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Comment by xabotage | Hacker News Reader

I distinctly remember sitting in yet another dull sprint retrospective and thinking, "Boy, I wish I were a firefighter."

Granted, that line of work comes with its own drawbacks and I would certainly get bored of it the same way I get bored of software (or else worn out from the demanding physical aspect), but some days I'm surprised to find myself wishing I could "dig ditches out in the sunshine" or something of the sort for a living.

This combined with the "eat, sleep, code, repeat" mentality I see in others makes me wonder if I'm really cut out for a software development career.

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I have had a literal ditch digging job, and I hated that even more. But I still find myself longing for such a thing. Maybe if I could just have 3-4 days per year? xD

My ideal would be a mix. One sprint of code. One sprint of building houses.

Buy a house. I love doing yard work on the weekends after 50+ hours of tech startup bombardment all week.

We call those "reminders."

You might something like Habitat for Humanity.

Do you know somebody with a garden? Or maybe there is a community garden nearby?

I second this. I find nothing more grounding after a caffeinated day of coding than pulling a beet out of the ground. Good food gardens (esp. permaculture ones) are fascinatingly complex systems that appeal to the engineering mindset, but involve neither 1) reading nor 2) looking at a screen.

I have a 30-hour-a week coding gig that is pretty easy stuff (enterprise integrations for WordPress plus a little Rails and a lot of "fix this CSS"). I spend the rest of the week playing music. It's a lot of moving boxes and equipment around and performing isn't super rigorous, but it's on your feet for 4 hours, and can be somewhat physical. I got a blister from a jazz gig on upright last night becasue I am out of practice.

I've had physical labor jobs (refinishing airliners, sanding gym floors, bussing tables), and playing music is about as physical of an occupation as I'd like.

IMO, 40 hours a week for a single thing is a bad job. I get plenty of work done in 30, I have a lower pay and live in the sticks, but I like it a lot.

> Maybe if I could just have 3-4 days per year?

Look for a company that offers VTO (volunteer time off). I worked for one that would organize a group volunteer event once per quarter and gave us a maximum of 8 individual days to volunteer per year. There's a ton of fun, physical volunteering opportunities. I've done habitat builds a few times and there are a bunch of parks in the Bay Area that are always willing to put volunteers to work on trail restoration, habitat restoration and other strenuous outdoor activities. One year I even combined all my VTO with a few days of PTO and volunteered in a national park for a couple weeks.

My father was a firefighter for 20+ years (retired a few years back, made it to Captain), and I almost regret not following in his footsteps. It'd be the perfect job for a freelance web developer. 24 hours on, 48 hours off, most of those 24 hours are sitting around the station, so I imagine I could code a good portion of those, not to mention on the other days off.

Plus great retirement.

It probably depends on the city, but I've heard that since Firemen work in long shifts living at the station a good deal of them also run contracting businesses on their days off from the station. It was explained to me that this was usually construction, but I imagine there are more than a few Fireman-coders out there.

It might just be particular to here (Australia) but firefighter is actually a very highly sought after and difficult to obtain job.

It is in the States as well. I don't thing the OP was saying it was an easy job to do or get, just a totally different job that would be completely refreshing. I've felt that same feeling too.

Oh man, retros :(

That response sounds like it's something that should be discussed in the retro, :p

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