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I would be very careful about basing your career decsions based on this trend. The data center build out will always be very boom and bust, which would really
by kvisner 2mo ago
I would be very careful about basing your career decsions based on this trend. The data center build out will always be very boom and bust, which would really suck to work in. One year you would be making 300k working on dataceters and the next you would make 30k because thousands of electricians are now competing to build a few single family homes.
- axus 2mo agoIndustrial electricians have always been in the boom-bust cycle. IBEW (Union electricians) have been doing really well this decade. Another option if you don't want to be a contractor or an Anthropic employee. But they've also gone years without enough work to go around. Scroll down to this comment for a better discussion than I could give: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098874
- 4d4m 2mo agoover before things even started if that's the point at which one's aware
- nerdbaggy 2mo agoAt least in NYC IBEW has mandatory furlough, months without work, etc. And the members are stuck because they will get fined if they work for a non union place.
- axus 2mo agoMy understanding is the union members can move to another local and sign up for work there. Not an easy lifestyle, chasing work around the country.
- chasd00 2mo agoAlso, an electrician just doesn't pop into existence. You have to go through years of apprenticeship and union dues payments.
- ceroxylon 2mo agoVery true, it is difficult to even find an opening for the training to start the process, the schools are limited and have short enrollment windows that are fiercely competitive (at least in California).
- bespokedevelopr 2mo agoI applied for an apprenticeship several years ago when I was testing the waters to rotate out of tech after covid. Tested into the highest percentile, had previous high voltage experience with OEMs, a mech eng degree, still ended up like 200 people deep in the queue. That was the end of that interest. You basically have to be friends or family with someone to get into IBEW.
- tedmiston 2mo agothis is a bizarre timeline of reality where an ME degree gets you waitlisted for an electrician apprenticeship
- bespokedevelopr 2mo agoIn the end I'm happy it turned out the way it did. I've had some great experiences since and stayed in tech. Plus that freed up a slot for one of the many early 20s kids that were trying to get in.
- axus 2mo ago"A Soviet engineer needs some plumbing done in his apartment..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487885
- 8note 2mo agomechanical is pretty famously bad at things that dont include gears
- nekooooo 2mo ago
- NichoPaolucci 2mo agoDoesn't that average out to 165K / year? That's not so bad IMO!
- boelboel 2mo agoI'd imagine those 300K years they're not just working 40 hours a week, more like 70+ hours. Add higher taxes on those years and it becomes less attractive.
- newtonianrules 2mo agoOooof. I pity the poor fool who has to pay taxes on their 300k annual salary.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- solenoid0937 2mo ago300k per year for a few years is just not that much money. It's a nice boost but let's not pretend it's rich or wealthy. IMO taxes should be on the rolling average of your income so two good years does not mean you get taxed as if that's your steady state
- seanmcdirmid 2mo agoIt’s 1099 income, not w2 income. You often need to buy your own non-group health insurance, in addition to employer payroll tax contributions.
- bell-cot 2mo agoIf it was a predictable & reliable 300k, 30k, 300k, 30k, 300k, 30k pattern, then yes. But if not...
- qup 2mo agoYeah, if not, it could be even more!
- barbazoo 2mo agoI feel like we're entering an age of electrification so having training/education in a field related to electrics/electronics seems like a reasonable path for someone to take.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2mo agoI think that age started over 100 years ago.
- wffurr 2mo agoIt's accelerating. Electrification of infrastructure and buildings is a huge growth area with big delays in projects due to lack of capacity.
- mjevans 2mo agoThat's what I don't understand about the lack of building more power plants. Of all types. Yes, people should make efforts to not waste electricity (use more effective lights, etc). However the demand is _never_ going to go down. Progress utilizes more energy. Make stuff more efficient, or less expensive, and people will do more things, or more people will do things. That's how quality of live goes up.
- oblio 2mo agoDidn't the US administration just pay Total $1bn to NOT build an offshore wind farm?
- AnthonyMouse 2mo agoIsn't the current US administration notoriously incoherent? They can have quixotic opinions about windmills without being wrong on the broader point that we should be increasing generation capacity. It just makes them ridiculous, not wrong on the second point.
- 2mo ago
- throw0101d 2mo ago> The data center build out will always be very boom and bust, which would really suck to work in. HVAC and electrical (e.g. UPSes) need somewhat regular maintenance, so once build-out is done, if you're with one of the OEMs, you'll probably have regular work babysitting the gear.
- Analemma_ 2mo agoI mean, no career is ever perfectly secure against future uncertainty (a few years ago I would've joked "... except prostitution", but even that seems threatened by AI these days). The question is a relative one: how stable is it compared to feasible alternatives? I could certainly see job losses and wage stagnation in software engineering being worse than those of electricians over the next 15 years.
- pfdietz 2mo agoOn the other hand, the economy is going to be increasingly electrified. Demand is going to be there in some form.
- limecherrysoda 2mo agoOn a third hand, electricity is just movement of electrons. While DC is driving electrons down the line, AC is basically just when you vibrate them around. Anyway my point is the field (no pun intended) may change drastically in the increasingly electrified future. I'm personally excited for more wireless power in areas, and the concept of ambient energy - harvesting power out of the already vibrating electrons in the static in the air.
- mjevans 2mo agoDC is super weird that way... The actual velocity of an electron down that line is, offhand, extremely slow compared to the speed of light. Think of DC more like you're trying to pump a frozen ice mixture drink (trying to avoid any of the major brand names) down a straw. If you melt it, that's loss to heat. If the pressure gets there that's DC current. The AC vibrations are the same thing except it's like the lever action on a steam locomotive. Translating the motor's spin into a back and forth wave in the line. This is why AC is rather useful for making other things spin or vibrate to the point of being emissive.
