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This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
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We've been predicting the demise of the coding career since the dawn of the coding career, but even if it's not dying, being proficient in coding and becoming proficient in one other trade is a good way to find opportunities to make software that makes that trade easier. The bar for quality in trade-specific software is shockingly low and money can be made in those niches.
This is basically me.
I was in restaurant management in the late '90s, and knew it well, but loved computers and had been teaching myself programming for a while.
My last restaurant job was for a small franchisee, and I moved into IT and support for them after a couple of years (while also doing catering, covering vacations for managers, doing graphics on vehicles and banners, pretty much whatever needed to be done).
In 2001 I went to work for the company that sold us our POS Systems. Originally I did installation, training, and support, but started coding pretty quickly, and after a few years became lead.
I now own all of that software / IP, and my own company.
That rules. I hope you use your powers for good.
I've spent my entire career as a professor advocating that students should pick a minor, certificate, or double major if they're capable.
My rationale is remarkably similar I think. Literally ever field, hobby, and area of study involve some form of technology. Many of those disciplines lack the sophistication of the tooling and that we have in more programming related fields, which makes people with an additional specialized skill set extremely valuable.
Hell, look around at fintech, bioinformatics, computational arts, etc. We have emerging Fields all the time that are essentially computer science combined with another field.
I worked in IT support for 15 years. Now I work on a dairy farm. Cows are way better than people. Go into farming, fellow lemmings. It's so rewarding.
One day... I must still fix the machines. The normies still won't know what the power button or ram stick are, even with help.
The McDonald's frycook of IT
Fuck the normies
Don't do plumbing, join us in HVAC-R. There is way less training and fewer certs required. The bar is so low it's derailing subways.
I sent this to my plumber to congratulate him on his career choice.
Turns out now he’s an electrician and his company got hired to help build an AI data center. 💀Sixty electricians from his company alone on one job. Drones surveilling the repetitive work overhead.
So much for escaping the impacts of AI.
With all the food recalls, I'm sure plumbing is a high demand job.
Jokes aside; trades suck. If you like hot ass heat, cramped places, constant injuries, buying your own tools, ruining your body before you reach forty, and annoying customers; then it's the job for you. This is an anecdotal take but yeah it's not fun. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I say I wish I did anything else for the last ten years. The money was good but the added pain isn't worth it.
I don't know what I did, but I'm definitely about to get beat for it
You added the wrong vowel to consonant-ending words while doing a faux Italian accent
I’d rather be an electrician than a plumber. It’s like a simpler, deadlier Ethernet.
👴 my first PC in the mid-90s had a 10mbit coaxial network card that my brother and I used for a 2 PC LAN connection, and let me tell ya - you wouldn't want to handle that while the PC was turned on.
Although the zap was less hurtful than an electrical fence.
Looking it up, it was most likely 10BASE5.
Also if you become an electrician then you have an excuse to run Ethernet poorly. Gotta love when the electrician runs unshielded cat6 cable through 100ft of conduit containing 480V wires. Talk about POE, you could probably run a toaster off that Ethernet cable.
And electricians don't have to interact with human feces nearly as often.
That's unironically a good idea if you are just getting into it. The trades pay very well and are in high demand.
The trades pay very well and are in high demand.
But you'll pay for it with crippling back pain at 45. Maybe some nice cancer as a bonus, from all the exposure to weird chemicals. Oh, and 90% of your coworkers racist, sexist, homophobic MAGA-heads who'll make sure you hear about it at every opportunity.
The trades can still be good, but go into it with eyes open. It's no paradise.
And the pay. Its usually the people who own the business making lots of money. Everyone else is making slightly above minimum wage working 12+ hour days Monday to Saturday.
Woman here, can confirm. Worked as an aircraft mechanic for a year and a truck driver for another, you will encounter the scum of the earth. So glad to be back to working with civilized humans.
People whine that women wont enter the trades, theres a reason they dont want to and its not because the work is too hard.
Anyone going into the trades for money is going to be fucking miserable. The pay is nice but the pay is nice for a damn good reason. You will have no time, be perpetually tired, and wind up working in some really shitty conditions. Also a lot of that money will constantly be getting spent on tools. Sure most companies provide their techs with some tools and a stipend, but that stipend is never enough and you'll wind up wanting to replace most of the provided tools with your own anyways once you find ones that work better for you.
If you're going to get into the trades it better be because you like working with your hands and beating your head against brick wall problems. In that regard though going from software to the trades isn't that weird of a move. I'm a tradesman now but I nearly got my bachelor's in Computer Science. I loved how coding made me use my brain. I only dropped out when I got a desk job and realized that I wouldn't be able to stand working a desk job. In the trades I get the same intellectual fun without having to sit at a desk all day.
They're gonna stay like that unless a bunch of woke people join them out of nowhere for several years and convert/push out all of the weirdos
Then you just have the crippling back pain and cancer!
Joke's on you, I've already got crippling back pain before turning 45.
Tell me about it. Giving thought to retraining as an electrician given how in demand they are.
I want to get training as an electrician so I can take my house completely off the grid (or at least, be independent with the grid as a redundancy) one day without accidentally burning it down. Then I want to make free software to monitor and manage home power usage, and share it with the world so we can all have nice, efficient, futuristic homes without some corporate combine demanding a monthly fee and invasive surveillance for the pleasure.
Depending on where you live, home owners can often legally do as much of their own wiring as they want. If that's the case where you live then you don't need the license, you just need the knowledge. That's still a big hurdle but it's a smaller hurdle than 4 years as an apprentice and then another 4 years as a journeyman.
Started carpentry work this week. It's alright if you don't work with assholes
So many assholes though. So I bought a lawnmower and a trailer, cutting grass and gardening by myself is really nice
