• intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    21 hours ago

    I’m an uber driver. The pay is atrocious, but the work is super easy and I feel energized after a long shift. I may go back to tech, but in a talking job like sales or support. I’m just not built to write code all day.

    I stopped taking all the stimulants at some point before being fired. Even after the panic attacks stopped, I still couldn’t get to a point where I could write code more than two hours per day. As a full-time dev I was expected to account for 9 total hours including 8 billable hours per day. It never worked out.

    But I stopped taking the stimulants and discovered my productivity was just as high without them. Which with code means still pretty low. But any other kind of work I can go twelve hours without issue. I’m really productive so long as I’m not making precise and articulated decisions all day.

    I’m an excellent driver, but the rules don’t change. Driving is the same set of rules every day, every road condition. There’s like maybe 150 rules to memorize and then all I have to do is implement them perfectly. As an autistic I’m really fucking good at that.

    Programming is like doing construction, except:

    • You never build the same thing twice
    • The tools change daily
    • The building code changes daily
    • The properties of the materials change daily
    • Physics changes daily

    I’ve done a lot of different jobs and programming is easily the most mentally taxing. I always say if you’re doing the same thing twice as a programmer, you’re doing it wrong because you could have automated something.

    I just can’t be that creative all day every day.