Quitting engineering to pursue art full-time
staysketchy.com
staysketchy.com
https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149...
I don't think this is a case of "grass always seems greener on the other side", but of getting a job as a quantum theorist. It is hard to find (and keep for a long time) a job in your area of academia. :-(
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=5730
Stephen J. Wiesner (1942 – August 12, 2021)[1] was an American-Israeli research physicist, inventor and construction laborer.
Shipping is always an option, but it's a lot less if you're a half-day's drive from Vermont. Or somewhere I'd like to go on vacation anyway.
Edited to add: I've got to go stretch my legs after spending the day in front of the computer designing, but I'll check back later and try to field any questions that have popped up.
> The reason we mention this is because when Pablo first started selling his art online, he created all his posts strictly in Spanish - his native language. Over time, he felt that this was limiting him, so he started making posts in both English and Spanish, and then eventually just English.
The bit about cutting out Spanish entirely suggests this is not a lesson in maximizing one’s TAM
AI generated-articles designed to give computer programmers dopamine hits when they get to correct a small error/issue/discrepancy.
Like Zyns but distracting.
Maybe it’s like a reward. Fix a tough bug and your manager sends you an article where you get to point out that the author is incorrectly using “strawman fallacy.”
It seems that a lot of effort has been put into tooling for translating to and from English. It's probably much more effort invested than for other languages, so by using English he actually is increasing his TAM because the translation tools are better adapted to many other languages from English.
Spanish can understand English.
English can't understand Spanish.
Speaking English you can communicate with English and Spanish without also speaking Spanish, kill two birds with one stone.
The virtues of a lingua franca.
There are plenty of signs that the US could be in the midst of its own empire failing. Whether that actually plays out is something we wouldn't know for decades or centuries, but there sure are a lot of parallels to failed empires of the past.
So far it seems like it'll be China on account of there being no other country or bloc able to compete at that level, but that would be very unpleasant for us westerners.
If the US and China really were to get into direct conflict, the bigger question may be who on earth was least impacted by nukes rather than which of the two countries "wins" (in quotes because we all lose in war).
Unfortunately I don't think the US would go down quietly if the empire really is failing. Another major war wouldn't be out of the question, clearing the board for a lot of change to take place.
Without a war though, and one can only hope this is the case, I don't see China pulling it off. I both don't think they really have that motivation, and I don't expect they really could transition from such a totalitarian state to an empire driving anything near the level of US dominance.
When the US empire fails, and it has to eventually even if we aren't currently walking that path, the question is whether it falls apart or fails violently. You could point to many parallels with the Roman Empire and guess that it will just fall apart, even if there are fringe wars along the way.
They already did, and the US had to blow up a pipeline to keep them in line. But that capability won't last forever.
There's a lot rolled up in such a small idea. What makes another population barbarians, and how is it so different from the US? Assuming there are groups of adversarial barbarians around the world, why should the US step in to "fix" it and how can they even define what the fix is?
Irrespective of the origins of America, that is a categorical difference in the scale of death and destruction. To Americans, that is barbarism, but it's possible that Europeans do not see it as such and perhaps see civilization as inherently violent.
They are foreign to us here and speak different languages so perhaps their true minds are forever opaque to us, but we can see their actions: and that is repetitive quarrels with their neighbours with frequent attempts at ethnic extinction. From that, some conclusions can be drawn.
> English can't understand Spanish.
Many Spanish-speaking people are bad at English.
And from personal experience, ages ago, landing some jobs when people tought I was native English speaker, and even same country, sometimes is better if they don't know the relation will be across international boundaries until they have half decided to buy/contract. Maybe that has changed in recent years.
1. Minimizes screen time and doesn't rely heavily on computers for productivity.
2. Allows me to disconnect after work without constant notifications or calls.
3. Offers stability, requiring minimal adaptation to new trends or technologies.
4. Lastly, and more importantly, not easily replaceable by AI in the near future.I think the thing that kills me is the mental exhaustion of software development. Just thinking about how to solve problems all day is mentally taxing.
Another activity that I believe would bring more joy than 99% of jobs, if not all, is charity.
It should be ridiculously easy to self sustain with all this stuff we've built! Instead we just work just as long to produce ton of crap that does nothing for our happiness.
I wouldn't trade it for the world at this point though. Its a very strange, and satisfying, experience to raise, butcher or harvest, and cook food that you raised on farm.
