Has anyone switched from a professional job to a more manual one?

Software engineer for 12 years then got depressed about the job. Got into firefighting because I want to go to heaven and figured that with the 1 day on 2 days off schedule I can continue software on the side anyway.

Turns out just because you are a good software engineer, it doesnt mean you will be a good firefighter, and I need to dedicate a huge amount of time learning the job because software is a creativity focued job and Fire/EMS is a memory based one, and i have a bad memory.

The sleep is terrible, im an introvert and have a hard time getting along with others at the firehouse, but will say without a doubt it was absolute best decision ive ever made in my life. You will never see the facial expressions behind a computer you see in this job.

Im doing creative data analytics for fire depts to see how to save more lives, and thinking about making the swap to law enforcement just because i think my past as a software engineer can save more lives there. One example of my analytics is posting cops in areas where statistically it isnt likely for fire/EMS to show up in time, if the cop gets on sceane sooner, they can begin patient care sooner, and unltimaly increase rosc rare. You gotta be the change you want to see in the world you know?

Oh hey -- this is me.

I was a software engineer for close to 6 years, and now I'm a barista (read more here: https://thoughtfulcoffeenyc.substack.com/p/roast-24-the-bari... ). The change in role isn't permanent, as I intend to go back to tech to save money and then leave it to try and open a cafe in a few years.

But my thoughts on your questions:

> How did you find it (assuming the job)?

At the moment, I enjoy it! I do think... I'd likely get bored after a year or two since there really isn't a lot of variety to the barista job. I'm able to practice and develop my social skills which wasn't something I was able to do as an engineer, and it's kinda exciting waking up knowing you'll get to interact with new people. In tech, it was just the same people over and over again -- which isn't bad, but I remember always wishing that I could interact with more/new people.

> Did you miss the money and status?

Yes. Lol. Also a reason why I intend to return to tech... I can't really live my current lifestyle off a barista salary. I don't care much for the status, but I do miss the freedom that money brings. I also miss the flexibility that tech has.

Anyways, hopefully my answers were helpful to you!

I haven't quit, and have no plans of quitting, but I scratch the manual labor itch by, well, manually laboring at home.

I've dug hundreds of feet of trenches to move around sprinkler and water lines to account for a new patio and fence. Added walls to my home to add an extra bedroom and office. New trim, new solid core doors, etc.

I've painted rooms, ran Ethernet to all the bedrooms, added some outlets, replaced all outlets with tamper resistant ones, and the list goes on and on.

To top it off, I have a project car that I've been working on. They constantly require some small amount of maintenance and something can always be made better. You can be in troubleshooting mode, tracing electrical gremlins, or you can just be mindlessly sanding off rust from the frame.

Once my kids are older, I hope to get them involved somewhat just to teach them some skills. I cherish the memory of my grandfather teaching me some of this stuff and hold on to some things he made for me.

I structure things so that I can have two or so small projects running that I can pick up and set down without fuss, since life and kids often get in the way.

I've definitely saved thousands on some of the work I've done

If you want my honest feedback don't do it. It depends on what you want to do exactly, but most of the outcomes of manual labor is the same. I'm in my mid 40's and my girlfriend is in her early 50's. I worked with chocolate and ran the family candy store when my dad couldn't. She's been a chef for 20+ years. The thing no one tells you is that it's brutal on your body. It'll break down after a time. The pay is bad, and it won't cover the cost of what you're doing to yourself in the long term.

You also have to be prepared for a major culture shift from what you're used to. The food industry at least is different than what you're probably used to. It's rough. You have to be comfortable with things not being above board, heavy drug use and heavy alcohol.

Our jobs in tech are so easy compared to what other people go through. The pay is good, and the freedom is amazing. Unfulfilling is really a complaint well off people get to talk about that aren't struggling to survive.

I've had a few career breaks from IT.

One time was a job in the construction industry for 6 months. It was the happiest I'd ever been. I went from struggling to get to sleep, struggling to wake up before midday in IT, to bouncing out of bed at 4am for a 6am start. I could have woken up later but I wanted an hour to relax and have a coffee before work.

I was outside all day, saw the sunrise and the sunset, my mood was amazing, my feet were sooo sore. I liked the people I was working with, about half the foremen were total pricks and I enjoyed dealing with them too.

I ended the shift physically worn out and ready to go home. I got home around 7pm, put my work clothes in the washing machine, had a shower, had dinner, put my clothes in the drier and was in bed before 9. I'd try to watch something but I'd fall asleep very quickly.

wake up 5 minute before my 4am alarm and hit my head on the ceiling bouncing out of bed looking forward to the day.

I did that for 6 months, I was thinking I would start looking for another job in IT when I was contacted by someone filling a role and got it.

So, I would say if you're serious about leaving, talk to your boss and ask for 6 months leave without pay, and go do something different. You then have the option of going back. Or, just quit, do something else for 6-12 months and if you feel the urge to go back to your old field, start applying for roles.

My cousin worked in finance but then due to a health issues he was not able to look at screens (or artificial light in general) for extended periods of time.

He was forced to switch to another profession which had to be outdoor based to avoid artificial light and doesn't use any screens.

He decided to train dogs. Initially it was a bit rough (working long hours a day Monday to Saturday) but fast forward 2 years later he is now considered to be one of the best dog trainers in his area. This allowed him to triple his prices and reduce his working hours. He now earns more than he did in his finance job working shorter hours.

If you find your niche and become an expert in that area, I think you can earn a good living no matter what that niche is. But some niches make it easier than others as the base earnings are higher.

If you actually mean manual labor then make sure to think through how you'll save and plan for retirement. My cousin did construction most of his adult life and realized in his 40s that there was no way he could keep it up into his 60s and beyond--the toll on your body is high and everyone else in the field is younger and more able-bodied. He realized plumbing (at least for residential homes) was something that didn't require as much hard labor and he saw older guys doing it all the time. So he started apprenticing and made the switch to plumbing late in his career.

Not sure what coffee engineer is exactly but the same basic idea applies. If you're doing manual labor make sure it's something you can do into your sixties. If not, look for some specialization or related field you can move into--be sure you see older people actually working those jobs to know it's realistic or even apprentice with them.

If you haven't already, I would consider some less committal steps to find out more about the problem you're experiencing.

1. Take an unusually long time off - double whatever the most is you've taken in recent years. If you don't have the leave, call off sick. Keep a note of how you feel about work each day when you get up and when you go to bed.

2. Try to list what makes an unusually good day at work. Even in a very samey job there are days you travel; days you have meetings with specific kinds of people; days you work on something a bit unusual.

3. Consider finding a good (not always easy, but if you can afford it you'll have a much better hit rate if you go for min. £75 an hour) psycho-dynamics therapist. When "interviewing" them, say that your initial goal is to find out if moving jobs will make you happy.

What you do in your early thirties when you have the freedom and desire to instigate a big change could be very important, and it's worth finding out more about yourself to help make the right choice.

I spent two years during the pandemic working at a hand-made beeswax candle factory. I spent most of my day either running the wax filtering machine or dipping taper candles.

When I received an email saying that my job was going to be work-from-home for the forseeable future, I knew that I had to quit. At the time I had really been relying on office friendships and work for too much of my socialization and self-image, so moving to a remote environment took too much away from me.

