alas, many of us will never reach goose-farm level success
Jokes on programming. Hated life before being forced into it..
Edit: it meaning programming. This isn’t supposed to be that edgy.
Just try being uneducated and working in a dead end factory job while having hated life all your life anyway!
Much fun! -46/10 would never recommend!
I wish I was forced into programming... I tried on my own and just don't have the mind for it, I find it incredibly boring. All my friends are in the field and all work from home wherever the hell they want to live. I'm stuck in a VHCOL area with shit income and 0 potential to increase it :(
This isn't a shit post, its the truth
You ever been around geese? Those terrible shits take shits everywhere, all the time. Loud, nasty birds.
Our previous CTO left by saying "I have enough money now. Peace out!"
We need more of those people, people who find contentment in their wealth instead of endlessly pursuing more wealth.
I feel like the progression of my "Programming shelf" says a lot about my career trajectory as well.
You read some Thoreau and immediately wanted to leave society behind lol, I see you took his lessons to heart.
The other pivot point is The Pragmatic Programmer, which is totally understandable.
That book does a good job of grounding the reader through examples and parables from everywhere else but IT. By the end, you realize that good software engineering makes the best of general problem-solving skills, rather than some magical skillset peculiar to computing. You wind up reaching a place where you can begin to solve nearly any problem through use of the same principles. So @codex here, perhaps effortlessly, went on to management instead.
What are those books on Doom and Wolfenstein? Is it the game development black book by sanglard? That’s the book I found with a bit of searching
Yes, those are the Game Engine Black Books (Doom|Wolfenstein) by Fabien Sanglard. Highly recommended for anyone interested in games, programming, and history. They are amazing time capsules of those games and the development environments that produced them. I think/hope he's working on GEBB: Quake and I'm so excited for him to eventually release it!
Yeah... But right to left or left to right... Lol.
This looks uncannily like my shelf, I'm trying to buy land now for my permaculture forest 😭
I love 'DEBT' lurking on the bottom there.
Judging by The Dawn of Everything sitting next to it, I'd guess that book is Debt: The First 5000 years by David Graeber!
Thanks for reminding me about Art of Shen Ku. Friend had a copy years and years ago and from time to time I would remember reading parts but could never remember the title. Cheers!
That's what a year of being a software architect does to you.
You spent all those years down in the trenches implementing bullshit designs an architect came up with, positive you could do better if you just got the chance. Then you go to graduate school to get the qualifications companies say you need to be an architect. You receive a masters degree. You're your companies leading expert on software design. You get promoted to architect.
That's when you find out the truth. All those previous architects left for the same reason you someday will. It wasn't the previous architects making the terrible decisions that frustrated you. It was the marketing team and the CEO telling the CTO that the software product must have certain buzzwords present in the design. Those buzzwords offer no value to what your software product is meant to accomplish. But if you don't put them in the designs, they'll fire you and hire someone who will play their games.
Eventually, you can't take it anymore. Having interfaced with the upper levels of your company, and having the understanding of systems engineering you do, you realize that every software firm will be this. There is nowhere you can go that will be better. You start saving.
Your goal is to save enough money to purchase a small plot of land and put an organic farm on it. Your convictions for this farm are simple: it must be able to feed your family. This may not be exclusively what you envision for it, and you may not even intend for it to be the only source of food for your family, but it will help you be less reliant on the kinds of corporation you've come to know and come to see as irrevocably evil.
And then sometimes, you get people like this in the post. Who find enough success farming to focus their energy on it exclusively.
I was in my first architecture review meeting this week.
The accuracy is infuriating and humbling.
If you give a shit about your work and the product you’re working on, then don’t work in a big company. In big companies, people are there for the money and maybe for a good looking entry on their resume, so they’ll only do what they’re being told to do, after all they’ll be elsewhere in 2 years tops.
If you have ideals and don’t just work for money, don’t work in the corporate world. Small to mid-size employers come with a lot less bs and more engaged co-workers.
22 years. 1 year is chicken farmer, 10 is ducks, 15 is, oddly, Alpacas, and 20 is geese.
Yeah, after 22 years at Microsoft in a senior position, you should be able to retire and do whatever the fuck you want as a hobby. I very highly doubt this guy will ever make significant money from goose farming.
Are you saying his income will be ... ahem ... a goose-egg?
I’m a senior/principal engineer with 20+ years of experience and I can’t even think about retiring any time soon. All the posts in this thread are making me super sad. And the posted salary numbers are way higher than mine. :(
20 years of Microsoft stock options is a good pile of money
I'd way rather be a duck farmer. Geese are noisy little bastards.
Might be one of the few times a Lemmy post related to me.
I have owned a farm for four years, and do engineering for fun. AMA
How did you get into owning a farm, and what led you to engineering?
My grandfather is/was an electrician for over 60 years. Worked on very important projects in New York City. This rubbed off on me growing up. I spent much of my childhood taking things apart, figuring out how they worked, and putting them back together how I liked. I’ve been working on both hardware and software since I was 11. Had the privilege to study CS formally in high school, and Computer Engineering in university.
