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Comment by Apreche | Hacker News Reader

Only someone doing dangerous and rare types of welding, such as underwater welding, will make a ton of money. The trade-off is that it is extremely dangerous, and life expectancy is well below average.

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Or incredibly arduous and you need to train for years while your actual working life is 10 years or so. I know metalworkers who can't pick up their tools any more because of the damage their bodies have sustained from their work.

I suspect a civilian contractor on site in places Afghanistan and other high risk countries make a lot more.

During IRAQ II I saw a local add (Uk) offering £40K tax free for a basic car mechanic going out to Iraq to presumably work for the Military or PMC

Like a £40K sign on bonus to relocate to Iraq? Or £40K per annum? Because the latter seems low.

www.totaljobs.com says an average car mechanic gets about 32K in the UK. That's about 24K take home. 40K vs 24K is a 53% increase in salary.

That's against 52K on glassdoor for being a military officer. But I am pretty sure that 52K is taxable itself so the actual different is smaller.

Not an apples to apples comparison, but my uncle got paid 250k/year USD to drive a big rig in Iraq for the US military. He knows Arabic and can "fit in", though. You can get paid a lot more for taking on a lot more risk, even if you don't have particularly unique or exceptional skills.

Yes this wasn't an experienced time served mechanic job this was basic shop skills.

I drove a truck in Iraq for "$52k/year" and came home after a little over four months when I made ~$40k -- it was all in the overtime.

What country are you talking about? Also, citation needed. Underwater welding requires a very specific skill set; I can imagine the sort of people who go in to it will be daredevils but it would probably be illegal to put them in situations where the risk was bad enough to say "well below average". Plus, they are probably quite important; companies wouldn't want to risk them.

Not just bad situations like getting killed on the job, but "Hazard Pay" in the case of underwater welding, prolonged exposure to being under pressure has shown to cause heart problems.

I know several underwater welders, and several more folks in training programs to become one. They are not daredevils. They tend to be very methodical, very careful professionals who are above average at evaluating risk. Daredevils are not tolerated, because daredevils either screw up (lots of money lost), get killed (lots of paperwork) or get someone else killed (bad).

They do seem to make a lot of money.

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