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Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while holding each other's calloused hands at the alter.

Sure, but the money for that has to come from somewhere. Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money, and if "working-class, blue-collar" people identify with the economic system which designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, I'm not sure how much I can do about that.

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>Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money, and if "working-class, blue-collar" people identify with the economic system which designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, I'm not sure how much I can do about that.

Maybe by pointing to blue collar work that still pays well. A buddy of mine is an auto mechanic and is the sole income earner for his family. They do just fine in St Louis (another city like Detroit and Pitt). Another friend of mine is a pipe fitter for gas pipelines who works 3-6 months a year and earns ~150-200K depending on contracts. Spends the rest of the year surfing and diving.

Trades do, in fact, make money. Pay attention to how much you spend next time you call a plumber.

I totally agree. My parents own a 'cabin' in a development in the mountains, and the biggest cabin in the development -by far- is owned by a a plumber. He has done very well, and I doubt he writes much, if any, code.

You’d be surprised! My dad is a builder, and programs his own utility software (in Access and other systems) to make his life easier (like work diaries, log books and so on)

Well put! I shouldn't assume.

> Pay attention to how much you spend next time you call a plumber.

How many tradesmen are self-employed? I think business-owning plumbers would be equivalent to consultants in the software world, and their billed income (per hour) is way above average for the field.

> Pay attention to how much you spend next time you call a plumber.

Anecdotal, but the average quote I got for electricians in the bay area was $200/hour. This is also consistent for electricians in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago (just had a friend recently get work done at that price). I recently paid $2k to get a transmission done, of which $1700 was labor alone (took 3 days).

Point is - these trades are no joke when it comes to earning income, especially if you're talented.

I'm a serious proponent of promoting vocational jobs. Even in an "AI world" you're still going to need mechanics. Basically anything with moving parts needs labor.

Where did that $2k come from? While it's nice there is some way to redistribute wealth in this way, unfortunately service sector jobs don't create wealth: you can not have a city solely of repairmen and realtors.

Less skilled factory work would generate wealth, but unfortunately those are the exact jobs that left.

>service sector jobs don't create wealth: you can not have a city solely of repairmen and realtors.

Repairmen very directly create wealth by adding value to the thing they repair, equivalent to a craft trade or construction. Realtors create wealth indirectly by increasing/facilitating trade, trade creates wealth.

What is "wealth"?

If car built in a factory is useful for 10 years without repairs, but useful for 30 years with repairs, the mechanics add 20 years of useful life to the car. Does that not increase wealth?

I'd argue it increases utility, not wealth. It'd increase wealth if that vehicle was used in a business to generate income.

While you are entitled to your definition, I thought I'd throw in one of the original PG definitions:

> Suppose you own a beat-up old car. Instead of sitting on your butt next summer, you could spend the time restoring your car to pristine condition. In doing so you create wealth.[0]

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

If you have a $35,0000 truck with a blown transmission, then your repair-person just created $35,000 - $2,000 - whatever_that_truck_would_have_worth_as_scrap_parts.

Electricians, Plumbers, Roofers, Drywallers, auto-motive repair to some degree, are the one who actually create/repair/restore the only physical infrastructure that actually matters. My Twitter, Facebook, Instagram could all disappear, and it would probably have no (real) impact on me. But take away electricity, water, roof, walls, transportation - I'll notice within a few minutes.

In my mind, those are the people who create real wealth.

I think what the parent poster meant was if the whole town is filled with service providers, their customers must also be from the same local area. But if there are no other jobs for those customers to work at (to bring outside money into the community), they won't be able to afford those services. Local trade with each other (mechanic selling services to an electrician, the electrician doing work for a roofer, and the roofer putting a new roof on the the mechanic's workshop) falls apart when you don't have money flowing into the area from outside (i.e., building trucks to sell to people in other cities).

Edit: After seeing the downvotes on the parent post, and a couple similar ones, I think people are reading "creating wealth" vs. "not creating wealth" as value judgements on the people in those industries. Whereas in this context I think they mean in the purely economic / accounting sense, similar to "cost centers" and "profit centers" in businesses. Without profit centers, the business would crumble, but without the value that the cost centers bring to the business, the profit centers wouldn't be able to function.

So just like Silicon Valley needs to find a way to not price service workers (janitors, mechanics, etc) out of the area, other places need the same healthy balance of money flowing into the area along with a local economy to distribute that money around.

