Table of Contents
- Introduction: What am I looking for in my next career?
- Adaptation - Management
- Adaptation - Specialization
- Adaptation - Solar Power Industry
- Adaptation - Start My Own Company
- Escape - Science
- Escape - Art
- Escape - Teaching
- Escape - Electrician
- Parting thoughts: What is a career, anyway?
Introduction: What am I looking for in my next career?
Now that LLMs are killing software engineering, I need to find a new career. No biggie, just figuring out what to do with the rest of my life.
One approach is to look for a small, sensible career move. Find something that's closely related to what I've been doing. Step out of the role that's being ruined by LLMs into the closest related role that isn't being ruined by LLMs.
The other approach is to take this as an opportunity to start over and reinvent myself in a completely different career. What are things I always wanted to do? What dreams did I set aside because software engineering was "more sensible"? I could take a leap into the unknown.
There's a fork in the road between "adaptation" and "escape". In this post I'm evaluating four "adaptation" careers and four "escape" careers. I'm scoring each one according to the four circles in the Venn diagram. ("Does it make $", "Does it help somebody", "Do I enjoy it", and "Am I good at it"?)
... and also a fifth category, "Is It Climate?" For the past decade I've been trying (not always successfully) to use my software engineering career to fight climate change. I want to keep trying. It's not the only thing I'll consider, but any job with potential to help phase out fossil fuels will be ranked much higher.
The sixth and final category: "How Much Are LLMs Fucking It Up?" LLMs are fucking up all jobs, but not equally. The more a job consists of sitting at a desk looking at a screen and sending emails, the more likely it's getting replaced by LLMs. My theory is jobs will be less affected if they're hands-on, face-to-face, or both. Does a career involve going outside and doing stuff in the physical world? Does it involve in-person human interaction? Those are the ones to look for.
My ideal job would help the climate, be in-person and/or hands-on, be enjoyable, make money, and be something I'm good at.
Adaptation
Management
| Makes $: | Lots |
|---|---|
| Helps Somebody: | Only very indirectly, if at all |
| I Enjoy It: | No |
| I'm Good at it: | Kinda |
| Is It Climate: | Small chance |
| How Much Are LLMs Fucking It Up: | A Lot, but also managers are the ones doing the up-fucking |
Case For:
I've been a software team lead and/or project manager for several years. I've been told I'm good at it? I can do 360 reviews, KPIs, quarterly goals, hiring budgets, scheduling and time estimation, interviews, meetings, all that stuff.
It's in high demand. It pays well. I speak the lingo and I have relevant experience, so I could probably get management jobs if I want them.
There were some parts of my time as a manager that I enjoyed. These parts were mostly about mentoring people: helping newer software devs get unstuck on their projects, assigning projects that will grow their skills, working with them to improve their understanding and their code quality. Making presentations to teach the team better practices. Those parts were satisfying.
Case Against:
There's an idea that, having achieved the first "management" rung on the corporate ladder, climbing that ladder is what I'm "supposed" to do from now on. That the ladder is obviously the escape from the sinking ship of being a software engineer, so I should cling tightly to that ladder and count myself lucky that I got a foothold before it was too late.
This idea is what I call "terminally LinkedIn-brained".
The fun part of managing is the mentoring part. But if companies in the age of LLMs no longer value skills development, or code quality, and they stop hiring junior devs because they think LLMS replace junior devs, then the one satisfying part of management won't exist anymore.
Indeed, I think one of the main things expected of managers in this age is to replace underlings with LLMs. Competing with other managers to see who can downsize their own team the fastest. Climbing the corporate ladder only to kick the ladder down after me.
No paycheck is worth feeling like I'm making the world worse every time I go to work.
In my observation, the people who have most eagerly embraced cognitive surrender to the LLM are managers. Maybe they're already used to a relationship with work that's mostly asking other people to do things for them. The LLM seems like the ideal employee: one who never complains or disagrees with your ideas.
Craftspeople have been a little more resistant to cognitive surrender, because we can tell the difference between craft and slop.
I don't want to be a manager for the same reason I don't want to use LLMs -- I like being the one who builds things.
Is It Climate?
