We’ve drunk the koolaid that work with one’s hands is not respectable. Meanwhile the trades are mostly killing it and watching white collar workers with their hunched backs and lattes have their work slowly eroded by language models.

So as a CTO, why do people think it’s extra cool that I build wooden boats, too? One of my role models is a retired Chevrolet mechanic who has never had to worry about money.

The stigma is just one more tragic falsehood that echoes around us.

Guys, guys. There’s no stigma. I literally have ironworker friends. It’s just job to normal people here in the Bay Area. You guys are the only ones doing this.

This always happens on HN. Someone will go “Despite what people think, left handed people are not idiots. Some of the smartest people I know are left handed. I think it’s bullshit that everyone thinks they’re morons”. But nobody thinks that. WTH it’s normal stuff.

I’m literally in software here in San Francisco. My wife is in marketing. We don’t think this. Nobody I know thinks this wtf.

My bet is that the stigma comes from indians and third world people who associate it with low socioeconomic status.

But it's worse in India, where being lower status means being a lesser human.

Honest work is honorable. Treating it with stigma is dishonorable.

It’s not an honor or dishonor thing here.

Typically welders earn less than professors in Nigeria.

IMO it’s a little short sighted to call the man just a welder. He owns a welding shop with multiple workers. Most welders don’t have that and are single operators or like his employees work under someone else.

He’s paying his workers $100 a month. Compare this to the $500 to $900 a month that professors take?

The world is larger than San Francisco.

I don't really know about Nigeria, but certainly in parts of Europe (can't speak for all of it) stigma against these kind of more tech-oriented occupations is very real. Even for software devs by the way.

Don't extrapolate your limited experience from a tiny part of the world to everything. Your experience and SF ironworker friends mean bugger all for most of us.

Aren’t you also extrapolating “your limited experience from a tiny part of the world to everything“?

"parts of Europe (can't speak for all of it)"

The number of times I've had remarks about the state of my hands / fingers / nails... yes, I always answer: these hands are used.

Real world skills are highly underrated in developed societies.

Tangentially related: I notice that in some EU countries, and the UK, people can skip universities, go into the trades, and do very well in "white collar professions" or in politics.

That's much less common in the US.

The world can be as large as it wants to be. But there’s a reason this forum came to be in the Bay Area and not in god knows where else.

>I’m literally in software here in San Francisco. My wife is in marketing. We don’t think this. Nobody I know thinks this wtf.

I find people usually perpetuating that attitude are the blue collar workers themselves.

A dinner party with a CEO, doctor, lawyer, professor and a plumber. Who gets taken more seriously at the dinner table by the zeitgeist?

Taken more seriously about what? If it were a question about management, I'd probably take the CEO more seriously. Law, the lawyer. Medicine, the doctor. And plumbing (or probably any construction related question), the plumber.

the people who don't take the plumber seriously just dont know their shit.

That's true, however

Where I come from, you don't need a license (or any kind of study) to become a plumber.

That means the market is loaded with incompetent people who just don't mind grabbing a wrench and learning about the field in the process. And if they fuck up, they fuck up.

That means, finding a good plumber is a nightmare. A vast majority of them either do a mediocre job by accident, or they may actually try to scam you.

Is it any easier to find a good software developer?

Where I come from, you don't need a license (or any kind of study) to become a developer.

That means the market is loaded with incompetent people who just don't mind grabbing a framework and learning about programming in the process. And if they fuck up, they fuck up.

That means, finding a good developer is a nightmare. A vast majority of them do a mediocre job by accidentally, or they may actually try to scam you.

****************

In the US at least, plumbers need to be licensed after a probationary period where they learn the craft from other plumbers. They don't make much money initially, and it can take a few years before they become journeymen.

I also live in the Bay Area, surrounded by highly educated people, many ethnicities, mostly in tech, some in law, medicine, etc.

