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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 g

by 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.
jshowa3 7y ago
I'd argue that people who read 4 or 5 books on programming don't know much about anything either when they first start out. In fact, I'd argue that a graduate knows much more than most people think. The problem is that it's usually general knowledge that doesn't apply to some specific framework that 90% of developers use. It's all abstracted away to learning X framework.
- soperj 7y ago
  Sure, and that's pretty much what this guy was saying. How much does theory help you properly weld? Same way learning when to use bubblesort vs. quicksort helps me figure out why my css is working in firefox but not ie11.
  - RHSeeger 7y ago
    Knowing how to judge the complexity of an algorithm (which is what learning about different sorts helped teach me) is useful to me in developing software on a regular basis. That includes javascript sometimes.
  - brandmeyer 7y ago
    > How much does theory help you properly weld? A ton. The metallurgy of welding is complex. When performing a bespoke weld, you have to know what type of filler metal to use (it frequently is not identical to the pieces being welded...), heat pre-treatment, heat post-treatment, and range of available current for the job. All of those factors vary with the job. While the reference texts can help you, you have to at least know enough to figure out where to look. Then you need to have enough practice to to recognize when things go wrong, and how to correct it. Much as in the current programming industry, the problem is people coming out with an education on paper, yet not actually knowing either the theory or practice the of welding.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > I'd argue that people who read 4 or 5 books on programming don't know much about anything either when they first start out. I would say that's a function of a lot of complex items, including their prior educational experience, general intelligence, and just how closely they read the book. There exist many books I've "read" once and mostly forgotten, and precious few I've read a half-dozen or more times and know intimately. If the former, I agree with you. If the latter, not so much. > In fact, I'd argue that a graduate knows much more than most people think. In my experience there are two kinds of graduates, those who spent years memorizing material to get a piece of paper, and those who learned how to learn and applied it to get their piece of paper. When folks talk about shit graduates they have the former in mind, when folks extol the virtues of a university education they are thinking of the latter. Unfortunately universities spit out both and it's very hard to distinguish on-the-fly.
nimbius 7y ago
You realize $7 an hour is $95,000 a year in 2019 cash? If i were offered that for hangover quality work burning rods at a good union job i would not think twice. id be able to afford the median home price in 1970 which was $23,000. These numbers seem to support the idea of the wealthy welder. Its entirely possible fossilized republicans are thinking in 1970 dollars. Fast forward to 2019. auto mechanics START at just shy of 22,000 a year and thats assuming you keep track of your time and work for a shop that doesnt engage in the rampant practice of wage theft. master mechanic? depends, maybe $28 an hour in 2019? but nowhere near the $46 an hour a twice convicted tombstone welder made back when the Love Boat sailed. The problem is not trade, or college, its the seemingly endless wealth gap between people who do work, and people who just seem to collect mansions and yachts.
- hangonhn 7y ago
  The last sentence really hits the nail on the head. Just to add to that, during the 2008 recession I saw my portfolio swing pretty wildly going negative one day and positive another but the amount was more than I made that day or maybe even that week. It was then it dawned on me, American capitalism rewards ownership, not labor nor time devoted to a task. Those changes in my net worth would have happened regardless of if I worked or took the day off. Time and labor can get you to ownership but that's not guaranteed nor probable in some fields. I don't want our country to discourage property ownership and accumulation of wealth but the paths leading to that from working hard seems increasingly fewer and narrower.
  - abacadaba 7y ago
    aka, capitalism
  - rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
    This comment shouldn’t have been downvoted because it’s completely accurate, and provably so: tax rates for earnings on capital are by and large less than earnings on labor. Warren Buffett has complained for years that he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary. The system we have rewards trust fund babies, and punishes hard working people.
driverdan 7y ago
How can you go to school for welding and still suck at basic MIG techniques? Is it all theory with no practical? I learned MIG basics in an afternoon. So far none of my welds have cracked. I'd expect much better welding from people coming out of school than what I can do.
- grogenaut 7y ago
  How have you stressed or tested your welds?
  - driverdan 7y ago
    Yes. All of them are in active use and subjected to hundreds or thousands of pounds of force. Considering my lack of experience I suspect over time I'll find at least one weak joint. That said it's really not hard to tell if you get penetration, especially if you grind them.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  The only difference may be that you care.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Welder here. I live in Australia. Well, not just welding: we're considered engineering tradespeople - that's what it says on my trade certificate. Earned over $100k last financial year, doing 50+ hour weeks, so plenty of over time, we certainly work for it. If you're in the right workshop, or doing the right site work, we're getting paid reasonably well. If you can buy a house away from the major centres, maybe one that needs a bit of a refresh, and don't need a brand new car every few years, we can live quite comfortably.
grogenaut 7y ago
In WA to get a license to weld you have to pass a 4G or 5G test. You can't really pass those without a penetrating weld as the lack of penetration will be very obvious when they slice and fold the cupon. I could see that people who can pass the test would not know how to weld in many positions or on many automotive type materials/parts, but they should at least know how to get a penetrating weld.
colechristensen 7y ago
I used to watch a lot of https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks for fun and the impression I got from this guy was that welding school and certification tests are hard and require verification of exactly the kind of good welds you describe.

