8 ms·

I joke with programmer friends that we should become gardeners instead. I guess the appeal of physical labor is you get to leave work at work.

by dev360 11y ago

cosinetau 11y ago
It wasn't landscaping but, I worked in a shop where the supes were often abusive. That isn't always true.
unknownknowns 11y ago
I've enjoyed working in national security and defense. It's a laid-back environment and I can leave work at work without feeling stressed.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  What a world we live in. Defending the security of a nation = laid-back, no stress. Writing yet another CRUD backend for a mobile app = crazy hours and ulcers.
  - morga3sm 11y ago
    I mostly agree that the environment in government contracting is pretty laid back. We definitely have surge times, but generally we're focused more on getting things done correctly over fast. I think there's also a good understanding that people aren't as effective when they work over 40 hours/week for consecutive weeks.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      Having been in government, this seems to be the opposite of what I've seen. Makes me think it is fully a byproduct of culture, independent of the work done.
- sciguy77 11y ago
  Woah, can you expand on this? Are you a contractor or a government employee? What makes it laid back? Are the deadlines just more reasonable?
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    It depends on the contract. For the most part, the scrutiny of government auditors ensure that you actually can't work more than 40 hours in a single week. Sometimes the contract also ensures that the work cannot be done outside of a government-controlled facility. So if you're the actual do-the-work peon instead of someone in any of the several tiers of useless middlemen, you work regular 8 hour days, get 10 or 11 paid holidays, and when you get home you are simply done with work until the morning of the next workday. It does not matter much if you do your job well or do it poorly, because there are so many other people working on it that you will never get recognition for a job done well, nor will you get any blame for doing it poorly, so long as it does what it says on the box. The deadlines also vary by contract, but as every layer of middlemen adds its own padding, it wouldn't be remarkable to have two years to develop yet-another-CRUD-app with zero scalability, compatibility, or interoperability requirements. No one doing the actual work is a direct government employee, because the uniform pay schedules are completely incompatible with industry norms. The government employees are simply there to make sure the contractors do what is required. The net result is that you can get all your work done in just 2 hours and look busy for 6, or amble through it at a sloth's pace, gold-plating everything, achieving 100% test coverage, using ordinary software as a teaching lab for industry best practices, and such. There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work.
    - ryandrake 11y ago
      > There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work. These are the same downsides you see in the private sector.
amag 11y ago
Yeah, that and a lack of responsibility sometimes attracts me. My whole career (+15yrs) has basically been in industries where things are not allowed to go wrong. Some days I wish I was a lumberjack or maybe a programmer in an industry where you don't kill people or cost millions of dollars with a bug... But at the end of the day I can't stop myself from programming and I want to work on things that make a difference, so I'll leave the wood-cutting to my spare time.
- TheCoelacanth 11y ago
  Odd that you would pick lumberjack as an example since that is a job where mistakes frequently do kill people.
  - amag 11y ago
    Yeah, I know, I realized that as I wrote it, but I guess I like to be out in the woods and do some heavy labor. A bit of a simplification maybe, but as a lumberjack there are N+2 moving parts you need to care about, the saw, the tree and N coworkers in the proximity (N < 10) (if there's a moose and I catch it with my falling tree, it doesn't count as an accident, it counts as a bonus). With software there are thousands of moving parts and you can be pretty sure that no matter the amount of testing and code-reviewing, the parts will move in new unexpected ways once they reach the customers. Besides as a lumberjack when you leave work you leave work. You only have to worry about not killing someone during your working hours.
hellameta 11y ago
The appeal of physical labor? People only do physical labor because they are either unlucky or simply lack the knowledge to choose another path. I don't expect that to be the popular perspective on "PC" hacker news but that is the real world for you. Show me a gardener who wouldn't want to make 6 figures instead of breaking their back day in and day out for close to if not minimum wage? Appeal? Yeah right.
- softawre 11y ago
  You are right. But... I'd be a gardener. If it paid me the same I make now. At least for 3 months a year? I worked at Lowes in college hauling lumber and I miss it dearly (rose colored goggles and all). I was in the best shape of my life, I didn't think about work (lumber?) at home. It was a simpler life.
  - tdsamardzhiev 11y ago
    Last summer I discovered I particularly like gardening. I think I'd be a gardener too if it paid the same.
    - dev360 11y ago
      I guess its something that grows on you as you get older. Ive toyed with the idea of buying a little house in south europe, cut my expenses, work IT part-time/remot and have some land to grow stuff on.
    - hellameta 11y ago
      > I think I'd be a gardener too if it paid the same. this is exactly my point
  - ido 11y ago
    I wonder if you'd have enjoyed it as much if you weren't as young as you probably were at the time (late teens/early 20?) That sort of work can really wreck your body as you get older.
- 11y ago
brandontreb 11y ago
This must be a common joke amongst programmers. We often joke that we should all become potato farmers. Being outside, watching things grow, working with something physical. I totally get the appeal.
xyzzy4 11y ago
I actually got fired once because I didn't work crazy hours. Now I work at another company where it's much more laid back. I don't do any work when I get home or on the weekends.

