Skilled crafts here can generate a more money in the first 10-20 years of a career than what you make with a university degree desk job. One factor is that you can get into the labor force much earlier, don't neglect that 3-5 years head start when saving for your first house loan. After that, it depends if you're doing the extra hours, weekend and night shifts.
After that the masters degree jobs get the advantage. The craftsmen either they worked their way into a more supervising role or are not able or willing to do the lucrative labor hours.
The decline in crafts like baker or butcher is attributed to the long and weird hours, more than the pay. There are simply not enough to replace the
+ the aging work force.
Most tradespeople prefer to work on new builds, large amounts of stable work, without the hastle of renovating existing structures and all of the hidden issues that are quickly exposed once the surface has been taken away. (So... technical debt...)
As a contract IT consultant - sure, sometimes I take small "side-hustle" contracts if I am not swamped by my primary gig - but, I couldn't pay all mortgage if I was reliant on just taking small/odd jobs. Same goes for tradespeople.
This isn’t 1800. Moving back for a job is trivial when the alternative is being unemployed.
It’d be like saying you can make a million as a waiter or cook, because of a small business owner who opened a restaurant.
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-HV...
Most of them still prefer to surf than work !
Then you work for someone else and probably make $80k or $90k, then you start your own business.
In terms of supply/demand Australians are extremely house proud and spend an insane amount of money on renovations, upgrades, etc, so all the trades are always slammed. Have been for 20 years.
For sure there are common skills that all electricians share regardless of country, but there are still significant differences between countries, like in the UK ring circuits are common, but are against code in the USA.
licensing process that doesn't care about relevant unlicensed experience
The problem with unlicensed experience is that it provides no assurance of knowledge of code or safe wiring practice. Like when I found that my house had several MWBC's, but on one of them, the previous owner (or someone he hired) had replaced the tied-handle breakers with untied breakers, which leads to a very unsafe situation (another common mistake with MWBC's is moving breakers around and putting the hots on the same hot leg, which can lead to an overloaded neutral). Or worse, when I mapped out my outlets and found that the owner had put a 30A breaker on the 12 gauge wire leading to the garage outlets, presumably he was tripping the code compliant 20A breaker and "solved" that with a bigger breaker.
But if a guy who is a master electrician in El Salvador can sell himself as an electrician here, then a homeowner may trust him to do major electrical work "Permits? Naa, you don't need permits for this, that'll just make it more expensive. Trust me! I'm an Electrican and I've been doing this work for 20 years back home"
Where in live in the US, the housing market is exploding. It is impossible to find these workers, licensed or not.
He also does landscaping, tree removal, fence repair, house painting, trash hauling, electrical, plumbing and general dentistry (if you ask).
The two class of jobs are so different. Scalability, physicality, career path, longevity etc all comes into picture.
The discussion has been going around in cycles for many years.
Trades are solid career choices but it's hard work and you expire at about the same rate as a software dev.
It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is $47k, welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.
Then when we look at other technology jobs, PM, IT, etc, the story is similar to developers, high median salary with a multiple of jobs available over the trades.
I do know though that it’s pretty common for the seller to write the note financing the deal, especially when the buyer is a soon to be former employee. So financing is often within reach.
Another example is trucking. Plenty of trucking businesses were built by a lone operator rolling profits into more trucks and hiring drivers. Given the intense competition for CDL drivers today though it wouldn’t be my first pick.
The SF saleries are inflated BS because they are insanely high even compared to one of the most expensive countries in the world.
She describes it as a bimodal distribution. One (smaller) group of people with trades are willing to work anywhere whenever. They work in fly-in camps with limited work seasons and practically unlimited overtime. Since there’s nothing else to do, they log enough hours to get into double and triple time. The other (larger) group goes home after work and their overtime is limited to nonexistent. The pay is so different between the two groups that if they’re analyzed together, the statistically typical tradesperson looks nothing like the typical tradesperson.
