6 ms·

I left a job as a carpenter and joiner in 2008 when work dried up. My father stayed at it. I had done some study with the open university and used that to get i

I left a job as a carpenter and joiner in 2008 when work dried up. My father stayed at it. I had done some study with the open university and used that to get into office work in Finance. I miss using tools, but I don't miss the way you had to rush to make money. I always did a good job, but it was constant pressure. The article mentions that the longer time on the job reduces what can be paid vs a plumber. This is true, but also true is being able to supply materials. I would rarely supply construction timber, because either the main contractor or even the client could buy it themselves for the same price. Whereas a plumber would always supply a boiler, a tank, a bathroom...all with tasty discounts that were not available to the public. The other big change I saw was the nailgun and chopsaw revolution. All of a sudden some ex-labourer was touting a nailgun and was now a carpenter. Nobody seemed to care that they didn't know what they were doing. We started to find we would be called in to do the roof and then some clown who was 'cheaper' was called in to do the rest. My apprenticship was 3 years with day release to technical college. That day was a complete joke, the college was disorganised, and underfunded. I have constant pain in my hands, back and knees for my 10 years. Everywhere I go I see bad carpentry, and nobody cares but me. AMA Edit: I'm in the UK

deepsun 4y ago
But imagine how it was 50 years ago. Pretty much the same, minus health security.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  Where I live (NZ), 50 years ago they had apprenticeships. Behold the fruit of deregulation.
- jimnotgym 4y ago
  No...50 years ago we had the NHS, and sickness benefits, same as today My father and grandfather were both in the trade. 50 years ago there were some safety concerns, especially around scaffolding (asbestos too, but that's its own story). However they all lamented about how much easier it was to feed your family then.
  - jimnotgym 4y ago
    Also 50 years ago if you were building new housing, if your work was sub-standard you did not get paid. There would be a clerk of works checking it was up to scratch. Now it is a race to the bottom
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Also 50 years ago if you were building new housing, if your work was sub-standard you did not get paid. There would be a clerk of works checking it was up to scratch. Now it is a race to the bottom I’m old enough that one of my earliest memories of advice being given on house buying (not to me, I was still to young for that) was of people advising against buying anything from around the time you were praising (which at the time of the advice, wasn't brand new but still newish), making exactly the same comparison of that time to the time a few decades before (though I thing then it was usually 20-30 and not 50 years before held up as a model) as you make of now to then.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        I suspect they’re both correct. House building standards seem to have been trending downwards for at least 100 years if not more. Some things have gotten better of course (fire safety, insulation, etc), but the construction itself tends to be optimised for cost over quality these days.
        maccard 4y ago
        Remember that there's a survivorshio bias in the 100 year old buildings you see still standing today. In many cases they are impractical for modern standards too - my home has 2ft thick external sandstone walls, and all the internal walls are brick. It's massively overengineered for the use of the building. At the same time there is nowhere to put any insulation on external walls meaning that during the winter were leaking huge amounts of heat and during the summer we live in an oven. Compare that to my friends modern new build in the same city (Edinburgh) their internal temperature is mostly stable. There's also things like "you can't run any extra cabling"- adding ethernet to my existing cabling isn't happening without replastering my entire home. And lets not start with modern 5GHz WiFi not passing through my internal walls. Needs have changed, materials are more consistent and easier to get, efficiency standards have changed. All of these things have had a huge impact on materials and costs. It's unfair to just say that buildings are built worse without considering anything else.
- donthellbanme 4y ago
fredgrott 4y ago
ahem, former son of a carpenter. In the USA and several other places the way from unskilled to skilled was via carpenter as you could enter the field unskilled. My father went from truck driver to carpenter after a truck driver strike. And due to that there was always money loosing cycles occurring when it was easy to get in and an over supply of those wanting to get in. What some did was step up to furniture finishing such as kitchen cabinets, bars, etc.
blagie 4y ago
My experience with shorter versus longer jobs, in the tech industry, consulting a few years back: - 30-60 minute consultations, I need to charge $600/hour minimum to make ends meet - 1-2 week gigs, I need to charge $300/hour minimum to make ends meet - 6-36 month gigs, I need to charge $100/hour minimum to make ends meet Making ends meet means covering mortgage, health care, etc., not having a decent lifestyle. There is overhead to: - Finding clients - Billing - Cancellations - Marketing - Commuting - Networking - Contracts / legal Etc. All of that overhead goes down with longer jobs. I don't feel that "longer jobs" are the root culprit here. If I were to guess, the root problem is that anyone can do carpentry (poorly). That sets low expectations on prices. That keeps better tradespeople out, since you can make so much more in any of the other trades.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  Any tips on how to get into software consultancy?
  - blagie 4y ago
    This will sound flippant, but know people. You don't need to know them well. Former bosses, workers, etc. are fine. In a tight job market, many will be looking for people. Random recruiters are fine too. If someone's calling you up to recruit, you can let them know you're not open to employment, but glad to consult. Many companies will be open to both. Indeed, consultants are cheaper on taxes and benefits, and easier to let go, so there are a lot of wins for the company. . The bigger question is whether you should consult. Why do you want to get into it?