The $1700 labor cost isn't really labor, it also includes overhead like rent, utilities, general supplies, insurance, etc. Some of those costs are also covered by the markup in parts, but not when parts only cost $300.

If it took a full 3 days that's 24 hours of work, or around $70/hour, probably half of that went to the employee which gives him around $70K/year salary, not much in the bay area.

> If it took a full 3 days that's 24 hours of work

I should have clarified. It took 3 days end to end. It's unlikely the actual labor was 24 hours (the tech even admitted that once they take the transmission apart they have to let it soak in lubricant).

> rent, utilities, general supplies, insurance, etc.

Of course. But as you can probably imagine, most auto shops skimp on those costs as much as possible. The point is, a developer charging $200/hr (even remote) for their time is also paying for insurance, workspace, computer, internet connection, etc.

How much of the high labour costs actually goes to the owner of the shop not the guy/gal doing the work.

Yup, I had a leaking roof during the last rainstorm and the emergency repair cost me $800 for 1 hour of work. Still happy with it because the potential damage would have been much worse.

A while back I needed some sprinkler work done.. normally I would have attempted it myself but due to health issues I can't do it anymore... and the lowest cost gardener was $200 for 30 minutes worth of work. There is still money in the blue collar trades for someone willing to run a business.

Just for perspective, these jobs are a bit different than regular contracting or hourly jobs. Although the hourly rate seems high, often we exclude the travel time. Also the uneven demand. For example- On a rainy day, there might be 10 calls but they can only take a few and on sunny days they'd be lucky to get a call.

Sadly, this is the sort of advice that would work for anybody, but won't work for everybody. :(

Specifically, if more folks were trying to follow this advice, it would begin to fail in predictable ways.

When the factory closes, whose car do you repair? When the factory closes, whose plumbing do you fix? When the factory closes, whose house to you build?

As all of these cities aptly demonstrate, plumbing and auto mechanic jobs aren't a panacea for disappearing factory jobs.

This is why I'm a big advocate (but not affiliate) of the "mikeroweWORKS" foundation. Mike Rowe, from the TV show "Dirty Jobs", is using his foundation to revive interest in trade schools and jobs. There are a lot of people who could be great machinists, electricians, plumbers, etc., but due to social pressures, they start college and soon drop out, then work for peanuts (if they can find any job at all). We need to eliminate the stigma against trade schools and encourage people to work with their hands if that's their passion.

http://profoundlydisconnected.com/foundation/

I'm a big fan of his foundation too, but I often find myself wondering whether the stigma is the biggest problem. I looked into becoming an electrician awhile back, and the path to licensure seemed long and expensive. Contra that path, I'm sure we all know very successful self-educated programmers. Maybe the licensure and training expense is totally necessary, or maybe it could be improved through regulation reforms or apprenticeship instead of for-pay training. I really don't know enough about these industries to say, but it seems possible. It also seems like that would be likely to result in those jobs no longer paying such top dollar. Put a different way: it seems like if Mike Rowe were extremely successful in his initiatives on this front, the result may be that the jobs he is advocating are no longer as attractive as they currently are.

Having said all that, I'll be very angry with myself if my future children graduate high school thinking that college is the only next step that would make their loved ones proud, like it was for me and my friends.

Here's what the BLS has to say about that. https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

I think about this when people post about how you don;t really need a college degree, you just need a trade. I have no doubt that some tradesmen do very well but I doubt they represent the entire class of workers.

I do wonder what the numbers would look like if trained tradesmen (and women) were compared based on time spent learning (e.g. years of apprenticeship vs. years of college.)

I think the "everyone can be a millionaire via college" mentality has created a focus on higher education (engineering, medical school, law school etc.) ... and dissuaded people from professions which may be very worthwhile (welder, autoshop-owner) ... but will cap out at wages of $200k-$300k.

We've made these jobs seem "dirty" and low class when they're not.

Agreed. Most people you know will never make 300k a year. The vast majority are unlikely to make 200k. And in most of the country anything over 100k is seen as doing well and rising. Building something based on a trade and "only" making 200k is laughing all the way to the bank in most cases.

The irony is that a lot (I would even say, most) of what's being done in the software engineering field is really more of a trade, and would likely benefit from being treated accordingly - including having trade schools rather than colleges teaching that stuff. I'm sure there are other industries like that.

