High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up for University
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First, construction in general is a pretty up and down industry. Construction booms don't last forever, and in general you need to 'follow the work'. This is great if you are young, single, and willing to chase the high paying jobs. Not so great if you have a strong desire to stay in one spot.
Second, trade jobs are usually pretty tough on the body. After a couple decades of work your body begins to break down, assuming there are no workplace injuries to put you out of commission sooner.
Third, workplace conditions are on average undesirable. Outdoors in the heat/cold, or indoors in tight spaces or high places. It's tough sell over companies that glorify bean bag chairs, nap pods, and free beer on hand.
Fourth, there's a social stigma around trade skill jobs. Blue collar jobs have gained a reputation of being jobs held by slackers or the less fortunate. Unfortunately, wearing workboots carries a stigma that wearing a shirt and tie/'startup' attire doesn't.
Fifth, and this one may seem like a silly reason to most, the drug testing (for marijuana specifically) is a huge barrier of entry. From a safety perspective, it makes sense. But for better or worse, marijuana use is becoming more socially accepted while work places (and in particular trade jobs) are lagging behind the times. Removing a marijuana screen from standard workplace testing would help revitalize the employee pool.
Sixth, and this is arguably the biggest one, four year degrees are seen as a status symbol and are being sold to use as such. They are Big Education, and are pulling on all the right strings to keep the tuition/student debt machine running. Advocating for trade jobs is in direct competition. They have enough players in their pockets (donors, alumnus, politicians) to keep the money flowing in the right direction. Selling someone on trade school/work is hard when it is seen as the less optimal path towards 'life success'.
All of these observations are based off my fathers experience as union based pipe fitter/welder for >30 years.
But on the other hand, yesterday we had an article here about visual coding, and according to some it can build very complex application with much higher productivity(and maybe the work becomes accessible to business analysts and domain experts, maybe).
So it's hard to tell these days.
Not my area but various companies have been trying to do this sort of thing forever. I can remember reading stories about partially pre-manufactured modular homes decades ago and it's never panned out. It seems to be one of those ideas that makes a lot of sense on paper but people don't want it.
The Sears & Roebuck were partially assembled (think wall by wall), and then those parts were hoisted off the freight trains and nailed together. There was still a lot of work that needed to be done (often by professionals), but it really cut down on the (especially local) costs.
They recently raised $865m lead by SoftBank's vision fund [0].
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/business/dealbook/katerra...
So people will have to build more houses for the same money.
My house is full of copper plumbing, all cut and soldered together by hand. The wiring is all in hard conduit. Today, conduit is gone, and plumbers assemble things using flexible tubing and fittings that get squeezed onto the ends (for lack of the correct terminology).
I doubt that fixing things will ever provide as much work as construction.
> Removing a marijuana screen from standard workplace testing would help revitalize the employee pool.
To me, trade jobs seem to be the most willing to offer a "second chance" to workers willing to work. More so than some white-collar jobs that have a no tolerance drug/crime policy.
But a majority of trade workers get bounced around job sites, and are usually required to pass a screen before each one. If you get sent to a job with little notice (can happen within a week), you need to pass a screen. If you fail, you simply don't get hired and have to enter the queue and wait for the next opportunity. Fail enough times and you either get dropped by your union local, or black listed entirely.
So messing up a drug screen once or twice doesn't mean you will lose all job opportunities, but it could mean you go without work for 1 week to over a year. And if you are represented by a trade union, you don't have the luxury to apply freely to open positions like you would in the white collar market.
If you’re lucky enough to get into the union, I doubt you care much about the luxury of making less money.
I find it interesting you equate even light use of marijuana with the abuse of alcohol.
With respect to marijuana, it’s well known that it is detectable for some period of time. If you’re smoking with full knowledge that you can be randomly screened, you’re demonstrating poor judgment and risk tolerance.
I don’t want someone dumb enough to do these things in a position where my health and safety is at risk.
Some trades will take you to awful places to live and work. For example, if your job takes you into the oil fields, there's a good chance you're going to Bakken, and North Dakota/eastern Montana is just a fundamentally terrible place to be, winter or summer, and the usual boomtown criminality and lack of resources only makes it worse.
That's tough on your family, too: Those places don't have good schools. The after-school activities consist of drugs, drinking, and driving under the influence of one or both to get to and from the places you do both or either. There's a reason there's a meth/opioid epidemic in those regions, and it isn't because they have a vibrant social scene with plenty of gathering places you can walk to most of the year.
I lived in Havre for ten years, including my high school years, and I have, if anything, understated the problems because Havre isn't nearly as bad as the Bakken region.
Tech jobs aren’t free from this anymore. For people in the industry, if all you do is stuff like front end JavaScript work (basically what any boot camp grad does), you’re basically the tech equivalent of a construction worker. Except now, others outside the industry are catching on to this too. The people in tech who get all the prestige are those who are solving real problems or work in more esoteric domains, at least by those who aren’t also blue collar workers themselves.
Nothing wrong with it, it’s just the way it is. Prestige won’t last forever.
The people in tech who get all the prestige
are those who are solving real problems or
work in more esoteric domains
Ironic given that plenty of blue collar professionals can make a lot more than your average worker in many degreed professions. (That's not to say the average blue collar wage is higher)
I feel like referencing welding is pretty cliche, but for example:
Examples:
Difficult to see work becomes root cause if phase error between protection in place and start of arc.
Ever glance over and see the bright arc? Hard to not do that.
Use of marginal protection happens for a ton of reasons.
Each flash exposure adds up.
1. https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Welder/Hourly_Rate
No they don't, this is a myth that has become perpetuated in recent years.
Mike Rowe might mean well by writing articles like this, but the content is a lie. The median salary of a welder in the US is $40,240 a year according to the BLS. People are essentially selling an entire generation a load of BS in order to flood the market with cheap labor instead of paying them more.
There are some welders who make $100k a year, but they are several standard deviations above the mean. Those $100k/welders are like the $5MM/yr programmers. Yeah, they exist, but only in the top 1% of workers.
I don't want my kids to be tradespeople. I watched 2008 destroy the careers of every tradesperson friend I had, along with nearly wiping out my family's (second-generation) construction business. I had talented friends in their early 20s that were forced to move back in with family after having their work hours cut to 2-3/hr a week (but they had to report to work everyday). The ones with family safety nets went to college, those without joined the military.
If you're willing to accept the boom-or-bust nature of construction projects, or remote (as in, go to where work is in demand) work, you can make considerably more. Then there's overtime, which your salaried white-collar worker doesn't get at all.
> Then there's overtime, which your salaried white-collar worker doesn't get at all.
Not true across the board - in fact, many mid-paying office jobs are hourly and do pay overtime. I know a bunch of people that worked at AT&T as "salaried" workers, but they still needed to log their hours toward projects, and received 1.5x pay when they worked more than 40/wk, which was most weeks.
https://www.damemagazine.com/2014/05/23/amazon-killing-my-se...
A lot of people live up to the stereotype though, and that's where the author of the article is coming from. To repeat a saying I heard a lot during my undergrad at a Stem-heavy school that had male-dominated ratio - "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."
I think there is a stigma.
When single I remember the intense look of an interested girl, that switched off at hearing what my job was.
However, I also think that is offset by some positive bias towards looking for wrll paid professional partners.
The stigma exists. I do think it is fairly easy to avoid its effects (don't be the "undesirable" stereotype). I also think most jobs have a stigma, with negative reactions from some people.
If someone only sees you as your job, that is their problem!
Maybe try telling her you’re a plumber and seeing what the reaction is as a comparison.
For this thread, there is no difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuIOGazSmHg
(It's from the 90's.)
Though, I guess he's also a rich playboy who happens to build robots powered by advanced AI.
Poor her. She should move to a city with less intelligent and successful men, I suppose.
Luck is a great factor. He might have dodged a bullet, she might have made the wrong choice. Frankly I don't give a damn about them. I've turned down worthy people, I've been turned down by less-worthy ones, and reverse. It doesn't matter. I don't have any regrets.
Programmers, like all people, can be good looking, physically fit, not socially awkward(?:, successful, financially stable/rich, confident, healthy, faithful, non-promiscuous, happy, etc., etc.)? and good in bed. The exact opposite can also happen. Most times it's a variable combination and that's just the way it is. That is how nature works.
Tastes and opinions (not only prejudices) can change and people can find themselves compromising as they grow older. This is what matters to me, I don't want to see myself regretting choices related to my love life.
I’ve been in the industry my entire adult life and have never met one of these mythical creatures. After all, the term started off as a joke developers themselves would use then got co-opted by anti-tech people and used literally.
You won't run out of job opportunities if your book 1 union.