I found the light factory work really enjoyable. It was so rewarding to make simple, high quality products wit my hands. It was also nice to have a job where I was interacting with a wider cross-section of people, as I tend to not really enjoy tech culture very much. I had forgotten what it was like to work in an environment where there is comradery among the staff and a healthy distrust of management. I feel like in tech people are always grovelling to their bosses and the C-suite, which rubs me the wrong way. A bunch of temporarily-embarrassed billionaires I guess.

I'm back in tech now, but with the perspective that I am working to achieve some mid-term monetary goals. After I pay down my mortgage considerably so I can cut down my monthly expenses, I will highly consider going back to a crafting job of some sort. Life is too short to spend it on the computer.

I've been a software engineer for 25 years. I'm currently at the Principal level and I'm thinking about retiring from tech. I'm "only" 41.

I'm not sure how valuable my input will be, since I haven't actually done it, and what I'm thinking about leaving the tech sector for is not exactly "manual labour" even though it is way more physical.

My wife and I are semi-professional performing magicians. We've been developing our act on and off for the last 7 years or so and do weekend gigs. And we're thinking about giving up a cushy > 200k / year base salary to become starving artists.

Why? The obvious one is that we're extremely passionate about our act and love it.

But I'm also tired of the tech industry. I don't have the enthusiasm for technology that I used to. I never jumped on the smart phone bandwagon. I'm sick of the direction the industry has gone in with cloud and SaaS. I'm a tinkerer, a maker at my core. That's not only why I love magic (the prop building, problem solving, script writing... producing something that is MINE) but it's what got me into technology in the first place: being the master of the machine. Building and creating something tangible that has a real effect on the user. That factor seems to be eroding more and more as specialization takes hold in the industry and the machine we're programming is some virtual computer in a data centre.

Raises hand (...halfway...)

I'd been solidly in tech for the past ~9 years - DevOps software, eCommerce company, sales enablement software, etc.

I also re-picked up my hobby/passion of coin & currency collecting a few years ago and started buying and selling for fun.

The stars aligned in such a way that fairly recently I've been able to focus purely on the numismatic world, and I'm now doing that full time (and then some).

My life now consists of about 50% time on the road at physical, in-person coin & currency shows all over the country. I stand at my booth and buy & sell, run around the floor making deals, hunt other dealers cases for treasure in plain sight, and all that fun. So I wouldn't exactly call this "manual", but show days are very much in-person and 12+ hours of being on your feet brain fully-engaged.

(I spend the other 50% of my time at home working on the software that powers my operation, buying & selling on eBay, going to and from the post office, etc.)

But man, this is SO MUCH FUN. I describe my former life as "arguing with people on Zoom all day" and my current life as absolute heaven indulging in a super fun hobby that actually makes money. There's also an incredibly cool social aspect to it wherein you kind of see the same dealers at all the big shows, so it's a bit of a traveling circus ("see you next week in Phoenix?")

You are living the dream, I suspect, from a UK perspective. I have a similar background. Not sure what you mean by coffee engineer? I have friends who are plumbers (gas safe) or builders etc. They can make the same money as me, or more, but it's hard work and you have a lot of liability on you. You also need to manage the business side as well as the work, if you want to be self employed and hence make decent money.

Despite being very sporty, I'm now finding in my mid 40s that I'm hitting various physical issues. Nothing serious, but would prevent me from doing hard manual work every day. As it is I haven't lost a days work due to pandemic, or illness for years now as the work I do is so low impact and from home. I imagine this would be much more challenging into 50s and 60s whereas in tech you can work almost indefinitely (I have a friend about 75 who is working).

You also need to consider the training and certification time that might be required. Also being out on the road wouldn't work for me, I'm used to being close to home now.

I can tell you that prior to working in the professional industry I took some lower paid manual jobs.

There is a big quality of life difference by being able to "buy whatever you want" - whether that be the latest watch, or fixing your boiler that just broke - without worrying about if you can afford your rent that month.

I think there is also a big mental difference between - I don't have a choice with my job and this is what I'm stuck doing at this pay grade "forever" - vs - I'm doing this by choice and if I really need to I can go do something better.

Whenever I think I have it tough in software I look back and think - well, at least I'm not in those other jobs. Those other jobs did have upsides, but a lot of downsides.

You sound burnt out. Don't make large changes until you've first sought to take a longer vacation or sabbatical equivalent. Many companies offer some version of that.

Really - figure out a rough sketch of what your PLAN is for the future.... not 1 year, not 5 but 10 and see how whatever your next step is fits into that to complement it. Ideally, take some trusted mates and run it by them too for a reality check.

Whatever you do, make sure you are on a path where you aren't relying on your body working right in your mid-40s to keep a roof over your head. People's health varies, but as a rule: 40+ hours a week of manual labor feels good in your 20s, okay in your 30s, brutal in your 40s and unsustainable in your 50s.

My father-in-law wanted to go into construction, but picked up a civil engineering degree upon hearing this advice from a foreman, and said it was the best advice he ever got. Plus, working as a surveyor meant he wasn't stuck behind "a damn desk" all day.

> I have an interview next week for a coffee engineer role which pays around a third of what I currently earn and would involve being on the road four out of five days.

The most poignant tip I can give you: Do not jump straight into drastic career changes as a solution.

You sound dissatisfied with your job or recent jobs, but you’re projecting that dissatisfaction on to the entire career. It is a mistake to assume that all software engineering jobs are going to be as equally uninspiring as your current one. You’ve notified a job that is so completely different from your current work that you assume it must be better, but I assure you it comes with many downsides you haven’t learned about yet. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence because you’re less familiar with it.

I’ve done a lot of career mentoring. Frequently, people come to the mentoring program dissatisfied with their current job and under the belief that they’ll be happier if they abandon it all and do something different. My sample size is small, but for what it’s worth I’ve only seen this work out once: The person hated software from the start, had only gotten into software because they thought it would pay well, and they weren’t able to keep up with basic software tasks. Basically, they chose the wrong job for the wrong reasons and couldn’t do it.

For everyone else, drastic changes usually result in some hard-learned lessons that they miss their old career and the money that came with it.

Taking 1/3 the pay to travel 4/5 the time might sound refreshing to someone who is tired of sitting at a computer right now, but I doubt you’ll be excited about it after 1000 days of grinding through travel delays, missing events at home, layovers, and a retirement account that isn’t growing any more.

Pick a less disruptive and less permanent way to change up your life first. Do manual labor on the weekends. Volunteer somewhere. Take an extended vacation. Landscape your yard. Help your elderly neighbors clean up their yard. Anything to start adding some variety to your life without detailing your career to try it.

A book that has been useful thinking about jobs:

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber

https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp...

One thing from it that has been stuck in my mind: a common occurrence of people hating their jobs despite being paid to do quite-literally nothing. Part of the reason is that people generally want to be useful to society, and when they see their job as not doing that, it's hard to care or find satisfaction.

I took a few gigs with a roommate who is a gastro chef doing catering a few years ago for the hell of it. Was really quite the experience. I love to cook but never had done it for like 80+ people on a level of expectation of a certain high quality before then. Made Spanish Paella for one event, Brazilian steak at another... Everyone thought I was some special professional foreign chef flown in from Canada which is the funniest part. We just rolled with it because while we didn't even intend for anyone to think that, they just loved it. They even invited me for doing their Christmas dinner but I figured working over those days was a bit much and politely declined.

