Programming or Trades? - "Learn to code!" VS "Learn to weld!"

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With trades, what's the percentage of workers who develop some sort of long term injury from repetitive use or a work place accident?

I've heard of people who when they get into their late 30's or 40's that they start looking to transition out of manual labor into a desk type position as they're body is failing them.

I do see guys who are in their 40s and 50's who are roofers who are on top of a two story house in the Summer loading up piles of tiles one shoulder and walking down a sharp incline with dust and bits of insulation flying around. Hopefully they're making a good wage.
Yea wear protection; gloves, earmuffs, mask, etc. You might look like a fool, but you'll be laughing later... I mean they won't hear you laughing cause of the tinnitus but you get the point...
 
Heard mixed things. I think it's more so people ruining joints from years of lifting stuff or repetitive injuries from jobs like brick laying. Had a friend who did laboring and had a tooth smashed in from someone passing down a wooden plank from the next level and it hitting him in the face.
 
I think the biggest problem is one that people are mistaken.

Programming will still be valuable but only for more niche work. There are certain things you can't trust an AI to do because mistakes can result in massive losses. Most the developers losing their jobs are junior at this point. If we assume the most bad scenario then I think it is that people will flood into trade work making the demand lower and wages going down with happens with most industries.

The other point people are forget is that many trade work is done by foreigners. This is common in every country. It is the same logic of the high skilled programmer in that the best will rise up and make lots of money but not everyone just going into the trades will be making large money.

I am more curious of what other industries will be valuable that are proven to be difficult to replicate by AI. Language was my first opinion as AI does not do well with most languages outside of English but that is changing. There has to be something?
 
I love that the "just learn to code brah" folks are finally experiencing the same workforce hardship as the rest of us; pajeets taking over. Programming found itself in a perfect bubble; nerds who grew up as technology bloomed, coding for a hobby turned into a well-paying job, only to then shill this great lifestyle to the next generation who grew up on ipads and are now being replaced with indians.

"Get a trade, brah". Friend of mine just got his trucking license and he can't find job anywhere cause nobody wants a 0 miles driver. Likewise a fresh electrician with 3 years of internship to his name, likewise nobody wants to teach him. A machinery guy of 20 years in the heart of our industry unable to find work cause he's "old".

It's all fucked for everyone and unemployment has never been lower, so nobody even bothers with the conversation anymore.
 
The trick is to complete your education, collect creds like they are fucking pokemon, have so many CE needed that you wanna end yourself... Then to never get a single interview because a jeet took your position because they spammed linkden better than you. On the bright side, they will hopefully die from AIDS - So, you know, small victories.
 
I love that the "just learn to code brah" folks are finally experiencing the same workforce hardship as the rest of us; pajeets taking over. Programming found itself in a perfect bubble; nerds who grew up as technology bloomed, coding for a hobby turned into a well-paying job, only to then shill this great lifestyle to the next generation who grew up on ipads and are now being replaced with indians.

"Get a trade, brah". Friend of mine just got his trucking license and he can't find job anywhere cause nobody wants a 0 miles driver. Likewise a fresh electrician with 3 years of internship to his name, likewise nobody wants to teach him. A machinery guy of 20 years in the heart of our industry unable to find work cause he's "old".

It's all fucked for everyone and unemployment has never been lower, so nobody even bothers with the conversation anymore.
Codecels get replaced by pahjeets.
Laborcels get replaced by mexicans.

If they can't threaten you with a h1b visa, you are unemployable, my friend!
 
The biggest advantage of a career in software is that you don't need any special equipment or environment to get practical experience. By working on side projects or open source on evenings and weekends you can stack up experience quickly and leapfrog over your peers. Depending on the open source project you might even get more valuable experience at home than at work.
Where can i go to get started with open source? Is it just solving pull request on projects or is there like a place were you can go to find projects that are looking for developers?
 
Has anyone in software tried the startup route? It feels like its impossible to get an entry level job or internship
Aye.

There's 3 ways you can go:
* Trying to sell a service to a business. This might work if you know the local businesses but everyone who's serious goes for the big cloud/database solution. You simply can't offer anything more than their team of coders has been working on for 10 years now.
* Trying to sell to customer; all odds are stacked against you. You need a lot of investment to get anything serious, you have to fight your way on the distribution platforms and even if you make it, 100 Chinese apps will steal your spotlight.
* You could try to pitch an idea to investors. That means traveling to conventions like Slush and spending $$$ trying to beg investors for money so, good luck!
 
