Have any tradies here managed to leave trades behind? Where did you go? I'm 25 and I realized I hate plumbing so I quit. Now I'm realizing im not smart enough to be a white collar worker so that's not working out either. I was miserable as an apprentice plumber for 4 years but it looks like I have worked myself into a corner.
Got so fed up I started my own company. Now I work 3 days/week and make more money. I turn work down, I refuse to be miserable again.
I would do this but i cant get a plumbing license in NY yet
Then keep grinding your hours?
>NY plumbing license
good fricking luck
>land of the free
>plumbing license
hey you're better off than me, at least you have an actual skill under your belt rather than retail.
I'm also in NY, and my brother was in a similar spot as you except as a mechanic. He ended up landing a great job as a custodian with a school district. They really like people who are skilled tradesman and can do more than take out trash, and there's opportunities for extra pay, usually you're in a union, and state salary that keeps on goin up. The ideal school custodian acts more as a groundskeeper/repair man, so your experience will come in handy.
Don't underestimate the Vue of being able to install peep holes in the girls locker room, and set up a cot back behind the boiler. I used to buy weed from a custodian in high school.
I have a friend who went from pouring concrete to selling for aflac. He specializes in selling to tradies.
you're only 25 lmao, you haven't worked yourself into any corner. Most people haven't even started a career at that age.
Are you good at anything else? I know someone that left the trades to go into software development and he makes way more money now than if he would have stuck it out in the trades. He never went to school either just taught himself. If you think your not smart enough for that you can go into sales maybe. My uncle makes six figures selling swimming pools. Other than that I think the trades are your best bet if you have no education. I do commercial HVAC and make 35 dollars an hour which sounds like alot when your young but in reality its not alot of money at all. I plan to go to residential and make less hourly but make way more than i do now through commision.
I make 36 in the soviet union of canuckastan where a whole chicken is 13 dollars and I'm comfy as frick. What do you spend your money on?
Some of us have this little financial liability called a wife and kids
Does your wife not work? How many kids?
I left HVAC-R to teach design and tech in high schools.
I’m half a year down at university and loving it, realised I actually like teaching younger kiddos arts and craft stuff, as well as normal maths and English, as well as design, metal and wood work.
Just enjoy teaching them to think logically, about processes and problem solving. Those are all skills used in trades that can transfer almost anywhere.
Leave children alone, groomer.
I had a male primary school teacher for a house mate and the female/ nist system made me think murdering him would have been quite humane. It’s a system, the kids come and go but the system hates men
Did you try residential service plumbing yet? Best paid, easiest work in plumbing.
A former plumber from KY, I moved to SF and started my own high tech company. Raising capital was the most difficult part but my gay uncle helped me find an angel investor. I had to part with my straight ways too, but it is well worth it.
I did construction for 4 years, metal work for 6, then said frick manual labor. Spent 3 years getting a bachelor's degree in cyber security and got a job about a month after finishing. Trades pay well but ruin your body.
Do you think the degree is necessary?
Not entirely. Certifications are better, I have project+,A+,network+, security+,pentest+, and cysa+. They usually last at least 3 years so it's worth the investment.
Thank you, Amigo
Have you considered getting the ospc? (not 100% on the gay ass acronym but I think that's right)
Used to do timber framing, both the woodwork and assembly, it was a bit tough on the body
not to mention you frequently use giant versions of tools that are a bit scary compared to regular wood work
I moved into the design side and learned Sketchup for concepts and blueprinting, then Unreal Engine for nice renders. Now I work from home in my underwear, and half my work is just watching youtube tutorials on Unreal
Chances are pretty good there's some adjacent field to what you've learned that is less labor. Something like sales for a plumbing supplier, or just being the guy the goes out and does quotes, or whatever
I make 40/hour delivering for UPS. IDK where that fits into the job genre but it's something
Why do my UPS packages always look like they were dragged through the dirt behind the truck? If you don't hate the work, that seems like a good gig. Teamsters are evil frickers, but you'll be set for life.
I left my trade as a sparky to become an electrical engineer. Uni wasn't as hard as people say it is if you got the determination to not crawl around in roof spaces breathing asbestos for the rest of your life.
plumbers make good mechanical or chemical engineers, you should have a crack at it.