One of the things it helped me realize is that I need to be in better shape. Felt like I got in a fight or something after each gig, spending all day and night preparing a ton of food is NOT easy, it is extremely demanding and you need to make sure of a bunch of stuff that matters less if you're just a programmer like kitchen hygiene.

Someone I know pulled off some pretty big career changes: from a sound engineer working in windowless rooms, to a professional gardener, then to a software engineer. After several years working full time mainly outdoors as a gardener - including through the winters - they were looking forwards to working indoors again. And the pay was much better in software. So while some of us stuck in the office might gaze out the window on a sunny day and daydream about having a job out there in the fresh air, it can go the other way too.

There's several people here commenting that physical work can be refreshing and rewarding compared to office jobs, but often that's only in a part-time or volunteer capacity. I can attest to it being a nice change, but only ever as a part-time project. I would guess anything you do full time long-term will some time or another feel a bit of a grind. Manual work in particular can take a serious physical toll over the years, and being mostly sat down indoors for your job can end up being tempting too. I also know a couple of musicians who are perpetually on the road, and it's not always a glamorous globetrotting lifestyle - one said they mostly see highways and airports. But then there are great gigs too.

I think there's probably no such thing as a perfect job. That's not to say a change can't be refreshing or worthwhile though! Perhaps it's just that after many years most people eventually get a bit tired of whatever they're doing, and then the grass can look greener on the other side.

What's a Coffee Engineer? Are you engineering coffee plants, or is that a euphemism for a barista? I've started seeing the word engineer get appended to a lot more job roles these past few years; Sales Engineer, Technical Support Engineer, etc.

I was a staff software engineer (front end lol so take that for what it is) at a medium sized B2B SaaS company that turned into a unicorn during my time there.

I quit in 2019 to start a company. In 2020 my time was split 80/20 between building a company and working alongside brothers and sisters in my local church.

In the past couple of years I’ve degreased kitchens, demolished walls, hauled concrete, done some electrical, metal work, automotive, woodworking, janitorial, hauled bags of salt and piled em up two stories high in a metal warehouse during a thunderstorm. Dirt under your nails work.

Yes 80% of my time was still tech (working on hardware though, which is a nice change) but I wouldn’t give the 20% for the world.

There’s a deep satisfaction in putting forth real effort - mentally and physically with sweat and sometimes blood - doing something that’s taxing, alongside and for the people in your community you know and love.

The things that separate and seem so large - cultural background, socioeconomic status, upbringing - they melt away when you’re in the dirt laboring together.

And I understand that this is coming from a privileged viewpoint. And that I had the choice to take on these things while others don’t. But in a way that makes it more meaningful.

Jesus didn’t have to empty Himself of His power. God Himself chose to humble Himself taking the form of a man and instead of being a ruler over the humanity while He was here, He chose to live among the lowest of the low. To love and care for the folks that society tried to pretend didn’t exist without any gain, self aggrandization, or virtue signaling. To die for us in order that if we turn away from the world and towards Him in faith we would be saved from the sin inside of us that separates us from God and warrants His judgment.

Jesus’ love makes me want to be like Him. I’m nowhere close — often foolish and more often still selfish. But in His presence there’s fullness of joy and an abundance of life that’s only found in sacrificing one’s self to Him.

I switched in the opposite direction, from an engineering role to software development. My engineering role wasn't exactly manual labour, but at least I had to deal with real hardware sometimes, the joy of which I wrote about in another thread recently [1].

Overall I believe the amount of manual labour had little to do with my job satisfaction ever. For me it is more about building stuff that others find useful and I need to be involved in much of the process. If you never see the outcome of your work it's probably inevitable to find it pointless at some point. If you only ever deal with the outcome of others (like in sales) you might find it pointless as well (at least I did).

Coming back to your question: I think it is generally believed that jobs with manual labour often enable one to build things from start to finish or at least be responsible for a closed tangible process (like maybe being a coffee engineer) while information work rarely does.

I, for one, am not convinced that is the case and I would like to encourage you to at least look into possibilities that give you satisfaction while still being adequately paid (which manual labour is very rarely). As a physicist you have the best prerequisites one can imagine.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36055688

I spent a decade or so in geospatial, moved country and struggled to find work (moved just as covid hit).

I picked up a job doing construction, specifically windows and doors. I've always been pretty handy and know my way around the tools, but had never worked this kind of job.

Its satisfying work no doubt. I lost a ton of weight and was in the best shape i had been in years with no effort outside of work. I learned a bunch of new skills and my confidence to complete most home repairs has increased exponentially.

Downsides are the wear and tear it puts on your body. After 12 months i had more small scars than i could count, i broke my foot on my last day there. You come home filthy everyday.

For the first few weeks i was wrecked after everyday, got home and basically passed out on the lounge.

My biggest pet peeve was probably a factor of the specific company i worked at, but i found the lack of basic organization and communication infuriating. Suggestions to implement simple procedures that would reduce the number of misquotes, scheduling and general chaos are ignored because it would require change.

I'd do it again, but for a more organized and professional company.

I suggest working out instead. With manual jobs your back hurts? too bad - you have to go in. If you want to be physical be physical, you don't need a job to tell you to do it.

I worked in online sales, then web development, then managing web projects over a 15 year period. I wasn't particularly good at any of them or found it fulfilling but I was paid quite well, paid my mortgage and I got to work remotely.

I quit a few years ago to try a few things that I would find more satisfying. Joinery and cooking are two that I did well at. I am now a junior chef / chef de partie and in my early 40s.

It is physically challenging and very low paid but it feels a bit more natural than my previous career. The stress is different too. I think it could quite as easily been a joiner or another trade that I focused on however there are a couple of things that are important:

1) Who you learn off of really matters, as you have less time when you are older, so try and pick that wisely - lots of professionals want to teach new commers that are serious about learning. I've also found that it's not as easy to teach yourself, as it is with web development. You need to be shown what to do.

2) Your social network matters. If all your friends are lawyers, doctors or programmers and you don't know anyone that is a barista, chef, joiner, [insert trade], then it makes it harder to learn. I knew more chefs than I did joiners, which is part of the reason I am doing what I am doing. My old boss said to me when I quit to do something else said "now you need to go and make new friends". It was the best bit of advice I've received.

It probably doesn't apply here (and might well be country/region specific), but one thing I've heard from friends who've done similar has been some resentment/hostility related to jobs that are only people with previous money can afford to take.

I've got several friends that made a lot of money in tech/law before switching to more fullfilling jobs (things like furniture maker, barista, something music-related, plumber, museum curator, librarian).

One argument they've heard is that by taking jobs that aren't economically feasible to do without money, they're encouraging low pay for others in that field who don't have any other choice. One or two volunteer for free, and have heard complaints that volunteers have destroyed careers in certain sectors.

...there's a Rick that works more with wood, than with polarity plating. His name is Simple Rick, but he's no dumby. He realized long ago that the greatest thing he'd ever create was his daughter.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5218332/characters/nm0204797

I've transitioned to consulting - I make more money and have more freedom to work out during the day which is great, but I can't help but feel I'm well behind my peers and have a stagnating career. Since I basically resorted to consulting since the job market for engineers is so dire at the moment / maybe my resume is just a red flag?

I was in tech for more than a decade. I would go back _if_ I could find a well run company with a good team rather than the corporate bureaucracy that sucks the fun out of coding.

