I struggle with this occasionally. My partner is a hydrographer and her job is to create electronic navigation charts for the Western Canadian and Arctic coastline. This involves surveying the waters, studying tides, and generating the charts from all of the data. Sometimes she gets to go for weeks or a month at a time on the surveying boats, or they fly out to check on remote tide stations.

The rest of her time is much like ours, just sitting at a desk tapping away at a keyboard or mouse. But 1.5-2 months of her year are booked by her employer to be off surveying. They see whales, go fishing and dive for food in their spare time, visit remote waters in the arctic or BC coast, stay in interesting communities along the coast, and all kinds of neat stuff.

Of course it isn't perfect and the ~10 months spent charting is so tedious that it gives me mild discomfort from a distance. I think the value of having quality navigation charts for the ocean is a little known but incredibly important asset to any place in the world though. Vessels travelling safely is the backbone of trade, tourism, fishing, and many kinds of recreation. I suspect there's some satisfaction in that at least.

Nah, when I vacation I can go there if I like it. These people have to go certain places.

My friend is a marine biologist and she dives off tropical islands in beautiful blue ocean water. The other day she talked about how everyone said it must be amazing to live this life so close to nature and she said it's really fucking hard not to flip out. The job is hard and painful and to be honest, my job as a software engineer is way better because I get to have fun wherever I want two days a week.

Ever since watching The Life Aquatic ~15 years ago, I’ve secretly wanted to throw all my computers away and become a marine biologist.

I've considered just quitting and wandering around countries on foot. I've got the money from software saved up to do it. And I live cheaply anyways.

Do it.

I've spent 24 years writing software professionally and I often think about my exit. I don't think I'll ever stop writing software, I truly love it. But the career itself is incredibly stressful. The money is compensation for that stress, but I'd much rather be outside and working with my hands. I'm going to create other channels of income and then move on.

It's not that I think people can't be happy at a desk. I've been very happy. Just looking for a change and some sunshine.

When you are working in software, you are not “sitting at a desk”, you’re sitting at the helm of the future. All of the advancements and evolution of mankind and life on this earth have led us to the creation of civilization’s most important tool: the computer. And as computers weave more into the fabric of our world and everyday life, those who master them wield power like Gods. There’s no place I’d rather be.

I've spent a lot of time in software and I am looking to exit so I can spend more time away from the desk, but I have to say - this is a great attitude to have!

Thankfully there is free (as in freedom) software. It is as important as ever that it exists, it is our only hope to stop these "gods".

I do archaeology in-between software jobs. The pay is terrible, but there's an attraction to working outside on something meaningful that's hard to ignore. At the same time, washing clothes in rivers and being sick in the field sucks.

Could be true, or not. You could head out to wilderness every weekend, on vacations (probably further away), move closer to it etc. And researcher can head down to nearest pub or TV with netflix after work. You can travel where you actually want, not where the job takes you (although this specific one covers pretty cool locations).

I don't want to know the world and I don't enjoy going outside. My life is perfect in front of the computer and I'm kind of offended that you presume everyone wants that kind of life.