Youngsters keeping traditional trades alive | Hacker News Reader

Youngsters keeping traditional trades alive

bbc.co.uk

77 pointsDanBC51 comments

The homeowners in Charleston SC found that in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, the craft skills weren't available to repair their historic homes. So a group got together and founded the American College of the Building Arts, which awards a four-year liberal arts degree with concentrations in timber framing, architectural stonework, ironwork, plasterwork, and woodwork.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqqomuL-64

http://americancollegeofthebuildingarts.com/

Somewhere around 20% of them start their own businesses after graduation. The rest get heavily recruited by high-end builders and restoration firms.

I frequently wish I had taken up a career like this instead of going into data science.

Eh. I've done both. Data science is better.

There are drag days to be sure, but having to get up at 5 in the morning every day and working until your whole body is sore then having to do it again sucks if you have to do it every day.

This is exactly why I did not get into the trades. I love doing that type of work and working with my hands. But my dad who has been doing construction/electrical work for over 30 years now has trouble using his hands at times or holding a screwdriver. So that basically convinced me from doing it.

Thanks for the reality check.

Awesome news to hear that the graduates are finding good jobs. Makes me wonder why there wasn't anyone in business with these skills present.

Housing collapse.

You had vast swaths of experienced tradesman that were out of work, essentially, overnight. If you're ~23-28 years old, then you graduated at a time where there were literally no open positions in the construction industry, so you never had the opportunity to get into it. And if you're 29-35, you probably found a different career during the turmoil and never came back.

I saw this a lot first-hand. Any friends that graduated to become tradesman all switched careers, joined the military, or went to college during the 09-10. Being in their early 20s meant they were first in line for the cuts.

Not directed at you but I'm really surprised when I hear people say, "young aren't interested in trades." As if they seriously never connected the dots between "trade jobs disappeared" and "lack of people in trades".

> Training an apprentice for just one day can reduce a craftsperson's income by 20%, according to the Heritage Crafts Association (HCA).

We're seeing the same thing with senior developers: "No no no, don't mentor the juniors, your productive output is waay to valuable to waste it on them"

I'm throwing out a generalization, but developers tend to have destructive personality traits when it comes to collaboration. I've never seen mentorship discouraged for those who work well with other people. It can level up a team and compound productivity. If you are seen as easily triggered or judgemental, your manager is wise to limit your interactions, since you can still be a productive individual contributor.

I've seen it... Honestly though, I see it more in specific developer communities than others.

The "headphones on all day, don't speak to me, no meetings, no I won't explain my code review/feature request/JIRA ticket/etc" folks are specifically who I'm referring to.

I've found it pretty rare at non-Rails Ruby jobs -- they're generally very collaborative teams. I'd probably start a flame war if I mentioned where I have seen it fairly consistently though.

I never got how that mentality survives, in the majority of companies where I worked that would be a pretty bad evaluation score in soft skills area.

"We need 10x developers"

They get stuff done.

Maybe you're a collaborative person so you get put on teams where that's more highly weighted. I'm more of a "don't talk to me / I hate meetings" developer; I get excellent evaluations, but I almost always work independently and the groups I work with quickly pick up on my temperament.

I will say that I'm certain I'd be shown the door if I didn't have a track record of going off into the Batcave for a few months and coming back with cool products.

Is there a reason why it's such a binary choice though? I understand why a master tradesman would take a big pay hit. But what makes it so difficult to have a tiered system where pros train midlings who train lowbies that train newbies?

Most tech companies outside the big ones plan for the short term. In the short term, mentoring is easily seen as a waste of time. Companies that plan for the next ten years instead of the next seed round or two years are not going to want to do mentoring (among other things).

The problem with high turnover is that it makes the long-term benefit someone else's. Why train Google's employees just because they're yours right now?

Ultimately, engineers will have to start negotiating for career building as another form of compensation.

Pretty weird. I feel I can make the biggest impact by mentoring junior devs. The faster they get up to speed the better for everybody.

Major luxury watchmakers are in such desperate need of not only service technicians but also full-blown watchmakers to the point that tuition is free (via private scholarship/subsidy) at all American watchmaking programs. I am surprised more people don't go into this industry - the pay isn't great by software standards, but it's reasonable by trade standards and the working conditions are better than in many other trades.

People want cushy gigs. A friend just shut down a 3 generation jewelry store because the kids wanted to get out of retail hours. They ended up getting into commercial banking.

Retail is also bad because you have to deal with the general public. I would never advise anyone to go into retail unless they have no other options.

I'm not surprised, it's not clear that traditional watches have a future at all. Right now they are still a fancy fashion accessory, but it wouldn't shock me to see that change in the next decade or two.

Betting your future livelyhood on an industry like that continuing to exist seems like a risky prospect for little reward, except to the extent that the skills you learn will be transferable to another industry.

I am pretty convinced that high end watches ($5000+) will be around for a long time. In terms of functionality a smart watch is probably better but I just like mechanical watches and I know a lot of people who feel the same way.

I’m sure there’ll always be some market, but looking at the numbers it wouldn’t be unreasonable to speculate that the sector is currently in a bubble.

