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Yes - I spent one year working shifting boxes in a warehouse in the early part of my IT career.
This was purely on the basis of not having a good work balance at the time, spending hours and hours coding and not much else - I wanted to do something physical and the company I worked for paid all staff equally so I was not taking a pay cut.
It was the right choice - I had a year of heavy physical work(I was less tired in the evening than when I was at a desk) and I also got an appreciation of how uninteresting that type of work was, eventually returning back into the IT team.
Sure if you want a 'career' doing this sort of thing is probably frowned upon - however I have no desire to be in management or have a 'career'...
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
modified 10-Jun-15 8:02am.
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You should read my bio - I drifted quite heavily in my early 20s. Not included in the bio was a year's stint as a treasury analyst in a building society. I hated that, though learning about the various financial instruments was interesting. Without it I wouldn't have really got into programming as a career - part of it was sys admin on the treasury systems plus I automated several processes with script - something I could point to in later interviews.
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In real life I was a research chemist - w/PhD from a rather prestigious institution, at that.
In part my reset (as you put it) evolved as I moved towards modeling chemical systems on the computer followed by trying to see if the models worked in real life (amazingly, they did). Automated instrumentation, too, as I was too lazy to sit and run it by hand all day (and the computer did a better job).
Finally, I decided to relocate - got a break to be hired as a programmer - a good thing as no major chemical industry exists in the area and CP is now suffering the consequences.
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I'm in the process of getting a counseling certificate (I really don't want to do the BA/MA route) in psychology so in 3-5 years I'm hoping that counseling / life coaching can be my main revenue source and programming is just something I do for fun on the side. I'm also learning to play the lyre[^], it would be really fun to do so professionally, though the demand of course is limited.
[rant] And if you ask why, well, I'm actually getting pretty jaded at dealing with other people's sh*t code, which just seems to be everywhere. And I'm tired of dealing with ever-changing half-assed technology stacks.[/rant]
Then again, as I tell my girlfriend, doing counseling is really the same thing. Different software, same sh*t.
Marc
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Musician, hard work, little money, people with ego issues, got nowhere... Printer, monotonous dirty work. Went to tech school then worked in electronics for 14 years. I was pretty good at it but it got boring when I became a lead tech that ended up doing more paperwork and swapping boards, component level troubleshooting takes too long they said, took all the fun out of problem solving. Started programming to automate product testing and service inventory tracking. Went back to school for computer repair and networking but still found programming more interesting.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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I spent 10 hard years in the corrugated fiberboard shipping container (cardboard box) industry as a press operator before going back to school. Fun times! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I graduated with a degree in Marine Science and began working for a scuba diving facility which I eventually bought from my boss when he retired. I spent about 20 years in that business. Being self taught for the most part I didn't go directly into software development. I was working for an environmental company and wrote programs on my own to make my life easier on the job. This caught there attention and they moved me to database manager/software developer which I have been doing for the last 15 years.
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Well it's not a software career, it was hardware but I code so:
For 10 or so years I worked in Orange County California at various upscale firms in the engineering departments as a test engineer.
The closest I ever came to having to interact with normals was when someone from the sales division would invade the engineering lab.
Reset 1993
When it looked to my techie wife and I as if California was going to go to the dogs or worse we bugged out to the woods in the high Rockies (9800 ft) that is Summit County Colorado among the moose elk n' bear.
We started a Network and PC support shop to support ourselves and keep from having to stock the shelves at the local grocery store. There is no place to be properly compensated here for your talents so autonomy of eeking out a living here along with the Elk, Moose and Bear must suffice. My wife and I run this shop and she runs interference so I don't alienate the whole normal customer base. 
I am trying to code myself to better income and I have high speed internet, statics for my servers and y'all to amuse me so it's all good. 
Oh, and So. Cal did go to the dogs.
modified 10-Jun-15 17:57pm.
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This article is nothing more but a distraction...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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No, it is a waste of space, and one becomes dumber by reading it.
Very obvious once you read item 1.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Maybe the author wanted his boss to read it ...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Rule 0:
Disconnect from the network, both wired and wireless. **
** For the duration you need to focus.
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I can get very little done unconnected. The app I'm working on requires an internet connection just to log in. Yeah, I could comment this out and hard code a successful login, but we know where tricks like that lead.
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. - Oscar Wilde
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They lead to you getting to do the interestintg stuff while you leave the boilerplate to your minions as an exercise.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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I have no minions. Just started here. Despite my admittedly dismal Angular skills.
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. - Oscar Wilde
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If you think that's important, why did you want your account back? 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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What I meant was:
- Pre-processing: Download all info needed, as PDFs, videos, etc.
- Focus time: Disconnect, read and watch them, and solve your problem.
- Then, back to network.
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I was joking with you...and generally, it doesn't work like that, except for fairly trivial problems.
You Google, you read, you google again, you read, you think you have a solution, you check, you start looking again, you...
Disconnecting slows you down, rather than allowing you to focus better.
The best aid to focus I have found is to take a break and do something completely different!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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yeah,you are right.
I have attended an interview one month ago,I got cleared 2 rounds in that company, and then next was system test, it was strange test i didn't complete that one and i asked the interviewer i need internet connection to do , then he said that we don't have internet connection in our office, i was totally upset, and i wondered how ?
நெஞ்சு பொறுக்கு திலையே-இந்த
நிலைகெட்ட மனிதரை நினைந்துவிட்டால்
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I am sure he meant they weren't having an internet connection for the machine you were given for giving the test.
And at least you were given a machine and an IDE with Intellisense, and not asked to write code on paper.
You have just been Sharapova'd.
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Quote: he meant they weren't having an internet connection for the machine you were given for giving the test.
I was asked one of the employee in that company , she said that "if you can use it, the internet connection blocked in all machines, we have only client's site to access, cant surf anything ".
நெஞ்சு பொறுக்கு திலையே-இந்த
நிலைகெட்ட மனிதரை நினைந்துவிட்டால்
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I used to work for a company that (among other things) made a Tempest Approved VDT - a "dumb" terminal (although it had a processor, ROM, and RAM and was quite bright foe its time) that is in a big radiation shielded box to prevent evildooers from the KGB spying on what the UK army was doing with email.
When it broke down, the service engineer we sent was deprived of all reading and writing materials, pens, watch, phone, pager, calculator, cash, and all tools. He was then locked into a Tempest Room (Radiation proof cage, basically) with no electricity or tools of his own with a VDT disassembled by the military, and all ROMS removed... Fix that, sunbeam!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: You Google, you read, you google again, you read, you think you have a solution, you check, you start looking again, you...
Nah, the "Next Generation" coders are much smarter. They just post a question in QA and ask for teh working codezz.
You have just been Sharapova'd.
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