  - jlevers 4y ago
    disclaimer: i've only been doing this for a couple years...but it's gone pretty well. i've written this more like a story than direct advice, because i think all the twists and turns are relevant. i went straight from college (dropout) into the consulting world right before COVID hit. i gave myself a year to get the consulting business going, and if that didn't work, i was planning to get a "real job." i started off by leveraging my existing contacts in the software world: mostly a couple internships that I'd had (one before my year of college, one after). the first few months, i was only working for those two places while i tried to figure out how to expand. i started a blog [0] at this point -- it was mostly nontechnical content, but helped me demonstrate that i'm a sane person and a reasonably good communicator. i started replying to the "Who wants to be hired?" threads here on HN and got my first couple (small) independent contracts there. then a family friend who runs a high-volume used book business needed his whole inventory/order management system redone from scratch, and i was a) cheaper and b) a known quantity, so he hired me. you can interpret this as me getting lucky, and in some sense it is, but i strongly believe that luck favors the prepared. i certainly wouldn't have gotten that gig if i hadn't been prepping for it, hard. this is when i started to raise my rates. (you've probably seen this repeated endlessly on HN, but it bears repeating: raise your rates. raise your rates. and then raise them again. to match $XX/hr as a FTE, you need to charge at least 2*$XX/hr as a consultant. ideally a lot more.) i spent tons of time reading HN and twitter, and responding to anyone who was doing something i found interesting. i went into these interactions with no expectation of getting work out of it -- i just wanted to meet people who were working on cool things. a few of those interactions did turn into work, and one person i met is now one of my best IRL friends. crazy. at some point, i had to learn about a new amazon service (the Selling Partner API) for that bookstore project, and discovered just how badly documented and tested it was. after a couple months (!!) figuring out how to use it properly, i wrote a few blog posts about it, and people started hiring me from my blog (and now, my OSS SP API library [1]). between that, and a few of those people i talked about meeting via HN/twitter/etc, i've kept busy for the past 18 months. i actually just hired my first part-time employee, which is exciting :) i think the three biggest things that have made me a modestly successful consultant are: 1. focusing on people over everything else. if you're a consultant, you're a salesperson, and in my experience just being genuinely interested in other people is the easiest and most effective form of sales. 2. writing online. it's cliched, but it works. you don't need that many people to see what you've written for it to be worth it -- i've never gotten more than 150 views in a day on my blog, and usually it's way less than that, but that's been enough to have plenty of work. 3. raising my prices ;) i make a lot less money than i might by working for FAANG/etc, but i have total time and location freedom, i don't work a ton, and i really enjoy running my own show. ymmv, and good luck :) [0] https://jesseevers.com https://jesseevers.com [1] https://github.com/jlevers/selling-partner-api https://github.com/jlevers/selling-partner-api
gumby 4y ago
> The other big change I saw was the nailgun and chopsaw revolution This. I hired a union shop to build my house, and am thankful for it. for various reasons, construction is mostly lowest quality possible, but everybody on my house had a ticket and the result is obvious (not just appearance but lower cost of maintenance). When I worked at Terrajoule we were not a union shop but we often hired union contractors for specific jobs (particular high pressure welds) or temporary extra manpower — after a couple of terrible experiences, it was clear that union people always knew what they were doing.
- iandanforth 4y ago
  "had a ticket" <- I'm not familiar with this phrase. Can you tell us where it comes from?
  - zamfi 4y ago
    Probably “had a union ticket”, i.e., were a member of the union.
    - gumby 4y ago
      Yes, and it specifies whether they are apprentice, journeyman, master, as well as other skills (e.g. rated for welding high pressure lines).
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > I hired a union shop to build my house Aren’t most tradespeople self-employed? How do you have a union when you’re the boss?
  - gumby 4y ago
    For my house, the general contractor I hired ran a union operation. I didn't hire individual welders and plasterers myself. Or perhaps I misunderstood the question. Unions are extremely important for those that don't have a single employer. For a lot of union jobs, you'd go to the union hall to find jobs, often by the day or week for jobs like stevedores (mostly gone now of course). For my house, the contractor had a network of people he would reach out to. At Terrajoule, we just advertised in the ordinary way or more commonly asked around, and then we looked at their credentials which generally meant a union ticket for safety critical jobs (which was most of them).
short_sells_poo 4y ago
I care! I never worked in trade, but perhaps I have an obsessive personality and like it when things are done properly. When I moved to the UK a few years ago, one of the first things I noticed is the appalling quality of work that the construction industry puts out in the UK. It is truly shocking. Everything is just “that’ll do”. It is very difficult to find a true craftsman these days, even if you are willing to pay for it. I want people in trade to earn a very good wage. It is difficult labour that requires a lot of practice and experience to do well. Unfortunately, the entire industry today seems to be drowned out by construction “sweatshops”. It’s sad.
- robk 4y ago
  Seriously? Quality feels 2x higher compared to US in my observations
ransom1538 4y ago
"I have constant pain in my hands, back and knees for my 10 years." There are a bunch of industries out there where the pay is horrid and the skills required are high. EG: butcher, carpenter, chief, school teacher, most retail, auto mechanic, etc. I would want a high price for "knees".

