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Comment by rapind | Hacker News Reader

> Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history.

Nope this is an outdated opinion. You can do just as well or better in trades (source: my electrician buddy). If you’re referring to the FAANG salaries (sub 1%) you’re comparing to doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs in terms of opportunity cost. Your average joe programmer isn’t killing it like you seem to think, and they’d do just as well in trades or middle management.

The cynic in me thinks this is an opinion promoted by employers, just like the BS “labour shortage” headline.

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Do you actually have data to back that up, or just one anecdote from a friend? Median pay for electricians is about $57k/year [1], and that's after 4 years of apprenticeship and passing the exam. That's compared to a median salary of over $100k for software devs [2]. Sure, you can make a lot of money as an electrician, HVAC person, welder, etc. if you own and run your own business, but your average tradesperson is not in that category, just like your average software developer isn't running their own dev shop.

[1] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/electrician/salar...

[2] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...

There's a huge difference in where plumbers vs. SWEs live, though. You have to compare the actual purchasing power. SWEs are more likely to be located in HCOL areas and therefore have higher salaries because SWEs need the infrastructure cities provide. Whereas there are plenty of plumbers who live in rural areas.

I have no idea how that comparison would shake out, or if the rise of WFH for tech people would/will change it, though.

Yeah, but in trades you have to climb in hot attics, deal with sewers, work outside, etc. And you have to put in a full days work. How many of us developers actually put in a full 8+ hours? I know that I don’t. I can usually get my assigned work done in about four hours. Can you imagine an electrician or plumber or doctor or lawyer only working 4 hours a day? It’s insane how much I get paid for what I actually do.

I don't have to imagine them because I see them while working for me or while talking to my friends who do the job. They go from coffee to coffee, work hard 6 hours for a day then take 2 days break, take 4 hour lunch breaks, say they are gonna come then come 2 days later, and many other stories. Now ALL of them hiked the prices 2x to 3x no matter the craft because of course THEIR material also "dramatically rose in price". Plumber, painter, glassworker, woodworker, electrician, you name it. Some things actually rose in price like steel or wood, but some rose only 20-30% and of course they double the price of work after the price of material "doubles".

>doctor or lawyer only working 4 hours a day

I'm absolutely sure that lawyers and doctors only work 20 hours a week.

Ha! My father is a doctor and in his 70s. He says he is retired because he only works 60 hours a week at the hospital emergency room. According to him, 60 hours a week is being retired since it is so few hours for a doctor.

My brother is a doctor, while he works insane hours, it seems there's a LOT of downtime between jobs, where he's technically "on the clock" but reads ebooks or watches series or socializes.

I technically work 12 hours as well as a developer, but actual work might be 6 hours or less, and it's way less stressful than a doctor.

Don't forget starting your day at 5am, driving an hour and half to and from the job site, or living at a Holiday Inn for weeks at a time.

I know a few doctors working < 20 hours a week.

We’ll my buddy does electrical for new builds and most of his time is spent waiting on other shit to get done. Not even joking, they want the electricians there just in case they can stick to schedule, but of course they can’t.

Also sitting in a chair in an office all day has a lot of health issues And they’re insidious in that your body doesn’t immediately tell you how badly your damaging it.

Have you seen the way somebody who has been in the trades for 20 years walks? They have a very particular kind of gait. You can easily tell them apart from the weekend-warriors walking into Home Depot just by their stride. It's the walk of a body that's been absolutely wrecked by physical labor.

Man this is the truth.

They all have some combination of: odd posture, odd gait, a dry cough, or bad skin. You can talk about ageism in the Tech world, but I've worked as a tradesman for a bit of time when I was young, and there were not many past 50 much less 50 and healthy. Over lunch they each all recounted their health issues, which made me quit that summer and get an office job.

You can do just as well in the trades - if you are a master (whatever the top rank is) working 80 hours a week. Right now the trades are in high enough demand that you can get that overtime, but that will change and then you are back to hoping you can even get 40 hours. In the meantime working for a boring company is a 40 hour a week job with great pay. FAANG is much higher pay, but they are also more hours per week in general (or so I'm told).

Remember that a high-paid software developer is unlikely to have poor electrician friends, so by definition any of their friends are likely to make as much or more money.

The trades can be a good life, especially since you have much more freedom in where you can be located, but to pretend they average as high as FAANG is silly.

> to pretend they average as high as FAANG is silly.

Who said this anywhere in this thread?

The point is that the trades lile electrician or HVAC get paid well but ut is much harder physical work just had my AC replaced and the guy was sweating through rhe day to put everything together I paid well but it wasn't harder than making a SWE salary.

SWE is easy, can be fun, pays well, can be full remote, safe desk job. Usually other professions lack one or more of these.

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