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The Myth of the Wealthy Welder

• Apreche 7y ago
  Only someone doing dangerous and rare types of welding, such as underwater welding, will make a ton of money. The trade-off is that it is extremely dangerous, and life expectancy is well below average.
  • thrwayxyz 7y ago
    Or incredibly arduous and you need to train for years while your actual working life is 10 years or so. I know metalworkers who can't pick up their tools any more because of the damage their bodies have sustained from their work.
  • roenxi 7y ago
    What country are you talking about? Also, citation needed. Underwater welding requires a very specific skill set; I can imagine the sort of people who go in to it will be daredevils but it would probably be illegal to put them in situations where the risk was bad enough to say "well below average". Plus, they are probably quite important; companies wouldn't want to risk them.
    • frankbreetz 7y ago
      Not just bad situations like getting killed on the job, but "Hazard Pay" in the case of underwater welding, prolonged exposure to being under pressure has shown to cause heart problems.
    • kjs3 7y ago
      I know several underwater welders, and several more folks in training programs to become one. They are not daredevils. They tend to be very methodical, very careful professionals who are above average at evaluating risk. Daredevils are not tolerated, because daredevils either screw up (lots of money lost), get killed (lots of paperwork) or get someone else killed (bad). They do seem to make a lot of money.
  • C1sc0cat 7y ago
    I suspect a civilian contractor on site in places Afghanistan and other high risk countries make a lot more. During IRAQ II I saw a local add (Uk) offering £40K tax free for a basic car mechanic going out to Iraq to presumably work for the Military or PMC
    • joncrane 7y ago
      Like a £40K sign on bonus to relocate to Iraq? Or £40K per annum? Because the latter seems low.
      • heavenlyblue 7y ago
        www.totaljobs.com says an average car mechanic gets about 32K in the UK. That's about 24K take home. 40K vs 24K is a 53% increase in salary. That's against 52K on glassdoor for being a military officer. But I am pretty sure that 52K is taxable itself so the actual different is smaller.
        • mruts 7y ago
          Not an apples to apples comparison, but my uncle got paid 250k/year USD to drive a big rig in Iraq for the US military. He knows Arabic and can "fit in", though. You can get paid a lot more for taking on a lot more risk, even if you don't have particularly unique or exceptional skills.
          • C1sc0cat 7y ago
            Yes this wasn't an experienced time served mechanic job this was basic shop skills.
    • UncleEntity 7y ago
      I drove a truck in Iraq for "$52k/year" and came home after a little over four months when I made ~$40k -- it was all in the overtime.
• helpPeople 7y ago
  I've seen a few people I've grown up with try doing skilled trades. First, they seem to ignore that there is still education needed. And most people who claimed they were going skilled trades ended up doing low skilled manual labor. And second, they overvalue their education. I've had people claim their skills were good enough to call them an engineer. (But if you give them a real world engineering question, they don't make an attempt) Third, I've seen fantastic technicians, able to solder a board-mount LED by hand saved us literally thousands of dollars. There is value here, but this person was physically talented from decades of experience.
  • bryanlarsen 7y ago
    For a couple of semesters I roomed with a guy taking an electrical engineering technician course at a college while I was taking an electrical engineering degree at a university. We were both surprised at how similar many of our courses were. The big difference was that the standards for pass/fail were lower at his, and that he didn't have any of the 300 or 400 level courses where all the interesting stuff was IMO. And I didn't have any of the hands on courses that was the interesting stuff in his opinion. He had an advanced soldering course. I had an "optional" 3 hour tutorial in it -- it was optional in the sense that you didn't have to attend, but you'd fail your labs if you couldn't solder...
    • cr0sh 7y ago
      And that's where you have this divide of people who have an EE degree but can't assemble their own designs to save their lives, and those with just a technical background who may struggle to design and understand their own circuits, but who can build them to expert level standards. There are plenty in the middle who can do both - and more than a few of them with such knowledge have never take a college or university course in their life. You see the same thing with software engineering sometimes - the CompSci graduate who can't code their way out of a wet paper bag even if given a github of fizzbuzz, versus the person who never went to college yet makes 6-figs in SV hacking on code (yet doesn't have the "book understanding" of data structures or algorithms). ...and tons of people in between those who can combine both. Slap 'em together with similar people in the trades - well, you'll find yourself a myriad of people at all levels and understanding of "mechatronics" and/or robotics and such. It is quite likely that your roommate could learn what you learned - and you could (or have) learned what he knew. It ultimately all depends on having the motivation and desire to pursue it. Where you might have the advantage is that you could probably pick up his skills from online resources and simple practice projects or whatnot. He would probably struggle to do the same, without actually going into debt and attending some kind of university course(s). Some of it can be approximated with self-study and some online MOOC training, but not all of it, unfortunately - and he wouldn't have the "piece of paper" at the end.
• biohax2015 7y ago
  I just don't get it. Education is everything! How is the United States placing such a low priority on it!? It is really only a matter of time until we are blown out of the water by Asian countries, who seem to understand its importance.
  • AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
    Education is important, but it's not everything. I do hire people every once in a while and I want them to be reliable, smart and educated in this specific order of priority. Education is important, but I'm sure my plumber who charges a thousand bucks cash for half a day work earns more than most college graduates in this country.
  • jimmaswell 7y ago
    There's an image problem with college in the US, largely the fault of some of the students/student organizations. Like that protest that took over a whole unrelated building, barring an innocent professor from accessing his research, and resulted in the professor being fired for trying to get it back. I hope we can return to respectable academia at one point. Where universities put furthering the body of human knowledge before bending over for their 'customers' who are more concerned with using the place as a playground to push their political views. I wouldn't be surprised if some medical university research program was on the verge of curing cancer but let their program be delayed because the students wanted to do a walk-in over something or other.
    • jimmaswell 7y ago
      Wish the downvoters would give some explanation. I left my college with a vague sense of shame over the frivolous protests the student body participated in and the admin/professors allowed to disrupt class/activities/common-use areas. I'd have paid more togo somewhere protests had to be done off-campus or in a designated zone. At least in theory you're supposed to be there to learn.
  • caseysoftware 7y ago
    Education is important but it doesn't have to be formal degree-oriented offered through what is effectively a cartel. Education can and does come in a variety of ways. Expecting it to look exactly the same and work exactly the same for basically everyone doesn't make sense. I'd love to see more of an emphasis around lifelong learning instead of demanding 18yo make lifetime decisions with near-zero life experience.
• skadamou 7y ago
  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-salary https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/lineman-sal...
  • nugget 7y ago
    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.
  • rexarex 7y ago
    Linemen were some of the highest compensated employees at McMurdo Station, Antarctica when I was there a couple years ago.
  • Whatarethese 7y ago
    Linemen in PHX make upwards of 95k plus shit loads of overtime.
    • TKWasRight 7y ago
      Yeah, but you'd have to work for APS or SRP...That's a hard pass for me.
  • bretpiatt 7y ago
    The high paid welders are working on off shore oil rigs and have underwater certifications: https://bizfluent.com/info-12034815-average-salary-oil-rig-welders.html https://bizfluent.com/info-12034815-average-salary-oil-rig-w...
