Technology

+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.

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 :^)

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.

Fuck. That's exactly it.

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.

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

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.

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

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.