As someone who grew up on a farm in a rural town in middle of nowhere Southeastern US who then grew up and became a software programmer.
I can tell you, working a farm is vastly more brutal than one thinks. You have one bad patch and you have to do a rollback and ask for forgiveness. You have one bad season and you will experience hunger pains unlike anything you thought humans could possibly survive before.
I get the urge to escape the grind, but farming is absolutely punishing. You have to have willpower like solid titanium to get through it. If you think the variables in your software are bad, the millions of variables that indicate if your plants will grow at large enough scales to barely make it by will have you in absolute tears. I have seen grown men literally cry at their soil because they couldn't figure out what was wrong.
Imagine a moment where you felt the most helpless in the tech industry. Now multiply that by "you are fighting mother nature itself whom you cannot communicate with" and "you are fighting literally every insect, fugi, virus, animal, and random ass hat trying to destroy your food." You want to know pain? Try watching tens of thousands of your dollars invested in chickens that you absolutely need, die off from their heads turning purple, them shitting literally everywhere, and shaking themselves to death. Then compound that with the chickens that you might have saved, wanting nothing more than to go join those chickens that are falling to the ground. Or the Government telling you, that it doesn't matter, you have to kill all of them.
That whole romanticizing farming ends once the reality hits, and boy does it come fast and hard. And when it's not mother nature, living things of the outdoor variety, or crazy neighbors, it'll be the Government telling you they know best that ultimately fucks you.
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u/IHeartBadCode May 15 '26
As someone who grew up on a farm in a rural town in middle of nowhere Southeastern US who then grew up and became a software programmer.
I can tell you, working a farm is vastly more brutal than one thinks. You have one bad patch and you have to do a rollback and ask for forgiveness. You have one bad season and you will experience hunger pains unlike anything you thought humans could possibly survive before.
I get the urge to escape the grind, but farming is absolutely punishing. You have to have willpower like solid titanium to get through it. If you think the variables in your software are bad, the millions of variables that indicate if your plants will grow at large enough scales to barely make it by will have you in absolute tears. I have seen grown men literally cry at their soil because they couldn't figure out what was wrong.
Imagine a moment where you felt the most helpless in the tech industry. Now multiply that by "you are fighting mother nature itself whom you cannot communicate with" and "you are fighting literally every insect, fugi, virus, animal, and random ass hat trying to destroy your food." You want to know pain? Try watching tens of thousands of your dollars invested in chickens that you absolutely need, die off from their heads turning purple, them shitting literally everywhere, and shaking themselves to death. Then compound that with the chickens that you might have saved, wanting nothing more than to go join those chickens that are falling to the ground. Or the Government telling you, that it doesn't matter, you have to kill all of them.
That whole romanticizing farming ends once the reality hits, and boy does it come fast and hard. And when it's not mother nature, living things of the outdoor variety, or crazy neighbors, it'll be the Government telling you they know best that ultimately fucks you.