This is a good reminder that every software revolution eventually becomes a hardware and infrastructure problem. Someone still has to build the buildings, wire them, and keep them running
A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
261–270 of 436 posts
Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd imagine those 300K years they're not just working 40 hours a week, more like 70+ hours. Add higher taxes on those years and it becomes less attractive.
Oooof. I pity the poor fool who has to pay taxes on their 300k annual salary.
300k per year for a few years is just not that much money. It's a nice boost but let's not pretend it's rich or wealthy.
IMO taxes should be on the rolling average of your income so two good years does not mean you get taxed as if that's your steady state
Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
#263Earlier 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.
What do those residential electricians do then? Become baristas?
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Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
#264Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My point was that journeymen often at an electrical shop who have apprentices are recently at Amazon without apprentices because Amazon is bidding wages so high they (to some extent) abandon the apprenticeship system. Why is this a bad thing? It sounds like giving folks more pathways to make money doing this work is only a good thing.
Well, the pathway requires being apprenticed to experts. There are licenses that by law limit to this pathway, but the system breaks in unexpected ways when the experts leave because it's paid better to work at a datacenter and from what I know, those journeymen are not apprenticing. Apprenticeships are capped, electricians can't apprentice 10 newcomers, so the backlogs explode. Sure, better for the journeymen. But i…
It sounds like the journeymen win no matter what, and the number of apprentices is so limited that it doesn't materially change regardless of whether or not a datacenter is getting built.
I think the villains here are the journeymen, not the people with electrical needs.
Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
#266There are a few Data Centers going up within a couple hours of me, it has pulled all of the trades people away from us. I've called around to every electrician I can find online, or been recommended by neighbors, they are all out of town for the foreseeable future. Same with HVAC and to a lesser extent plumbers. I've had to learn a lot of skills this summer trying to get some repairs done on my house, and I've had to…
If you go to any large DC construction site the lot will be filled with out of state plates - and not just adjacent states, but folks from across the country.
Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
#267Earlier 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.
the real question is what booms when electrician work busts
Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I applied for an apprenticeship several years ago when I was testing the waters to rotate out of tech after covid. Tested into the highest percentile, had previous high voltage experience with OEMs, a mech eng degree, still ended up like 200 people deep in the queue. That was the end of that interest. You basically have to be friends or family with someone to get into IBEW.
this is a bizarre timeline of reality where an ME degree gets you waitlisted for an electrician apprenticeship
mechanical is pretty famously bad at things that dont include gears
Re: A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
#269I 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.
Industrial electricians have always been in the boom-bust cycle. IBEW (Union electricians) have been doing really well this decade. Another option if you don't want to be a contractor or an Anthropic employee. But they've also gone years without enough work to go around. Scroll down to this comment for a better discussion than I could give: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098874
over before things even started if that's the point at which one's aware