Some managers, if they climb high enough on the corporate ladder to have actual power, can make decisions that reduce their company's emissions.
How Viable Is This Path?
I've included it on this list for completeness, but the only way I can see myself managing is, if I could somehow parlay software management experience into management in a different field. (But how would I be any good at managing people if they're doing a job I haven't done myself?)
Specialization
Software engineers I know who want to stay in software engineering are scrambling to become less replaceable, by becoming experts in a specialized sub-field. For example: computer security, architecture, UX, data science, high-performance embedded computing, etc.
| Makes $: | Lots |
|---|---|
| Helps Somebody: | A little, maybe |
| I Enjoy It: | Not much |
| I'm Good at it: | Maybe |
| Is It Climate: | There's a chance |
| How Much Are LLMs Fucking It Up: | LLMs might *create* opportunities in fact |
Case For:
Taking computer security as an example specialization: if my thesis is correct that LLMs are about to cause a computer-security-pocalypse, then there's going to be increased demand for security experts. That's a field with interesting challenges. It would be fun to get good at white-hat hacker stuff.
I have quite a bit of experience in data-pipeline-engineering, data science, user research, and database optimization. I could specialize in one of those and have something to offer that's not so easily replicated.
Possibly the pendulum starts swinging back away from vibe-coding as people realize the drawbacks. The world is left with a lot of vibe-coded messes and increased demand for people capable of fixing them.
Instead of working for one company, what about starting some kind of consulting business? "Fucked up your product with vibe-coded garbage? Pay me to fix it!"
Case Against:
This feels like retreating into a corner. Know what I mean?
If I'm wrong about the pendulum swinging back, then the corner will keep shrinking.
I want a job that benefits the world. Findig jobs at the intersection of "uses software development skills" and "benefits the world" was already hard. Specializing makes that intersection even narrower.
Cleaning up other peoples' vibe-coded messes doesn't sound fun.
My new career direction should not feel like retreating into a corner, it should feel like escaping into a brand-new open space where I can thrive.
Is it climate?
The one way it could be is if there's a clean energy company that needs one of these software specialties.
How Viable Is This Path?
Seems narrow, but I'll keep it in mind.
Solar Power Industry
| Makes $: | Unknown |
|---|---|
| Helps Somebody: | Very Much |
| I Enjoy It: | Yes |
| I'm Good at it: | Unknown |
| Is It Climate: | Yes |
| How Much Are LLMs Fucking It Up: | Minimally? |
What if I tried to work directly for one of the big solar installer companies, like SunRun or SunPower? There's a job called solar design engineer: someone who chooses the hardware and layouts to design site-specific photovoltaic installations to maximize efficiency and minimize cost.
Case For:
Before the start of the LLM crisis, this is the direction I thought my career was going. My idea was to use software engineering to support the growth of renewable energy. For more than 8 years I worked in a software startup that did data science for solar power. (It was my best job. Some other time I'll tell that story.)
I still want to work on clean/renewable energy. If software engineering won't be the way to do that anymore, then maybe moving closer to the silicon is the way. I.e. working on the hardware/software interface, the power electronics, the mechanical parts, the manufacturing processes...
It would be satisfying to invent, design, or deploy some physical stuff to solve physical problems in the physical world.
Even with the former USA being run by Captain Planet villains, solar is still growing strong. Solar plus batteries is already the cheapest form of power in many places at many times, and those places and times are growing.
This is one of the very few positive trends in the world right now.
Case Against:
All the solar power design engineer jobs that get posted require you to already have experience doing solar power design engineering. (A common catch-22 with highly specialized jobs).
I thought that working on the software side of solar would be a good stepping stone, but in practice for various reasons I ended up mostly working on fin-tech (financial technology). The upshot is that all three of my climate-related startup jobs involved working at a level of abstraction from the physical. I sat at a desk and crunched numbers that resulted in solar projects getting funded; what I didn't do was go on-site and install panels.
So it's easy for me to say "I wanna work on the hardware side", but my years of experience are all on the data side. A hiring manager at a solar installer company isn't necessarily going to see it as relevant experience.
Is it climate?
The most direct climate impact of anything on this list, probably.