• rwmurrayVT 7y ago
  Skilled trade demand varies across the United States. Welding is not a major trade in the western North Carolina. You can jump right on over to the eastern portion of Virginia and find a large number of welding opportunities. The temp agency I work for as opportunities from 13 to 21 and beyond for 5XXX and CuNi in South Carolina, Norfolk, Knoxville, Tampa, and Columbus. Several of these go so far as to offer per diem.. When I got hired I was in initial OSHA training with a guy from VT Halter in Mississippi who came up here on per diem and was being paid 29 + per diem. The skilled trades have a good amount of opportunity if you're available and able to reside where industry is located. This guy was fired twice for missing work. So that's just a bad sign off the rip. I think welding is being pushed too hard. Every one needs to do their research and see what trades are in demand where they reside. 12 -18 https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/26693cff-8967-4b2c-a629-1e645d269310#.XXu3-IvwkBQ.link https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/26693cff-8967-4b2c-a62... https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/e30dd4d1-fe81-4f71-8253-4f2690024c5b#.XXu30bUUz18.link https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/e30dd4d1-fe81-4f71-825... 20 - 23 https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/2541dfe5-4f21-41fa-aef4-553e819da88a#.XXu3-A8LKmg.link https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/2541dfe5-4f21-41fa-aef... https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/59ec0ea9-e975-4ff8-9312-3e8336b14d4e#.XXu3-JCMfwk.link https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/59ec0ea9-e975-4ff8-931... Unlisted, but based on reading 20+. Mostly 5XXX, CuNi, etc. https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/cf1967b7-0e04-4a5f-9ff3-98934b40ad5a#.XXu3-JP29Jg.link https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/cf1967b7-0e04-4a5f-9ff... https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/b3482924-7abe-44bd-b76d-b415c960830a#.XXu3-EVTmZM.link https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/b3482924-7abe-44bd-b76... https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/29c1474d-a58c-4299-aba5-091afa5e08c7#.XXu3-Ev5w7c.link https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/29c1474d-a58c-4299-aba... https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/d5ff023f-c22e-4ad9-95d5-61be36e1e0dc#.XXu3-DmUnvg.link https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/d5ff023f-c22e-4ad9-95d...
• bilbo0s 7y ago
  In fairness, where I live in flyover country, people are pretty realistic about how much money you can get as a welder. Or carpenter. Or plumber. Or what have you. They are relatively good jobs, for around here. But everyone knows you're not gonna make six figures being a welder. Not even close. (Maybe if you're working on a pipeline, that's underwater, but even that's temporary.)
• kisna72 7y ago
  There is nothing wrong with vocational education. But the reality is that, on average, how well you do with college education largely depends on what degree you pursued and same is true with vocational education as well. If there is a lot of demand for your vocation, salaries will be higher regardless of whether it requires college degrees or not.
• olivermarks 7y ago
  This article seems to imply 'welding' is a single level skill after you have jumped through X number of academic hoops. this is like saying 'IT' is basically one skill set that can be learnt. There are welders earning vast amounts flying all over the world working on mission critical projects with huge economic and safety dependencies at the top, large numbers of highly talented entrepreneurial artisan welders (who often have many other skills) and people trying to learn a skill at the bottom. The article is like saying someone going to junior college to learn python is discouraged because they aren't immediately thought of as a senior engineer once they get a few qualifications.
  • bilbo0s 7y ago
    Gotta be evenhanded though right? I mean, the people putting forth the narrative that you can make good money as a welder don't draw any of the distinctions you outline in their anecdotes either.
  • habitue 7y ago
    The article also goes into the percentiles of wages for the profession as a whole. The 90th percentile makes $60K. It says there's a high floor of wages for the profession, but also a low ceiling, which seems fair So if you are looking at software development with the same eye, you're going to see high floor, high ceiling, and come to a different conclusion about the profession as a whole.
    • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      >So if you are looking at software development with the same eye, you're going to see high floor, high ceiling, and come to a different conclusion about the profession as a whole The line between software and IT is blurry. Depending on where you draw the line the floor for software can be pretty low.
  • bagacrap 7y ago
    > The article is like saying someone going to junior college to learn python is discouraged because they aren't immediately thought of as a senior engineer once they get a few qualifications. "Welders at the 90th percentile of income for the profession, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earn $63,000 a year before taxes. Those are, statistically, the top earners, and they are usually expert welders with decades of experience."
• AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
  After a year and a half, Orry was fired for missing too many days of work... Orry had been working hard for five years... Isn't there some contradiction in these two statements?
  • smush 7y ago
    Not necessarily. I worked at a company where if you missed two days of work without calling in to let them know, you were fired. You could stretch that to about 5 days if you always called in. I'm not making a judgement as to whether those are reasonable terms, only pointing out that such jobs exist, and could be similar where this individual worked there.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • jknoepfler 7y ago
    We don't know if he was hungover, ill, injured, taking care of a loved one, or "just depressed". So no, not necessarily.
  • wysifnwyg 7y ago
    I think you may have missed something in the article. It does not state that the five years of work had been continuous or at the same location. It mentions multiple places they worked and that they were fired from multiple positions.
  • lwelyk 7y ago
    You can be fired for missing too many days of work for a legitimate illness.
• defertoreptar 7y ago
  A career with similar average salary would be teaching. Four year tuition is an average of 25k in state and 41k out of state.[0] Welding school is typically 5k to 15k [1] and takes two years or less. Despite how things played out for the particular case covered by this author, there is a good argument for welding. It may not make you rich. However, if you don't like the traditional college route, then welding and similar trades offer comparatively good pay/training trade-off. * https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-college https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c... * https://education.costhelper.com/welding-school.html https://education.costhelper.com/welding-school.html
  • bobloblaw45 7y ago
    Paying for welding school is just one way you can go. Apprenticeships will pay for you to go while paying you. Also there's non union options where the company teaches you while paying you. If you think about it, with the proper guidance and motivation it's not impossible to do both, learn the trade and take a night class or online course with your community college a term at the same time. It's really unfortunate how the trades were looked down upon in the past. I remember in high school it wasn't even an option since all the adults would kind of hide that option from students since it wasn't what "smart" people did.
  • cr0sh 7y ago
    One of the other nice things about welding - while it may not make you rich - is that you can do it to some degree almost your entire life. It's the same with a lot of trade skills. I'm a software engineer - that is what I know, and what I do. But I'm already above the "age ceiling" that we all know exists - but somehow (maybe due to the fact that I keep my skills current?) I have stayed employed and haven't been subjected (to my knowledge) to not being hired because of my age. I'm also not in SV or any other "high earning" area, and I like small "mom-n-pop" vs large established companies (with all the politics and other junk) - so I've never earned 6 figs - nor will I likely ever. But what I do earn pays my bills and keeps a roof over my head, and allows for entertainment for me and my family. For now. But someday that won't be there. Then what? Well - I intend to work until I die - that is, code forever. I know there are plenty of software engineers out there much older than I am who are still employed. So maybe it isn't as bleak as I think. But I do know this: When I am not employed, I can't just "go around the neighborhood" or "advertise on craigslist" or "hang out a shingle" that says "Got a broken fence? I can weld it for ya! Call me @ xxx..." Which is something tradespeople can almost always do. In their "retirement years" they can become handypersons, do side-jobs welding or carpentry, or maybe simple auto repairs (or even more complex ones if they have the tools and strength left). Plumbing and electrical isn't out of the question either. They may not make bank, but they likely won't starve, either. For myself? I'm not sure what I could do. One thing I do know I can do - just not well enough to be employed at it - is weld. I can also use a hammer, saw, plane, whatever - I do have some wood and metal shop skills. I also work on my own automobiles. Whether I could convince someone else to let me fix their issues - well, that's just some marketing and hopefully doing it right for them (just hand me that grinder and paint - I'm no tig stacked-dimes artist). So there's that to be said about the trades - that it is something that can be done to keep some form of food on the table, even if it's just helping out neighbors for a few dollars. Nobody wants to hire an aging software engineer to code up a simple website or something like that any longer it seems. Those older SWEs typically find their gigs maintaining aging and creaking software in a language nobody uses any longer (and fortunately for me, I do have skills in Perl, VB3 thru 6, classic ASP, some COBOL - and it seems PHP may be headed that way too).
