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I grew up in a trade. My folks ran a small auto repair business, and as such, I'm more than competent in a lot of automotive related things and a barely compete

I grew up in a trade. My folks ran a small auto repair business, and as such, I'm more than competent in a lot of automotive related things and a barely competent in a lot of the trades (carpentry, electrical, tile, accounting, taxes, etc). Essentially, anything we needed to get done to make the business run, I did alongside my folks and family. I'm decidedly out of the trades as an adult. Mostly, this is because of my folk's parenting in general. I was not good, due to the stresses of said work and business. But I imagine that's true of most small business owners. But, it's also because the trades are quite hard on the body. I'm fully not kidding here when I say that my jeans were so dirty that they stood up on their own. Again, kid's jeans, and it wasn't every day, but at least twice a week. Heavy machinery like lathes will literally tear your arms off and beat you to death with them. I've grabbed 220V before and my Dad had to break the circuit with a broom handle, leaving quite the bruise on my arms, not to mention the near death of that kind of shock. Don't get me started on car exhaust and brake cleaners. Auto repair may not be very exemplary of the trades as a whole, but I choose to take showers after work now.

beezlebroxxxxxx 1y ago
Many of my friends are in the trades (I would be fascinated to know if that's common on HN, my hypothesis is that it is not) and the unspoken thing in a lot of "go into trades" rhetoric is that most trades people either get into management as fast as they can, a small amount start their own business and a share of that small amount are very successful, or a large amount of people trade $$$ for future health problems (not just joints, many of the materials used in trades are awful and many never wear proper PPE). It's important to look at the trades without the veil of blue-collar romanticism; the trades can be lucrative but tradesmen will be very quick to give you the tradeoffs.
- ashoeafoot 1y ago
  I actually wouldn't be suprised, running your own shop in a trade or in software bootstrap day to day mode has to be remarkable similar. Including consulting gigs to keep yourself afloat.
- Balgair 1y ago
  For my family it really wan't a trade off. This jobs was the only one we could do to make end meet. My family is the 'petite bourgeois'(owners that labor alongside their workers[0]) that Marx said were the only people that actually had a choice in the class war and were the breeding grounds for fascism. We did management too, but labored with the employees all the same. Did we get paid more? Sometimes, but we had to go without pay a lot and pick up other jobs. Still, my sibling and I went to college debt free, none of the employees' kids did that [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93managerial_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93manageria...
  - Gothmog69 1y ago
    Karl Marx died 40 years before fascism was invented so I would be surprised if he said anything at all about it. Fascism is just repackaged marxism anyways with more nationalism.
    - Balgair 1y ago
      Yeah, my grammar was bad there. Thanks for catching that. The wikipedia link goes into better detail about what I was trying to relate.
- antisthenes 1y ago
  Yes, all of this is very easily seen by the BLS statistics about the average/median wages of trades. For every anecdote of a plumber making $20k/month in a HCOL area, there are probably 3-4 plumbers who are barely pulling $70k/year in M/LCOL and end up having health problems.
nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
> But, it's also because the trades are quite hard on the body. Most of my friends are blue collar, and aged 20 years in the last decade. One can't hear as well as he used to from impact guns hammering away, back problems, knees, and more. You can deal with it at 25, but time comes at you fast.
- sockp0pp3t 1y ago
  Totally depends on the trade. Concrete foundations, roofing, anything that uses a wheelbarrow, etc. will eventually break you. Maybe an electrician, plumber, carpenter can weigh in, but digging post holes or hauling shingles up a ladder is not the same beating as hanging cabinets, or wiring circuit breakers. Just saying there are different kinds of hard.
  - libraryatnight 1y ago
    The plumbers that just fixed my slab leak were getting IT certifications because their knees and lower backs are shot. Labor fucks you up.
  - alistairSH 1y ago
    It's all degrees of hard on your body. Roofing might be relatively worse than electrical, but both are definitely harder than sitting an air-conditioned desk.
    - 5bolts 1y ago
      but there's something to be said about doing something with your hands and going to bed physically tired... your other option is mentally drained, potentially depressed, probably anxious - especially if/when something breaks on you i went with the desk job, yearn for something else.. would rather have become a machinist or welder looking back. do both as hobbies now to clear the head from the desk job
      - alistairSH 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
K0balt 1y ago
For sure. I believe that a a person should work towards working more with their mind than their back, long term. A lot of professions are good vehicles towards that goal. But being able to do what you need to, and being able to make ends meet in a worst case scenario are both great sources of strength and significantly reduce your economic fragility.
- Balgair 1y ago
  Yeah, I agree with both your replies here. The certainty that I had when I was starting out in life that I could walk into pretty much any auto shop and have a job in a week, I dunno, I think I took that for granted. In that, I never really thought about it and my profession was more of a choice to me; I always had a backup. I guess a lot of my friends and coworkers really didn't have that sense about themselves, maybe. The real question, per the WSJ article here, is: How does a kid go about getting this back up? I got it by virtue of birth. But some other kid would have to go seeking it out, at the expense of time they could spend studying or, you know, just being a teenager. I'm not sure that teenage me would have taken the 'learn a trade as a backup plan' route. In fact, I know I would not have done that.
K0balt 1y ago
I prefer trades as a backup to a profession, for sure. A trade can give you the runway to put yourself through school or to ramp up your capabilities in other ways, leading to a better long term plan. Getting old Is a bitch, to be sure.