Yes--construction is not a great job. Out if of all the Trades; Electrical is a bit better than the rest. It's less physically taxing.
Union Elevator Mechanic might be the best trade?
So much depends on your attitude. If you like going to work, sweating, getting dirty, and going home without much worry--in a good union you are making over $100/hr. Listening to some of the guys takes patience, but you will never hear, "It sounds like you have a case of the mondays, or have to listen to some jack arse pontificating in a meeting.
Non-union is just aweful. You are better off in retail. If very motivated, use the non-union shop to gain experience, and then get a C-10 contractor's licence.
That said, there's only a few cities I would consider working in.
Mike Rowe (the t.v. guy who's made himself the ambassador of "working hard". I personally think he is exploiting a bad situation.). goes around as the prince of the Trades. He always yacking about these jobs that go unfilled. Most of these jobs are non-union, in the middle of the rust belt, and are temporary. There's a reason these jobs go unfilled.
So if you don't mind getting dirty, ex king up early, being around sweaty guys all day long; keep an eye out for the union admittance test. Some unions have over 1000 people taking the test for a few spots.
It's an easy test, but get every question right. The oral interview counts for half.
(I was in the union a year. I got a better opportunity, so I left. Looking back--I probally should have finished the apprenticeship, but did not want to turn into my father. I literally saw myself turning into him. Oh yea, watch the drinking. It's ok to come in with a hangover, but heavens forbid marijuana.
In all honestly, a lot of guys smoked pot. It's only the bigger job sites that required a drug test. Even then, when I worked at Pacbell park, guys would stop smoking a few weeks before showing up for to the job site, and within a few days they were back to smoking.
There was one statistic about working construction that always bothered me. Too many guys were waiting for retirement to really live their lives. They would collect a few retirement checks, and die. A lot of that was probally the wrong diet, and too much drinking?
Good luck!
How long would it take to get to that level from zero trade experience, and how hard is it to get into the union?
>"Parents want success for their kids," said Mike Clifton, who teaches machining at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, about 20 miles from Seattle. "They get stuck on [four-year bachelor's degrees],
What parents want is to be able to brag on their kids. Which is to say, they want to be able to boast that their kid went to a presigious university and now holds a prestigious job. And the Education-Industrial Complex (tm) has milked that for everything it's worth. Which is trillions of USD.
Seventh, the people who work in the trades have a rep as rabidly anti-intellectual, for whom Playboy magazine is "too snooty."
This is an odd example; Playboy's whole thing was that it featured high-class literary content, so you could read it "for the articles". It was intentionally snooty as a branding choice helping it contrast with, say, Hustler.
"See that awesome building with the cool lights? My kid wired the whole thing, passed code inspection the first time."
Frankly, accomplishments like that are worth talking up. We play, live, build, do as we do in relative comfort and safety because of the hard, quality work trades people do.
It's like the old saw, "nobody values the plumber, until they do." When they do, they really do.
All of us could be messaging to this in basic, affirmative ways. I think it would help.
Meta: what is the post limit? I can't seem to interact reasonably. Nothing out of the ordinary, but too fast... ?
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) is rolling out a high-school STEM curriculum[0] for aviation. There are lots of options for aviation careers such as dispatcher, air traffic control, airframe & powerplant mechanic, and of course pilot.
A pilot who wants to make captain at one of the major U.S. airlines will want to add a four-year degree somewhere along the way, e.g., as a military officer or as a civilian climbing the ratings ladder. Part 121 is only one segment of the aviation market.
The FAA recently changed the required equipment for the commercial-pilot and certificated flight instructor (CFI) checkrides. Candidates for either rating until recently had to provide a complex airplane (retractable landing gear, flaps, and a controllable-pitch propeller). These take more time to train in and hence more expense.
[0]: https://youcanfly.aopa.org/high-school/high-school-curriculu...
First officer salaries at regional airlines have come up to start in the skilled trade range, $60k plus. Regional captains make $80k and up. (It used to be awful, $20-30k.) Getting to that point in the Part 121 world takes a lot of training and expense. Candidates for the Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate must have a minimum of 1,500 flight hours.
Other commercial flying such as hauling cargo, air taxi, or private charter may require a commercial single or commercial multi certificate with instrument rating. These pay about like the skilled trades too.
Reaching ATP minimum required 1,500 flight hours has multiple routes to it. Unfortunately for people who work their way up through the ratings as civilians, they are competing against retired military pilots who did not go into debt for their training and who are receiving pension payments. (Military aviators certainly paid for their training in a different way, and I am making no comparison of their respective costs.) Retired military pilots are frequently hired directly to major airlines whereas Billy and Susie Civilian start off at regional airlines.
Even with ATP certificate in hand, it’s not yet fat city. Airline pilots have to work their way up through the seniority ranks, beginning with crummy ready reserve where they sit around hoping for a ride. Other flavors are short call and long call, the difference being how quickly the pilot must report for duty after receiving the call. Moving up to more desirable bases and aircraft goes through a complicated bid process[0].
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/8eaupt/moronic_mond...
Yes, compensation relative to the training expense used to be horrible for first officers and even captains at regional airlines, starting in the $20k range annual compensation. Again recall that military retirees have their mailbox money coming in. Because of the pilot shortage, first officers at regionals now start around $60k annually.
Two common civilian paths to ATP minimums are becoming a certificated flight instructor (CFI) or flying aerial survey, photography, air tours, private carriage, diver driver (i.e., flying skydivers) and so on. In reality, there may be some blend because all of the aforementioned tasks require a commercial pilot certificate. Because the airlines are a training environment, there is at least some degree of preference for CFIs rather than someone who schlepped around for a thousand hours towing a banner over the beach in a 152. These are not minimum-wage jobs. Someone with a wet commercial ticket might make twenty bucks an hour. Here again, the would-be ATP is competing against fellow time builders trying to get to 1,500 hours. More advanced instructors (e.g., CFI-Instrument, commercial instruction, or complex instruction) command a higher hourly rate, and instructors get paid for both flight time and for ground instruction. It’s not great money, but they aren’t starving either: starting in the $30k range up to the $50s — a lot like apprentices in the skilled trades.
Candidates for the commercial pilot checkride must have at least 250 flight hours. The commercial airplane ticket comes in four flavors along two axes: single- or multi-engine and land or sea. The least expensive is airplane single-engine land (ASEL). To reach that point, trainers in this class rent between $100 and $200 per flight hour “wet,” inclusive of fuel. Include instruction, test fees, gear, and the cost of an instrument rating (which I am glossing over) will total to around $30k. Some flight schools and operators of multi-engine aircraft will foot the bill for the multi rating and MEI in exchange for some number of flight hours on the back end with a clawback if the pilot leaves for another opportunity.
I would love if someone in the industry could shed some light here. I have two friends early in an ATC career and it sounded like getting to where they are now was hell (and they definitely aren't at the 6 figure mark yet). The most reductive way I've had it explained is it's years of training, with shit pay and relocation, and the possibility of washing out along the way being relatively high.
Assuming our hero passes the academy, she is then assigned to an Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC or just Center), an air traffic control tower (ATCT), or an “up-down” facility with both a control tower and TRACON, terminal radar approach control. Certifying in just one sector may take a year or two. Trainees make upwards of $30k annually. Someone who washes out may look at transferring to a less demanding facility. People also request hardship transfers to be closer to family and so on, but ATC is chronically understaffed, and obtaining those transfers takes time.
As with pilots (see another reply in this thread[0]), military ATC experience is often a more expedient route. FAA controllers tend to discount the skill and decision making of former Army controllers who mostly deal with low-flying slow movers under VFR rather than jets under positive control.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941169
Oh by the way, our hero must get in (I believe be admitted to the academy) before her 31st birthday. The clock is ticking.
Yes, there is survivorship bias in the success stories. People wash out of other careers too. Seeing actual data on rates would be fascinating. For balance, read the “Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?” chapter of Freakonomics.
The number of years it takes to go from regional FO to major Captain is extremely dependent on the economy. Since everything is based on seniority, if there is a downturn, airlines fly less flights and need less pilots, so basically your career goes on hold because no one is getting promoted. When things are good, you move quickly up the ranks.
To your direct question, once you have all of your ratings and your 1500 hours, plus a 4 year college degree (required at major airlines) (figure 6 years and $200-250k in debt), at 2 years you are probably FO at a regional, $50k/yr. At 5 years, captain at a regional, 80k/yr, 10 years, FO at a major, $150k/yr.
If the economy tanks, you stall and might be laid off or furloughed. If your airline goes bankrupt, you scramble to find another job and start at the bottom of the FO totem pole again. If you have almost any health problem or require most any medication, you lose your medical and find another line of work. If further automation leads to a single pilot cockpit (fairly likely IMO in the next 20 years), you either lose your job or take a big pay cut.
