Ralo

Canada

The problem is, I write my tests and do great! So, this is working. It is exactly what the college is rewarding me for.

If I was using this AI and my grades were poor then I'd agree, that its perceieved but its provably working.

Sadly, the truth is that in school, you're only rewarded for what you vomit back up on the test. Rote memorize some formulas and facts, copy those back on the test and you're now a certified mechanic/engineer/doctor/whatever. That's exactly what got me through math courses in university.

Sucks, but its true. In my case, if there was a test that required me to disassemble an engine top to bottom, claude would be mostly useless.

I don't know if my statement would apply to grade school kids. They have completely different requirements. I'm mainly referring to post secondary.

edit: misread your post.

I do, all the time. I get test, do good and then the college signs off that Im a certified mechanic when Im done.

Maybe its more of a critique on the school, but no one tests you on your ability to disassemble an engine and rebuild it. They simply make you write a test based off terms you learned in a textbook.

This was exactly my experience in high school, university, and now the same in college.

I would of killed for this bot during my math courses in university.

I agree. However, the majority is theory. It's probably 80% theory, 20% practical.

I'm taking courses at my local college (heavy duty diesel tech) and I'm finding how little use the teachers is for me. I got a digital copy of the textbook, and downloaded all the courses notes, pumped that into claude and made a discord bot that generates me quizes, tracks all my progress, and builds me a study guides off the results.

Superior to any teacher I've ever had, no matter how involved they are. I genuinely don't even see what my teacher is needed for beyond a requirement for me to be there. I can ask the bot "can you clarify X section" at 3am and it'll do in 1 second. In class, the teacher reads the slides, adds some extra points and takes questions. But my bot does all this, completely personalized to me.

Times move on, and I don't see teachers surviving. I'm hoping by next year the college will offer an "at home, self paced course" option. Theres no reason for me to be there.

I'm so at peace right now, the flow is good. I don't need the hustle of chasing mllions of dollars. The owner of the company can deal with that, I just want to do my 8 hours and go home free and clear.

I've tried both. I've seen what both offer and I'm so confident in my decision that I just sit back and watch the gong show at this point.

My decision gets further cemented when I ask my tech friends how work is going.

Absolutely. It's not perfect but safety is in your control, and all up to you.

I accept the trade off, as the alternative is going back to linkedin and begging for a job all day.

This is why I try to hoard all my money. I don't want to do this when I'm 50. I've always thought about doing this for 10-15 years and then building a semi and doing some owner operator long haul trucking. I could easily fix anything on the truck and save major money.

Absolutely.

It's not perfect. I risk crushing my hands everyday. Or falling. Or causing 10s of thousands of dollars in damage because I didnt tighten a bolt. Arthritis is likely.

But it's still incredibly rare, and mainly in your control. All my coworkers are major injury free.

Maybe 10 years ago. Now you have to fight 300 other applicants for an entry position that pays $50k in NYC.

The biggest thing for me that pushed me over the edge was thinking, how will I get a mortgage? All this applying, 100s of applications, even if I land a job it's not stable. Maybe it pays more, but I'll be laid off in a year or 2. Then back to 100s of applications while my mortgage is ticking away.

I have a friend who worked at Adobe for 5+ years as a senior AI researcher. Has a PhD in compi sci majoring in AI. He got laid off last year and couldn't find any work. I witnessed it. He gave up and started doing a side hustle thing on a video game. It's just not stable, and thats not how I want my life.

I don't see much overlap between mechanics and cars honestly. Everything in a car is modular. If it doesn't work, you replace it. Car tuning has some level of tech. Kind of. But that's an entirely different field that people specialize in, typical mechanics cannot do that.

I try everyday to apply my tech background to my mechanics. I use it for things like torque specs and brain storming issues but nothing much else.

Utilizing it for business purposes is certainly an option too. Possibly in the far future, having the highest quality website with good SEO would help me stomp out competition.

I'm not concerned. If the trades get replaced, then its just over for everyone.

Then literally nothing is safe.

Besides, unless we build physical robots to trace airlines and replace them, I'm safe.

That's how the majority get into it. My first year course, half the students were all from the public transit and knew each other.

100%

And tools have never been cheaper. The knock off chinese clones are used by professionals too. I have tons of automotive friends and they all vary in their level of access to things. I have friends who built their cars on the public road infront of their house, and some friends who took a year long college course.

We all ended up in the same place.

I had lots of personal experience under my belt. I built a hot rod out my garage on the cheap (because I was broke and wanted a nice car). I used that on my resume and they were extremely excited on that. The company I work for is famous for their fleet of "show" semis. It's super super cool and I think the mix of my passion for cars mixed well with their eye for details on their fleet.