Good timing mostly got me into farming, especially since interest rates fell to the floor during the pandemic. Had enough to buy the acreage I wanted, and the wife was interested in helping out. We grow a variety of things now, and not just plants. For example we sell Honey, Soaps, Walnuts, and Mushrooms. It can be hard on the body to be so active all the time, but it is more satisfying than a monitor staring back at you at 3am because of some small incident.
I continue to tinker, and assist startups in my spare time, I can’t imagine I will ever stop programming.
To have such a good career payout that you don’t need a career.
Honestly jealous
Okay, thats the response for rich people. Whats the offer for less rich who would like to "disconnect from the system"?
start crying!:D
It's a case by case thing, obviously there's no single answer, it's going to depend on your existing skills, your location, the availability of geese, and so on
We have a principal software engineer who is a part-time farmer. He has chickens and cows.
Man I'm starting to think I've got the wrong hobbies. Maybe I do need to get out more.
Touch
grassgeese.
I quit my 20+ year career as a sysadmin about 2 years ago and started turning my backyard into a massive garden. I'm currently trying to figure out places to sell large quantities of hot peppers and I'm about to start selling matted and framed photos of flowers and wildlife from my garden.
Fuck IT.
i'm a data analyst. there's an urge to say fuck this shit and start a brewery. That urge is there every single day.
I used to be a Toolmaker long ago and far away. And there is a, and not undeservedly so, stereotype of Toolmakers as cranky old assholes. And the job tends to make us intolerant assholes.
I too had reached a point where I had enough of being angry, cranky, and hateful to everyone and myself every day. So I finally took all that cranky angry hatred and decided to channel it into something more constructive - I became a Medic for the next 15 years. And when that pissed me off enough I decided to teach math in my tiny rural school for 4 years until I retired.
I am a very slow learner........
We always need more brewists. Do it !
I worked in IT for 20 years. I became a handyman and have 7 geese.
Are geese good animals to have?
Yes and no. They are much cleaner than ducks and they can be exclusively fed on grass once they are feathered out. This makes them unbelievably awesome in addition to their guard dog ability. In the springtime you get giant goose eggs. Which is a big perk. Since we got our first two geese we have not lost a single chicken or duck to hawks. Which is why we got them. We were losing 1 to 3 a year just to hawks.
The downside is that like all birds they poop everywhere And their poops are more undigested grass than runny stuff. And in the spring when you get those giant eggs the geese can become extremely aggressive. This means separating them from the other birds to prevent injuries and it means learning how to wrestle geese in a safe manner. And it means always being on guard. You will not be safe on your own property.
But for me the benefits far exceed risks. They pay for themselves. They give giant eggs, they stop hawks, they mow the yard, they require no feed.
You should say "This is how something looks" or "This is what something looks like", but don't put the "how" and the "like" in the same statement.
That is not how it should look like.
This is what not it should look
The Venn diagram overlap of senior+ programmers and farmers is oddly large
I have taken a half step in this direction and it’s improved my life greatly.
I still have a normal job, but my Covid project back in 2020 was to finally put a koi pond in my back yard. I spend way more time learning and thinking about it than keeping up on tech shit. And the job I have now is great - I’m not trying to escape from it or anything.
The best part is that even the guy I bought my recent koi from has a microbiology degree. He’s properly living the “x farmer” dream, but that “job” is much more than a 9-5.
Wait...you mean to say it's feasibleto have a cottage-industry koi farm for a hobby/supplemental income? I've been considering putting in a pond and looking at different ideas for what to put in it and koi are a contender.
Oh no, the microbiology guy I’m talking about is beyond full time with his farm. He’s there 7 days a week when he’s not traveling to shows.
And that’s just taking care of the fish and growing them out, not breeding them. He imports from Japanese breeders.
As for breeding new babies and selling them, it’s certainly possible but there probably isn’t a ton of profit in it. Any time I’ve thought about it I’ve thought two things: I don’t want to deal with rando customers and I don’t want to turn my happy peaceful hobby into a job.
I feel like we are all agreeing here
You're right, of course.
Not in computers. I'm an accountant. I don't have enough money to throw the double middle fingers. Can somebody please, for the love of all that's holy, show me the way out or, you know, come sneak onto my property when I'm not looking and delete me?
Edit: JUST now, I got told that I'm unprofessional because I refuse to give my personal cell phone number to all three thousand of our clients. I said that my private phone funded by my personal money is not a business asset and they can give me a company phone if they want me texting clients. This was met with a huff, turning of a back on me, and storming off.
sell all your earthly possessions and buy two geese, one male and one female. then you, too, will be a goose farmer.
To avoid inbreeding issues you might want to start with a few more than that...
Isn't this Jeremy Clarkson's career path, more or less?
Car driver turned farmer. Both kinda low level jobs.
Yes, with AI anything is possible!
An AI goose farmer. Is that an AI Farmer™ or does that farm AI Goose™
We found John Stardew!?
Damn it! It's Duck, Duck, Grey Duck! NOT goose!
***A Minnesotan argues about the important stuff
- rake in the lake
I'm sincerely envy. I wish I could do the same.
20+ years at M$ sounds like hell on earth. Might be better for mankind to work for 20 years at an oil company ffs
