There's a startling lack of quality a lot of the time now, it's gonna get hella bad when the trades-boomers go.

I'm 42 now and I left the trades a year ago after getting the life beat out of me for most of my life. It's not that no one wants to do the work, it's that no one wants to pay for a good tradesperson. When I left my last job they were only hiring techs for $16-$20 and hour. That was with HVAC certification. It's laughable.

Matter of fact, the company I worked for withheld raises from one of their teams for 3 years and they pikachu faced when they all left. Literally the best tech team in the company too. (This team had over 100 years of total experience in the trades. Plumbing, electrical, you name it. They've done it.)

Not to mention like 99% of the companies require you to own your own tools and will not replace/repair anything that breaks while working for their company. Got a nice new impact and it broke doing a job? That $200 is coming out of your pocket. Always.

Fucking, also, all the jobs that require being on call. Got a family? Fuck you, go fix shit at 2am and then make sure you show up to work on time at 6am with no sleep. Work 10-12 hours, go home, get called the next night too.

As someone who spent the last 5 years in trades, and is now going to retraining: nobody is willing to pay enough for you to destroy your body by the time you're 50.

Germans have a word for it. Fachkräftemangel

Southpark’s latest special covers this.

Everyone shits on blue collar workers until their furnace stops working, their pipes leak, their car breaks, their roof leaks, their foundation cracks, the wiring in their house gives out... Shit, it's almost like their work is integral to their jaded-ass day to day lives

Also, while it's back breaking work

This is why. It's not so much "these people are dumb" as it is "you don't want to have to do backbreaking labor the rest of your life".

That's not fair. Do you have any idea how hard I work to put adverts into your products without making them crash? God, think next time!

Hey, c'mon those programmers making minecraft mods during their work hours are contributing to society

What STEM path is barely getting by? Programmers and engineers are highly sought after employees rn.

I think you mean a moo point

Just have to wreck your back by the age of 35.

Figuratively and literally!

That construction worker has made more money at his entry level job than you have in the last twenty years mom!

~$24/hr x 2080 = $49,920 x 20 = $998,400. + 36/hr x 520 OT = 18,720 x 20 = 374,400. = $1,372,800 + benefits in 20 years.

Mom = -$200,000 first 4 years in reality -300,000 with interest for college. $9/hr full time job for 2 years outside of your industry. $17/hr first 3 years in your industry. $20/hr next 5 years. $25/hr next 5 years. $23/hr due to salary cuts last 1 year.

-300,000 + 37,440 + 106,080 + 208,000 + 260,000 + 47,840 = $359,360 for mom in 20 years with the good benefits only coming after she gets salaried.

Congrats, this is what the gender pay gap has been about since it was created. Men destroy themselves and off themselves in droves for it.

Don't let your job be your only workout. Stretch daily, and then do low weight/high rep strength training in the gym a few times a week, to be stronger than you need to be for your job. You'll stop pulling muscles so easily. I'm 43 and I don't have even half the pain that most of the 30 year olds around here complain about.

That's the thought that crossed my mind. As far as pay, it is being a good stable career option - the very physical trades tend to encounter a lot more injuries and physical consequences. I respect the heck out of the trades and I work with a lot of them on different things for work - but if you look at some of the older/close to retirement folks - physical ailments and shorter life expectancy is a real concern.

Think of the "silent generation" and "baby boomers" you know that are getting up there in years. Everyone I have known that reached their 90s had fairly "cushy" desk jobs. The ones I knew who did skilled labor and trades work lived to their late 70s/early 80s.

I think, at least in the US, that we are going to REALLY feel the decrease in trades like plumbers, electricians, etc. You can teach some trades much quicker when there is a need - but with licensing and such - its going to take time to turn that ship back on course.

Until he becomes the construction dude who falls apart like lego every morning at the age of 45

Year is irrelevant, as long as class exists (working, owning, and middle deluded worker, aka "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"), so will classism.

Yea well... Tell that to the Indians. Tradesmen are looked down upon quite a lot here (cuz they also tend to be poor and of the lower castes).

I didn't know people were talking trash about them. When I was a kid my parents warned me to do skooll gud so that I could get a cushy office job instead of a low paying back breaking job, not that those professions are shameful or anything like that.

Me: Yes, excavators are fun. (Note: I am not in construction though.)

A 2-year paid apprenticeship no less.

Finish carpentry building science labs...as an architect who has recently taken an interest in building science, that sounds interesting. The jump from programmer is interesting, too. Like, did you have prior experience in carpentry, or did you go in blind?

As an ex-programmer that is now in the trades

I'm trying make the opposite switch haha

I swear there are so many systems that should have never existed let alone be perpetuated into the current era...

"It's ok to hate that person, they're ARBITRARY CLASS NAME." ...ughh

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The flipside now is doing what you love now requires multiple 10's of thousands of $ of debt to get even a CHANCE of getting into said field, and theres no guarantee that even if you get in you'll love it as a job instead of just a hobby, so you arent guaranteed better mental health by career switching

That's the thing I struggle with: There's lots of tasks that I wouldn't mind, or might outright enjoy, to accomplish in exchange for monetary return...

...oh, but it's the same routine that occupies that un-movable, sometimes randomized deathgrip on that huge time-block in your life? Day in and day out? Until you lose your mind and quit?

Even "playing games for a living" would suck under those circumstances!

long term the office is likely better for your health but man actually doing things you can admire afterwards is so effing satisfying.

To paraphrase office space, "No man, no one says shit like 'a case of the Mondays' I believe you'd get your ass kicked saying something like that."

Same. Left corporate middle management with a healthy salary to work a trade and I am very satisfied with my decision. I sleep like a baby since I go to bed with a clear conscience every night.

Me too, I like to say I fix everything from software to cars. A problem solver is a problem solver, no reason you can’t do just about everything with logic and the internet.

Which 3/4 of goes to the company they work for and the actual worker gets paid shit.

til I don't make smare peoples wages.

Im curious why you dont think IT is like a trade? I write code all day and petty much feel like a glorified construction worker for computer programs. IT has been blue collar for a while now. Heck my local trade school for teenagers 15 years ago had various IT role classes.