Ask HN: Have you thought about leaving programming for the trades?
I’ve been working as a programmer for 10 years and think I’m done with it.
I feel like the golden age of being a programmer is gone. With constant learning, AI, and competing in a global market because of remote work, it’s super volatile.
Yet my neighbor is an electrician and he has endless clients. He can work 80-90 hours a week if he wants to. He has stable work. He just became a manager and is now making more than me. I think about this a lot, but my thoughts always go to aging. As long as my mind and fingers still work, I can work on a computer until I’m old and gray. The physical requirements are minimal. Could you shadow your neighbor (or someone else in the trade you be interested in) for a few days to get a better idea of the realities of the job and if you’d enjoy it? Also, pay attention to their frustrations and issues and ask if they have similar feelings, wishing they had a job like yours (the grass is always greener…). I think no matter that the job, if it’s a break from the norm, it will feel nice at first. Much like Office Space, I spent a few months doing demo work in addition to my normal IT job. I was working 90 hour weeks, was having a great time, and look back on that time fondly. However, I’m not sure I’d have the same view of it after 10 years, if it was my main job. I was a tourist, I didn’t live there, and I could stop whenever I wanted. "As long as my mind and fingers still work, I can work on a computer until I’m old and gray." This is a big assumption. Why would they hire an older guy? They can have cheaper people more willing to put up with BS by hiring under 5 yoe or offshore. One good person with experience can beat a several who aren’t so good. My old boss would give one of the newer/cheaper people a task and they would flounder for months on it. After about 3 months he’d ask me; I’d have it done and back to him in a couple hours. This happened countless times. While I get paid more than them, 2 hours of my time is cheaper than 3 months of their time… not to mention the value of faster turn around. There are also many problems I can see coming and avoid, because of experience, where a younger person has a good chance of hitting the issue head on. You’re also talking about hiring. I have a job and can keep it, assuming my mind and fingers still work. I’m not planning on interviewing much. That said, I did have a FAANG reach out to me just last week. I wouldn’t call myself old and gray yet, but I have aged into the protected class. As a hedge, I save my money and keep my expenses low. Sure, but the general consensus is that companies and managers are not as willing to hire the 15+ yoe crowd due to their cost. The new people you describe sound like they are bad, not just new. If you have FAANG coming to you, then it sounds like you're in a different class. If someone is just better than most, like 1 SD above, then it'll still be rough. The cost of everyone has and will continue dropping. Among the people who'll be cheaper, more experienced out of work people who already got into the shit housing market early will outbid younger more desperate people who can't afford to take cheaper salaries. I don't think we've ever seen that happen. I'm skeptical that it ever will. Costs go up as one gets older - family cost more , healthcare, etc. The company isn't just paying for your salary, They're paying for your benefits too. If you're factoring in cost of living to outbid someone, then clearly offshore could outbid onshore and the problem still stands. Personal costs shouldn't necessarily go down but also shouldn't inflate to require absurd salaries though. If you bought a home 10 years ago with a $250k salary, and are suddenly out of work along with everyone else, you have downward pressure on your asking price, but might have a better chance of tolerating it than someone who'll need a downpayment and to secure a long-term extremely high salary to service a brand new mortgage at a higher interest rate You also starred in a TV show for the trades right? Tool Time was an interesting chapter in my life, but not as lucrative as one might think. I left the trades for programming. Your body can't maintain that type of work unless you stay fit. Then there is the risk of injuries which is inevitable. Working on concrete is hard on your knees, hips and back. You eventually have to do something different like management. How long did it take your neighbour to become qualified/time served and how many further hours did it take for him to get to the position he is in now?
I think you're looking at another soul destroying ten years? I'm 59 and used to work in construction, many of my former peers are now physical wrecks. I got out in my 40's and, in hindsight, it was a good decision. I also can't think of anyone who made a huge amount of money at the time either? Your neighbor who makes more than you (I am guessing) he has been doing it for a longtime and is good at it. So let's not overlook the time it will take you to catch up to where s/he is. As for software dev being volatile, I agree. But it's not volatile for everyone. A good electrician is rare. A good programmer is rare. If you are moving based solely on your neighbors success, I urge you to speak to 30 other elecs before you make the jump. I hired a driver in Spain to take us from Valencia to Granada. Striking up a conversation with him on the way I learned he used to be an electrician and said he would never go back to it. Guess it depends on the individual. I worked in Alaska one summer and got to kind of assist an electrician while we were getting the cannery ready to process fish for the upcoming season. For a commercial job like that there was a good amount of physical labor and crawling around in attics etc involved getting the cables from place to place. I also had a job doing telecom wiring at my university. Most of that was just straightforward wiring jacks or hooking up lines at the end points but it did lead to another job I got at better pay but involved more physical labor pulling wires. Like anything else, any career you go into will need to be managed or you could just find yourself stagnating. Ended my last software engineering role in 2022 and have been doing carpentry and recently welding since then. Huge pay cut. 10x the satisfaction of building something tangible. If you can afford to scale back your lifestyle, and take time to learn the skills, do it! You won’t regret it. It is quite rewarding knowing that that many of the gears I made between 2015-2020 will still be in use in the year 2100. However, the pay and the commute across Chicago sucked. Sometimes I fancy about that but then I realize that I should wake up early because all those jobs go by the sun, work in cold and hot weather, drive around for many kms, etc. They could make more money than I do, it's well deserved and I'm OK with what I'm doing now. You could be sitting on a beach at the ocean doing your job. You can be part of a 1-5 man shop that makes a million (USD) a year per person. You could do both of these things. The only thing that limits you as a programer are your own ideas and your own ambitions. and luck. People often confuse luck with persistence. And vice versa. No. Brains and persistence, are more important. If you're not launching dumb stuff and you keep trying at some point something sticks. Learn from your failures, keep going after you fail, you're going to feel lucky when you do finally get a hit. Luck will have had NOTHING to do with it. This is something people oblivious to their lucky breaks keep saying to themselves. >you're going to feel lucky when you do finally get a hit. Yes, because if I try something for 15 times and only 1 time succeed it is not my skills that worked, otherwise they would have worked the first time, it is pure luck. So I feel lucky because I am. What do you mean by "If you're not launching dumb stuff"?
