You view of trades work is romanticized. The labor is grueling for 90% of the bodies on any given site. Some days you can sit in your truck and play on your phone for 8-20 hours until you get sent back to the roach motel with 2-3 other guys to come back in 8-12 hours to do it again. Other days it's 100F, and you're standing on asphalt or concrete all day boiling in your sweat rushing through a month of labor in a couple weeks to meet the deadline. You're only rushing after two weeks of sitting on your hands because the paperwork got messed up and that precisely ordered $10k of sheeting, or brick, or wire isn't the right color so the entire plan needs to be recertified. The culture is toxic. The labor will break your body and if you don't get addicted to heroin to make it through your day you're probably an alcoholic and are probably a smoker. The guys who are making 100k+ are site engineers, masters on jobs they're there to fix, or are honestly overpaid. Most masters I know are 60-90k and would love to have a job cushy enough to sit around and complain about on the internet during the work day.