So you think you could be an electrician?

In a logical world, computer programming would be a trade. I take the point about risk of physical injury of death, hovever.

I think one problem is thinking of the trades as a place where you put people not (good|competent|intelligent) enough to go through college. (Some people's conception of the armed forces makes the same mistake.)

Go a generation or two back and in the UK, we had a much clearer separation between working and middle class, for example one got paid weekly or hourly wages, the other got paid a monthly salary. The trades themselves were divided into skilled and unskilled. While it made a huge cultural difference which class you were from, a good skilled trade could easily make you more money than a clerk job. (Bob Cratchit was middle class!) An unskilled day labourer such as a stevedore might live from hand to mouth, an engine mechanic could usually afford to raise a family and afford a place to live (in a working-class area).

I've worked a variety of manufacturing jobs; from medical manufacturing of catheters the size of fishing lines with three inner diamters, running 5 story oven stack extrusion lines, laser etching tooth insert threading, and suface coating PTFE into sheet material for military radar and industrial applications, to grunt work factory assembly lines making the rubber gun butts for Ruger.

They all carried serious risks of bodily injury, and some far more so than others - but this is what's crazy to consider: the difference in wages we are talking is no more than $3 per hour. Meaning, that grunt work where you could lose your hand to a steel injection mold was $9, the teflon coating job where someone working third shift on the machine I ran was struck in the skull with the peg-end of a steel 72+ inch roller pin holding a full 300 yard roll of coated fabric, nearly (millimeters from), resulting in her having a steel plate surgically placed - that position paid a whopping $12 in 2014.

I've worked as a line cook, over 5 years, and as a driver, 6 years. None of these paid well, and all are inherent of risks. It's always seemed silly to me when you zoom out of this picture and see it like this; the more your job pays the less it exposes you to physical harm.

One point that most people miss is there are many different kinds of electricians who, often can't even do each other's jobs.

There is the house wirer, the panel builder, automotive electrician, HV, marine, drilling, industrial, maintenance etc etc.

Some kinds pay better, others yield work almost wherever you go, others lend themselves to starting your own business better.

It is nowhere near as homogenous as often described.

Yeah I get all of those, and that's why I initially fancied about getting into a trade but nowadays I don't think that's a possibility. The physical part alone is too much for my aging 45+ body. If I lose my job right now and can't find a new one, I better pick up my very old life style of $1,000 a month (everything included) 10 years ago and adapt it to the inflated modern times.

On the other hand, my handyman is 55+ and he has been working on this side gig (his day job is IT Analyst which pays very well) for quite a while. He is very interested in DIY and this led him into the gig. Me? I'd rather waste time (conceived by me as the biggest sin) than do DIY. I'm THAT uninterested.

Having been an electrician turned dev, friends ask me if I miss it at times and I can honestly say I don't miss being covered in rat faeces and fibreglass. Much prefer my standing desk and clean air.

I met a professional electrician in college who was in charge of the electrical system in an old high-rise building. He told me that it was common for him to work on high-voltage lines that could not be shut off for service. He said that hearing the pops from the high voltage was not uncommon. He regularly put his life on the line as part of his job. Just hearing that made me want to make sure I got a college degree so I wouldn't have to get a trade job. All trade jobs will wear your body down, and you regularly have to put your health on the line. Saying that trade jobs are the future is easy to say, but there's a catch. You may sacrifice your health. The better route maybe a career where you help reduce the dangers of trade jobs.

Even if manual jobs were safe from being replaced by AI (for the sake of the argument, we're assuming that this is what's going to happen) these jobs would not be safe from the market pressure created by the displacement in other areas.

Everyone seems to forget that if everyone followed the “AI-proof career” advice to become a plumber, electrician or carpenter - then there’d be so many of them that the pay would go down considerably

I've been in the trades. Everything in this article is real: the hard work, the internal hierarchies, the safety and health concerns.

However the main point is: just pay attention to who is telling you to get a job in the trades instead of a knowledge one.