How Viable Is This Path?
I'm sure I don't want to work for any more fintech startups. I know I want to work on something less abstract and more concrete. The question is how to break into the physical side.
I'm educating myself on power electronics through various side projects. I'm still very much beginner-level, but I should keep studying. Possibly I could also go back to school for an electrical engineering degree and pursue relevant experience.
I know some former coworkers who used to work closer to the silicon. I should reconnect and ask them for advice.
Start My Own Company
| Makes $: | Depends on how hard I work AND how lucky I get |
|---|---|
| Helps Somebody: | If people pay me for it, maybe that means they need it |
| I Enjoy It: | I don't know. Not the sort of thing I have historically enjoyed |
| I'm Good at it: | Untested |
| Is It Climate: | There's a chance |
| How Much Are LLMs Fucking It Up: | They might be creating opportunities |
Case For:
I've spent my whole software development career developing other peoples' ideas.
I don't think I ever want to work for another startup again unless it's my startup. My idea. The time and energy commitment is too big for anything that's not a personal passion project.
Somebody I respect a lot, when we were talking about career moves, suggested that with my software expertise plus LLMs, it should be easy for me to rapidly create a bunch of software products, release them, and see if any of them could become a passive income stream. A foreign idea to my brain, but worth considering.
People in the Opportunist category seem to think that the current LLM craze offers a great opportunity to start a business. In particular, that you can start a business with fewer people, because the LLM can substitute for certain employee functions.
Usually these are wanna-be CEOs who are excited to start a software company solo, with no engineering team, because they can just describe software and the LLM makes it real. But... what if we flipped that idea around? Could I start a company by using LLMs to replace the parts I'm not good at, like marketing and sales? So that I could just focus on the product?
Starting a company doesn't necessarily mean "a startup company", if you catch my meaning. A startup company tends to be VC-funded because it's a high-risk, high-reward bet that some idea has the potential for exponential growth.
If I started a company, I'd be looking to grow slowly, and become a sustainable lifestyle business. The equivalent of a barber shop, restaurant, or auto garage or something. I wouldn't want to take on a lot of debt, or be beholden to vulture capital.
(A lot of companies started since 2023 are just thin wrappers around an API to a 3rd-party LLM. That's a doomed business model. That's not what I would start.)
Under the "specialize" heading, I already raised the idea of starting a consultancy fixing the security holes in other peoples' vibe-coded products. What are some other ideas?
Maybe... some kind of private tutoring business? There's plenty of rich parents around here...
Case Against:
If it really gets that easy to vibe code the software you want, then why would someone pay money for my slopware? They can just vibe code their own slopware, right?
We're not at that point yet, but why try to start a company that offers software when the value of software is being driven to zero?
A smart person would start a company offering something complementary to software. When everyone's drowning in low-quality software, what do they start needing more of?
Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for that question. There's a reason I've worked on other peoples' product ideas for my whole software career. I don't have product ideas of my own. Because the things other humans want to spend money on are a complete mystery to me. (I've felt like an alien most of my life. Software engineering was a good career path for me because it was a job that didn't require understanding human beings.)
Even if you start your own company, it doesn't mean you get to work on your own idea. You gotta find something that customers will pay for. The customer is always right. If you spot something they'll pay for, you'd better pivot away from whatever idea you had before.
Is it climate?
I can think of ecologically sane alternatives to existing fossil-fuel-derived products and services. But to turn it into a business, I'd have to figure out how to provide that alternative at a competitive price point, without relying on government subsidies... that's hard. Very hard.
But it's vital. For climate-sustainable alternatives to take over, they need to become cheaper than the status-quo. Someone has to find a way of making them cheaper. A business that can drive these prices down can make a huge difference in the world.
How Viable Is This Path?
A good business starts with an understanding of what product or service people need that they don't already have. That requires starting a lot of conversations with strangers. Listening to what they need. Cold-calling people and asking for help. That makes me nervous. I've never felt like a "people person".
But maybe being a "people person" is something that can be learned. If I'm right that face-to-face jobs are the ones that survive the LLM crisis, then maybe I'd better get started learning it.
