I’ve told this story before on here, but most of my social circle went to college. In general, most of those I’ve stayed in touch with are doing alright for themselves.
But we graduated college between 2007-2010, so it was a rough economy to be looking for a first job.
One friend skipped college and joined the local electrician union. He did his 10 years to get his lifetime card, and started his own business a few years ago.
Not only is he already making a ton of money, he has zero debt, and more importantly charges close to whatever he wants an hour because of how in demand he is.
He jokes that he’s going to be the only electrician in the city in the next ten years because all the old guard is retiring, and way fewer millennials went into trades.
College would have been a bad idea for him and he knew it.
The common denominator for making a lot of money is not "the trades" but owning a business. Of course he's gonna make more if he doesn't have to relinquish the majority of his profits to a boss.
A lot of people here and on reddit like to romanticize the trades while sitting in an air-conditioned office like it's some secret tip to instant wealth without the need to study for years. But the reality is grim for the majority of salaried tradesmen. It's a job that is very hard on your body and the heralded "fresh air" suddenly sounds a lot less nice when you have to do physical labor in intense heat or cold.
Those who go above and beyond will always succeed no matter the field but for the average Joe a solid education is a much better bet and you are doing them a disservice by spreading these second-hand anecdotes.
> for the average Joe a solid education is a much better bet and you are doing them a disservice by spreading these second-hand anecdotes.
I agree with everything you said up to the above quote.
I’m not sure how you characterize “the average Joe”, but I assure you that the 50th percentile of college age people by any reasonable measure of aptitude will not be able to finish college with any degree, and they will certainly not be able to get a degree that will likely lead to (relatively) high pay like engineering or nursing.
About 32% of 24 year olds (maybe 25 yo) have an undergraduate degree. If you have a casual conversation with the 20%-32% folks (spitballing this number), you would probably be shocked about how little most of them know about anything, including their “major”. These folks were basically socially promoted through an undergraduate degree. This happens a lot more than many folks would like to believe, and it boils down to ability to pay.
If you need some anecdotal evidence of this, I strongly encourage you to teach or be a TA for a required freshman writing course (esp. at a lower competitive university / junior college). The inability of many of these folks to write a coherent short essay or even a coherent paragraph would make your brain explode.
These are the average Joe’s you are referring to. College, at least in its current form, is not the answer for these folks.
Haha, I am a TA actually for several classes. It's true that most of my students are dumb as fuck and incapable of basic tasks. You'd assume that a computer science student would be able to install a development environment on their own, but apparently not.
But at the end of the day many of them still get a degree and (somehow) get hired and there are plenty of universities here that are far easier than mine. You don't need to be smart to get a college degree, all you need is discipline to torture yourself through these mostly pointless exercises.
Whether or not they learn anything at college or just waste time is not the point. The fact of the matter is that a college degree helps you to get a job that is usually more comfortable and pays better. I'd argue that those people who can excel as a tradesman and actually rake in the money would also do the same had they gone the college-route instead and for those that don't, an office job with college degree is clearly the better option.
I actually got sick of the "trades" trope recently and did a little research. Looking at local job listing, the entry level pay for most of the trades is very grim and you have to put years and years of work to get a decent wage. This is in a low CoL area
A huge issue is region/nation. Unless you have luck with your trades business here in Germany and the market is not over-saturated and the guild actually lets you start the business, you're looking not at 100k€ but 30-50k€ per year, and that's with some significant seniority already so you're waaaay behind in earnings. The opportunities are there, but going into the trades, esp. when you look at the next 40 years, is not much better than giving university a shot (ok, it's no tuition here).
Plus, with a college degree, getting visas for abroad is easier and in these troubled times mobility of this sort is also something I wouldn't like to miss.
This is pretty comparable to the low wages the majority of people will receive just out of college, except the trade job is much more likely to build career skills and relationships without the huge debt burden.
It wasn't until I had about 5 years of solid experience before I started being able to significantly increase my income regularly in my field.
Perhaps you're right. I probably have a warped view of wages working in tech, but I just can't imagine working for over a decade just to max out around $50-$60k without starting my own business
That's the reality for almost everyone unless they're willing to relocate. Most tech jobs aren't in low CoL areas and remote work is ultra competitive.
There is a ceiling to what local opportunities can provide. More specialized or more senior roles are usually available elsewhere.
There are at least some regions in the nation right now where the trades are absolutely in demand. There are also some college majors right now that add nothing to your income. Which trade/region, and which major/university, are necessary for any worthwhile discussion of which is a better option.
Agreed. Anecdotally (my wife works for a small business that employs [mostly low voltage] electricians), a typical electrician makes roughly $35/hour. The business bills them out at $125/hour. It isn't the electrician making the big bucks.
