are trades worth it?
im currently in an electrician apprenticeship
the pay is shit, the work is mentally and physically grading, everyone i work with are frickheads
its summer right now and i come home from work (after my 2 hour overtime of course!!) dripping and completely drained.
thinking of sticking with it until i get qualified but frick me its a grind.
any similar experiences? or advice, feeling a bit lost.
>the work is mentally grading,
Out of curiosity, what kind of things grind your gear mentally? I thought all the rules are already in the building codes. Are your teammates buttholes or something else?
calculations when measuring/marking out, mental checklist of random jobs and things that need to be fixed, tasks that require a bunch of consentration or you could cause 1000s of dollars worth or damage in seconds, triple checking everything you do is up to code ect.
all while dealing with incompetent, arrogant, lazy, aggressive idiots
Sounds pretty draining, I wish you strength to get through it so atleast it won't be in vain
I thought trades were the last vestiges of the ignorant
>electrical engineering degree
kek if you find being an electrician mentally taxing you will not make it through an EE degree
>you will not make it through an EE degree
I'm a gay drug addict and I earned a bachelors in chemical engineering with honors while sleeping though half my classes. Modern higher education is a total joke, at least in the US.
>are trades worth it?
big fat NO
Ben Shapiro is the guy that says work trades, what trade does he work again? Talking on tv!
Does the ratfaced israelite want the Mike Rowe audience or something?
Can’t stand that dude, he’s a rich kid with a degree in theater and brags about working in sag after union…. He wanted to be an actor
Idk where all his blue collar bullshit stems from
>Idk where all his blue collar bullshit stems from
He did a tv show about it and turned it into his whole identity.
I'm an electrician's apprentice and feel lost as well. Not really sure if I want to continue doing this shit.
Electrical work is much easier than other trades. Your most grueling, apprentice based work is hauling spools of wires, bending conduit, drilling/cutting holes in concrete or drywall is child's play to sheet metal or pipe fitting apprenticeship.
But the nice thing is you have a great upgrade path after learning the fundamentals of wiring. You could learn some programming and go into control work, starting as an install person, take some programming classes and actually be the controls guy who does programming on site for VAV boxes and chillers or water pumps. As with all trades, it depends on how you want to continue down your path. It's easy to outshine people in the trades and you just need to keep an eye out for opportunities to take you skills and apply them to the next thing.
>t. TAB tech, started in sheet metal.
thanks for all the advice and feedback
yeah ill admit it isnt as physically taxing as other trades i see on site, concreters, roof plumbers ect.
once im qualified i think i will look into solar installation or even and electrical engineering degree to design solar systems, im in Australia and there are government programs and incentives for solar so i can get on government money or do fly in fly out work at solar farms in the outback.
currently doing only residential, i feel like im learning a lot though, doing; switchboards, lighting and power circuits, security, data, tv, fans ect.
i have a mate in industrial and he has essentially pulled cable for 3 years, whats commercial work like? do you do new builds or only maintenance and call outs? we did a security system for a shop once and that seemed pretty much the same as residential. i feel like a big gap in my knowledge is troubleshooting and call outs, we mostly do new builds.
there's nothing you can learn in residential that you won't learn in commercial but the opposite cannot be said. In residential you're not going to be wiring motors or VFD's or dealing with three phase, and a hundred other things. I don't know how long you've been doing this but the max anyone should ever work in residential during an apprenticeship is one year and it should be your first year. pasture first year there is no utility in working residential. Forget industrial until you've done your ticket because you could spend your whole time installing cable tray or some other dead end learn nothing task. Go work commercial and get in some service work. You'll never learn more about how stuff works than you will troubleshooting it.
Construction is good to start and we all have to know it, It's good money in the right setting, but troubleshooting is where you really learn. Installing new shit is pretty easy. Fixing other people's shit when it goes wrong is a lot harder. However once you become good at troubleshooting you are a much more useful and knowledgeable electrician than the guys that only do construction. The guys that spent their entire apprenticeship doing residential or commercial are basically useless at the end of 4 years.
Managing your apprenticeship is up to you. Don't frick it up by doing what's easy.
>are trades worth it?
As long as the sexual come-ons aren't to aggressive. in your area.
I'm a journeyman electrician. I don't know where you live but the money is likely going to get better. pretty much unless you live in one of those non-compulsory states or right to work state the money will get better. Where I live journeyman electricians make very good money.
some advice about your trade though, or more specifically about you in this trade. The best way to go through your apprenticeship is doing commercial work. Ressi is too simple an industrial can be almost a non-learning environment. ideally you want to get on commercial and then start doing service calls at some point. you'll never learn more than you will doing service calls.
>are trades worth it?
if you aren't going to go into a career that requires tertiary education then yeah they're worth it. there's not really a better option for young men.
the best path for tradies is to run your own business. grind through it with that goal in mind, get all the skills you can and find a niche where you can make decent money as a contractor. within 10 years you could have a business and your own crew of apprentices earning you money
depends. i work it because i value and respect the work. i need a job i give a shit about. if you don't care about the work than find something you do care about or deal with it. if your overworked and work with idiots, work for a different company. I got lucky and work with one guy whos a pretty based polak that lets me do things my way and lets me take time off whenever. once we got a contact who wanted us to start work at 6:00 and I straight up told my boss if we work with this guy I'm going to quit because I'm not waking up at 5am everyday, so we didn't work with him. the last two days i just ran low voltage wire down a stairwell. tomorrow im installing ring doorbells. ezpz.
