After 5+ years of actively trying to get into the field (pre AI), I left.
I threw my degree in the toilet, I closed my linkedin, and I went to go work in the trades as a diesel mechanic.
Greatest choice I've ever made. The pay is great, the work is steady, the coworkers are relaxed and not trying to one up each other. I'm now being paid to go to school, and get raises every year until I'm fully ticketed (way more than I ever made in the entry tech positions).
I've heard non-stop my whole life that if I join a trade it's going to be grunt labor and I'll be paralyzed in 5 years. Maybe some are, but this isn't hard at all. I lay on a creeper and turn wrenches. Anything over 50lbs we have lifts for.
Tech has become fun again, I'm just making projects because its what I wanted. I come home and relax by writing on my projects.
Now, I'm watching my tech friends from a distance and my only regret is not doing this sooner.
Reading this and some of your other comments in this thread, I think it’s awesome you’ve landed up doing what you really enjoy and are well compensated for it.
It makes me wonder if I would be happier doing something else, but (because of my personality) I’m very doubtful.
Since you see yourself as also being a computer guy I’m assuming that lack skill or intuition was not why you left the industry, so don’t read the rest of my comment as talking about you.
But I’ve definitely seen plenty of people in the software development industry where they may get by “okay” at their job, but things don’t tend to “click” as easily (in terms of intuitive understanding) for them the same way they do for me.
So I feel lucky and deeply happy to be at a company I enjoy working at and doing what has always been my passion.
It’s not that the computer industry is completely terrible (although plenty of parts of it certainly are), it’s just that for some people it’s not their true passion (which is fine).
I think its the smart people who things click well for that have the most problems because theyre not worried about things clicking, so their whole focus is on how B.S. the actual industry is.
> I closed my linkedin, and I went to go work in the trades as a diesel mechanic.
Love it! A score of years ago, I considered being an auto mechanic after graduating HS but then ended up back in CompSci.
Did you have to go back to school? Did you find a shop that would take you in as an apprentice? And if they did, how did you convince them you can/will be good at the job?
I had lots of personal experience under my belt. I built a hot rod out my garage on the cheap (because I was broke and wanted a nice car). I used that on my resume and they were extremely excited on that. The company I work for is famous for their fleet of "show" semis. It's super super cool and I think the mix of my passion for cars mixed well with their eye for details on their fleet.
However, the bar has never been lower.
I didn't want to do automotive, the piece work is a cancer. You'll do 12 hour days and get paid for 8. Not my cup of tea. I was interested in the big stuff. Offroad equiptment sounded cool too.
FWIW, there's a huge difference in job quality between diesel and a regular auto mechanic (at least if you're in the states): Unless you work somewhere rare and amazing, auto mechanics typically work within the flat-rate system. In case you're not familiar, this is a joke of a wage system wherein you're not actually paid for the time a job takes, but the time a book says it should take in a perfect world. Rusty fasteners, broken equipment, bad/wrong parts- all the real-world complications that come up during jobs will conspire to make you take longer than book time and, especially for new people, can leave you making less than you'd make in fast food.
Turns out that I was really out of my depth when it comes to ins and outs of a car at the chassis level. I also realized that if I can’t toy with it in my free time then I’m not going to pursue it as a career. Working on cars needs a lot of space which a broke college student doesn’t have.
Wrenching is a better than the average trade, but you will accumulate damage in your hands and shoulders from it.
The vibration of impact guns do considerable damage to your hands over a decade or two of work along with the tight squeezing of tools. Thick padded hand grips might be a good idea even if impact guns don't feel like it hurts right now. Heavy wrenching can do a number on shoulders too but shoulder sockets can be replaced, although it is supposedly not a pleasant experience.
Absolutely. It's not perfect but safety is in your control, and all up to you.
I accept the trade off, as the alternative is going back to linkedin and begging for a job all day.
This is why I try to hoard all my money. I don't want to do this when I'm 50. I've always thought about doing this for 10-15 years and then building a semi and doing some owner operator long haul trucking. I could easily fix anything on the truck and save major money.
Have you thought of opening your own truck repair shop? Often there are places where trucks break down and the solutions are slim to None. A good repair shop in the right place might make decent money.