I had saved up a good amount of money (before losing it all lol, where I could do this). I was thinking about buying some nice land, setting up an aquaponics farm, and just running some solar farms/generators.
No fret from me if you want to do it all by hand, but there really ought to be a middle ground between living as if it was the 1800s and working 8-10 hours day at a desk.
We don't do absolutely everything by hand, but we definitely avoided many of the modern approaches. We have 13 cows, 9 chickens and 20 chicks that just hatched, and a small garden (~3500 sq ft).
There's always certain jobs that take all day or multiple days, like cutting our fields (~50 acres), planting/harvesting, and butchering a pig was a huge undertaking given that we've never done anything like it before. On average, I'd say we put it 6-8 hours a day split between two people, with the occasional days of both working 8-10 hours each.
In my experience tolerating managers and people who don't really care about software is the much more exhausting part of software development.
No screen time, no one needs a midnight massage (although your work hours would probably not be 9-5.), not reliant on technology, and going to take a while for AI to replace.
Very few good jobs fulfill criteria number 2.
edit: i will say he and his crew are pretty amazing at what they do. Speed and quality is unbelievable (it's been 20 years since i've seen him work though)
edit2: i've also heard of people buying a backhoe, dump truck, and a trailer and making 6 figures doing random contracts.
- lots of outside time and exercise built into the day
- independent work
- low credential barrier to entry
1. Electrician. It's not something you can just jump into, even if you're the type who can grok 100% of the theory, equipment, and electrical code overnight. Even after you're all trained up, you have to rank up through various levels, most of which require working under someone else for X number of years. It takes a decade or more before you really have much of a choice of what you get to work on, and start making decent money. In other words, it's a serious career change on-par with doctor or lawyer, just with much less pay.
2. Aircraft mechanic. I love planes. Aircraft are expensive machines. Getting them repaired and maintained and also extremely expensive. So being an aircraft mechanic should be lucrative, right? Sadly, no. I don't know where the money goes, but most aircraft mechanics make significantly under under the median wage and don't have much flexibility on where they can work.
3. Pilot. I would LOVE to fly airplanes and get paid to do it. But this is also another whole career in and of itself. The training costs are extremely exorbitant. A regular job would have me away from home more often than not. According to Real Pilots, airlines are some of the worst employers to work for. But all that aside, I would be a poor pilot because I have a hard time mentally keeping track of numbers. And pilots have to memorize and juggle an insane (to me) amount of numbers just to land safely. I couldn't memorize more than about three numbers for more than 10 seconds or so even at gunpoint.
4. Real estate investor. Lots of people get surprisingly rich from this. But it is a lot of work. The idea is pretty simple: buy a run-down house at a discount, fix it up well enough to rent, re-finance it to get your money back out, and then you effectively have an income-producing property for free. Take that money and go do the same on another one. The problem with this is that the devil is in the details. Every deal is different and unless you're lucky enough to have a mentor willing to share resources and vet your deals, you are GOING to mess it up. I tried this and it didn't work out for two big reasons: 1) I can stay on top of projects, but running all aspects of a business myself is not for me. And I could not find anyone that I trusted to partner with. 2) The sudden large increase in interest rates in the middle of my rehab meant that refinancing was not a viable option. I was forced to sell the property after it was done. I broke even monetarily, but gained a lot of wisdom. I might dip my toes into the water with a simpler strategy in the future, but that's a good 5-10 years off.
5. YouTuber. YT was nice in the beginning, but has consistently been giving the shaft to content creators while keeping all the profits for themselves. On top of that, I found that I really hate editing video.
Right now, I've made peace with the fact that my current destiny is getting paid fairly good money to sit in front of a screen for 8 hours a day. The goal at this point is to sock away as much as I can into index funds, to grow it as quickly as possible, and retire early enough that I can essentially devote my whole day every day to hobbies, grandchildren (if I have them), and friends (if I have them).
I have also started to try getting more aggressive with investments
I have family in this field; not only is the pay not great (for the skill level) but there is a layer of stress (and liability) that gets added to jobs where one mistake can mean death for someone else. I wouldn't jump into it without being sure that stress wouldn't affect me.