• readams 7y ago
  The unspoken claim here is that if he'd gone to college and pursued a liberal arts degree that he'd be better off now. The evidence in the article however says the opposite. He'd have even more debt and even lower prospects after failing to complete that degree.
  • ska 7y ago
    I don't think that's the claim at all; Rather that there is a common but unrealistic, if not downright dishonest, narrative about opportunity and working class jobs and it is doing a disservice to people. It's also plausibly a tool for people in other economic sectors to pretend any problems these people have are "their own fault". I think that thesis is pretty defensible. Clearly a liberal arts, or for that matter professional, degree isn't for everyone. On the other hand, pretending that some sort of idealized working class living exists in the US today for anyone who just wants it enough and will work hard is disingenuous at best. There has been a lot of cynically dishonest political rhetoric around these topics in recent decades.
  • jrumbut 7y ago
    The claim is very much not that he should have gotten a different degree, but that there is no decent path to upward mobility for this seemingly decent person (or at least welding is not that path). Some have been arguing that skilled trades are the answer to those who are facing a lack of opportunity, this looks in depth at how one person's attempt to join the skilled trades went (poorly) and also looks at statistics for welders generally and shows that it's a mixed bag.
  • Medicalidiot 7y ago
    Maybe I missed that part of the article where it was a direct comparison of welding to a liberal arts degree outside of the politician comparing philosophy to welding. Philosophers make more money than biochemists, FYI. What are your sources about the opposite occurring? If one goes to an instate school s/he can do fairly well with a liberal arts degree.
    • readams 7y ago
• scottlocklin 7y ago
  This is a glorified anecdote by a smug Atlantic writer yutz; dripping with condescension "There is no doubt that Orry would benefit from high-quality face-to-face instruction from a caring and conscientious English professor.." It's also a red-herring. Nobody believes an average welder makes $150k a year. In fact, we know what they make: a lower middle class salary (admittedly linked in the column): https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers-and-brazers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers... The guys who actually do well, and who do make $150k a year were not enrolled in some shitty associates degree program (this article should really be on the failure of the US higher education scam); they're highly skilled former Navy machinists. And of course, the reason working class jobs like welder don't make more is simple: we keep importing new low skilled laborers, driving the price of low-skilled labor down. Mercantilism and labor laws could fix this. Instead we get dimwits from the Atlantic suggesting welders go to English class.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    I object to the labeling of Associates Degree programs as 'shitty'. In my experience, AS programs are just far more practicality oriented than academic BSs. You want to learn how the math behind Dijkstra's algorithm works, get a BS. You want to learn how to build a network, get an AS.
    • scottlocklin 7y ago
      You might be right regarding computer associates: but getting a degree in something like welding is just increasing the number of firey hoops someone has to jump through to do a job he can be trained on the job for, or in a union apprenticeship program. I myself learned welding on the job: at a muffler company, and again later in a government lab. The answer to social problems is not always "more school."
      • wcunning 7y ago
        This is in fact quite common in the welding world. Several other comments mention companies that hire anyone and train them to weld. I've also read articles from the oil field companies that they do the same. So does the military, if you pass the aptitude test at least. That said, my community college will teach you to run a CNC laser welding machine, a CNC plasma table, a robotic arm MIG, etc. Getting into all of that off the street is rare.
• conjectures 7y ago
  Skilled trades are still a good idea in the UK. I estimated that experienced self employed electricians could probably pull in $80-120k per year excluding office costs at 80% utilisation. It's not huge money, but once you start factoring in that tax is much better for the self employed, costs of living, commute time etc it does look like a good deal. Even if you discount the estimate by 1/3 it still compares very favourably to most white collar careers.
• dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  The way you make money as a welder is the same as every other trade a) Be willing to do it in conditions nobody else wants to. b) own a business and employ other people who do it.
• bobloblaw45 7y ago
  I work at a company that does heavy manufacturing. They're begging for welders. They only accept something like 30% of applicants, I hear drugs is a big problem with applicants. They thing is that you don't even need to know how to weld, they'll train you. They put you through their training program and eventually you'll be welding for them. And the type of welding they do isn't small scale thing but really heavy duty thick sheets of steel. And here's the kicker, their pay is terrible. Which is why they're constantly begging for more people to train.They totally know that they're basically the guys that train all the welders in the area. People come in to learn the ropes then about 2 years later or so they get a job down the street making a lot more. I'm not a business guy but I guess it works for the company because they've been going for a very long time and still growing. I guess it's cheaper for them to constantly be training than it is to retain their welders.
  • marcosdumay 7y ago
    If you can deal with the variance, training people is a very good way to get cheap talent. I have no idea why it isn't very common.
    • Kalium 7y ago
      I think the business case for it depends on training time, training costs, the odds of a person being useful after training, and how expensive it is to get someone already trained. Training a batch of people for six months who will mostly be useful after completion and are mostly likely to complete training might be a good proposition. If training time is four years, 50% of entrants complete training, and 50% of those trained are useful... the case might be weaker.
      • jseliger 7y ago
        I believe the biggest issue is people leaving. Invest x months of training at y cost. Then the person leaves right after training for a higher-paying job. That dis-incentivizes training.
• tengbretson 7y ago
  The person in the anecdote was second to last in their high school class and got fired for missing too much work. No one thinks such a person should be sleeping in the gutter, but let's not beat ourselves up over the fact that they're not making 6 figures here.
  • llampx 7y ago
    They could well come to the same conclusion if they followed a similar person learning "coding".. Cherry-picked example. Although I do think the Conservative opinion of skilled trades is not really rooted in reality. Most of the better-off tradesmen are sole proprietors.
    • refurb 7y ago
      Is it really a "conservative opinion"? I've heard positive stories about the trades from people across the political spectrum. And of course, the trades aren't a panacea. Demand ebbs and flows and sometimes work can be hard to come by. But I see nothing wrong with suggesting it as an option to a college degree (and the debt that goes along with it). Even if the salary isn't that high, it still beats being unemployed with $20K in student debt.
    • cybersnowflake 7y ago
      There is a ton of need for skilled blue collar jobs and there are plenty of well paying ones available. More than jobs for ethnic studies majors. This is not opinion this is fact.
    • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      >Most of the better-off tradesmen are sole proprietors. That's like saying the better off developers are senior software architects or consultants. If you want to optimize your trade career for money owning your own business is simply where that path leads.
  • MrZongle2 7y ago
    That was my takeaway as well, based more on the twice-fired history than the high school performance. Some people just don't apply themselves. Some just have bad luck. Some have a combination of the two. It's unfair to Orry Carriere (the individual in question) for us who aren't better-versed in his personal history to assume which of the above cases (or perhaps others unmentioned) he falls into. But regardless, the article seems to have cherry-picked Mr. Carriere. Alternatively, how would someone who graduated in the middle of his class (or near the top) and never was fired from their job have done as a welder? I'm quite open to the argument that the "wealthy welder" is truly a myth.... but this article was not the most compelling, objective way to make the argument.
• Circuits 7y ago
  I don't think the author did enough research here. I think the article misrepresented and undercut the value of trade schools. For instance, it is perfectly possible to become a welder without attending college. In fact, the standard method is to simply start an apprenticeship and work up from their much like a plumber or electrician. Also, it completely disregards the fact that most experienced tradesmen eventually go into business for themselves as independent contractors. However, since an independent contractor files as a business owner and not a welder (or electrician or what-have you) they would no longer contribute to the statistics for their actual trade. Overall I would give this article and its author a 5/10 in terms of quality... not really worth reading imho.
