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I started my career as a plumber (exterior - digging up water mains), and currently I am a corporate IT security engineer.
While the plumbing part was absolutely harder physically, the work was overall more enjoyable and much less stressful. I was outside a lot of the time, I got to play with heavy equipment, and most of the time there wasn’t much urgency to the tasks. I never stared at the ceiling at 2 am worrying what tomorrow would bring.
In corporate IT security? There are days I don’t leave my desk for 6-8 hours straight. I feel a constant need to be connected, and I’m always planning, strategizing and worrying about the next project.
Everyone talks about the sitting at the desk thing, which is an issue, but corporate life is also much more mentally taxing. And that crap adds up over 10-20 years.
There is something about manual labor that office workers cannot simply understand. Sure it’s hard and often times dangerous. But at the end of the day, you feel tired than drained.
Yeah, I miss that too. I had to get out because my body was beat up.
Or you just move into management. I still do some physical work, because I never want to be the boss who refuses to get his hands dirty, but most of my days are spent coordinating, tracking and problem-solving and also a fair amount of pointless paperwork.
I went the career firefighter route.
Pros: tons of time off, rewarding, never boring, great pay and benefits. Will actually be able to retire at 55.
Cons: pretty much guaranteed to get cancer and it’s not even the expected stuff from fires. The AFFF foam we used for years had PFAS – a carcinogen. Even better, it turns out even brand new, unused turnout gear is absolutely saturated in PFAS too.
Oh and stress, cumulative injuries, etc.
It’s like we made a bad deal with a devil.
Oh you want to be fireproof? Sure. Here’s the catch: cancer.
Look it’ s better than the old asbestos gear
I’m interested in STEM (I very much have an engineers brain) but I’d like to avoid the office lifestyle and constant stress that you mentioned. Do you have any recommendations about what I shoukd look into?
As an engineer, you’re gonna be stressed a lot. But you have a wide range of what kind of stress you get and how much time you spend in an office. I’m industrial and I spend some days on my feet building shit, some days sitting in front of a spreadsheet until my soul hurts, and most days doing a bit of this and a bit of that with good balance of sitting and standing.
I work in municipal development and our civil engineers get to do a fair amount of site inspections.
This is complete nonsense.
They can also train to shoot brown people.
Military, police, or drug dealer?
is there a mix of all three? that’s what I’d choose
CIA
CIA
border patrol
Yeah, its an undercover cop
Everything I hear from Vets is that they also inhale lots of toxic fumes.
Heavy industry onsite engineer: I play both sides so I always come out on top!
Work from home has made the staring at Excel thing much nicer than it was in the past. I’m in an IT role with no on call duties and I can wander around my house while on Zoom calls and no one notices. I can stream videos or podcasts on my home PC while doing my job. I consider myself pretty lucky.
sometimes you can do both at the same time, its more of a spectrum you see
addendum:
aw fuck i didnt see the title at first, sorry about that op… i had, at one place: abbrasive dust in some parts of the plant, corrosive fumes at others, a carcinogenic dust workstation with improper handling by one coworker, two lasers in another room… on some level it was nice to see all that i guess. but in retrospect i should have asked for home office instead of becoming the their girl for any job under the sun to keep shit running smoothly… how was your experience so far?
I smelled soil for hydrocarbons, so meh?
Be an industrial engineer you can do both
and? which one’s better?
Most of the time the 8 hour desk job pays more unfortunately. Unless you’re in a good steel workers union that is.
Statistically speaking, if you sit for 8h a day, you’re 50% more likely do die of everything. Sitting, staring at a screen is death, just a slow one.
I think toxic fumes might be worse
If your workplace has good safety standards it’s not as much of a problem these days, I’d rather wear a respirator at my job working with fumes and dust than sit at a desk all day and fuck my back and eyes up. Though I’m fucking my back up too probably, but if you don’t overwork yourself and use proper techniques even manual labor doesn’t have to be so bad for your body.
Oh most definitely, especially if you’re sitting in those fumes all day 🙃
Idk plumbers, electricians, contractors, etc make a lot around here. I’m sure they usually have business overhead that factors into their hourly rates (like $100+ an hour here in Seattle). Or if they work independently, they’d still need to pay taxes, insurance, health insurance, licensing, etc., but assuming they make $60/hr after all that, that’s pretty good.
I’m a contractor. I work in hospitals where it rains money. They charge $120 an hour for my services. By the time all the hands get in the pot, I get very close to $100 less per hour.
Both UA and IBEW have a higher pay scale than the Ironworkers local where I live.
whichever has a union, so likely the manual labour.
Fresh air, free exercise, good union… Join us.
Desk.
I get to see my kids.
I’d rather excel and muscle degredation, but the trades is significantly easier to get into with less investment, well, monetary investment anyways, like the meme points out, you’re often trading the gradual health of your body for that money
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