<story><title>Just Your Handyman</title><url>https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/work/just-your-handyman</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>neverartful</author><text>I mostly agree with you. I&amp;#x27;ve been a full-time software engineer for the past 28 years and a part-time handyman for the past 5 months. One of the biggest differences that you don&amp;#x27;t mention is the use of your body. Software engineering is purely intellectual -- often to the detriment of your body (or mine, anyways) since it&amp;#x27;s often the case where I sit at the keyboard for hours on end, day after day. As a handyman, your body necessarily is a key part of the work you do. Lifting tools, materials, carrying them, getting into weird positions to access the problem area (under bathroom sink for example). The other aspect is the physical nature of the work. The work is tangible. You can take a photo of the thing that needs to be fixed  before the repair&amp;#x2F;construction and then another at the end and compare the before&amp;#x2F;after photos. Even if you don&amp;#x27;t care about the photos, you can still see the tangible, physical end-result of your work. With software engineering, at best it&amp;#x27;s usually just a status update on a Jira ticket.&lt;p&gt;Regarding AI technologies, I agree that it&amp;#x27;s extremely unlikely that AI will take over the work. It&amp;#x27;s possible that may help in some diagnostic cases. I strongly disagree with &amp;quot;all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries&amp;quot;. Why? Many (perhaps most even) software engineers that I&amp;#x27;ve worked with are too lazy or too proud to do handyman type work. Some of the handyman work can be physically quite taxing and some of it can be quite humbling. Examples of taxing work - when you&amp;#x27;re doing a gate rebuild&amp;#x2F;repair in 107 degree temperature in direct sun. Example of humbling work - opening up p-traps under sinks and having some of the smelly, dirty water splash on you.</text></item><item><author>karaterobot</author><text>Neat article. If you squint, I don&amp;#x27;t think there is a ton of difference between what most handymen do and what most software engineers do: they both have some generalizable skills, and when they get asked to do something they say &amp;#x27;yes&amp;#x27; and then figure out how to do it. I don&amp;#x27;t think the challenge level of most day-to-day software tasks is any harder than the &amp;quot;where&amp;#x27;d that water stain come from&amp;quot; puzzle he described in the article. The difference, of course, is in working conditions and payment.&lt;p&gt;But even if the AI technologies we&amp;#x27;re so nervously excited about replace all our jobs, the handymen, plumbers, and electricians of the world will be mostly unaffected. Their work is hard to automate. I hesitate to say we&amp;#x27;ll change places in terms of economic status—more likely, all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries and drive down the prices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spenczar5</author><text>Those are good distinctions. I&amp;#x27;m a 13-year software engineer, and a 4-year part time finish carpenter.&lt;p&gt;An important distinction that comes up for me a lot is that it&amp;#x27;s much harder to fix mistakes with physical stuff. I can rapidly iterate on software, try stuff, see what works, play with a concept. But if I do that with wood and nails, I&amp;#x27;m going to be in for trouble. Each idea costs material, and if it&amp;#x27;s a repair, there can be no going back. &amp;quot;Iterative development&amp;quot; really isn&amp;#x27;t a thing. This has gotten me in trouble - my instinct is to explore a problem,  but I find that physical stuff requires more intellectual planning up-front, counterintuitively.</text></comment>
<story><title>Just Your Handyman</title><url>https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/work/just-your-handyman</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>neverartful</author><text>I mostly agree with you. I&amp;#x27;ve been a full-time software engineer for the past 28 years and a part-time handyman for the past 5 months. One of the biggest differences that you don&amp;#x27;t mention is the use of your body. Software engineering is purely intellectual -- often to the detriment of your body (or mine, anyways) since it&amp;#x27;s often the case where I sit at the keyboard for hours on end, day after day. As a handyman, your body necessarily is a key part of the work you do. Lifting tools, materials, carrying them, getting into weird positions to access the problem area (under bathroom sink for example). The other aspect is the physical nature of the work. The work is tangible. You can take a photo of the thing that needs to be fixed  before the repair&amp;#x2F;construction and then another at the end and compare the before&amp;#x2F;after photos. Even if you don&amp;#x27;t care about the photos, you can still see the tangible, physical end-result of your work. With software engineering, at best it&amp;#x27;s usually just a status update on a Jira ticket.&lt;p&gt;Regarding AI technologies, I agree that it&amp;#x27;s extremely unlikely that AI will take over the work. It&amp;#x27;s possible that may help in some diagnostic cases. I strongly disagree with &amp;quot;all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries&amp;quot;. Why? Many (perhaps most even) software engineers that I&amp;#x27;ve worked with are too lazy or too proud to do handyman type work. Some of the handyman work can be physically quite taxing and some of it can be quite humbling. Examples of taxing work - when you&amp;#x27;re doing a gate rebuild&amp;#x2F;repair in 107 degree temperature in direct sun. Example of humbling work - opening up p-traps under sinks and having some of the smelly, dirty water splash on you.</text></item><item><author>karaterobot</author><text>Neat article. If you squint, I don&amp;#x27;t think there is a ton of difference between what most handymen do and what most software engineers do: they both have some generalizable skills, and when they get asked to do something they say &amp;#x27;yes&amp;#x27; and then figure out how to do it. I don&amp;#x27;t think the challenge level of most day-to-day software tasks is any harder than the &amp;quot;where&amp;#x27;d that water stain come from&amp;quot; puzzle he described in the article. The difference, of course, is in working conditions and payment.&lt;p&gt;But even if the AI technologies we&amp;#x27;re so nervously excited about replace all our jobs, the handymen, plumbers, and electricians of the world will be mostly unaffected. Their work is hard to automate. I hesitate to say we&amp;#x27;ll change places in terms of economic status—more likely, all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries and drive down the prices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>karaterobot</author><text>&amp;gt;  One of the biggest differences that you don&amp;#x27;t mention is the use of your body.&lt;p&gt;Oh, for sure. I was a dev for many years, then switched to product design. What I left out of my first comment was that my older brother is a maintenance guy for a hospital—basically a handyman with an office in the basement. Growing up, it was clear that he was &lt;i&gt;at least&lt;/i&gt; as smart as me, but at a certain point he went one direction and I went another. Cut to 25-30 years later: his body is a wreck, mine is okay (modulo poor diet and lack of exercise), he&amp;#x27;s always broke, and I&amp;#x27;m doing alright.&lt;p&gt;When I said that our jobs are very similar, I just meant that, like a handyman, much of what a SWE does is basically attaching one thing to another thing while cursing. That&amp;#x27;s a joke, but you get what I mean. My point was that neither are rocket science, but we shouldn&amp;#x27;t think we&amp;#x27;re especially smart for being programmers just because we get paid too much for it. Add the physical element of handyman work to that and that just underlines the point I wanted to make.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I strongly disagree with &amp;quot;all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries.&lt;p&gt;This is timely. I said that because I was thinking about it yesterday, when talking to some friends about what they&amp;#x27;d do if and when AI obviated their current jobs (which is in the realm of possibility). A common answer was that they&amp;#x27;d become electricians. I think there are at least two problems with that: one is the physical aspect of being a tradesman, which nobody thinks about. The other is that there would certainly be &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; people going into the trades, not less, if those industries became a safe harbor from AI. Many of these people would wash out, sure, but at least some of them (like yourself) wouldn&amp;#x27;t. That, combined with all the upper-middle-class people being suddenly broke, would probably drive down wages for people who work with their hands. I can&amp;#x27;t imagine anything else happening, though of course I could be wrong.</text></comment>