I am currently building out my farm.

I am also a general contractor.

And the end of the day you feel a profound sense of accomplishment when you gaze upon your the fruits of your labors. Everyday I drive past houses and businesses that I framed and now people live and work in them.

Pretty soon I will be petting my cows and swimming in my pond. Also there is nothing like a spring morning outside, sun on your face, birds chirping. Good for mental health.

Why would a manual job not be professional?

I have massive respect for the trades people, waitstaff etc, they do much if not all of the actual work on this planet if you discount automation and DIY. A lot of my time has been spent on getting proficient at DIY and every time I look at the end result I know for a fact that even a junior schooled in the art would have done a better job than I did. It still gives me satisfaction, but it also shows me that there is no such thing as a job that isn't worth doing and doing well.

I'm not sure what a 'coffee engineer' is though.

Well, not really a job, but I enjoy volunteering at my local food bank. Career wise I am all in on tech (written 20+ AI books, have 50+ patents) but it is refreshing and personally rewarding to do something useful that is non-tech.

I am in my 70s, but when I was a 25 year old computer programmer I looked into having two part time jobs, one programming and one something like working on a fishing boat. I ended up not going the working in a fishing boat route, settling for working in tech an average of 30 hours a week, and bought a sailboat.

Been in web design for the past 10 years... love it and never want to leave, but I did check out being on the road, specifically driving 10 hour days for 8 days out of the month. The job description was basically art delivery.

Lots of people want art delivered and UPS, USPS, and FedEx are unreliable when it comes to making sure thousands to millions of dollars of artwork is delivered unscathed. Its a job that I'd love to do, but unfortunately, I refuse to leave my web design job to do it.

Went through an interview but they asked me if I'd quit my other job.. and I said no. I felt I could do both as one is remote and "on call". They never called back after that but I'm not upset about it. Instead, I actually purchased two properties in the past year that are condominiums, right across the street from a hospital and on a main road, with a beautiful view of the mountain and valley, and renting them out with a ROI of about what that delivery job was paying per month.

My whole reason for looking elsewhere is because I fear losing my job as I'm usually threatened to be fired at least 2 or 3 times a year since I've had the job for almost 11 years and lack of promotional and financial opportunity. My company loves to use fear tactics to get people into shape. Unfortunately, I believe I'm the only one who ever seems to have to go through the bullshit.

I did try retail for a while and realized how much I love my cozy work-at-home job and would never work retail for those slave wages again... at least, the last job I took years ago only paid $12 an hour... I was unloading trucks in the very early AM, only to be harassed about being too slow. [bleep] that [bleep]. Never again.

Have you seen the ending to the movie office space? If not - I highly suggest watching this lovely movie before making this move.

But yes, your future job could give you a more happy life balance. Or it could be worse. Or the same.

I am in the middle of reading William Gibson’s Virtual Light and seriously considering a career change to bike messenger. Unfortunately it doesn’t pay much more than minimum wage.

More seriously, though, I have had similar feelings many times. However, I spent a decade from high school through post-college working manual and food service jobs, so I have no illusions that they provide some kind of fulfillment not found in computer jobs.

My solution was to spend as much non-work time as possible doing outdoors/manual things. And if there’s something related to your job which can be done while riding a bike, or walking, or repairing a motorcycle, or whatever your preferred physical activity, rather than sitting at a desk, then do it that way. Listen to an audio version of a report instead of reading it, do meetings while walking, etc.

Finally I’d also recommend a book related to this topic: Shop Class as Soulcraft, which is about a philosopher that became a motorcycle mechanic, and I believe later became a philosopher again.

I'm similar to you in that I work in tech and love being outdoors and doing physical activities. What I'm realizing though, is my biggest chance at "making it big" is by doing the work I'm really good at.. which right now is tech work. Personally I have plenty of hobbies, but my long-term earning potential at those hobbies would be pretty low.

That being said, I also know people that have had tremendous success by making a business out of their hobby. Whether it be photography, bike repair, mechanic. It's cliche to say but the advice I'd give is stick to what you like, or what you're good at, or ideally both - and then pursue your hobbies part-time. If your full-time workload doesn't allow you to pick something up part-time. Find a slower paced environment that'll let you keep a salary you're used too, and afford you more time to play around with some part-time jobs and see if any of them could become a full-time gig for you.

First understand what you find about your work that is "uninspiring, pointless, and eroding". The answer may lie in the markets that you work in rather than doing something with your hands. (City-based (finance) products can seem pointless once you realise how and why it all works). You can do sales in an industry that is meaningful to you - like coffee machines.

I work in tech and am currently trying to build stuff that addresses energy efficiency in manufacturing (my small bit to help climate change). I have to go on site in safety boots and a hard hat - looking up at a massive plant that burns dead dinosaurs. It is not pointless, but it is frikkin' hard. It is also a much better use of my abilities and experience in tech to try and optimise their plant with data than dig a ditch or man the food truck outside the factory gates. No offense to those useful skills, but mine are better applied (and more valuable) elsewhere.

The biggest difference to my mind is that at end of a day you have something concrete to look at and say “I done that”.

In software or business we spend so much time on intangibles. Often worthwhile, but just not viscerally satisfying. “I am mentally fatigued because I refactored the whole controller layer of this app. It turned out the proposed redesign wasn’t worth pursuing so we reverted the commit, but the knowledge gained from this spike was very valuable!”

Hits very different to “All my muscles hurt. I dug that hole. That one right there.”

The line between being fulfilled by manual labour versus being crushed by it is flexibility. If you’re choosing when to work and what to work on, you’ll probably love it. When you’re working through an injury on the hottest day of the year and the aircon on the truck is broken and all the fire in the area was put out days ago anyway… you’ll wish you were refactoring.

I've been a sw engineer for 12 years, from intern to junior to engineer to senior. About 4 years ago it had taken so large of a toll on my mental health I quit with no plans other than hiking some bucket list thru hikes with my wife.

After the time off, really looking at what matters to me, I find myself looking to careers that will provide me with personal enrichment rather than another one that is "easy," high paying, and providing "skill development".

Right now I'm looking at starting very low paying trail angel services that would let me meet a lot of Appalachian trail thru hikers. And taking a job as a flight attendant so that I can travel the world for free. Both would give me complete control over my schedule so I wouldn't find myself trapped in the same cage that destroyed my mental health before.

What I recommend, and plan on doing unless I just retire early outright, is to downshift to a less stressful software job. I've worked at quite a few places where I was bored and the pay was low. This was a problem early in my career when I was trying to advance and earn more for my family+retirement, but sounds pretty good now honestly!

I think us software engineers don't realize how good we have it. I've worked factory jobs, manual restaurant jobs, and other ad-hoc outdoor work for neighbors and family growing up and trust me, software engineering is a job most other people dream about having. Try to find a job where you can maintain your fitness in your own time, downshift to an easier job or just scale back your workload at your current company if you're not trying for a promotion.

That's my dream, to take a normal job. I hope to one day be able to afford working on construction sites, laying railroad or something meaningful. Or even going back to washing dishes in a crazy Tokyo restaurant.

Status wise, I'm not sure there's much difference, being a software engineer is not something I'm proud of. When you talk to people, they can immediately tell if you're intellectual anyway.

