[j9461701]

And yet construction workers were the happiest group surveyed:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/construction-workers-topped-r...

Personally, I really couldn't agree more with what you're saying. The prospect of doing manual labor for a living just sounds awful. Getting dirty and smelly, blowing out my knees and ruining my back, having my brain stuck in idle for 8 hours all day every day, massively increasing my probability of suffering a crippling or fatal work-related accident. And an office job has the possibility of leading to a work-from-home situation, which would allow you to get whatever level of exercise of whatever type you want every single day of the week.

[visarga]

> having my brain stuck in idle for 8 hours all day every day

You'd be surprised how many times manual labor requires solution finding. Even figuring out a leaking pipe or a problem in the electricity panel requires ingenuity. Designing and making custom furniture can be complex. A competent construction worker / repairman can be like a dev and payed like one (& sometimes harder to find). Take a look at those DIY videos to see what I mean. Not to mention the tooling these guys have in their shops ...

[wufufufu]

Yea, the opinion that you can only use your brain in an office job is wrong, but that opinion is somehow is imprinted on everyone.

I know people who work(ed) construction who are actually very smart and they constantly belittle their own intelligence because they don't have a college degree or have a job that works with computers. Vice versa I know people who attend graduate school at tech institutes who are actually stupid in many ways but are so full of themselves because they've managed to memorize enough to pass engineering classes.

[TheCoelacanth]

Construction industry, not necessarily the people actually doing the construction. That is easily explained by the relatively good economic performance of the construction industry at the time the survey was conducted.

[watwut]

Injured and sick get out of manual labor, oftentimes in pain. Developers whose back hurts or joints are bad continue working slightly less happy. Worker whose back or joints hurt gotta find new job.

[fjsolwmv]

And guess what group was #2: Software developers. Now look at long-term health and economic prospects of the two careers, beyod short term satisfaction with survivorship bias. Former developers are better off than former construction workers.

[j9461701]

Actually #2 was consumer products and services. Technology in general and software ranked 3rd.

>Now look at long-term health and economic prospects of the two careers, beyod short term satisfaction with survivorship bias.

Economics seems to be the real reason the original poster saw people switch away from manual labor after trying it for a while. Construction workers may be happier and more fulfilled day to day, but software engineers are paid more and it's hard to say no to a larger, more consistent paycheck.