I disagree about there being a social stigma about the trades. It might tend to be seen more frequently among certain age groups or geographic locations but I c

I disagree about there being a social stigma about the trades. It might tend to be seen more frequently among certain age groups or geographic locations but I can't recall ever seeing people be thought of that way for having a skilled trades job (I'm in the US). Quite the contrary actually, I think they're seen as very hard working. But I've also never seen very much in the way of recommendations from others in that trade to get into that kind of work. Probably because there are few people to do the recommending. There's certainly no shortage of freshman brogrammers who will preach a career in software development as easy money (they'll change their tune when they see the ugly side of things but that's a different topic of discussion).