• plughs 7y ago
  Another frequently overlooked problem with the 'trade school' mantra is that women need jobs too - and I'm willing to wager that the prejudice women are going to face in a welding shop is going to be a lot higher the frequently cited problem of women in engineering. Never mind if they try to hang out their shingle as a plumber or electrician. It'd be an interesting study to compare the number of calls that Charlie vs Charlene would get in that field, but I think we all know the answer.
  • ryanmercer 7y ago
    >Another frequently overlooked problem with the 'trade school' mantra is that women need jobs too - and I'm willing to wager that the prejudice women are going to face in a welding shop is going to be a lot higher the frequently cited problem of women in engineering. I suspect there is some truth to that however, I regularly see women with 'welder' listed on their dating profiles (mostly tinder, although I've seen 2 on Facebook dating app, within 15 miles of me, since it rolled out making matches in Indy yesterday) and personally I only know one male that welds for a living. I see plenty of female automotive techs/mechanics around too. I think out of my last dozen oil changes there has been at least 1 woman in the bays working and as many as at least 3 and my last brake job was a woman (she called me out to do the 'well we could machine your rotors butttt...). I'm sure there's a lot of sexual harassment and general unpleasantness still there in a random shop but I feel like there are a lot more 20-40ish women in these sorts of jobs than there were even a decade ago. Indianapolis could be somewhat of an outlier though as we have a huge FFA presence here and in surrounding towns as well as a few trade schools that just do automotive, welding and electrician training. What I've never seen though is any women doing HVAC or plumbing. One would think women would be more inclined towards plumbing given they are generally smaller and can fit in those tight spaces better, instead in my experience I've generally seen plumbers that are built like me, like a refrigerator, grumbling and groaning while they try and snake their way under a sink or behind a toilet.
  • itbeho 7y ago
    My aunt owned and managed a welding shop for over 50 years. She'd disagree with most of what you wrote. The opportunity is there for people that want to work hard and learn. There is in fact a fairly good tradition supporting women in the trades, (in the US at least) especially during and after WWII. See "Rosie the Riveter" for example, which is where my aunt got her start.
• aazaa 7y ago
  I can't help but consider the wider background of this story. Across the country, high schools have been cutting shop classes. Administrators push 4-year college as the only viable option. Anything else is increasingly viewed as irresponsible advice. At the same time, 4-year college costs have been skyrocketing. Students are taking on levels of debt that the previous generation would have thought obscene. Meanwhile, the breadth of degrees that can reasonably be expected to service the debt of a 4-year college stint, let alone earn a living afterwards, appears to be shrinking. Just because some degrees are currently in high demand doesn't mean that will be the case in 1, 2, or 5 years. Tech recessions can be brutal given how leveraged the booms are. At the center of all of this is automation in numerous forms. The changes we've seen so far will only accelerate. There's little evidence to suggest that today's economies will be up to the challenge of providing economically viable pathways for young people starting out. The myth of higher education as the pathway to a middle class lifestyle has all the hallmarks of an idea that will die a slow, agonizing death. We're utterly unprepared for what comes next.
  • wcunning 7y ago
    My local community college's welding program includes classes on robotic MIG welding, automated sub-arc welding and CNC laser welding. These things are progressing in the places where people need to learn it, but it does slowly sort it into fewer and fewer people.
  • ryandrake 7y ago
    > Administrators push 4-year college as the only viable option. Anything else is increasingly viewed as irresponsible advice. At the same time, 4-year college costs have been skyrocketing. Something tells me these things are related... My old man taught wood shop in a high school. Year after year, there was less and less demand/attendance. To stay securely employed, as he was getting closer to retirement he pivoted over to teaching drafting and then CAD which had tons of interest and were supported by administration. By the time he retired the wood and metal shop classes were gone for good. Pretty sad and worrying to think that since then an entire generation has gone through that school with no opportunity to learn how to actually make a physical good with their hands. We have YouTube now if we want to learn, and it’s a great resource, but it’s hard not to think something has been lost.
• 693471 7y ago
  I was hearing this back around 2004-2005 that welders could make $150k if they take this remote oil pipeline jobs and "all your expenses are paid for while you're out in the field". I heard a lot of people talk about taking these jobs but they never seemed to exist.
• war1025 7y ago
  First, to quote the Drive By Truckers: "If you want to feel old after 42 years, keep dropping the hammer and grinding the gears" My dad did blue collar labor his whole life and his body hurt. He would take something like 6 ibuprofen every morning with breakfast. To do that kind of work requires you putting your family above yourself, which is a noble thing. I think what people miss in the old "you could support a family doing this" was that it was very much you actively harming yourself so that your family could be better off. It's the same thing with coal miners. They get all sorts of terrible health consequences from the work, but it is a noble sacrifice to them. My dad was adamant that we were going to college and living a more comfortable life than he did. So here I am, a software engineer with plenty of worries in the world, but at least a job that won't leave me broken and in pain after I do it for twenty years. I didn't read this article word for word, but it seemed to have a bit of an agenda to it. The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if you're working class is how driven you are. If you are lazy, you'll struggle your whole life. There isn't any family safety net to keep you ignorant of that. It's important to give people access to opportunity, but it's up to the individual to be self-motivated enough to take it. Education isn't some magical panacea.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • la_barba 7y ago
    On a meta-level, maybe part of being educated, is being educated about the various possibilities and opportunities you might have if you pursued certain career paths. Its fuzzy whether you can get to that stage without a well rounded formal education.
  • hinkley 7y ago
    > at least a job that won't leave me broken and in pain after I do it for twenty years. There are no guarantees. There's ample opportunity in this field for atrophy or strain to take its toll. Take care of yourself, pay attention to the complaints and do something about them.
    • 7y ago
• aphextim 7y ago
  >To earn an associate’s degree, Orry would need to pass 12 separate welding courses, plus basic courses in math and English, as well as more conceptual courses in welding metallurgy. >His first year at CVCC went well, mostly. It wasn’t completely smooth—he failed his required English course, which was offered only online. But in his welding classes, he earned nothing but A’s and B’s. After that first year ended, he ran into some bureaucratic trouble with his financial aid, he told me, and he took both the summer and the fall of 2017 off from school. For a while, I wondered whether he might just be finished with college. But then he started up again as a full-time student in January 2018. Why would anyone pay to go to college for welding? Unless it is some specialized area (Underwater welding), you can join the Iron Worker's 4 year apprenticeship program. 4 years of work/classes once a month. Start at 60% scale (16-18$ depending on state) in year one. 10% pump in pay each year so by the end of your program when you have your journeyman's card you get (26-32$) depending on the state. You have to pay like a $400 sign up fee to get in the union (way cheaper than college) and continue to pay your union dues, however that gets you the benefit of getting on a list to be called when contractors need to man a job. A lot of times it just takes one job with a contractor where you do well, and they will call you direct anytime they need a job. There are lots of Iron Workers in my area at least who only work 9 months out of the year and make $100,000 + by working shutdowns (emergency repair jobs) through the union hall. You can get all your welding certificates without going to college which is what any job requires. Experience and certs proving your welds are up to par. Also FTA > It was hard work, loud and dirty and repetitive, but it paid $13.90 an hour, more than Snappy Lube. After a year and a half, Orry was fired for missing too many days of work, but he soon managed to land a job at another steel-wire factory. Then he got fired from that job as well. > It was by that point the spring of 2016, and Orry was 24, separated, and unemployed. He was raising two children with his ex-wife, Katie, and he was living with a new girlfriend named Crystal. Orry had been working hard for five years, and yet he was broke, with nothing saved. It doesn't explain why he was fired other than 'missed too many days' - and doesn't say any reason for the 2nd. This sounds to me like it's more about the personal work ethic of Orry and budgeting skills vs being a welder you will be poor. Anecdotal I know, but a friend of mine right out of high school got into the trades with the above mentioned path. By 24 (2 years into his journeyman work), he had a modest two bedroom house, wife, two kids and had no issues with money or bankruptcy. He also only worked shutdowns where he may work 28 days in a row, 12 hours a day, and then have an entire month off until the next job. This life isn't for everyone but hey for some it works some it doesn't.