Now that I work electrical maintenance I feel like it was all worth it. Maintenance for a large facility (school, hospital, store) is very slow paced and simple. Also, people act like you performed a miracle by fixing a light. Pay is lower on average but damn it's worth it.
Is that non union? May I ask what your pay range is and what benefits do you get?
non-union, 27/hr, decent health insurance, vacation/sick leave, typical retirement plans
Is it worth going into an electrical apprenticeship at 29? I have a college degree, but laboratory work is fricking gay and the pay isn't any better than trades. Would probably have the end goal of getting into process controls; a lot of those jobs require a background in either steamfitter or electrical though.
Having a deep loathing of actual labor and love of benefits I left the industrial maintenance etc world for the Air Force and haven't felt a recession in decades.
Now the Space Force is an option plus you can commission with your degree. Unless you have legal or mental issues they can find you'd be foolish not to choose either then never have to work again after 20 years (which officer retirement makes easy) and your future job hunting benefits from that human network.
The hilarious thing about those branches is PrepHole is too autspergic to consider joining for the glorious Federal career because Anons are childish therefore stupid. Only retirees and senior active officers/enlisted know the true score. Give it a look. Not having to work at all after age 49 should get your attention. Don't even consider other branches because they're fricking horrible by comparison and that is no interservice rivalry talking.
We all know the benefits, we also all know that its a path that very few people can actually take. Federal jobs are a crap shoot to get.
Lol, I already played the enlisted game with the Army. Have exactly zero intention of going back into the military, even the Air Force. Thanks for the suggestion though.
ok we get it, we're going back to war
I have degree , however I’m fat and low iq probably score lower than most blacks on an asvab
What are my chances of sitting around chair forcing
I don’t want to go overseas just come in late 30-120 mins, leave early and probably work on personal projects 50% of the day
im a second year and im still having fun everyday although it might be because im in love with my tradesman and will do anything for him
Gey
I recently figured I'd give trades another try and started volunteering as a boiler operator so I can get a black seal. I'm hoping it's one of those trades they can't let you go.
Boilers need operators so as long as your reason for operating exists you'll have work. Industrial and power house boilers aren't going away in this lifetime.
Get qualified
Go work on a big project like the dams in Canada, or Mining.
Get paid a shit load
Don't frick the hookers
Come back to the real world and buy a house with cash.
Once I got into maintenance, especially industrial maintenance, it was all worth it. Working at a medium sized dam
>$62/hr
>4/10s
>union
>only "work" about 2 - 4 out of those 10 hours
>work is slow paced, focused on safety and doing it right
>optional overtime on the weekends if I feel like making extra money
How'd you do it? I like fixing broken things, but otherwise have no experience. I have worked on my own car and built my own motors though.
t. failed English major.
Worked a seasonal (9 month) job at a dam for 6 years. Went to trade school for instrumentation at 26. Got done and worked a contract job for a year then got on in house doing maintenance at a oil refinery for 2 years. Left when a position at a dam near where I used to live opened. Been there for almost 2 years now. Instrumentation in a refinery is kind of stressful but also slow paced. There's almost no stress working in hydro plus the scenery is so much nicer.
Every tradie I've worked with has failed like fricking crazy to do anything competently from difficult installs all the way down to the cheapest appliance part swapjob so...become a tradie if you're an absolute moron ready to disappoint people I guess.
$18/hr you’re a machinist this week electrician helper the next why give a frick
Drooling npcs excluded (so 99%,) how about dignity and honor? But since everyone with even the smallest mental capacity ate the reddit notion that they're being used instead of building society with purpose like the philosopher kings they are yeah why not be fricktrash and shit on the little guy who trusted you instead of your supposed demonic employer. You earned your tendies for the day for accomplishing nothing so let the world burn.
So the society we aren’t allowed to participate in crumbles if we half as our job?
Why does that affect us? We’re the dregs
as someone who spent 15 years getting a BA, MA, and PhD, I can say the grass is not greener on the other side. I deal with morons all day long too, and I hate my job. It's easy and well paid but very draining, pointless, and creates nothing of value. I'm pretty much a parasite
>easy and well paid
That's the point of work. Work inherently sucks when it's for someone else so get money then retire so as not to work.
>trades worth it?
For the Exp&Skill, yes.
For the career, frick NO! You'll be competing against thousands just like you.
>pay is shit
it's an apprenticeship, of course it is.
>the work is mentally and physically grading, coworkers are frickheads
That's nothing new, I think every blue collar job is like that + from my experience, if the coworkers sense that you're even slightly autistic, they'll bully until you quit. More pay for them
>sticking with it until i get qualified
good for you
>are trades worth it?
>im currently in an electrician apprenticeship
>the pay is shit, the work is mentally and physically grading, everyone i work with are frickheads
>its summer right now and i come home from work (after my 2 hour overtime of course!!) dripping and completely drained.
>thinking of sticking with it until i get qualified but frick me its a grind.
>any similar experiences? or advice, feeling a bit lost.
I mean this with all genuine sincerity and kindness I can without muddling the message. With your language skills, I'd take whatever job I could get.