the electrician i hire is in better shape than i'll ever be in, despite being about 50. pretty sure he makes about what i do, too.
> Third, workplace conditions are on average undesirable. Outdoors in the heat/cold, or indoors in tight spaces or high places.
ignoring high rises and installing solar panels, i feel like it isn't much worse than the stuff a lot of folks do on a regular basis to get exercise to make up for all the sitting they do all day, or just recreationally.
Curious, have you ever talked to a physical therapist? I've learned a lot of the maladies people live with are correctable, even sometimes things that seem permanent. Many running overuse injuries, for example, boil down to muscle weakness, muscle imbalance, or bad posture.
Without seeing a therapist, try doing this every day or every few days to elongate your 'posterior chain' and help your posture reset (which will help your knees, ankles, elbows operate under less duress): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOTvaRaDjI
Why would you blow all your salary? On something that is uncertain to work?
As a DIYer for 8 years 'ish, mudding drywall is an art. Where it might take me 4 or 5 (or 6) to get a good finish on joints or corners, it might take a pro 1 or 2 coats and very minimal if not none sanding in between. Primer and 2 coats of paint won't fill in imperfections greater then an 1/16th in diameter so if you have a lot of imperfections, you'll see it in the finished product.
Let's not even discuss mudding ceilings. The amount of upper body strength needed is amazing, let alone good balance on a ladder.
What do life/health/disability insurance companies think? They might charge higher prices to people in more dangerous professions, and they have big incentives to get it right.
So true, also earning is relational, if you are in a group of high paid folks, you tend to feel you earn less, not matter how much you earn more than average income.
On a relational note to the exercise portion, the max a high earning person often dream (and afford) about is spending a week in a beach 'hut' on a 'remote' island while there are several penniless people who just live on a beach hut for 365 days often without experiencing half the stress.
Perhaps (and I'm granting some leeway here) we don't yet have the tools or the data to understand well enough how something like THC affects motor skills like we do with alcohol, but someday I expect we will. Work places (particularly those with high safety concerns) shouldn't make any sacrifices just because something is socially acceptable. You can't show up drunk, and alcohol is more socially accepted than marijuana.
Fire someone for showing up to work drunk, sure. But would you fire them for a bottle of wine on a Saturday night?
If alcohol was like THC (that is, it's impossible to determine whether you drank in the last hour or the last week), I sure as hell don't want people who test positive driving.
That, plus marijuana is still illegal in most states. Whatever your personal conviction may be, businesses aren't in the business to turn the blind eye to illegal substance use. They're on the hook for liability.
NPR recently pointed out that if you include medical marijuana this is no where close to true with it being legal in 29 states: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S....
So as far as I know, there isn't a reliable and accurate way of testing.
Roadside DUI test is a general test for motor impairment. BAC tests are a nice proxy for that in the case of alcohol, and a legally convenient one as they are precise and objective, but the police care (morally speaking) about your motor impairment not your BAC.
tl;dr, we can already answer the question "is this person too stoned to drive?", roadside DUI test.
There's tons of (acceptable) prescription drugs that have a worse effect on performance than THC being in your system from the weekend before. Someone's glucose level being outside the norm would have a larger effect.
> Work places (particularly those with high safety concerns) shouldn't make any sacrifices just because something is socially acceptable.
Should it be illegal to be on the job while sick? Good luck getting that legislated.
We do have some understanding and data: very slightly, the most consistently measurable affect being minimally impared depth perception. Treating marijuana intoxication as a high risk imparment to motor function is making a mountain out of a mole hill. Relating the equation of motor function impairment caused by marijuana to that of alcohol or for that matter many other intoxicants (including a multitude of very commonly used pharmaceuticals and stimulants) sure seems a bit ignorant or uninformed to me. I'm not advocating marijuana use, especially when performing potentially dangerous actions that require attention and possibly urgent corrective action (driving, operating dangerous equiptment, performing surgery, etc.). But do consider there's plenty of professional athletes who have preformed some of the highest level coordination, precision and reaction time dependant functions of humanity while being under the influence of THC. Sorry to rant, but I think it's important to remember that people using alcohol cause an awful lot of harmful, deadly, and easily avoidable accidents. DUI's and similar restrictions are a direct result of that fact. I've looked for but have never seen evidence that shows an even remotely similar risk from THC consumption. If anyone is aware of data indicating otherwise, please share.
