Comment on Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 6 months ago
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.
That’s where I would recommend one thing to other software people as a software person myself: make your own tools.
I started writing a little notepad type thing just so I could have a cross platform tool with a set bunch of capabilities no matter what OS I’m on.
It’s very rewarding to just want something, make it, and use it.
It can be simple, it can be complicated… It can work like everything else does or only in a way that works for you.
It’s very freeing to work on something where you don’t have to ask fifteen people what the requirements are and then have them change under you. If your tool is useful and you use it you don’t even need testing overhead either.
I highly recommend it. Build your own tools when you find the existing ones to be frustrating.
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.
If you don’t think building chairs or sculptures requires solving “intellectual” challenges you’ve never tried building a completely wooden multi-axial interlocking joint furniture…
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.
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.
Not counting the “projects patterns” that would be invented because some manager thinks it’ll be cheaper and machines taking the fun part, leaving you to do the boring or frustrating part.
In IT sometimes you open an old project and wonder who the fuck wrote this shit.
As a contractor you tear down a wall and discover the house wasn’t built as you expected, and wonder who the fuck built it this way.
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.
Nah I do biology as a hobby and also for work, it’s great. There are the usual trappings of work, but I’ve had jobs I’m not passionate about and it’s definitely worse lol. I feel like what you’re saying is a cope people say when they don’t follow their passions.
Yeah it is a luxury opinion to have. 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
Eccitaze@yiffit.net 6 months ago
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.
balder1991@lemmy.world 6 months ago
A month ago I decided to paint a new door that was placed at home. It felt like a chore to me, even though I was satisfied with it at the end.
richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 6 months ago
I’d say that tactile fetish for objects is fitting coming from a society that frowns upon physical contact with people.
I find that the wish is actually thinking as little as possible. That’s a nightmare for me.