I'm so at peace right now, the flow is good. I don't need the hustle of chasing mllions of dollars. The owner of the company can deal with that, I just want to do my 8 hours and go home free and clear.
> I'm now being paid to go to school, and get raises every year until I'm fully ticketed (way more than I ever made in the entry tech positions).
This. People tend to underestimate the joy that steady progress brings. A quick peak usually just leads to a long, depressing decline. Many people would rather take a career that grows a few percent every year for four decades over one that spikes and crashes any day. It’s better to be a slow grower who stays valuable than a flash-in-the-pan who burns out by 35[1].
[1] Honestly, I think there is a reason for this decline that has nothing to do with AI: the IT industry has just matured. Aside from the classic GoF patterns and Enterprise patterns and their variations, what new popular and deep design patterns have we actually adopted lately? Or look at all those must-know data structures and algorithms that are all over the web. How many of those were invented in the last ten years? Even in open source, where are the new platform-level projects invented in the last 5 years that every major company is pouring resources into? There are not many.
In other words, we are just eating our own tail at this point. It is just CRUD to death. When things get this stagnant, tech departments inevitably turn into cost centers. Even without AI, we were already heading toward a dead end. AI just happens to be the tool that makes it easy to automate everything because, at the end of the day, most of our work is just rearranging the same old code patterns anyway.
> Many people would rather take a career that grows a few percent every year for four decades
That's exactly what the corporate IT world has always been once you leave SV.
Paying about 10M/yr for a team of 50 people makes perfect sense. It doesn't really make a dent in payroll to keep daily operations going while their people get paid competitively to work from home in an affordable suburb.
In this world, AI is not a threat. It just auto-transcribes meeting notes and sucks at code review. There's very little to delegate to AI because everyone is maintaining services that have to stay in prod for years if not decades. You wouldn't replace them in the same way you wouldn't replace your lawyers and accountants.
I wanted a nice car, so instead of racking up mega debt on a $70,000 mustang I bought an old classic car and learned everything. After 5 years I fully restored it on the cheap (less than $10k) and now I've pivoted my career to that.
A long-ago colleague got a junk classic car and took night classes at the local community college to learn how to fix/restore everything. He finished the degree and quit the tech job.
Anyone currently with a tech job can pay for it out of pocket and barely notice. If it’s something someone thinks they may want to do, they should just do it. Nobody says you have to switch jobs at the end.
And tools have never been cheaper. The knock off chinese clones are used by professionals too. I have tons of automotive friends and they all vary in their level of access to things. I have friends who built their cars on the public road infront of their house, and some friends who took a year long college course.
I'm unconvinced that car mechanic pay is anywhere near programming but either way I'd say you have a pretty select and valuable skill set if you know cars and computers, given how computerised modern cars are.
Maybe 10 years ago. Now you have to fight 300 other applicants for an entry position that pays $50k in NYC.
The biggest thing for me that pushed me over the edge was thinking, how will I get a mortgage? All this applying, 100s of applications, even if I land a job it's not stable. Maybe it pays more, but I'll be laid off in a year or 2. Then back to 100s of applications while my mortgage is ticking away.
I have a friend who worked at Adobe for 5+ years as a senior AI researcher. Has a PhD in compi sci majoring in AI. He got laid off last year and couldn't find any work. I witnessed it. He gave up and started doing a side hustle thing on a video game. It's just not stable, and thats not how I want my life.
I don't see much overlap between mechanics and cars honestly. Everything in a car is modular. If it doesn't work, you replace it. Car tuning has some level of tech. Kind of. But that's an entirely different field that people specialize in, typical mechanics cannot do that.
That's really inconsistent with my experience. Are you a game dev maybe? I can believe it for them. Or maybe a web dev. I think if you do anything a bit more technical and "boring" like firmware development or data engineering there's tons of highly paid work, at least in the UK (which has lower salaries than the US for skilled work).
> Everything in a car is modular. If it doesn't work, you replace it.