"...and you keep trying at some point something sticks" this part makes sense to me A work friend of mine is suffering from Tinnitus which started after his Covid infection, so much he cannot cope with normal conversations when speaking over Teams or in face to face interactions. He's a senior engineer and one of the best I know, and is considering wood working / joinery. From my research, it's not exactly well paid but he says it's something he's always wanted to do and will keep his mind busy and loud enough to distract away. This sounds like programming was not your thing in the first place. You probably were there just for the money and fashion. Im not a born hacker myself, but this is something i can do better then the majority of the population. While i also can do many thinggs well with my hands - ill barely achieve same expert level as the best. So why bother. Any programmer can program better than the majority of the population. Even if you define population as the population of programmers, being in the 51st percentile is still very grim. > You probably were there just for the money and fashion. So? You think plumbers do it for the artistry, honor, and love of the craft? So - this is the underlying reason of OP attitudes (a hypothesis). If it were the topic about plumbers - we'd discuss plumbers. Btw, plumbers are definitely there not for easy money, not for super profits, not for fashion or for the hype. Therefore they have 1000 times much more of my respect than all random mediocre programmers who just leveraged the temporary extreme lack of human resources — and now wining about the end of "golden age". And don't even have enough condifence in themselves and no respect for the craft to
think they will not survive yet another market downtime. So what are plumbers there for? I have thought about it - I talked to many of my friends in trades. They are all jealous of how good I have it. Most of them are earning ~70% of what I do, often spend ~2 hours commuting, hard on the body, risk of injuries... maybe you can transition to a orthogonal field in software to change things up? I thought about it early in my career (5ish years), and I realised it's not so much "can work X hours" as much as "has to work X hours, often starting at 5am", especially early in the trade career. Your tech career counts for nothing
in the trades, you start from zero. I’d become a truck driver. I love driving. When I drive I like to pretend I’m driving a big truck lol. Spend some time researching this before you dive into it. Truckers are treated exceptionally poorly by the trucking companies, and the pay is consumed by vehicles leasing, maintenance, and you won’t get sleep. In Australia, the "Traffic Control person" (aka Lollipop person) earns AUD 125K (USD 79K) and even without any qualifications doing home maintenance such as painting, replacing washers on leaking taps, or assembling Ikea furniture earns up to $100,000 pa. People with PhD in Life Science struggle to get a job but people who have watched a few YouTubes earn huge wages. If I were advising a younger coder, I would suggest that they learn COBOL and get paid $150K and leave the office at 5.00 pm " I would suggest that they learn COBOL and get paid $150K " The high paying COBOL jobs almost exclusively hire ex-employees who know the system. I knew COBOL from school and even making a couple small changes when I first started working. The people hiring specifically for COBOL want people with 25+ years of experience, familiarity with the specific system, and familiarity with the JCL or other aspects of the system. As a fellow Aussie that left the motherland, I'd advise folks to learn JavaScript and earn 4x that (in AUD) in the US You need to get permission to work and live in the US. To earn $320k you would surely be griding leetcode / system design questions? As an out of work, albeit Canadian JavaScript programmer, I think that ship has sailed Yes but it's difficult to justify the immediate loss in income for long term gains Trades usally demand better physical health. I can't do that :/ I often wished we had more houses. I rarely wished we had more software We need more good urban planning first, and the buildings will almost build themselves! dont we all, we just here for money to do other trades man. the few outliers are nerds. Yep, it's what I'm spending my time trying to find the best path toward, since I'm out of work and it doesn't seem hopeful anymore. Might get a warehouse job or something in the meantime if I can, but my resume is shit and considering just taking a fundamentals course and applying for apprenticeships.