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A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

nytimes.com

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Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

#101

Post by saturn8601 »

signatoremo wrote: post #83
cmiles8 wrote: post #32

The same thing happened with the oil sands boom 15 years ago. Industrial sites were losing skilled trades people left and right as they went up north to make 2-3x their salary. Then that bubble popped and these folks were tossed onto the street before they could blink. By all means go make money if the opportunity presents itself. I love to see well compensated trades. But be under no illusions that when the bubble p…

The clear plan for electricians and carpenters is to eh continue to do electrical and wood works. Or do you think they would be out of work if there are no more AI-related jobs?

They might if many of the white collar people that pay them can't afford to pay them anymore.

Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

#102

Post by vouaobrasil »

bpodgursky wrote: post #28
willis936 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's good. It also prices out a lot of other better uses for their labor. Projects I work on have seen prices soar. I don't consider building the things everyone hates because they promise concentration of wealth and an attack on labor at the expense of building literally anything else to be somehow a big W for labor because a few people get a slightly higher temporary paycheck. Ask the Wagyu cows how they fee…

There's sort of no winning here! AI unemploys middle-class workers: AI is stealing jobs from the middle class! AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!

That's correct! AI is a negative for society no matter how you look at it. That's the entire idea!

Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

#104

Post by chasd00 »

kvisner wrote: post #89

I would be very careful about basing your career decsions based on this trend. The data center build out will always be very boom and bust, which would really suck to work in. One year you would be making 300k working on dataceters and the next you would make 30k because thousands of electricians are now competing to build a few single family homes.

Also, an electrician just doesn't pop into existence. You have to go through years of apprenticeship and union dues payments.

Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

#106

Post by SoftTalker »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #63
clarance wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this kind of thing is why every quote we got for dead-simple mini-split heat pump installation last year had an effective person-day labor rate of like $2.5k or more (we didn't end up paying, I mean my god, I'll just fucking do it at those prices, it'll take me twice as long as someone who does it every day, but that's insane). Electricians and HVAC workers with certs in crazy-high demand, I guess. Quotes fo…

So we had our central HVAC burn up, and I bought a mini-split heat pump to replace it, because the HVAC companies around me don't do mini-splits. Apparently they also don't just remove old systems unless they are replacing them. So for 30 minutes of demo work, they charged me $2900 to just remove the old system. I need to install the mini-split myself still, but for now, to get me through the summer and fall, I have…

If an "inspector" didn't find issues like that you had a bad inspector. Which many of them are. And they have escape clauses in their contracts disclaiming any liability for things they miss.

That's not to say a good inspector will find every fault either. They don't tear walls open, and they don't have x-ray vision. They only inspect what they can see.

Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

#107

Post by nathan_compton »

scotty79 wrote: post #71
jsrozner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things come to be only when the people with MONEY demand them. If you have no money your demand doesn't exist. A society this unequal serves only the rich (whether that's people or companies).

Money is a mechanism for keeping tabs on how much the human civilization owes to any particular person or entity. It's imperfect, sure. But it's what we decided to go with. If you don't have money, society just decided (using its mechanisms) it pretty much owes you nothing. So your demands are disregarded.

Who is the "we" who decided to go with it?

Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

#108

Post by krapp »

Theodores wrote: post #97
kristov wrote: post #11

It's nice to hear tradespeople getting paid well with lots of work. I'm happy for them :-)

Allegedly many an American 'believes' that Jesus will be back some time right about now. They are serious about this belief, however, it is never explained as to how he waves a magic wand and fixes the many, many entirely man-made problems we have. But now I see the light. Jesus was a carpenter, right? I am imagining that Jesus, with his carpentry skills, is driving right now in his Chevy truck to the job site, to he…

>however, it is never explained as to how he waves a magic wand and fixes the many, many entirely man-made problems we have.

It's explained in the Book of Revelations - Jesus comes back and kills everyone who isn't Christian (and actually most Christians too) with plagues and fire and violence and burns the world down to ashes. And then (something something multi-headed dragon something something Whore of Babylon) a giant cube-shaped crystal city drops down from space lit by God's radiance and all of the dead Christians come back wearing white robes to live there and eat and drink and praise Jesus forever and never leave because why would you?

And belief in this is legitimately a big part of why we will never take climate change seriously.

Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

#109

Post by fcatalan »

j-bos wrote: post #96
1970-01-01 wrote: post #88

Carpenters? As in carrying around a framing hammer and nails? I'm not sure they have the right term here. I'm not familiar with these wooden datacenters.

This is generally the right term. Carpenters also refers to the guys who put up metal studs, doors and things of that nature. But they might be referring to the people who put up their framing for the concrete structures and molds.

"Aluminium carpentry" is a thing around here: people that build and install window frames, metal gazebos, conference stalls, custom sheds and so on. These huge data centers probably aren't using the quaint standard data center server cabinets.

Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

#110

Post by saturn8601 »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #63
clarance wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this kind of thing is why every quote we got for dead-simple mini-split heat pump installation last year had an effective person-day labor rate of like $2.5k or more (we didn't end up paying, I mean my god, I'll just fucking do it at those prices, it'll take me twice as long as someone who does it every day, but that's insane). Electricians and HVAC workers with certs in crazy-high demand, I guess. Quotes fo…

So we had our central HVAC burn up, and I bought a mini-split heat pump to replace it, because the HVAC companies around me don't do mini-splits. Apparently they also don't just remove old systems unless they are replacing them. So for 30 minutes of demo work, they charged me $2900 to just remove the old system. I need to install the mini-split myself still, but for now, to get me through the summer and fall, I have…

Eh every house has elements of this and everyone learns the hard way. After struggling to install a new bathroom exhaust fan a few years ago in a house that was half built by someone 80 years ago and half completely redone by my late father (who did contracting work early on before he became an engineer), I learned that Carpenters/contractors real skill is the experience they have on the job improvising and adapting to the uniqueness of every project they take on because there is no other way around it. The real world does not have perfect APIs/abstractions and in reality neither do most computing systems so improvisation and solving for the problem is the thought process both in home building and coding.

Its very much like an experienced coder going into established codebases and being able to more quickly make changes and improvements. No codebase is perfect and they all seem to have their own uniqueness just like no house is perfect and all have their own quirks. How good or bad it is can be determined by the experience and foresight of the person doing the work but there will still always be uniqueness and quirks.

Once I finally internalized it, I really appreciated the history of my home and the things people did to solve problems as time went on just like a mature codebase. I would argue as long as the property is generally good, its just a fact of life to have to deal with the rest.

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