If a highly educated person works with something manual, I think most people will assume that they do that because they like it, and not look down on them. But then I do live in Scandinavia where people are far less obsessed with financial status. I think most people here are more impressed if someone is a struggling actor or professional juggler, than if they're a management consultant making 10 times more.

I'm reading between the lines here, but my guess is that you're interested in the coffee role because you're passionate about coffee. It also sounds like you've looked at the pay cut, and decided you can live with it. (Take the long view ... if you make a career of this job, will you be able to afford to live where you want to? Will you be able to comfortably retire?

I suspect that if after a year or two you decide that this more manual work isn't the life improver you expect, you should still be able to get another job in your current field. It might be a little harder than if you were to look for a new job without the gap, but will be much easier than breaking into it in the first place.

You can also talk to your manager -- they might be able to offer you an unpaid leave of absence for a while which would give you the space to try the new job while keeping your options open.

I'm familiar with the finance industry in NY which has a heavy work-hard-play-hard culture; or put another way, they have demanding expectations, but pay you enough for you to tolerate it. I assume London is similar. Switching to a similar sales role in a different industry might be an alternative that could work for you as well. It might be less of a pay cut, but give you more capacity to pursue things you're passionate outside of work.

Know more than a few, though most made $$$ from some source or another and were able to leave mostly on their terms. Start a coffee shop, or work at their father-in-law's fabrication plant. Pay cut for sure, but they'd already paid off a house and were stable otherwise.

Only one who really jumped in without a plan was a Phd physicist who was teaching in Canada and had enough of academia -- he quit to make cheese full-time. Still doin it.

Been there done that and reversed. Manual labor (of any sort) can be very fulfilling, particularly if you enjoy it. You can do manual labor that you love, its easy. But when you look around and see the little old men still doing the same as you and you realize those little old men are only 50 years old and will still be doing it when they are 65, then its an eye opener. If they live to 70 they will probably have arthritis and other wear and tear on their bodies. Do you want to do that? This is reality check time. If you are going to do it, do the retirement plan first. Put the nest egg away for retirement, then go for it. Reckon you can keep working when you have the flu? You can at your present job, but you will ruin your long time health if you do hard physical labor when you are sick. First think about what ELSE you can use that physics degree for. Sales in finance is probably the low end of using your knowledge. One other thing to consider, is that if you change your mind 5~10 years down the track (you did once :) )can you go back and put up with the younger brighter more recently experienced who will be your bosses?

I had generous doctoral funding in the humanities with a very light teaching load and left to be a stable-hand, mucking stalls and throwing breakfast and lunchbhay to the horses. (So this kinda sorta counts, since I was still in school, and the labor job was always going to be temporary. Having said that I loved it and still miss it). In the end I worked at the stable for about a year.

It paid almost nothing. I rented a room and was broke. But the work was cathartic and interesting and completely altered my world— or dropped the world I’d known away, leaving this really interesting (again temporary) moment of peace in its place. Status wise, when you do something like that, you meet new people. There are different ways of comparing status— and of not even caring at all about it.

It took me a while to adjust away from academic thinking, which manifested largely as an extreme lack of confidence if I wasn’t quoting someone else’s argument or surrounded by piles of books. The stable was a great place to sort some of that and to like regain a sense of self (and people in the world, more broadly than in the university) in a really tangible way.

I wound up doing a bunch of different work over time. A mix seems to me ideal at this point. Ha still trying to figure it out.

If you're smart enough for a physics degree, a sales/finance job, and your own start up, then you are likely smart enough to make it as a coffee engineer too.

I took a summer job as a painter and did some other contracting stuff in my 30s after being in tech my whole life. I went from setting my hours to getting up at 5 am to be picked up to go to a job site, working hard all day, coming home, and going to yoga for body repair.

By the end of the summer, I was ripped. Best shape of my life, and I got paid to do it. I was very tempted to keep doing that for a living and probably would have had a more consistent income.

I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good-looking. And I plan on finding out what that is. - Derek Zoolander.

Just go work a day in manual labor. You don't need to take a big risk to try it out.

I’m a software engineer now. In my past I worked as a landscaper. I prefer my current job because of the money, but I found an incredible calm in spreading mulch. It was hard work and I’d return home exhausted every day, but it was a great experience. Hard physical labor shuts off the mind, in my experience, in a way that most activities today don’t, and that produces a unique satisfaction.

I don't know what kind of work with your hands you mean, but for lighter working with hands, just be aware of risks like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury

If you mean hard labor, even if you're an active athlete, maybe talk with an expert on how that affects your body (doctor? physiotherapist?). I'd guess they might be able to advise on what to expect physically, how to condition yourself to help avoid serious injuries, the top 10 unfortunate moments that turn into permanent regret (e.g., lifting with back), what your time horizon should be before moving to supervisor or an easier field, etc.

If you already have enough money stashed away to live comfortably, that helps: not only don't you get trapped in physical labor jobs if you stop enjoying it, but you'll avoid money-related stress (which adversely affects your health multiple ways, including making you more susceptible to injury).

You're being naive. The grass looks greener because you're used to your present day existence. If you actually took a 2/3 pay cut you'd see just how little money you really have at the end of the day.

It's far better to be bored and rich than engaged and poor. Especially in a field which has rapid pay increase potential like finance.

Stay in your job, save a few million pounds, then play barista

I was a software engineer for just long enough to realize that it was killing my soul and so I scammed my way into being an engineer in aerospace.

Protip: if you do some solidworks tutorials on your off-time to get some experience with it and have basic electronics knowledge from a lifetime of dicking around with amateur radio and electronics kits, managers are willing to overlook a LOT.

Before I sat in a nightmarish hellscape of an open office staring at IntelliJ all day between Agile cultist gatherings.

Now I have an office and a typical week has me working with hardware prototypes, building test apparatus, writing a little code but just a little, working with MechEs, developers, EEs, and piling schematic printouts up on my desk into precarious stacks like I'm a stereotype of a wizard hoarding esoteric knowledge or something.

4-5 times a year I go out to remote test ranges two weeks at a time to do a little R&D in the field which involves crawling around inside test aircraft to wire up instrumentation and flying around in circles for hours on end. For space stuff we have launch parties.

Also, my workspace is an office with windows and a door that closes and seating and a whiteboard for ad-hoc meetings and I have not had to wear my noise-cancelling headphones just to remain sane as everyone around me slurps their soup and has conversations on the phone in years!

If I had continued on my previous career path, today would see me trying to figure out how to get AI to get you to watch an ad about dickpills or something so that my employer could stripmine your personal data and now I build cool stuff that flies in the air and in space.

There are options, though I'm not sure about the UK, for well-compensated tech work that isn't just sitting staring at a screen for 8 hours a day.

Yes, twice. I tried starting a career as a guide in the mountains, but after passing my certs realised that it would take me too long (years) to achieve any kind of financial stability, all of that whilst being away from my family a lot of the time. In the end, the pay would still be significantly lower and volatile compared to a dev job.

Also worked as a plumber for nearly a year. You do get the satisfaction of not being glued to the screen every day of the year, and actually seeing the job you did at the end of the day. Again though, you need to put up with some kind of people with whom you may not have the same conversations you're used to, plus the low pay, plus the constant labor. It was freeing to do it for a year, but not any longer.

I'm now in a very boring job which pays pretty well, and my thinking now is how can I become less dependent on my dev salary, so if I burnout again (and I know it will happen), I can take an extended breather again before going back to my desk.

