This person has been in this job with this company for well over two decades. He leaves home at 6:30 to get to work at 7 am and leaves work at 3 pm and gets back home at 3:30. One of the things he likes about his job is that when he leaves the factory, he leaves the factory behind. No email, no blackberry, no powerpoint presentations due for tomorrow morning.
What surprised me even more was that he found his work fulfilling; he had what is so elusive in IT - job satisfaction. And before you start to imagine a blue collared guy in grey overalls, I would like to point out that this person wears a white shirt to work and drives a luxury German automobile and lives in a 5 bedroom home. Clearly, he is good at his job.
Which causes me to wonder, what is it about working in IT that more often than not, leaves something to be desired? Are we as humans geared to appreciate stuff that we can see and hold than the stuff that is mere abstraction? Brings to mind a show I saw on Discovery Turbo, way back when the channel was about cars and turbos; where the protagonist said that he used to enjoy working on his own car when he could turn a screw on the carburetor and hear the engine note change and just feel it when the car was tuned right. These days, he said, you plug a cable into the On Board Diagnostic post and tap some keys on a keyboard. The numbers on the screen change and if the font is not red, then you know you are done.
Perhaps this also explains why the most enjoyable hobbies, those that give one a sense of achievement, are those that involve doing something with ones hands.
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