• ivanhoe 7y ago
  Looking at these official stats, median for plumbers is $54K per year, which is not such a bad money for a job that requires no school, just on-job training. Little bit less for carpenters, floor installers and masonry and construction workers, etc. But we need to take into account that none of them requires any special education, it's on-job training only, so you start your life with no debts which gives you a big head start and a lot of freedom. Unlike welders they also, with a bit of entrepreneurship, can expect one day to run their own businesses and earn more. Also, these days very important thing to think of, AI and robots will not replace plumbers or tile layers anytime soon. People working in maintenance will probably be the last to be replaced, if ever.
  • smileysteve 7y ago
    > median for plumbers is $54K per year, which is not such a bad money for a job that requires no school, just on-job training. Not only is it not bad, it's higher than the median salary of many college graduates, even of highly accredited known public schools.
    • lotsofpulp 7y ago
      There are other opportunity costs of trades, such as increased risk of morbidity and mortality due to all the driving/type of work/materials worked with, and working away from home. If one can land a well paying desk job, then currently it still has a greater value proposition, and who wants to be real and tell their child that they probably won't make it into the ranks of a well paying desk job?
      • smileysteve 7y ago
        > who wants to be real and tell their child that they probably won't make it into the ranks of a well paying desk job? Likely the successful tradesmen who has instilled a sense of worth in "dirty jobs" and working final product. Anecdotally, I have some college educated friends that describe the majority of their desk jobs as tedious, repetitive, and duplicative data entry; A plumber or welder's job certainly has comparatively longer term viability.
• oblib 7y ago
  My first career was welding. MIG welding to be specific. I learned shortly after MIG welding machines were first being produced back in the mid-1970s. I made good money doing it, but the work was hit or miss and it wasn't really the welding I was getting paid for, it was knowing how to cut up vans and modify them for severely handicapped people and I'd learned how to do that by building "custom cars" with my father who was a "bodyman" by trade and went on to become a "custom car builder". By the time I quit customizing vans for the handicapped the State of California required you be a "certified welder" to do the work I did on the vans and cars they purchased for people who were in wheelchairs so you had to pay to go to a "welding school" to get a certification. But none of those welders I met who did that actually knew how to weld. How to lay down a bead that penetrated the steel. They all did what those I learned from called "bird shit" welds. A cold weld that laid on top of the metal and didn't penetrate all the way through, and were thus prone to fail. And none of them started those jobs for much more than $5-$7 an hour. That's when I decided to learn how to code. It was only a few years after that when the Internet started taking off, so I learned HTML and Perl by buying books written by the likes of Steven Brenner, "Selena Sol", Lincoln Stein and Randal Schwartz and there were no college level classes that taught it. I got invited to teach some after hour classes at SMS because they didn't have any at the time. Now, more than 20 years later companies want to hire someone with a CS degree, and really they often don't know any more about it than those guys who took those welding classes did about laying down a bead that stuck. But in both cases those who sold the classes lobbied their State Reps to make them mandatory and raked in the cash afterwards.
  • adreamingsoul 7y ago
    Good for you! One of my first job’s after hishschool was Aluminum TIG and MIG welding. I learned to weld throughout highschool and was hired because of the reputation my school had for teaching welding. Unfortunately, I think most of the trade skills are no longer taught at that school. My welding career was only for a couple years, but during that time I focused on improving my TIG skillsets and was able to move into the number two postion at a high end shop that manufactured Aluminum wakeboard and fishing towers (Samson Sports). The welding quality was superb, and every inch was looked over for visual and structual perfection. Needless to say, the pay still wasn’t that great.
• cybersnowflake 7y ago
  TLDR: OMG Orry the welder isn't making billions of dollars like mark zukerberg. REPUKLICKIN myth blue collar jobs can pay well==BUSTED. We must continue Big Ed welfare and support more and more people getting their ph.d in Paleoinuit intersectional feminist theory!
  • dang 7y ago
    Please don't do this here.
• bt848 7y ago
  You shouldn't need to make $150k to get by as a welder. In any sensible society a person who knows how to do something useful like weld should be able to muddle along. Some of my friends from high school in Oklahoma became oil field welders in the 90s. They made good money, bought houses and raised children early in life. It seems like a square deal to me. Of course, that was possible because houses in Oklahoma were plentiful and cheap and the public schools were good and so forth. You know, the way civil society is supposed to work.
  • hinkley 7y ago
    There's a piece of specialty equipment I just learned about recently while pulling on a thread regarding one of my hobbies. It's pretty expensive and I'd probably only need it four times in as many years so I was looking around for other options like rentals or tool libraries. Found nothing. Then I end up in the DIY section, and for about ten seconds I think I hit paydirt. Then I realize that every. single. video. is by some guy who knows his way around an arc welder. And not like "This video is for people who know how to weld," just, "okay cut these pieces and then you weld em together and then you're done." Like everyone or their brother knows how to weld. Now I bring this up because clearly there is some subset of people who are saving a great deal of money by making specialty tools out of stock or scrap instead of buying it. I know a bunch of amateur carpenters and a few woodworkers, but didn't think I know any amateur welders.
    • war1025 7y ago
      I always feel a bit inadequate when I go to my parents' house and look around in the shop at all the tools and odds and ends related to metal working that I have zero idea how to use. And even that is a small smattering of what my dad actually knew how to use. I don't know if its a time and place thing where those skills were more relevant to a rural farm boy in the 60s than they are today, or just that such people still have those skills, but I'm just not one of them...
      • ryandrake 7y ago
        You can pick up a lot of wood and metalworking skills from just watching YouTube and SAFELY experimenting. You’re not going to become a master tradesman or anything but you can pick up a great deal of know-how. Just get a list of things you want to learn and spend some time in dad’s workshop with a laptop showing YouTube. I currently feel comfortable doing basic home plumbing, electrical, my own auto maintenance, building small pieces of wood furniture, and light metalwork (bending, drilling, riveting, etc). Next up that I’d like to learn is welding and fiberglass. With so many resources out there for free, your only limitation is time and access to basic tools.
• taneq 7y ago
  > Conservative politicians and media figures have in recent years been making a sustained and often vociferous public case against higher education. I don't live in the U.S. and so I'm somewhat distant from your politics, but I believe it's less "right wing hates learnin'" and more "conservatives think maybe you shouldn't be spending four years studying left handed underwater lesbian basket weaving." I've never heard a stuffy conservative type dismissing engineering or applied science degrees as useless.
  • monocasa 7y ago
    I have. Occasionally one of them will screw up and say the quiet part out loud. Just last week for instance: https://apnews.com/ba22eace0ec2414794c6722c5bfb5baf https://apnews.com/ba22eace0ec2414794c6722c5bfb5baf Edit: and additionally, a lot of the majors they cry about have pretty good job prospects. Like gender studies or racial studies have good jobs. Some in HR, some in more self starting careers in community outreach and organization. Conservatives just don't like the politics implicit in those majors so they pretend that they're a drain on society without digging into the data.