I think you misunderstood the MJ testing. MJ stays in the blood stream, and you can be caught by a random drug test on Tuesday for that joint you had on Saturday.
OP was not, I think, arguing for working 'high'
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) is rolling out a high-school STEM curriculum[0] for aviation. There are lots of options for aviation careers such as dispatcher, air traffic control, airframe & powerplant mechanic, and of course pilot.
A pilot who wants to make captain at one of the major U.S. airlines will want to add a four-year degree somewhere along the way, e.g., as a military officer or as a civilian climbing the ratings ladder. Part 121 is only one segment of the aviation market.
The FAA recently changed the required equipment for the commercial-pilot and certificated flight instructor (CFI) checkrides. Candidates for either rating until recently had to provide a complex airplane (retractable landing gear, flaps, and a controllable-pitch propeller). These take more time to train in and hence more expense.
[0]: https://youcanfly.aopa.org/high-school/high-school-curriculu...
A bit of first hand here, I'm currently pivoting over to this-there is absolutely demand for flight dispatchers right now. There's two kickers though I learned along this course that was not immediately apparent:
1) While you can take the first phase of your ADX training online, virtually every school that offers this program requires a portion of in-class instruction, which for some is a deal breaker...mostly due to
2) The number of available schools is not that great; the majority are on either coast, with only a dotting of schools to choose from in the interior US.
3) It's not the cheapest professional license one could obtain, but there are others that are far more expensive (welding for example, excluding training and licensing and simply purchasing durable and quality work gear can be a heft cost)
Still, that said...I have a friend who also decided to go out and become an ADX. She took the FAA exam, passed and was employed in under a month (this required relocation on her part).
So with a wife and two kids and in his late 20's, he decided one day he was going to be a pilot. Already in precarious financial circumstances, he took out some huge loans to go to flight school. We all were concerned it might not turn out so well. He worked up to a pilot license, twin-engine license, flight instructor license, commercial license. He got a series of cargo jobs ... and >> they pay extremely low wages and require lots of odd hours and time waiting around away from home. << It wasn't easy, pay was low, for many many years. These outfits all make money by squeezing employee pay and by skimping on maintenance -- and he had a couple of emergency landings in the Arizona desert amongst the cacti and boulders.
He eventually got some jobs flying real people around for >> minor airlines <<, and bounced between those and other cargo jobs. Pay was still low. He also spent a stint in the Central African Republic helping a real nice Sudanese gentleman start an airline. There are lots of mining companies that need to fly around equipment and engineers even in a poverty-striken country, and lots of rich Portuguese folks wanting a real African dense-jungle hunting experience. The biggest risks for a while were precarious landing strips and corrupt government officials (they managed to pay zero bribes by just saying "no" to solicitations, holding out, and working their way up the hierarchy). A revolution came along to destroy the airline dream, and he was lucky the French military managed to pick him and other expats up from his neighborhood before the worst came along.
In his last "podunk" air cargo job, the airplane he was operating malfunctioned due to poor maintenance. The company wanted to pin the damage on him and his lack of procedure (he's very conscientious) and tried their best to break him on an unreasonable simulator test -- he managed to come out of that unscathed. Fortunately he'd just interviewed with America West and got the word the next day he was hired to fly 757's.
So it took my brother about 15 years to work from his first commercial job to becoming a full-fledged airline pilot in the majors ... and he had to work many marginal jobs for low pay in the interim. It's worked out well for him. He's flown 757's for various years on many routes, but most commonly now does Phoenix <--> Hawaii. There have been more challenges stemming from America West's acquisition pseudo-mergers with first the bankrupt US Airways, then the bankrupt American Airlines ... labor and seniority issues in the airlines are never easy, especially during mergers.
