5 ms·

I was just going to look for data on plumbers and carpenters. One common theme to all these jobs is that they tend to be quite stable, and require a life-long

by retrac 5y ago

I was just going to look for data on plumbers and carpenters. One common theme to all these jobs is that they tend to be quite stable, and require a life-long set of skills. My father did metalwork before moving to an office job in the civil service. He was the son of a die pressman. Who was the son of a blacksmith. Dad taught me how to weld and cut and so on before my teens. My intellectual interests went to math and computers early on, and he did encourage me to go wherever that might lead. Yet after university and exploring the world I end up in a job where I make circuit boards. It's nearly all automated now but I still do far more welding in my job than most people with a degree. Sometimes it feels like our life scripts are often sketched out by circumstance and trends long before we're even born.

ozim 5y ago
I went into software dev while my father was a construction worker. He is really proud of buildings he was working on and that he was able to build things with his own hands. Even though I have an engineering degree and work in totally different environment I think that something I took from him is that I am really happy with the systems I have built and ability to create things on my own. I did it with keyboard while he did it with hammer. So I don't think it is "cartels" it is still a lot of what you experience in your childhood. If your parent is a dentist he will talk about that and you won't have problem to understand things in that area, maybe you will visit his practice and be able to play with the tools even. Well it still is some kind of upper-hand but not every child can have the same exposure to dentistry and I am fine with that.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  Looking back, I think that one superiority of construction over software is that your work has real permanence. Now and again I'll see a very expensive thing I worked on on eBay for a penny on the dollar. Maybe it's time to build a Museum of Me in a spare bedroom.
noizejoy 5y ago
I'd say it's a script filled with probabilities rather than absolutes. And isn't that all of life, the universe and everything?
Spooky23 5y ago
Another big aspect to trades is there’s often a union bureaucracy or something similar to navigate. It helps to have someone to show you the ropes.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  It's a test for most union trades. To those interested, call the union hall where you live. So, it's usually a test, and a interview. The interview counts for 1/2 of the hiring process. The test is usually an 8th grade, or high school equivalency test. It's not hard, but in certain high paying markets, like San Francisco, a 1000 guys might show up to take the test, so you need to get most questions right. Once you get into the union, it's kinda a cake walk. You can achieve a middle class income, health, and retirement. It wasn't for me, but a lot of people like it. (answering the top question. I never wanted to do what my father did. We had a strained relationship the minute I stopped agreeing with him. Even as a kid, I loved my father, but didn't want to be like him in any way--including career.)
  - kingsuper20 5y ago
    >Once you get into the union, it's kinda a cake walk. Knowing people in the highly unionized film biz, getting your next job always seems to be the order of the day so it seems to depend. It actually sounds pretty tough compared to a 'normal' gig at a company, but you do end up with good stories to tell.
lordnacho 5y ago
