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

The US is building factories at a fast rate

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 309 posts

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#211

Post by failbuffer »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #204
no_wizard wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a professor remark once (this is circa 2009) that we should all learn a highly skilled trade around advanced manufacturing because eventually offshoring will reverse itself and by your early 30s you'll be in a prime position to profit immensely off the re-shoring of advanced manufacturing equipment and processes Maybe he was right. I'm in my early 30s now, and I don't regret becoming a software engineer, but al…

It doesn't matter. In 5-10 years all those jobs will be entirely automated by autonomous robotics.

Source? Seems like an Elon Musk- or Fusion research proposal-type timeframe

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#212

Post by Aunche »

no_wizard wrote: post #116
obblekk wrote: post #2

> The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers It's too early to know, but if it turns out the solution to decades of economic misery for middle class blue collar workers was 1. 50% tariffs on China, and 2. $100B of subsidies to chip makers and green tech... The reversal of Reaganomics we're living through will become permanent for at le…

I had a professor remark once (this is circa 2009) that we should all learn a highly skilled trade around advanced manufacturing because eventually offshoring will reverse itself and by your early 30s you'll be in a prime position to profit immensely off the re-shoring of advanced manufacturing equipment and processes Maybe he was right. I'm in my early 30s now, and I don't regret becoming a software engineer, but al…

>have the benefit of actually owning their own businesses

This sounds like a business is just something that happens to fall on your lap while you're fixing a pipe rather than something that you build with your blood sweat and tears. Most tradespeople make nowhere close to 300k. Their success is credited to their hard work, not their happening to choose the trades.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#213

Post by no_wizard »

nosefrog wrote: post #150
no_wizard wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a professor remark once (this is circa 2009) that we should all learn a highly skilled trade around advanced manufacturing because eventually offshoring will reverse itself and by your early 30s you'll be in a prime position to profit immensely off the re-shoring of advanced manufacturing equipment and processes Maybe he was right. I'm in my early 30s now, and I don't regret becoming a software engineer, but al…

FWIW, re: comparing to "elite SV company" compensation, it doesn't really make sense to discount stock, since stock at the "elite" SV companies is effectively cash, because they're public. Unless you mean that your friend is also making a significant amount of stock, but since you can't value it (e.g. the company is private), it's harder to compare to the "elite" SV companies. I know Google was handing out $385k tota…

Two things I want to point out:

First is Google is an outlier, even among Silicon Valley. So is Meta. They both are well known for very high total compensation. I also specifically didn't say FAANG for this reason. There's other high compensation places that I would bucket in as top 5% that aren't in the acronym (Microsoft comes to mind) which very good TC packages.

Second is I removed stock because stock is hugely outsized in value for tech companies, and most of these jobs aren't going to have RSUs. If you compare salary to salary however, its a better metric. I know an industrial HVAC specialist that pulls in north of 300K in just salary, and has great retirement benefits. In fact, better than you might see even at say, Apple on both fronts, for most people, and importantly, they're young (7 years my junior).

One thing alot of the highest paying trade jobs have in common though, is travel travel travel. The folks who work only local jobs do well enough, but not near the gangbuster rates the travel folks are pulling in.

Source: I have friends and extended family who are all trades people. Plumbers, carpenters, masons etc. as well as a few who work in other engineering disciplines (like industrial engineering & robotics). Blessed with a large enough extended family that I think I get a decent idea of whats out there

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#214

Post by distortionfield »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #204
no_wizard wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a professor remark once (this is circa 2009) that we should all learn a highly skilled trade around advanced manufacturing because eventually offshoring will reverse itself and by your early 30s you'll be in a prime position to profit immensely off the re-shoring of advanced manufacturing equipment and processes Maybe he was right. I'm in my early 30s now, and I don't regret becoming a software engineer, but al…

It doesn't matter. In 5-10 years all those jobs will be entirely automated by autonomous robotics.

I highly doubt this and even if it becomes legitimately true, people have been claiming we’re all being replaced out of jobs for the last 2000 years. It’s not happening.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#215

Post by no_wizard »

Aunche wrote: post #212
no_wizard wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a professor remark once (this is circa 2009) that we should all learn a highly skilled trade around advanced manufacturing because eventually offshoring will reverse itself and by your early 30s you'll be in a prime position to profit immensely off the re-shoring of advanced manufacturing equipment and processes Maybe he was right. I'm in my early 30s now, and I don't regret becoming a software engineer, but al…

>have the benefit of actually owning their own businesses This sounds like a business is just something that happens to fall on your lap while you're fixing a pipe rather than something that you build with your blood sweat and tears. Most tradespeople make nowhere close to 300k. Their success is credited to their hard work, not their happening to choose the trades.