He's had time to get a Comp-Sci degree in the mean time while working "reserve" and started a decent-sized Salesforce consultancy and recruited some other family to work in that. (That consultancy kind of blew up ... working with family is hard, but that's a different story.) He flies and does Salesforce consulting now and is reasonably happy.
There is, but it might not mean what you're thinking it means.
The number of years it takes to go from regional FO to major Captain is extremely dependent on the economy. Since everything is based on seniority, if there is a downturn, airlines fly less flights and need less pilots, so basically your career goes on hold because no one is getting promoted. When things are good, you move quickly up the ranks.
To your direct question, once you have all of your ratings and your 1500 hours, plus a 4 year college degree (required at major airlines) (figure 6 years and $200-250k in debt), at 2 years you are probably FO at a regional, $50k/yr. At 5 years, captain at a regional, 80k/yr, 10 years, FO at a major, $150k/yr.
If the economy tanks, you stall and might be laid off or furloughed. If your airline goes bankrupt, you scramble to find another job and start at the bottom of the FO totem pole again. If you have almost any health problem or require most any medication, you lose your medical and find another line of work. If further automation leads to a single pilot cockpit (fairly likely IMO in the next 20 years), you either lose your job or take a big pay cut.
First officer salaries at regional airlines have come up to start in the skilled trade range, $60k plus. Regional captains make $80k and up. (It used to be awful, $20-30k.) Getting to that point in the Part 121 world takes a lot of training and expense. Candidates for the Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate must have a minimum of 1,500 flight hours.
Other commercial flying such as hauling cargo, air taxi, or private charter may require a commercial single or commercial multi certificate with instrument rating. These pay about like the skilled trades too.
Reaching ATP minimum required 1,500 flight hours has multiple routes to it. Unfortunately for people who work their way up through the ratings as civilians, they are competing against retired military pilots who did not go into debt for their training and who are receiving pension payments. (Military aviators certainly paid for their training in a different way, and I am making no comparison of their respective costs.) Retired military pilots are frequently hired directly to major airlines whereas Billy and Susie Civilian start off at regional airlines.
Even with ATP certificate in hand, it’s not yet fat city. Airline pilots have to work their way up through the seniority ranks, beginning with crummy ready reserve where they sit around hoping for a ride. Other flavors are short call and long call, the difference being how quickly the pilot must report for duty after receiving the call. Moving up to more desirable bases and aircraft goes through a complicated bid process[0].
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/8eaupt/moronic_mond...
Yes, compensation relative to the training expense used to be horrible for first officers and even captains at regional airlines, starting in the $20k range annual compensation. Again recall that military retirees have their mailbox money coming in. Because of the pilot shortage, first officers at regionals now start around $60k annually.
Two common civilian paths to ATP minimums are becoming a certificated flight instructor (CFI) or flying aerial survey, photography, air tours, private carriage, diver driver (i.e., flying skydivers) and so on. In reality, there may be some blend because all of the aforementioned tasks require a commercial pilot certificate. Because the airlines are a training environment, there is at least some degree of preference for CFIs rather than someone who schlepped around for a thousand hours towing a banner over the beach in a 152. These are not minimum-wage jobs. Someone with a wet commercial ticket might make twenty bucks an hour. Here again, the would-be ATP is competing against fellow time builders trying to get to 1,500 hours. More advanced instructors (e.g., CFI-Instrument, commercial instruction, or complex instruction) command a higher hourly rate, and instructors get paid for both flight time and for ground instruction. It’s not great money, but they aren’t starving either: starting in the $30k range up to the $50s — a lot like apprentices in the skilled trades.
Candidates for the commercial pilot checkride must have at least 250 flight hours. The commercial airplane ticket comes in four flavors along two axes: single- or multi-engine and land or sea. The least expensive is airplane single-engine land (ASEL). To reach that point, trainers in this class rent between $100 and $200 per flight hour “wet,” inclusive of fuel. Include instruction, test fees, gear, and the cost of an instrument rating (which I am glossing over) will total to around $30k. Some flight schools and operators of multi-engine aircraft will foot the bill for the multi rating and MEI in exchange for some number of flight hours on the back end with a clawback if the pilot leaves for another opportunity.
