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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

#281

Post by thedreammachine »

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.

Except that gold-rush-like booms tend to attract individuals who are more risk-taking and entrepreneurial. So of course there will still be losses in a downturn, but this is a self-selected group with greater adaptability, more likely to mix and match skills and still end up better off than if they had not participated at all...

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

#282

Post by estearum »

AngryData wrote: post #274
estearum wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't work in construction do you? Lack of skilled tradesmen is a widespread problem and a major source of project delay (on top of massively higher housing production costs). I assume next comes the zoning-causes-all-shortages and if only we could fix zoning then we'd solve housing – a thesis for which there's zero evidence.

That "lack" of labor is the norm because construction is a boom-bust business and nobody wants to pay to retain talent and skills they aren't actively profiting off. And very few want to spend time training new people when they are currently earning 3x their normal rate working a boom cycle. If the AI boom crashes, how many of these people will get laid off and unable to find comparable paying work for years afterwar…

Yes, the labor supply for skilled tradesmen is very inelastic. Which is one reason it sucks to have so much of it drawn into a probably-speculative boom.

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

#283

Post by someothherguyy »

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.

> these also aren't professions that ... will get automated away in the long term

sure they will, all it takes is automating running wire and making connections. when the cost is low enough to do so, it will happen.

drones are already used to somewhat automate line inspection, etc.

imo, there are plenty of companies attempting to automate traditional trade jobs, and increasing automation for knowledge roles in those companies will accelerate those initiatives.

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

#284

Post by notesinthefield »

My next door neighbors’ tiny (>50 people) electrical company has been booking millions in lighting protection installation work across the east coast. Theyve made more from dc work in the last three years than the previous 20.

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

#285

Post by captainbland »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #181
paul7986 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummmm in time it's inevitable as in 2026 you do not need any skill to be a computer programmer. AI has replaced that once valuable skill and will continue it's way through ever white collar job til the robots (5 to 10 years) start taking the blue collar jobs away. The blue collar job boom is great present day, but what they are helping build is their machine driven replacement. Maybe this all sounds hyperbolic, but i…

Vibe coding by people with no programming skills is not going to happen. What will happen is moving to higher and higher code representations. A compiler is already doing 99% of the actual coding when you realize that the only language computers understand is assembly.

People are already doing it to some extent, especially the sort of technical non-programmer crowd. A member of my family was even having a (now pretty out of date) version of chatGPT spit out VBA macros for them with precisely no idea what they were doing, but the result worked well enough for them. Now I know lots of programmers will scoff at that but when you see what the big models can do today in terms of breaking down a fairly large task and executing on all the steps with minimal need to stop it, including going to existing docs/web pages etc. to gather info, correcting itself, even troubleshooting issues and correcting them, it strikes me as hard to see a future where programming skill as such remains considered scarce in the market.

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

#286

Post by gosub100 »

mike_bob wrote: post #179
chasd00 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was in the IBEW when I was doing basic tech support for HawaiianTel 15 years ago... making $15/hr, union dues were nothing even at that wage and they rarely ever go up. This cry of "OMG dues suck" is so stupid for what you get in return. But go ahead and buy more into republican propaganda.

[dead]

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

#287

Post by icehawk »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #271
chasd00 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

As a guy who does HVAC as a hobby, this post is hilarious, nobody should take it seriously.

I can see exactly where the practical experience would be invaluable.

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

#288

Post by jaredhallen »

someothherguyy wrote: post #283
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.

> these also aren't professions that ... will get automated away in the long term sure they will, all it takes is automating running wire and making connections. when the cost is low enough to do so, it will happen. drones are already used to somewhat automate line inspection, etc. imo, there are plenty of companies attempting to automate traditional trade jobs, and increasing automation for knowledge roles in those…

It doesn't sound to me like you've pulled much wire. I'm sure there will be a point in time when that sort of thing can be automated, but it's at least an order of magnitude more difficult a problem than driving a car.

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

#289

Post by someothherguyy »

jaredhallen wrote: post #288
someothherguyy wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these also aren't professions that ... will get automated away in the long term sure they will, all it takes is automating running wire and making connections. when the cost is low enough to do so, it will happen. drones are already used to somewhat automate line inspection, etc. imo, there are plenty of companies attempting to automate traditional trade jobs, and increasing automation for knowledge roles in those…

It doesn't sound to me like you've pulled much wire. I'm sure there will be a point in time when that sort of thing can be automated, but it's at least an order of magnitude more difficult a problem than driving a car.

> It doesn't sound to me like you've pulled much wire.

not commercially, but i worked as a residential electrician and contractor for half a decade, if we are doing ad hominems

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

#290

Post by calvinmorrison »

michaelfm1211 wrote: post #147
krapp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

An overwhelming number of Christians do not believe this and do not interpret Revelation in this way. The belief that "Jesus will come back and solve everything instantly" is only held by a minority of small 2nd Great Awakening groups and a few outspoken Evangelical groups, and is unique to theological traditions that arose in the United States. The official teachings of the Catholic Church, Orthodox Churches, Anglic…

https://www.mincedgarlic.org/idiotic-blowhard-parrots-bad-th...
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