A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by quickthrowman » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

Marsymars wrote: post #342

quickthrowman wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is almost zero overlap between residential and commercial electricians. There is a shortage of residential electricians because the customers are a nightmare to deal with (both builders and homeowners, homeowners are incredibly entitled and I refuse to deal with them, lol) and the pay sucks.

> and the pay sucks. This is baffling to me from the homeowner's perspective. I just checked the last invoice I had for electrical work - $300 for something that took (And like, he did good work and I'd hire him again... but at those rates it's worth me doing anything I can myself even if it takes me 5x longer.)

I said the pay sucks, not the profit. Owning a residential electrical company is lucrative because they pay their electricians substandard wages.

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

#402

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #119

barbazoo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we're entering an age of electrification so having training/education in a field related to electrics/electronics seems like a reasonable path for someone to take.

I think that age started over 100 years ago.

On top of that, direct electrification, what I'm thinking of for example is the electrification of how work is performed. A lot of oil and gas is used to spin a machine. Those use cases have to be electrified. That involves industry, commercial, infrastructure. That's where a lot of the energy savings will come from. From not having losses due to combustion.

I'm thinking learning something in that field might be an option.

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

#403

Post by throwitaway222 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 4:22 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #365

throwitaway222 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oil

Not for long. 1-2 economic cycles and oil and gas will probably be 20-40% of what they are now. Useful to keep in mind when choosing a new career.

We're heading into a period where you need to adapt your life to a career on a dime, and be ready to switch again. SW engineering is going away.

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

#404

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

Marsymars wrote: post #397

lotsofpulp wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you including travel time in the 30 minutes? Time to travel and provide free estimates? Sick/vacation time?

I mean, obviously not. (Though no travel for free estimates, estimates are just done by phone.) Obviously my electrician isn't making anywhere close to $300 40 hours 52 weeks = $600k+/year - and I don't begrudge my electrician making a good living. But from my perspective as a homeowner, skilled trades are punishingly expensive, and my response was to a post specifically claiming that the pay sucks .

> But from my perspective as a homeowner, skilled trades are punishingly expensive, and my response was to a post specifically claiming that the pay sucks.

My post is a response to yours, showing that the provider’s pay can suck even if you find a service punishingly expensive.

Volatility of pay, body wear and tear, hours per day and flexibility of schedule, extensive travel greatly increasing morbidity/mortality risk, and other components go into whether or not pay sucks or not.

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

#405

Post by rogerrogerr » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

quickthrowman wrote: post #401

Marsymars wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the pay sucks. This is baffling to me from the homeowner's perspective. I just checked the last invoice I had for electrical work - $300 for something that took (And like, he did good work and I'd hire him again... but at those rates it's worth me doing anything I can myself even if it takes me 5x longer.)

I said the pay sucks, not the profit. Owning a residential electrical company is lucrative because they pay their electricians substandard wages.

It’s not possible for the standard wage to be substandard.

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

#406

Post by paul7986 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #382

paul7986 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users don't care if they hear amazing song and don't know its AI Music slop or their favorite new iPhone game is powered by slop. The entrepreneurs pumping out said slop and making some to a lot of money don't care what old time programmers think of their slop. They are making money! Things change and this change is hard for sure ... i'm living it and embracing the change by becoming a vibe coder and starting up busi…

Getting an idea out there quickly and cheaply is definitely a good use for AI. In the context of the original op, this is not putting any developers out of work. Quite the contrary, if the idea takes off then you will probably want to make a proper implementation with a carefully thought out UX.

The UI/UX Gemini made is less is more and follows how I have designed for years. The idea is musicians/bands find local venues to play out. Which is an easy UI/UX .. a logo ... sign up button, header that says "Bands find local venues to play out," and a search bar below for them to search local spots. Ive done these sites for forever so I know how to describe a startup idea quickly to humans and an LLM. That's a unique skill yet can be taught quickly like stop going on and on about your idea i dont care give it to me in 15 to 30 seconds.

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

#407

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 6:35 PM UTC

Mawr wrote: post #299

anigbrowl wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll be surprised about that. I'm not in the robotics field (though perhaps I should be) but at an earlier stage in life I spent several years on remodelling and building houses - as in swinging a hammer, not singing deeds and checks. Repair/remodeling is challenging because you need (approximate) knowledge of construction techniques from across a 150 year timespan, buildings settle and change shape over ti…

Knowledge is irrelevant. Idk why you'd think dust would be a problem too, that's also comparatively trivial. Health and safety is also a good one, lol. It all comes down to robots being unable to hold and operate anything in 3d space, much less precision tooling in arbitrary environments, which is basically what construction is. Everything in construction needs extensive planning, then to be done in the exact right o…

It's better than your reading comprehension.

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

#408

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 6:38 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #195

anigbrowl wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Well let me know when US stores stop selling everything in imperial units and framing is done in metric.

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

#409

Post by Animats » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

gpt5 wrote: post #324

Animats wrote: post #312

The next demand for those trades will be for war plants. For those who haven't noticed, the US/Israel/Iran war and the Ukraine/Russia war just merged. Countries currently shooting at each other: Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Israel, US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait... See the lead story in the New York Times for the past two days. This war has crossed an important threshold. No pai…

Most of these countries have been participating in bombing or getting bombed on and off for the last decade (and longer). You are reading too much into the current media hype cycle, and not really reading the geopolitics in place, which puts a lot of pressure internally on these countries to not escalate further. This includes both Ukraine / Russia and the middle east which you are so eager to tie together on the sli…

Today: Iran drones strike a gas storage tanker in Egypt. Yemen's Houthis are attacking Saudi Arabia from Iraq.

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

#410

Post by scotty79 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

nathan_compton wrote: post #400

scotty79 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sum of all homo sapiens.

I can't remember taking a worldwide vote on the subject.

There's nothing innately democratic in our species. Democracy is just one of the mechanisms that we sometimes use to make some decisions. We use it way less than money mechanism as you probably noticed.