I joke with programmer friends that we should become gardeners instead. I guess the appeal of physical labor is you get to leave work at work.

by dev360 11y ago

I joke with programmer friends that we should become gardeners instead. I guess the appeal of physical labor is you get to leave work at work.

cosinetau 11y ago

It wasn't landscaping but, I worked in a shop where the supes were often abusive. That isn't always true.

unknownknowns 11y ago

I've enjoyed working in national security and defense. It's a laid-back environment and I can leave work at work without feeling stressed.

ryandrake 11y ago
What a world we live in. Defending the security of a nation = laid-back, no stress. Writing yet another CRUD backend for a mobile app = crazy hours and ulcers.
- morga3sm 11y ago
  I mostly agree that the environment in government contracting is pretty laid back. We definitely have surge times, but generally we're focused more on getting things done correctly over fast. I think there's also a good understanding that people aren't as effective when they work over 40 hours/week for consecutive weeks.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Having been in government, this seems to be the opposite of what I've seen. Makes me think it is fully a byproduct of culture, independent of the work done.
sciguy77 11y ago
Woah, can you expand on this? Are you a contractor or a government employee? What makes it laid back? Are the deadlines just more reasonable?
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  It depends on the contract. For the most part, the scrutiny of government auditors ensure that you actually can't work more than 40 hours in a single week. Sometimes the contract also ensures that the work cannot be done outside of a government-controlled facility. So if you're the actual do-the-work peon instead of someone in any of the several tiers of useless middlemen, you work regular 8 hour days, get 10 or 11 paid holidays, and when you get home you are simply done with work until the morning of the next workday. It does not matter much if you do your job well or do it poorly, because there are so many other people working on it that you will never get recognition for a job done well, nor will you get any blame for doing it poorly, so long as it does what it says on the box. The deadlines also vary by contract, but as every layer of middlemen adds its own padding, it wouldn't be remarkable to have two years to develop yet-another-CRUD-app with zero scalability, compatibility, or interoperability requirements. No one doing the actual work is a direct government employee, because the uniform pay schedules are completely incompatible with industry norms. The government employees are simply there to make sure the contractors do what is required. The net result is that you can get all your work done in just 2 hours and look busy for 6, or amble through it at a sloth's pace, gold-plating everything, achieving 100% test coverage, using ordinary software as a teaching lab for industry best practices, and such. There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    > There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work. These are the same downsides you see in the private sector.

amag 11y ago

Yeah, that and a lack of responsibility sometimes attracts me. My whole career (+15yrs) has basically been in industries where things are not allowed to go wrong. Some days I wish I was a lumberjack or maybe a programmer in an industry where you don't kill people or cost millions of dollars with a bug... But at the end of the day I can't stop myself from programming and I want to work on things that make a difference, so I'll leave the wood-cutting to my spare time.

TheCoelacanth 11y ago
Odd that you would pick lumberjack as an example since that is a job where mistakes frequently do kill people.
- amag 11y ago
  Yeah, I know, I realized that as I wrote it, but I guess I like to be out in the woods and do some heavy labor. A bit of a simplification maybe, but as a lumberjack there are N+2 moving parts you need to care about, the saw, the tree and N coworkers in the proximity (N < 10) (if there's a moose and I catch it with my falling tree, it doesn't count as an accident, it counts as a bonus). With software there are thousands of moving parts and you can be pretty sure that no matter the amount of testing and code-reviewing, the parts will move in new unexpected ways once they reach the customers. Besides as a lumberjack when you leave work you leave work. You only have to worry about not killing someone during your working hours.

hellameta 11y ago

The appeal of physical labor? People only do physical labor because they are either unlucky or simply lack the knowledge to choose another path. I don't expect that to be the popular perspective on "PC" hacker news but that is the real world for you. Show me a gardener who wouldn't want to make 6 figures instead of breaking their back day in and day out for close to if not minimum wage? Appeal? Yeah right.

softawre 11y ago
You are right. But... I'd be a gardener. If it paid me the same I make now. At least for 3 months a year? I worked at Lowes in college hauling lumber and I miss it dearly (rose colored goggles and all). I was in the best shape of my life, I didn't think about work (lumber?) at home. It was a simpler life.
- tdsamardzhiev 11y ago
  Last summer I discovered I particularly like gardening. I think I'd be a gardener too if it paid the same.
  - dev360 11y ago
    I guess its something that grows on you as you get older. Ive toyed with the idea of buying a little house in south europe, cut my expenses, work IT part-time/remot and have some land to grow stuff on.
  - hellameta 11y ago
    > I think I'd be a gardener too if it paid the same. this is exactly my point
- ido 11y ago
  I wonder if you'd have enjoyed it as much if you weren't as young as you probably were at the time (late teens/early 20?) That sort of work can really wreck your body as you get older.
11y ago

brandontreb 11y ago

This must be a common joke amongst programmers. We often joke that we should all become potato farmers. Being outside, watching things grow, working with something physical. I totally get the appeal.

xyzzy4 11y ago

I actually got fired once because I didn't work crazy hours. Now I work at another company where it's much more laid back. I don't do any work when I get home or on the weekends.