Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 915 posts

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

#701

Post by chii »

rootusrootus wrote: post #437
threetonesun wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who went to school for English in 2000, I can say that while those jokes existed the context here is misunderstood, they were told by business majors about the liberal arts, or anything academic. Heck in 2000 a CS degree wasn't positioned as that much more valuable than an English degree, and if you looked at the preceding decade you'd see that was statistically true. The change for the current generation…

> in 2000 a CS degree wasn't positioned as that much more valuable than an English degree Ha! By whom? We had a pretty good idea that it was a solid choice in the early 90s and before. We teased my older brother for going for a bachelor's in business while I went into CS, because we were pretty sure the CS degree would be worth a lot more. He's doing just fine, but mostly because he backfilled the equivalent of a CS…

Right after the dot-com bust, a CS degree was seen as having no future by a lot of people.

The glut of graduates that have come off the pipeline due to the hot tech sector prior to the bust fell off after 2-4 yrs. This actually led to the huge lack of supply of CS graduates in the ensuing decade!

I think it is partially responsible for the high salaries that CS graduates get (of course, it's a small portion of the cause, the bigger factor being huge growth in the sector).

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

#702

Post by AngryData »

waynesonfire wrote: post #326
dragonwriter wrote: post #84

> America needs carpenters and plumbers. Try telling that to Gen Z Look, as long as we have a market economy, here's how you tell it to Gen Z: raise the wages for carpenters and plumbers (and if necessary shift some of that forward into subsidies and incentives for people to train as carpenters and plumbers) until you get as many as you say you “need”. If America isn’t willing to pay enough to get X carpenters and Y…

I don't understand who is getting paid $24 an hour when I paid over $125 per hour to get a sub-panel installed. Could it be that after starting their own company, they found it difficult to hire additional journeymen at the rate of $24 per hour which they themselves had previously earned as a journeyman? When everyone can get $125 an hour, there is suddenly a shortage of cheap labor! Big surprise.

Are you accounting for all the overhead? Commute time, vehicle maintenance, tool costs, having material stock on hand for any and every type of breaker or connector or wire they might possibly need, the time spent on the phone lining up jobs and bidding jobs and everything else.

Also retrofitting into older unknown shit is WAY more of a pain in the ass than doing new construction too. So if I have enough work to do 40 hours on new construction, im not even going to entertain something like retrofitting a new panel into an older electrical system unless the pay is significantly higher.

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

#703

Post by bluSCALE4 »

keybored wrote: post #397
falcolas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a semi-retired craftsman I watch regularly on youtube - Essential Craftsman. Almost all long-term success stories in the trades which he tells directly or gets from his friends involve transitioning from a tradesman to an employer. You're selling your health and body as a tradesman. If you can make the transition to running a trades business, then you're selling your brainpower more than your body. Success st…

> You're selling your health and body as a tradesman. If you can make the transition to running a trades business, then you're selling your brainpower more than your body. Selling your brainpower meaning managing the people who will sell their health and body as tradesmen. A minor racket.

As with all businesses, there are good and bad people. Personally, I think it's easy to be good: 1) keep learning and using the best materials 2) pay a little more than a persons worth.

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

#704

Post by bluSCALE4 »

bluedino wrote: post #655
xenadu02 wrote: post #479

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 he's union he can't do side jobs

Unions pay living wages and provide insane health care and retirement packages. So I supposed when people say side jobs, they imply those working non union jobs.

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

#705

Post by bluSCALE4 »

ummonk wrote: post #409
UncleMeat wrote: post #127

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…

I’m skeptical of the narrative that trades is some great career choice, but "Well if you aren't in one of the good areas you'll get fucked" applies to pretty much every career choice.

Do you own a house? Have something go wrong and get a few quotes from corporate institutions. You'll be seeing insane prices. Some smart tradesmen will look at their call volume and charge more accordingly since more calls means people are settling and paying corporate rates.

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

#706

Post by bobkazamakis »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #560
jacobr1 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distribution matters. How common are the bad/good/mediocre scenarios? Some just might be mostly bad, with rare exceptions. While other jobs might be mostly good, with rare bad cases, so you might risk this outcome.

The distribution isn’t random though. At some point people need to be honest with themselves about where they’re likely to wind up.

>At some point people need to be honest with themselves about where they’re likely to wind up.

Ah, the social mobility of the american dream.

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

#707

Post by dahart »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #384
joecot wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Who told you any degree would do? People have lambasted underwater basket waving and things like that forever.

Where is underwater basket weaving a degree? (The answer is: nowhere, it doesn’t exist.) That term is a 50+-year old fictional pejorative used as a stand-in for useless academics. Sadly, the supposedly humorous point is entirely undermined by inventing a degree that doesn’t exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving

FWIW, the St Louis Fed publishes stats on incomes of degree holders, and I recently read them and found out that the average 4-year college degree holder has 2x the income of non-degree holders. (3x for advanced degrees.) Twice is a really big number and it surprised me, it’s much larger than I had suspected. Obviously some degrees make people more money than others, engineering and sciences tend to yield higher incomes than the arts. But, with an average of double the income across all degrees across all people in the US, it’s easy to see why people recommend any ol’ degree at all, and statistically speaking, it’s a valid point and good advice.

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

#708

Post by Merad »

rcme wrote: post #198
bluedino wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not that many jobs that pay that much around here. However, our Seattle location has that problem. It was almost closed down because of competition. edit: can't reply to the person who replied below, but if you have a contract to sell parts to a company you can't just increase your worker pay to whatever you want and have it be sustainable.

> There's not that many jobs that pay that much around here. Hiring movers to pack your stuff and move it across the country costs a few thousand dollars, and it's never been easier to rent an apartment via online showings. Your competition is a lot broader than your immediate geographic area.

Your info is a little out of date. Two months ago I hired movers to go 150 miles, and I did the packing myself. I have a house rather than an apartment but I don't have that much stuff. Cost was $3500. A full service pack and move across the country would probably be upwards of $5000. Even more if you were moving a whole family.

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

#709

Post by bluSCALE4 »

ryanmccullagh wrote: post #536
thedaly wrote: post #516

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

I really hate this mentality. I don't understand how people do shoddy work on peoples homes. For example, I drilled through my joist and put in these plastic rings to prevent rattling. 100% any other plumber would have just cut holes and left it at that. I originally planned on getting 1 per hole, but thought, it fits two, why not spend another $30 on material so both sides are covered? It turned out that it more than double the pipes rigidness while surely making the pipes silent for life. With one, I could see them eventually moving/popping off or having slight rattling. With both, you could hang off them and they wouldn't budge.

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

#710

Post by mnky9800n »

clnq wrote: post #693
AlwaysRock wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you have to go do it. I love working behind a computer. I sit in a chair. Waking up at 5am to go to a client site to do some physical labor 40+ hours a week for my entire life sounds like hell. Even if the money was incredible it would suck.

Perhaps it's a case of "the grass is always greener", but before I became a software engineer, I felt much healthier doing a physical job.

I felt healthier stacking boxes but I really felt better when I moved close enough to work to cycle every day.
Post reply on HN