I should have addressed this more sufficiently, but there are a couple different things I'm saying here so let me clarify:

One is being the trades is rewarding, yes not all bring in 300K+, but I don't know a single trades person, many often my junior, who don't bring in a good income pretty comparable to software engineers at non FAANG companies make (typically 150K+) and I don't think any of them are carrying high debt student loans (many states even pay for trade education outright) and their benefits can't be beat, esp. if they're union.

The second is that there are trade businesses that do earn, esp. right now in the industrial sector, but they all have a singular thing in common: Travel Travel Travel. thats the name of the game. They're gone alot. For instance, my cousin is an industrial electrician, and works on windmills. He travels all over the midwest and Texas to do the work, is rewarded quite handsomely for the privilege, but is gone over half the year. Has no wife or kids currently, so there is that, but its taxing. Other trades folks I know have businesses and do pull in alot, but the "grind" can be very real at times, but I've been told that its rewarding, because its yours at the end of the day

Third is in a specialized sliver of robotics / industrial systems, you can make a fortune, but its not so outsized across the board. Medical systems are a big one, robotics are being really big in surgeries, and there's alot of money to be made there

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#216

Post by Aerbil313 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #207
guardiangod wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where he got his stats from, but 9.56 million sounds about right. https://news.sina.cn/gn/2023-01-17/detail-imyanfvn6707213.d.... (Figure 3) 2017 - 17.23 million 2018 - 15.23 2019 - 14.65 2020 - 12.00 2021 - 10.62 2022 - 9.56 Note that this is official Chinese gov statistics. Their numbers are known to be untrustworthy.

Falling in half in six years? Again, woah. Any idea what's driving that?

Modernity. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race…

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#217

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

FpUser wrote: post #158
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that a problem for the United States, for instance? Do officeholders in the United States have any responsibility to people in foreign countries beyond that in ratified treaties? Do we have any moral obligation to make restitution for our great-great-grandparents' crimes to the great-great-grandchildren of the victims? And what level of punishment is going too far?

You do not have to do shit. But you do not live in the vacuum and unless you take interests / complaints of the other parties into considerations sooner or later you would face problems. Karma.

We're not all in this together. If there are any problems that arise naturally, I'm not personally averse to working out something mutually beneficial.

But if that were a threat, then I'd like to see some other country make good on it.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#218

Post by wernercd »

failbuffer wrote: post #211
atleastoptimal wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter. In 5-10 years all those jobs will be entirely automated by autonomous robotics.

Source? Seems like an Elon Musk- or Fusion research proposal-type timeframe

Don't need a source... in 12 years climate change is going to kill us all anyways. Spoken by another Oracle of Delphi.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#219

Post by mixmastamyk »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #204
no_wizard wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a professor remark once (this is circa 2009) that we should all learn a highly skilled trade around advanced manufacturing because eventually offshoring will reverse itself and by your early 30s you'll be in a prime position to profit immensely off the re-shoring of advanced manufacturing equipment and processes Maybe he was right. I'm in my early 30s now, and I don't regret becoming a software engineer, but al…

It doesn't matter. In 5-10 years all those jobs will be entirely automated by autonomous robotics.

“By your command…”

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#220

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

simonsarris wrote: post #190
jjk166 wrote: post #153

Manufacturing employment is roughly at the same place now that it was in 2020, and still substantially lower than where it would have been had the pre-pandemic trend continued, and even that was nowhere near returning the US to pre-2008 levels. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP Construction spending is a terrible proxy for manufacturing - both because the size of a building you need isn't pegged to the value…

But also looking at FRED data we see that manufacturing sector productivity has doubled since ~1990, so it's not clear that headcount is the best proxy either. And if we look at industrial production or sector output we're still near (plateauing) all time highs https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPMAN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS But not everything is a plateau. Fabricated metal reached an all time high p…

Would be interesting to see 'profit per employee' over time and see how productivity plays agains employment. Ultimately, we want full employment with competitive wages. Profitability relative to employment should tell us if we're on the right track.
Post reply on HN