I would love if someone in the industry could shed some light here. I have two friends early in an ATC career and it sounded like getting to where they are now was hell (and they definitely aren't at the 6 figure mark yet). The most reductive way I've had it explained is it's years of training, with shit pay and relocation, and the possibility of washing out along the way being relatively high.
Assuming our hero passes the academy, she is then assigned to an Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC or just Center), an air traffic control tower (ATCT), or an “up-down” facility with both a control tower and TRACON, terminal radar approach control. Certifying in just one sector may take a year or two. Trainees make upwards of $30k annually. Someone who washes out may look at transferring to a less demanding facility. People also request hardship transfers to be closer to family and so on, but ATC is chronically understaffed, and obtaining those transfers takes time.
As with pilots (see another reply in this thread[0]), military ATC experience is often a more expedient route. FAA controllers tend to discount the skill and decision making of former Army controllers who mostly deal with low-flying slow movers under VFR rather than jets under positive control.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941169
Oh by the way, our hero must get in (I believe be admitted to the academy) before her 31st birthday. The clock is ticking.
Yes, there is survivorship bias in the success stories. People wash out of other careers too. Seeing actual data on rates would be fascinating. For balance, read the “Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?” chapter of Freakonomics.
Ironic given that plenty of blue collar professionals can make a lot more than your average worker in many degreed professions. (That's not to say the average blue collar wage is higher)
I feel like referencing welding is pretty cliche, but for example:
No they don't, this is a myth that has become perpetuated in recent years.
Mike Rowe might mean well by writing articles like this, but the content is a lie. The median salary of a welder in the US is $40,240 a year according to the BLS. People are essentially selling an entire generation a load of BS in order to flood the market with cheap labor instead of paying them more.
There are some welders who make $100k a year, but they are several standard deviations above the mean. Those $100k/welders are like the $5MM/yr programmers. Yeah, they exist, but only in the top 1% of workers.
I don't want my kids to be tradespeople. I watched 2008 destroy the careers of every tradesperson friend I had, along with nearly wiping out my family's (second-generation) construction business. I had talented friends in their early 20s that were forced to move back in with family after having their work hours cut to 2-3/hr a week (but they had to report to work everyday). The ones with family safety nets went to college, those without joined the military.
If you're willing to accept the boom-or-bust nature of construction projects, or remote (as in, go to where work is in demand) work, you can make considerably more. Then there's overtime, which your salaried white-collar worker doesn't get at all.
> Then there's overtime, which your salaried white-collar worker doesn't get at all.
Not true across the board - in fact, many mid-paying office jobs are hourly and do pay overtime. I know a bunch of people that worked at AT&T as "salaried" workers, but they still needed to log their hours toward projects, and received 1.5x pay when they worked more than 40/wk, which was most weeks.
1. https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Welder/Hourly_Rate
Examples:
Difficult to see work becomes root cause if phase error between protection in place and start of arc.
Ever glance over and see the bright arc? Hard to not do that.
Use of marginal protection happens for a ton of reasons.
Each flash exposure adds up.
>"Parents want success for their kids," said Mike Clifton, who teaches machining at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, about 20 miles from Seattle. "They get stuck on [four-year bachelor's degrees],
What parents want is to be able to brag on their kids. Which is to say, they want to be able to boast that their kid went to a presigious university and now holds a prestigious job. And the Education-Industrial Complex (tm) has milked that for everything it's worth. Which is trillions of USD.
Seventh, the people who work in the trades have a rep as rabidly anti-intellectual, for whom Playboy magazine is "too snooty."
This is an odd example; Playboy's whole thing was that it featured high-class literary content, so you could read it "for the articles". It was intentionally snooty as a branding choice helping it contrast with, say, Hustler.
"See that awesome building with the cool lights? My kid wired the whole thing, passed code inspection the first time."
