You’re way underpaid as you’re apprenticing.
Money in trades comes from owning the business not running the trencher, pulling wires etc.
I've had the pleasure (/s) of working retail, being a janitor at a McDonalds, working in a plastics factory that wrecked my sense of smell, and hauling shingles up onto a roof in 100F+ summer temperatures. I will take my sit-down, climate controlled, fingers typing job over any of them, any day, no matter how much those meetings and status updates annoy me.
And, none of the above even touched on salary or standard of living...
They would, of course, love to be paid as well as I am, and many would love the schedule flexibility (though some of them also get to make their own schedules much like I do), but they feel very strongly that being stuck inside, immobile, spending all their days reading, writing, and talking, mostly on a computer screen, would be totally miserable. So the grass isn't always greener!
I'm the opposite, I certainly fantasize about doing different things that are mostly intellectual, but I know I'm well suited to sitting around reading, thinking, writing, and chatting from time to time.
I didn't really understand this until some of those family members started finishing high school, and I started trying to suggest careers that seemed good to me, and more than one person finally told me, "I don't want to do any of those things because I'll be stuck in front of a computer all day every day and I would hate that". And I think they were right! "Know thyself" is important.
(Note: I'm talking about careers in trades and professions that are not office work. But not entry level jobs at retail businesses like most of your examples. I think everyone does indeed hate working in retail. But not everyone actually does prefer being on a computer in an office to nailing shingles onto a hot roof!)
I loved that everything I sold went into my pocket. Certain products had spiffs (10 dollars for activating a phone/plan) while everything had a commission (%4 for name brand / 6%/ 10% (for batteries). If I didn't sell enough to make minimum wage I would get minimum wage otherwise whatever I made.
I loved the busy time around christmas. I loved when people came up and I rang them up. I loved playing with the products and learning about the stock.
I worked at a booth that gave away food and sold cheese/meat baskets. I loved giving away food, selling and collecting the money.
I wouldn't go back but I miss that selling feeling.
And there's probably some solutions that simply need more adoption like electric stair climbers.
I'm getting ready to do a pivot and have set a hard deadline: if my income is going to take a very large hit, it needs to be reflected when I fill out the FAFSA for my oldest child. I'm pretty sure that I have 2 years to pivot because I am filling out the FAFSA in 4. If I can't make it happen by then, I'll need to stick it out for a while.
Other than that kind of thing, I think you dramatically overestimate how much you need your 6-figure job.
I'm still trying to figure out what my pivot will be. All I know is that if I have to work with people that don't care, it has to be a job in which not caring is totally fine for the work they do.
This is true.
A fair while back I left database and dev work for a few years. Tried my hand at kitchen design and sales, loading trucks, ISP tech support, chicken farming, builder's merchant sales counter, call centre night manager, farm labourer, collections agent, and more.
Loved it all, but my motivation was to experiment to see if the tech world was just my default or something I truly enjoyed. Turned out it was the latter so I returned to it.
Initially I was down about 20% on salary on my return to the industry, but a couple of years sorted that out and early employers seemed to appreciate the more rounded real-world experience.
Cathartic. Though I wouldn't do it again now I have a wife, mortgage, and dog to support.
There are projects, the time-scale is like a year, they can fail spectacularly, and it can be perceived as (may actually be) my fault. Projects from years ago can be understood, in hindsight, to have been fucked up. I fantasize about quitting and driving a bus, going home everyday having no doubt that the day's work met expectations. Giving my son a bath without feeling compelled to sneak away for another edit-compile-debug cycle.
It's becoming increasingly evident to me that I just want to stockpile savings against what feels like an increasingly inevitable crash-and-burn of this career. Be it GenAI, my own ADHD and lack of follow-through, whatever.
And when that day comes, just do something I can't fuck up
Re: AI. Ya I dunno. I imagine we'll ride the (10 year?) wave of being the principal AI tool users before we're replaced by an MBA and a prompt. More than enough to squirrel away money.
The old deal was that “if you were good or smart you’d always have work” isn’t true anymore. Instead we have to just accept chronic instability - but we do have a choice!
…just stop doing extra. Stop it. Control yourself and re-evaluate what’s important. It’s a hard cycle to break, but I believe you can do it. Then if you get laid off or a project crashes, just shrug and onto the next one.
How can they really apply pressure to anyone if you’re subject to random layoffs? Eventually it will be your turn, so just chill to heal burnout, then instead of extra cycles for your job, do something you enjoy, maybe build a shelter in the woods somewhere, learn to live off the land, find a local source of body paint for your war band, learn to weld so you can build a mad max roadster in the coming wasteland apocalypse you know this isn’t coming out like how I expected; on closer inspection I also have a lot of anxiety about this “new normal” apparently?
That's why I need the savings. You're suggesting I behave like a man with leverage. Currently, I am not one.
FWIW, this current level of burnout-inducing commitment is because I am gunning for a promotion. If I get it, I will indeed pull back. Or, indeed, if I don't get it. One way or the other.
Why are you gunning for a promotion
1. My career is no less a Sword of Damocles when I am semi-checked-out and spending more time on domesticity. Getting promoted would, I hope, (a) make me more secure in my current position by tying it to the judgment of the people who promoted me, (b) make me secure in my career more generally by generating a paper trail of high performance in this position, and (c) make me more secure generally by increasing my income and allowing me to save more.
2. My wife encouraged me to do it, and I need to demonstrate commitment to both professional success and The Domestic Project (enabled, as it is, more by our combined incomes than our actual domestic labor) to keep her happy. Possibly to keep her around. It is valuable for our relationship, I think, for her to know what it takes, so that FOMO on lost income does not foster resentment of my complacency in my career
Hey now. I think you have other issues than your job.
And to be honest, it sounds like you don't like your job because you're gunning for a promotion.
IME, people are often (not always) very bad at identifying the true source of their psychological stressors. When your life is unsatisfying for reasons that are your fault (or just very hard to fix) and hard to grapple with (e.g., your romantic life is awful, you hate your physical apperance, you antagonized your family, you're an addict, etc.), your working hours can feel intensely oppressive with that other stuff weighing on you and the newness of scenery and focus can appear like an attractive chance to escape. But it's often an avoidance tactic.
I have no idea if that's the OP's issue, but the great vagueness in his question about jumping careers sure raises red flags for me. The grass often isn't greener elsewhere, and the problems just follow you.