deepsun 4y ago

But imagine how it was 50 years ago. Pretty much the same, minus health security.

tuatoru 4y ago
Where I live (NZ), 50 years ago they had apprenticeships. Behold the fruit of deregulation.
jimnotgym 4y ago
No...50 years ago we had the NHS, and sickness benefits, same as today My father and grandfather were both in the trade. 50 years ago there were some safety concerns, especially around scaffolding (asbestos too, but that's its own story). However they all lamented about how much easier it was to feed your family then.
- jimnotgym 4y ago
  Also 50 years ago if you were building new housing, if your work was sub-standard you did not get paid. There would be a clerk of works checking it was up to scratch. Now it is a race to the bottom
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Also 50 years ago if you were building new housing, if your work was sub-standard you did not get paid. There would be a clerk of works checking it was up to scratch. Now it is a race to the bottom I’m old enough that one of my earliest memories of advice being given on house buying (not to me, I was still to young for that) was of people advising against buying anything from around the time you were praising (which at the time of the advice, wasn't brand new but still newish), making exactly the same comparison of that time to the time a few decades before (though I thing then it was usually 20-30 and not 50 years before held up as a model) as you make of now to then.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      I suspect they’re both correct. House building standards seem to have been trending downwards for at least 100 years if not more. Some things have gotten better of course (fire safety, insulation, etc), but the construction itself tends to be optimised for cost over quality these days.
      - maccard 4y ago
        Remember that there's a survivorshio bias in the 100 year old buildings you see still standing today. In many cases they are impractical for modern standards too - my home has 2ft thick external sandstone walls, and all the internal walls are brick. It's massively overengineered for the use of the building. At the same time there is nowhere to put any insulation on external walls meaning that during the winter were leaking huge amounts of heat and during the summer we live in an oven. Compare that to my friends modern new build in the same city (Edinburgh) their internal temperature is mostly stable. There's also things like "you can't run any extra cabling"- adding ethernet to my existing cabling isn't happening without replastering my entire home. And lets not start with modern 5GHz WiFi not passing through my internal walls. Needs have changed, materials are more consistent and easier to get, efficiency standards have changed. All of these things have had a huge impact on materials and costs. It's unfair to just say that buildings are built worse without considering anything else.
donthellbanme 4y ago

