Programming is not a dirty job for most (maybe if you are a plant PLC programmer)... the shows name is quiet literal, as figurative as you may want this to sound it just doesn't work talking about Mike Rowe. Unless you regularly arrive home showered in feces and tape your pants to your boots before heading into work.

There aren't enough literally dirty jobs to go around, unless you consider "dirty" to merely mean "in need of a shower", in which case my 36 hour coding sprints at the office definitely qualify me.

The important distinction is "job that pays me to do what I love and totally fulfills me" vs "job that is in demand, pays well and I can tolerate". The former is a meme that the baby boomers invented and indoctrinated into their children, resulting in a generation of highly educated barristas. The few that make it into the cushy jobs are the ones who end up complaining constantly, a symptom of inhibiting their natural productive instinct.

We need to get shit done. It's primal. And nothing feels more like getting shit done than something disgusting and dangerous. That's why you feel great after you clean the bathroom.

The tech industry is an anomoly in that the productive jobs are often also deeply fulfilling. There are a few other jobs like that, but not enough for everyone and they set a bad example for the rest of the working world.

I didn't mean it literally, obviously. I meant it in the sense that programming is not generally considered a glamorous job, aspired to by celebrity-conscious kids everywhere. It can be an art, yes, but often it's about rolling up your sleeves and putting in long hours to build something great.

Mike Rowe specifically mentioned the concept of infrastructure; something that societies need to be good places to live but whose construction and upkeep are not occupations encouraged by the media. Well, there is informational infrastructure too, and it's programmers who build it, mostly unsung outside our own narrow circles.

A dirty job, despite your narrow reading of the show's name, does not just mean you literally get dirty doing it. It means an unglamourous job where you just ignore everything else and go in and do what needs to be done. Hyett & co. might be micro-celebrities now, but that came after a long stretch of very unglamorous hacking - sitting on their asses staring at a tiny screen at all hours of the day and night, getting shit done. When was the last time you saw that kind of occupation celebrated in, say, an ad? And yet the product is the infrastructure we all rely on.

That's what I meant, sorry for being ambiguous. And if you still disagree, I'll show you some of the code I just wrote, I promise you'll feel dirty for weeks ; )

Oh no I know exactly what you mean, but the thing is... everyone, in every field feels the same way about their job. Just about everyone in the world feels that they work in the most underrepresented and unappreciated jobs.

I watch dirty jobs every now and then and love the show, but I think it is very clear that he is talking about the literally dirty jobs. Any job can be considered to have 'dirty' parts, depending on how far you want to stretch the definition. To think that even celebrated jobs like doctors and lawyers don't have, by your loose definition, dirty parts is very naive.

I am not really attacking you, I just always roll my eyes when people start complaining about their jobs. I guess growing up blue collar has made me very cynical when people working 8 hour days in air conditioned offices complain about doing dirty work. Hard, intense, difficult, exhausting? Sure. Dirty? No

Of course the TV show has to depict physically dirty jobs. Most TV programs seem to have a requirement to capture and keep hold of the viewer's eyes and ears. A TV show where a bunch of people sit in cubicles in a mostly silent office and you only hear typing, mouse clicking, and the occasional phone ringing does not make for desirable TV programming (even if it accurately depicts reality).

Just because most people feel that they are under-appreciated in their professions doesn't mean that that feeling is less legitimate. Everyone has the right to complain about their job, regardless of how cushy it seems to others.

In a way, complaining about your job is proof to yourself that you aren't where you want to be yet. That's the essence of a lot of startups.

Considering Mike Rowe is pushing for more trade school enrollment makes it pretty clear I think that he is talking about legitimately dirty work, the real literal definition.

I don't understand what any of this has to do with "dirty"? So now we just stretch the definition of dirty to mean anything one can complain about at work? Then there is no point to it, by that definition there are dirty parts to every single job in the world.

Personally I cant think of any other job that is further from dirty then most programming jobs (literal definition). Why is that tech people have to hijack everything with the me too talk? Next we will read about strong men competitions and all the tech people will chime in with how deployment is such a heavy weight to lift... but hey its just figurative! Or how the programming is like cleaning toilets, because you have to look at other peoples code... on your monitor!

And if you really think your job is dirty, go find an electrician and pull wire through a steel mill, or work with a nurse, or a truck driver, go pull up well pumps, or drain septic tanks... or any other legitimately dirty job.

Or just stop trying to jack the little bit of pride a blue collar worker can have because he actually knows what dirty work is everyday.

It doesn't have anything to do with "dirty" or Mike Rowe. You were saying that you were tired of people complaining about their jobs. I happen to think that complaining about your job is fine.

I don't think anyone is trying to hijack the phrase "dirty job" to lessen those who do literal dirty work in any way. I'm not attacking you.

To many programmers, handling source control is certainly a "dirty" part of the job. If GitHub cleans that up, it's a huge win for everyone.

"...programming is a dirty job"

hell yes!