How long did uni take you for this while still working full time. Considering doing the same
I'm considering becoming an elevator mechanic. I'm good in tight spaces. Any problems with the profession? Are there better trades I should consider? I'm in IA
Elevator is the highest paid but lots of travel and I don’t know if they’ve excepted new apprentices since covid in Iowa. They’re pretty hard to get it into, you pretty much have to know someone.
The only two guys I know that got killed at work were elevator repairmen. Just watching them work makes me nervous
I worked at a place where they refurbished our elevator. It took six months because elevators don't seem to age well. The manufacturers do t always end up stocking parts for forever, and every new elevator is essentially custom anyway. Those guys would show up for an hour and end up getting blocked by some weird wiring they needed to find or to go fabricate a custom part. It seemed like a decent job though.
>started doing shipyard labor for an engineering company.
>worked ass off; brown nosed like a motherfricker.
>handed in 2-weeks notice and told boss I was going to college to study engineering.
>asked me to stay on part-time and work during school breaks
>one summer boss told says to report to the engineering office instead of the yard.
>am now CAD operator.
tl;dr
be the person your wagie/tradie co-workers hate
I know a bunch of people who have managed to move to tech jobs like software engineering after being a grunt. They just became the spreadsheet guy who figured out how to automate something that nobody wanted to do.
this, dont join the wagie cult, they shame you if you try to leave
I'm a job hopper in the trades. I mostly focused on industrial sites because of my local area. Maybe someone on here can validate my idea, but I've seen some job postings for industrial business analysts. These roles (at least the ones I want) focus on process/logistics/work optimization, playing with data, building reports and forecasts etc. This is basically my autistic dream job and I'm currently taking a data analytics certificate online to pad my resume while using torrented courses to learn statistics, programming for data analysis. I am going to try applying to jobs after completion of the cert with my current resume of experience in maintenance as well as production to try and meme into something. Seem reasonable or am I smoking straight copium?
learn the statistical (or even pure mathematical) theory behind the methods.
you don't necessarily have to go into academia for this, but read enough journal articles to reach mastery in the field and try submitting articles once you feel confident enough.
once you do that you can get promoted easy to the cushy, high up "idea guy" positions.
Yeah I've been going through the stats books I have at work. Fortunately this is also just something Id do regardless. Sick seems like I can bullshit and knee pad my way into this thanks anon.
Got into security, now I'm thinking of being a cop. Free money in my small white town, and I can have a shop to get my creative energy out.
i quit my job as soon as i had all the hours for my tool and die apprenticeship dont and i've started sewing in the meantime. im 28 and there was like 35+ year old apprentices where i worked you haven't worked your way into a corner by any stretch of the imagination
>start maintenance tech job with zero experience (was a cook before this) at an injection molding factory
>Currently 2.5 years into a journeyman card for maintenance tech
>Hate the idiots i work for and with
>Would rather quit and do nothing but make soap all day which i discovered i love last month
>Know im too much of a sperg to be successful at it
OH WELL
>soap
Do it anon. My wife makes soap, candles, and other bath products to bored housewives who are spending their husband's money. She's doing pretty well.
I wanna go the opposite direction. I make good money writing software for the automotive sector but the high stress and unclear long hours are shit. Wish I had just gone to trade school, had no school debt and hopefully I would've started my own small construction company. I do my own framing and decking and around the house repairs. Seems like contractors are in severely short supply, they basically show up whenever they want around here.
Yo OP. I left. Went to college while working and got a BS in business. Went the PM route for a bit, now work in contracts. You can absolutely use your knowlegde in the field and apply it to the management side. Also, you could shoot for annengineering degree if you can work part time. I will say, the huuuge benefit of being a tradesperson is that you dont pay for a college degree. a degree is required for us normies but it costs a fricking stupid amount and student loan debt makes it a big and hard choice. Id say regardless, make sure in your current trade you have all the certs, reps, and licenses you can get. Those help a ton for any job. Start in community college, get an Associate in something, pay for it as you can, push to an oversight role, dont be afraid to change companies, but dont change too frequently, know your value and ALWAYS fight for that in your paycheck, dont settle for stagnation.
Yes, but it was out of necessity. Originally I grew up running my family's metal recycling yards from 15 till I was about 23 and my uncle died. At that point I had to find a new career when his crackhead GF he had a baby with took over the company.
We had a lot of HVAC guys scrapping coils, compressors, copper, ECT and I made a deal with one. We didn't have a pickup service so I'd ring the HVAC guy and he would bring the scrap to the yard and we'd pay him, win win. Well he was able to get me a job with a local residential HVAC company and I started in a non union shop. Didn't like the change in lifestyle, lots of baptists and really unhappy guys in their 40s. The boss had insane mood swings, total boomer consumed by greed, but an overall nice man.