Aside from talking to strangers, I'd need to learn a lot about supply chains and so on.
Unless I suddenly have a brilliant idea of how to bring costs down on some kind of clean-energy something something, I don't think this is the play.
Escape
So far I've been talking about things that are "logical" steps, or at least short steps, from my software engineering experience. In the second half of this post, I'm casting a wide net. Careers unrelated to software engineering.
Software engineering wasn't exactly my childhood dream job - as I've said, it was a good intersection of what I was good at, could enjoy doing, and could get paid for. I kind of stumbled into the opportunity, and then the opportunity kept happening so I stayed there for a while.
What did child me want to be when he grew up?
Science
He wanted to be a scientist. This is why he majored in physics.
| Makes $: | Dubious |
|---|---|
| Helps Somebody: | Yes! |
| I Enjoy It: | Very much! |
| I'm Good at it: | Unknown |
| Is It Climate: | Yes |
| How Much Are LLMs Fucking It Up: | Medium to high |
Case Against:
Science is the number one biggest thing I wish I had done with my life instead of software engineering.
But it's too late now, right? That ship has sailed. There's an extremely narrow path into scientific careers. It goes through academia, specifically graduate school PhD programs, and the time for me to get on that path would have been in 1997.
But at that time I had no idea who I was and what I wanted; it's good that I experienced the world, and discovered myself, instead of going straight into academia.
If I had, I would have gone into theoretical physics, which would have been a mistake because theoretical physics has basically been a dead end for my whole life. (Most people I know with physics degrees ended up working in insurance or something.)
I don't like the way our society gatekeeps scientific careers, and silos scientific disciplines, and the way it frames knowledge production, and the way it funds research. And there's problems with science itself: publish-or-perish, P-hacking, file drawer effect, and all the other causes of the replicability crisis. That's a rant for another time though.
There's also the slight issue that the USA has been taken over by science-hating fascists. They hate the university system and the concept of objective truth. They've been illegally cutting the science budgets. Antivaxxers are in charge of the CDC. They're trying to chase away foreign students from American universities even though attracting brilliant people from around the world used to be America's greatest competitive advantage... well, I could go on, but the point is, lots of great scientists have been thrown out of work since 2024, and if I had been a scientist that might be me right now.
The Case For:
Have you heard about the nitroplast? It was only discovered in 2024. It's an endosymbiotic organelle, like a mitochondria or a chloroplast - a once independent prokaryote that is now incorporated inside a larger eukaryotic cell - and it fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere. You know how the atmosphere is 70% nitrogen, but plants can't use that nitrogen, it has to be converted into ammonia that's added to the soil as nitrogen fertilizer? Except for beans, which have symbiotic bacteria in their root nodules that fix nitrogen into the soil, which is why we include beans in crop rotation. So if nitroplasts exist, why didn't they spread throughout the entire plant kingdom, like the chloroplast?
(I have cornered you at a party and I am getting more and more excited as I rant at you about nitroplasts. I will not change the subject. Imagine how my voice sounds. Read that paragraph in that voice.)
We're in a golden age of biology right now, what with the CRISPR and mRNA revolutions, being able to basically program genetic code. What if we could genetically engineer plants that have nitroplast symbionts in their cells? What if staple crops could fix their own nitrogen, and then we didn't have to use fossil fuels on the Haber-Bosch process in order to make enough fertilizer for our food crops? Then we wouldn't have to worry about shipping vast amounts of petroleum-derived urea through the Strait of Hormuz! This could prevent the next global famine.
That's not all! Did you know about the difference between C3 photosynthesis and C4 photosynthesis? They're two different chemical pathways that plants use. C4 photosynthesis, mostly found in grasses, is a recent evolution that only started spreading around the world about 20 million years ago, so it's a relative newcomer. It's much more efficient than C3 (under certain conditions, like bright light, high temperatures, and drought). C4 plants are only 5% of Earth's biomass but they do 23% of terrestrial carbon sequestration. That means there's room for Earth's plant life to become way more efficient at sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. What if we could CRISPR ourselves way more C4 photosynthesis plants, and use them to rapidly sequester atmospheric CO2, as part of a plan to reverse climate change?