However, the bar has never been lower.

I didn't want to do automotive, the piece work is a cancer. You'll do 12 hour days and get paid for 8. Not my cup of tea. I was interested in the big stuff. Offroad equiptment sounded cool too.

I love software, but knew I would quickly learn to hate it. I'm not going to be working on my passion projects. I'd be working on horribly boring software used by some corporation.

I really wanted to go into tech because I've been told the trades were the boogie man my entire life.

I'm a car guy, and a computer guy.

I wanted a nice car, so instead of racking up mega debt on a $70,000 mustang I bought an old classic car and learned everything. After 5 years I fully restored it on the cheap (less than $10k) and now I've pivoted my career to that.

My entire life I've done tech. I remember in middle school all my teachers knew me as the kid who wrote code. I did my degree, and did an internship but nothing ever really stuck (still not sure what happened with that) and my full time job became begging for work.

I didn't do any schooling but thats because I've always liked cars and would tinker at home. So I was very advanced for an entry level. They get government kick backs for hiring apprentices and the less of a burder you are to them, the better. However, the bar has never been lower. Before this, I tried electrician but didn't like it. I have zero experience as an electrician.

Your employer signs you up after you pass probation. Then every year you do a 2 month schooling course which is all government paid.

After 5+ years of actively trying to get into the field (pre AI), I left.

I threw my degree in the toilet, I closed my linkedin, and I went to go work in the trades as a diesel mechanic.

Greatest choice I've ever made. The pay is great, the work is steady, the coworkers are relaxed and not trying to one up each other. I'm now being paid to go to school, and get raises every year until I'm fully ticketed (way more than I ever made in the entry tech positions).

I've heard non-stop my whole life that if I join a trade it's going to be grunt labor and I'll be paralyzed in 5 years. Maybe some are, but this isn't hard at all. I lay on a creeper and turn wrenches. Anything over 50lbs we have lifts for.

Tech has become fun again, I'm just making projects because its what I wanted. I come home and relax by writing on my projects.

Now, I'm watching my tech friends from a distance and my only regret is not doing this sooner.

"Sometimes you gotta give in to win"

This implementation isn't using webworkers either. Moving the java VM to a webworker would likely improve performance 10 fold.

I'm saying it's clearly people pushing an agenda when there's bigger threats. I'm pointing out that if it was truly about children dying, they would focus on bigger dangers, like suicide (#1 cause of death for teens), drugs, or Pitbulls. Yet there's constant calls to ban guns in the US. When was the last time a senator had a speech about banning Pitbulls?

Maybe that's your experience within your specific company but that's not the normal.

If you guys have vacant positions, I'd love to apply. Anonymously of course.

Sorry but that's simply not accurate at all.

The entry positions are FLOODED with new comers. We aren't hiring them because they're the best fit, we have plenty of unemployed locals begging for work. To say we only bring in the best because we cannot fill the roles is a blatant lie.

You sound like you're describing senior position, which I would say is fair.

Were you very specialized in a certain field, filling a senior position?

As a Canadian with a CS degree who's been trying to get into tech for years, this is horrible to hear. We have thousands of new grads in Canada who end up working in fast food because they get passed over for cheaper immigrants. I've seen it first hand, all my tech friends have seen it. We're worse than the US for this, and we have even less tech jobs here.

We don't need to be bring more entry level talent, we have tons of that not being utilized here.

There's plenty of talk about greedy corporations until the topic of using immigration to increase their profits comes up. Then it's silence.

Lots of tradesmen will go "up north" into the oil fields for some hard hard labour but with incredible pay.

Most do it once or twice in their life for a couple years and come back to normal relaxed day job (although some are absolute champions and will tough it out long term).

I've always figured a job like this at Nvidia would be the equivalent of "I'm going to go up north for a while and come back".

A lot of it is private sales and there's a couple sites selling this land specifically.

Not a typo, I meant like acorn away your savings.

Canada has always seemed like a unique situation. We're a massive country with tiny population. This opens the door to cheap remote land. Lot of cottage land in northern Ontario goes for pennies and has acres. Infact a lot of it so rural that they don't belong to RMs and don't require building permits or inspections. Building a cottage is straight forward just building it.

I figured if you're living off grid and working online, you can just acorn and get way ahead. Moving to a major city for a job that pays 2x more usually isn't even worth it when you factor in cost of living. Obviously, you cannot have kids. This is for a young kid-less couple.

It's not ideal. Our parents many years ago would just buy a home in the suburbs and do their 9-5 but that isn't enough anymore. You will never get ahead doing that.

Working online really is a unique situation to get ahead now.

It's been living in the reverse repo market, it's slowly trickling out.