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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

#191

Post by bluGill »

paxys wrote: post #151
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.

Sure, but these also aren't professions that will disappear when data center demand goes down or will get automated away in the long term. I’d go as far as to say that for someone in their teens electrician (or trades in general) is a more stable long term career path than software engineer.

Both have boom and bust cycles. They are different cycles, but they are still cycles. I wouldn't call either more stable than the other.

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

#192

Post by chasd00 »

Aurornis wrote: post #14
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #4

Before you decide to change jobs - the demand in electricians is caused by a temporary massive construction boom of data centers. Maintaining an already built data center doesn't require much personnel. It's a clickbait article.

> Before you decide to change jobs Trades work is hard. Traveling to a far away job site every day and doing physical labor in a building that isn’t heated or cooled yet is the complete opposite of our comfortable office or remote tech jobs. If you’re dreaming about escaping meetings and annoying coworkers, imagine if most of the people you work around aren’t your coworkers at all. They’re other trades people from ot…

> Trades work is hard.

most of my extended family was hardcore blue collar (ranchers, welders, oil hands, etc). When they got older their bodies were pretty broken, most couldn't walk from one end of their house to the other after about age 70. That work is hard on your body year after year and it eventually just wears out. For comparison, my father was the typical white collar worker. He's a minor pickleball celebrity in Florida at 80.

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

#193

Post by SoftTalker »

kasey_junk wrote: post #117
gib444 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should just compete with the trillions of dollars of capital floating around for AI? And it's their fault for suddenly being 'poor'? Sounds like you're assuming people are paying pennies for labour. I don't think that's true at all While we're at it, how much should small bathroom, 2 week renovation cost? $100,000 in labour?

That small bathroom job is literally the worst case scenario for a tradesman. They have to work nearly as hard to line that up as better paying longer term commercial work. The residential buyer is the source of much less repeat work, is harder to deal with, more price conscious and harder to collect from than the commercial buyer they could be working for. Anyone that can competently market, manage, and execute that…

And even in residential, building million-dollar houses is easier (or at least not harder) and more profitable than building "affordable" starter homes.

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

#194

Post by scotty79 »

nathan_compton wrote: post #107
scotty79 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sum of all homo sapiens.

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

#195

Post by bluGill »

anigbrowl wrote: post #122
bpodgursky wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pretty disingenuous. The people losing jobs to AI can't just pivot into the trades. When you think about it, companies announcing they're pivoting into some other area where they have no prior background is usually a bit of a desperation move, aided by the fact that companies don't need to be licensed in any way to offer particular services, other than maybe in the military/national security sector. As for the…

As an engineer in the US - we already do all the math in metric units. There are conversion functions in the UI layer to transform our units to whatever you want to see. (they also convert metric units if you don't like the units were are using internally)

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

#196

Post by bluGill »

anthk wrote: post #145
paul7986 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in time AI robots will reduce the need for these blue collar workers who are presently helping replace the white collar workers. Just learned of a new acronym today "NILF," not in the labor force with over one million supposed NILFs out there -- dropped out and gave up.

Good luck with robots traing to lay up bricks, or doing plumbing in a home.

Making a brick laying robot is easy. I'm happy to do that if you want to fund my mid-life crisis... Note that I did not promise my brick laying robot can effectively compete with human break layers on cost. I fully expect my robot to be at least double the cost of humans doing the same work, and it will be less flexible than humans as well (meaning you need a different robot for different buildings)

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

#197

Post by SoftTalker »

Danox wrote: post #144
bpodgursky wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Dakota's unemployment rate is 2.3%

Other than farming, what is there to do in North Dakota or South Dakota? Most of the people who live there if they want to do anything else they have to go someplace else. Most of those data centers built in relatively remote areas. will have just a few people working at that data center. It’s not going to bring lasting prosperity to that midsize or small town.

> Other than farming, what is there to do in North Dakota or South Dakota?

Services that support farming.

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

#198

Post by bluGill »

kasey_junk wrote: post #117
gib444 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should just compete with the trillions of dollars of capital floating around for AI? And it's their fault for suddenly being 'poor'? Sounds like you're assuming people are paying pennies for labour. I don't think that's true at all While we're at it, how much should small bathroom, 2 week renovation cost? $100,000 in labour?

That small bathroom job is literally the worst case scenario for a tradesman. They have to work nearly as hard to line that up as better paying longer term commercial work. The residential buyer is the source of much less repeat work, is harder to deal with, more price conscious and harder to collect from than the commercial buyer they could be working for. Anyone that can competently market, manage, and execute that…

The residential buyer has one advantage though: they do not demand as much from those working. You can start this business today, and likely find enough friends and family willing to take a chance on you that you can get started and from there you have references. Commercial projects tend to be big enough that you cannot get into them without experience (which in turn you cannot get).

The crew that can build a driveway cannot build a parking lot, and they will never be able to break into that market because it requires experience that a driveway cannot give. From a parking lot there is then road building - the previous companies cannot break into them. Again there are just not enough projects of the size that sits in between to build experience.

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

#199

Post by esikich »

bluGill wrote: post #191
paxys wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but these also aren't professions that will disappear when data center demand goes down or will get automated away in the long term. I’d go as far as to say that for someone in their teens electrician (or trades in general) is a more stable long term career path than software engineer.

Both have boom and bust cycles. They are different cycles, but they are still cycles. I wouldn't call either more stable than the other.

You'll always have manufacturing and construction. I've never heard of an electrician boom bust cycle. It's infrastructure. It's always in demand.

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

#200

Post by krapp »

smalltorch wrote: post #184
krapp wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you under the impression that after the seven seals and seven trumpets and four horsemen and oceans turning to blood and earthquakes and famines and everything leading to a new Heaven and new Earth that most people will survive unscathed? The entire thesis of Christian eschatology is that everyone who isn't Christian burns in hell. And Matthew says regarding the end times "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, L…

>"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." It's in the context of describing false prophets? It makes sense. >Heaven is meant to be a very exclusive club that even most Christians won't get into This is jus…

>It's in the context of describing false prophets? It makes sense.

I see no evidence from the text that false prophets are being described. False prophets don't cast out demons and do miracles. I know the prior verse talks about false prophets (and do please give me a definition for that which doesn't encompass most Christians) but it's just an assumption on your part that this verse is exclusively talking about false prophets. False prophets don't tend to do miracles, cast out demons, and witness. These are people who seem to put in more effort than most, and are sincere in their belief.

>I was just looking for your reference about Jesus coming back to kill all the christians. Unfair to spout these types of things without some sort of basis right?

I never said Jesus was coming back to kill all the Christians, I said Jesus was coming back to kill most Christians and all of everyone else.

And that is simply and unambiguously the canon. The only point that can be argued is how many Christians are a part of the body count. It certainly isn't zero.

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