Frankly, accomplishments like that are worth talking up. We play, live, build, do as we do in relative comfort and safety because of the hard, quality work trades people do.
It's like the old saw, "nobody values the plumber, until they do." When they do, they really do.
All of us could be messaging to this in basic, affirmative ways. I think it would help.
Meta: what is the post limit? I can't seem to interact reasonably. Nothing out of the ordinary, but too fast... ?
https://www.damemagazine.com/2014/05/23/amazon-killing-my-se...
A lot of people live up to the stereotype though, and that's where the author of the article is coming from. To repeat a saying I heard a lot during my undergrad at a Stem-heavy school that had male-dominated ratio - "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."
I think there is a stigma.
When single I remember the intense look of an interested girl, that switched off at hearing what my job was.
However, I also think that is offset by some positive bias towards looking for wrll paid professional partners.
The stigma exists. I do think it is fairly easy to avoid its effects (don't be the "undesirable" stereotype). I also think most jobs have a stigma, with negative reactions from some people.
If someone only sees you as your job, that is their problem!
Maybe try telling her you’re a plumber and seeing what the reaction is as a comparison.
For this thread, there is no difference.
Poor her. She should move to a city with less intelligent and successful men, I suppose.
Luck is a great factor. He might have dodged a bullet, she might have made the wrong choice. Frankly I don't give a damn about them. I've turned down worthy people, I've been turned down by less-worthy ones, and reverse. It doesn't matter. I don't have any regrets.
Programmers, like all people, can be good looking, physically fit, not socially awkward(?:, successful, financially stable/rich, confident, healthy, faithful, non-promiscuous, happy, etc., etc.)? and good in bed. The exact opposite can also happen. Most times it's a variable combination and that's just the way it is. That is how nature works.
Tastes and opinions (not only prejudices) can change and people can find themselves compromising as they grow older. This is what matters to me, I don't want to see myself regretting choices related to my love life.
I’ve been in the industry my entire adult life and have never met one of these mythical creatures. After all, the term started off as a joke developers themselves would use then got co-opted by anti-tech people and used literally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuIOGazSmHg
(It's from the 90's.)
Though, I guess he's also a rich playboy who happens to build robots powered by advanced AI.
Some trades will take you to awful places to live and work. For example, if your job takes you into the oil fields, there's a good chance you're going to Bakken, and North Dakota/eastern Montana is just a fundamentally terrible place to be, winter or summer, and the usual boomtown criminality and lack of resources only makes it worse.
That's tough on your family, too: Those places don't have good schools. The after-school activities consist of drugs, drinking, and driving under the influence of one or both to get to and from the places you do both or either. There's a reason there's a meth/opioid epidemic in those regions, and it isn't because they have a vibrant social scene with plenty of gathering places you can walk to most of the year.
I lived in Havre for ten years, including my high school years, and I have, if anything, understated the problems because Havre isn't nearly as bad as the Bakken region.
Marijuana and heavy machinery don't mix well... I can't speak to how long you have to be clean to pass a test, so it's possible that these tests select for people who _never_ use, versus people who got high 30 minutes ago. Even if it's the latter, one could argue that any use means someone could be high at the wrong time. I don't really have enough information on drug use patterns to comment here; perhaps someone else does?
If you're a frequent smoker, it can last be detected over a month after your last use. Even longer in hair tests.
Obviously being high at work isn't a good thing, but neither is being drunk at work. But you don't get fired for having a few beers on the weekend.
Several days at least. Weekend smokers are out.
My house is full of copper plumbing, all cut and soldered together by hand. The wiring is all in hard conduit. Today, conduit is gone, and plumbers assemble things using flexible tubing and fittings that get squeezed onto the ends (for lack of the correct terminology).
I doubt that fixing things will ever provide as much work as construction.
But on the other hand, yesterday we had an article here about visual coding, and according to some it can build very complex application with much higher productivity(and maybe the work becomes accessible to business analysts and domain experts, maybe).
So it's hard to tell these days.