- leonidasrup 2mo agoGood intrpduction are Veritasium videos: "How Electricity Actually Works" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI_X2cMHNe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI_X2cMHNe0 "The Biggest Misconception About Electricity" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY
- perpetuallunch 2mo agoOne cannot simply bring up Veritasium without also honouring his arch nemesis ElectroBOOM. https://youtube.com/@electroboom?si=HqjCoJtrn6ci41uw https://youtube.com/@electroboom?si=HqjCoJtrn6ci41uw Others that deserve a mention: styropyro https://youtube.com/@styropyro?si=aPBPXdj42Oo0UzC2 https://youtube.com/@styropyro?si=aPBPXdj42Oo0UzC2 The Angry Pixie herder, Uncle Bumblefuck aka AvE: https://youtube.com/@arduinoversusevil2025?si=f1LHLwVdQTn0O8JB https://youtube.com/@arduinoversusevil2025?si=f1LHLwVdQTn0O8... And that guy with the multi gigawatt 150,000 volt Lorentz Cannon: https://youtu.be/lix-vr_AF38?si=P_WLCJFAUOD01pEF https://youtu.be/lix-vr_AF38?si=P_WLCJFAUOD01pEF I’m sure I forgot someone? AlphaPhoenix’s response to Veritasium: https://youtu.be/2Vrhk5OjBP8?si=vFlggT44kEyDKlKJ https://youtu.be/2Vrhk5OjBP8?si=vFlggT44kEyDKlKJ
- paxys 2mo agoSure, but these also aren't professions that will disappear when data center demand goes down or will get automated away in the long term. I’d go as far as to say that for someone in their teens electrician (or trades in general) is a more stable long term career path than software engineer.
- bluGill 2mo agoBoth have boom and bust cycles. They are different cycles, but they are still cycles. I wouldn't call either more stable than the other.
- esikich 2mo agoYou'll always have manufacturing and construction. I've never heard of an electrician boom bust cycle. It's infrastructure. It's always in demand.
- bluGill 2mo agoI know several electricians and they all have been through cycles if they have been around for more than a decade. Things never drop down to zero though, so sometimes they see their buddies without a job while they are still working.
- 8note 2mo agothe real question is what booms when electrician work busts
- throwitaway222 2mo agooil
- oblio 2mo agoNot for long. 1-2 economic cycles and oil and gas will probably be 20-40% of what they are now. Useful to keep in mind when choosing a new career.
- pianopatrick 2mo agoYeah, but you might still want to enter the field based on the aging of the current workforce. Seems likely to be a shortage of electricians over the next while.
- brcmthrowaway 2mo agoIs the Anthropoc data center buildout union ceritifed?
- kelvinjps10 2mo agoIsn’t the same with software?
- vivekd 2mo agoConstruction is always boom and bust by nature. Anyone in the trades, if they have an opportunity the should just take it while it's there.
- rayiner 2mo agoProbably better off than investing in any field where our output is bits.
- Gigachad 2mo agoBeing over reactive to anything you hear in the news is generally a bad idea. It’s always a view so zoomed in to a single blip on the chart that ignores the wider landscape.
- thedreammachine 2mo agoExcept that gold-rush-like booms tend to attract individuals who are more risk-taking and entrepreneurial. So of course there will still be losses in a downturn, but this is a self-selected group with greater adaptability, more likely to mix and match skills and still end up better off than if they had not participated at all...
- bawolff 2mo agoThe problem with a gold rush is by the time you hear about it, so has everyone else and all the gold is gone once you get there.
- AnthonyMouse 2mo agoThat's assuming it takes longer for you to hear about it than for everyone else to extract all the gold. Now suppose there is a data center boom and a massive housing shortage and a transition from fossil fuels to electric cars and heating systems and at least two of those things are likely to continue for a good while.
- smrtinsert 2mo agoAnd isn't this all dependent on todays modern expensive transformers based inference demands? If the next gen of inference is much more kwh efficient what happens to all these data centers and jobs?
- AnthonyMouse 2mo agoThat's assuming that causing the things to give you more stuff per watt will cause people to want fewer watts rather than more stuff. Compare Jevons paradox.
- throwitaway222 2mo agoYeah, because having Meta or OpenAI or Microsoft on your resume as an Electrician is basically blackballing yourself. /s
- notyourwork 2mo agoStating the obvious to to an audience not here.
- dismalaf 2mo agoThe construction business is all boom and bust and always has been...
- andsoitis 2mo ago> One year you would be making 300k working on dataceters and the next you would make 30k because thousands of electricians are now competing to build a few single family homes. That averages to 150k per annum, which is more than double the median salary in the US.
- jillesvangurp 2mo agoThere's a bigger trend that isn't going away any time soon. Basically we are at the beginning of what will be a decades long s-curve in terms of electrifying absolutely everything that we possibly can across essentially every sector. This is being driven by the plummeting cost of electricity. Mostly our inefficient and obsolete grids somewhat hide this trend. But those that have been experimenting with off grid installations or are playing early adopters by putting a lot of solar panels and batteries in/on their houses are starting to figure out that once you have these in place, the marginal cost of power is basically zero. The hardware isn't that expensive. The process of getting it installed currently is. Mainly because of the scarcity of skilled labor and the amount of bureaucratic overhead needed for permitting, certification, and the cost of the people doing that work. But the big picture here is enormous amounts of industrial processes, domestic heating, charging infrastructure, grid infrastructure, etc. related hardware will need installing over the next decades. And most of that will involve electricians. Data centers might be a bit of a bubble. But I don't think that will go away completely and there's going to be no shortage of other stuff that also needs to be installing.
- obligor_io 2mo ago[flagged]