fredgrott 4y ago

ahem, former son of a carpenter. In the USA and several other places the way from unskilled to skilled was via carpenter as you could enter the field unskilled. My father went from truck driver to carpenter after a truck driver strike. And due to that there was always money loosing cycles occurring when it was easy to get in and an over supply of those wanting to get in. What some did was step up to furniture finishing such as kitchen cabinets, bars, etc.

blagie 4y ago

My experience with shorter versus longer jobs, in the tech industry, consulting a few years back: - 30-60 minute consultations, I need to charge $600/hour minimum to make ends meet - 1-2 week gigs, I need to charge $300/hour minimum to make ends meet - 6-36 month gigs, I need to charge $100/hour minimum to make ends meet Making ends meet means covering mortgage, health care, etc., not having a decent lifestyle. There is overhead to: - Finding clients - Billing - Cancellations - Marketing - Commuting - Networking - Contracts / legal Etc. All of that overhead goes down with longer jobs. I don't feel that "longer jobs" are the root culprit here. If I were to guess, the root problem is that anyone can do carpentry (poorly). That sets low expectations on prices. That keeps better tradespeople out, since you can make so much more in any of the other trades.

ricardobayes 4y ago
Any tips on how to get into software consultancy?
- blagie 4y ago
  This will sound flippant, but know people. You don't need to know them well. Former bosses, workers, etc. are fine. In a tight job market, many will be looking for people. Random recruiters are fine too. If someone's calling you up to recruit, you can let them know you're not open to employment, but glad to consult. Many companies will be open to both. Indeed, consultants are cheaper on taxes and benefits, and easier to let go, so there are a lot of wins for the company. . The bigger question is whether you should consult. Why do you want to get into it?
- jlevers 4y ago
  disclaimer: i've only been doing this for a couple years...but it's gone pretty well. i've written this more like a story than direct advice, because i think all the twists and turns are relevant. i went straight from college (dropout) into the consulting world right before COVID hit. i gave myself a year to get the consulting business going, and if that didn't work, i was planning to get a "real job." i started off by leveraging my existing contacts in the software world: mostly a couple internships that I'd had (one before my year of college, one after). the first few months, i was only working for those two places while i tried to figure out how to expand. i started a blog [0] at this point -- it was mostly nontechnical content, but helped me demonstrate that i'm a sane person and a reasonably good communicator. i started replying to the "Who wants to be hired?" threads here on HN and got my first couple (small) independent contracts there. then a family friend who runs a high-volume used book business needed his whole inventory/order management system redone from scratch, and i was a) cheaper and b) a known quantity, so he hired me. you can interpret this as me getting lucky, and in some sense it is, but i strongly believe that luck favors the prepared. i certainly wouldn't have gotten that gig if i hadn't been prepping for it, hard. this is when i started to raise my rates. (you've probably seen this repeated endlessly on HN, but it bears repeating: raise your rates. raise your rates. and then raise them again. to match $XX/hr as a FTE, you need to charge at least 2*$XX/hr as a consultant. ideally a lot more.) i spent tons of time reading HN and twitter, and responding to anyone who was doing something i found interesting. i went into these interactions with no expectation of getting work out of it -- i just wanted to meet people who were working on cool things. a few of those interactions did turn into work, and one person i met is now one of my best IRL friends. crazy. at some point, i had to learn about a new amazon service (the Selling Partner API) for that bookstore project, and discovered just how badly documented and tested it was. after a couple months (!!) figuring out how to use it properly, i wrote a few blog posts about it, and people started hiring me from my blog (and now, my OSS SP API library [1]). between that, and a few of those people i talked about meeting via HN/twitter/etc, i've kept busy for the past 18 months. i actually just hired my first part-time employee, which is exciting :) i think the three biggest things that have made me a modestly successful consultant are: 1. focusing on people over everything else. if you're a consultant, you're a salesperson, and in my experience just being genuinely interested in other people is the easiest and most effective form of sales. 2. writing online. it's cliched, but it works. you don't need that many people to see what you've written for it to be worth it -- i've never gotten more than 150 views in a day on my blog, and usually it's way less than that, but that's been enough to have plenty of work. 3. raising my prices ;) i make a lot less money than i might by working for FAANG/etc, but i have total time and location freedom, i don't work a ton, and i really enjoy running my own show. ymmv, and good luck :) [0] https://jesseevers.com https://jesseevers.com [1] https://github.com/jlevers/selling-partner-api https://github.com/jlevers/selling-partner-api

