Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

391–400 of 436 posts

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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

How would it be double the cost if it can work day and night and on holidays and during bad weather and not have strikes?

Double is probably a low estimate. There is a lot of engineering required in the robot. Much of the effort is setup, someone still needs to bring it to the site, and feed the blueprints in. Cleanup is also a lot of the cost. Not to mention mortar is made of sand which is abrasive and will wear it out fast meaning lots of maintenance work.

Working day and night isn't helpful as the limit to speed is waiting for the mortar to cure before doing the next row. (Generally you do about 5 rows and then wait a day)

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

#392
post #324

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…

Would you be able to recommend any articles or videos that do a deeper more honest analysis than the current media hype cycle?

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

#393
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.

[flagged]

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

#394
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone else mentioned, you can read the book of Romans or the epistle of James to find out by yourself why this idea is absurd. But simplified, say you have a spouse who you dearly love. And say you found out that said spouse would forgive and get over any nasty thing you did to them. Would that mean that you'd start being evil to them just because you can? Or would that be yet another reason to try to live up to…

Yes, yes, Christians will "strive" to do better, but never really have try that hard, because you know, it's never gonna be "good enough" anyway, therefore accept that you will do "sometimes-woops" fucked up things, and then just ask for forgiveness (but never actually do anything). The incentive structure is set up to produce bad people. Kind of reminds of the sight where MMA fighters brutally mash some dudes head i…

You're right in plenty of what you're saying, that's why I'd recommend you reading Romans and James in the Bible.

But stuff like "but never really have try that hard" and "(but never actually do anything)" are your own assumptions and silly ones at that, you're putting too many people in the same bucket.

> If they represent themselves through inaction, they are virtually equivalent - equally as bad.

In regards to Neighbours A nd B, you're also right, but that's a bad scenario. Christians should thrive to lead a life that reflects the goodness of God and the grace they have received.

Some are rubbish at it, some are better and do amazing things. Same for non-Christian people, mind you.

But ultimately it comes down to: Christ died on the cross to pay for your sins. Are you going to accept that, repent, and follow Him? or are you going to disregard it?

The first option, if done from the heart, WILL bear good fruit.

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, the economy is going to be increasingly electrified. Demand is going to be there in some form.

On a third hand, electricity is just movement of electrons. While DC is driving electrons down the line, AC is basically just when you vibrate them around. Anyway my point is the field (no pun intended) may change drastically in the increasingly electrified future. I'm personally excited for more wireless power in areas, and the concept of ambient energy - harvesting power out of the already vibrating electrons in th…

Wireless power and ""ambient energy"" are incompatible with real physics.

Sure, they're real phenomena that actually do exist, but the physics are such that they're almost entirely useless beyond extremely specific and very limited applications.

These things have been known and studied for decades now, and the best use we have is charging your phone when you set it down on a special pad. Energy harvesting applications are good for sending a single radio packet once a week. It's just fundamental limitations of the universe.

Anyone excited about wireless power or energy harvesting hasn't read any further than "wireless power and energy harvesting". They aren't what you think they are.

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

#396
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At least in NYC IBEW has mandatory furlough, months without work, etc. And the members are stuck because they will get fined if they work for a non union place.

My understanding is the union members can move to another local and sign up for work there. Not an easy lifestyle, chasing work around the country.

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

#397

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.)

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 $30040 hours52 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.

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

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While i agree that the poster is reading way too much into this, i'm not sure about the geopolitics. Iran is friends with Russia and has helped them with their weapons program in the past. None of the countries allied with Ukraine like Iran. Iran (and its allies) have almost no ability to counter strike Ukraine. Ukraine picking a fight with Iran, or at least stopping their boats from visiting Russian ports, seems lik…

yeah I assume they've done the cost-benefit and figured that if Russia gets the supplies they'll be hurt more than however much Iran can possibly retaliate - Iran does have missiles that can hit Israel so I do have to question whether they can hit Ukraine - it's not that much further - but may very well be worth it to the Ukrainians to take whatever Iran can dish than what Russia could do with the shipments. And with…

> Iran does have missiles that can hit Israel so I do have to question whether they can hit Ukraine

True, but those are probably in relatively short supply for them at this point. I'd imagine they would want to save them for Israel.

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

#399
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Would you be able to recommend any articles or videos that do a deeper more honest analysis than the current media hype cycle?

I'm not the poster, but personally i have found William Spaniel's youtube channel to be good.
Post reply on HN