My father just retired from 35 years of "hard work" as a bread man. Driving around to grocery stores. Managing orders. Slinging bread onto shelves.
I say "hard work" in quotes because, as he puts it, he never had to make any decisions. He just showed up, did the work, went home. Yes, it was physically demanding, but you have to be pretty stupid to get it wrong (and yet, somehow, some of his coworkers did, but I digress).
He's going through a depression right now, and it's 100% not knowing what to do with himself. He doesn't have anyone to tell him what to do. He's 60 years old this year and has not lacked someone giving him orders since he was 18 years old and joined the Army.
I'm going on 20 years as a software developer. I've helped him on his route before. He's helped me build sales tracking databases. So we've gotten to have a bit of a peek into each other's worlds. We've had a lot of conversations about the nature of work. Being a software developer is a lot "harder" than being a ditch digger. As a manual laborer, you show up, do your job, go home. It might be physically demanding, but your body eventually adapts. You get stronger. You tolerate the pain better. Baring physical injury, you just keep on trucking.
But software development never gets easier. Nobody knows what is the "right" solution to any problem. Any particular task is potentially unbounded in the time it takes to complete it. You're always working at the limit of your understanding. Indeed, if you aren't, you're wasting time. And that's just the technical portion of the craft. There's also the office politics (which, BTW, blow my dad's mind. He says he's seen people get punched for far less than I've experienced in an office environment).
Or, at least, that's the ideal. I think, anyway. In reality, a lot of people treat software development more like ditch-digging than what I've described. Show up, do what you're told, body molds itself to chair.
How do you tell the difference between just showing up vs. actually doing the real, hard work of having to make risky decisions that might not pay off? I think a good litmus test is, in all that time, working at startups, working for other people, did you ever do anything for yourself? Did you ever make a decision--of any kind, on anything--that was not based on your expectation of how someone else would evaluate it? Your cofounders, your investors, the market, etc.?
In other words, are you the kind of person who gets bored and A) complains about it, or B) finds a box of crayons and some paper? Because option A is looking for orders.
I say "hard work" in quotes because, as he puts it, he never had to make any decisions. He just showed up, did the work, went home. Yes, it was physically demanding, but you have to be pretty stupid to get it wrong (and yet, somehow, some of his coworkers did, but I digress).
He's going through a depression right now, and it's 100% not knowing what to do with himself. He doesn't have anyone to tell him what to do. He's 60 years old this year and has not lacked someone giving him orders since he was 18 years old and joined the Army.
I'm going on 20 years as a software developer. I've helped him on his route before. He's helped me build sales tracking databases. So we've gotten to have a bit of a peek into each other's worlds. We've had a lot of conversations about the nature of work. Being a software developer is a lot "harder" than being a ditch digger. As a manual laborer, you show up, do your job, go home. It might be physically demanding, but your body eventually adapts. You get stronger. You tolerate the pain better. Baring physical injury, you just keep on trucking.
But software development never gets easier. Nobody knows what is the "right" solution to any problem. Any particular task is potentially unbounded in the time it takes to complete it. You're always working at the limit of your understanding. Indeed, if you aren't, you're wasting time. And that's just the technical portion of the craft. There's also the office politics (which, BTW, blow my dad's mind. He says he's seen people get punched for far less than I've experienced in an office environment).
Or, at least, that's the ideal. I think, anyway. In reality, a lot of people treat software development more like ditch-digging than what I've described. Show up, do what you're told, body molds itself to chair.
How do you tell the difference between just showing up vs. actually doing the real, hard work of having to make risky decisions that might not pay off? I think a good litmus test is, in all that time, working at startups, working for other people, did you ever do anything for yourself? Did you ever make a decision--of any kind, on anything--that was not based on your expectation of how someone else would evaluate it? Your cofounders, your investors, the market, etc.?
In other words, are you the kind of person who gets bored and A) complains about it, or B) finds a box of crayons and some paper? Because option A is looking for orders.