    • lunchables 7y ago
      It was a joke, do you really think he believed this? He graduated from Lipscomb. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/10/tennessee-senator-kerry-roberts-cutting-college-save-america-joke/2273103001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/10/tennes...
      • monocasa 7y ago
        "It was just a joke bro" is rarely a joke. You say it was just a joke when it's so abhorrent that it gets messaged past the audience it was meant for. It certainly didn't sound like a joke in context, and it's something that large parts of his base believes because of all the demonization of higher education as a republican talking point for decades. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a policy position that he doesn't actually believe but is willing to push because it polls well with his constituency.
• wcunning 7y ago
  I've been taking welding classes at my local community college (Washtenaw CC, just down the road from University of Michigan) around my day job as a controls engineer in the auto industry. This program produces people who win national welding competitions on a regular basis, but they're very open that you don't have to complete the entire thing. The instructor for my summer blueprint welding class kept talking about open jobs in the region and how to get into it -- what certs you needed and what skills to practice. Crappy jobs that didn't require certs paid $20/hr starting + benefits. A couple of years in and with several certs under your belt in a union -- pipefitters or ironworkers -- you could be making north of $40/hr. That doesn't sound high-paying, but many of the people at that level are nomadic, coming into a plant being built and working 12 hrs/day 6 or 7 days a week. Which brings me to my main point -- the statistics on this are heavily skewed. The guy that does that nomadic thing spends some number of months on until he quits and takes 3 months off. Other guys with no certs make money welding art or fixing simple things (a much, much larger category). The BLS numbers aren't a question of what you can make, they're a question of what the distribution looks like.
• briandear 7y ago
  > it absolves us of our shared responsibility to address the reality of his limited economic prospects. Why do I have a responsibility for someone else’s economic prospects? The man profiled in the story didn’t sound like he was a victim of anything I’m responsible for: I didn’t make him late for work so much he got fired. I didn’t ask him to get married and have two kids at age 21. There is a whole bunch of “not my problem” going on there. I’m also not convinced only $30-40 per hour in a pretty cheap cost of living area is a bad wage. That’s much more than many degreed people working in the city make. Also the potential with welding is that he could start his own shop and be making some serious money. The national demand is huge. My dad is a retired precision machinist and his “side business” in his garage makes him more money than his job working with physics Nobel laureates at a major university ever did. Most of his business is contract work for universities and oil field tooling companies and he hires welders almost continually. Most welders he works with are at full capacity and can’t hire people fast enough. The problem is that many people that go into the trades are like the guy profiled in the story: unreliable, often losers, who don’t stick around very long. The good ones, the sky is pretty much the limit. The economy is flying — there is a lot of work. Same thing in the construction trades as well, especially plumbing.
• hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  This article was horrible. Describing the costs/benefits of forgoing college for a trade would be the kind of discussion that I think Hacker News is made for, but not with this poor quality article. First, it cherry picks a single example of someone who obviously had a ton of other shit going on (got fired for missing too much work) and then seems to draw from that the conclusion that "Welding won't make you rich". Then it complains that the 150k salaries for welders bandied about are rare, but so what? Did anyone think a welder right out of the gate would make that much money? I think most of us understand that your average developer isn't making 400k a year at Google, either, but that doesn't mean that's an invalid data point. The reason people should be interested about the trades are: 1. They are immune from offshoring, which has had a huge impact on other blue collar jobs like manufacturing. 2. If they are a viable, and secure, path to the middle class, they should be supported. There are lots of valid issues to discuss (the toll it takes on your body is a big one), but would be better to see it from an article with better data and less out-of-the-gate bias.
  • semi-extrinsic 7y ago
    > it complains that the 150k salaries for welders bandied about are rare, but so what? Did anyone think a welder right out of the gate would make that much money? If you read it, they say the 90th percentile welder gets paid $60k a year. That is, the average 15+ year experience welder gets paid way less than 50% of the original $150k claim.
    • hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
      Your response is exactly why I think the article is horrible - why not lets look at the source data and then discuss that: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers-and-brazers.htm#tab-5 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers... What this says is that the 90th percentile for this entire group of "Welders, Cutters, Solderers and Brazers" was $63,740. But the small table there also says that there is a big difference in the average between "specialty trade contractors" and "manufacturing", which isn't that surprising. It also says nothing about the age range (I don't know where you got your 15+ year experience data from), so when looking at percentiles, it wouldn't be surprising that the field has a ton of junior folks that brings down the average. It would be very interesting to see what the distribution looks like for master welders with at least 10 years experience, but the article has none of that data. Furthermore, if you dig into the 150k claim, you'll see that that is almost always for welders in high demand areas, like oil and gas during the fracking boom. That doesn't make it apocryphal, just constrained to a specific industry.
• paulcole 7y ago
  White collar people LOVE recommending blue collar jobs. It's very similar to the FB execs who cash out and then suddenly say talk about how bad FB is. "Don't do what I did to get rich, it's not a good idea."
  • rpmisms 7y ago
    Probably because many of us dream about blue collar work at our desks.
    • mruts 7y ago
      Just like how many of them dream of white collar work at their mine/construction site/shop. The difference being is that when they find some white collar work, they no longer dream of blue collar work (because it sucks and kills you a day at a time).
      • TKWasRight 7y ago
        It depends on what blue collar work you're talking about...I went blue collar (power plant operator)...obtained CS degree and got a job as a programmer...then after a year went back to blue collar...operations is more interesting to me, plus I get to be on my feet, moving around all shift...it suits me much more...plus the pay for an operator is >$140k in a rural area
    • paulcole 7y ago
      Only the ones who have never worked them before lol.
      • rpmisms 7y ago
        I have, and I dream of going back often
• rossdavidh 7y ago
  My take: the college-educated class (of which I am one) is feeling nervous, and started to spew negativity at the idea of trades or apprenticeship. The college (loan) industry is in for a decline, and is feeling defensive. I don't recall ever hearing that welders were "wealthy", I heard (and continue to hear) that they can be middle-class. Which is something that some who took out big college loans to get a journalism degree, struggle to do.
• astura 7y ago
  People think welders regularly make six figures? Uhhh... I've been looking extensively at manufacturing positions lately because I'm helping a friend in his job search. All the welding ones I've seen in my area that have a salary listed pay around $28k-$38k (IIRC). Those jobs typically have benefits. So much misinformation around anything to do with pay, don't believe anything you hear, I've heard some really outlandish numbers quoted from a variety of places. The BLS (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/ https://www.bls.gov/ooh/) is probably the most accurate source of information you'll get. (Quoted in TFA) >Its premise was that in rural Ohio, there was such a shortage of skilled tradespeople that employers were regularly hiring welders at salaries of $150,000 a year and up. So because In-And-Out pays managers $160,000 a year [1] we should conclude that fast food is (in general) a highly paid occupation? [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/01/25/n-out-mangers-make-160-000-per-year-reports-show/1065434001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/01/25/n...
  • bluGill 7y ago
    Some welders make good money. If you can weld the I-Beams of a 80 story sky scrapper you will make good money. (I'm told most construction workers hit a wall at about the 30th floor and will not work on anything higher). If you can weld while wearing scuba gear you make good money- you also get a full pension at 40 when you are forced to retire because of the wear it does on the body. There are a few other areas where welding pays good money - but they pay good money because so few welders can do them.