A good plumber in my area (Seattle) is pulling in $60/hr minimum, and that is after the employers cut.
A plumber with some seniority is going to be making over 100/hr.
An experienced electrician is also well over 100/hr.
Granted if self employed they all have a higher tax burden and pay their healthcare costs, and driving between sites is a pain, but 100/hr makes up for a lot of that.
The trades people I know are booked out months. The general handyman I use is only booked out 2-3 weeks, and he comes in at an affordable $60/hr!
Next time a plumber stops by to fix your water heater, have a chat with them. Some of the ones I've talked to live in very nice custom built luxury homes that they designed themselves.
https://www.indeed.com/career/journeyman-plumber/salaries/Se...
Speaking of "250K" as a number, every single offer over 250K+ for someone with no experience, on levels.fyi, in seattle, was either for someone hired at L4 at Google or Facebook (usually this means a PhD hire), or a Facebook "rockstar" signing bonus, which I think levels.fyi mis-estimates (the "recurring" comp is lower than 250K, you get something like 120 base, 40 stock/yr, 100K signing (+ your normal annual bonus of ~15K). That's 200K/year over four years, not 250).
And last time I checked those packages had serious compensation cliffs after the first few years!
Software developer compensation is seriously bi-modal, most developers even in big cities are working at a fraction of FAANG pay, doing routine maintenance work.
Finally in seattle a top electrician makes 100/hr or ~200k/year. A top developer with similar years of experience makes $500k and never has to crawl around in your nasty attic and gets amazing healthcare and free food.
The money may be approximately comparable (outliers in both camps excepted) but all the trade people I know that have established themselves have very flexible work schedule. They have all the demand they can take so when they want to work 60 hours weeks they do. But since work is per job, when they want to work a few hours a week or take time off, that's also possible without repercussions.
Meanwhile in software land it's either great pay at 60+ hours a week, or nothing. Oh and "unlimited vacation" (aka don't dare take vacation ever).
Tradepeople also don't have standups or agile soulcrushing BS and their experience is respected.
This is just not true. There are loads of FAANG developers making well into 6 figures with 40 hour weeks.
I realize it's rather irrational but I personally don't think I could stomach the non-salaried lifestyle. A day of vacation is a day's wages lost. I'm sure it's something you learn to live with but I appreciate that the cost of taking time off is quite abstract for me.
It’s boring and you can practically feel your brain turn to slush.
Getting challenges on the job is a requirement for a good job.
First, work schedule. Keep in mind that, as another commenter pointed out, tradespeople often go through booms and busts, just like any other profession. The difference is that with tradespeople its a lot more obvious, since they still on a job for a few weeks, rather than a few years. On the boom, the tradespeople get a better deal out of it, because they get more work, whereas office workers of course only have the one job. In the busts, the office workers come out better, as the tradespeople have less work, whereas the office workers remain the same as they were in the boom.
Next, hours and vacation. I may be an outliner here, but my hours are the standard 9-5 and I get a fixed 30 days vacation a year, and flexible working (including working from home). As for unlimited vacation = no vacation, and 60+ hours is required, that seems more like a bad office culture/employer, no different than a tradesman would get a bad client. Again, its only more noticeable in office jobs because your there for a long time, whereas a bad client will only be a problem for a number of weeks (though potentially more if they hold off on paying). While we're at it, the same could be said of "their experience is respected". That's based on your employer, not your job.
Finally, standups, agile and office politics (assuming thats what you meant by BS). Its true, tradespeople don't need to suffer with that, but they do need to suffer through a hell of a lot of health and safety precautions and government red tape. Of course you can get some cowboys who don't bother with that, but that seems no different than the programming teams that don't do standups, agile or office politics (apart from the fact that one team is less likely to kill people). I would also mention the physical health issues that it can cause, but programmers get a similar thing through sitting for so long and you graciously didn't mention that.
