3 ms·

A welder in london charges 700£ plus per day. A bit difficult to reach as a software engineer.

hashar 4y ago
My place has a large shipyard and as story I got told is that good welder lands there with a private jet, do their welding then fly to the next place. I am guessing good welders have a niche market as well.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Great story, because it demonstrates what people often fail to think about in salary: your hypothetical maximum salary is bounded by the amount of value you add to the finished product. If you're a key component (welder) in a high priced product (ship), the builder can compensate you $$$$ and still win. So they do. You can temporarily have unreasonably high pay (higher than value added), but eventually the market will figure it out. The only way to make outsized returns your entire career is to find a supply-limited, high-value-add niche.
- doubled112 4y ago
  Welders that can weld underwater are scarce and compensated accordingly. My understanding is that it's dangerous and few want to do it.
  - riyadparvez 4y ago
    > My understanding is that it's dangerous and few want to do it. Yeah this is the part everyone is ignoring in the conversation. Many highly compensated physical labor jobs are highly compensated because of the associated risk. While being a developer (with exceptions) doesn't expose you to any physical risk.
    - mellavora 4y ago
      I hurt my little pinky finger programming. RSI is a real thing. but I don't think tech compensation is high because of risk of this type of injury. vs underwater welding, where the types of possible injuries have greater impact on overall health.
nly 4y ago
~250 workdays a year = ~£175-180K/yr, which is fairly achievable in London for a SWE
revertmean 4y ago
Email I got yesterday: DevOps Engineer City of London, London, £600 - £700/day EDIT: Sorry, you did say Software Developer. How about this? https://www.cv-library.co.uk/job/217407072/Senior-Front-End-Developer https://www.cv-library.co.uk/job/217407072/Senior-Front-End-... £650 - £750/day Remote
IaacForHire 4y ago
Funny, this is my plan to get out of tech. I've been welding bicycle frames for five years (cumulative, over maybe a 10 year period). I'll probably leave tech for good at the end of the year and start a boutique bike frame company. EDIT: (clarified a timeframe)
- potta_coffee 4y ago
  How can I learn this? It's a dream job for me. I tinker with bikes endlessly and I've lost all my hair in tech.
  - IaacForHire 4y ago
    I was first inspired by this video that a friend of a friend made for a boutique frame builder in California. http://soulcraftbikes.com http://soulcraftbikes.com A decade later I sold a company and spent 3 months in Portland at https://bikeschool.com/ https://bikeschool.com/. I took pretty much all of their classes. (Their wheel building seminar was fantastic, btw). Sadly they no longer teach welding, but the classes were fantastic. In each class you sized, laid out, machined and welded a bike. Started with lugged chromoly brazing, then chromoly fillet brazing, then chromoly tig, aluminum tin and finally titanium tig. Unfortunately there are no bike schools in the world which have as comprehensive as a program as bikeschool did. I think they lost most of their teachers during Covid. Hoping they recover. I ended up bringing 5 frames with me on the train home from PDX to Oakland. Over the next year I built another 15 frames for friends, then started a business building and selling custom, very durable bikes to overweight techies. It was great fun, we used to host weekend 25, 50 and 100 mile rides, nobody under 200lbs allowed. I lost $300 on every bike I made, but it was worth it. Check out Paul Brodie's videos on YouTube, I am hoping to do a master class with him next year. https://www.youtube.com/c/paulbrodie https://www.youtube.com/c/paulbrodie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2CnJ9lmlQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2CnJ9lmlQo really shows the beauty of fillet welding. Also, I'm going to take a carbon fiber class here: https://www.framebuildingschool.com https://www.framebuildingschool.com Long story short: Go buy a couple of the cheapest throw-away bicycle frames you can. Get a brazing setup, then spend a few weeks cutting them up and learning how to join tubes solidly. Everything else is easy after that.

My place has a large shipyard and as story I got told is that good welder lands there with a private jet, do their welding then fly to the next place. I am guessing good welders have a niche market as well.

ethbr0 4y ago
Great story, because it demonstrates what people often fail to think about in salary: your hypothetical maximum salary is bounded by the amount of value you add to the finished product. If you're a key component (welder) in a high priced product (ship), the builder can compensate you $$$$ and still win. So they do. You can temporarily have unreasonably high pay (higher than value added), but eventually the market will figure it out. The only way to make outsized returns your entire career is to find a supply-limited, high-value-add niche.
doubled112 4y ago
Welders that can weld underwater are scarce and compensated accordingly. My understanding is that it's dangerous and few want to do it.
- riyadparvez 4y ago
  > My understanding is that it's dangerous and few want to do it. Yeah this is the part everyone is ignoring in the conversation. Many highly compensated physical labor jobs are highly compensated because of the associated risk. While being a developer (with exceptions) doesn't expose you to any physical risk.
  - mellavora 4y ago
    I hurt my little pinky finger programming. RSI is a real thing. but I don't think tech compensation is high because of risk of this type of injury. vs underwater welding, where the types of possible injuries have greater impact on overall health.

nly 4y ago

~250 workdays a year = ~£175-180K/yr, which is fairly achievable in London for a SWE

revertmean 4y ago

Email I got yesterday: DevOps Engineer City of London, London, £600 - £700/day EDIT: Sorry, you did say Software Developer. How about this? https://www.cv-library.co.uk/job/217407072/Senior-Front-End-Developer https://www.cv-library.co.uk/job/217407072/Senior-Front-End-... £650 - £750/day Remote

IaacForHire 4y ago

Funny, this is my plan to get out of tech. I've been welding bicycle frames for five years (cumulative, over maybe a 10 year period). I'll probably leave tech for good at the end of the year and start a boutique bike frame company. EDIT: (clarified a timeframe)

potta_coffee 4y ago
How can I learn this? It's a dream job for me. I tinker with bikes endlessly and I've lost all my hair in tech.
- IaacForHire 4y ago
  I was first inspired by this video that a friend of a friend made for a boutique frame builder in California. http://soulcraftbikes.com http://soulcraftbikes.com A decade later I sold a company and spent 3 months in Portland at https://bikeschool.com/ https://bikeschool.com/. I took pretty much all of their classes. (Their wheel building seminar was fantastic, btw). Sadly they no longer teach welding, but the classes were fantastic. In each class you sized, laid out, machined and welded a bike. Started with lugged chromoly brazing, then chromoly fillet brazing, then chromoly tig, aluminum tin and finally titanium tig. Unfortunately there are no bike schools in the world which have as comprehensive as a program as bikeschool did. I think they lost most of their teachers during Covid. Hoping they recover. I ended up bringing 5 frames with me on the train home from PDX to Oakland. Over the next year I built another 15 frames for friends, then started a business building and selling custom, very durable bikes to overweight techies. It was great fun, we used to host weekend 25, 50 and 100 mile rides, nobody under 200lbs allowed. I lost $300 on every bike I made, but it was worth it. Check out Paul Brodie's videos on YouTube, I am hoping to do a master class with him next year. https://www.youtube.com/c/paulbrodie https://www.youtube.com/c/paulbrodie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2CnJ9lmlQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2CnJ9lmlQo really shows the beauty of fillet welding. Also, I'm going to take a carbon fiber class here: https://www.framebuildingschool.com https://www.framebuildingschool.com Long story short: Go buy a couple of the cheapest throw-away bicycle frames you can. Get a brazing setup, then spend a few weeks cutting them up and learning how to join tubes solidly. Everything else is easy after that.