So with a wife and two kids and in his late 20's, he decided one day he was going to be a pilot. Already in precarious financial circumstances, he took out some huge loans to go to flight school. We all were concerned it might not turn out so well. He worked up to a pilot license, twin-engine license, flight instructor license, commercial license. He got a series of cargo jobs ... and >> they pay extremely low wages and require lots of odd hours and time waiting around away from home. << It wasn't easy, pay was low, for many many years. These outfits all make money by squeezing employee pay and by skimping on maintenance -- and he had a couple of emergency landings in the Arizona desert amongst the cacti and boulders.
He eventually got some jobs flying real people around for >> minor airlines <<, and bounced between those and other cargo jobs. Pay was still low. He also spent a stint in the Central African Republic helping a real nice Sudanese gentleman start an airline. There are lots of mining companies that need to fly around equipment and engineers even in a poverty-striken country, and lots of rich Portuguese folks wanting a real African dense-jungle hunting experience. The biggest risks for a while were precarious landing strips and corrupt government officials (they managed to pay zero bribes by just saying "no" to solicitations, holding out, and working their way up the hierarchy). A revolution came along to destroy the airline dream, and he was lucky the French military managed to pick him and other expats up from his neighborhood before the worst came along.
In his last "podunk" air cargo job, the airplane he was operating malfunctioned due to poor maintenance. The company wanted to pin the damage on him and his lack of procedure (he's very conscientious) and tried their best to break him on an unreasonable simulator test -- he managed to come out of that unscathed. Fortunately he'd just interviewed with America West and got the word the next day he was hired to fly 757's.
So it took my brother about 15 years to work from his first commercial job to becoming a full-fledged airline pilot in the majors ... and he had to work many marginal jobs for low pay in the interim. It's worked out well for him. He's flown 757's for various years on many routes, but most commonly now does Phoenix <--> Hawaii. There have been more challenges stemming from America West's acquisition pseudo-mergers with first the bankrupt US Airways, then the bankrupt American Airlines ... labor and seniority issues in the airlines are never easy, especially during mergers.
He's had time to get a Comp-Sci degree in the mean time while working "reserve" and started a decent-sized Salesforce consultancy and recruited some other family to work in that. (That consultancy kind of blew up ... working with family is hard, but that's a different story.) He flies and does Salesforce consulting now and is reasonably happy.
There is, but it might not mean what you're thinking it means.
A bit of first hand here, I'm currently pivoting over to this-there is absolutely demand for flight dispatchers right now. There's two kickers though I learned along this course that was not immediately apparent:
1) While you can take the first phase of your ADX training online, virtually every school that offers this program requires a portion of in-class instruction, which for some is a deal breaker...mostly due to
2) The number of available schools is not that great; the majority are on either coast, with only a dotting of schools to choose from in the interior US.
3) It's not the cheapest professional license one could obtain, but there are others that are far more expensive (welding for example, excluding training and licensing and simply purchasing durable and quality work gear can be a heft cost)
Still, that said...I have a friend who also decided to go out and become an ADX. She took the FAA exam, passed and was employed in under a month (this required relocation on her part).
the electrician i hire is in better shape than i'll ever be in, despite being about 50. pretty sure he makes about what i do, too.
> Third, workplace conditions are on average undesirable. Outdoors in the heat/cold, or indoors in tight spaces or high places.
ignoring high rises and installing solar panels, i feel like it isn't much worse than the stuff a lot of folks do on a regular basis to get exercise to make up for all the sitting they do all day, or just recreationally.
What do life/health/disability insurance companies think? They might charge higher prices to people in more dangerous professions, and they have big incentives to get it right.
Curious, have you ever talked to a physical therapist? I've learned a lot of the maladies people live with are correctable, even sometimes things that seem permanent. Many running overuse injuries, for example, boil down to muscle weakness, muscle imbalance, or bad posture.
Without seeing a therapist, try doing this every day or every few days to elongate your 'posterior chain' and help your posture reset (which will help your knees, ankles, elbows operate under less duress): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOTvaRaDjI
Why would you blow all your salary? On something that is uncertain to work?
As a DIYer for 8 years 'ish, mudding drywall is an art. Where it might take me 4 or 5 (or 6) to get a good finish on joints or corners, it might take a pro 1 or 2 coats and very minimal if not none sanding in between. Primer and 2 coats of paint won't fill in imperfections greater then an 1/16th in diameter so if you have a lot of imperfections, you'll see it in the finished product.
Let's not even discuss mudding ceilings. The amount of upper body strength needed is amazing, let alone good balance on a ladder.
So true, also earning is relational, if you are in a group of high paid folks, you tend to feel you earn less, not matter how much you earn more than average income.
On a relational note to the exercise portion, the max a high earning person often dream (and afford) about is spending a week in a beach 'hut' on a 'remote' island while there are several penniless people who just live on a beach hut for 365 days often without experiencing half the stress.
You can do that job to pay (at least partially) your way through university, and if your preferred career is interrupted by economic conditions or some weird life event, you always have something solid to fall back on.
Tougher than sitting in an office chair for 10 hours a day ?
But yeah, personally, I'd push my own child to get a degree, as insurance. Life can be quite long and you never know.
Ask for something like that at a job site and you'd probably get laughed off.
If I remember correctly, the NSA had to drop the marijuana prohibition on hires recently, simply because they were not getting enough applicants.
Perhaps (and I'm granting some leeway here) we don't yet have the tools or the data to understand well enough how something like THC affects motor skills like we do with alcohol, but someday I expect we will. Work places (particularly those with high safety concerns) shouldn't make any sacrifices just because something is socially acceptable. You can't show up drunk, and alcohol is more socially accepted than marijuana.
Fire someone for showing up to work drunk, sure. But would you fire them for a bottle of wine on a Saturday night?
If alcohol was like THC (that is, it's impossible to determine whether you drank in the last hour or the last week), I sure as hell don't want people who test positive driving.
That, plus marijuana is still illegal in most states. Whatever your personal conviction may be, businesses aren't in the business to turn the blind eye to illegal substance use. They're on the hook for liability.
NPR recently pointed out that if you include medical marijuana this is no where close to true with it being legal in 29 states: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S....
So as far as I know, there isn't a reliable and accurate way of testing.
Roadside DUI test is a general test for motor impairment. BAC tests are a nice proxy for that in the case of alcohol, and a legally convenient one as they are precise and objective, but the police care (morally speaking) about your motor impairment not your BAC.
tl;dr, we can already answer the question "is this person too stoned to drive?", roadside DUI test.
There's tons of (acceptable) prescription drugs that have a worse effect on performance than THC being in your system from the weekend before. Someone's glucose level being outside the norm would have a larger effect.
> Work places (particularly those with high safety concerns) shouldn't make any sacrifices just because something is socially acceptable.
Should it be illegal to be on the job while sick? Good luck getting that legislated.
I think you misunderstood the MJ testing. MJ stays in the blood stream, and you can be caught by a random drug test on Tuesday for that joint you had on Saturday.
OP was not, I think, arguing for working 'high'
We do have some understanding and data: very slightly, the most consistently measurable affect being minimally impared depth perception. Treating marijuana intoxication as a high risk imparment to motor function is making a mountain out of a mole hill. Relating the equation of motor function impairment caused by marijuana to that of alcohol or for that matter many other intoxicants (including a multitude of very commonly used pharmaceuticals and stimulants) sure seems a bit ignorant or uninformed to me. I'm not advocating marijuana use, especially when performing potentially dangerous actions that require attention and possibly urgent corrective action (driving, operating dangerous equiptment, performing surgery, etc.). But do consider there's plenty of professional athletes who have preformed some of the highest level coordination, precision and reaction time dependant functions of humanity while being under the influence of THC. Sorry to rant, but I think it's important to remember that people using alcohol cause an awful lot of harmful, deadly, and easily avoidable accidents. DUI's and similar restrictions are a direct result of that fact. I've looked for but have never seen evidence that shows an even remotely similar risk from THC consumption. If anyone is aware of data indicating otherwise, please share.
Marijuana and heavy machinery don't mix well... I can't speak to how long you have to be clean to pass a test, so it's possible that these tests select for people who _never_ use, versus people who got high 30 minutes ago. Even if it's the latter, one could argue that any use means someone could be high at the wrong time. I don't really have enough information on drug use patterns to comment here; perhaps someone else does?
Several days at least. Weekend smokers are out.
If you're a frequent smoker, it can last be detected over a month after your last use. Even longer in hair tests.
Obviously being high at work isn't a good thing, but neither is being drunk at work. But you don't get fired for having a few beers on the weekend.