I don't know a single person who has encouraged their kids to skip college and go into the trades. (Even when the kid has very little academic inclination, the parents pay for four years of private college.)

It's great that you have ironworker friends, but from what I see, "working with your hands" is not what most educated white-collar people want for their kids.

> I don't know a single person who has encouraged their kids to skip college and go into the trades.

Same-ish here. I have a brother in the trades (of seven siblings) and at least two cousins. But out of 23 nieces and nephews, zero AFAIK.

But also, this is 100% the circles I’m in — I get that.

Yeah, dude. For good reason. It’s a job with high physical risk. Everyone I know has had a workman’s comp issue or some injury or the other.

Moto X champion is a high-prestige position and I still don’t want my kids to do it. That’s not stigma. That’s called being aware of the risks.

When you’re off due to injury (like one of my friends who worked on T1 at SFO who hurt his back on the next job) it’s not great. And it takes a toll on you. That’s not stigma. That’s real. There’s no stigma. There’s just awareness of risk.

The dream is that your kids make a steady income at something they can enjoy or at least tolerate while not risking their physical health.

> The dream is that your kids make a steady income at something they can enjoy or at least tolerate while not risking their physical health.

Yep. The thing is, white collar (desk) jobs are bad for your health; physical and mental. I love my job but it comes at a price, too.

If you’re looking for steady work plumbing is where it’s at. Are we at 5000 years of continuous demand, and where skills are transferable across decades (maybe centuries)?

I think people like to make all these claims but any blue collar worker would love a desk job. It’s easy and to stop paying the physical price you just stand up every hour and walk to the water cooler and then come back to a well-adjusted desk.

Ironworking and carpentry are actually hard on one’s body. You only need one fuck-up. And that’s nothing like being a roughneck.

These are not the RSI kind of injuries. These are the They Sent Me Home For a Year injuries.

Language models have been out to the public for less than a year.

Social class isn’t a new phenomenon. Teachers and professors have long been the poorest members of the upper class.

If you think about it...

* they had halls of human computers 100 years ago

* they had halls of humans using computers a few years ago

so what is next?

Halls of computers using humans?

M. Night Shyamalan plot twist:

The halls were always the ones controlling things.

If you are in the Bay Area, I suggest Chabot College, and learn under Prof Johnson's night class. Hes an excellent instructor for both MIG and TIG. Really helped me step up my game.

Totally agree. It’s a superpower to be able to reject the zeitgeist and do something against the grain. What’s weird is that there are “acceptable against the grain” directions (e.g. founding a startup in a risky space) and unacceptable directions, like working blue collar jobs/trades/etc.

The stigma comes from blue collar workers. My parents were fishermen, neither of them wanted me to become a fisherman because they went into their 40s with severe medical problems due to the strain work put on their bodies.

Trades can pay very lucratively but depending on what trade and where you are it's going to be brutal on you. That's why going union and taking proper safety measures sometimes even in spite of your employer is important

There is no stigma. A professor is someone who's supposed to define your country's future by helping people grasp knowledge. Having or not having the right set of professors today makes a lot of difference to your country 50 years down the track. Only a small percentage of people can ever build themselves up to do that kind of work.

Welders make steel constructions that are used today. More than half of all people can be trained to weld well.

Having people move from university teaching to trades indicates a strategic misalignment with long-term growth.

That’s not how it works in real life. Professors have PhDs in a narrow speciality in their field. They aren’t trained to be excellent teachers and teaching is often an unpleasant afterthought to them, as the main focus is doing research.

Professors aren't "trained". If you're not an excellent teacher you have no business being a professor. You're thinking "researcher".

Again, that’s not how academia actually works. Professors are hired based on research output and potential, not teaching ability.

"Professor" and "researcher" are synonymous at American research universities.

I've worked for two world-famous research universities. Getting tenure is insanely difficult, and has approximately zero to do with teaching ability.

(It's different for adjuncts, lecturers, others who are hired to teach. But they have different titles.)