I wonder if I'm the only kid who expressly did not do what their parents did in this thread. Of course I also sit in a cluster, knowing several other kids who also did not want to become restaurant workers. It was simple really, our parents would say "I'm serving fried rice to people so that you won't have to." None of my family friends have taken over the family business. It's nearly an insult to suggest it, I remember seeing an article about my friend's dad having his anniversary at one of Copenhagens most beloved Chinese grillbars. The FB comment section made it clear she had no intention of taking that over, his hard work had resulted in a cushy white collar job for her and she was thankful for that. Oddly my wife, a doctor's kid, also got put off being a doctor by her dad. He had long become cynical about working in the NHS and let his kids know when they got to the age where you think about this.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  My dad was a telecom salesman, I became a software engineer. I do remember seeing big stacks of dBase binders in his closet, and he taught me how to use a command line, but a developer he was not.
- joatmon-snoo 5y ago
  Re this thread specifically, I suspect medicine is viewed differently in the US than in the UK. There's certainly an impression, imo, of the profession in the US that's derived from the upper percentiles of the earning potential here; I've heard (but am not sure) that the range is less extreme in countries with superior healthcare systems.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    Yeah, I happen to have relatives who are doctors in the US. I think they get paid more than my father-in-law did, but they talk about malpractice insurance taking up a lot of that income, so I'm not sure how it nets out.
- KMag 5y ago
  > I wonder if I'm the only kid who expressly did not do what their parents did in this thread. My father and my father's father were both anesthesiologists. I'm a software developer with a degree in mechanical engineering. Growing up, I saw a lot of my dad's frustration butting his head against hospital and regulatory bureaucracy and decided to steer clear. (His biggest headaches came because it's not uncommon for one anesthesiologist to cover 3 simultaneous low-risk operations, circulating among the operating rooms while each surgery has a dedicated nurse anesthetist. There was one billing regulation that was ambiguous in a corner case for such simultaneous services, where one reading indicated that they weren't allowed to charge any fees at all in a corner case. His company inquired for clarification from the government regulator and got no response. Years after their inquiry, they got sued regarding corner-case billing of the government for services provided to low income patients. The legal discovery process found internal government memos where regulators joked with each other over my dad's company's inquiry about how it would be great to have zero-cost healthcare at the expense of physicians. The laws were later clarified to avoid the ambiguity to essentially match my dad's company's interpretation, but unfortunately, the lawsuit was over the laws at the time the billing was made. They were actually sued by a third party on behalf of the government, in exchange for a percentage of the money recovered for the government. Some of the key pieces of evidence were shown pre-trial to be "mistakes" where the other side had "accidentally" photocopied several bills twice and redacted the two copies of each bill slightly differently. There were some "anonymous whistleblower" faxes that were traced to an office service center across the street from the other party's offices (conveniently preventing the whistleblower from having to answer questions under oath), and all kinds of other obvious dishonest evidence submission. Most of the complaints were thrown out pre-trial, the rest they settled out of court rather than risk a jury trial pitting "rich doctors" against a government program for low income folks, over ambiguous wording. There were also anti-trust allegations made by defining a market as the area right around the hospital's where dad's company operated and conveniently ignoring some hospitals in-between those included hospitals. At least the anti-trust stuff was dropped pretty quickly, but the whole ordeal was a high-stress multi-year situation for my dad when I was in elementary school.)

