Sparky's with apprenticeships (in Australia at least) have the advantage of earning while learning while also segueing into the interstitial Hardware / Software zone.
A good many I've known have pulled cable and slogged for several years, invested in shitty old house after another (renovating and flipping), transitioned into running electrical subcontracting companies, and "retired" out of trades and into software careers (in GIS or other domains) in their mid thirties to early forties.
Neither trades nor university education are lifetime commitments or mutually exclusive.
I met a professional electrician in college who was in charge of the electrical system in an old high-rise building. He told me that it was common for him to work on high-voltage lines that could not be shut off for service. He said that hearing the pops from the high voltage was not uncommon. He regularly put his life on the line as part of his job. Just hearing that made me want to make sure I got a college degree so I wouldn't have to get a trade job. All trade jobs will wear your body down, and you regularly have to put your health on the line. Saying that trade jobs are the future is easy to say, but there's a catch. You may sacrifice your health. The better route maybe a career where you help reduce the dangers of trade jobs.
I think the most important aspect of high salary is job demand.
Perhaps once there was a high demand for good SWE coming out of 4 years of $$ tuition uni.
Personal anecdote: Got a buddy who dropped out of Bible school, worked at a auto shop while getting his certs. After 2 years about any dealership would hire him.
He moves, lands a 100k+ job. 2 years later, switches to a dealership in San Jose, earning 150+.
6 months later, he gets an offer to become foreman at a dealership in gilroy with a $5/h raise + foreman benefits. How it works is techs are paid flat rate: Paid per job, not per hour. So if youre good, you can really rake in the money.
Its been wild to see his career arc in real time.
He's highly trained, very handy, Nd he's damn smart at debugging.
Basically doing CAN bus diagnostics with an oscope and logic analyzer.
He earns more than me who got a MS in ECE.
On the flip side, his job is physical and he works more hours than me.
I get to so R&D, think about cool math, and code. But in another life I'd love do be a tech.
All that said, there's a lot of demand for good auto techs.
There's demand but for all but the most specialized stuff (maybe NVH), the work is brutal and the flag hour system sucks ass. Got a warranty job? Better be happy with half pay. Got something that's an absolute bitch to get apart or something goes wrong? Yeah you're still getting paid the same even if it's not your fault. There's a good reason Ford can't find enough auto techs. There's no way I would go back to earning money as a mechanic over something like HVAC or being a millwright.
A few years back, we hired an electrician to do some relatively small things for us—things I could do like replacing light switches with timer switches and the like, but didn’t have time to do. The thing that really blew me away was when I asked him if he wanted me to shut off the power at the breaker box and he said no and did all the work with live current in the wires. Yes, I know, gloves, rubber soled shoes, he was fine, but it still was somewhat terrifying to watch.
Being wealthy is better than being poor, and being able to pay for college is better than working in construction. However, when choosing a specialty it is important to consider one's preferences. If your child don't want to be a lawyer it doesn't matter whether you can afford paying for the degree, and if he insists he would rather be fixing cars than dealing with documents, helping with a student loan is not really the best thing you can offer as a parent.
The part about blue collar jobs being inherently more deadly doesn't feel right to me. For one, I want to believe we have collectively gotten better in avoiding "dumb" deaths and injuries, these, that could have been prevented by inventing and following safety procedures. The health risks certain profession implies is certainly to be considered when choosing one, white collars included. Desk job kills slowly, but surely.
So, answering to the title, which doesn't seem to be related to the article contents, I absolutely do. Qualified engineer knows enough to be able to double off as a technician, and missing monthly payments is much scarier than high voltage, so if my entire job field was to become obsolete due to AI or any other reason, I would absolutely consider getting out of desk and getting my hands dirty.
You can only get so much better at reducing "dumb" deaths and injuries when you spend all day every day around things that will kill you if you touch them.
The other aspect I think people are missing is that, for the right person, the choice isn't between a white collar office job and trades, it's between struggling in retail and service work with a (possibly bad) degree and no upward mobility, where your only escape is into either management or retraining.
For those people, trades are absolutely a better choice - it's not like becoming an HVAC dogs body prevents you from later going to school if you decide it's not for you.
Simple enough, one group will be living in houses falling apart, the other group will be renovating distressed cheap housing into relative mansions to live in or flip at cost or less.
One point that most people miss is there are many different kinds of electricians who, often can't even do each other's jobs.
There is the house wirer, the panel builder, automotive electrician, HV, marine, drilling, industrial, maintenance etc etc.
Some kinds pay better, others yield work almost wherever you go, others lend themselves to starting your own business better.
