As someone who has obligations to provide for a family in the USA, I can't imagine leaving dev work without an absolute clear passion and burning drive to do something specific. Giving up a six figure income I use to feed and house my family that demands I use my brain while sitting in a comfortable indoor environment, doing nothing more physically taxing than use a keyboard? Sure, I have fantasies from time to time about doing something with more dynamism in meatspace, but let's get real: it's a fantasy. I can't imagine recommending anyone with a stable career in data work upset that apple cart unless they already have a clear aim in mind, which they think about day and night - not with the unsureness of this post.
I think some people must have some romantic view of manual labor, like it is more noble or pure than moving protobufs from one API layer to the other. Combine that with the very real problem of burnout and stress from an emotionally abusive work environment, and you have people thinking they want to quit and do farming or something. A lot of my peers in the office quite obviously (it's hard to hide) grew up quite well off and have no idea what it's like to work a mind-numbingly dull service job or how much daily manual labor wrecks your body.
I've had the pleasure (/s) of working retail, being a janitor at a McDonalds, working in a plastics factory that wrecked my sense of smell, and hauling shingles up onto a roof in 100F+ summer temperatures. I will take my sit-down, climate controlled, fingers typing job over any of them, any day, no matter how much those meetings and status updates annoy me.
And, none of the above even touched on salary or standard of living...
As a bit of a counterpoint, I have a number of people with more "blue collar" jobs in my family, and while they also relate all the downsides of manual labor that you listed, they also see what I do as a clear "no thank you!".
They would, of course, love to be paid as well as I am, and many would love the schedule flexibility (though some of them also get to make their own schedules much like I do), but they feel very strongly that being stuck inside, immobile, spending all their days reading, writing, and talking, mostly on a computer screen, would be totally miserable. So the grass isn't always greener!
I'm the opposite, I certainly fantasize about doing different things that are mostly intellectual, but I know I'm well suited to sitting around reading, thinking, writing, and chatting from time to time.
I didn't really understand this until some of those family members started finishing high school, and I started trying to suggest careers that seemed good to me, and more than one person finally told me, "I don't want to do any of those things because I'll be stuck in front of a computer all day every day and I would hate that". And I think they were right! "Know thyself" is important.
(Note: I'm talking about careers in trades and professions that are not office work. But not entry level jobs at retail businesses like most of your examples. I think everyone does indeed hate working in retail. But not everyone actually does prefer being on a computer in an office to nailing shingles onto a hot roof!)
I miss retail, selling electronics and answering technical questions at radio shack.
I loved that everything I sold went into my pocket. Certain products had spiffs (10 dollars for activating a phone/plan) while everything had a commission (%4 for name brand / 6%/ 10% (for batteries). If I didn't sell enough to make minimum wage I would get minimum wage otherwise whatever I made.
I loved the busy time around christmas. I loved when people came up and I rang them up. I loved playing with the products and learning about the stock.
I worked at a booth that gave away food and sold cheese/meat baskets. I loved giving away food, selling and collecting the money.
I wouldn't go back but I miss that selling feeling.
I worked in carpeting, which involved glueing and unglueing carpets from floors.
Although I had this job only for a year to save money for university, it was a miserable year. I developed a severe allergy to dust, the fumes from the glue messed up my sense of smell, I totally agree with you.
And also many tools currently in use in the trades are stuck in the last century UX-wise. There's a lot of open innovation in reducing the need for manual force or awkward body positions...
And there's probably some solutions that simply need more adoption like electric stair climbers.
I'm glad you love your career! I found myself getting increasingly unfit, sad, daylight-deprived and in need of doing something - anything! - else that involved me moving my body. (Bandaids like a standing desk or regular breaks or gym work or a SAD lamp couldn't really detract from the fact I was spending 8 hours a day (the brightest daylight hours too!), in the prime of my life, cooped up at a desk. After a career in live sound, I now design and install high-end A/V hardware and I love it.
my understanding of most blue collar jobs is the first 5-15 years are great, but as your body starts to break down, you physically can't do it any more.
My first 3-4 years were meh in terms of income, but great in terms of fun (could hack long hours, and I got excited for every little thing). My next 5 years were great in terms of income, and meh in terms of fun (I just wanted to get paid and leave at 5pm). Nowadays, the money is still good so it’s hard to give up, I don’t like software engineering (doing software with a team, with deadlines, with oncall, with managers, etc) anymore. I still love doing side projects.
I'm no fool. I stash a lot away. If I'm lucky, I'll retire early. If not, I'll have more than enough cushion to pivot without a major disruption in lifestyle. I certainly saw enough instability in every other profession - even civil service - since COVID to know that there is no guarantee in this world.
> Giving up a six figure income I use to feed and house my family
I'm getting ready to do a pivot and have set a hard deadline: if my income is going to take a very large hit, it needs to be reflected when I fill out the FAFSA for my oldest child. I'm pretty sure that I have 2 years to pivot because I am filling out the FAFSA in 4. If I can't make it happen by then, I'll need to stick it out for a while.