I haven't yet, but it's in my future.

It's not realistic for me to retire early and I suspect I will be obsolete in the tech industry long before the age of 70.

My plan is to work on lowering my living expenses to the point that as of the age of 50-55, I can switch to a job that is local, not in tech, lower paid, in the physical world, connected to real people. It's obviously not going to be very hard labor at that age.

The idea is to pay down the entire mortgage, optimize the home for energy use, and reduce to just one small cheap car, or maybe even none at all. There's plenty smaller items to save on, but that's the bulk of it. Funny thing is that it's barely even a lifestyle downgrade.

It should add that this is our plan. My wife is in. She has an office job, not in tech, but is equally done with it. A massive waste of life, it drains the soul. We estimate that by that time, it requires as little as 1.5 x minimum wage to keep things going. Which is an absolute joke compared to our current combined earning power.

I'm under no illusion that our potential new jobs are going to be terribly exciting. It doesn't have to be.

Our plan isn't just driven by a disgust for the modern office or fear of becoming obsolete, it's also because we realized that retirement is a scam. We both have a large family and the general pattern we observe is that around the age of 70, most people are broken, exhausted, dead or have lost their partner. They do not thrive in magical new freedoms, travel, or hobbies for some 2 decades. They perish. They sit, talk and complain and slowly see their peers fall apart.

Brutal, but the lesson is to not delay gratification that long. Work with the assumption that retirement sucks and that you're on the clock to improve your life during your good years.

Anyway, what was the question again?

Right now I’m about 50/50 between software engineering and EMS. The value of the work I do as an EMT is obviously much greater, but the pay disparity is so vast it’s hard to commit to the jump. Aside from what other comments have already noted, I’d get ready for work being much much harder on you and your body on a daily basis. You may not have to think about the job outside of working hours, but there’s a new level of physical exhaustion that comes from being on your feet working 12 hours a day then doing the same the next day. And the next, and the next.

Additionally, you may find the new rules and regs of your position to be grating. Since you’re in sales, you can set your own schedule to some degree. That flips to needing to get permission to leave work for the slightest reason. This extends to relationships between you and your bosses as well. At my software job I tend to collaborate with management, in EMS I take orders.

I worked in joinery and carpentry for around 6 years (apart from a few years as a teen as well). While I love building and think they’re incredible crafts, you might find that very few people agree. If you want to work for the sake of moving, building, some kind of rudimentary connection to a physical process, maybe that would be alright.

I found it fairly soul draining. I want to be great at what I do so I can make the best things possible for people (within reason, of course). Every time I build something, I’m focused on improving myself and my work. The end result should be the creation, improvement, or restoration of something that really should exist, and makes someone’s day or months or years better. A form of leaving things better than you found them.

What I did for most of my years was seek out people like me (and mostly failing) while unethically corner-cutting for foremen, radically simplifying joinery processes to save money (not improve products), doing mass amounts of body-breaking menial labour to get big jobs moving, covering up avoidable mistakes because very few people cared not to make them, and generally grinding my love for my work into a pulp.

Drunk people on forklifts. Heaps of overt sexism and racism. People working hard to avoid doing their jobs rather than working hard at their jobs. Heaps of resentment if you care and want to do better. Terrible compensation.

I love building things. I still do it, and frankly I value my physical labour and trade skills more highly than software. I suppose it seems to me that society, or at least the economy, strongly disagrees and so it’s both financially and perhaps spiritually intractable to return to that kind of work as a career.

If these things don’t sound like they’d matter to you, that’s great. I know my incompatibility was partially my own temperament and stubborn inability to simply adapt and let these things be. I am glad I left it behind, though. Despite being young and healthy, it was doing bad things to my body and not doing much for my mind either.

I moved in the other direction. Helped my father run a business that could roughly be classified as "sewer and water installation", among other things.

The term "manual" varies a ton. The work I was doing was extremely physical, requiring long hours (12 hours on a reduced day, six days a week) during the main work season. Friends working in a grocery store had very different working conditions and pay.

The first thing to keep in mind is that it's hard to do a job with a heavy physical component after 50. There's a good chance you'll end up managing other workers, and it's not the same as managing office workers. And finally, as is the case with many of these types of jobs, mine required considerable intellectual effort in addition to the physical effort (solving problems, dealing with regulations, etc.) and I had to deal with customers all the time.

>I know that office work is desirable for a reason (people like to sit down!!) but I think there might be something inspiring and rewarding about working with me hands.

Before I became a programmer I worker various odd jobs during summer holidays and some time during my first years in university. It was mostly unqualified job at construction sites, delivery of household appliances, farm work, etc. Of course, you are not aiming at that kind of work but I just wanted to share my experience of "working with me hands" - it absolutely sucks. Cold, exhausted, wet, dirty or any combination of these, I didn't earn much and sometimes I worked for >14 hours just for a little bit of more pay, I also often had to wake up very early. Office job is soul-rotting but at least it's physically comfortable and I am really happy I have one now.

I co-founded and run a non-profit makerspace. 70% of our membership is in the IT field in some way. Getting to make something physical especially something small enough to show people is a big win for a lot of them. Some love CAD designing things to be CNC milled or laser cut or 3D printed but doing manual measuring, cutting, assembly, etc. in the woodshop is by far the most popular craft. If you have a makerspace / hackerspace in the area, it's a good way to get in some time working with your hands without (or before) switching careers.

I definitely see some paths for someone to make a living or even quite decent wage doing custom(-ish) work in a few areas but unless you get hired somewhere or partner with a business, it's a lot of marketing work or grinding on Etsy or at local shows.

I like to do the oil change on my car, not because I love it, but because it's a good reminder to myself what life is like for those less fortunate who didn't have the same choice. Not to say there aren't any people who don't love that, but physical labor is plenty though as well.

You might enjoy the interview I did with a 20 year software engineer veteran who did stint(albeit short) as an Amazon warehouse worker to get through burnout

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33072083

God no. I crawled out of that dirt to make a life for myself. You don't wanna go back there. Every single morning I wake up and thank God, Buhdda, Krishna, Zeus, Allah, whoever, for my career and job. You have no idea the misery that 90% of the human population is trapped in for life.

No. I think it's a "grass is always greener" fallacy. Working behind a cash register is likely going to be far more frustrating than working with tech stakeholders and be a lot more physically fatiguing. You really just can't attach so much of your self-worth to your job ever. If you have a hole in your life, then picking up a hammer or paintbrush doesn't seem likely to fill it. Maybe finding a job in your area of expertise working for a company that has more of a positive mission can add a little extra satisfaction without forcing you to give up too much. But really making personal connections is what's going to give you the most. If not with co-workers, then falling in love works pretty well. So does having kids.

I did not something similar, but here’s my catch after reading about 3/4 of the comments as well as your reactions to it.

I think you should do it! Follow your passion!

I see all the arguments of people say “nah” but I think this career switch will bring you joy and happiness. Also, you always have the ability to go back. More likely is, that you grow into the coffee business and might end up building your own company.

Having a small espresso machine at home, I brought it to a espresso machine maintenance company. I entered the shop and I immediately felt the passion for good coffee, the craftsmanship of maintaining and fine tune coffee machines and finally make a good espresso. Pure joy to see and experience!

Good luck and have a wonderful ride!

I think it also depends on your social background, the social life that you would lead, and what you want to be in the future?

