James Strawn, a former Adobe engineer, became a school bus driver after struggling to find work, sparking a broader conversation about ageism and the challenges older tech workers face.
‘Ghosted me’ and ‘passed me over’: Strawn’s blunt message to the tech industry
Read somewhere this guy lived in some coastal town or island and he was either an ex tech worker who became a boat mechanic or knew one and I haven’t stopped thinking about ditching web dev and learning how to fix boats ever since
I grew up boating up and down the New England coast. As long as there are big boats in the water there will be a need for good mechanics, and plenty of boat owners willing to throw money at you.
I remember stopping at a marina for fuel once and we saw a mechanic replacing an outboard engine on one of those big “cigarette” boats that often have 3 or 4 engines on them. We struck up a conversation and learned that the boat owner was a rich idiot who didn’t know how to operate the boat properly and would blow an engine almost every time he took the boat out. It happened so often that the mechanic had started keeping a spare $20,000 engine in stock just for this boat. He was more than happy to take money from the idiot boat owner to keep the guy happy.
I spent the summer tearing apart an exterior wall of my 1902 Queen Anne house, doing electrical and Ethernet and fixing plumbing and insulation. Real work in the 100-105* sun. It’s fucking glorious. The problem is, every time I come home, or face a challenge of any kind, I just go “well fuck it, time to go work on the house.” So I am super behind in all of my projects, including a business to get me out of tech, heh. I want to trade screens for sun…
Read somewhere this guy lived in some coastal town or island and he was either an ex tech worker who became a boat mechanic or knew one and I haven’t stopped thinking about ditching web dev and learning how to fix boats ever since
I grew up boating up and down the New England coast. As long as there are big boats in the water there will be a need for good mechanics, and plenty of boat owners willing to throw money at you.
I remember stopping at a marina for fuel once and we saw a mechanic replacing an outboard engine on one of those big “cigarette” boats that often have 3 or 4 engines on them. We struck up a conversation and learned that the boat owner was a rich idiot who didn’t know how to operate the boat properly and would blow an engine almost every time he took the boat out. It happened so often that the mechanic had started keeping a spare $20,000 engine in stock just for this boat. He was more than happy to take money from the idiot boat owner to keep the guy happy.
I spent the summer tearing apart an exterior wall of my 1902 Queen Anne house, doing electrical and Ethernet and fixing plumbing and insulation. Real work in the 100-105* sun. It’s fucking glorious. The problem is, every time I come home, or face a challenge of any kind, I just go “well fuck it, time to go work on the house.” So I am super behind in all of my projects, including a business to get me out of tech, heh. I want to trade screens for sun…