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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

#791

Post by boppo1 »

WalterBright wrote: post #546
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the conditions under which they lift. If you lift weights, you're probably watching your form and taking rests in between your sets. On a jobsite, you're being forced to bring those bricks or that heavy tool over ASAP, and nobody is going to let you get into proper deadlift form. While OSHA standards exist, most companies and techs are just skirting by because of the margins in the business. There's a…

Thanks for the interesting take. I've been running for 40 years. I suffered from knee and hip pain from it, until I read about the biomechanics of running. I ran doing the "heel strike", where the heel hits first. I could feel the shock in my knee and my hip with every stride. I decided to switch to "ball strike" where I landed ball of the foot first and then rolled onto the foot. I did not feel the shock in my knee…

>Running also builds up your heart, lungs and muscles quickly, but the tendons and joints and bones need years to adapt. A lot of people get into trouble by feeling strong and overdoing it. Ya gotta hold back and give it years.

Any good resources on this? Getting into running in my early 30s. Already switched to zero-drop, I think I'm ball-striking.

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

#792

Post by atlgator »

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…

Can you elaborate on his credentials? Is he licensed? The apprenticeship path for any trade can be grueling. You're doing all the grunt labor for low wages because you are getting on-the-job training. You are also YOUNG and able-bodied, typically 18 right out of high school if not younger through a vo-tech. But once you reach to that journeyman level at 3-4 years and get your State License that's when your pay really increases, especially if you start your own company.

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

#793

Post by daseiner1 »

meetingthrower wrote: post #360

Man, I'm in PE buying these companies and if you want to get rich in America be competent in skilled trades. If you have a little bit of management skill it is very doable. I've been offering 40 year old high school grads $30M in cash for their companies (and they would get that much again as we are doing rollups and they maintain significant equity.) What is amazing is that these guys just do this again and again. Y…

fuck you

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

#794

Post by RunSet »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #755
nverno wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, when I used to work on farms, the old guys were a lot healthier than most of the people I see in tech nowadays. Although, most of that work isn't unhealthily repetitive, like jack-hammering or something, so perhaps not a great example. But, use-it-or-lose-it is a real thing.

Nah you've got it right and there are a shitload of studies that prove it: the most effective way for a human being to wreck their health is sitting on their ass all day.

I would be interested in reading such studies.

Please don't take that as "Citation needed!" but rather genuine interest.

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

#795

Post by boppo1 »

joecot wrote: post #96
Avshalom wrote: post #36

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…

"This" comments are not allowed on HN, but as a 31 year old millennial: I would have written this EXACT post about the situation.

The only addition being "learn to code/program", but now interest rates are starting to narrow the reliability of that avenue.

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

#796

Post by switch007 »

balls187 wrote: post #731
qwerpy wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your conclusion? It’s hard for me to make generalizations. The ones who work at my high end FAANG company are all hard-working and driven. But they’re the cream of the crop.

I'm on the side that high performers (across all industries and generations) tend to be outliers. The consensus is that GenZ's work ethic can be summed as "do the bare minimum not to get fired" and that they "work to live, not live to work." Not that either ethos is a bad thing necessarily, it's just that they generally don't care about work as much as previous generations did. My father's generation, employees staye…

The world also stopped caring about them so much.

House prices, rent prices, politicians pandering to the elder generations, allowing young people to get addicted to social media and all the psychological issues that causes, wilful destruction of the education system, removing third spaces etc.

In the UK this was through the older generations consistently voting for right wing governments.

Is it any wonder it looks like they gave up? Can’t afford a decent house, can’t afford to save for a decent pension etc

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

#797

Post by gregw134 »

joecot wrote: post #96
Avshalom wrote: post #36

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…

We just need to give every high school student a print out and a website showing salary per career, years of college required, and percentage of graduates that find a job in their field.

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

#798

Post by SergeAx »

Manuel_D wrote: post #585
SergeAx wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be sure that the YouTube is right and real life professionals are not? Making money on YouTube ad revenue share is quite popular thing today, and no one verifies what is uploaded there, unless it is a copyrighted material.

It obviously depends on the field. But if the YouTube video explains clearly why X technique is sub par, and demonstrates the failure mode I'd believe it over a tradesperson. Say you see your mechanic tighten the nuts on your wheel hub in a circular pattern instead of a star pattern. Would you point this out?

I know nothing about nuts tighten patterns. I always tighten four bolts system diagonally because I saw how things could deform otherwise. But I took it from my own experience, not from some guy with the camera and strong wish to earn money from ads on cloud video platform. Also I am 100% sure that if I first pre-tighten bolts in a circular manner, and then make a second circle of full tightening - it will be okay, just longer.

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

#799

Post by midoridensha »

chrisdhoover wrote: post #588
Brybry wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US population growth is mostly flat, all the growth is from immigration.[1][2] And those people are filling trade skill jobs. [3] > More than one-third of construction laborers (686,000 workers), at least 30 percent of carpenters (382,000 workers), and 45 percent of painters and paperhangers (264,000 workers) are immigrants. And without them the population long term would decrease (which is obvious from the low ferti…

True that. Every job site I go to is filled with hardworking Mexicans and Central Americans.

Yet everyone complains how poorly houses are built these days...

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

#800

Post by boppo1 »

XorNot wrote: post #344
Avshalom wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries Sure but that never stopped anyone from pulling out BLS statistics showing life-time earning potential of an BA in english vs a highschool diploma. But the point of bringing up "any degree" isn't that any student thought (or any guidance counselor said) that underwater basket weaving and electrical engineering had the same potential it's that we were told to go t…

On an adjacent note, I'm really tired of the "underwater basket weaving" short hand being used. There's either a real degree you think is useless (which the above thread notes doesn't look nearly so useless by statistics) or there's not. There's a fairly long history of people inventing what they think is taught at colleges as a straw man to then criticize them in some way and it doesn't contribute to anything for th…

At the college I went to (low-mid tier state uni) the Art History degree was basically a degree in social justice and feminism. I had close friends in that program and some other humanities and was able to observe the curriculum. The stuff you expect to learn was a tiny fraction.

Hell, I audited the main American art course. We spent multiple weeks on indigenous textiles and pottery (not quite baskets I guess), multiple weeks on modernist and feminist painters. We didn't even touch american sculpture and spent less than a week on 'serious' painters. Saint gaudens, Sargent and the Boston painters, not even mentioned.

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