It's really just "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" all over again. I grew up on a farm, and that career absolutely will suck the life out of you as well, just in different ways. I wouldn't ever choose to give up my tech career for that, because even though I know it has very real downsides I know the downsides of doing physical labor all day to get by are worse.
I grew up on a farm too, and now make a living programming while raising some chickens and pigs on the side and helping out on my parents' farm.
I wouldn't say it will suck the life out of you. I suppose that depends on your personality. But I'd agree that there's more physical labor involved, even today with modern machines, than most people fantasizing about the idea probably realize.
But even knowing how hard the work can be, there are days when I step away from the keyboard at 5pm and head out to shovel manure or harvest crops for a few hours with a lighter mood than I had all day, because there's something "real" about it that's refreshing after a day of working with the unreal.
So I get why people dream about it. I'd just warn them to spend a week or two's vacation as an "intern" on a farm to see what it's like before quitting the keyboard job and buying 40 acres.
I meant it'll suck the life out of you in a more literal sense. My dad is a good example: he had both hips replaced by the time he was in his 40s, and has since (now in his 60s) had to have one of his artificial hips replaced. He has chronic arthritis worse than most people his age, as well. That's just a hazard of the job - even if you don't get injured by the big powerful machines (or heavy animals, etc), the sheer wear and tear you put on your body is far greater than what those of us with a desk job will.
Metaphorically, farming can be far less life-sucking. There is something refreshing about just getting stuff done without any of the corporate BS to navigate. I just think that a lot of people in the tech industry aren't seeing the downsides, and only see the ways in which it's better than their career.
That's fair. I look at my fellow office workers and see a lot of obesity and back problems caused by too much sitting, but those are optional in a way that my dad's physical wear and tear from farming weren't.
I definitely wouldn't tell a tech guy with no farming experience to just jump into it. Get a few chickens or something, and see what it's like to depend on you for food and water every day, whether it's 100 degrees or a blizzard that day. Or plant a 10x10 garden in your backyard and see what it's like to pull weeds in July heat.
And don't expect to make money (or even break even) at it. Farming today only makes money if you go large-scale, which isn't what anyone dreams about, or if you find a niche and are really good at marketing something like artisan cheese. Even people who know what they're doing struggle to make that work.
Nobody is saying that being a farmer is a magical key to physical fitness. We're saying that farming, no matter how hard you try to take care of your body, will be hard on your body in ways that office work simply isn't. If you're working in an office you can choose to exercise and eat right, you can choose to practice good posture and take breaks. But as a farmer you can't choose to not do hard physical labor all day long.
> But as a farmer you can't choose to not do hard physical labor all day long.
The seasons dictate when a farmer will spend 16 hours a day in a tractor seat ploughing, or seeding, or spraying, or harvesting (and roping a friend in to drive chaser trucks behind the combine).
Eyestrain from watching the GPS screen, backache from chair springs getting old, cursing when the air conditioning malfunctions .. it's tough, demanding hard work fit only for RealMen™.
At other times of the year there's a lot of choice as to time spent welding, engine mechanics, radio mantainance, going over blueprints for new silos, contracts for grain, yarning with ag advisors, dropping trees on firebreaks, cutting rounds, feeding rounds into hydraulic splitters.
And more. So it goes.
All the farmers I know are active from dawn to dusk, sometimes quite active, often just idling along fettling something or another.
But hard physical labour every day all day long? That's 1930's pre mechanised talk for farmhand work. Picking stones off fields, drywall building by the foot, harnessing bullocks to haul water from the spring. Hand saw and axe.
Grapevine pruning and Grapes of Wrath harvesting is what farmers hire backpackers for .. and they get pnuematic cutters and fancy tools these days.
I grew up on a farm and it isnt hard physical labor that takes a toll on the human body. That is actually the healthy and beneficial part.
It is poor ergonomics and acute injury that does the damage to farmers and trade workers too. Work is physical but there is almost always a smart and safe way to do it.
> Metaphorically, farming can be far less life-sucking.
Is it though? It's not like the repetitive work of milking cows or shoveling manure every day is any less of a drudgery than office work.
And, if anything, farmers hereabouts seem to be more prone to the sort of self-destructive behaviours you'd expect from people who's life lacks meaning. Drinking all you've earned for example. Or getting into fights over nothing in particular.
For many, the "homesteading" labor is an fulfilling and concrete complement to lucrative but abstract desk work, not a replacement.
It takes the place of idle hobbies like consuming more media on screens, lifting abitrary weights or running in place on a treadmill, etc
It's natural to assume we'd be pretty deeply wired to productively tend to our own lives and our own well-being in very concrete way, and many people who intentionally take up neglected homesteading tasks at their own pace and convenience often find it ameliorates many of the odd feelings of depression, anxiety, restlessness, etc that hung over them previously.
We probably shouldn't be doing anything in particular all day, but doing concrete productive things in a world where so many things are abstract and alienating can provide great balance.
Sure, but anything is more fun as a retiree hobby. That goes for programming as well as farming - if you can work (or not) at your own pace on the projects you think are interesting, that doesn't really suck the life out of you.
Wait until the overproduction of code from AI and see how you feel then.
Every industry that has suffered from over production ends up cheapening and removing significant elements of artisanal beauty. If the AI hype is to be believed we are in the cusp of that for software engineering and just about any other knowledge work for that matter.
First, I don't believe the AI hype and I would advise you to not believe it either. People are notoriously bad at predicting the future. When I was in high school everyone said that programming was a dead career because it would all be outsourced to India, and that you should pursue a career as a PC repairman because it couldn't be outsourced. Needless to say, those predictions aged like milk. And even right now, AI isn't nearly as capable as the hype club makes it out to be. All that we can do is remain on our toes and be adaptive to change, but that's always been the case. Anyone who figures they will retire from this business doing the same exact job they started with has always been in for a rude awakening.
Second, even if my job gets destroyed by changing tech that doesn't make farming an attractive option. It's dangerous, it wears your body down super hard, and the pay is garbage (which isn't very just tbh, but economics rarely are). I don't know what I'll do if my career goes up in a poof of smoke next year, but farming will be very low on the list no matter what I do.
Even without complete replacement over production is a real concern. Over production doesn't necessarily mean better but it did mean your hand crafted artisanal code need to compete against the shovelware of AI generation. Given the predominance of short-termism and "productivity" metrics this may push you out anyway.
As AI takes over creative work, we won’t need humans to sit at a desk, so they can be employed in subsistence farming while AI VCs make record profits.