• samstave 7y ago
  Not unless your this guy: https://www.nboler.com/ https://www.nboler.com/
• Havoc 7y ago
  1st world to 1st world - doubtful. 3rd world to 1st - that gets more interesting. I recall a story about EU tunnel boring machines where the drilling head was welded together by a team flown in from south africa. Thought that was weird - that's a country with zero tunnel boring experience. Bit more thinking later I realised...that's actually not a bad strategy. Throw some Euros down and get the top 0.1% of the skillset of a 3rd world country. Welding is welding and top 0.1% is pretty grand.
  • saq7 7y ago
    I suspect the top 0.1% would realize that they are the cream of the crop and wouldn't be so easy or cheap to fly out by "throwing some Euros". If there was any price differential between the best welders in these two countries, it would be rendered nil by the cost of flying and housing a team.
• Glyptodon 7y ago
  A relative a mine works for an engineering firm that hires a lot of pipe fitters and welders for jobs they bid (beverage industry). The hourly and (frequently) overtime wages they pay welders often sound good, but the work is also somewhat intermittent and almost always involves significant travel. The welders they hire have pretty significant wage variability year to year.
• anm89 7y ago
  I'm not a welder but I have friends who are and it seems like this is painting the most difficult, least lucrative way to go about this as the norm(ie the whole thing is a strawman) and then crapping on it. My friends who got into welding mostly did so through aprenticeships with unions or on the job non union apprenticeships. They will probably not become millionaires selling their time as welders but they are solidly middle if not upper middle class. They go on international vacations and eat at fancy restraunts. They are fairing on average far better than my friends with "soft" liberal arts degrees. Yeah it's not a total panacea easy road to riches but learning a trade like welding seems like a super high EV move for a lot of people who want a stable career right now.
  • hardtke 7y ago
    Although unions have their flaws, they do help to keep wages high for skilled workers, both in terms of the prevailing wage but also in enforcing overtime rules (double time for Sunday work, for instance). They also prevent out-of-area workers from coming into an area when times are good. Skilled union workers in the Bay Area can work 168 hours per week right now if they want to.
    • Consultant32452 7y ago
      The primary mechanism unions use to keep wages high for union members is to limit supply by lobbying to keep "un-certified" or "non-union" members out of the market. This provides a nice buffer, keeping the poorer class poor and protecting the middle class.
      • journalctl 7y ago
        Do you have a source for this?
        • Consultant32452 7y ago
          Nobel Economist Milton Friedman, for one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4 If you watch to the end he fully explains how the net effect of unions is to raise the pay of high paid workers and lower the pay of low paid workers. You might also like "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell which talks about this phenomenon also.
• Unklejoe 7y ago
  > Welders at the 90th percentile of income for the profession, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earn $63,000 a year before taxes. Those are, statistically, the top earners, and they are usually expert welders with decades of experience. I know one anecdote doesn't mean much, but I have two friends who are making around $100k/year as stick welders (boiler type work) in the New Jersey area. They do more than just weld though - I'd say that 50% of their job is actually welding and the other 50% is miscellaneous boiler repair work. One of them has only been doing it for about 4 years, after going to a two year school. My other friend is making around $80k/year as a "burner mechanic" with absolutely no schooling at all. His only prior experience was that he was a DirecTV installer. He is very mechanically inclined though. The key is getting into one of those companies that does work at state locations - I'm not sure exactly how this all works, but it's something like "if you're working on a state site, you have to get paid the prevailing wage", which is usually very high. Couple that with overtime and you'll see welders making $80+ an hour. I'm sure there are welders who make far less, but that's probably the case with any industry. My friends are probably at a gig equivalent to FAANG in the software world.
• brandonmenc 7y ago
  Every welder and tradesman I know back home where the median home value is $75k is doing pretty good. No student loans, dual-income with a CRN, and you're living pretty high in the rust belt.
• zelon88 7y ago
  > One of the many odd things about the rhetoric that posits welding as the antithesis of college is that in order to become a welder, you actually have to go to college. You can learn the basics in a high-school shop class, as Orry did, but to do it well, you not only have to master multiple precise manual skills; you also need a pretty deep scientific understanding of the metal you’re working with and the electrical and chemical processes you’re using to manipulate that metal. To earn an associate’s degree, Orry would need to pass 12 separate welding courses, plus basic courses in math and English, as well as more conceptual courses in welding metallurgy. This right here. Says it all. I've worked in machine shops all my life, and while it is true that welding was one of the highest paid occupations in that environment; it's also true that it's not something that anyone can do with a week of on-the-job training. Most welding jobs are sticking wrought iron railings together, or playground equipment, or repairing mufflers. It's easy. It's cheap. It is, quite literally, something for a disposable employee to do. It doesn't take skill or experience to replace a muffler. It takes a hack-saw and a MIG welder. There's no reason anyone would or should pay a Jiffy-lube muffler installer $150k/year. It's not a job that warrants that kind of pay. But most "welders" go into the trade thinking that's what they're working towards. It's not comparable in any way to the work performed by a professional welder. They really shouldn't even be called the same thing. It's like labeling a script kiddie a programmer. Misrepresenting the script kiddie takes more away from the actual programmer than it gives to the fake one. That being said, "real" welding is where the money is. It's being certified by some authoritative body to perform your job, whatever that may be. Aerospace, architectural, nuclear, underwater, ect. It's being able to read a complex blueprint and create assemblies that are conforming to a long list of criteria. Criteria that come from a) the government, b) the customer, c) your own quality department, d) your engineering department, e) your own experience. I bet you that if you took most bicycles from Wal-Mart and had the welds x-ray'd that 100% would fail standard NDT testing like X-Ray, FPI (fluorescent particle inspection), MPI (magnetic particle inspection). It requires a very low-level understanding of the science behind welding. On a molecular/chemical level. The welders who take their job seriously, climb to the top, take their time, can read a blueprint, and are professional in their appearance, work ethic, mannerisms, and products do well. They will reach $150k by working on mission-critical components that people's lives depend on. You can't substitute an actual welder for "a welder." They need to be responsible, talented, and intelligent. Sadly the people being pushed/drawn into welding careers aren't any of those things. They are simple people looking for an easy way out of poverty. As a result, there are now hundreds of thousands of under-qualified people trying to get into a career with mere thousands of openings. The ones that do get in hover close to the bottom because they need the same skills to be good at welding that they needed all along. The bar for welding is just as high as for being a doctor, or a programmer, or any other profession. So in the end, you can be a wealthy welder or a poor welder. You can be a wealthy programmer, or a poor programmer. It all comes down to the word "professional". If you're professional chances are good you're intelligent and will do well no matter what field you go into. My last shop was NADCAP certified (for aerospace with 5 x-ray certified full-time welders. We had one who only made it about 9 months or so. His welds were GORGEOUS. This guy should have been working in a motorcycle shop. His work was just so neat and tidy! But he couldn't pass X-ray or FPI to save his life. He would wait nervously for his parts to return from NDT vendors to count the parts he would have to rework. After he porked 400 or so inconel rings for tungsten inclusion we had to let him go. He was a good welder, but he wasn't good enough to be working on airplane parts.