I don't think being a tradey is a bad job, not at all. Its just not perfect, and like any job has its pros and cons. I too have fantasised about going into that line of work, but I imagine if I did, I'd end up fantasizing sitting in a comfy chair all day building software. As I said, the grass is always greener on the other side.
You should line up several interviews all in the same week and play the offers against one another. At least one should be over $150k, and possibly over $200k. That highest number then sets a floor that everyone else will need to rise to as you negotiate. Politely ignore claims that offers will explode; they won't. Add options/RSUs, and you may be shocked at the amount of compensation you can get.
You can actually do it.
The numbers aren’t inflated, they’re just not equally distributed.
Literally interviewed with a small startup (around 20 people total headcount) less than a week ago. The offer was for a base salary of $180k+grand promises of equity given out that should grow 15x and make one rich, but whatever, because equity at this point is just imaginary monopoly money worth pretty much nothing right now, so lets omit that part completely. But even with that in mind, $180k of pure cash just from base salary is more than doable. And I am not even a senior level or anything like that. Technically the company is in NYC, but the position is fully remote, which makes it even more lucrative for people who want to live in cheap COL states (no salary adjustment, which works out great for this scenario).
It’s not “fair” but it’s worth your time to look into getting into the US tech sector. Your skills have the most market value their.
Most senior salaries around here seem to be in the $95-120k range, so when I see similar numbers for "entry level" roles, it always perks me up a bit.
Not saying I disagree, but yeh, its not unique to software dev it seems
These numbers are all for remote roles for SV-based companies. You can also check salary on levels.fyi.
You won't believe it, but 300K+ for new grads (undergrads) isn't even unheard of if you look at places like Citadel & Jane Street, tho of course the hiring bar is very high at these places.
Side note - fan of your username.
Im in the late stages of my career and after owning my home for 15 years my mortgage is far less than rents in my area, my salary has gone up a ton over the years, and my house has appreciated a ton.
If you are a dev early in your career and in a big city, stick it out. Get into a big company that gives you stock options that are worth something, but a house when you can, and start working to max out your 401k. In all likelihood it will pay off in the long run. My old boss called it the “get rich slowly plan”. As a person that grew up really poor and has been in tech over 20 years, I can assure you it pays off.
Real estate is a tricky thing. I wouldn’t buy it for the sake of expecting it to go up in value. I’d buy it because you need housing.
Barring catastrophe, it will almost certainly go up if your time horizon is longer than 10 years. If you are in a big city, the populations are growing faster than new housing is being built. On top of that, there is no space to build many new single family homes so those will go up even more if you own one instead of a condo or townhouse.
I bought my first house at the peak of the last bubble. Ten years later I sold it for more than I paid for it, and those last few years my mortgage was a fair bit lower than rents for a comparable place.
Most people simply haven't wrapped their head around exponential growth. Our economy grows exponentially, and our population has historically (there are signs this might be changing). Unfortunately, I think our environment can't sustain that, but as long as it does, things will go up if your time horizon is long enough.
Edit: also, I’m not suggesting that your home value will double in 10 years. Not sure where you got that idea. My point does not assume or require doubling in 10 years.
Although you're not wrong, and crashes absolutely happen, I feel like I have been hearing that for at least 30 years now.
Just when it seems like things can't continue, the market always seems to find a way to support the higher prices.
For example: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/what-is-the-40-year...
It's probably only a matter of time until the 40 is the new 30 year loan for everyone...
- vacations
- cars
- all online purchases
- most hobbies
- etc...
When I moved to NY, I expected that my (much higher than before) salary would barely allow me to buy a car. Instead, I ended up with the best car I had ever owned up to that point, and went on craziest vacations. I also lived in the shittiest place ever before and after.
I totally agree that the non-FAANG companies have terrible dev pay. But most of the FAANG companies have offices well beyond just SF/NYC, so the opportunities are definitely available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164047/umfrag...
https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/gehaelter-so-hoch-i...