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Comment by pwarner | Hacker News Reader

I ended up paying "professionals" to install some vinyl flooring in my house. They were making like 5 of the top 10 mistakes from the YouTube video I had watched the night before. I had to correct them, which was awkward since they had been installing floors for 15 years, supposedly...

YouTube changes things for sure, although I am unsure if that's the cause of fewer folks going into the trades. Demand over all seems higher than ever in my area. Very hard to get good trades people, or even bad ones a year ago!

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How can you be sure that the YouTube is right and real life professionals are not? Making money on YouTube ad revenue share is quite popular thing today, and no one verifies what is uploaded there, unless it is a copyrighted material.

It obviously depends on the field. But if the YouTube video explains clearly why X technique is sub par, and demonstrates the failure mode I'd believe it over a tradesperson. Say you see your mechanic tighten the nuts on your wheel hub in a circular pattern instead of a star pattern. Would you point this out?

I'm not sure about your particular example but it seems to me like this argument could be made for something like software engineering too, ie someone watches YouTube on the top web frameworks or SWE best practices and asks you why you're not doing it the way they saw. Sure, the video might show failure modes too, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's always the right way to do it, there are tradeoffs everywhere.

The difference is that the SWE probably has to maintain the software.

The contractor just needs their work to fail not-before the warranty period expires.

Think of them more like foreign software contractors being paid per JIRA ticket, rather than in-house long-career developers.

I know nothing about nuts tighten patterns. I always tighten four bolts system diagonally because I saw how things could deform otherwise. But I took it from my own experience, not from some guy with the camera and strong wish to earn money from ads on cloud video platform. Also I am 100% sure that if I first pre-tighten bolts in a circular manner, and then make a second circle of full tightening - it will be okay, just longer.

A good YouTube tutorial would tighten bolts circularly and how the resulting deformation. This is my point: if the failure mode is illustrated in a way understandable by a layperson, it seems totally reasonable to trust the youtube tutorial over a contractor. After all, the contractor is looking to make money, just like the YouTuber.

> the contractor is looking to make money, just like the YouTuber

That's a very valid point. The question is who has more skin in the game. Contractors have more of a positive feedback: if I am satisfied, I will recommend them to my friends and relatives. YouTubers may have more of negative feedback (not that much since dislike button is gone), but it takes someone to call their bullshit and write a refuting comment. I don't think lots of core YouTube userbase is inclined to do so, the default behavior there is to make a "pffff" and swipe away.

A bit off topic, but I’d love to see something like Wikipedia references added to YouTube in some way. Being able to cite something at a point of video would be awsome. Sounds like it might be sorta impossible tho

No please no. Me like read. Video no good.

Youtube basically helps me do jobs I could already do, to a higher level of quality. Like painting a room, I now know the mistakes to avoid. But when it came to major drywall repair/replacement it was no help, there is must too much individual variation that experience trumps information.

This is spot on. We're at a point where the basics of virtually any field can be learned quickly online, but I think becoming an actual expert takes just as long as it always has.

I believe it. For floors, especially, the barrier to entry to the field is very low. Most of the important techniques you can pick up on the job during your first install.

> For floors, especially, the barrier to entry to the field is very low.

If that was an unintended pun, I LOLed really hard xD

(Sorry in advance for the low quality comment)

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