It is nowhere near as homogenous as often described.
Sparky's with apprenticeships (in Australia at least) have the advantage of earning while learning while also segueing into the interstitial Hardware / Software zone.
A good many I've known have pulled cable and slogged for several years, invested in shitty old house after another (renovating and flipping), transitioned into running electrical subcontracting companies, and "retired" out of trades and into software careers (in GIS or other domains) in their mid thirties to early forties.
Neither trades nor university education are lifetime commitments or mutually exclusive.
I met a professional electrician in college who was in charge of the electrical system in an old high-rise building. He told me that it was common for him to work on high-voltage lines that could not be shut off for service. He said that hearing the pops from the high voltage was not uncommon. He regularly put his life on the line as part of his job. Just hearing that made me want to make sure I got a college degree so I wouldn't have to get a trade job. All trade jobs will wear your body down, and you regularly have to put your health on the line. Saying that trade jobs are the future is easy to say, but there's a catch. You may sacrifice your health. The better route maybe a career where you help reduce the dangers of trade jobs.
I think the most important aspect of high salary is job demand.
Perhaps once there was a high demand for good SWE coming out of 4 years of $$ tuition uni.
Personal anecdote: Got a buddy who dropped out of Bible school, worked at a auto shop while getting his certs. After 2 years about any dealership would hire him.
He moves, lands a 100k+ job. 2 years later, switches to a dealership in San Jose, earning 150+.
6 months later, he gets an offer to become foreman at a dealership in gilroy with a $5/h raise + foreman benefits. How it works is techs are paid flat rate: Paid per job, not per hour. So if youre good, you can really rake in the money.
Its been wild to see his career arc in real time.
He's highly trained, very handy, Nd he's damn smart at debugging.
Basically doing CAN bus diagnostics with an oscope and logic analyzer.
He earns more than me who got a MS in ECE.
On the flip side, his job is physical and he works more hours than me.
I get to so R&D, think about cool math, and code. But in another life I'd love do be a tech.
All that said, there's a lot of demand for good auto techs.
There's demand but for all but the most specialized stuff (maybe NVH), the work is brutal and the flag hour system sucks ass. Got a warranty job? Better be happy with half pay. Got something that's an absolute bitch to get apart or something goes wrong? Yeah you're still getting paid the same even if it's not your fault. There's a good reason Ford can't find enough auto techs. There's no way I would go back to earning money as a mechanic over something like HVAC or being a millwright.
A few years back, we hired an electrician to do some relatively small things for us—things I could do like replacing light switches with timer switches and the like, but didn’t have time to do. The thing that really blew me away was when I asked him if he wanted me to shut off the power at the breaker box and he said no and did all the work with live current in the wires. Yes, I know, gloves, rubber soled shoes, he was fine, but it still was somewhat terrifying to watch.
110V is for pussies.
Being wealthy is better than being poor, and being able to pay for college is better than working in construction. However, when choosing a specialty it is important to consider one's preferences. If your child don't want to be a lawyer it doesn't matter whether you can afford paying for the degree, and if he insists he would rather be fixing cars than dealing with documents, helping with a student loan is not really the best thing you can offer as a parent.
The part about blue collar jobs being inherently more deadly doesn't feel right to me. For one, I want to believe we have collectively gotten better in avoiding "dumb" deaths and injuries, these, that could have been prevented by inventing and following safety procedures. The health risks certain profession implies is certainly to be considered when choosing one, white collars included. Desk job kills slowly, but surely.
So, answering to the title, which doesn't seem to be related to the article contents, I absolutely do. Qualified engineer knows enough to be able to double off as a technician, and missing monthly payments is much scarier than high voltage, so if my entire job field was to become obsolete due to AI or any other reason, I would absolutely consider getting out of desk and getting my hands dirty.
You can only get so much better at reducing "dumb" deaths and injuries when you spend all day every day around things that will kill you if you touch them.
The other aspect I think people are missing is that, for the right person, the choice isn't between a white collar office job and trades, it's between struggling in retail and service work with a (possibly bad) degree and no upward mobility, where your only escape is into either management or retraining.
For those people, trades are absolutely a better choice - it's not like becoming an HVAC dogs body prevents you from later going to school if you decide it's not for you.
I can confirm it's not easy to get an electrical apprenticeship
One thing rarely mentioned is what happens when all the white collar people lose their job and can no longer pay for expensive blue collar work?
Simple enough, one group will be living in houses falling apart, the other group will be renovating distressed cheap housing into relative mansions to live in or flip at cost or less.
What does that mean?