My point isn’t that everyone should quit college and join a trade union, my point is that it can be a viable option for a lot of people, ESPECIALLY in lieu of taking on a bunch of debt at a young age.
>The common denominator for making a lot of money is not "the trades" but owning a business.
This, this, this.
Our education system does a great job of teaching value production. It does an absolutely terrible job of teaching value capture.
It would be really nice if the two were always aligned. But for most people, most of the time, they're not. The best solution for most people, IMO, is to divorce the two: to work at a job, and serve the community in off-hours. And to aim for independence so the two can be joined.
> A lot of people here and on reddit like to romanticize the trades while sitting in an air-conditioned office like it's some secret tip to instant wealth without the need to study for years. But the reality is grim for the majority of salaried tradesmen. It's a job that is very hard on your body and the heralded "fresh air" suddenly sounds a lot less nice when you have to do physical labor in intense heat or cold.
I agree. My father works up in Albertan north in temperatures anywhere from +30 to -50, and their schedule is 14 days work and 5 days off. No doubt it's getting harder on his body ( he is now approaching 60's).
Sitting at a desk for 40 years is also “hard” in your body.
Also, a lot of people romanticize the value of “the college experience.” Is that experience worth $150k of debt? Is a degree in social work ever worth that much? Not at all; the data proves it.
> for the average Joe a solid education is a much better bet and you are doing a disservice by spreading these second hand anecdotes
Did you hear the one about the sociology graduate working at Starbucks with 100k in debt? How about the English graduate working at a call center with $80k in debt? How about the one about the one who worked her way through a marketing degree only to end up working as an assistant manager at a local Williams Sonoma making about $18 per hour.
Let’s not spread anecdotes about how college is a better bet because for many many people, it’s not. I got a completely wasted degree in journalism, but now I work for a FAANG as a software engineer. The degree wasn’t even a consideration. So I have student debt for no good reason.
And belittling the trades, claiming physical labor is hard: that’s just elitist. Most of the trades are more active than your office jobs, but that’s what “work” often is. People have gotten soft, lazy and fat. It isn’t like the trades require 12 hours a day at the bottom of a coal mine. A sedentary lifestyle is more of a risk than being a machinist.
> I got a completely wasted degree in journalism, but now I work for a FAANG as a software engineer. The degree wasn’t even a consideration.
Are you sure about that? I've always thought that a degree was essential to get past HR at large, established companies, but it's not essential that the degree relates directly to the job you're doing.
> I've always thought that a degree was essential to get past HR at large, established companies, but it's not essential that the degree relates directly to the job you're doing.
Not necessarily. Many large companies, including even some of the FAANGs, phrase the requirement as "BS in Computer Science or equivalent experience". That being said, though, applicants who want to make use of the "or equivalent experience clause" should expect to be challenged to demonstrate that they do indeed have equivalent experience.
I have an economics degree myself but I've worked alongside excellent software engineers at midsize companies that were dropouts or didn't even start college at all. I've found little correlation in ability between a college degree and their ability to do their job. Hell, my cousin is 2 years into his CS degree and had no experience using git or worked on a group project till I drilled the importance of these soft skills into him.
Just a side comment on your "soft, lazy, and fat" terminology; young POWs in the Korean War were also called "soft" for not escaping and for dying at high rate (38%).
> What struck Major Anderson most forcibly was the almost universal inability of the prisoners to adjust to a primitive situation. "They lacked the old Yankee resourcefulness," he said. "This was partly—but only partly, I believe—the result of the psychic shock of being captured. It was also, I think, the result of some new failure in the childhood and adolescent training of our young men—a new softness."
My dad's former neighbor of 40+ years used to be a welder. The man has undergone numerous surgeries on his wrists, shoulders, and back from repetitive stress injuries on the job. Did it afford him the nice house on the big chunk of property in the country he wanted? Sure, although remarrying a local business executive helped with that.
My dad, meanwhile, started out as a pipefitter but went into the management side of things and was basically doubling up his neighbor in salary for the last 20 years of their careers, and the only medical treatment he's ever had for work was for carpal tunnel, which was non-surgical.
My dad is 70 and gets around way better than you would expect for a man his age just because he's kept in shape with a bit of jogging. His former neighbor is 4 years younger and has to be extremely judicious with how he gets around.
It's not that we didn't want to, but that we never had the opportunity. The Great Recession destroyed basically every trade job out there. Nobody was going to hire a young buck when you could get really smart, experienced guy for the same price.
So us millennials went to college instead. In 2009, people my age with no degree had an unemployment rate of like 20-25% while people with degrees had an unemployment rate of maybe 5-6%.