When enough people realize just how much of it is smoke and mirrors, I think the common snobbery towards those "dirty" jobs would dissipate. Right now, it's self-reinforcing, because being "better than those guys" is part of white collar identity, regardless of pay. It reminds me of the racial arrangement in Jim Crow South, where even the most poor whites would find solace in that they're not on the lowest rung of the social ladder.

The various bootcamps and accelerator programs may end up, in the end, morphing into a form of "trade school" for software engineers.

Why would it benefit software engineering or the workers? it would benefit employers as they could reduce salary costs and working conditions.

Also this would require employers to commit to training in away they will not want to do and because of the one size fits all they would have to pay for a generic learn the needed skills and knowledge.

It's less about the cap and more about the wage curve. Some industries are extremely punishing. As a musician you either make nothing or millions. As an architect you get paid poverty wages or you're internationally famous and can name your price.

If you're a welder you'll get a very good starting wage, and while it will never hit stratospheric levels, the upper end when you you've had years of experience and have worked to increase your qualifications can be extraordinarily generous.

I know two highly qualified welders that work on oil plant equipment and they make so much money they can afford to take half the year off to do whatever they want. You don't want random idiots welding pipes in a billion dollar plant, and you need to pay for that kind of talent.

Consider: Tech workers often get paid very well, but I don't know of many that get overtime.

But the % of former blue collar workers who have the interest and can go though the academic requirements is small (and most of that cohort today go to Uni).

For example the requirements to go on my technician course in the UK back in the day required 6 O levels (exams taken at 16) for the Bank only 4. Ok it was a specialized for the local industry themo fluids one.

Trades pay very well with just a high school education.

> "Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money`" is just flat out wrong. That line of thinking is a major contributing factor to the shortage of labor in blue collar fields, along with mass amounts of young adults with crippling college debt.

Trades pay well with a customer base to support them.

The core problem is, ultimately, the customer base is led by the white collar jobs who lack the skills to perform those tasks.

The blue collar tradesmen, frankly, has the skills to avoid buying services from each other. I know a mechanic that does her own plumbing, electrical, etc. She'd never try to make money at it but to the best of my knowledge the only time she hired anyone was to get the HVAC installed. That was largely a size/experience issue with a crane to move it into her backyard over the fence.

People will always own houses. People will always be too lazy to learn how to do things themselves. But thats besides the point, the real money in trades is commercial work, not residential.

To clarify, the people working by staring at computers are also seen as a cost to be repressed and not a service to be rewarded. Supply and demand has made the cost resistant to repression up til now, but the economic system is hard at work finding out how to change that.

One might even go so far as to postulate if the IT industries push to get more people into IT is so that labor supply goes up leading to labor costs going down.

> One might even go so far as to postulate if the IT industries push to get more people into IT is so that labor supply goes up leading to labor costs going down.

This has been discussed in great detail, especially here on HN. The consensus seems to be that even if you increase the supply by a lot, the nature of Software Engineering, its inherent complexity will restrict the supply of the highly skilled workers. This theory seems to have held out in the Indian/Chinese labor markets; but its possible there are other systemic reason for that.

Meanwhile the demand for Technology skills keeps increasing rapidly. Perhaps in the next economic bust there will be a much-delayed correction. The future does look pretty rosy for Software Engineers at the present time.

A critical aspect of that is the distribution of engineering skill is bimodal, if not multi modal.

People want a lot of top end coders. The lower and middle, far less so.

Lumping all comp sci labor into one skill and ability bracket prevents nuanced understanding.

I also wonder if, in some ways, devops (I mean the "idea", not the engineers themselves) could be commoditizing IT people (not implying there's some conspiracy), blurring the distinction between devs and sysadmins in particular.

Well you could say the same about the entirety of "the cloud" ... no need to pay a team of sysadmins to manage, deploy, and maintain a data center, when you can easily provision a VM in seconds, or even better, use a SaaS offering so you don't even have to worry about applying patches and stuff ;)

I'm old enough to remember when a significant part of the "dream of the Internet" was that knowledge workers could work anywhere with an ISP.

Obviously that dream was not widely realized, but there are some employers that will allow you to write code from the countryside.

Remote working is becoming more and more accepted as time goes on, and collaboration technologies improve. Video chat is by far one of the most useful things about being on a remote team, in addition to things like git/pull request workflows making it simple and async-by-default to work with others.

I've got news for you. Unless you own the business, your work of any kind is a cost to be repressed.

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