If you are from the UK, then you would need to consider how the change in social status would affect how you are perceived by your possible friends and family. Would you be happy having to deal with people who have a different mindset, different cultural pursuits, etc... than you?

I think money is less of an issue as long as you make a nice middle class salary for where you live. A lot of the tech community seems to be obsessed with money making, but that is more of a trait shared by Americans, and not widely found in Europe nor Asia. The main issue is whether you are physically capable of manual labour.

I wish I could be a musician. I have the necessary talent but haven't put in the work. To be honest, I'd rather be a musician and eat Ramen noodles than keep writing accounting software and live in a mansion. Hell, even if it meant being alone forever and being poor as dirt vs having a relationship and living in luxury, I'd still take rather be a musician in a heartbeat. Every time I do a job interview it gets harder to smile and say this is my dream job when I know I will spend every moment in misery feeling like I was wasting my life. I got into programming as a creative outlet, and now I'm competent at it, and I have to survive. I bet a lot of other people are in a similar boat.

I haven't switched. I still mostly do software engineering. But I did burn out on my job in a toxic workplace and quit with nothing quite so formal as a plan.

Before picking up more software work ~6mo later, I got certified as an EMT and started volunteering on the ambulance at a local service. It has been a really great choice. I work with excellent people in a job very different from my remote software one. I wouldn't call it manual labor by any stretch, but it has a very different physicality and interpersonal nature than engineering that makes it very rewarding for me.

There's no reason on paper to spend whole days volunteering doing something you're not the best at. Doesn't matter.

> would involve being on the road four out of five days.

This is bad for your health. Being stuck in a vehicle is worse than being in an office chair. And no matter what you say now, you're going to end up eating a lot of take out and not really exercising.

Something to consider.

For me, a career change seems drastic and unnecessary. If you want to do work with your hands, pick up a hobby that lets you do that, and use your finance salary to fund it. If you want to be traveling all the time, find a high-paying sales job that lets you work from the road to financially support all that travel. If you want to do good for the world, volunteer--but keep doing the uninspiring pointless work to support yourself. You're probably going to see a lot of survivor bias in the replies here--nobody ever wants to talk about how they burned out, tried becoming a janitor or whatever and failed and went broke.

I went the other way, from a manual laborer ("able seaman") on a cement tugboat to an engineer. I would never go back for any reason. Parts of working with your hands or working outdoors can be rewarding, but it was extremely brutal and backbreaking work. Aside from the physical demands it was also very unhealthy breathing in powdered cement all the time. IMO if you want to use your hands more start a garden, fix up a house or a car, or get some productive physical hobby. Don't quit your day job until you're very sure you want to do the thing day in day out for a living. Just my two cents.

Before software I worked a number of blue collar jobs. Despite sharing the same feelings as you, there's no way I'm taking a pay cut and going back to how I lived before.

I would remind you that the grass is always greener.

Here's a thread that was on the /r/bestOf subreddit the other day about finding meaning in one's work:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/13ohn5b/is...

A friend of mine switched from IT work (roll outs of retail systems) to driving a fork lift. He was able to stay with the same company and kept his seniority and vacation time (they give an extra week per 5 years so he’s up to 6 weeks PTO). He’s making less money of course, but he’s far happier. No more time on the road and he says he loves that when his shift ends, it ends.

One downside for me is we have to plan further ahead to hang out since he is almost always scheduled to work weekends. But between us we’ve got plenty of PTO to make it work. We’re doing a full week of bikepacking in July!

I find the juxtaposition between professional and manual jobs to be quite odd ;D

“Pays a third and on the road 4 out of 5 days”

That doesn’t sound very nice to me. If working with your hands seems rewarding then maybe find a hobby or something to get that reward without putting your livelihood at risk.

I've known a quite few people who dropped out of tech around the dotcom bust and I've not really had a very normal continuous career..

As afar as manual labor and car(?) travel, I would recommend against doing that without a specific trajectory in mind that you've already been working on. For example if you will be transitioning to more of a lifestyle as an owner of coffee shops.

Most people I know who went into the trades and stayed had pretty good advantages compared to ones that were really looking for anything open to an entry level worker.

This isn't so bad, huh? Making bucks, getting exercise, working outside.

Fuckin' A.

Fuckin' A...

The problem is fundamental: monetizing business value. Is there a particular, defensible, specialized manual skill worth as much as the most niche knowledge work you can do? Perhaps some sort of nuclear-rated welder? A professional engineer who happens to be an expert witness and subject matter expert for the interpretation of civil or mechanical engineering building codes can command 50k GBP for writing an opinion report that takes 1-2 hours of effort.

Just think of the kind of boss, and your relationship to them, you might have in that new role, and also the colleagues and customers.

Of course some of that depends on the actual company, even branch, but a surprising amount is endemic, uh, inherent to particular industries.

In my experience a large part of the job experience is 'other people'. The most fulfilling work can be made a hell by a bad boss, and the most mundane tasks elevated by interesting colleagues, etc.

And also, about people you work with; you will become them, in some small (or large) way.

You can do whatever you want. As long as you're employed enough to meet your bills and retire one day.

I also haven't done the switch, but consider getting into a physical hobby AND also perhaps switching to a lower hours less stress role in your current field that will free you up to spend more time on your hobby.

I worked manual labor through high school and most of college. Be careful of a job that has repetitive motions that can cause you overuse injures. They're very common in the 50+ crowd in the blue collar area I'm from.

Good luck!

This classic thread is relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541964

I knew a guy from rural Canada who’d stop software engineering work for the winter and would do snow plowing (contracts, for money). Then back to software when the winter was over.

exercise the brain -> better brain using your hands -> better hand coordination physical activity - > better endurance hurl heavy objects -> more strength etc each can be split up into more specific things like learning a new programming language or framework will come with similar but also different conditioning from filling taxes or writing a business plan. Just like drywall, Boxing and deadlift.

If I rent out my thoughts to an employer there will be few thoughts left to use in my spare time. Same with tiring physical work. Memory and fine motor skills are available all day, every day but watch maker by day and watch maker by night might get really boring.

Motivation is a bitch, doing something as a job is so much easier to stick with. If the job has you run up a mountain every day you will do it, if it's suppose to be a fitness goal or hobby you do have to show up.

Each of the challenges in life has its perfect portion for the day, week, month, year. Say, run up the mountain twice 3 days/week. You might write better books if you do it 24/7 for 4 months/year.

You have to figuring out the ideal amount of money to burn, how much to earn and the ideal number of hours per week per project.

Thankfully life is completely pointless, there are no real goals. It's all about the journey. (Life could be sitting down all day, exploring the various foods of the world.) Every turn you make, every step along the way will take you further away from other things. When eventually the coffee comes out of your nose there are always other places to explore.

Senoir/Lead Engineer, possibly transitioning to be a residential remodeler and small construction projects. I just enjoy it more than writing software now.

There are plenty of reasons to change career path (https://ivypanda.com/essays/why-do-people-switch-careers/) and as someone who chose my passion over stability can relate. If you could give it a try without a significant loss for you (won`t be starving etc.), why not?

Coffee engineer? You’ll still be working with Java I bet

Check out langorigami.com. Robert Lang switched from being a physicist to being an origami artist. He has all kinds of exhibits etc., and has written several origami books, some of which have a lot of math in them. He still gets to use physics sometimes too, like when he was involved with the design of a car airbag that, when stowed, is folded up like origami.