A lot of my friends growing up that started in trades (myself include) ended up in the military and/or college because you still had to show up for work every day, just to sit around for a few hours to learn you weren't getting paid.
Not that I'm complaining, my life certainty worked is better as a result. But I don't think people with office job realize how bad The Great Recession was for people at the bottom.
Ive been doing a lot of renovation on my condo lately...and found there's a couple distinct categories of people in trades.
- Those who suck at their job
- The scammers
- Those who are so overbooked they have a 4-8 months waitlist and charge 3 times as much as the rest.
Even the first 2 categories can be hard to come by, too. But for a good, let say, carpenter? I'll happily pay north of $200-300/hour. Because those who are cheap are usually just scamming/screwing me anyway and will cost more in the long run, so may as well get it right the first time.
I will caution you, price does not in any way directly correlate to quality of work. I have hired people who undercharge (at least in relation to the quality of their work) for several reasons: because they don't know what the market will bear; they enjoy the work and don't care; they are just starting out and need referrals; they are a one-man-shop and still make more than they would as someone else's employee.
In fact- I've found that often times, price inversely correlates with quality of work. Perhaps it may reverse again once you reach a certain inflection point where you're paying for a lot of 'white glove' service and someone who is willing to take abuse from very demanding clients.
I mean, like with everything these rules aren't 100%. That's just been my experience over the last decade across several renovation projects, some successful, and some catastrophic disaster. In this city, it seems like the good ones make names for themselves very _very_ quickly.
My painter is an exception... I've been tipping him like 50% because he undercharges like crazy but does absolutely amazing work. Maybe he'll get the hint eventually (I don't like underpaying people who do great work for me).
The "most are in the middle" category does seem to be missing from a lot of trades, though. I can echo GP's comment about carpenters, flooring, masons, electricians, plumbers. Everyone is either absolutely amazing, honest, and truly cares about their craftsmanship, OR, they'll show up late and do shit work. I can't think of a single middle-of-the-road contractor I've ever hired to work on my property, and I've hired A LOT the last 5 years.
I think the bias in analyzing these is that when it comes to hiring, I'm more likely to deal with an individual carpenter than an individual programmer.
With that said, I echo what another poster said. In the trades, it really feels like "the middle" is much, much rarer. Unlike, let say, programming, trades are usually an understood problem, where most of the challenge is in the execution (except for the design phase). That means after doing it for 15 years, people who are legit are actually REALLY good at it.
As a software engineer, Im not sure I've ever done the same thing (or even similar things) twice within a year or even a decade at times...
Completely true. Just look at the research around active management. Most outperform before fees, but after fees slightly under-perform. This is the equivalent to most employees add value before salary and benefits, but probably add less value to a company than their total comp plus expenses.
Counter anecdote: I had a friend who went to a mechanics trade school around that time. He is/was very talented: as a teen he built a working 6ft trebuchet and he was always tinkering with cars. He did 2 years of trade school, graduated in the height of the recession, and couldn't find a single mechanic job. No one was hiring, and he ended up working basic service industry jobs instead. While I agree trades are under appreciated as a career path, I don't think we should treat trade school as the antidote to job market woes and a broken education system.
The key ingredient in most of these trade success stories is not trade per se but working their asses off to build a scalable business. It is a blue collar startup story.
I have a relative who worked construction after high school. Today he is "owns beautiful houses in exclusive neighborhoods around the globe" style wealthy. Yes he worked in the trades, but so did the hundreds of other guys he was working with when he first started out and I doubt any of them did nearly as well. His success wasn't due to him being in the trades, it was his ability to operate an efficient business that narrowly targeted a large business segment that had previously been under-served by generalist businesses, to consistently exceed customer expectations even under adversity, to build trusted business relationships, and to make all of this scale in practice. Which is a fair description of what a tech startup actually entails.
Most trade career success stories have a strong element of entrepreneurial effort and ambition such that I wonder if we are misattributing whence that success is largely derived.
These "I know a guy who makes a lot of money" stories do not paint a full picture of the trades in general. My family and friends worked in trades in 2008, and let me tell you, it was an absolute shit show. Many tradesmen had to travel across the country to find work, but most were just unemployed. They called it the "Man-cession" precisely because it affected blue collar workers the most. Many went to college on loans and state retraining programs to find better, more stable work. Now people (many of whom are in white collar jobs) act like it's a missed opportunity to forego the trades. I can't help but roll my eyes.
Moreover, the key word here is "union." That is the common feature of most of these tradesman success stories. People need to embrace unions in many fields if they want better jobs. A union won't protect everyone during a 2009-like economy, but it significantly improves pay, job security, and working conditions otherwise.
