Pretend we're talking about someone on the low end of programming knowledge, the kind of tech worker who might be made obsolete by AI.
Don't confuse owning a business that hires its electricians to customers with actually being an electrician. The former is very lucrative, the latter much less so. It takes many brutal years to get from the latter to the former.
[1] As opposed to QA, customer service, etc, which are more comparable hence the "tech worker" caveat
There's also a relevant bias. The BLS does not adjust their wage percentiles to local cost of living/taxes. Software development jobs tend to be concentrated in high cost, high tax, high wage regions. By contrast tradesmen the demand for tradesmen is the same (per capita) just about everywhere. This bias makes the numbers difficult to compare. Suffice to say trades earn more in real terms, and software engineers earn less in real terms.
Electrician - https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472111.htm
Software Developer - https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm
Do you have a source for this? How much of that derives from tech workers generally living in high COL areas and needing higher salaries, while electricians are distributed throughout the land at all COL?
I have no doubt that high-earning engineers outearn high-earning electricians, but the assumption about this disparity seems suspect to me, without a source to back it up.
In Indiana, seems 75th percentile electricians earn about the same as 25th percentile software engineers. In Nebraska, it's 90th electricians and ~35th software engineers. A lot to take into consideration, and a wider gap then I expected in non-tech hubs.
The same informal research suggests a pretty consistent 60K or so for journeyman electricians. The range is tighter because skilled trade wages are subject to more regulation. Based on my knowledge of the Oregon & Washington prevaling wage rates (my wife works in accounting and has several small business electricians as customers), 60K does sound about right. Though as an hourly worker, it is not uncommon for them to sign up for more hours to push their yearly compensation above 100K.
As for electrician: universal demand, get paid to learn, and a really interesting skill on top of it all? I mean even if it doesn't end up being somebody's final career, it just sounds like a really interesting idea.
How do you feel about standing on ladders and pulling wires with your hands for 8 hours a day? How about when it's -10F outside? (may not matter depending on where you live).
I think it has both pros and cons over software dev. For sure the success metric is clear (thing works and passes code and inspection? it's done). Vs the fuzzy software dev requirements. But it also can be a lot more physical.
My first question would be -- how old are you? Skilled labor is still labor, and it is fairly normal for middle aged electricians, plumbers, etc, to have significant chronic injuries. A smart electrician, HVAC guy, plumber, etc, is moving into supervision or business management at that point and hiring new young technicians to do the physically hard work.
> tech worker who might be made obsolete by AI
My advice would be to level up and become an software engineer instead of a coder. Even then, I don't think coders are in any danger of being explicitly replaced by LLMs. Regurgitating plausible code, which sometimes even works, is useful but still definitely requires a human to decide how to leverage it. If you're not interested in software engineering (by that I mean all the non-coding parts, which really start to dominate the higher you go), and I can totally understand that, then maybe change your title to Prompt Engineer :).
As someone who hires people (and having graduated as engineer), it is already extremely difficult to hire people who have an "engineering mindset", who know how things work deeply and would be able to make new stuff from scratch if needed. For "coders", who only know how to put a few libraries together and are allergic to novel stuff, I got stacks and stacks of resumés. Yeah, those will get replaced.
He pushed me into college when I worked with him as a youth. He straight up told me, "be an engineer, those guys make twice what I do for half the work."
Also, an often ignored fact of trades is that recessions hit them hard. My dad had nearly no work for all of 2009 and the company he worked for nearly went bankrupt.
One downside: they get pulled into more low voltage/systems work and they hate that part of the job as they wanted to get away from computers.
And some localities don’t consider low voltage to be electrical at all and you need no training/licensing.
Practical downsides: considerably lower pay right now compared to a job at FAANG, although certainly nothing to sneeze at. A profession regulated far more than necessary, similarly to many other blue collar fields - for example in California, you need 8,000 hours of apprenticeship to get a license. You are also technically required to deal with municipal bureaucracies and get sign-offs on almost every single thing you do, although most electricians follow these rules rather liberally, and there's a ton of unpermitted work in every older house.
You're less vulnerable to AI, but you sure are vulnerable to downturns in construction.
You serve at the pleasure of your clients. You're gonna be getting emergency calls at weird hours and you're gonna be spending a lot of time in your car.
It's physical labor - you're gonna be spending some time in crawl spaces or other uncomfortable positions, it's rough on your hands, etc.
Almost all jobs everywhere pay considerably less than FAANG.
I find it curious that HN so casually uses FAANG pay as the benchmark.
And even more mysteriously, treat working at FAANG as a de-facto career goal.
On that board, it was honestly seen a failure if a person did not get into one of the Big 4 IBs or PE funds. It was like entering a twilight zone, no one could lower themselves into accepting anything less than working at one of 6 companies on the entire earth.
This is also a really weird point. If you work at FAANG, you are vulnerable to economic downturns. Just look at how so many tech companies have decimated their workforce.
This is just not the case if you're an electrician and construction is drying up.
The trades are going to have to start paying more and reducing regulation.
Even then, the amount of credentialism is extremely high for anything besides the lowest rung of dev jobs. Look at how people on HN turn their noses up at bootcamps, or really anything less than a CS undergrad degree.
Biggest mistake I made was not going to school and buying into the “you don’t need a degree” stuff. While technically true, it feels extremely limiting when you want to venture outside that “lowest rung”.
And for a good reason.
If it's an interest you('re friend) has then why not take a couple evening classes to slowly get the foundational skills & ensure you have enough of savings to make that jump in the future if needed?
Fwiw, I live in the Bay Area and one of the best paid people I know is an electrician - he can pull in $1k a day on some jobs - so the upside is there too.
This can be mitigated of course, just like how a desk worker can mitigate the risks of sitting for so many hours a day, but it may be harder to mitigate for a trades job.
If you limit yourself to simple work like replacing outlets, switches, and hardwired lamps, that's most of the likely electrical work for an existing house. Call a profesional for new circuits and maybe for replacing breakers; IMHO, it's a scary box, but the work is straight forward, so I'll replace breakers, but I would (and have) definitely call out for a breaker box replacement.
No way you're making $200k doing residential work, even in large cities. Definitely not if you aren't on your own.
Do you like dealing directly with customers? Customers who have unreasonable expectations of your trade? Other construction workers? Do you like working with your hands, at the cost of your long-term health? Do you like making a lot less money?
If so, yeah, it's a great option.
It’s a good gig.
bing > consider joining a union or a professional group that can offer you guidance and support during your apprenticeship journey. Some examples are International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Independent Electrical Contractors (IEC), and Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC)
Anyway cant you(r friend) work both angles until something takes off? Apply to some unions / apprenticeships and dev jobs? Let the universe decide?
Personally I think its a great idea. I wish I'd thought of it during my last job search.
And yet, the HVAC and electrician industry remains understaffed. Maybe it's not such a great industry to work in?
Unless you're contracted on commercial projects, that's a large part of the job.