On top of all this, electricians don't spend much time doing actual electrical work. Time is spent driving a van, doing metal work, cutting, drilling, crawling around tight spaces etc.

> For instance, a future job site worker equipped with smart glasses and an earpiece might receive continuous direction via an AI interpreting and providing feedback on their actions.

I see this happening very soon- already, in some cases, for some applications. And I worry that it will be another way for capital to deskill and disempower labour; see Doctorow's "chickenized reverse centaurs" with Amazon drivers and warehouse workers being the classic example.

The other aspect I think people are missing is that, for the right person, the choice isn't between a white collar office job and trades, it's between struggling in retail and service work with a (possibly bad) degree and no upward mobility, where your only escape is into either management or retraining.

For those people, trades are absolutely a better choice - it's not like becoming an HVAC dogs body prevents you from later going to school if you decide it's not for you.

Residential master electrician makes 5K - 10K per day. They have other electricians working for them, just need to sign off on the work. With inflation and lack of labor supply in US, this will only increase.

Everything is going to be electric. The world is only at 23% electrification. The target is 35% by 2035, which many think is wildly optimistic.

The supply of electricians is limited by gatekeeping. A young kid in high school can get the training in school (less gatekeeping, career help), become a professional and quite possibly become a master electrician by 30. Then make big bucks forever.

Looks like kids and parents are coming to these conclusions on their own. The Hottest High Schools in Massachusetts Are Trade Schools: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/massachusetts-trade-hi...

[1] Can the World Hit 35% Electrification by 2035? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49904154 [2]Electrification Special Report, INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY: https://www.iea.org/reports/electrification https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/1c696cc3-e251-46a9-...

Guy I knew once was the son of a nuclear physicist. While maybe not quite as smart as his Dad, he was still pretty bright. He started his career as an apprentice plumber. His plumbing career got cut short by a serious back injury so he went back to the books and got himself a degree in mining engineering. Long story short he had a great career in mining and ended up as the wealthy CEO of a listed mining company.

Another guy I know started his career as a cabinetmaker but dropped out of his apprenticeship to go into software development. He didn't have what it takes for that and now he is unemployed.

Moral of these stories? Everything depends on your abilities and interests. Hitting the books and going after a white collar job works well if you're smart. But there a lot of frustrated white collar workers out there doing meaningless work or (with AI at the moment) getting laid off. Many would be better off doing a trade.

Picking up a trade like that I believe also requires a much more practical and hands-on mindset, which said kids of white-collar parents might have had less opportunity to develop in the first place.

I'm often in awe when I have these guys here, doing stuff and being allowed to observe, ask questions and learn (as much as that is possible, passively).

They just do things. An obstacle appears and it is just gone within minutes and with some clever workaround.

The white-collar corporate mind cannot comprehend.

__

The downside of that of course is that things get done no matter what. Common sense not necessarily included.

Which is a different style of dysfunction compared with 5 alignment meetings that go nowhere.

5 years ago everyone knew that human thinking was the last thing to get automated. Now everyone knows that physical labor is an impenetrable fortress against AI.

The hardware is already there waiting for the right model to direct it. If GPT 7 or Claude 6 is a true AGI we'll be months away from the same type of blue collar automation. The fact that the models are already building with blender demonstrates a growing understanding of the necessary spatial awareness and reasoning.

I’ve worked trades. I loved a lot about it! But I’m so glad this article pointed out the range of status: not all trades, or roles within one are equal. If you are an incredible welder who can run a perfect seam every time you can command a huge salary. For the rest of the welders it is quite different. If you can handle customers and a crew you can run a quite lucrative electrician shop, for the rest of construction it is quite different. Repeat.

I’m not saying it should be that way, but people need to be clearheaded that a top blue collar job is not as easy as showing up. There are real performance differentiators - reliability, judgement, skill, etc - and the numbers touted often belong to the top performers.

And anyone who thinks office politics go away in a family owned shop is extremely naive. Nepotism is default (and frankly reasonable. Why wouldn’t someone leave their business to their daughter if they were interested?). Large places are like that, too. Someone on a union job asked me point blank who I knew, the implication being that I’d have to know someone to get hired on.