Doesn't it require some skill diagnosing what isn't working using CAN tools? Plus there's all the coding of parts now. I guess to be fair, you're kind of limited by what tools the manufacturers are willing to sell you and it's probably difficult to go outside that unless you are a university level researcher.
Honestly, I think the biggest enjoyment I got from this thread is that programming culture is often toxic in ways that people aren't really ready to admit on this site which is dedicated to computers and programming.
I can hear them now: "Surely, you can't be happy with your decision, Mr. Ralo. You're leaving so much money on the table!"
I just downgraded the skillset needed and moved back down to dedicated IT. It's so much easier and I have zero job-related stress 95% of the time. I already worked a flashy job with big name recognition. I don't need to prove anything to anyone. I want no extra hours or responsibility. It's great.
It depends? It's certainly not gonna be more than you'd make as a SWE/SDE at a big tech company. But for semi diesel specifically you can probably clear $100k+/yr, so you might be making more than some entry level programming jobs that don't pay as well.
It's kinda like law. A mechanic doesn't make more than someone in the right side of the bimodal lawyer pay where 3Ls with the right clerkship or internship walking into a biglaw job paying whatever that is now ($200k?). But a mechanic might make more than the other tranche of lawyers fighting for the rest of the scraps who don't yet (and may never) have a good practice set up.
As a mechanic at the local quick lube, not much pay. But if you can get positioned as an expert in any car-related field, the pay can be huge. I know several people who are local experts in various car related professions who cater to the very rich automotive enthusiasts who have basically no budget limits, once they trust your work, you can name your price.
I did door to door sales for a while and let me tell you there's nothing more degrading than getting the door slammed in your face at best and being chased off by dogs at worst.
Would have taken grunt labour any day over the latter.
But it gave me a thick skin in the long run and made me a much better (nastier?) negotiator when I had to run business groups.
Happy to be out of it now. Kind of rose at the right time and left before LLMs showed up.
that is so inspiring to hear. would you mind answering a couple of questions:
1) How long were you in software?
2) How did you get your break in the trades? Did you go to school etc?
3) Did you have to start on an apprentice program?
My entire life I've done tech. I remember in middle school all my teachers knew me as the kid who wrote code. I did my degree, and did an internship but nothing ever really stuck (still not sure what happened with that) and my full time job became begging for work.
I didn't do any schooling but thats because I've always liked cars and would tinker at home. So I was very advanced for an entry level. They get government kick backs for hiring apprentices and the less of a burder you are to them, the better. However, the bar has never been lower. Before this, I tried electrician but didn't like it. I have zero experience as an electrician.
Your employer signs you up after you pass probation. Then every year you do a 2 month schooling course which is all government paid.
I'm looking to leave working in tech. The local public transit bus agency is always hiring mechanics. Going to a technical school for a diesel mechanic training and working there is high up on my list of things to explore. Thanks for the positive reinforcement.
> I've heard non-stop my whole life that if I join a trade it's going to be grunt labor and I'll be paralyzed in 5 years. Maybe some are, but this isn't hard at all. I lay on a creeper and turn wrenches. Anything over 50lbs we have lifts for.
The first sentence is what I'd think too.
Have you considered if the fully ticketed salary includes risk of serious injury if something bad happens (like, knock on wood, lifts failing)?
The far higher risk of injury and death is one thing that keeps people away from physical jobs.
It's not perfect. I risk crushing my hands everyday. Or falling. Or causing 10s of thousands of dollars in damage because I didnt tighten a bolt. Arthritis is likely.
But it's still incredibly rare, and mainly in your control. All my coworkers are major injury free.
I just did a search on "Boron and arthritis". It was helpful but didn't give you the information I thought it would. After Boron and arthritis I'd search on "Boron and arthritis and region" --> "Epidemiological studies suggest a link between geographic dietary boron intake and regional arthritis rates, with areas consuming higher boron having substantially lower arthritis prevalence"
I'm in a similar process. I've enjoyed working in tech but it feels for me that it has run its course. We recently started making EDC bags and minimalist laptop backpacks. https://ancientedc.com And while it probably won't generate tech money, it's really nice sitting down at the sewing machine and cranking out a physical product that people really enjoy using.
