[guycook]

I've never mined coal, but I did fly-in/fly-out work at coal mines surveying, and compared to coding it had the following benefits:

  - way better pay (not everywhere pays developers like the US)
  - kept me in shape
  - I slept a lot better during that job
  - satisfaction of jobs completed (no maintenance for topo data)
  - no micromanagment, open plan offices, daily stand-ups
  - predictable, stable working hours
  - etc. etc.

I don't do it now - 10 days out of every 14 is too long for me to stay away from my family - so I guess in the end the bad outweighed the good. But I just want to make the point that it's easy to assume that building boring CRUD apps is the best road to go down if you too quickly dismiss the other paths that can be taken.

[tonyarkles]

You bring up a really interesting point. My partner does both project management and sound tech work. "I love it when the gigs go well, but good or bad, at the end of the night I get paid for the gig, I come home, and I don't ever have to think about it again if I don't want to."