I'm a regular college grad, but always liked working on my own car (and didn't always trust professional mechanics.)
That lead me to consider becoming an auto mechanic at one time but after hearing some stories - and looking at the pay scales - I jumped back on my desk and rode off into the sunset.
The stories -
1) Constant complaints by mgmt about productivity.
2) Grueling work schedules
3) Pressure to upsell additional work
4) Customers blaming you for new problems
Sounds a lot like working in tech for 25% of the pay, doesn't it?
Media is really selling the "trade school" thing HARD lately.
I recently was talking to a relative of mine who is in his freshman year of college. He wanted to drop out because "If I am an electrician, I can be making 80k in 5 years"
So, I decided to fact check his thoughts here. If you look online, you can see in the average pay in his area is really more around 40k. So he is already being lied to. 25% of what a software engineer can make, for back-breaking, dangerous labor. Sounds like a great deal to me.
I feel like this comment, among others in this thread, really hits the nail on the head.
I want to focus on how hard a lot of trades are on your body. You do not realize how IMPORTANT maintaining your body is until you are a bit older and in pain. You only get one body.
A lot of trades, specifically electricians, lead to overexertion and stress injuries.
I'm 29 right now, and I have recently decided to get my health in order.
I know several people who were injured during high-school sports, who are now basically unable to exercise without pain. A few others were in the army, and it shot their knees. My father was a funeral director for 30 [0] years, and he suffers from similar stress injuries.
You do not understand how profound an effect stress injuries can have on your life until they happen. Consider the opportunities you are losing out on.
Working out and getting fit? Painful. In danger of further injury, further disabling you.
That hiking trip you wanted to go on? Walking a few miles? Visiting a foreign country? Playing in an intermural sport? Keeping up with your children? Standing somewhere for a long period of time?
0: 30 years, not 50. If it was 50 he would have been directing funerals as a toddler xD
I actually know a few people in the trades. There are several caveats when working there.
1. Your advancement opportunities are often far more limited; often, advancing means founding your own company, which can be really hard depending on the competition.
The biggest downside of being a car mechanic is that your back and knees will be shot after a couple of years. Ease of service and mechanic's comfort are not usually high on the list of desirable features.
That depends. I've known a couple of guys that own their own shops, and specialize how they want to. Those guys did really well, made good money, and enjoyed their work. Being an employee at a randomly selected repair shop would likely suck hard.
This is anecdotal, but a drawback to working in some trades is that the employers tend to be family-owned, which makes it hard to advance if you don't belong to the family. Car repair shops fall into that category.
The UK had a live-fire civil war until the late 90s. Violence has long been marginalised, but it's always there on the edge and as a possibility (police or demonstrators) at every demo.
Not only that, but the live-fire civil war was to do with the region at the heart of the current Brexit deal dispute: Northern Ireland, and its border with Ireland.
The court ruled that he was sane at the time of the murder, and it was extremely pre-meditated. And incited by all the far right material he had been reading.
Mental illness doesn't comprehensively eliminate culpability. The mental illness would have to explain why the act wasn't murder. Such as: the defendant was unable to foresee the act would cause death; the defendant believed they were acting in self defence.
In this case someone with a history of mental illness still premeditated to commit a political assassination.
He murdered her for a reason: he was a violent racist. His defense never maintained that he was insane and a judge determined that it was an ideologically-motivated murder.
"He had searched the internet for information about the British National Party, apartheid, the Ku Klux Klan, prominent Jewish people, matricide,white supremacism, Nazism, Waffen SS, Israel, public shootings, serial killers, William Hague, Ian Gow (another assassinated MP), and Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik (about whose case he collected newspaper clippings)."
He also happened to be mentally ill, but that hardly seems relevant. Suppose Hitler was bipolar (he wasn't, but suppose he was), that would hardly be exculpatory.
It's always weird to see people talk like the UK politics have suddenly become tense and high stakes in the last few years. Brexit, for all the anger, is not what "expect violent retaliation for airing your views" looks like. Last time there was a major schism over UK authority, that did happen, and it involved death squads.
I suspect a lot of the people who think "expect violent retaliation for airing your views" is in any way new turn out to be racists who aren't used to being called on it.
>Hand outs and taking people's money at the point of a gun is what the heirs do from those who work and create wealth. Larry Page talks about how the police encircled the auto plant his hammer-armed grandfather was [striking].
Would Larry appreciate a 75 - 90% tax on his earnings over ${rich_dude_income_threshold}? I'm not sure we can pass a law that taxes proletarian-grandkids-made-good at a lower rate than trust fund babies.
I will agree with your implicit point that if we tax income, we treat wages and capital gains equally.
>About 75 percent of Americans favor higher taxes for the ultrawealthy.
I would ask that if 75% of the population favor something, how many election cycles should it take to install a Congress willing to carry it out? Even in single-party districts, opponents can run in primaries.
So Mr. Wu's analysis has holes -- one I would mention is the role of political marketing -- by which I mean, sure the incumbent is in the lobbyists' back pockets, but they did ${something_heroic_way_back_when} and besides, the challenger did/said ${something_that_sounds_bad}.
And I think too that people believe too strongly in the "write a letter to your rep" fairy tale, which when balanced against the lobbyist USD, is found wanting.
Maybe incumbency is too strong an advantage.
>And when running for office, Mr. Trump did gesture at his support for popular policies, promising to control drug prices, build public infrastructure and change trade policy to favor dispossessed workers. Yet since coming to power, Mr. Trump, with a few exceptions, like trade, has seemed to lose interest in what the broader public wants, focusing instead on polarizing issues like immigration...
Mr. Wu seems to be wrong here. In the past weeks, I have heard news about Congress wanting to get a handle on drug prices; trade policy seems to be creeping slowly in the direction Mr. Wu would like; and around the time the last Congress was swearing itself in, Trump had mentioned something about infrastructure.
If Congress can find the time to pass an infrastructure bill, that is.
California already has some of the lowest per capita energy consumption in the US [1]. A good part of this is due to the mild climate where most Californians live, but some part of it choices people have made, like the widespread adoption of residential PV in cooling load dominated inland areas.
EVs are also taking hold faster in CA due to their better economics and broader cultural appeal in CA.
All these trends will lower the per capita energy consumption further without negatively affecting lifestyles.
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That lead me to consider becoming an auto mechanic at one time but after hearing some stories - and looking at the pay scales - I jumped back on my desk and rode off into the sunset.
The stories -
1) Constant complaints by mgmt about productivity. 2) Grueling work schedules 3) Pressure to upsell additional work 4) Customers blaming you for new problems
Sounds a lot like working in tech for 25% of the pay, doesn't it?