You know what else we need to fight climate change? Way more gigawatt-hours of rechargeable batteries, both for EVs and also plugged directly into the power grid so we can take all the excess energy that solar generates during the day and save it for nighttime. This is already happening but a limiting factor is the fact that the main battery chemistry right now is Lithium-Ion. The rarity of lithium in the Earth's crust limits how fast we can make lithium-ion batteries and how cheap they can be. Lithium is toxic, and mining it has environmental costs of its own. Replacing lithium would be fantastic. You know what's not rare at all? Sodium, which we can get from seawater. People are working on sodium-ion batteries as a potential replacement for lithium-ion. The problem with sodium-ion batteries is they're unstable, having a tendency to mechanically expand under repeated charge-discharge cycles, which is dangerous.
Imagine if I could be researching improved battery chemistry right now!
Is it climate?
The Most!
How Viable Is This Path?
Doubtful, but very interesting to think about.
Does a path into a scientific career exist from where I am now, at my age? Does it mean going back to academia and doing a PhD?
What if academia, universities, and PhD programs didn't have to be the only way to do science? The future may need completely different social structures for learning and research. More flexible ones. Something that doesn't require people to commit to a single field of study at age 18 and stick with it for the rest of their life.
What if I could be a pioneer in figuring out the new model?
Art
The other thing I've wanted to do ever since I was little was to make art - to draw comics, to create video games, to tell stories, make music, etc.
Most of my friends these days are people who I met through creative hobbies: other comic artists and musicians and gamers. When we're hanging out and people talk about changing careers, the question that always comes up is whether someone could make the jump to doing their art full-time.
| Makes $: | Basically: No |
|---|---|
| Helps Somebody: | Yes! |
| I Enjoy It: | Very much! |
| I'm Good at it: | Sort of |
| Is It Climate: | No |
| How Much Are LLMs Fucking It Up: | The Most |
Case Against:
There are much more talented artists, musicians etc. than me who are struggling and failing to find work right now.
Aside from a tiny handful of rock stars, the majority of people working in any creative field have always had to pay the bills with work-for-hire. Work on your passion project when you can, but most of the time get paid to work on other peoples' ideas. Like comic artists doing commission art, illustrations for games, corporate logos, graphic design, children's book illustrations, etc.
Now all those contract jobs are being lost to LLMs. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei apparently want a world where no human gets to make a living from creativity ever again.
This is why all my artist friends are, like, ready to lead the Butlerian Jihad.
But even before the LLM crisis, creative careers were tough.
Remember how the internet was supposed to get rid of the gatekeepers? Instead of having to convince a publisher to take a chance on our work, we'd be able to connect directly to an audience over the internet, remember that?
Now the social media algorithm is the gatekeeper. Everybody's in a zero-sum war for limited attention. Instead of making a deal where the publisher handles the promotion and you focus on the work, now you have to be your own promoter. You don't get to have a creative career unless you first master this unrelated skill of self-promotion on social media.
I don't have the personality type for self-promotion on social media. At all. Even thinking about it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Social media is like a terrifying minefield standing between me and any potential audience for any of my projects. It has been this way for like a decade and a half now.
I basically looked at that minefield and said: "Well... I guess I'll never have a creative career then." I guess I'll only ever do it as a hobby. I guess anything I make will be seen or heard only by a few friends.
(How many other creative people never find an audience because social media keeps them out?)
Case For:
For years I've assumed a creative career could never be an option for me. But, isn't that just assuming failure before even trying? Why shouldn't I give it a try first?
It would be fun. I've got a lot of stories I want to tell. I've got a lot I want to say to the world.
I think we desperately need new stories. We've had a drought of them. From my perspective, we've been in a kind of cultural wasteland for the decade-and-a-half since social media took over. Everything's short-form video, superhero sequels, nostalgia bait, ragebait, clickbait, and ironic mashups of stuff from the 1960s through the 1990s. It sucks! Everybody hates this! People are hungry for something new and different.
The work of rebuilding culture from the wasteland is very important. Somebody has to figure out a new model of how art, and human creativity of any kind, can continue to exist in the post-social-media, post-LLM nightmare world.