This is worse in software engineering. You are probably in the bay area or some other tech city, but for all the people who live outside of those areas, they have to either move to them or get paid a ridiculously low wage relative to their work.
Here in Australia, only those people who want to work in the mines have to go anywhere. All the other trades can not only live wherever they want, they don't have to live near the city. Programmers have to live close to the city and pay the extra in housing because all of the jobs are in the city.
>Second, trade jobs are usually pretty tough on the body. After a couple decades of work your body begins to break down, assuming there are no workplace injuries to put you out of commission sooner.
Sitting is worse for your body than most trades. Some trades may be really tough, but the majority are not. Programmers generally look completely out of shape. You talk about "after a few decades", well, I wonder if you have met any older office workers? I work with people in their late 30s and early 40s who have done nothing but office work. Just the other day, we were walking up a large group of stairs to go to a conference and they were all going on about their knees and groaning on pain. I suspect you are confusing people just getting old who don't really look after their body, with a specific effect of a type of job.
>Third, workplace conditions are on average undesirable. Outdoors in the heat/cold, or indoors in tight spaces or high places. It's tough sell over companies that glorify bean bag chairs, nap pods, and free beer on hand.
This sounds like someone who just hates the outdoors. I have worked in both types of jobs and I absolutely hate being in an air-conditioned office. I hate unnatural air and the lack of sunlight. I also hate beer, and bean bag chairs are terrible for your body. Nap pods, jesus.
>Fourth, there's a social stigma around trade skill jobs. This does seem kind of true, but I see people in trades with much prettier girlfriends than most programmers due to the better shape they are in both mentally and physically, and the fact that money is all that counts. Trades outside of tech cities get paid the same or more as programmers.
>All of these observations are based off my fathers experience as union based pipe fitter/welder for >30 years. Exactly.
- I would have disappointed them if I did not earn a 4-year degree. I'm one of the first, and very few people in my family with a degree.
- As others have stated, trades are very hard on the body, and things get dicy once it is going downhill. The pay is alright, but it cost a lot of knees, shoulders, and backs.
- The only way for my dad to continue in the trades business at his age was to start his own company and hire people himself. Not everyone is able to do this, and I continue to help a lot to build his online presence and non-labor side of the business. Hiring good people is insanely hard like the article states, and is actually capping growth.
- I'm currently way more successful working in tech than I could have ever been in the trades business, and to my family, this was the expected result. Their stance is that they worked way too hard to allow me to get an education for me to end up in the same place they did.
I'd like to add that I'm not discouraging anyone from skilled trades, nor do I think they're inferior to white collar jobs. I'm just pointing out different perspectives, and that it is much more nuanced than what is in this article.
But even sports figures have issues and retire early, so I don't think that is so clear cut and that doing things the right way solves everything
To me, I've always thought software engineering is better suited as a trade anyways. Save university for researchers. Software engineers could have a program like IBEW and flourish.
IBEW's program is 5 years of paid apprenticeship (6 months class room, 6 months job site, repeat). Back when I looked at it (10+ years ago) they started at $15/hr and got about $1 raise a year until they hit journeyman. At that point they jump up over $100k. I've always believed this system would work perfectly for software.
With a union, yes. Building web sites and much of IT are trade school skills.
that's how I became a sysadmin. actually, I think that's pretty common. If you are willing to do computer gigs and show some enthusiasm, there are a lot of $15/hr gigs about, I think.
I think I started closer to $4/hr (in 1994-1995 or so) fixing computers for a shop run out of a suburban living room. It took me more than 5 years to get to $100K, but in '94 I had 3 or 4 more years of highschool to go, so five years of full time work isn't too far off.
The secret, of course, is that my dad worked in IT, and this is true of most of my colleagues who don't have an education. Of course, I think that's also pretty common in the trades... and for that matter, my dad was midway through his IT career when he got his degree, so that doesn't really demolish the idea that you can do it without a degree... it's just like everything else, knowing people helps a lot, and having a good mentor helps a lot, and a parent makes a hell of a mentor, if they are knowledgable about the path you are taking.
Would a structured program be better? For some people, sure. This way worked well for me.
I've had a few jobs where I was called a programer or a 'toolmaker' or a 'production engineer' - but I'm really a sysadmin, and really still have some ways to go to make 'software engineer' - but I get paid better than an electrician, and I don't have to wake up early.
I wouldn't do much of that dangerous and exhausting work for double that pay range and I would still make less money than I do sitting at a desk now. I can put in <35 hrs a week, run errands during the day, work from home in my underwear, meet friends for long lunches.
I do think there are downsides to the office life though. The politics and games of course. There are also the issues of needing to make sure you take time for your physical fitness. Its easy to forget or slack off on that one.
I think the reality here is that those jobs are still majorly underpaid for the work involved when there are alternatives around every corner.
Also, adults in their life who are older are likely to caution about occupation that is health risk even absent injuries - and although all wont listen, some will.
They are also less likely to suffer any injury caused, or made worse, or made more likely, by some past injury they've already had, because they're likely to have had fewer of those.
Also, even given the same exact injury, they will likely heal faster & better than someone even 10 years older.
Black & white thinking doesn't really serve here. There's not some age before which 100% of people have none of the problems and after which 100% of people have all the problems. It's a continuum.
Cumulatively, during career, the longer you work there the more likely injuries happen to you. And the more physical work, the more catastrophic consequences (I can code with two broken legs).
All that must be factored in for young people too.
Nothing is guaranteed of course, but the question was "Who considers 55-60k 'high paying' especially when the job contains potential life threatening risks and other health issues?" and the answer was "Young high-school grads for whom that's a lot of money and for whom the health risks are not quite as bad." That's a very general answer that deliberately doesn't offer any opinion on whether they are right or wrong in thinking that way. And obviously the less young they are, or the more money they want, or the less risk they tolerate, the less true the statement is.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
So approximately everybody should consider twice that "high paying".
(fixed the number, was $32,000)
Without debating the specific skill sets needed in each (of course they vary based on field of choice, this is obvious), all of the “blue collar” multimillionaire business owners I know have the three traits I listed above. Ditto for the “white collar” multimillionaires.
It’s also interesting that they have similar problems (again in abstraction) — hiring, training, and retention. The nitty gritty details differ, but the problems sound awfully similar to me.
There are probably a few more characteristics and problems that I could list, but these were the ones that came off the top of my head.
Being smart at one thing doesn't mean you can be smart at anything you apply your mind to; there are cultural and biochemical reasons that can be preventing you from being good at something. Because I dont have the time right now, I'll leave an excerpt that might help to elucidate what I'm saying:
When the animals decided to establish schools they selected a school board consisting of Mr. Elephant, Mr. Kangaroo and Mr. Monkey, and these fellows held a meeting to agree upon their plans. “What shall the animals’ children be taught in the animal school? That is the question,” declared Mr. Monkey. “Yes, that is the question,” exclaimed Mr. Kangaroo and Mr. Elephant together.
“They should be taught to climb trees,” said the monkey, positively. “All my relatives will serve as teachers.” “No, indeed!” shouted the other two, in chorus. “That would never do.” “They should he taught to jump,” cried the kangaroo, with emphasis. “All of my relatives will be glad to teach them.” “No, indeed!” yelled the other two, in unison. “That would never do.” “They should be taught to look wise,” said the elephant. “And all of my relatives will act as teachers.” “No, indeed!” howled the other two together. “That will never do.”
“Well, what will do?” they asked, as they looked at each other in perplexity. “Teach them to climb,” said Mr. Monkey. “Teach them to jump,” said Mr. Kangaroo. “Teach them to look wise,” said Mr. Elephant.
I would suggest that most CS majors at top 20 schools/programs grossly underestimate how hard it is to do what they have done.
I know plenty of Cal State CS majors who only dream of jobs like this. These relatively lucrative jobs aren’t really that common for mediocre students at mediocre programs.
If you don't want to do that you're going to end up paying way more, hence barely getting by with $55k.
That $31,000 median figure includes all the people working part-time. It substantially disorts what your expectations should be for full-time labor in the US.
Similarly, a poor person and rich person in middle of nowhere Iowa can get the same amount of Iowa (though whoever's less time-poor wins) but neither of them can buy living in NYC.
Wow - HN at its best, folks.
Just because it's not high where you are (Somewhere probably really nice, honestly) doesn't mean that's not a good living in 90% of the rest of the country.
And I’m ignoring downtown Renaissances happening all across the Midwest.
the state's average annual wage of $54,000.
That accounts for all cost of living adjustments, since it is the same state. I wouldn't consider 2%-10% above average "high paying"
For 30k plus benefits I'd strangle puppies.
Currently just a stock boy while I add a second BS onto my useless resume.