You might be able to be a diesel mechanic and clean up in tech. This video is almost a year old, about applying Claude Code to boring businesses, a mobile diesel mechanic service in this case study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWNFna6fgS8
I try everyday to apply my tech background to my mechanics. I use it for things like torque specs and brain storming issues but nothing much else.
Utilizing it for business purposes is certainly an option too. Possibly in the far future, having the highest quality website with good SEO would help me stomp out competition.
Fiction has sold AI in the form of Data from Star Trek. A robot with perfect recall of information over a wide range of topics and flawless reasoning.
Today’s AI is nothing like Data with its hallucinations but are taking jobs anyway because it’s “good enough” for many corporations.
P.S. Haven’t been keeping up to date but let’s say I have a story where I retcon a previously an established fact midway through the story with no explanation. If I feed it into AI as part of its training data, will it “challenge” this contradiction? Or will it just blindly accept it? What if the story is part of a prompt, will it “challenge” it in anyway?
I mean even a young child will point out that “that wasn’t what you said earlier”.
That kind of work needs robots in the loop. There is very little training data, most of it is private or opaque, and a lot of the know-how was never written down. It should hold out at least 20 years longer than programming, where basically the whole job happens inside the computer, and where the best references, examples, and source code are public to a degree unimaginable in most other industries.
I love software, but knew I would quickly learn to hate it. I'm not going to be working on my passion projects. I'd be working on horribly boring software used by some corporation.
I really wanted to go into tech because I've been told the trades were the boogie man my entire life.
Were you very specialized in a certain field, filling a senior position?
As a Canadian with a CS degree who's been trying to get into tech for years, this is horrible to hear. We have thousands of new grads in Canada who end up working in fast food because they get passed over for cheaper immigrants. I've seen it first hand, all my tech friends have seen it. We're worse than the US for this, and we have even less tech jobs here.
We don't need to be bring more entry level talent, we have tons of that not being utilized here.
There's plenty of talk about greedy corporations until the topic of using immigration to increase their profits comes up. Then it's silence.
I was coming in as a ‘normal’ developer design manager, but that is likely fairly specialized. I’m guessing that was in my favor. I know others with a couple of years engineering experience under their belt having a similar experience. But yes, the lack of jobs can be an issue. Lots of folks I know, myself included, now working remote for US-based companies.
In tech in Canada, usually we aren’t hiring immigrants because they’re cheaper—visas, moving someone, etc, is a huge expense. It’s often more that they’re the best possible fit for the role. After Covid with remote work etc, I don’t think there’s as much of that immigration going on, though—I don’t know of many Canadian companies sponsoring right now.
The entry positions are FLOODED with new comers. We aren't hiring them because they're the best fit, we have plenty of unemployed locals begging for work. To say we only bring in the best because we cannot fill the roles is a blatant lie.
You sound like you're describing senior position, which I would say is fair.
I’m talking about intermediate to senior—we haven’t had junior roles for a while, and junior roles have never _really_ been good for immigrants anyway. I’m a hiring manager and can tell you that it’s true in my experience that it’s not about money or being ‘cheaper’ but who is the best fit.
The weirder thing that’s going on right now that’s counter to all of this is US-based companies _only_ hiring Canadians, rather than Americans, when people leave because Canadians are cheaper overall—even though American companies tend to pay more. It’s kind of a paradox, but works out well.
But this one of those places where I with a boomer voice have to scream, “stop being a victim”. The picture you are painting is a complete misrepresentation of reality. I think this stems from the fantasy of thinking that tech workers right now, are akin to factory workers and are being exploited by greedy capitalist overlords, who are using immigration as cudgel to ground them down further. Tech is nothing like a factory job. The demand for talented people in Tech has never gone down (probably higher because of the AI boom). Just consider the fact that openAI is willing to pay 800k+ to employees and it is not even profitable yet. And OpenAI has hired quite a bit of immigrants, and most immigrants come from much poorer backgrounds than natives. Develop your skills and you will easily find a place in the tech industry that will pay you 200k+. The fact that your friends can’t means they did not put in enough effort to develop their skills, while an immigrant from a likely poorer country did.