by oblib 7y ago

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.

jshowa3 7y ago

I'd argue that people who read 4 or 5 books on programming don't know much about anything either when they first start out. In fact, I'd argue that a graduate knows much more than most people think. The problem is that it's usually general knowledge that doesn't apply to some specific framework that 90% of developers use. It's all abstracted away to learning X framework.

soperj 7y ago
Sure, and that's pretty much what this guy was saying. How much does theory help you properly weld? Same way learning when to use bubblesort vs. quicksort helps me figure out why my css is working in firefox but not ie11.
- RHSeeger 7y ago
  Knowing how to judge the complexity of an algorithm (which is what learning about different sorts helped teach me) is useful to me in developing software on a regular basis. That includes javascript sometimes.
- brandmeyer 7y ago
  > How much does theory help you properly weld? A ton. The metallurgy of welding is complex. When performing a bespoke weld, you have to know what type of filler metal to use (it frequently is not identical to the pieces being welded...), heat pre-treatment, heat post-treatment, and range of available current for the job. All of those factors vary with the job. While the reference texts can help you, you have to at least know enough to figure out where to look. Then you need to have enough practice to to recognize when things go wrong, and how to correct it. Much as in the current programming industry, the problem is people coming out with an education on paper, yet not actually knowing either the theory or practice the of welding.
mieseratte 7y ago
> I'd argue that people who read 4 or 5 books on programming don't know much about anything either when they first start out. I would say that's a function of a lot of complex items, including their prior educational experience, general intelligence, and just how closely they read the book. There exist many books I've "read" once and mostly forgotten, and precious few I've read a half-dozen or more times and know intimately. If the former, I agree with you. If the latter, not so much. > In fact, I'd argue that a graduate knows much more than most people think. In my experience there are two kinds of graduates, those who spent years memorizing material to get a piece of paper, and those who learned how to learn and applied it to get their piece of paper. When folks talk about shit graduates they have the former in mind, when folks extol the virtues of a university education they are thinking of the latter. Unfortunately universities spit out both and it's very hard to distinguish on-the-fly.

nimbius 7y ago

You realize $7 an hour is $95,000 a year in 2019 cash? If i were offered that for hangover quality work burning rods at a good union job i would not think twice. id be able to afford the median home price in 1970 which was $23,000. These numbers seem to support the idea of the wealthy welder. Its entirely possible fossilized republicans are thinking in 1970 dollars. Fast forward to 2019. auto mechanics START at just shy of 22,000 a year and thats assuming you keep track of your time and work for a shop that doesnt engage in the rampant practice of wage theft. master mechanic? depends, maybe $28 an hour in 2019? but nowhere near the $46 an hour a twice convicted tombstone welder made back when the Love Boat sailed. The problem is not trade, or college, its the seemingly endless wealth gap between people who do work, and people who just seem to collect mansions and yachts.

hangonhn 7y ago
The last sentence really hits the nail on the head. Just to add to that, during the 2008 recession I saw my portfolio swing pretty wildly going negative one day and positive another but the amount was more than I made that day or maybe even that week. It was then it dawned on me, American capitalism rewards ownership, not labor nor time devoted to a task. Those changes in my net worth would have happened regardless of if I worked or took the day off. Time and labor can get you to ownership but that's not guaranteed nor probable in some fields. I don't want our country to discourage property ownership and accumulation of wealth but the paths leading to that from working hard seems increasingly fewer and narrower.
- abacadaba 7y ago
  aka, capitalism
- rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
  This comment shouldn’t have been downvoted because it’s completely accurate, and provably so: tax rates for earnings on capital are by and large less than earnings on labor. Warren Buffett has complained for years that he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary. The system we have rewards trust fund babies, and punishes hard working people.

driverdan 7y ago

How can you go to school for welding and still suck at basic MIG techniques? Is it all theory with no practical? I learned MIG basics in an afternoon. So far none of my welds have cracked. I'd expect much better welding from people coming out of school than what I can do.

grogenaut 7y ago
How have you stressed or tested your welds?
- driverdan 7y ago
  Yes. All of them are in active use and subjected to hundreds or thousands of pounds of force. Considering my lack of experience I suspect over time I'll find at least one weak joint. That said it's really not hard to tell if you get penetration, especially if you grind them.
jacquesm 7y ago
The only difference may be that you care.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

Welder here. I live in Australia. Well, not just welding: we're considered engineering tradespeople - that's what it says on my trade certificate. Earned over $100k last financial year, doing 50+ hour weeks, so plenty of over time, we certainly work for it. If you're in the right workshop, or doing the right site work, we're getting paid reasonably well. If you can buy a house away from the major centres, maybe one that needs a bit of a refresh, and don't need a brand new car every few years, we can live quite comfortably.

grogenaut 7y ago

In WA to get a license to weld you have to pass a 4G or 5G test. You can't really pass those without a penetrating weld as the lack of penetration will be very obvious when they slice and fold the cupon. I could see that people who can pass the test would not know how to weld in many positions or on many automotive type materials/parts, but they should at least know how to get a penetrating weld.

colechristensen 7y ago

I used to watch a lot of https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks for fun and the impression I got from this guy was that welding school and certification tests are hard and require verification of exactly the kind of good welds you describe.