Money, youthful ignorance (and a desire to get the fuck out of Florida) and an inability to fill out an application probably due to my truck load of self esteem issues (though there is always the possibility that I fail not because I think I'm garbage but because I actually am).
Grad school is also an option, and you don't have to go for physics (which is fairly competitive). I got into a CS program, have a friend doing EE, and know of plenty of people doing ME, AE, CE, etc. People will read "Physics degree" as "smart" or "worked hard".
> not because I think I'm garbage but because I actually am
Sounds like imposter syndrome. It is extremely common, though I know it is extremely difficult to deal with (coming from personal experience).
No really the last time I filled out an application it took me two months from start to finish and I considered it progress because I wasn't crying by the end of it. January 2017 ish a Prof offered me several research projects, after not responding to him for two weeks I am now hiding from him for the rest of my life.
I am absolutely aware that I am on paper qualified for all sorts of shit.
That doesn't change the reality that I am emotionally incapable of doing anything with it.
Which goes back to my coworkers who are all absolutely capable of better paying jobs but at some point you just stop believing that something else is possible. Then what?
Sounds like you might want to message them. Small progress is still progress. Some days you make leaps and bounds, but most days we barely make a step. And that is okay.
> I am absolutely aware that I am on paper qualified for all sorts of shit.
>> For 30k plus benefits I'd strangle puppies.
Anxiety and writing an email sounds better than strangling puppies for a (low wage) living.
> That doesn't change the reality that I am emotionally incapable of doing anything with it.
Get a therapist.
> at some point you just stop believing that something else is possible. Then what?
GET A THERAPIST
Seriously, if you are at the point where emailing someone is causing you so much anxiety that you are literally sabotaging yourself to work jobs that you are way over qualified for (and thus make you clearly miserable), you need to see someone professional. Because you said it yourself:
> I am qualified for all sorts of shit.
b) 30 grand and benefits in Albuquerque isn't a low wage it's god damned pinkies out upper class.
c) I am not over qualified to be a stock boy (though I am damned good at it) I am orthogonally qualified for other jobs.
d) yeah I am aware that a therapist would help but that self sabatoge came after 6 months of counseling and antidepressants... More effective therapy is either non existent or out of my price range.
https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-ho...
Unfortunately I've never heard about therapy for this - there's just a different medication than antidepressants - but maybe reading that would help you.
It requires a paradigm shift in the way you think, which is not easy. The first step is making a commitment to change.
Turns out it doesn't and I'm going to spend the next umpteen years saving up again for a third useless degree.
C'est la vie.
I’d recommend mindful breathing exercises and meditative practices. CBT may also help you. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Hope that helps, and best of luck to you.
On medication I don't want to die. It's not great but it's a damn sight better than the decade preceding it.
Went off medication for the summer and fall after 9 months. Failed 4 of 5 classes.
Doing the meditation and breathing and shit too. Turns out that in order to make positive changes in your life you have to be willing to make positive changes in your life. Which I'm not currently.
Like I said: c'est la vie.
Checkout 'inner engineering' on audible.com,
also try a grounding mat
I'm pretty hardcore existential-naturalist (existentialism actually was a reaction against naturalism by I am a born syncretic) and as a result the anarchy of LeGuin's the Dispossessed or Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread present more or less identical praxis but with out the need for faith in anything more than my neighbors.
A shit ton of theoretically attainable jobs seem out of reach to even the emotionally healthy. When your 20 and you just want to go to sleep and never wake up: every job seems out of reach and that number is going up.
And again I can't stress this enough. Even when healthy many many jobs seem out of reach.
Fella 'cross town said he's lookin' for a man
To move some old cars around
Maybe me and Marie could find a burned-out
Van and do a little settlin' down
Aw, but I'm just dreamin', I ain't got no ride
And the junkyard's a pretty good ways
That job's about a half week old besides
It'd be gone now anywayMaking money is a stressful endeavour. Everybody deals with stress differently. Some people like a lot of stress. Other people have a lot of difficulty with it. Often it's hard for people to understand others who are in the opposite condition (Those who have difficulty with stress are seen to be weak or lazy, those who thrive on stress are seen to be manic or even evil). It's great to at least understand yourself, and while it should not stop you from trying to become the person you want to be, it's pretty damaging to ignore who you are now.
Making money is stressful because you have a lack of control. You are either spending your time doing what others want you to do (always hanging that carrot in your face), or you are spending your time doing high risk things in the hope that it will pay off (always flirting with failure). In contrast, not spending money is an exercise in control. Everything comes from you because you do not have enough money to depend on others.
In many ways it's the complete opposite of trying to make money. You need to move to a quiet location where the cost of living is as low as possible. You have to prioritise time working for yourself over working for others. You have to cook, clean, sew, grow your own food, etc, etc for yourself. It's not easy (and not at all for everybody), but for someone who is capable it's a way of simplifying your interfaces and giving you back a sense of control.
I can't really give you specific advice because we are different, but the main thing is to view spending time for yourself as more profitable than working for someone else. For example, spending an hour making dinner for yourself is more valuable than spending an hour working to pay for going out to a restaurant. Spending time growing herbs on the windowsill (or even building a makeshift hydroponics system out of spare parts) is more valuable than buying herbs (or whatever) in the store.
It's easy to get into the mindset that $100 is an hour's work if you are paid $100 per hour. Can you generate $100 in an hour of your own time? But $100/hour is $200K per year and that $100 becomes really devalued. If you are living on $10K per year, the same $100 has a completely different value to you. At $5/hour it makes enormous sense to leverage your own time rather than collecting peanuts from others. In that very strange way, the less you make, the more valuable your time is to you -- because what you do with it becomes much more important.
I don't want to discourage your from finding ways to get past an issue that is obviously causing you a lot of pain. However taking a time out to work for yourself, rather than for others may help you get some breathing room.
But being able to save money doesn't change the ability to see possibilities as actually possible which is the fundamental reason so many people are not going into "skilled labor" trade jobs.
I'll wake up tomorrow and take a step. The upside to knowing there is no destination is that while no step takes you forward, no step takes you back either?
For me, what worked was getting another human being (my parents, in this case) to help me through getting the applications done, and following up with people I'm being avoidant about, and generally reminding me that I was being ridiculous. Also, it helped to find out that these were all really common manifestations of certain kinds of Brain Problems(tm) (anxiety in particular), which made me feel like less of a lazy worthless piece of shit and more like just a dude with a problem, and also directed me to various kinds of therapy & medication which have been helpful at fixing the issue.
Everything against everything, is me. If someone even just super passively tries to support me in an endeavor I am 1000% more likely to not do it. If they try to push me to do it I absolutely will not out of spite.
I harbor no illusions that I am particularly unique so I'm willing to bet you, or some one reading this, was exactly the same, until they weren't; unfortunately for me I am me until I'm not.
Many jobs that are requiring or preferring 4-year degrees need at best a 2-year degree, and more likely no degree (maybe a 1-4 month focused training course).
The college degree requirement typically serves as either a vanity requirement or a filter to reduce the number of applications.
In abstraction, I will say that there always is an education system of some sort that trains workers, but that system may be formal, may be informal, may be public, may be private, etc. acknowledging what role the citizens want a formal education to serve is an important discussion, imho. This is a discussion we are not really having in the US right now — at least not in a frank way.
That said, I think education should exist to train future members of society. Work training is a part of that, but there are other elements as well (social skills, communication skills, life skills, etc.).
I completely agree with your last statement, I have been troubled by America's recent move towards viewing education simply as training future workers.
An example from Wisconsin [1]:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker submitted a budget proposal that included language that would have changed the century-old mission of the University of Wisconsin system — known as the Wisconsin Idea and embedded in the state code — by removing words that commanded the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and replacing them with “meet the state’s workforce needs.”
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/02/...
You may correct regarding education and how it relates to marketable skills. However, a good tertiary education is so much more than that. It also teaches (ideally) the ability to think critically that is the foundation of an advanced society - especially a democracy.
That said, higher education costs spiraling out of control have corrupted the entire system. There is a solution though, I'm certain of it.
If you look at the bottom half (or more) of the students at most good schools, and maybe the bottom 80% or so of the students at most not-so-good schools, you will find that the desire to learn does not extend much beyond “what do I need to do to get $GRADE?” Often the desired grade is merely a passing grade. If the answer is some variation of “learn to think critically”, expect extremely poor evaluations at the end of the term and low enrollment in future semesters.
The problem as I see it is that many people do not learn the value of critical thinking skills until later in life — typically after they have actually had to use them (and noticed that they were lacking) in critical life situations. In my experience, this is why vets (as one simple example) tend to outperform non-vets with similar entrance stats (e.g., grades, SATs, etc.) at highly competitive schools.
I would prefer to see our society have a reasonable means for people to engage in proper tertiary (and actually secondary) education on a continuing basis rather than just before he age of 22.
