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

nytimes.com

211–220 of 436 posts

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

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA is not building anything. Private companies are. And unlike regular infrastructure projects (housing, transportation, energy) this won’t really benefit the public at large when it’s done. It’ll just enable companies to churn out more slop, faster, and reel us further in. Or to put it another way, a semiconductor, car or airplane factory wouldn’t really count as “infrastructure”, would they?

Electric utilities are certainly building out infrastructure. It's needlessly costly and slow in a lot of places, but it's happening.

Sorry for my crappy phrasing! I mean in the current building spree for AI, not in general.

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

#212

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.

It's plausible quite a few smaller datacenters have modern engineered wood frames. Wood is pretty high-tech these days. Engineered wood is cheap, lightweight, preserves as well as reinforced concrete, and increasingly for new residential buildings under 5 stories. It would be competitive in a bidding process considering the investors clearly have an appetite for risk.

But even for a steel and concrete datacenter you would want a few carpenters for the interior where humans (at least occasionally) work, more to help with scaffolding and other temporary buildings (e..g housing) during construction, and building framing for drainage ditches and other landscaping. I imagine wood-and-nails carpenters are quite in-demand for most datacenter projects.

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

#213
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.

Isn’t the same with software?

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know several electricians and they all have been through cycles if they have been around for more than a decade. Things never drop down to zero though, so sometimes they see their buddies without a job while they are still working.

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

#215
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 fals…

As one miracle is solved, another is opened.

I had the guy rocking up in his truck to spend a day doing carpentry for our AI overlords, and could not see the magic wand.

So now we have him solving the world's problems by killing everyone, apart from a few good people, so have we moved on from a magic wand to a magic wonder weapon?

We should be scared of this man coming back, not waiting patiently for thousands of years. Honestly, I try my hardest to understand it, but I see a greater chance of vast AI data centers in space due to a shortage of resources on earth.It is not going to happen.

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

#216
post #11

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

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…

resi has been drained pretty hard in the last 10 years, this just adds more fuel to the fire.

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

#217

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…

>a lot of other better uses for their labor Who on Earth are you to decide what is the "better" use for labor? And do you scrutinize every construction project or only AI? Is it a waste when contractors build a temporary set for a trashy reality TV show? A factory that makes cosmetics for dogs? Having someone the arbiter of what is the "right" use of labor is communism. In capitalism, people get to decide for themsel…

> Who on Earth are you to decide what is the "better" use for labor?

> In capitalism, people get to decide for themselves what they work on

Feels like there are some mixed signals here.

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

#218
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, aren't we all allowed to have an opinion on what's best for mankind? FWIW I am a high voltage test engineer. I used to be an electrician. I would prefer to build the substations that power machines for the benefit of all mankind, rather than data centers that feed the already wealthy. For example, keep the lights on for schools. You have a warped view of the world if you believe anything should be allowed to be…

These sort of moral grandstanding arguments are annoying.

There is no "moral grandstanding". I wish to live in a functional society.

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

#219

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.

I am a UX Researcher, UX Design and Developer by trade since 2009. I don't know iphone development, python, any back end stuff and or in depth JS stuff.

But, Codex does and just by typing I just published a startup in python in two weeks using Codex and it's iPhone app will be available soon.

How do you not think AI will not destroy programming jobs if anyone can type to create anything they want or share your screen with Codex and have it guide you via voice? I just feed screenshot after screenshot to Codex to understand what I need to do next. Look forward to being able to share my screen and have it guide me via a voice conversation.

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

#220
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.

Construction is always boom and bust by nature. Anyone in the trades, if they have an opportunity the should just take it while it's there.
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