• posterboy 7y ago
  I suppose what's called welder is not "Schweißer" in German, but a "Schlosser", which would be subdivided by application, and had a lot in common with a mechanic (a wrench is a "Schlüssel", literally a key, compare French "cle anglaise" - monkey wrench). Welding would just be learned as part of the job, whether as plumber or mechanic, once upon a time even as electrician (who now doesn't even learn to solder). I say "had", because the mechanic nowadays is taught mostly as a "Mechatroniker", since electronics have become ubiquitious in machines. The secondary education systems differ from the US, I hear. Nevertheless, most training happens on the job, with one school day per week over 3 odd years in case of these jobs--which ammounts to 6 month of schooling. Pay starts at ca. 15 Eur after graduation (and is miserable, below minimum wage, for the apprenticeship). Several possibilities to diversify afterwards exist, but many slug along without going for e.g. technician or master studies. The exams can be taken out of school under certain limited conditions. etc. p. p. "Schweißer" is not a registered apprenticeship, but qualification is offered and eventually necessary; job opportunities exist, almost solely through temp agencies, starting at ca 12 Eur; no publically indexed opportunity in Berlin. One adverisement mentions that up to 100 different welding techniques exist (need to be known, as they say) from once a mere five. I'd imagine kinds of certificates in welding can be optained in crash courses. In contrast, professional-welder does not strike me as an entry level position, nor as a common job. I haven't met any, to say the least. I do remember a special note about the welding jobs done on the Wendelstein-X project, mentioned in a podcast with the leader of the programm. That was followed by a note about a Swiss specialists detecting defects in custom coils, who was described like the master of an arcane art in the best tradition of swiss watchmakers. (check alternativlos.de if you understand .de)
• kerkeslager 7y ago
  It's actually even worse than this. I'm on the fringes of a community that does a lot of metal art, so I know a few welders who make good (but not great) money doing welding. But they all are artists, and they all have college degrees, and couldn't attract the art contracts they do without their college pedigree. It's disingenuous to say "Welding makes good money" and "Welding doesn't require a college degree" in the same breath, because many of the higher-income welders actually do have college degrees which increase their income, which skews the statistics. There are three people I know who weld but don't make much money. One makes most of her money on banking software, and the other two don't have degrees.
• speeder 7y ago
  This article surprised me by how biased and bad it is. And although it claims the "myth" started in 2015, I started to hear about this (and I am from Brazil, not US even) around 2005 or so. I finished college around 2009, and know from personal experience, that the "politicians" the article is against, are saying the truth, I ended college with huge debts, didn't got any decent jobs, and right now I work in a field not related to what I learned in college, I finished paying the loans only last year, and will finally marry this year, and will live in a tiny cramped apartment with my wife, with no vehicle. The friends I had at high school, the ones that went to college, are in similar situations... But the ones that went to trade school, all of them own their own house, are married with kids, own multiple vehicles... So I have no idea where the idea that this stuff is a "myth" came from. And I am sorry of how much I belittled a friend in high school, when he said he would not go to college, and go learn welding and how to operate CNC machines... Back then all "adults" convinced me he was going to be low class and poor, and that I should aim to enter a pretigious university. That guy while I was still in college, had bought the motorcycle of his dreams. When I finished college, he was paying for his house. When I was strugglign to find jobs, in part because everyone wanted experience instead of education, and thus I was 5 years older with zero experience compared to my competitors (either 18 year old guys with lots of energy, or people same age as me, that skipped college but had 5 years of experience on the job), he was complaining of how many job offers he had to turn down...
• loeg 7y ago
  If not college, though, your options are kind of limited. Other (used-to-)pay-pretty-ok blue collar jobs are things like plumbers, electricians, and union telco work, if you can get it. Plumbing isn't too hard to pick up; I don't know if you need licensing for that (or why), other than a professional liability insurance policy of some kind. AFAIK there's still pretty good demand for plumbers and electricians, although I haven't done any kind of research on the market and expect it varies a lot by locale.
• contingencies 7y ago
  Does anyone with deep experience within welding have any pro tips on fixture design? Even willing to do some consulting? We are tackling this at the moment and getting some grossly conflicting inputs from manual welders, automated welding equipment suppliers, and other sources. Basically we want to produce precise and repeatable assemblies mainly out of 304 beam stock, but with a view toward validating precision before investing in automation we've become aware that fixture design will be critical, yet lack experience. Our initial prototype fixture already functions successfully with pneumatic work holding, but has numerous design flaws.
• peteretep 7y ago
  > If we are able to persuade ourselves that there are plenty of lucrative opportunities available for young people like Orry who didn’t much like high school, it absolves us of our shared responsibility to address the reality of his limited economic prospects Mic drop
• blackflame7000 7y ago
  Just today the AC unit at our house sprung a leak. Due to California's laws you have to replace old ACs with more efficient ones. In the middle of the summer installation costs run 3-10k. Instead I did it my self and just paid a welder to connect the copper tubes. He worked about an hour and I paid him $500.
• ranDOMscripts 7y ago
  What the title of article should be: "The Myth of the Freelance Wealthy Welder in Nowheresville, Anystate USA". Welding, and trades in general, pay big money in the big cities along the coasts. I bet the union welders putting up sky scrapers and fixing public works are making six figures, minimum.
• welder 7y ago
  Despite my handle, I'm not a welder. In all seriousness, it sucks people were duped into a welding career not all it's cracked up to be.
• jacquesm 7y ago
  I know of two wealthy welders. The one lives in Northern Ontario, is technically pensioned but both the local steelmill (Sault Ste. Marie) and a large mining operation kept asking him to solve their 'unsolvable' problem, which he would do without much ado or noise. He would fix stuff while it was running because shutting down a smelter is very expensive, either through remote control (pantographs) or other trickery to get close to the welding spot. The other is here in the Netherlands, works in off-shore and has gradually transited from welding to safety officer. He made a ton of money doing welding though (diver / welder) and has a lot of property that he rents out. He could retire anytime he wants (and is still < 40).
• eire1130 7y ago
  Most people who go on about "the trades", I find, it's unlikely they ever personally worked them. Maybe their Father's. I doubt Marco Rubio has ever touched a hammer, let alone worked as a real laborer. As for me, going to college was absolutley the thing that really changed my life course. I grew up on a dairy farm in northern New York. Milked cows until I was 18 and then my dad sold the farm. So I joined the Navy. I did that for 6 years and then when I was about to get out in 2002, I can still remember an officer (you know, a guy with a degree) explaining to me that I was making this huge mistake getting out. Because I was successful in the Navy. Already an E6/FC1. My career was made. So I asked him, if I'm successful on the inside, what makes you think I cant be successful on the outside? So I got a lot of reasons. It was a good pitch. He even talked to me about getting an associate's at the local college. I was almost there anyway, just a couple classes and I'd be done. At the end, he questioned if Bard, a private liberal arts school I was accepted to, was even accredited. That's when I knew, not only did he not care, but he would seek to harm my potential future growth just for some metric. Anyway, so I did go to Bard college. Graduated with a degree in economics, now I'm the CTO / CPO of a middle market company (7 or so years after graduating college). Had I of stayed, I could have done other blue jobs on the outside someday. I know a guy who works on powerlines in Texas. Says he likes his job. Takes advil like its candy. It pays the bills. My wife and I have saved a lot, even with two kids. Last year, after our company consummated its sale to a PE company, we've been able to buy our own house in Brooklyn. If I became a truck driver like my dad did after the sale of the farm, I'm not sure I'd be in the same place today - but it's possible I suppose. My brother is in the trades. Hes a master plumber and runs his own plumbing company. He's also been successful. His back is also totally shot.
• plants 7y ago
  This is so true. Every comment I see on HN regarding welding paints it as the counterpoint example to a college education/getting a white-collar job. I have a brother who gets worked to the bone welding for about $15 an hour. He can get pretty good incentive for producing more than the hourly "expected" rate, but it's hard work! He welds I-beams and lifts between 20-60 pounds per beam, depending on the specs of the specific beams, all day every day that he works. He does somewhere on the order of 40-60 beams per hour. Between his job as a welder and my cushy job as a software developer (making twice as much) I would choose the cushy software developer job every time. Not sure I would be saying the same thing if I had gotten a liberal art degree, but I certainly wouldn't use welding as the prime example of a trade-school "easy way out" from going to college.