6 ms·

Disclosure: i graduated from a trade school, and promptly got a handful of certifications for heavy diesel mechanical maintenance. The trades have always been

Disclosure: i graduated from a trade school, and promptly got a handful of certifications for heavy diesel mechanical maintenance. The trades have always been there, but i suspect the reason boomers steered their kids to college was twofold. One, they watched tradecraft in the fifties slowly kill their parents before OSHA was really a thing, and second, boomers lost touch with just how predatory colleges became as they went from general educational institutions to undergrad paper-mills grinding graduate students into dust and milking student athelete slave labor for fame and cash. If youre thinking of the trades, we need you. We need electricians, HVAC, and mechanics. We need welders, nurses, ironworkers, and plumbers. we need linemen, boilermakers, and radiologists. most importantly WE NEED YOU. check around your local city for community colleges and trade techs, and try to stick with the public ones where youll spend a couple of years alongside old-timers and professionals. Read up on the unions in your region and join up where youll be PAID to work alongside skilled journeymen instead of service a lifetime of debt for the privilege of learning basket weaving. Tradecraft isnt golden gate bridge levels of dangerous anymore. for example my shops had an 11 year run with no lost time accidents. Theres hard, rewarding work waiting for you that respects your intelligence and gives ample changes for advancement, and it pays a living wage.

_-david-_ 5y ago
>One, they watched tradecraft in the fifties slowly kill their parents before OSHA was really a thing I think this may be part of it, but there were also a lot of manufacturing jobs that left the US around this time as well. Many towns become shells of their former selves resulting in a lot of people never find a better job. A prevailing idea was that a college degree would help insulate against such things.
nemo44x 5y ago
If you're a reasonable smart person you'll do really well in the trades. It's easy enough to learn quite a few trades while taking some basic business courses at night and you'll already be well ahead of the game. A friend of mine runs an industrial insulation business (install, removal, maintenance, etc) and uses union staffing for the contracts he wins. He works about 2 hours a day taking the calls he needs and arranging inspections for bidding on jobs. Makes as much as a software engineer at a FAANG. Another friend is a general contractor who has connections to custom cabinet shops and he sells home renovations and is getting 30% margin on high end jobs. Did all the jobs for about 10 years so bidding is easy for him and he doesn't lift a thing except the gas cap when he's filling his 100k truck.
- bradlys 5y ago
  While this is often a thing - it’s definitely one of the most directly leech-like things you could do. It’s quintessential capitalism at its finest (worst). Say what you want about FAANG eng - they’re often doing something.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    Interesting, I never really thought of it that way. I always saw it as someone creating a market for buyers and sellers of insulation installation/maintenance labor. I'm probably oversimplifying his involvement though. He does have to supervise on jobs, fire bad workers (which there is a lot, even in the unions) and deal with the day to day stuff.
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    value delivered is not always proportional to time spent working. it's like the proverb of the engineer who fixes the machine by whacking it with a hammer. $5 to hit it, $995 for knowing where to hit it. even a "simple" home HVAC project can involve a bunch of different subcontractors that work for different companies, have different schedules, etc. without knowledge of the industry and the individuals involved, selecting and managing the subcontractors directly would be a nightmare for the average homeowner. the general contractor can earn most of their 30% cut just by knowing who to call in the first place and getting them to show up. when you find a good one, you really want to hold onto their number.
invalidOrTaken 5y ago
>One, they watched tradecraft in the fifties slowly kill their parents before OSHA was really a thing This is a really good point---to some extent we can see college as individiuals reacting to working environments---"inefficiently" in that it doesn't solve the problem, but it solves it for them---meanwhile eventually society handles it as a whole. I think there can also be a "prestige" thing going on---jobs that aren't prestigious can become less well-paid (relatively), because those with prestige can at some point say, "Why are we paying these undesireables all this money, can't we bring in some immigrants/subsidize substitutes/outsource?" Which means that it's quite possible that certain trades could become much more valuable, very quickly---as we've seen in nursing, for instance.

_-david-_ 5y ago

>One, they watched tradecraft in the fifties slowly kill their parents before OSHA was really a thing I think this may be part of it, but there were also a lot of manufacturing jobs that left the US around this time as well. Many towns become shells of their former selves resulting in a lot of people never find a better job. A prevailing idea was that a college degree would help insulate against such things.

nemo44x 5y ago

If you're a reasonable smart person you'll do really well in the trades. It's easy enough to learn quite a few trades while taking some basic business courses at night and you'll already be well ahead of the game. A friend of mine runs an industrial insulation business (install, removal, maintenance, etc) and uses union staffing for the contracts he wins. He works about 2 hours a day taking the calls he needs and arranging inspections for bidding on jobs. Makes as much as a software engineer at a FAANG. Another friend is a general contractor who has connections to custom cabinet shops and he sells home renovations and is getting 30% margin on high end jobs. Did all the jobs for about 10 years so bidding is easy for him and he doesn't lift a thing except the gas cap when he's filling his 100k truck.

bradlys 5y ago
While this is often a thing - it’s definitely one of the most directly leech-like things you could do. It’s quintessential capitalism at its finest (worst). Say what you want about FAANG eng - they’re often doing something.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  Interesting, I never really thought of it that way. I always saw it as someone creating a market for buyers and sellers of insulation installation/maintenance labor. I'm probably oversimplifying his involvement though. He does have to supervise on jobs, fire bad workers (which there is a lot, even in the unions) and deal with the day to day stuff.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  value delivered is not always proportional to time spent working. it's like the proverb of the engineer who fixes the machine by whacking it with a hammer. $5 to hit it, $995 for knowing where to hit it. even a "simple" home HVAC project can involve a bunch of different subcontractors that work for different companies, have different schedules, etc. without knowledge of the industry and the individuals involved, selecting and managing the subcontractors directly would be a nightmare for the average homeowner. the general contractor can earn most of their 30% cut just by knowing who to call in the first place and getting them to show up. when you find a good one, you really want to hold onto their number.

invalidOrTaken 5y ago

>One, they watched tradecraft in the fifties slowly kill their parents before OSHA was really a thing This is a really good point---to some extent we can see college as individiuals reacting to working environments---"inefficiently" in that it doesn't solve the problem, but it solves it for them---meanwhile eventually society handles it as a whole. I think there can also be a "prestige" thing going on---jobs that aren't prestigious can become less well-paid (relatively), because those with prestige can at some point say, "Why are we paying these undesireables all this money, can't we bring in some immigrants/subsidize substitutes/outsource?" Which means that it's quite possible that certain trades could become much more valuable, very quickly---as we've seen in nursing, for instance.