beezlebroxxxxxx 1y ago

Many of my friends are in the trades (I would be fascinated to know if that's common on HN, my hypothesis is that it is not) and the unspoken thing in a lot of "go into trades" rhetoric is that most trades people either get into management as fast as they can, a small amount start their own business and a share of that small amount are very successful, or a large amount of people trade $$$ for future health problems (not just joints, many of the materials used in trades are awful and many never wear proper PPE). It's important to look at the trades without the veil of blue-collar romanticism; the trades can be lucrative but tradesmen will be very quick to give you the tradeoffs.

ashoeafoot 1y ago
I actually wouldn't be suprised, running your own shop in a trade or in software bootstrap day to day mode has to be remarkable similar. Including consulting gigs to keep yourself afloat.
Balgair 1y ago
For my family it really wan't a trade off. This jobs was the only one we could do to make end meet. My family is the 'petite bourgeois'(owners that labor alongside their workers[0]) that Marx said were the only people that actually had a choice in the class war and were the breeding grounds for fascism. We did management too, but labored with the employees all the same. Did we get paid more? Sometimes, but we had to go without pay a lot and pick up other jobs. Still, my sibling and I went to college debt free, none of the employees' kids did that [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93managerial_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93manageria...
- Gothmog69 1y ago
  Karl Marx died 40 years before fascism was invented so I would be surprised if he said anything at all about it. Fascism is just repackaged marxism anyways with more nationalism.
  - Balgair 1y ago
    Yeah, my grammar was bad there. Thanks for catching that. The wikipedia link goes into better detail about what I was trying to relate.
antisthenes 1y ago
Yes, all of this is very easily seen by the BLS statistics about the average/median wages of trades. For every anecdote of a plumber making $20k/month in a HCOL area, there are probably 3-4 plumbers who are barely pulling $70k/year in M/LCOL and end up having health problems.

nyarlathotep_ 1y ago

> But, it's also because the trades are quite hard on the body. Most of my friends are blue collar, and aged 20 years in the last decade. One can't hear as well as he used to from impact guns hammering away, back problems, knees, and more. You can deal with it at 25, but time comes at you fast.

sockp0pp3t 1y ago
Totally depends on the trade. Concrete foundations, roofing, anything that uses a wheelbarrow, etc. will eventually break you. Maybe an electrician, plumber, carpenter can weigh in, but digging post holes or hauling shingles up a ladder is not the same beating as hanging cabinets, or wiring circuit breakers. Just saying there are different kinds of hard.
- libraryatnight 1y ago
  The plumbers that just fixed my slab leak were getting IT certifications because their knees and lower backs are shot. Labor fucks you up.
- alistairSH 1y ago
  It's all degrees of hard on your body. Roofing might be relatively worse than electrical, but both are definitely harder than sitting an air-conditioned desk.
  - 5bolts 1y ago
    but there's something to be said about doing something with your hands and going to bed physically tired... your other option is mentally drained, potentially depressed, probably anxious - especially if/when something breaks on you i went with the desk job, yearn for something else.. would rather have become a machinist or welder looking back. do both as hobbies now to clear the head from the desk job
    - alistairSH 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

K0balt 1y ago

For sure. I believe that a a person should work towards working more with their mind than their back, long term. A lot of professions are good vehicles towards that goal. But being able to do what you need to, and being able to make ends meet in a worst case scenario are both great sources of strength and significantly reduce your economic fragility.

Balgair 1y ago
Yeah, I agree with both your replies here. The certainty that I had when I was starting out in life that I could walk into pretty much any auto shop and have a job in a week, I dunno, I think I took that for granted. In that, I never really thought about it and my profession was more of a choice to me; I always had a backup. I guess a lot of my friends and coworkers really didn't have that sense about themselves, maybe. The real question, per the WSJ article here, is: How does a kid go about getting this back up? I got it by virtue of birth. But some other kid would have to go seeking it out, at the expense of time they could spend studying or, you know, just being a teenager. I'm not sure that teenage me would have taken the 'learn a trade as a backup plan' route. In fact, I know I would not have done that.

K0balt 1y ago

I prefer trades as a backup to a profession, for sure. A trade can give you the runway to put yourself through school or to ramp up your capabilities in other ways, leading to a better long term plan. Getting old Is a bitch, to be sure.