After 2 years and sitting at $16.00 with little training I decided to move from Illinois to Missouri towards STL and join the union. Got placed with a commercial HVAC company, given a transit, started at $18, and only did maintenance. Learned everything possible about commercial units, telepaks, diakin, aion, carrier, trane, ECT and became very knowledgeable about electricity like three-phase, DC voltage, formulas, and alot about motors.
After 2 years of this I was at $26 an hour from exploding my union hours working OT but then shit hit the fan. I was diagnosed with Type 2 narcolepsy and started going off the road in my work truck. Exit ramps, ditches, ECT almost getting in multiple head on collisions I realized I had to leave my career.
For the last 6 months before leaving I began building a business out of my basement (split level house) and got into online government auctions. Since I knew I was fricked and had no career path ahead of me (unable to drive) I started my own company Refurbishing and rebuilding anything I could get my hands on. Before I left I had 7 cars in my yard and a basement full to the point you had pathways to walk through. (1/2)
And it was a very stressful time for my family as my wife stays at home raising two daughters. Survival was the goal and I've been able to do so for almost 8 months now. Life is a fricked up mess with no guarantees.
Well that's my blog post, feel free to ask questions(2/2)
those government auctions are so cool, I've been refurbing and flipping servers and laptops from them for years and although competition has grown immensely it's still enough to live off of.
Every tradie gets to the point where he realizes he's busting his nuts to make some other fricker rich, then they try to go out on their own thinking they'll be buried in cash and up running themselves into a bankruptcy.
Tradies are great at fixing stuff but are generally shit businessmen. They don't understand shit like accounting and business law and get so bogged down in paperwork and licensing that they can't even work the field anymore. I can talk shit because I've been there and shit the bed.
When you get too old to get in a van anymore then you either get a job at the supply house or retire and work at Home Depot.
If you want to flip cars get into the low end used car lot business which can make gobs of cash.
I worked at one (for fun, I'm retired and wanted to get current since I'd been wrenching motorbikes and aircraft prior) and learned much though I was already quite experienced.
Do not "finance". Do price to include the interest you'd have gotten by financing but there is no interest and no bonus (unless you feel like it) for early payoff. You then need not comply with lending regulations.
Have the first or first two or three payments plus the down clear your actual cost (auction car plus repairs).
Have storage space for donors and hulks (for your business). That means no public sales but also no salvage yard rules and no HazMat BS. When you've gutted them all and sold the cats for cash off da books to the usual cat buyers call in the mobile crusher which normally is worth rolling for a hundred hulks.
There are many decent wrenches with shady backgrounds due to life (weed busts, minor shit) who work cheap. You run the sales and keep the books and supervise. There is serious money in that world once you get good and socialize comfortably with your buddy network (with who ya barter parts, hulks etc). You don't step on each other at Copart auctions and know who not to piss off.
Frick you tradies like to complaint so much.
I work in a cubbie, day in day out, seeing my life slowly slipping away in a job I hate, but moneys too good to quit.
Covid was a blessing, since we all had to work from home. Now that we’re back in the office, they basically pay me endure a bunch of people I wouldn’t associate with outside the office.
What line of work are you in? Can you tell them to frick off and move to a company that allows remote work?
I'm a software engineer, and while I love it, I'm not one of those nerds who lives to write code. I keep busy after hours building things. You need to find a non-tech hobby to stay sane.
Why don't you look into becoming a Steam Fitter? Some anon recommended that particular specialization to plumbers on this board not too long ago. I would think that could be a pretty cool job.
Probably can’t weld.
Outer Wilds pic?
I do an apprenticeship as machinist but don't like standing in the machine hall all day doing mostly jack shit. Can you move to work on PC from this? I loved to model shit on PC and stuff. I'm open to learning code too, I wish you could combine it
i did the opposite.
worked my way up the ranks till i landed what i thought was my dream job: working a google
within a year i hated office/tech work and the super moronic hordes of blue haired hr c**ts so fricking much i quit, moved to florida and became an electrician apprenticing under a good friend.
ive never looked back and never been happier
>I'm realizing im not smart enough to be a white collar worker
Just learn how Excel works
I got a job as a union offical
sparky currently in school working to become an instrumentation/automation technician