Re:Ask HN: Manual skills that pay well and can be self taught?
by the_only_law on Thursday December 31, 2020 @09:38AM
(#25593013)
Does the midwest have a strong union culture or something? I'm in the southeast and whenever I look at data for pay on most trades people, you still are unlikely to come anywhere near the salary for a software engineer unless you have 10-20 years of experience, and even that is dependent on the trades. Checking various trades on Glassdoor around my location shows the low end being mid-20 to low-30s with the high end capping in the 50s or 60s, which doesn't sound bound till you see that amount for years that people want for that pay.
If this is the direction you're trying to go: I grew up in the trades and keep trying to bounce back into that direction, but always get pulled back towards the technical aspect and/or implementing tech into the business side once anyone in management figures out you can as much as use the Office Suite. I eventually got backed into a spot of not enough "professional" dev experience to leave, and old enough to not be desired to start over as a junior.
If you're dead set, though, I'd start with HVAC - I think it's the best balance of interesting with a little manual effort to it. Includes a bit of many trades (plumbing, electrical, steam depending on the area). The main walled garden is the EPA-608 cert and it can be obtained fairly easily with little study.