I loved the camaraderie, being on the move, and building something physical. But it wasn’t a nice relaxing stable existence, either.

I recently switched to being an electrician in ship construction after a MSc in Computer Science and PhD in Data Science with heavy focus on writing software/services.

So far, I like it a lot. The work is physically demanding but the colleagues are nice, down to earth and come up with good jokes (I also see this a lot when I watch trades videos on YouTube). Also nice is the feeling of having made something at the end of the day and the lack of office politics. I didn’t do any extra education, they say I’m picking it up fast so it seems I can go without. I think that would hold for most programmers since it’s a very similar mindset that you use especially when you start troubleshooting.

As a side note, the text styled with Noe Text in a bold weight is quite unreadable. I would use 100 instead, which makes the text more pleasant to digest.

Electricians are a bit like airline pilots in that they are paid for knowing what they know, the limits, and making timely decisions. Good ones are paid well, and bad ones kill people. Other tradies have super skills. Welders - who knows how they (reliably) do what they do.

Being wealthy is better than being poor, and being able to pay for college is better than working in construction. However, when choosing a specialty it is important to consider one's preferences. If your child don't want to be a lawyer it doesn't matter whether you can afford paying for the degree, and if he insists he would rather be fixing cars than dealing with documents, helping with a student loan is not really the best thing you can offer as a parent.

The part about blue collar jobs being inherently more deadly doesn't feel right to me. For one, I want to believe we have collectively gotten better in avoiding "dumb" deaths and injuries, these, that could have been prevented by inventing and following safety procedures. The health risks certain profession implies is certainly to be considered when choosing one, white collars included. Desk job kills slowly, but surely.

So, answering to the title, which doesn't seem to be related to the article contents, I absolutely do. Qualified engineer knows enough to be able to double off as a technician, and missing monthly payments is much scarier than high voltage, so if my entire job field was to become obsolete due to AI or any other reason, I would absolutely consider getting out of desk and getting my hands dirty.

I think the most important aspect of high salary is job demand.

Perhaps once there was a high demand for good SWE coming out of 4 years of $$ tuition uni.

Personal anecdote: Got a buddy who dropped out of Bible school, worked at a auto shop while getting his certs. After 2 years about any dealership would hire him.

He moves, lands a 100k+ job. 2 years later, switches to a dealership in San Jose, earning 150+.

6 months later, he gets an offer to become foreman at a dealership in gilroy with a $5/h raise + foreman benefits. How it works is techs are paid flat rate: Paid per job, not per hour. So if youre good, you can really rake in the money.

Its been wild to see his career arc in real time.

He's highly trained, very handy, Nd he's damn smart at debugging.

Basically doing CAN bus diagnostics with an oscope and logic analyzer.

He earns more than me who got a MS in ECE.

On the flip side, his job is physical and he works more hours than me.

I get to so R&D, think about cool math, and code. But in another life I'd love do be a tech.

All that said, there's a lot of demand for good auto techs.

A few years back, we hired an electrician to do some relatively small things for us—things I could do like replacing light switches with timer switches and the like, but didn’t have time to do. The thing that really blew me away was when I asked him if he wanted me to shut off the power at the breaker box and he said no and did all the work with live current in the wires. Yes, I know, gloves, rubber soled shoes, he was fine, but it still was somewhat terrifying to watch.

I mean when it says "Electrical linesmen tend to be killed by electrocution." one way to interpret that is if you become an Electrical linesman your most likely way of dying will be by electrocution, but I bet statistically that is not what is meant, instead I am just going to assume, without any evidence, that if you take the job your most likely chance of dying on the job will be through electrocution.

Now I couldn't really do the job anyway because my ADHD makes keeping track of a bunch of tools and stuff just not possible, which I am totally able to do in the virtual world of the computer with a ticket tracking system and understanding of codebases and so forth.

