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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

#651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should start buying some cheap tools of his own (to start with) and do weekend/night jobs for himself. If he's working on 1.5m homes I guarantee you there are a ton of homeowners who need electrical jobs done. Get on Yelp, ask his customers to leave good reviews, and build a business. There are a ton of niches and other opportunities. For example being available during late hours. In anything like a large or mediu…

If there's one thing that I've learned hanging out on /r/freelance, it's that most people are not cut out to be business owners.

Seems like a startup niche - a more idealized Uber for electricians - abstract the worst parts, help tradespeople keep more of the money their work produces.

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

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should start buying some cheap tools of his own (to start with) and do weekend/night jobs for himself. If he's working on 1.5m homes I guarantee you there are a ton of homeowners who need electrical jobs done. Get on Yelp, ask his customers to leave good reviews, and build a business. There are a ton of niches and other opportunities. For example being available during late hours. In anything like a large or mediu…

If there's one thing that I've learned hanging out on /r/freelance, it's that most people are not cut out to be business owners.

Can you elaborate why?

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

#653

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…

I think a lot of people who major in those subjects with very competitive jobs just don't have it in them either skillwise or motivationwise to work that hard. They have a semi interest in them, and the grading is not as harsh as many STEM fields, and they might like the idea of a not too hard job to get in those fields, but they don't have the mettle for graduate work and several underling stints to really make that…

Not to mention that almost all the jobs go to a handful of elite universities, and if you're not getting your PhD there you're wasting your time.

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

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The YouTube videos of linemen hanging off helicopters to work on high tension lines make me glad I have a desk job.

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

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a bad area. There aren't better employers in the area. He knows he is being abused. He used to live and work as an electrician in another country where he was treated considerably better. He spends his days wiring new homes that sell for 1.5M+ and gets treated like crap. Moving is unfortunately not an option because my sister's career is very location-dependent. "Well if you aren't in one of the good area…

He should start buying some cheap tools of his own (to start with) and do weekend/night jobs for himself. If he's working on 1.5m homes I guarantee you there are a ton of homeowners who need electrical jobs done. Get on Yelp, ask his customers to leave good reviews, and build a business. There are a ton of niches and other opportunities. For example being available during late hours. In anything like a large or mediu…

If he's union he can't do side jobs

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

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> managing the people who will sell their health and body as tradesmen. A minor racket. A racket? He just became a 'wealth creator'! How dare you compare a visionary entrepreneur to a pimp!

I am once again unable to tell whether this is genuine or sarcastic capitalist bootlicking. This website has destroyed my brain.

Why not both

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

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

not trying to be a smarta$5 but suppose welding is working with a live circuit too

Arc, TIG, and MIG welding is fairly low voltage, like 15 - 30 volts. To start the arc there's a brief high-voltage high-frequency burst, but it's current limited. So it's pretty safe as far as electrocution goes.

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

#658

"Youtube university" has most definitely had an effect. Particularly in regards to the lack of pay increase in the trades. My toilet is leaking? 10 years ago I'd call a plumber. Now I diagnose the problem and determine if it's within my skill level to learn the repair (it usually is). For me, this wouldn't be feasible without online how-to videos. A plumber/carpenter/electrician will charge me $50-$100/hr for work th…

I don't know. I was under the impression that a lot of those sort of things are skills you use to learn from your parents, and being able to do maintenance of the things you owned was more common in the past not less.

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

#659
post #96

A lot of these threads devolve into "have you tried paying more" but I'd also like to highlight "have you actually tried telling Gen Z that". I'm 35, from basically as early as I can remember until sophmore year of college I was told constantly by every adult (and I mean every adult not just the ones that had degrees) in my life to go to college, get a degree, any degree. So yeah I went to college. It was aggressivel…

I'm a millennial. First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. So everyone went and got a college degree, and since so many people had it it wasn't a status symbol anymore, so that wasn't enough to get a good middle class job. And then a bunch of people were told they shouldn't have gotten those degrees and they were worthless. Then we were told to go into STEM. So lots of peop…

>Any degree would do.

That's completely foreign to me.

It was well understood that degrees in English, psychology, and the wider arts were useful for teaching, but they weren't going to pay well, unless you were the exceptional minority that had a clear idea of what you were planning on doing.

I really think millennials should have got more real world work experience and internships before committing to overpriced degrees in industries that they didn't really want to work in. With a broader view of the world, one can make better decisions for happiness.

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

#660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a union plumbing company in a major metro area and union plumbers make very good money here (100k+). We aren’t losing any business to YouTube. We only do service for commercial businesses, and the house engineer isn’t going out of the way to do any more work than what is absolutely necessary. You will still need a plumber if you do a large remodel or new construction. Good on you for learning how to do more…

> and the house engineer isn’t going out of the way to do any more work than what is absolutely necessary Most contractors: Doing the absolute minimum necessary and cutting corners

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