Closest I've come to a new job so far was almost taking a job at a local sawmill, I just haven't quite tied up my own projects yet to commit the time. Its run by an older local guy who has been milling for decades. The list of things I could learn from him is very, very long and access to good lumber is a great perk.
p.s : professional stand up comic here, been trying to quit my day job for 14 years :-)
I think this meets your requirements. It is in danger of AI replacement though. Which would be sad. But reckon there is 20 years of red tape to cut before we get there.
But if you don’t want to talk to people and be on a schedule then carpentry might be a good one. The sort where you make things as oppose to fix architraves in old houses.
AI plus machinery could make “home made” looking stuff but cheapos will keep going to ikea and there will still be a market.
If I didn’t need to make much money and just stay occupied probably do walking tours for free in untouristy places (think the “boring” countryside between cities that ain’t in any guidebooks) or just for a bit of cash walk people’s dogs at the park.
Robots may eventually do these things but to a dog a robot won’t smell like a human so they are the last to be fooled. I imagine in 2050 everyone will have a dog (bred to be small and generally dosile and easy to train) to sniff people for bot detection.
I recently quit my job as a robotics engineer -- and I've been painting a lot more and have noticed the quality of my work has gone up. In the past few weeks I've had more sales than I had in the year prior as I was doing it nights and weekends.
Super cool to read about other engineers-turned-artists and how they approach their work!
It's fantastic to work in this field and very fulfilling but I consistently find the quality of teamwork and coordination to be much lacking compared to my engineering past. I wish I could sit down with a group of musicians and give them a bunch of Jira tickets to work on for the sprint before the upcoming rehearsal.
They'd most likely become your little slaves if you paid them. The reason people put up with such bureaucratic systems and bosses is the pay. And many quit in frustration for lower pay and more freedom.
That would be great but because most of these people are in the "quit out of frustration for lower pay and more freedom" bracket they're not always so easy to persuade with the carrot of cash. More likely they'll just turn down the project and move onto another.
The whole stick of this article strikes me as marketing in the first place.
Also, thinking of customers as "fools" only makes sense if you believe you are selling/producing garbage. If what you make has value, then whoever buys it is no fool.
That's all nice, the problem is though that the market is in decline right now
I wonder what the ratio between these two is
It's sort of upsetting that doing something I'm bad at (SE) makes me more money than anything I'm good at. Feels like it traps me.
Did he mean to say "passion" in this case? How is hate a "good" sign of engagement? If someone has an opinion and is willing to share it with me, I'd hope they could do it in a constructive way (but I wouldn't call that "hate", and this is the Internet he's talking about).
Imagine being surrounded by 100 people hurling insults at you, telling you you're no good and your product / service / art sucks. How is that a "good sign"?
Edit: Maybe the assumption is "For every hater, I find 10 people that _do_ like it", so the realization is that "I'm reaching people," and the underlying prayer is that "And hopefully, they're not _all_ haters."
Therefore, since I am unknown and poor, I must be a great artist.
But also:
> Afterall, it’s good for engagement and the Instagram algorithm.
I think the parent's free use of 'hate' stands in for a conflict in emotion and interpretation this way, and less it being completely despised or loathed.
If you're creating art because you enjoy doing it, and if you're performing / putting it on display because you think it has value and others might enjoy it too, then I can't think of any reaction other than love and encouragement (implicitly via purchasing or explicitly via encouragement) that would suffice in keeping one motivated to share it with others.
Now, amidst any hate I might ask myself "Did I do the absolute best according to my ability? Is there anything else I can improve?" From this perspective, hate is amazing as fuel because it's an effective way to eliminate your perceived faults (assuming you take it personally, which I'd wager most artists do).
In this case, hate is attention that helps algorithms. It's why shortform media is usually inflammatory, you get more engagement out of it.
Hate and other powerful emotions are a good sign, they can promote you to people who don't hate you.
Without objective functionality, “Haters” in an art context only have one thing to be vitriolic about - their own subjective aesthetic taste. Thus their words cannot contain anything of value to the artist.
He said, "No, of course not. You're nobody 'til somebody hates you."
So if you despised them first and said something that touched them that deeply, I could see considering that a success.
Some retire early =)
just curious, with 245K followers on Insta.. how many units/month are you selling?
We only see posts of the successful ones, though.
Ai does a very narrow part of what art is.
Since covid I left tech and have been working at ayahuasca retreat centers (assisting and managing) and apprenticing. Frankly I can't imagine a career less at risk to AI replacement!
Maybe someone should start a job board for AI-proof gigs.