And it’s obviously very vulnerable to recession.

I couldn’t imagine wearing a luxury watch on my daily walks through seas of tent cities, panhandlers, and car campers. I would feel embarrassed and vulnerable. Arguably I already should, but a Rolex would definitely push it over the top. Cities are increasingly looking like this, and we are increasingly living in cities and walking and taking transit. Wealth display won’t go away, but I predict it will shift towards venues that are less obvious when you’re a soft target waking around in public.

Digital watches were pretty cool when they were new, too.

In 10 years, smart watches will be bougie. Something about analog-everything has more staying power.

Smartwatches had their opportunity in the 80's Casios and Timex watches.

The new trend is an attempt to survive in the already saturated mobile market.

I bet in 10 years time, most smartwatches will join Casios and Timex ones on flea markets.

That's interesting. There must be other similar trade opportunities as boomers start to retire in larger numbers.

I'd be fascinated to hear more if anyone is informed of other niche occupations that are in a similar position.

I heard Apple Watch sold more than all Swiss watches together. Seems like a risky bet to go into watchmaking.

Wrist watches are about style and individualism. Standard Apple Product™ doesn't really fit in.

Yeah, because the millionth Rolex or Swatch does...

Dropping four to five figures on a Rolex is definitely not the only way to buy a wrist watch.

That's a funny comment given how much watch makers spend on marketing and branding.

>I heard Apple Watch sold more than all Swiss watches together

To different people.

I realize this will not make or break the industry, but I wanted to point out one utility of luxury watches is to be a universally accepted, easily transferable bribe material. No technology product can for the foreseeable future compete on this level.

My dad is involved with a sailing charity that runs apprenticeships in traditional boatbuilding:

http://pioneerck18.org/page4/index.html

They restore and maintain the yachts that the trust sails, and build rowing gigs which it sells. There is apparently a booming gig-rowing scene, although it doesn't look like much fun to me.

Meanwhile in France, they have a quadrennial contest to find the best craftsman (or craftswoman) in the country in an enormous range of disciplines:

http://www.meilleursouvriersdefrance.info/concours_sujet.php

Winners earn the right to decorate their tools with the colours of the tricolore - even if, in the case of one blacksmith, that just meant wrapping three bands of electrical tape round the shaft of a hammer. I was lucky enough to come across an exhibition about some of that year's winners at the Musée des Arts et Métiers when i was last in Paris. There were a load of winners' masterworks on display, listing the materials used and the number of hours it took to make them - often in the several hundreds.

The other gig[1] economy...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_pilot_gig

This reminds me of a couple of things.

1. There was an article in Scientific American a little over 20 years ago by pianist James Boyk on how piano technicians skilled enough to maintain pianos for concert pianists were disappearing. There were very few apprenticeships or training programs, and those that did exist were not turning out new technicians anywhere fast enough to replace those who were retiring.

Here's a reprint on Boyk's site: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/essay.htm

Anyone know if the situation has improved?

2. I read a few years ago about a project by archaeologists and historians to restore a medieval village somewhere in Europe (I think it was in France). They were doing the restoration using the tools and techniques that would have been used originally.

The cool part was that they had set things up so that members of the public could help out. If you volunteered you would be provided a place to stay (if I recall correctly), and you would be trained in an authentic medieval craft they needed for the restoration and use those new skills to help. (I don't remember if they also provided food). You'd also have enough free time to do the normal tourist stuff that people did in that area. Basically, it was set up to combine a vacation to France with a chance to help science.

Unfortunately, I did not save a link to this.

Is it this one?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guédelon_Castle

I'm not sure. Apparently there are a few of these kind of projects. That one sounds closer to what I remember from the article than this other one I just found: http://www.sabranenque.com/eng/index.html

I'm glad globe-making is still being practiced. For my money, there's nothing quite as cool as an artisanal globe!

Shakespeare's Globe is a fine example of globe made by craftsmen.

What's that guys' instagram handle? Couldn't find him - but I love maps + globes.

https://www.instagram.com/globemakers/

Their website (http://www.bellerbyandco.com/) looks to be having a bit of a database woe at the moment, but their work looks simply incredible.

I just wanted to piggyback on this to say that I find myself now using Instagram primarily to find new artists and artisans. You will find these nests of people active in a craft, most of them willing to share methods, and even willing to speak one on one in some cases.

I'll leave one of my favorite Instagram artisans to follow: https://www.instagram.com/romanbooteen/

There is a huge community of machinists in instagram. It's always amazing to see people's results post on instragram.

> JoJo Wood, clog-maker

Nominative determinism at work.

There are so many amateur "craft" goods manufactures these days.

Is there a good store or other resource to discover high end craft goods - such as the hand made globes?

When I get a house I will craft fountain pens.

Have you seen these: http://www.pilot-namiki.com/en/ ? Amazing work...

Have a look in your area to see if there are any maker spaces. That way you can create, without having to spend a fortune on tools or space.

I'd really like to get into this also. As far as I can tell if you use pre-made nib assemblies all you really need is a jewelers/watchmakers lathe. can anyone clarify?

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