Not my area but various companies have been trying to do this sort of thing forever. I can remember reading stories about partially pre-manufactured modular homes decades ago and it's never panned out. It seems to be one of those ideas that makes a lot of sense on paper but people don't want it.
The Sears & Roebuck were partially assembled (think wall by wall), and then those parts were hoisted off the freight trains and nailed together. There was still a lot of work that needed to be done (often by professionals), but it really cut down on the (especially local) costs.
They recently raised $865m lead by SoftBank's vision fund [0].
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/business/dealbook/katerra...
So people will have to build more houses for the same money.
You can do that job to pay (at least partially) your way through university, and if your preferred career is interrupted by economic conditions or some weird life event, you always have something solid to fall back on.
> Removing a marijuana screen from standard workplace testing would help revitalize the employee pool.
To me, trade jobs seem to be the most willing to offer a "second chance" to workers willing to work. More so than some white-collar jobs that have a no tolerance drug/crime policy.
But a majority of trade workers get bounced around job sites, and are usually required to pass a screen before each one. If you get sent to a job with little notice (can happen within a week), you need to pass a screen. If you fail, you simply don't get hired and have to enter the queue and wait for the next opportunity. Fail enough times and you either get dropped by your union local, or black listed entirely.
So messing up a drug screen once or twice doesn't mean you will lose all job opportunities, but it could mean you go without work for 1 week to over a year. And if you are represented by a trade union, you don't have the luxury to apply freely to open positions like you would in the white collar market.
If you’re lucky enough to get into the union, I doubt you care much about the luxury of making less money.
I find it interesting you equate even light use of marijuana with the abuse of alcohol.
With respect to marijuana, it’s well known that it is detectable for some period of time. If you’re smoking with full knowledge that you can be randomly screened, you’re demonstrating poor judgment and risk tolerance.
I don’t want someone dumb enough to do these things in a position where my health and safety is at risk.
This is worse in software engineering. You are probably in the bay area or some other tech city, but for all the people who live outside of those areas, they have to either move to them or get paid a ridiculously low wage relative to their work.
Here in Australia, only those people who want to work in the mines have to go anywhere. All the other trades can not only live wherever they want, they don't have to live near the city. Programmers have to live close to the city and pay the extra in housing because all of the jobs are in the city.
>Second, trade jobs are usually pretty tough on the body. After a couple decades of work your body begins to break down, assuming there are no workplace injuries to put you out of commission sooner.
Sitting is worse for your body than most trades. Some trades may be really tough, but the majority are not. Programmers generally look completely out of shape. You talk about "after a few decades", well, I wonder if you have met any older office workers? I work with people in their late 30s and early 40s who have done nothing but office work. Just the other day, we were walking up a large group of stairs to go to a conference and they were all going on about their knees and groaning on pain. I suspect you are confusing people just getting old who don't really look after their body, with a specific effect of a type of job.
>Third, workplace conditions are on average undesirable. Outdoors in the heat/cold, or indoors in tight spaces or high places. It's tough sell over companies that glorify bean bag chairs, nap pods, and free beer on hand.
This sounds like someone who just hates the outdoors. I have worked in both types of jobs and I absolutely hate being in an air-conditioned office. I hate unnatural air and the lack of sunlight. I also hate beer, and bean bag chairs are terrible for your body. Nap pods, jesus.
>Fourth, there's a social stigma around trade skill jobs. This does seem kind of true, but I see people in trades with much prettier girlfriends than most programmers due to the better shape they are in both mentally and physically, and the fact that money is all that counts. Trades outside of tech cities get paid the same or more as programmers.
>All of these observations are based off my fathers experience as union based pipe fitter/welder for >30 years. Exactly.
If I remember correctly, the NSA had to drop the marijuana prohibition on hires recently, simply because they were not getting enough applicants.
You won't run out of job opportunities if your book 1 union.
Yes--construction is not a great job. Out if of all the Trades; Electrical is a bit better than the rest. It's less physically taxing.
Union Elevator Mechanic might be the best trade?