Lots of tradesmen will go "up north" into the oil fields for some hard hard labour but with incredible pay.
Most do it once or twice in their life for a couple years and come back to normal relaxed day job (although some are absolute champions and will tough it out long term).
I've always figured a job like this at Nvidia would be the equivalent of "I'm going to go up north for a while and come back".
Canada has always seemed like a unique situation. We're a massive country with tiny population. This opens the door to cheap remote land. Lot of cottage land in northern Ontario goes for pennies and has acres. Infact a lot of it so rural that they don't belong to RMs and don't require building permits or inspections. Building a cottage is straight forward just building it.
I figured if you're living off grid and working online, you can just acorn and get way ahead. Moving to a major city for a job that pays 2x more usually isn't even worth it when you factor in cost of living. Obviously, you cannot have kids. This is for a young kid-less couple.
It's not ideal. Our parents many years ago would just buy a home in the suburbs and do their 9-5 but that isn't enough anymore. You will never get ahead doing that.
Working online really is a unique situation to get ahead now.
The solution to the affordability crisis shouldn’t have to be withdrawing from society and homesteading in the woods.
Humans are social animals and social connection is essential to our health [1]. This strikes me as trading one problem for several.
You lose access to quality food you don’t have to spend all summer growing yourself (too bad if you didn’t harvest enough for the long, long winter; you don’t have a passable road). Good luck raising children with no help, and no education beyond Kahn Academy. You must purchase a ton of equipment and learn how to use it and maintain it for self sufficiency. And on and on. It is not for the faint of heart.
> home in the suburbs and do their 9-5 but that isn't enough anymore.
Enough should be what we want. A happy middle-class life avoiding the extremes of poverty or excess.
> You will never get ahead doing that.
Join the escalation against yourself (the joneses): a zero-sum ladder climbing game where everyone is a loser.
One oddity of modern society is that even the "winners" are often losers - become a sociopathic CEO or entrepreneur - win toys with more bling but lose other critical things. Being a country leader doesn't look like fun to me.
Weirdly enough modern society is pretty good at sharing: winners have there same phones as I have and commonly the same entertainment media.
And one important resource (time) has a hard upper limit for us all.
> It's been living in the reverse repo market, it's slowly trickling out.
While this is true, the "trickling out" timing doesn't appear to correlate very well stock market increases.
It's true that reverse repos have been decreasing and the stock market increasing. But the timing of movement seems too far out for there to be much of a causal link.
I wondered how many bits per silicone atom these SD cards are capable of now. Quick back of the envelope calculations say we're at 300 million atoms per bit of capacity.
Assumptions:
micro sd cards weighing 250 mg, resulting in 0.25/28 moles of silicon.
I think the cards are mostly plastic by mass, and the silicon is doped with other elements. (mostly lighter, some heavier. IIRC)
The actual metal storing magnetic charge in a hard drive is tiny also, with some drive platters being mostly ceramic. Regardless, if you were to personify the force of entropy, it would be greatly angered by humanity and modern computing.
Sure. I completely agree. Also micro sd cards are certainly not optimized for weight and I wouldn't be surprised if I made a mistake in my "calculation".
Looking at the leaked GTA VI videos and seeing ImGui being used by Rockstar internally is pretty neat how even a multi-billion dollar studio will use the same open source project we all use.
Interesting. I've been running that for years in my diesel truck. A mechanical diesel will run basically whatever you can pump through its fuel system. I assume jet engines are roughly the same. However they have some major standards, and can't risk running recycled fryer oil from the Chinese restaurant down the street.
> A mechanical diesel will run basically whatever you can pump through its fuel system. I assume jet engines are roughly the same.
This is very much not the case. They run on kerosene which is highly refined and pure. It has a lower freezing point, higher flash point and lower viscosity, which are obviously positive characteristics when flying in -45C temps high in the atmosphere.
I ran my 1999 Nissan Primera 2.0 turbo diesel on virgin vegtable oil for a couple of years (I had about 400L in the back when taking the channel ferry to to drive around Europe). It cost 0.40p/l instead of 1.20/l in the UK. Bought it from a farmer from an ad on eBay. No modification needed, but you need to have a couple of fuel filters and a tool to change it handy, in case you have a blockage (more common when first starting to run on oil). In winter add 5-10% petrol to keep the viscosity down. You can always add diesel to the tank without issue.