Aye.

There's 3 ways you can go:
* Trying to sell a service to a business. This might work if you know the local businesses but everyone who's serious goes for the big cloud/database solution. You simply can't offer anything more than their team of coders has been working on for 10 years now.
* Trying to sell to customer; all odds are stacked against you. You need a lot of investment to get anything serious, you have to fight your way on the distribution platforms and even if you make it, 100 Chinese apps will steal your spotlight.
* You could try to pitch an idea to investors. That means traveling to conventions like Slush and spending $$$ trying to beg investors for money so, good luck!
ok I think I'm gonna try the pitch to investors. I'm just copy Elon lol overpromise and underdeliver
 
Well, a lot of jobs are being upended right now with the funny DOGE business. Education's also apparently going to be reformed too, as is everything that relies on federal funding.

What's a good idea to do now?
 
Don't worry, I went for IT and are still working trades now. It is simply much better if you like personal freedom and not sitting in office all day every day.
You are right in a way. I got rich because of the vast skillsets in both white collar and blue Trades skill collar.

I have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in my property investment because of knowing the trades skills. Basically I can build a home from scratch. These skills are needed in life. Which a lot of today's people have no fucking clue how to use the basic tools to do basic repairs. Savings got turned into another investments.



A Consumeristic Society will always make you broke as slave to the corporations.
Don't be one of them. Multi skills are needed.
 
More importantly the greatest skill that can be learned is interacting with other humans and building relationships. Case in point. My septic system was on the fritz. It needed a full pump out, jetting, and herbicide introduction to the distribution box. Which was also under 6 feet of clay that required heavy machinery to access.

Are you

A. Idiot consumer with no ties to your community
or
B. Community member who knows guys who know guys.

If you answered B, then you are me. I paid 1000 dollars in cash on my front porch and three good ole boys dug out my septic system, pumped it, jetted the lines and reburied the whole thing.

If you answered A, you paid 5,000 dollars on a credit card to a mongoloid who hasn't done this shit before and is just there to collect hourly from his corporate, which was the bulk of the price you just paid that was used to cover their corporate overhead. The problem was also not fixed.
 
Trades are really fun, at least I've found them to be. As a university dropout I kind of just got into them for the circumstances, I also had my eyes on what money I could make but I soon started to love it for what it is. Lots of unique folk you will meet that don't exist in office envirenments.
All this being said is there a thread for tradesmen? Could we make one?
 
My parents were very against me going in to trades because my dad had been out of work so many times in his life. In retrospect I should have followed my gut and gone in to electromechanical engineering and worked on robots.

Never take advice from your parents kids if it's about fashion or jobs, because all their info comes from 30 years ago
 
I studied coding for 2 semesters and changed lanes for multiple reasons.

I'm a mechanic on the side if time and patience permits. I also know how to weld 6/10 IMO. I also am (expired) certified in electronic repair and theory (weird name).

It's really about what you can tolerate on a daily basis. Sure the money can be good in any of these categories, but will you hate yourself after a while? That's the important question that no one asks themselves, it seems.
 
Both are suboptimal timesinks. But whatever makes you more money and proper use of your time. I believe both are meme jobs where no one will tell you the drawbacks, they just want you to be in the meatgrinder lol.
 
I studied coding for 2 semesters and changed lanes for multiple reasons.

I'm a mechanic on the side if time and patience permits. I also know how to weld 6/10 IMO. I also am (expired) certified in electronic repair and theory (weird name).

It's really about what you can tolerate on a daily basis. Sure the money can be good in any of these categories, but will you hate yourself after a while? That's the important question that no one asks themselves, it seems.
I, and a few friends of mine, were battered into aiming everything at Law School to little avail. The parents doing this weren't lawyers and the time in college that we all wound up having kept getting distracted with other life events that made us just not really get to that goal. We're all over the world now, with family, trying to find entry level white collar work.

I don't hate any job, but I can't do heavy manual labor due to health issues. I'd love it if our economy expanded way more and wasn't ageist.
 
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