I take it that you haven't hired people into those professions. Plumbers and electricians need certifications and long apprenticeships. Teachers or nurse ... wow. Those are multi-year degrees plus professional training. Anyone with an imperfect background will have a seriously difficult time entering these professions.

Note that none of the jobs you list would ever allow someone with a criminal record. A minor felony conviction (drunk driving, drug possession etc) closes all of those doors.

Plumbers and electricians are still locked into the vestiges of the medieval guild system. You start as an apprentice, after some years and qualifications progress to journeyman, and then after much experience and credentialing rate as a master.

If that's medieval, then by the gods below, let's go medieval. Speaking for myself, the folks I worked with who came about the craft (software development) from school are always so steeped in theory they can't make actual progress on the tool. They'll throw away a year's worth of effort so they can re-write it in Javascript, no Dart, no Typescript, no...

In contrast, the people who learned at the hands of mentors always showed more interest in actually becoming good at the trade, and favor practicality over theory. They will usually work to fill their own gaps in knowledge, and become some of the lynchpins on any development team.

I'll take an earnest, self-taught person coming up from the QA department every day over a greenhorn fresh out of college.

> A minor felony conviction (drunk driving, drug possession etc)

Neither of those things are "minor felonies". They're misdemeanors, and don't close all those doors. Felony convictions hover around 8.6% of the population based on a cursory Google search, and most non-drug related felonies are serious business.

If you do get convicted of a felony, yes, your life as you know it is over (can't vote, can't own guns, etc etc) However, the two offenses you state are not felonies, unless you've hurt somebody while drunk driving or you possess enough drugs to indicate intent to distribute.

Nearly 10% is an awfully large percentage of people to be permanently disenfranchised for a one-time mistake. And it's easily possible to collect a felony conviction for something as trivial as shoplifting - the vast majority of shoplifters being mentally ill and not hardened criminals.

At the same time, it seems a bit much to say "your life as you know it is over". Lots of people don't vote or own guns anyway.

> At the same time, it seems a bit much to say "your life as you know it is over". Lots of people don't vote or own guns anyway.

Uhm, that's not the only problems you face. If you're not aware of it: you don't get a lot of federal benefits, credit etc is screwed, noone will rent you their apt etc., unemployable for almost every job except janitor etc.... your life is over.

Drunk driving can be a felony. Everything depends on the outcome. Hurt someone or do it more than once,and you will be looking at a felony charge. For drug possession, depending on how much you have, and how you carry it, possession quickly becomes possession with intent to distribute. Get caught with drugs while crossing a state line or boarding a plane and you will be lucky to avoid federal charges. Then there are conspiracy options should your possession be linked to other people.

> You don't need a LinkedIn profile.

FTFY.

If an interviewer criticized my lack of a LinkedIn profile, that is a warning sign to me.

Agreed. Avoiding any employer that requires a LinkedIn profile at all strikes me as a wise policy.

You do need a degree in nursing, and there's fierce levels of competition for even community college nursing programs, with strong GPA requirements. It's not med school level, but the same forces apply to nursing as well.

I think people here really overrate how open the trades are. Most of the "can't fill" positions are for things like underwater welding, or high risk/niche occupations. Your local tech school generally produces more than enough electricians and plumbers for most local markets.

Truck drivers are on the verge of severe disruption, the category might even be extinct by the time the next generation comes around. Teachers are horribly underpaid and overworked. Nurses are in demand but there is no career. Traders are at the mercy of real estate markets.

Sure, you don't need a LI profile to get a dead-end job.

> Truck drivers are on the verge of severe disruption

I keep hearing this. Have for years. I don't expect it to actually happen anytime soon. We're still stuck in the "assisted cruise control" and "lane keeping" age, a good decade after the technologies were first introduced into consumer cars.

Let me know when the self-driving cars can do even level 4 automation on more than the well marked, sun-drenched California roads. Then we can talk about the immanent automation of all of the trucks.

I think you are in a bizarre region or do not have friendships with people in the mentioned occupations.

Nursing, plumbing, and electrical work are all stable, rewarding jobs. Nursing has no career? Get real. Nursing has as much career progression potential as a software developer: nurse -> administration/policy/public health; nurse -> manager; nurse -> nurse practitioner; nurse -> anesthetist.

My dad is technically still a nurse, so uhm, yeah I know a thing or two. In Europe at least, most admin positions are filled by people with degrees. You will need a degree to be promoted to an admin role. In fact, there are even degrees in nursing these days, which give preferential access to stable roles in areas where offer outstrips demand (i.e. poorer regions).

The best you can get without a degree is leading your own team of nurses, which basically means deciding shift patterns. My dad sorta invented his own job (back in the '70s when the world was more flexible, let's say) and "escaped", but most people he knew are still there doing shifts.

Sure, if you change the goalposts to make my argument practically a strawman.

"You can be a nurse, but you're never allowed to pursue any certificates or a BSN"

Do "real jobs" lose their authenticity once someone tries to improve themselves?

>Sure, you don't need a LI profile to get a dead-end job.

I'm pretty sure the only people who ever say that are people who were raised to hate themselves if they aren't at least in the upper-middle class. There will always be teachers making $50k per year and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, if you look closely, all across America there are millions of people earning less than $60k per year. Guess what? They're doing just fine. They're content with life. They aren't toxic as*holes who can't live with themselves because they don't make X thousand dollars per year and live in Y school district.