Stories are how we make sense of our world and construct meaning in our lives, and if it feels like nothing makes sense anymore, maybe it's because we don't have the stories for it. The world has changed so much, but we're still stuck with zombie stories from past decades that don't work anymore.
We're missing stories about a future anybody'd want to live in. Right now it feels like everything is either dystopia, apocalypse, post-apocalypse, or retreat into an imaginary nostalgia world. Where's the vision of a positive, or even livable, future to build towards? Even today's Star Trek is just nostalgia for old Star Trek, it's not plausible utopian sci-fi like old Star Trek aspired to be.
In the absence of a future, of course people choose retreat into an imaginary nostalgia world. Then they're easy marks for authoritarians with false promises that we can return to the past if we just round up all the immigrants. And that's the last decade of global politics in a nutshell.
Is it climate?
No. Making art about the climate crisis is important but it's not the same as fighting the climate crisis.
How Viable Is This Path?
Sure doesn't look viable right now.
But you know, I already draw a lot of comics and record a lot of music. I just don't put my work anywhere where people can see it. Because I'm shy. What if I just... started trying to find an audience?
I wouldn't bank on succeeding. I'd just pursue it on the side while doing whatever else I do for pay. So there's not much at risk besides my ego.
Basically I'd do more of what I'm already doing, I'd just tell strangers about it.
Teacher
| Makes $: | It's a pay cut but it's stable |
|---|---|
| Helps Somebody: | Yes! |
| I Enjoy It: | Very much! |
| I'm Good at it: | I think I might be |
| Is It Climate: | No |
| How Much Are LLMs Fucking It Up: | Low to Medium |
Case For:
I've done some teaching before -- I taught English in Japan, I taught Javascript at a bootcamp, a few other things like that. So I know I enjoy teaching. There's a great feeling when a kid who's been struggling with something starts getting it. Helping them reach that point is very satisfying. I think I could be good at it.
Teaching physics would be my first choice, but I could teach math, or computer programming (if that still gets taught anywhere in the future... maybe it will be treated like pottery or basket-weaving)
Whenever I mention "science teacher" to people who know me, they say things like "oh that would be perfect for you".
Some of the people I respect most in the world are teachers. Such as (Spouse)! Speaking of that, a nice side benefit would be sharing the same vacation schedule as (Spouse) and (Daughter).
How amazing would it be to set up lab experiments and practical science demonstrations for students??? What if a school had a FIRST robotics team that I could coach? That would be so fun.
There are several local universities that offer one-year teaching certificate programs. There are even some state incentives for math and science teachers who commit to some number of years teaching in the local public schools. I gather this area has a shortage of good math and science teachers, because people who are good at STEM around here tend to go work for Google or whatever, not to become teachers.
The corrupt Silicon Valley elite have been hoarding and monopolizing the power of technology for themselves for too long. They want us all to be helpless consumers, reliant on their LLMs and their social media algorithms to make our decisions for us. Part of fighting back against that has to be raising the next generation to think for themselves. To feel confident about their own logical, mathematical and scientific thinking. Who see technology not as magic that they have to receive from a special priesthood, but as something that rightfully belongs to themselves, something they can understand and use to solve their own problems in their own ways. A generation who can overthrow Silicon Valley and seize the power for themselves.
Case Against:
I know it's not all sunshine and roses; there's grading, prep time, admin paperwork, schedules, reports, kids with discipline problems, entitled parents, etc.
LLMs are causing a lot of problems for teachers. Students will absolutely use ChatGPT to cheat themselves out of learning anything. Any essay assignment that students submit online is now suspect. I've heard a lot about schools having to move assignments back to in-person, pencil-on-paper writing. They've started using those little blue books again.
I hear that sometimes even parents are like "just let them use ChatGPT, nobody needs to learn how to write an essay anymore!" And the teacher has to patiently explain the concept of "learning" to the parent.
So there's challenges. But at least teachers are fighting back against the LLM takeover. Unlike software developers, who seem to be embracing their own destruction. The teachers seem to have a much better attitude.
Is It Climate?
The only real drawback I see to becoming a teacher is that I wouldn't be fighting climate change.
