(no title)
throwaway2331 | 4 years ago
Pay sucks dick.
Unless you bust ass and work overtime/meet management's obscene expectations (you won't unless you're on meth), your pay is going to suck.
If you want a more relaxed environment (residential stuff, "small," few employees, lifestyle biz) your pay is going to be even lower.
Commercial pays better, but it's more soul-sucking and kills your body quicker.
If you're not in a skilled trade (big 3: plumber/pipefitter, electrician, or HVAC; physical IT/wire-pulling) it's even worse.
If you don't have a family/friend connection, good luck breaking in to anything worth anything (that includes a union. If you're non-union, you're basically screwed, unless you're high-skilled/massive amount of certs and can negotiate for yourself).
LUNA (or whatever the labor union goes by nowadays) is pretty decent if you've got a lot of problems in your life, but can come to work sober (and on time), do the work without bitching, and be productive. All the other unions worth anything are, once again, almost impossible to get into (unless you wait years, have a connection, or have a track record). Everyone wants to be an electrician (so much so, that even non-union shops aren't accepting any "apprentices,"---cheap labor---that don't already have experience; this is no different from the unions).
If you get in, it's a golden meal ticket for the uneducated; but pay caps out quickly (and any white collar professional with a shred of ambition will surpass you in pay in their 30s).
Hours are uncertain.
You can sometimes be working 2 hours a day, and sometimes 12. Overtime is cool, but it doesn't beat getting home and having a few hours to do anything at all, instead of passing out on the couch and waking up at 5am to go back to work.
Past that, any other jobs that pay better (tow truck operator, lineman, etc.) have even worse/more dangerous conditions. Your body will start hurting in your twenties, and you'll feel like you're 60. This won't go away unless you stop doing any physical labor for a while, but if you do that, you won't make money, nor gain "hours" (for those sweet union pay bumps after you pass a certain amount of hours -- regardless if you're the most efficient and most experienced apprentice, you'll still be getting paid the same as the bumfuck nephew of the owner who's only there because family takes care of family).
If you're a citizen of the U.S., there's no real reason to do manual labor, unless you really don't care that much about money or starting a family (most people in manual labor). For illegal immigrants, the pay is fucking amazing compared to what they get paid back home. They can work for a few seasons, save up their cash, then go back home where American dollars let you live like royalty.
I work in tech now. I get paid more than 2,000x what I did being a tradesmen, my body feels amazing now, I can fuck around all day doing whatever I want because I'm remote, and---in comparison---I barely do any work. These are my anecdotes.
meatsauce|4 years ago
rmbyrro|4 years ago
throwaway2331|4 years ago
Definitely made finding a job as a SWE difficult. Pretty hard to break in. I got lucky.
I never had any connections/family worth anything, so I learned how to sell/market myself, and I talked my way into all of my early jobs.
Pretty straightforward once you figure out the process. Took a long time of eating shit to get there though.
I'm also lucky that I was adopted into an upper middle class family, and went to good schools, and interacted with children from successful families.
Even if those relationships have done zero for my career prospects, being surrounded by those sorts of people rubs off on you. If I grew up in a working class area, around working class people, my sense of values and my perspective on the world and so on would be a lot narrower, and less likely to lead to great financial success.
Some people never had a chance. The communities they're born into, and the people that imprint onto them, can snuff out any hope of moving up and out.