’t see people. What you have isn’t a dislike of the outdoors, it’s agoraphobia.
Nope. I don’t have a panic reaction when I go outside (and now I go daily to the office, because it’s near and more confortable than my house). I just don’t have the Nature fetish some people do.
In my country I went to see the Iguazú falls and my reaction was “Huh. Nice.”
You kind of seem like the most insufferable person imaginable so honestly, cool. Stay inside by yourself.