I think many 90s indirect-injection diesels can run vegtable oil without modification, but some ppl add a fuel heating system or a dual-fuel switchover system.
There were newspaper stories of ppl going into Tescos and filling their trollies with 5L bottles of vegtable oil, then going to the parking and filling their tanks. Later (virgin) vegetable oil became more expensive than diesel, used oil is a different story.
Bonus: when reversing, or at the lights with a breeze, you often notice an odour like fried chips. :)
It probably wasn't more common because it was some hassle with the fuel filters and potential damage to fuel pump (some are built better than others). The Nissan had a license-built Bosch design that was solid.
Perhaps you need to consider when you want to buy a switchover system from eBay: If caught, obviously by police with a nose for chips. They will take your car milage multiply that by the amount of fuel tax you did not pay, double it as punishment and give you a set fine while they are at it.
Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this vehicle was operated under illegal conditions for the entirety of that duration? What if it were imported? Used?
In my country the tax law has a reversed proof clause. Meaning, you are guilty until proven innocent. This clause is activated after you get caught, or even when you did not comply with administrative requirements. Other countries have similar clauses.
So in this case, if you have hard proof, meaning a proper administration, fuel tickets, etc. Which you all don't have, there is basically only a central milage database and ownership records that can hedge your damage.
1994 Toyota pickup with a Om617 swap. I bought a kit for the engine swap then did all the work to swap it.
I did nothing to handle the oil. It just works. You pour it in the tank and go. However, it doesn't work in the winter without a heater or additives.
It's not more common because a) mechanic diesels are old technology and means you'll be driving an old vehicle. b) WVO is a hit or miss in your area. Lots of restaurants will get paid for their old oil by recycling centers so most wont give it away. c) processing it is tough until you get a system in place
As well you can run on so many different fluids. Waste motor oil, waste transmission fluid, brake fluid, etc.
Motor oil burns more rapidly than diesel. You'll get more "power" but also less durability.
Burning motor oil happens when your turbo breaks down and puts all your oil via the air inlet to your engine. It's hard to stop that engine until all the oil is used.
You absolutely can and I have before. However, I blended it 70% WMO and 30% diesel. Used motor oil WILL carbon up everything. It's so full of ash that it'll pool up internally.
You need to used a centrifuge to pull out the carbon. Sounds intense but it's not.
You can pour it entirely in your tank without any filters but your fuel filters only go to about 10-30 which will not pull out the tar. Small amounts like that won't do any damage really.
The Caterpillar diesel engine manual says you can burn up to 5% used motor oil without affecting the warrantee. It does say to make sure you filter the used oil so as not to gunk up your fuel system.
For a large engine that produces many buckets of oil at each change, this is a good way to get rid of the stuff.
In Poland at least, people were doing it - mostly rural in their tractors - but just straight using cooking oil for your trucks&tractors is illegal - too much pollution.
Of course SAF is cleaned up to different standards. Also, SAF is not just cooking oil, they use various kinds of tech.
Running personal cars on cooking oil was legal in the UK up to a certain number of litres/year. I think it was more an issue of taxation, I'm not aware that it creates additional polution.
I threw my degree in the toilet, I closed my linkedin, and I went to go work in the trades as a diesel mechanic.
Greatest choice I've ever made. The pay is great, the work is steady, the coworkers are relaxed and not trying to one up each other. I'm now being paid to go to school, and get raises every year until I'm fully ticketed (way more than I ever made in the entry tech positions).
I've heard non-stop my whole life that if I join a trade it's going to be grunt labor and I'll be paralyzed in 5 years. Maybe some are, but this isn't hard at all. I lay on a creeper and turn wrenches. Anything over 50lbs we have lifts for.
Tech has become fun again, I'm just making projects because its what I wanted. I come home and relax by writing on my projects.
Now, I'm watching my tech friends from a distance and my only regret is not doing this sooner.
"Sometimes you gotta give in to win"