Some people are ready to function in society younger than that, but they can't build savings for the rest of their life, do anything productive, or even have fun if you're making them spend another few years doing homework problems fulltime.
I think we could see a lot of benefit from separating an institute for higher academic pursuits from the employment and status market entirely, though I don't really have a good idea for how to go about doing that.
That's just hubris on your behalf. Regarding 60k being high paying - for a job at 20, that's A LOT. For a job at 40, that's pretty good.
These interviews are with apprentices! They're still in training and they're make $55k+ with benefits.
Depending on the trade, an apprenticeship usually lasts 3-5 years, with pay increasing along the way. By the end you'll be a journeyman, earning probably 50% more per hour. If you're a specialist or a leader (foreman), you'll get more pay on top of that. Call it an average 4 years, that's a six-figure advantage over someone who went to college, assuming they invest nothing and the college student pays in cash.
Being union and hourly also means they will get overtime when the crunch comes. And it will. An executive somewhere will always change their mind and decide they want Y instead of X.
>I wouldn't do much of that dangerous and exhausting work for double that pay range and I would still make less money than I do sitting at a desk now.
Industrial construction work in particular can be hard, but I wouldn't call it exhausting. You get less of a workout than you would in the gym—you need to be able to do it 40 hours a week, after all.
>I can put in <35 hrs a week, run errands during the day, work from home in my underwear, meet friends for long lunches.
Back when I was in an industrial trade, I could show up to work, do my job and that was it. I'd go home with a nice gloss of sweat on me, take a shower, and feel good. I took zero stress home with me. I looked damn good.
Most importantly to me, though, at the end of the job, when I was talking to someone or just reflecting on my own work, I could point to a hotel, an office tower, a bridge, a federal building, and so on, and say, "We built that. I built that." And I did. And it felt good.
$60k salary x 4 years = +$240k
vs
$25k tuition X 4 years = -$100k (state school [1])
$50k tuition X 4 years = -$200k (private school)
Of course there are other intangibles to be had from working, such as learning personal responsibility at a younger age ;-)
[1] https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tm...
Of course, there are the other factors that others are discussing. Plus things like interest (on loans and investments).
It's the nature of the business.
This is more in the compliance sector, but I get what you're trying to get at.
2680 sq. ft., $44,900 -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1-Hillcrest-Dr-1-Marysvil...
2268 sq. ft., $37,000 -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/505-Francis-St-Daykin-NE-...
2187 sq. ft., $39,900 -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1941-S-Broadway-Ave-Wichi...
4462 sq. ft., $400,000 on 5 acres -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6472-N-431-Pryor-OK-74361...
2208 sq. ft., $14,900 -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/353-E-24th-St-Erie-PA-165...
What I meant was that you can get a big gorgeous home on a nice lot in a great neighborhood for $100k.
Secondly, depending on where you live that is a lot of money. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and my parents home is only worth $250k. It's 4 bedroom, 2 car garage, finished basement, on a 1/2 acre.
So...yes, you can make decent money, and beginning sooner than you would if you get a degree. It's economically a viable thing, especially if you enjoy the work (I occasionally think I would like to be outside more for my work, and there are a lot of trade skills I enjoy learning and doing for fun...I plan to build my own house with my own two hands someday not too far in the future). But, if you do, you should start investing in being able to leave the field by the time you're in your 50s (or even earlier), because you're probably going to find yourself in a situation where working is painful or not possible. Or, join a union. That can help, and the most successful guys I know who've done that kind of work for decades are union members, and they know they're protected in the event of a variety of mishaps.
Thinking of it in economic terms, labor is not a homogeneous factor. We are not interchangeable cogs in some machine.
Shunting anyone into vocational training — or into a college-bound track, for that matter! — because of ignorant ideas about anyone’s “place” in society is evil and wrong.
The lack of pay commensurate to the risk of injury, variable work schedules, not being home every night, etc causes the status.
That's comparable to the median household income in Sweden. It's ~150% higher than the median individual income in the UK.
Skilled trades often pay moderately well in the US.
But do many people want to tell their kid that they're probably not good enough to compete for the cushy jobs, and that they should go for the trades instead?
Mine wanted to be a game programmer when he was 12. Now, at 17, he's discovered that he loves welding and is pretty good at it. He wants to get certified and be a professional welder.
Living on a farm, he's used to hard work outdoors at temperature extremes and does it without complaint. If he wants to be a welder instead of a software engineer, I'm all for it.
The reason young people got out of the trades was entirely due to the Great Recession, which eliminated any opportunity people graduating between 2004 and 2012 had of ever having a career in these fields. There's no reason to take on apprentices when you can get a desperate person with a decade of experience for the same pay.
The people who trained in those careers just a few years earlier retrained for new jobs and new people never bothered to get training for jobs they knew didn't exist. The only people that stuck it out were those who were lucky or desperate.
A very large proportion of parents would say that their ambition is for their children to go to college and get a "good" job, with "good" invariably meaning white-collar. There's still a widespread intuition that college is the best or only route into a middle-class lifestyle, but many degrees have a negligible impact on earning potential net of tuition costs.
Most college graduates aren't going into six-figure jobs in the tech industry. A large proportion are aspiring to relatively poorly-paid roles in education, healthcare and the service industry. Plumbing pays better than most non-tenure track jobs in academia, but "my son the plumber" carries a very different set of cultural and emotional baggage than "my son the lecturer".
The most popular undergraduate degree in the US currently is in psychology. But there aren't that many psychologists.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/15/the-6-most-popular-college-m...
People like to look down their nose at people whose jobs they couldn’t do if they tried. They also like to pretend like everybody is stupid for doing them. If nobody did any of those jobs, Mr Smartypants, you’d be dead in a gutter somewhere because you can’t take care of yourself.
Are we talking about doctors or plumbers?
I really do think it is wrong that people look down their noses at other people because of their profession or even worse, that society has made some people ashamed of what they do - good, honest work. That is where this resentment comes from.
At some point in my life I realized that everyone was ignorant about something (maybe most things!). I wouldn’t look down on people who can’t turn a wrench/program a computer/cook a meal/shoot straight/etc. just because I/you can.
And out here, "...look at me and your uncle...", or "...look at your older sister or brother...", is usually a fairly compelling argument. As is having a degree when all of the construction jobs go belly up.
Young people aren't given a clear picture of their options. A bachelor's degree is often treated like a golden ticket to the middle class, rather than a very expensive and often questionably useful qualification.
I think a lot of people would be surprised how popular Nursing degrees are in my neck of the woods. I don't know if they are popular nationwide, but Nursing out here is seen by many, (young ladies especially), as a ticket out of the ghetto or the trailer park.
Three years out of high school, with 4 more to go before I finished my University education, I was back home for a weekend. I met up with a buddy of mine from high school to grab a beer at the local pub in town and we ran into another guy from our year- Let's call him 'Jim'. My friend had been sort of friends with Jim in grade 8 or something so he wound up sitting down with us for a bit.
The most astounding part to me was that Jim wasn't in prison. I mean, Jim had been the kind of guy even in high school where he probably should have been arrested a dozen times for the trouble he got up to. Seeing him a free man was like "wow, he made it" on its own. He wasn't a dumb brute, but he wasn't the type for University either.
We got talking about what we'd been up to. Me: education and debt; my friend: similar story. But Jim had gone out west to Alberta and gotten himself a welder's license. Training for 8 months right after high school, paid for by the oil companies. Making $80k/year[0], more if he put in the extra time. Had almost saved up enough to buy that welding rig for his truck and then he could go independent and probably bring in $120k or more- again, depending on how hard he wanted to work.
We were 22-ish, and in terms of lifetime income, Jim was probably close to $200k ahead of us with zero debts.
I suspect that in the last decade, I may have caught up. Maybe. I've had a good career so far. But not if Jim's been working hard that whole time. If he has, and if he's saved and invested wisely, then he's still long ahead of me. (Or if he's in prison- then I might catch up!).
[0]All monetary amounts in Canadian dollars, but you know around 2007 we were above the USD in value.
Man some of the comments in this thread really are disgusting.
The reality is though that what universities prize- this strange form of 'smart' that involves sitting and reading for hours on end, usually of subjects that have no meaning towards the actual career objective- is not a skill that needed to get a trades degree. There, everything you learn is specially needed in the job you'll do. And there's a lot of kids right now sitting in University classrooms desperate to learn something practical while going deep into debt to learn something else.
That's not a form of 'smart,' but a form of discipline that greatly influences how successful a person will be. Lots of careers require people to spend hours learning material that they have absolutely no interest in for the sole purpose of achieving some goal.