After 16 years implementing business applications I switched to managing family business, including a wedding dress shop. That gave me a steady level of income that allowed me to bootstrap a handful of SaaS products since 2018 (and still have time for the kids while they are young and see me as relevant to them).

"every form of refuge has its price"

Every lifestyle has its own pain and perks. Heck, Kato Kaelin found out the hard way that even living in a celebrity's pool house comes with its risks and problems. A lot of it boils down to deciding what kind of suffering you are least uncomfortable with.

I would die from boredom if I chose this job. Have you thought about being a plumber? You'll probably earn the same amount as now, but you'll get more diverse communications with it, and this job will not be replaced by AI within the next 20 years (IMHO, I might be wrong though).

I would say yes you're being a little naive. You'll be sitting in traffic, setting out early and getting back late, dealing with parking tickets and difficult end users. You will ache from driving and working in strange positions. It will get old quickly.

While I still love my IT work which consumes most of my time, my wife and I actually decided to "make" more stuff and possibly make money with it: crafting photos on real film in our darkroom, doing electronics, invent wood kits, etcetcetc.

Most manual jobs are going to pay less and hurt your body more. I think your best bet is to save tons of money and then retire early, so you can do what you want.

Most jobs (manual or office work) are not rewarding and don't provide meaning.

I did manual labor (construction, gas station, etc.) work thru high school and college. For me, I would never ever go back to that life. But maybe your job is different than just pure manual labor. So good luck to you.

I'd probably rather die if I had to work any physical job the rest of my life. Realms of the mind and thinking are so much more comfortable to me. Even hanging up picture frames gives me anxiety.

Anyone trying to make this change now?

I came across a great, well-paced, well-paid¹ outdoor role that still involves a small amount of tech.

¹Better paid than a lot of tech roles, actually.

I would need a teammate to break in. Get in touch!

I’ve learned recently that you’ll never find long lasting happiness by chasing it. You have everything you need already inside you to find happiness and joy in whatever you’re doing :) Good luck!

Start volunteering at a farm on weekends if possible. If you like it, get your own land and start a small hobby farm. You can even start associated processing business or shop.

If only our jobs were not so specialized and all consuming we could have better balance of the physical, social, and technical skills we desire. I like to tell this story which immediately gets a rise out of people. One of the things the [name revealed at end] did that I liked was to require everybody in the country to do some manual labor. Scientists, bureaucrats, doctors and the like were all required to be outside for a few hours a day doing manual labor alongside others from various backgrounds. This not only made a physically healthy population but improved society. The government that did this was the Nazis. Of course much of what they did was horrible, but I think this great experiment was lost in history due to the branding.

It seems like you’re trying to get the tail to wag the dog. Ask yourself what your greatest good is, and order your life towards that.

I continue in my office job, but get my fix of physical-type work through gardening, cooking, golf, and driving.

Don't do it. You have good circumstances you should not throw away. If you're really that bored all day, find a job in the same field that is more challenging. Just know that in a few short years that greener pasture you tricked yourself into will become boring again or worse. There's nothing new under the sun. My honest advice, seek Jesus.

“someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave - Tim Farris / Rolf Potts

:/ i think the first step is disregarding the thought process that a "Professional job" is not a manual job....that's kind of an insulting thing to say.

Army, Marine Corps, Wildland Firefighting, Owning 3x Coffee Shops, and now Software Dev for 10 years.....

just saying.

You don't need a career change. You need a hobby.

Peter in officespace did.

If you're getting paid for a job, it's a professional job.

A long time ago I was a software engineer. And I am now again a software person.

In 1990, after the murder of a close friend, participating in the invasion of a small Latin American country and contracting for a national government on the edge of a war zone, I looked forward to a stable job as a software engineer. No one would shoot at me, I figured, so it must be a better gig.

It was, however, quite boring. I don't think I had real PTSD, but after a while in the sterile cube farm, I started imagining what I would do if opposing forces broke down our front door and attempted to claim our office park for the glory of Upper Kraznovistan. Apparently there are things worse than being in battle: the mindless drudgery and impossibly poor management of a telephony equipment manufacturer in the early 90s.

So I dropped my last dose of purple microdot and drove to NYC where I hung out with some old friends. I wasn't really paying attention and wound up with a part time job delivering scenic backdrops to Broadway. This was back when Times Square was somewhat crime-ridden (not peak crime, but still a lot rougher than it is today.) No one shot at me while driving my delivery van, but I did get guns pointed at me from time to time. And then the Teamsters would try to punch me for unloading the van. Turns out all the Teamsters didn't get the memo that we were supposed to unload items in the van, staging them in a designated area. Then the Teamsters pick them up and move them. I have no beef w/ Teamsters and get it they thought they were protecting their jobs against management scabs.

Was getting guns pointed at me and almost punched by Teamsters enough for me to return to the loving embrace of software? No. But I wasn't making nearly enough money to live in NYC or the surrounding areas, so I wound up as the VP of A&R for a small record label in Dallas while living in an artists' commune in what we might call "Midtown" today.

I eventually saw a print job ad in the Dallas Morning News with several lines of 8086 assembly with the comment "if you know what this does, give us a call." The siren call of working with crazy people trying to make a dent in the universe was hard to ignore and I once again returned to a career in the ontological arts and crafts.

I am now a nameless drone in sector 47 of the underground software mines. But it's totally fine, I have long since made peace with the fact I'll never put a dent in the universe. Or rather... that I had for a long time been building software with the idea that it would dent the universe. My outlook now is to focus on the software, let the universe dent itself.

This is a long way around of saying... Yes, software is largely soul eroding. The music business, which it has been observed by my betters as a cruel and shallow money trench in which pimps and thieves are rewarded is still less corrosive than software.

If you got into software just for the money, then I would say "yes, fly! be free!" But if you do personal projects on the weekend just 'cause you like it, then maybe not. Maybe just find a better environment to express your design pattern addiction.

You're always going to have to work with idiots. (Often you find that they're only really mildly less informed than you are and not real idiots.) There are always going to be people who will rejoice in thwarting your best laid plans. If the reason you don't like software is you've always worked with idiots or people who wouldn't know an agile process if it turned into a snake and bit them on the ass, even though agile processes seem to repeatedly turn into metaphorical ass-biting reptiles. If you work with people who are irritating, maybe first try to find a less-well-paying job in software first? It'll probably still pay better than a coffee industry lackey.

But you mention working with your hands so maybe it's the abstract nature of work you've had 'til now? Maybe try working on an IIoT or robotics project?

I think my advice is to consider other types of jobs with other types of teams/people, probably at smaller organizations before prostrating yourself to big coffee. Or not. I kept coming back to software, maybe you'll be happy to keep it far behind.

IT -> Manual laborer gas industry.

It's rewarding, been to beautiful places, met whole other (blue collar) subcultures. But it's really hard to know if it's life positive. It's certainly not for life, screw that. Manual work keeps you fit but it breaks the body more. It's also dangerous which is an ok price to pay for experiences but not for living life.

Volunteering in IT in a developing country (1 year turned to 2.5 years) unconditionally positive, travel, different people, different challenges, different parts of the brain used.

> Did you miss the money and status?

Money yes, but if I got my tickets I could be on similar to before. Status, that's a UK thing. I literally lol on the idea people in IT have status.