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Comment by skadamou | Hacker News Reader

The salaries of welders does seem a bit over-hyped. That said, there are people out there working in the trades making decent money. I have a couple of friends that went to school to be electrical lineman and both are making close to 6 figures now with minimal student loans. I think it just requires a little bit of research and perhaps the help of a decent high school career counselor.

Average salary of electrical lineman: https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/lineman-sal...

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If you start off as an electrician, you don't have to remain an electrician forever. You can move up to managing other electricians. You can become a general contractor and manage multiple trades. You can become a real estate developer and manage your own custom or spec builds. Welding, electric, plumbing, roofing - that's just the skill you start with, but entrepreneurship in these fields is alive and well, and the sky's the limit for ambitious people.

The high paid welders are working on off shore oil rigs and have underwater certifications: https://bizfluent.com/info-12034815-average-salary-oil-rig-w...

Linemen in PHX make upwards of 95k plus shit loads of overtime.

Yeah, but you'd have to work for APS or SRP...That's a hard pass for me.

Linemen were some of the highest compensated employees at McMurdo Station, Antarctica when I was there a couple years ago.

I think a high wage also requires the same things it does in other professions - flexibility and willingness to chase opportunities.

If you're a welder in a small mid-west town with no obvious industry, your prospects are going to suck. If you're willing to go to the oil patch for a few years, you could do really well.

If they went to school to be an electrical lineman and incurred any student debt to do so then they already failed...

You can join the IBEW as an apprentice, get work experience, an education, and get paid...no student loans required.

I'm not sure how your friend did it, but they should have done more research...

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