I think one thing the author didn’t touch on is what your outlook for jobs would look like provided you dedicated the same amount to the trade that you would college

That’s the real comparison in my opinion

I get the whole apprenticeship route, but even that isn’t the same

Specifically what I mean is what if a teenager took 4 years to really home a skill before even looking for a job?

If you wanted to be an electrician and spent a couple years really learning from somewhat first principles up and keep yourself in good shape, you’d be set up for success

The article makes it seem like someone who would be smart enough to go to college and graduate wouldn’t be smart enough to navigate how to get an electrician job or pass those aptitude tests?

Also, a lot of trades people simply don’t take care of themselves. I’m not saying the job isn’t hard, because it is. My dad was a contractor and I worked on the sites every summer til I graduated college

But these dudes would eat like crap, skip ear protection, prove how manly they were by working to exhaustion - this only makes the “these hands” lectures worse

All in all the article felt scattered much like my own comment

The truth is, there are some people who go to college who should have gone into the trades in stead. I’d go on a limb and say I’m sure of it. (And the answer isn’t purely based on intelligence which the author touches on condescendingly)

Similarly, I’m sure a lot of kids who go into the trades would have been better off going to college

What’s missing imo is guidance

What kids imo need is guidance, someone to give them exposure to what’s out there in some way, lay out options, pros, cons and help kids make an informed decision

The real problem is that there are so many professions that people simply don’t know about - instead of telling people to go to college or scare them away from trades, I’d be pushing to introduce more of these resources to high schools. No kid at my high school would have ever known what a business systems analyst is or what firmware is.

I grew up on a farm. I don’t care what the author says, manual labor is very rewarding. I built my own office, carport, horse stable, chicken coop and many other projects in the evenings after already exhausting work, and if I could make more in construction, I’d pick that over an office job any day of the week.

If you take good care of your body and health, it doesn’t have to be as bad as you think. But a lot of tradies think eating healthy, stretching, eye protection, gloves, etc. are “gayyyyy”.

I can confirm it's not easy to get an electrical apprenticeship

I'm an electrician. I used to be a programmer. I still program for fun and sometimes get small gigs.

In my city the pay scale for the first 5-7 years of a grad software engineer and grad electrician careers are comparable and I expect that to be the case in most of the world outside the handful of American bubbles. One thing I enjoy is that the minimum pay is regulated by a union so I don't have to hop job every year to make sure I'm not underpaid.

After that the salaries diverge quite quickly and the ceiling is much much lower as an electrician.

It's still pretty good money, though, so I don't think that's really a con to this career.

No, I do not, but thank you for asking. This is one thing I'm happy to pay professionals for!

The article literally admits is first point was misleading.

My carpenter buddy sets his own schedule, spends his time pulling his camper, works extra when he wants to, floats in and out of his union asks (exploiting their rigidity).

He’s been at it for years, so he’s a qualified instructor for anything he can get his hands on, even esoteric stuff like pouring concrete for nuclear facilities.

His job is hardly comparable to an Amazon driver, like this article conflates. Bro makes more than an equiv exper and age software dev, but with no glass ceiling.

One thing rarely mentioned is what happens when all the white collar people lose their job and can no longer pay for expensive blue collar work?

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> Almost every tradesperson knows someone who’s had at least one protracted absence due to a work injury, and many of us know someone who was permanently disabled or killed.

Construction and other labor also have the highest suicide rates among occupations. [1] [2]

> ... Rowe has something in common with most people selling this popular narrative: a college degree.

Yes indeed - those senators and governors promoting trades jobs and cutting higher education funding, do you think their kids join the trades or do they go to college?

The pitch for the trades is an abomination in America (the pitch, not the trades) - telling kids to stay in their socio-economic class and do jobs appropriate for it. Don't think of college, think of where you belong. So much for 'all are created equal' in the 'land of opportunity'.

> potential missteps. Social work majors on average earn much less than their college peers

That assumes that college is about income, when it's about far more - personal development which will aid your life and your roles in family, community, citizenship, and yes, career.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7250a2.htm

[2] https://mhstats.org/blog/suicide-statistics-by-profession/