This blogpost might generate more profits, but I doubt they are even close to being profitable and have other income/savings.
But this is what the classics of stoicism (in the literal sense of both) have been telling us the whole time. We make our own meaning, and money isn't it. Go and grow things. Raise things. Build things.
Civilization is when men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.
For some, the benefits for society are not as immediately visible as a farmer producing potatoes or corn which he/she can touch with their own hands, but in my personal view my job positions me as a not insignificant cog in a gigantic machine which has genuine benefits for society (and some negative influences, yes).
Some red flags in the linked article. Spirituality and barefoot running, which I do not believe is very evidence based to recommend. My opinion is that anyone working a software engineering office 9-5 should also always be doing strength resistance training and some cardio every single week. This should provide the health benefits needed to survive in what is a sedentary job.
There is a visceral spiritualism to working with your hands, but if you can achieve that with coding, great! Live a life you would want if money didn't matter.
Writing code is also working with your hands. It produces real world effects which even if you cannot observe them directly still provide societal benefit: The "impact" of this can in many cases be much larger than a manual job.
People change countries, partners, careers not because of one book. This is usually the last drop. They were long-term unhappy, yearning for something else.
And as this guy wrote, he was sick, he was burned out. I suppose, he wasn't able to limit his screen time, it was all or nothing. Sometimes, those big changes work better than incremental steps. 20 years ago, I went from a pack of cigarettes a day to zero. If I went to 19, then 18, then 17, I might still smoke to this day.
I thought this was a beautiful statement; something to really help us think about what we're trying to do here on Earth. But personally I would add Artist to this. Painter, sculptor, musician, writer, poet, and so on. We need those too.
Some had rich patrons and there were travelling bands of entertainers...
A poet needs his pen and paper. Someone needs to man the paper-mills and ink-factories, someone needs to work on logistics and planning issues related to that, infrastructure etc.
It's a completely meaningless statement.
The thing is that we always sell the product in intermediates that would pack it up and sell it in a much higher price. I don't know of any small producer that sells the product directly to the consumer. This seems like a very big investment and not really sustainable. Are there other people that are doing it?
Could my knowledge as a software engineer help that family business in any way to be more profitable ?
It's possible, the market is kind of small I guess but you need to have a product where the customer is happy to pay a premium.
And being a software developer helps because you might have the money to invest?! :)
Something you might be able to code is plugins for these ecommerce sites, if it makes sense for your business. I also used to run a loose leaf tea ecommerce store via Shopify but I imported from producers like your family as you describe, and I wrote one for dynamic pricing for buying from various countries due to their purchasing power being less. It'd calculate their power as well as my thresholds and figure out optimal prices where more people could buy it but wasn't screwing me over too.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46385308, https://www.vidaliaonions.com/
Wishing you good luck!
Seems shocking at first, but the more you think about what our SWE works does, for whom, and who benefits the most of it ... IMO it makes sense.
The author also forgot another path: teacher.
Also I inherently disagree with the idea of meaninglessness the author presents there. Meaning is relative to man, man makes meaning. There is no objective meaning and so you have to choose it for yourself.
I started natural winery at the ripe time when it first started to be popular and managed to miss the wave. It was a great first year after many years of tech grind in big tech hubs. I was waking up late, went for walk where I probably met friend or two who had nothing much to do, so we drink a coffee and talked a bit. Waiting for summer heat to be over, then work in the vineyard till the sun went down and then go to the local pub for beer or four.
I guess it sounds like it was vacation or playing farmer. And that is what it was, really. I did that for couple of years and then moved back to the nearby city and rejoined the startup grind. What I got from this experience is that there are seasons in life and it is great to have an optionality to play with different modes of life. The tech industry will always be there.
I am in my 40s now. Found a wife, got a mortgage and couple of kids. I kept the farm and treated it as a weekend hobby, rented out most of the land and slowly building the infrastructure I missed when I started. One day the kids will be old enough and tech will no longer excite me. The season will change, I move back, wake up late, meet with local friends who have nothing much to do during summer heat, work the vineyards and then hit pub when the sun went down.
I saw some mention of the same on the website for the farm. Care to share any recipes? Or even just names of dishes? I quite enjoy foods from the Mediterranean and I'm interested in trying more!
yownie•46m ago
tonnydourado•37m ago
Tade0•25m ago
I was raised Roman Catholic and to me it was always a head scratcher why would someone insist on a certain translation which is at least two languages away from the original.
It's a whole field of study and there's broad agreement that as language evolves translations need to be updated, otherwise you'd have to become an expert in that old language the work was written in on top of everything else.