So much depends on your attitude. If you like going to work, sweating, getting dirty, and going home without much worry--in a good union you are making over $100/hr. Listening to some of the guys takes patience, but you will never hear, "It sounds like you have a case of the mondays, or have to listen to some jack arse pontificating in a meeting.
Non-union is just aweful. You are better off in retail. If very motivated, use the non-union shop to gain experience, and then get a C-10 contractor's licence.
That said, there's only a few cities I would consider working in.
Mike Rowe (the t.v. guy who's made himself the ambassador of "working hard". I personally think he is exploiting a bad situation.). goes around as the prince of the Trades. He always yacking about these jobs that go unfilled. Most of these jobs are non-union, in the middle of the rust belt, and are temporary. There's a reason these jobs go unfilled.
So if you don't mind getting dirty, ex king up early, being around sweaty guys all day long; keep an eye out for the union admittance test. Some unions have over 1000 people taking the test for a few spots.
It's an easy test, but get every question right. The oral interview counts for half.
(I was in the union a year. I got a better opportunity, so I left. Looking back--I probally should have finished the apprenticeship, but did not want to turn into my father. I literally saw myself turning into him. Oh yea, watch the drinking. It's ok to come in with a hangover, but heavens forbid marijuana.
In all honestly, a lot of guys smoked pot. It's only the bigger job sites that required a drug test. Even then, when I worked at Pacbell park, guys would stop smoking a few weeks before showing up for to the job site, and within a few days they were back to smoking.
There was one statistic about working construction that always bothered me. Too many guys were waiting for retirement to really live their lives. They would collect a few retirement checks, and die. A lot of that was probally the wrong diet, and too much drinking?
Good luck!
How long would it take to get to that level from zero trade experience, and how hard is it to get into the union?
Tougher than sitting in an office chair for 10 hours a day ?
But yeah, personally, I'd push my own child to get a degree, as insurance. Life can be quite long and you never know.
Ask for something like that at a job site and you'd probably get laughed off.
Tech jobs aren’t free from this anymore. For people in the industry, if all you do is stuff like front end JavaScript work (basically what any boot camp grad does), you’re basically the tech equivalent of a construction worker. Except now, others outside the industry are catching on to this too. The people in tech who get all the prestige are those who are solving real problems or work in more esoteric domains, at least by those who aren’t also blue collar workers themselves.
Nothing wrong with it, it’s just the way it is. Prestige won’t last forever.
The people in tech who get all the prestige
are those who are solving real problems or
work in more esoteric domains
First, construction in general is a pretty up and down industry. Construction booms don't last forever, and in general you need to 'follow the work'. This is great if you are young, single, and willing to chase the high paying jobs. Not so great if you have a strong desire to stay in one spot.
Second, trade jobs are usually pretty tough on the body. After a couple decades of work your body begins to break down, assuming there are no workplace injuries to put you out of commission sooner.
Third, workplace conditions are on average undesirable. Outdoors in the heat/cold, or indoors in tight spaces or high places. It's tough sell over companies that glorify bean bag chairs, nap pods, and free beer on hand.
Fourth, there's a social stigma around trade skill jobs. Blue collar jobs have gained a reputation of being jobs held by slackers or the less fortunate. Unfortunately, wearing workboots carries a stigma that wearing a shirt and tie/'startup' attire doesn't.
Fifth, and this one may seem like a silly reason to most, the drug testing (for marijuana specifically) is a huge barrier of entry. From a safety perspective, it makes sense. But for better or worse, marijuana use is becoming more socially accepted while work places (and in particular trade jobs) are lagging behind the times. Removing a marijuana screen from standard workplace testing would help revitalize the employee pool.
Sixth, and this is arguably the biggest one, four year degrees are seen as a status symbol and are being sold to use as such. They are Big Education, and are pulling on all the right strings to keep the tuition/student debt machine running. Advocating for trade jobs is in direct competition. They have enough players in their pockets (donors, alumnus, politicians) to keep the money flowing in the right direction. Selling someone on trade school/work is hard when it is seen as the less optimal path towards 'life success'.
All of these observations are based off my fathers experience as union based pipe fitter/welder for >30 years.