gumby 4y ago

> The other big change I saw was the nailgun and chopsaw revolution This. I hired a union shop to build my house, and am thankful for it. for various reasons, construction is mostly lowest quality possible, but everybody on my house had a ticket and the result is obvious (not just appearance but lower cost of maintenance). When I worked at Terrajoule we were not a union shop but we often hired union contractors for specific jobs (particular high pressure welds) or temporary extra manpower — after a couple of terrible experiences, it was clear that union people always knew what they were doing.

iandanforth 4y ago
"had a ticket" <- I'm not familiar with this phrase. Can you tell us where it comes from?
- zamfi 4y ago
  Probably “had a union ticket”, i.e., were a member of the union.
  - gumby 4y ago
    Yes, and it specifies whether they are apprentice, journeyman, master, as well as other skills (e.g. rated for welding high pressure lines).
chrisseaton 4y ago
> I hired a union shop to build my house Aren’t most tradespeople self-employed? How do you have a union when you’re the boss?
- gumby 4y ago
  For my house, the general contractor I hired ran a union operation. I didn't hire individual welders and plasterers myself. Or perhaps I misunderstood the question. Unions are extremely important for those that don't have a single employer. For a lot of union jobs, you'd go to the union hall to find jobs, often by the day or week for jobs like stevedores (mostly gone now of course). For my house, the contractor had a network of people he would reach out to. At Terrajoule, we just advertised in the ordinary way or more commonly asked around, and then we looked at their credentials which generally meant a union ticket for safety critical jobs (which was most of them).

short_sells_poo 4y ago

I care! I never worked in trade, but perhaps I have an obsessive personality and like it when things are done properly. When I moved to the UK a few years ago, one of the first things I noticed is the appalling quality of work that the construction industry puts out in the UK. It is truly shocking. Everything is just “that’ll do”. It is very difficult to find a true craftsman these days, even if you are willing to pay for it. I want people in trade to earn a very good wage. It is difficult labour that requires a lot of practice and experience to do well. Unfortunately, the entire industry today seems to be drowned out by construction “sweatshops”. It’s sad.

robk 4y ago
Seriously? Quality feels 2x higher compared to US in my observations

ransom1538 4y ago

"I have constant pain in my hands, back and knees for my 10 years." There are a bunch of industries out there where the pay is horrid and the skills required are high. EG: butcher, carpenter, chief, school teacher, most retail, auto mechanic, etc. I would want a high price for "knees".