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The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

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Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#611

Post by bubblematrix »

artemonster wrote: post #327
bubblematrix wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent plumbers/local plumbing businesses can easily earn $1,000/day with 2-3 service calls. Not sure how universal healthcare, PTO, immigration, and more pay have to do with this. Edit: Thank you for all the downvotes for me calling out the weird correlation between tech benefits/politics and plumber skill-shortage + high-reward wages. Your wokeism will forever benefit society.

The downvotes should be a hint for you to re-evaluate your position and maybe look for logical errors. Instead you've doubled down and threw in some ridiculous piece of your worldview (that thing with wokeism) to shift the blame away from yourself to everyone around you.

Well here's some logic for you. Before entering enterprise tech (8+ years), I managed a finish-construction company warehouse. Being good at web development, I helped a buddy start a locksmith company and have a small portion of equity for doing all his marketing/SEO (since 2012). He makes close to $1mil/year and lives out of a warehouse... Spare me with your "ridiculous piece of your worldview"...

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#612

Post by crazygringo »

JamesBarney wrote: post #583
crazygringo wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure what you're talking about... a friend of mine studied archaeology in college and wound up starting her career in the curation department of a major museum. Another studied history and wound up becoming a tenure-track history professor. Now granted they both worked crazy hard in school, but the idea that it's "obvious bullshit" isn't true at all. Archaeologists and historians are real jobs that exi…

There are 500 NBA players, and another 500 minor league players and 5000 practicing archaeologists. So it's not too far off. I have 1 friends who is tenure track (stem which is significantly easier) but 14-15 who got PhDs weren't able to find tenure track position. But two friend started an internationally acclaimed bands. And another who is an internationally published author. So sure these jobs exist but archaeolog…

Except there's orders of magnitude more competition for those NBA players though, than there is for archaeology (or historian). Especially when you realize how mind-numberingly tedious it mostly is, so much cataloguing seemingly endless shards... (Or endless 16th-century documents, if you're a historian.)

But if you've really got your heart set on archaeology/history, they're not fantasies. They're just extremely niche. You're right that the parallel isn't "developer", it's more like "database engine developer". Albeit much much lower pay, in most cases. ;)

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#613

Post by eddsh1994 »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #380
peruvian wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech people always say this but forget that being a plumber means being on their knees wading thru poop water and likely being unable to work when you reach a certain, fairly young age. I get it, trades are important, but let's not glamorize them.

Nothing against them but I think glamorizing trades seems like a kind of virtue signal.

I have no issue glamorizing potentially six figure salaries that are useful to society! Personally I view software as a trade with a bubble salary range atm, but think it’ll pivot towards a trade over the next decade or two.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#614

Post by systems_glitch »

Infernal wrote: post #520
quartesixte wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to contractors in any city with a hardware startup scene and they absolutely are making a killing. Lots of 220V, 480V, miles of 120V. Transformers, machine hookups. You name it.

220, 221, 222… whatever it takes!

208 and 277 as well!

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#615

Post by pibechorro »

WalterBright wrote: post #275
jorts wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plumbers and electricians contort their body and are moving up and down into cavities of various sizes all day. It definitely takes a toll on you.

Can't be worse than yoga. Edit: Downvote me all you like. I've done yoga, I've done plumbing, I've done electrical. Yoga takes the cake by a mile for most painful contorting. And yet I know an 86 yo woman who has been doing yoga 3 time a week forever and is fit and sharp.

1 hour of harder yoga != A 9 to 5 for years of 'easier' awards body positions while building or fixing something. Its cronic pain.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#616

Post by sbaiddn »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #610
UncleMeat wrote: post #33

"We need more tradespeople" seems to be an evergreen news article. My brother in law is an electrician. He is paid alright, enough to live on. But there are HUGE downsides. He does not receive health insurance. He does not get paid vacation. In order to match decent white-collar pay, he needs to work overtime. His company pushes hard to get jobs finished fast, causing people to cut safety corners. Many of his coworke…

It's also highly dangerous. I knew a guy that was the electrician to a 50+ year old high rise. He could not turn off the power, don't know why, so he worked with live current all the time. He told me that he would go to the main power source and he could hear it crackle, while he worked on it,since there was so much current going through it. He joked about it but, ya, no thank you.

I dont know about residential buildings, but working on live circuits is a thing, and there are techniques to do it safish-ly. Namely dont touch two wires and dont be ground.

Linesmen do it quite a lot.

Linesmen is also one of the most dangerous jobs

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#617

Post by bubblematrix »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #450
bubblematrix wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent plumbers/local plumbing businesses can easily earn $1,000/day with 2-3 service calls. Not sure how universal healthcare, PTO, immigration, and more pay have to do with this. Edit: Thank you for all the downvotes for me calling out the weird correlation between tech benefits/politics and plumber skill-shortage + high-reward wages. Your wokeism will forever benefit society.

I dislike wokeism as much as anyone else but what does this have to do with being some. I think the idea that plumbers make $1,000 a day as if that translates to their salary is a bit silly. How many plumbers fob you out see riding around in Lambos or do you think they are just too modest for that?

Your mistake is the assumption I'm translating it into salary. That $1,000 a day can go towards additional employees (coverage area) and marketing.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#618

Post by lr4444lr »

UncleMeat wrote: post #33

"We need more tradespeople" seems to be an evergreen news article. My brother in law is an electrician. He is paid alright, enough to live on. But there are HUGE downsides. He does not receive health insurance. He does not get paid vacation. In order to match decent white-collar pay, he needs to work overtime. His company pushes hard to get jobs finished fast, causing people to cut safety corners. Many of his coworke…

Why doesn't he join a union shop?

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#619

Post by Justsignedup »

The article PERFECTLY explains the problem.

"But Mwandjalulu, who makes nearly $24 an hour as a carpenter, said he's still had trouble convincing his friends, whom he keeps in touch with on Facebook and Snapchat, to follow his path."

There you go. This is minimum living wage right now. We're fighting to make this amount the minimum wage now. Meanwhile this is the prospect of this job.

It doesn't pay. People rather go into tech work or anywhere near tech work.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#620

Post by Justsignedup »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #610
UncleMeat wrote: post #33

"We need more tradespeople" seems to be an evergreen news article. My brother in law is an electrician. He is paid alright, enough to live on. But there are HUGE downsides. He does not receive health insurance. He does not get paid vacation. In order to match decent white-collar pay, he needs to work overtime. His company pushes hard to get jobs finished fast, causing people to cut safety corners. Many of his coworke…

It's also highly dangerous. I knew a guy that was the electrician to a 50+ year old high rise. He could not turn off the power, don't know why, so he worked with live current all the time. He told me that he would go to the main power source and he could hear it crackle, while he worked on it,since there was so much current going through it. He joked about it but, ya, no thank you.

This. This is a real dangerous job. We talk about "police run into gunfights". yeah... "Electricians run into fatal power!"
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