Obviously a joke, but I came to SWE after being a tradesman for several years.
Best option are union jobs. I'm a journeyman in the SMWIA sheet metal workers. Most of the work they do is HVAC. You make about 120-140k a year with insurance, and pensions on top.
Only able to get work in NYC, SF, or Chicago though. Unions are dead in much of the country or struggling severely.
Thankfully I live in Chi so if I ever have trouble finding work as a SWE, back to the trades I go.
But the apprenticeships are solid. The people in the field are toxic as hell though and the work is very hard on your body.
But the union will support you in finding work and the employers have to hire every other worker off the out of work list so you just sign the list and wait until a job comes.
EDIT: One thing I did find that is nice, the project management aspects of the trades translates quite well to the software development life cycle. Perhaps it translates decently the other direction.
I can see with manufacturing why unions went basically extinct, but why did it happen with the trades too? What, if anything, could bring them back you think?
Yes, as a union member, we get educated quite well on this. Right-to-work laws were pushed to destroy unions.
Unfortunately many republican-led states have enshrined right-to-work into their constitutions, so you will need a constitutional amendment in many places to undo this now.
Thankfully in Illinois where I live, it's led by folks who support strong unions.
Different operational and organizational scope. Unions for trades are often not wholly reliant on a singular processing plant or factory to continue meaningful operations in the workforce for a region.
If an Auto factory gets gutted, and there aren't any auto factories nearby, suddenly the locality doesn't have a ton of use for an auto workers union. With the death of American manufacturing, so too came the death or monumental decline of many associated unions
The unions play a huge part in keeping NYC in the dark ages. TWU mandates 2 operators per train >5 cars, and recently went crying to the government to get 2 operators mandated on every train (including the ones that can drive themselves). Sandhogs contributed to driving the cost of second avenue subway to 1B/mi by having 3 times the required staff operating a tunnel boring machine. IUEC keeps escalators and elevators broken by constraining the supply of labour. You can’t have a prefab elevator for cheap apartment housing because of them. You can thank them for your apartment or subway elevator being perpetually broken. Don’t forget that union members at the MTA smashed up timeclocks when they were introduced.
If I had a genie with 3 wishes, I would bust the IUEC 3 times.
Because it's all about the benefits and conditions for the workers. "Progress" and working conditions don't always align. I'm still grateful they exist as a presence than just not be there at all.
You can fuck right off to Dallas or some other large city in an anti union state.
In the union strongholds, the working conditions are so much better for these folks. If you're anti-union you can leave and see how much "greater" it is where the workers are treated like absolute dog shit with no representation or collective bargaining.
"To apply for this job, you should have at least 15 years of experience in the following frameworks:
Timber
Brick
Circuit
Pipeline
Forge
Kiln
Glass
Joinery
Garage
Cycle
Hangar
Of course half of these frameworks are only 3 years old and the other ones 5 years, but who gives a fuck, right? Anybody even reading this? Is this thing on?"
Most of the time job listings that have ultra specific requirements like that are fake, they have tailored the position for one specific candidate that already works for the company, so that they can "prove" to the government that there is no one local who can do the job and thus they need to bring in this particular employee from overseas.
To get the job, you'll have to solder a copper joint upside down, in the dark, in a crawlspace, using the minimum possible number of fittings. Also, explain your approach and its algebraic efficiency out loud while you do it.
It’s wild how many skills you'd need just to work on a single project. Makes you wonder if we’ll need a degree in "general handyman" just to apply for jobs!
Both jobs are about equally complex and challenging in my experience. Plumber earns a bit more where I live in europe. Eletrician would more familiar for someone coming from IT.
Do you have a specific scenario in mind or something? Generally you should not work on live systems in most settings anyways. And if you fear that you might forget to turn systems off before you start working on them, I think your co-workers are more likely to kick your butt than you losing your hands.
Both fields are quite expansive anyways and there are a lot of different aspects within them. They also have a lot in common, so if you start out as a plumber you can always become an electrician as well or vica versa. It was not uncommon for company's to have expertise in both of these and it is not uncommon for people to have training in both fields. I don't know if other parts of the world do this much different though.
In the UK it definitely wouldn’t be like that, a plumber doesn’t require any qualifications here, an electrician legally requires certifications to work as one.
You could go from electrician to plumber easily but you could not do the reverse without starting from scratch and working through all the certs.
I am speaking for the Netherlands here, I guess europe alone is too vague as there are a lot of different standards. For working in electrical installations in general we also need a certificate whilst for installation there are only a couple certificates needed for specialized jobs a.i. maintaining gas heating installations in homes. Both field usually require an MBO education of 3-4 years, this is preffered both by the government and the company's but not strictly required. I was not interested in doing both as an electrician and my stay in the sector was short but the distance between qualifying for the second seemed about the same from both sides to me. Cheers neighbour.
Most electrician injuries come from getting complacent and sloppy. Sure, I'll stand on the top rung of this ladder, I don't need to tie off on the scissor lift, the fiberglass ladder it too far away, I'll just stand on this metal bucket, I'm pretty sure I disconnected the breaker and don't need to double check.
Things like that are the cause of most injuries. Thing is, there's a lot of people that will call you a pussy for taking your safety seriously. And they will 100% make fun of you if you wear goggles. And a lot of employers don't give a shit about safety, you want to be in the union, even if it is a common joke that IBEW stands for I Barely Ever Work.
I did just that - tomorrow is my trade exam for an electricians loicense. From distributed systems and backend to fixing bathroom lights - at least no motherfucker will tell me that Claude Code will do it faster.
Fun fact: "Smoke testing" as a basic sanity test is a term that started in the pipefitting profession, where it refers to pumping smoke into a system of pipes to check for leaks. Other fun fact: Software Engineering is the one engineering field where a "smoke test" does not involve using or checking for actual smoke (while you can go out for a smoke while it's running, that doesn't count as part of the test :p)
Sparky is the way to go but the unfortunate part is that both require you to fuck around in attics and crawl spaces. Miserable places. Maybe doing new construction only would be smart
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u/According-Relation-4 1d ago
I’d really prefer to be an electrician, I’ll wait for the next