It could involve teaching about climate change, teaching about technologies for fighting it, steering kids in the direction of climate careers... but that's not the same.
How Viable Is This Path?
I started applying to teaching certification programs last week. We shall see what comes of it.
Electrician
Since jobs with a hands-on component are the least ruined by LLMs, it makes sense to consider blue-collar trades. Of these, electrician is the one with the most obvious application to fighting climate change.
| Makes $: | Solid |
|---|---|
| Helps Somebody: | Yes |
| I Enjoy It: | Unknown |
| I'm Good at it: | Unknown |
| How Much Are LLMs Fucking It Up: | Minimally |
Case For:
Working outdoors! Working with my hands! Wouldn't it be satisfying to point at a building and say "I helped wire that up"? Somebody's lights don't work, then I come and do my job, and now they work. It's not glamorous, but that sounds like a day at work where I know I made something better. Certainly in a more tangible way than most days at a desk job.
One probably learns a lot of interesting stuff about the underground infrastructure of civilization that most people never think about.
Because it's physical, the amount it's getting fucked up by LLMs is probably much lower.
To replace fossil fuels, we've got to install a lot of electrotech. We have to make electricity clean and we also have to make everything run on electricity that currently runs on combustion. So aside from solar panels, batteries, and EV chargers, there's some less obvious electrotech that needs installing. Think of all the buildings that have fossil-fuel powered heaters and boilers and stoves. Those all need replacing with heat pumps and induction stoves.
Back in the "Solar Power Industry" section, I talked about wanting to break into a clean energy role that's closer to the hardware. Getting an electrical contractor license might be just the ticket.
Case Against:
After that stint working at the video store as a teenager, I swore I'd never do a customer service job again. Having to go into peoples' houses and talk to them? Awkward!
Then again, most customers are probably grateful you're there. It probably gets less awkward once you develop some scripts.
Is starting manual work in my 40s is a one-way ticket to Lower Back Pain City? I'm a little worried about that.
Some people would probably see working in The Trades as a big step "down" from a white-collar job like software engineering. But honestly? Who cares. Those people are just snobs.
I hear there's currently a ton of demand for electricians to install wiring at data centers. But I don't want to build data centers. That would feel like I'm actively making the world worse.
Is it climate?
Maybe! The question is how much choice I'd have over my contracts. Would I be able to choose to focus on installing solar panels, EV chargers, batteries, heat pumps, etc? Or would I have to just take whatever I can get?
How Viable Is This Path?
If I could focus on installing climate tech, I think I'd love this job. If I'd have to take jobs wiring up data center, I'd hate it.
I should meet some electricians and ask them about their work. And also research vocational schools and apprenticeship programs.
Parting thought: What is a "Career", anyway?
We have a ton of our self-worth and identity tied up in our careers. A career is a story you tell about how all your jobs form a logical progression of increasing salaries and titles, and that means you "are" something (like "I am a software engineer") and that means you're a successful adult and a valuable member of society.
The reality is that, like most people I know, I've worked in a bunch of different fields, none of them related to my college major. If I told you every job I've ever worked, you would not hear a logical progression along a well-defined career path. It would sound like a bunch of different ways that traded my time and labor power for money. Because that's what it is. When applying for software jobs I can selectively edit that list into something that look sufficiently like a "software engineer career path" to a hiring manager.
Careers are a box we try to fit ourselves into, in order to make ourselves more legible to capitalism. Maybe we shouldn't build so much of our self-worth on that flimsy foundation.
If "being a software engineer" was still a load-bearing part of my self-image, I'd be going through a major existential crisis right now. Luckily for me, I already went through that existential crisis over a decade ago. I learned to find my sense of identity and self-worth outside of work. Glad I did. I'm ahead of the game!
The idea of "being" one thing, and following a linear and legible career path, already seems like a quaint luxury from a past century. Maybe the attitude has to be "cobble together whatever you can to make a living" until the new world is able to be born. Adaptability is key in this time of chaos. Embrace the weirdness.
I think the teaching path is the one that I'm currently most excited about, but I could still change my mind if I see an opportunity to do something more climate-related.