I was in a car ride with one of my boomer coworkers at the warehouse recently. Thought he was a grumpy guy who yelled at me a lot when I first started out. But he started telling me how I was a hardworker, that I seem smart, and that he has seen many men who couldn't put up with the physical demands of our jobs; he was saying I have the body of a laborer.
He told me to forget college and just get into construction. He was talking about how AI was going to wipe out all college jobs and that the only thing that's going to get you ahead is working with your hands.
I was telling him I planned to get into things like plumbing and taking a community college course for it but I told him there was a lot of nepotism so I was hesitant to waste my time. He was telling me no that's all bullshit and there's a shortage.
I'm turning 22 soon and he told me I have a lot of time, but I need to set my shit straight once I hit 23. He told me no bullshit that "time is the most valuable fricking thing you have right now. Don't fricking waste it. Not at this warehouse".
Well, now I want to take that leap of faith. How do I get started on the trades with no hands-on experience other than slugging around boxes? I plan on going to community college for a year for a pre-apprenticeship on plumbing.
Everyone at your job will laugh at you for having spent a year in school. Especially for plumbing dude, come on
>Shit runs downhill
>Don’t like your fingers
>paydays on Friday
Go find someone who does good work and offer to work for them for a few days for free. If you can show up on time and work hard they’ll keep you working. You’ll make shit for wages to start out but once you’re competent you should be fairly compensated. Good luck
>Especially for plumbing dude, come on
What's wrong with it? I think it'll give me a good foundation, especially for a guy with 0 construction experience
Do you have some sort of disability? If you need 6 months to figure out how to use a level and PVC glue you should get a job at Walmart instead. There is no theoretical or abstract knowledge in plumbing. You’re moving gas and liquids from one point to another using best practices for each application. That’s it. You don’t need to study phase changes, pressure/temperature charts, induction motors, dew point, psychrometrics, insulation values etc. Just go out there and work
Sure you can learn how to do everything online, but unless you want to keep working those same hours for the rest of your life, the degree will help you become more than just a laborer or foreman one day. Unless you still wanna be crawling around and doing the same exact shit for the next 70 years, planning ahead is a good idea.
Otherwise, they only way to get out of the eternal labor trap is starting your own business once you've been doing it for long enough to really understand not just the customer side of it, but the business side of it too.
You don't need a degree to pass the state licensing so I don't really see a point unless you are 18 years old straight out of highschool. Once you are licensed, does anybody actually give a shit whether you went to school for it?
I absolutely care if the vendor is licensed. It's literally a prereq for doing any commercial or industrial work and the entire reason why you'll get called out to those sites instead of maintenance guy like myself just doing it.
Residential work is garbage unless you're working for a contracting company doing fresh installs, but that's also going to be a commercial company. So just get licensed to work for them anyways and save the shit digging for the plebs.
It's a scam. You can learn everything from spending a couple dozen hours on youtube. Look into the most common projects and watch several videos on each and commit it to memory. If they ask if you know how to do (insert task), say, "yeah I helped my dad do that a couple years ago" or something along those lines.
I have a 4 year degree and no one at my construction jobs laughs at me about it
I just landed a plumbing apprenticeship. I had to apply for way more jobs than I thought to get an interview and I got the feeling that the barrier to entry is higher than you'd assume. I worked apartment maintenance for a few months last year and that helped me get an idea of what working in each trade would be like as well as on the job experience. Maintenance has a lower barrier to entry and I'm glad I did it before just jumping into a random trade blind.
I'm 23, just started HVAC doing a pre-employment course for skills, hours towards my apprenticeship and a job shadowing opportunity to get my foot in the door at a good comapny.
It's been kicking my ass, a lot to learn while still working to support myself but I wake up every day excited to learn more about it because it's so god damn fun for me. I love working with the machines, trouble shooting, dicking around with my classmates and seeing the sights at new jobsites.
For particularly hazardous trades like electrical or HVAC pre-employment is a great move, if you do one dor plumbing you'll have a leg up over other guys but you could probably learn what you need on the job.
>I plan on going to community college for a year for a pre-apprenticeship on plumbing.
If I can make six figures and all I need to do is bring my DuPont bunny suit and a gas mask sign me up.
Its funny how you used that video as a proof as a shitty job but that dude is balling with a 13 dollar disposable tear resistant tyvek and a thousand dollar papr to scoop up a little poo.
When my last company had to clean up a basement filled with foot deep sludge back up that had been sitting in the middle of summer for a couple weeks we got a bunch of mexicans together gave them some shitty gloves, n95s and the cheapest tyveks we could and supervised them shoveling.