One of the best Microsoft stack Sysadmins (AD/Exchange) I knew back in the day was a former diesel mechanic who got badly injured in an accident and transferred to do help desk work. He dove in and really mastered it. Just a great guy who was great at training new folks.
Not programming but the other wacky transition was a Wall St guy who burnt out, started a subsistence farmstand in the country, married a hippie lady and sold vegetables, drove a school bus and plowed snow to get by. Really nice guy... when he died it turned out he owned a few buildings in NYC and was loaded to the tune of $20-30M, and his family had no clue.
I once met an unemployed software engineer who went door to door selling magazine subscriptions.
Re:Ask HN: Who has been laid off?
by karatestomp on Friday April 03, 2020 @06:51PM
(#22774695)
Reminds me of King Vidor's The Crowd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crowd_(1928_film)
(I guess that could kinda be a spoiler for an almost 100 year old film?)
LOL might be too dated, for this crowd but man that movie was a classic to those that worked thru that era.
Re:Ask HN: Who has been laid off?
by tonyedgecombe on Saturday April 04, 2020 @01:48AM
(#22776456)
My plumber has written a ton of VBA in Excel to automate his business.
I was at a customer site a few months ago installing some test hardware and the guy I was working with was their welder, having been an auto mechanic before and we got into a discussion about programming in Python!
The best interaction, however, would be the homeless guy I met who used to be a programmer.