Other than that kind of thing, I think you dramatically overestimate how much you need your 6-figure job.
I'm still trying to figure out what my pivot will be. All I know is that if I have to work with people that don't care, it has to be a job in which not caring is totally fine for the work they do.
If you have savings, it's easier to imagine. Also, it's probably not career-ending to take a few year break but I don't know much about this anecdotally.
> it's probably not career-ending to take a few year break but I don't know much about this anecdotally
This is true.
A fair while back I left database and dev work for a few years. Tried my hand at kitchen design and sales, loading trucks, ISP tech support, chicken farming, builder's merchant sales counter, call centre night manager, farm labourer, collections agent, and more.
Loved it all, but my motivation was to experiment to see if the tech world was just my default or something I truly enjoyed. Turned out it was the latter so I returned to it.
Initially I was down about 20% on salary on my return to the industry, but a couple of years sorted that out and early employers seemed to appreciate the more rounded real-world experience.
Cathartic. Though I wouldn't do it again now I have a wife, mortgage, and dog to support.
Not the person you're replying to, but, personally, because my career is a Sword of Damocles.
There are projects, the time-scale is like a year, they can fail spectacularly, and it can be perceived as (may actually be) my fault. Projects from years ago can be understood, in hindsight, to have been fucked up. I fantasize about quitting and driving a bus, going home everyday having no doubt that the day's work met expectations. Giving my son a bath without feeling compelled to sneak away for another edit-compile-debug cycle.
It's becoming increasingly evident to me that I just want to stockpile savings against what feels like an increasingly inevitable crash-and-burn of this career. Be it GenAI, my own ADHD and lack of follow-through, whatever.
And when that day comes, just do something I can't fuck up
It sounds more like a perspective issue than anything. Dev work is becoming more unstable - we’re now being sacrificed quarterly to appease the Shareholder Omnissiah - even the best of us.
The old deal was that “if you were good or smart you’d always have work” isn’t true anymore. Instead we have to just accept chronic instability - but we do have a choice!
…just stop doing extra. Stop it. Control yourself and re-evaluate what’s important. It’s a hard cycle to break, but I believe you can do it. Then if you get laid off or a project crashes, just shrug and onto the next one.
How can they really apply pressure to anyone if you’re subject to random layoffs? Eventually it will be your turn, so just chill to heal burnout, then instead of extra cycles for your job, do something you enjoy, maybe build a shelter in the woods somewhere, learn to live off the land, find a local source of body paint for your war band, learn to weld so you can build a mad max roadster in the coming wasteland apocalypse you know this isn’t coming out like how I expected; on closer inspection I also have a lot of anxiety about this “new normal” apparently?
> …just stop doing extra. Stop it. Control yourself and re-evaluate what’s important. It’s a hard cycle to break, but I believe you can do it. Then if you get laid off or a project crashes, just shrug and onto the next one.
That's why I need the savings. You're suggesting I behave like a man with leverage. Currently, I am not one.
FWIW, this current level of burnout-inducing commitment is because I am gunning for a promotion. If I get it, I will indeed pull back. Or, indeed, if I don't get it. One way or the other.
1. My career is no less a Sword of Damocles when I am semi-checked-out and spending more time on domesticity. Getting promoted would, I hope, (a) make me more secure in my current position by tying it to the judgment of the people who promoted me, (b) make me secure in my career more generally by generating a paper trail of high performance in this position, and (c) make me more secure generally by increasing my income and allowing me to save more.
2. My wife encouraged me to do it, and I need to demonstrate commitment to both professional success and The Domestic Project (enabled, as it is, more by our combined incomes than our actual domestic labor) to keep her happy. Possibly to keep her around. It is valuable for our relationship, I think, for her to know what it takes, so that FOMO on lost income does not foster resentment of my complacency in my career
After years of this in FANG/adjacent, I recently started a new job that isn't like this. I didn't know it really existed. But we work quarter to quarter on goals. If they slip, next quarter is fine, no stress.
I work 9-5.
Re: AI. Ya I dunno. I imagine we'll ride the (10 year?) wave of being the principal AI tool users before we're replaced by an MBA and a prompt. More than enough to squirrel away money.
Just the lingering endless possibilities of youth. I don't mind being a dev. Wouldn't say I _love_ it, but the stresses of the job really aren't that bad compared to other jobs I've had.
IME, people are often (not always) very bad at identifying the true source of their psychological stressors. When your life is unsatisfying for reasons that are your fault (or just very hard to fix) and hard to grapple with (e.g., your romantic life is awful, you hate your physical apperance, you antagonized your family, you're an addict, etc.), your working hours can feel intensely oppressive with that other stuff weighing on you and the newness of scenery and focus can appear like an attractive chance to escape. But it's often an avoidance tactic.
I have no idea if that's the OP's issue, but the great vagueness in his question about jumping careers sure raises red flags for me. The grass often isn't greener elsewhere, and the problems just follow you.