Lawyers don't give a crap about Clark v. West Virginia, but there might be a time when they need to learn ever single detail of the case because it is relevant to their job. The same situation applies to many top-tier careers.
Have you ever worked a trades job? It takes "smarts" to be a good HVAC technician...it involves knowing and understanding practical thermodynamics, electricity, and mechanics.
Due to the evolving nature of the equipment that mechanical and electrical technicians work on, they now have to know how the equipment works, how its networked, and how to troubleshoot any problem involving the equipment. It isn't uncommon, at least in the industry I work in, to find technicians that have extensive knowledge of electronics, electrical/mechanical equipment, and even have their CCNA and good networking/system administration knowledge.
What I'm trying to say is that you don't need grades or genius to get in the door. And once you're in, smarts will help, sure, but hard work pays off more.
you can make a lot of money in the trades (really, a lot) if you open your own business though, but that's a whole different skillset.
edit* 50k in seattle
also, what is the upwards mobility like in these types of jobs? anecdotally, it seems like managers on construction sites went to college. I imagine it tops out, kind of like software development, until you reach a managerial or director level.
The median HH income in the US is 60k/y. So he is almost making the median, and that's as a newbie, and with no partner. If he had a partner making minimum wage, he'd be over the median. After he gets a few more years of experience, he'll be over the median. Yeah, I'd say that's pretty good.
Women represent just 4 percent of the workforce in natural resources, construction and maintenance, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Their underrepresentation in such high-paying industries is one key reason that women earn, on average, 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, the agency said.
What would have to happen for this lopsided gender imbalance to change?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-women-in-trades-04...
A big part of it is that many women are interested, but don't like the way they're treated on the job site.
Mine worked for a lawn care company. She hates offices and would rather be outdoors. However, although she liked the actual work, she got sick of being around idiots who thought that since she was a woman she was automatically incapable of getting anything done. The company owner liked her work ethic and even asked her to come back after she quit, but the atmosphere was simply too toxic to be worth it.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40525199/just-2-of-vc-dollars-we...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/05/tesla-sex...
There's nothing that can "fix" that.
Currently, software development is completely unregulated, requires no formal education or credentials, and is solely assessed on experienced. That said software development has far more in common with iron working, mechanics, music performance, and construction than it does something like law, medicine, or real estate.
I know people like to talk up their profession with their high priced education and the trappings of the fancy corporate environments. Honestly, most software developers are little more than skilled button pushers. Very few of the people paid to write software are computer scientists, actually use or benefit from any form of graduate education, or are inventing new concepts in software.
The application of that knowledge is how and why things are different. I actually asked a friend of mine, programmer-turned-lawyer, how similar the two were based off your premise. To him, there are completely unrelated skill sets that differentiate the two.
I'm sure some subset of lawyers overlaps with what some subset of software engineers do, generically speaking, but a practicing lawyer winning cases and a software engineer actually writing code are very different beasts.
This article is drumming up support for the idea of taxing Amazon and other big businesses to build affordable housing.
However, that kind of policy would also hurt society by discouraging mixing of people with different jobs, so really housing should not be based on pay at all. First come first serve seems more appropriate unless there's a demonstrated hardship.
Going full socialism would need some more, well, socializing.
I guess "high-paying" is a matter of degree, and cities are really expensive.
And as wierd vicious cycle, when you're short on bodies have less tolerance for people learning the ropes. So the number of will-train job ads probably isn't going to increase anytime soon.
The need a job to get a job thing is actually pretty universal. "Have you been unemployed for more than 30 days in the last 6 months: explain" is actually a stock question on applications.
1) Trade jobs are notoriously hard on the body, and often result in much longer hours compared to office workers. Also, hours are not flex. You cannot work from home, you can't pick your kids up from school early.
2) Trade jobs can be very boom bust, far more than people realize. When it's good, it's very good, but there's no guaranteed income stream. When the economy is down, trades are hit very hard. There's no internationalized income stream as there are with global corporations.
3) Many trade jobs don't have many of the cushy benefits that corporate employees do, such as 401k with match, generous vacation time, paternity leave, etc. Maybe this will change as demand increases.
4) Some trade jobs don't result in easily transferable skills. For example, a manager of a team can use those skills to manage most teams and shift industries. A mason isn't able to become an electrician without significant work.
5) Status. Corporate office worker has a certain status in society. Is this fair or equitable? Probably not. But it does exist.
Germany for example does something I like a lot. There is a mix between trade schools and universities. You can become a doctor in Germany by going to a trade school, they are paid during the programs. But Germany also has the whole free university thing and doesn't have a hang-up on trade skills being lower class. I figure this is because careers such as Doctors can be obtained through trade schools.
I personally make 6 figures, and live in a major city that doesn't have inflated cost of living like most of California and NYC. My income alone is more than double the average household in my city. I don't have anything more than a high school degree and I work in tech, in fact a degree hasn't ever been a barrier for me employment-wise except at an engineering firm, at the firm I couldn't have engineer in my job title but I still got paid the same or more then those with engineer in theirs.
There's no prestige in underemployment/no-employment after graduation. Everyone knows someone for whom you attended their graduation party and then six months later they're still working retail..
"around 44% of college graduates ages 22 to 27 work in jobs that do not require a college degree. " https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2017/07/13/new-y...
I think trade jobs have the highest long term stability risk IMHO but this is based on anecdotal evidence
Sever folks I know when from the mid 2000s (post crash) learned trades from plumbing to carpenters to skilled machining. Only the skilled machinist has not been laid off at least once nor had to move for where they live to get work (or travel more than 20 minutes)
My engineer graduate friends? Never even faced possible unemployment
The growth lives somewhere. You do have to make an effort to stay marketable though and that can be tough
How is that any different from programming? I know a few COBOL programmers who did very well in 1999 - after that, not so much...
So person A might want to take an electrician's ticket first so they then have a decent paying sideline while at university. Person B might want to study at University first for their own interests like art history for example, and then plan to take a trade's ticket later because the work environment of a trade is often better paid and much superior to the back biting office environment of many 'management' positions.
Also, one of the other cited professions, professors, are paid considerably less than that.
Also, do remember that the doctors that do make that kind of money, have student loan payments on $250k-$500k loans
I don't know the most reliable sites for stating pay for doctors, but in my experience these numbers are accurate:
https://careertrend.com/starting-salary-doctors-right-out-re...
http://time.com/4408807/surgeon-salary-how-much-doctors-make...
https://blog.doximity.com/articles/doximity-2018-physician-c...
The occupation of a doctor is a position of power. You always have people working under you -- nurses, students, medical staff. The fundamental interaction between patient and doctor has a power imbalance. The patient comes to the doctor for help and listens to the doctor's authority in the subject.
It's also a more social position than SWE. You talk to people as part of your job. I can get by never talking to anyone as a SWE. It's easier to accumulate a balanced social group as a doctor.
There is a bit of the life saving aspect of it, but people in my experience hold successful business owners, prominent lawyers, hedge fund managers and traders in similar regard. People that make more money useful and know other people who also make more money are or can be useful to you, hence the status. I'm sure some engineers working at Google/Facebook/Apple/etc have similar statuses.
A truly successful business owner is the best IMO -- it's the only one that isn't capped in the amount of money you can earn, but society is jaded by people who have "Entrepreneur" as their occupation on LinkedIn and just occasionally do photography or whatever.
I would say "EM at Google" is better than a GP, but orthopedic surgeon is better than "EM at Google".
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Tech doesnt have nearly the regulation, the slow pace of innovation, and lack of mobility that medicine has. Professors are the worst and are not well paid at all, unless they are able to do consulting on the side.
I personally have owned my own company for around 18 years. I dont care about status, but I want to generate enough $$ to not have to worry about money.
The money I make is about the same as my friends that are at top tier jobs in the bay area. Though my income fluctuates between 300-600k and theirs tends to be more steady.
My wife doesnt work and so many of my friends with two more modest tech incomes make about the same as I do.
> Professors are the worst and are not well paid at all
Not from the professors I know (engineering fields). That information is also public in many cases. They're not making your 300k-600k, but it's extremely stable, a position of power, prestigious because of the requirements, and it gets more prestigious with time.
I suspect with software engineering there is age discrimination against older people. Older doctors are wise and more experienced, older engineers are outdated and retiring soon?
My dental surgeon was recently paid $650 to remove a wisdom tooth, which took him and 1 nurse a total of 5 minutes. Even if you assume 75% of that is overhead, that is still $170 per hour and he immediately went on to see other patients.
I googled for life time earnings by profession and found this document by the US census bureau that makes it seem like they earn similarly (and engineers make a bit more), but they mix nurses and technicians together with doctors and surgeons.
You are still below professors if you measure success by the number of coeds that want to sleep with you regardless of how you look like but you can always find solace in being able to afford to spend $200 on dinner.
