[claytoneast]

This is spot-on for some of us here. I told my friend last week that I'd like to come work construction with him and will be quitting my decently-paying programming job to go do so in 3 weeks. I'd started to interview at another tech company and realized that I couldn't bear the thought of programming for someone else again. I burned out so hard at my current job I can't conceive of working anywhere as a programmer and enjoying it. So I'm going to go pour concrete and frame walls and hope that someday I'll sit down at a computer and want to tell it what to do again. I do remember that magical feeling. I just can't feel it anymore.

[marcus_holmes]

I had an "alternative" start to my coding career. Before that, I worked all sorts of different unskilled jobs. In one of them, warehouse picking in a supermarket chain, I met a guy who had burned out of tech (and this was ~1990). I couldn't believe that someone who had a career writing code, working for IBM, all of that, would just walk away from it to become a warehouse picker.

30 years later, after ~25 years in tech and a major clinical depression, I totally understand why he did that. He seemed happy, too.

[Lich]

Resonate with this alot. I often found that when I was doing labor work at home or helping someone else, I easily find myself focused and in the zone of whatever I'm doing. I often find myself thinking as I drive by construction sites or watching tradesmen/contractors work, that I should have gone into that line of work.

[taneq]

There's a great deal of satisfaction in a blue-collar career. Some months I live on the edge of one, and just building physical things and using simple tech to solve real problems is fulfilling in a way that some neat code running on a server in relative isolation has never been for me.