by retrac 5y ago

ozim 5y ago

I went into software dev while my father was a construction worker. He is really proud of buildings he was working on and that he was able to build things with his own hands. Even though I have an engineering degree and work in totally different environment I think that something I took from him is that I am really happy with the systems I have built and ability to create things on my own. I did it with keyboard while he did it with hammer. So I don't think it is "cartels" it is still a lot of what you experience in your childhood. If your parent is a dentist he will talk about that and you won't have problem to understand things in that area, maybe you will visit his practice and be able to play with the tools even. Well it still is some kind of upper-hand but not every child can have the same exposure to dentistry and I am fine with that.

kingsuper20 5y ago
Looking back, I think that one superiority of construction over software is that your work has real permanence. Now and again I'll see a very expensive thing I worked on on eBay for a penny on the dollar. Maybe it's time to build a Museum of Me in a spare bedroom.

noizejoy 5y ago

I'd say it's a script filled with probabilities rather than absolutes. And isn't that all of life, the universe and everything?

Spooky23 5y ago

Another big aspect to trades is there’s often a union bureaucracy or something similar to navigate. It helps to have someone to show you the ropes.

hellbannedguy 5y ago
It's a test for most union trades. To those interested, call the union hall where you live. So, it's usually a test, and a interview. The interview counts for 1/2 of the hiring process. The test is usually an 8th grade, or high school equivalency test. It's not hard, but in certain high paying markets, like San Francisco, a 1000 guys might show up to take the test, so you need to get most questions right. Once you get into the union, it's kinda a cake walk. You can achieve a middle class income, health, and retirement. It wasn't for me, but a lot of people like it. (answering the top question. I never wanted to do what my father did. We had a strained relationship the minute I stopped agreeing with him. Even as a kid, I loved my father, but didn't want to be like him in any way--including career.)
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  >Once you get into the union, it's kinda a cake walk. Knowing people in the highly unionized film biz, getting your next job always seems to be the order of the day so it seems to depend. It actually sounds pretty tough compared to a 'normal' gig at a company, but you do end up with good stories to tell.

lordnacho 5y ago

I wonder if I'm the only kid who expressly did not do what their parents did in this thread. Of course I also sit in a cluster, knowing several other kids who also did not want to become restaurant workers. It was simple really, our parents would say "I'm serving fried rice to people so that you won't have to." None of my family friends have taken over the family business. It's nearly an insult to suggest it, I remember seeing an article about my friend's dad having his anniversary at one of Copenhagens most beloved Chinese grillbars. The FB comment section made it clear she had no intention of taking that over, his hard work had resulted in a cushy white collar job for her and she was thankful for that. Oddly my wife, a doctor's kid, also got put off being a doctor by her dad. He had long become cynical about working in the NHS and let his kids know when they got to the age where you think about this.

tomc1985 5y ago
My dad was a telecom salesman, I became a software engineer. I do remember seeing big stacks of dBase binders in his closet, and he taught me how to use a command line, but a developer he was not.
joatmon-snoo 5y ago
Re this thread specifically, I suspect medicine is viewed differently in the US than in the UK. There's certainly an impression, imo, of the profession in the US that's derived from the upper percentiles of the earning potential here; I've heard (but am not sure) that the range is less extreme in countries with superior healthcare systems.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Yeah, I happen to have relatives who are doctors in the US. I think they get paid more than my father-in-law did, but they talk about malpractice insurance taking up a lot of that income, so I'm not sure how it nets out.
KMag 5y ago
> I wonder if I'm the only kid who expressly did not do what their parents did in this thread. My father and my father's father were both anesthesiologists. I'm a software developer with a degree in mechanical engineering. Growing up, I saw a lot of my dad's frustration butting his head against hospital and regulatory bureaucracy and decided to steer clear. (His biggest headaches came because it's not uncommon for one anesthesiologist to cover 3 simultaneous low-risk operations, circulating among the operating rooms while each surgery has a dedicated nurse anesthetist. There was one billing regulation that was ambiguous in a corner case for such simultaneous services, where one reading indicated that they weren't allowed to charge any fees at all in a corner case. His company inquired for clarification from the government regulator and got no response. Years after their inquiry, they got sued regarding corner-case billing of the government for services provided to low income patients. The legal discovery process found internal government memos where regulators joked with each other over my dad's company's inquiry about how it would be great to have zero-cost healthcare at the expense of physicians. The laws were later clarified to avoid the ambiguity to essentially match my dad's company's interpretation, but unfortunately, the lawsuit was over the laws at the time the billing was made. They were actually sued by a third party on behalf of the government, in exchange for a percentage of the money recovered for the government. Some of the key pieces of evidence were shown pre-trial to be "mistakes" where the other side had "accidentally" photocopied several bills twice and redacted the two copies of each bill slightly differently. There were some "anonymous whistleblower" faxes that were traced to an office service center across the street from the other party's offices (conveniently preventing the whistleblower from having to answer questions under oath), and all kinds of other obvious dishonest evidence submission. Most of the complaints were thrown out pre-trial, the rest they settled out of court rather than risk a jury trial pitting "rich doctors" against a government program for low income folks, over ambiguous wording. There were also anti-trust allegations made by defining a market as the area right around the hospital's where dad's company operated and conveniently ignoring some hospitals in-between those included hospitals. At least the anti-trust stuff was dropped pretty quickly, but the whole ordeal was a high-stress multi-year situation for my dad when I was in elementary school.)