There were recessions in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. And the ones that got hit the hardest, first were always the trades. People have been treating these jobs and those workers like shit for decades. Everyone wants the same thing, great work at a low low price.
We have this romantic notion that a pipe-fitter wants their kid to take over the family trade. The reality is that kid probably grew up through a few recessions, knows free/reduced school lunches a bit better than they would like, and the parents aren't necessarily pushing them to follow in the old man's foot steps.
These opinions always pop up during these conversations. I agree spending a ton of money on a degree that isn't going to secure you a well-paying job is not a good idea if you do not want to be in debt for years and years.
However, trades are not a silver bullet and there are many down sides. The pay starts out low, and a lot of the time STAYS low. Trades are notorious for stress injuries. Electrician is ACTUALLY a kind-of dangerous job. You can fry yourself by being careless. As are a lot of the trades.
I would rather have my health, a valuable degree, and body fully working than not have student loan debt.
You can pay off debt and make it go away if you are smart. You cannot heal your shot joints.
SO MANY young people abuse their body thinking it's going to be young forever. It is not.
I took a partial gap year and took a couple college classes with a good friend who dropped out and went on to become a journeyman in a union trade. I went on to get a bachelor's degree. School wasn't his thing. He continues to makes more than a lot of software/data engineers. And he has a pension that should* start paying out more than a decade before I'll be ready to retire.
*Interestingly though, because fewer people are going into the trades, he has noticed the quality of incoming people has gone done year after year and the aging union leadership has lowered the hiring bar to keep the pension numbers up. He can't count on people to do their job right or even show up on time, and they come in already knowing everything and not wanting to learn. With higher cost than non-union and struggling with quality it makes them less competitive with non-union shops in the contract bidding process.
There are good opportunities for people willing to work hard and learn.
My wife is a doctor of physical therapy who owns her own business. Most of her job is marketing and paperwork.
If you want to throw the title Business Owner in front of a career title, I'd still suggest Electrical Engineer business owner over Electrician business owner.
When I say "electrician that owns their own business", I generally just mean an independent contractor that has structured their personal finances as an actual business.
I wasn't really talking about someone who employs lots of other electricians.
Sure they can and do but the EE is going to be pulling six figures much sooner and have a more stable and less physically and mentally taxing career path than the electrician.
But could he do enough better [than hiring business advisors] to make up for probably a 15+ year delay in starting the business (due to time spent in college and postgraduate work PLUS the debt incurred in schooling)?
Depends. There have been exceptions you can point to, but many small businesses fail because the owner doesn't spend enough time in the office. "Joe Electric" works when "Joe" and one assistant is the extent of the business, but "Joe" - if he is in a good location - will soon have more business than he can accept at which time it is temping to expand, and then the MBA skills are needed or Joe's poor handling of the office work ends up killing the company.
If Joe was good at business he could keep 200 electricians busy with jobs that pay about as much as they would earn on their own, and no need for them to do all the book work in the office, and ultimately Joe makes more money.
If only more people had that self-awareness in high school. Unfortunately, the influence of parents and other social pressures often cause kids to make choices that aren't right for them.
Absolutely agree - these skyrocketing tuition fees should be causing a rise in trade schools and other (shorter, less expensive) paths to a career. Not everyone needs a 4-year or postgraduate degree to make a decent living.
I think it should also cause us to look into why tuition has gotten so expensive. I think society and a lot of individuals would benefit from more non-trade education. And it's not like, say, an ethics class needs to be expensive.
They said this 20 years ago, and then they opened up immigration or they will loosen up licensing or some other non-obvious outcome. You'll be amazed at what people will do to keep labor rates low.
That sounds like it's more a function of choosing a career that's in demand rather than choosing to go to college. Bonus if its something that's not a "bad idea" for you.
I like the trades a lot. I used to spend a lot of time working on my own home over the weekends. Its not all easy as you get older though. I know of a plumber and a contractor who wore their back down after years of running their business. One had to quit and the other cut back a lot. Meanwhile I'm someone on dialysis and can still manage my desk job as a software engineer.
I knew this by the end of my first year of college (2003) and left.
I didn't go into trades but I got jobs doing what I was good at. Now I work with people who mostly went to Cornell and MIT and I have zero student debt. I'm doing extremely well.
But we graduated college between 2007-2010, so it was a rough economy to be looking for a first job.
One friend skipped college and joined the local electrician union. He did his 10 years to get his lifetime card, and started his own business a few years ago.
Not only is he already making a ton of money, he has zero debt, and more importantly charges close to whatever he wants an hour because of how in demand he is.
He jokes that he’s going to be the only electrician in the city in the next ten years because all the old guard is retiring, and way fewer millennials went into trades.
College would have been a bad idea for him and he knew it.