From all that experience, as well as my own personal experience having friends from multiple types of backgrounds, I have observed the follow again, my own experience and opinions:
This is what I found to be true: - People who do trade jobs are respected by most (if not all) my quote unquote 'intellectual' or 'upper class' friends (those smart enough to value their labor, myself included) Even my friends or the friends of my parents growing up who where multimillionaires (including one family who had 2 state governors in it). I know this isn't universal, just a general observation. - They have always tended to favor policies (politically speaking) & outlooks that would actually benefit this group of folks the most - There isn't any classicism bias in as so far as I could tell among anyone I know who would be defined as well educated, wealthy, upper class etc.
However, I see this stigma come up a lot, and I have to wonder, is it those looking down or those looking above who perpetuate it? I say that because: - Being around a lot of families that had roots in working trades, I found they often would have resent against those who they considered 'upper class', without much or any evidence as to why this opinion has formed. I always found this fascinating, because its typically their target market (with exceptions of course). - Most trades people I knew typically didn't seem to value education as much (i know its a stereotype, but it did play out in my experience) - Many, many MANY (with the exception of the ever dwindling Unionized tradesmen) favored economic/political policies and had outlooks that would be long term damaging to them (One of the biggest protesters where I grew up of universal health care? Ironically, those who aren't poor enough for govt assistance but aren't well off enough to pay full flight for their medical care (even after insurance). E.g. Those who would benefit the most!) - And often, these are the folks who look down on their own jobs the most.
Now, all of these have caveats, exceptions, edge cases, what have you. I knew those who worked trades that did value education, had lots of logical & grounded philosophical beliefs, etc etc etc and I grew up around people who had carpentry businesses who were multimillionaires before they were 40. So its not hard and fast how this plays out.
I know i'm rambling a bit here, but I feel like this stigma may not be caused by those looking down, but perhaps, those looking up.
Meanwhile, I know some tradespeople that are 1. smarter than most people I went to college with. 2. make more money than most people I went to college with. 3. harder working and arguably more valuable to society than most people who I went to college with.
A few things I've observed: • My parents aren't intellectual, but they aren't stupid. They read a fair bit. My dad can be pretty dismissive towards academics, but is very pro-learning. • They're pretty conservative - both socially, but more importantly, financially. This seems to be pretty entrenched in their group.
This thread is pretty instructive, in that you've got highly paid techies saying "$60k isn't much money vs what I can make." I think the stereotype in tradespeople not being seen from a position of high status is that there's a very real ceiling on how much you can make (in the same way that there is working for the government).
But there's also got to be something said for the fact that the people making the big jumps in life (at least from a perception point of view) have all gone to college. My parents might have started their careers blue collar - and my Grandparents were all blue collar throughout their careers, but every single grandchild on both sides of the family to date, has gone or is studying at University.
College can do this. So can changing jobs. So can travel.
He then proceeded to describe the difference in income of what a plumber makes in comparison to your average CS grad over 10 years.
Needless to say, it was quite an eye opening experience (this is in the UK by the way, not sure how well plumbers do in the US)
of course it's hard to compare statistics, but 40k pounds a year would be somewhere around normal for a dev with a couple years' experience?
whereas $70-80k would be low for a similar developer in the US, and you're making $100k+ if you go to work for a big tech company straight out of college.
i've heard people speculate, without much justification, that this is a CP Snow "two cultures" thing, where a sort of British aristocratic spirit means that engineering and other fields requiring applied scientific knowledge are lower status than other professional fields like law or finance. (if this applies to medicine as well, it would explain the lower status of doctors in the UK.)
10 years ago £500-600/day was fairly standard for consulting gigs (>£100K/year vs £60K/year as a senior engineer employee.) In London there was plenty of contracting work and could easily count on working full time on six month contracts. Outside of London the pay was a little less and the opportunities further between but with the lower cost of living it ended up about a wash.
Working in Silicon Vally now, the big advantage is the availability of super-senior engineering roles that only really exist in organizations with 1000s of software engineers.
By my estimation, software engineers in the UK are on about the same social rung as solicitors or accountants. I think doctors still enjoy a high social status in the UK, just without the high salaries (or huge student loans!) of the US.
Of course the golden age of factory work has dried up but trade skills aren't in a position to dry up like that. Even with all the hype around machine learning and automation the skilled craftsman trades won't be automated away anytime soon, in fact software developers themselves are likely to be automated largely away before the trades. Along with other fields of IT.
Some might argue technology will replace some trades like plumbing that uses self healing polymers but someone still has to place the plumbing, someone still has to replace it when the damage is greater than the self healing capacity. The people replacing it won't be the engineers designing the polymers it will be the plumbers. If we ever increase space exploration and colonization guess what will be needed? Trade skills...
Automated construction will start in the next 10 years.
I'm curious as to what 30 years of sitting, programming, drinking cool-aid will do to health vs 30 years of lugging steel... Trawler fishing, I agree - v.dangerous, not good for you!
>Automated construction will start in the next 10 years.
Possibly, maybe - but more likely 20 or more; and emphasis start.
In those 30 years, you will likely accumulate injuries that make it harder to keep doing the work. My father is a general contractor, and though he does the work far less often than those who work for him, he has accumulated a number of minor injuries that stay with him.
Doubt it. It is one field where productivity has not seen increases at all[0]. Plenty of advances in technology demonstrations, but these really are not translating into improvements on sites.
[0] https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Capital...
I do somewhat envy/admire what they do because it's more of a physical skill and keeps the body strong and in motion unlike sitting in front of a computer 9-5. Trade jobs are underrated and hopefully won't be replaced completely in the future.
Computer jockeys, meanwhile, may suffer from some RSI from typing, or injuries from falling off their Boosted Board or rockclimbing.
The majority of OSHA regulations out there are meant to protect people in the trades. Let's not romanticise things: white collar workers have it easy when it comes to toils on the body. If you get injured, you can probably take a few days off, work from home, heal properly.
In the trades, you pop some Ibuprofen and suck it up. Sit out injured too long and you're out of a job, unless you happen to win some workman's comp lottery.
In addition, lots of risks with sedentary behavior are preventable: eat well, take frequent breaks, go for a walk after dinner, etc.
Then give them a higher wage, institute better benefits, and/or facilitate more employee training.
Oh, and if we're expecting kids to do trade jobs and not attend a 4 year college, then our schools sure as heck better do a good job teaching geometry and algebra as they won't have remedial college courses to fall back on and trades often make use of such skills (especially as mechatronics is increasingly integrated into trades such as carpentry, machining, etc... soon everything).
It is a shame that we push an expensive college degree on people who will end up getting paid less and having less job security.
I once remarked to a nephew who was thinking about what to do after high school that he should consider a trade. His parents overheard, and though they agreed it was good pay they didn't want their son doing that kind of work.
Upon reflection, I wouldn't want my son to do that kind of work as well, as it's usually hard work and not looked upon favorably.
It is just the way we are wired.
What people are really judging is how exclusive and useful to them you are. More people can qualify to be a plumber (hence their lower wages), than they can to be a doctor/lawyer/other similarly high wage careers. The latter also have more valuable people in their networks that are also valuable.
Unattractive trade jobs sit empty
Not very clickbaity
edit for speculation
Young people see trades as something that will be automated away and there is little future in them. Thanks AI headlines!
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-...
1. $50,000 is not enough money to become a homeowner by yourself and not nearly enough for upward mobility. Missing 4 years of college and the ability to mingle within your peers is a significant part of the rising cost of college. There are articles that show womens preferences towards men with similar education levels.
2. When you account for the health hazards and potential issues down the road with your joints and other components of your body, the pay isn't that high. Cost of medical coverage continues to rise and I'm not sure that going into the trades or into business for yourself in general is a valid path for the majority of high school graduates.
3. There are high paying skilled trades, but they have caveats of their own. For example, underwater welding, is not only extremely dangerous, but also, very likely, seasonal and not anchored to any one location, requiring someone to be constantly mobile.
4. What matters isn't how much the job pays compared to a state or national average. It's whether it pays more than the median for the radius where the tradesperson will be operating.
So his chances to marry are not that bad, assuming the dude wants to marry settle down and have kids. Marriage does not require home ownership either.
1900 sq. ft., $44,900 -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/709-East-St-Spencer-SD-57...
2342 sq. ft., $46,500 -- https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/KS/77201215_zpid/23_ri...
1800 sq. ft., $39,900 -- https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/WV/2089907837_zpid/61_...
You might as well have linked properties in India.
One wonders how much they are paid in high CoL places like the Bay Area.
A hard lesson to learn, and one I wish my school had given me, is that nobody tells you anything in America. Our social safety net is a good job market.