We are fighting the last war . . . .

[JDH]

Of course. I meant over time there could be a shift over. I have seen office jockeys try to run shovels and spud bars and it's not pretty.

Hey now...I resemble that comment

 

[JDH]

We average about 50 hours/week.

We do a lot of weekend shutdowns in industrial plants so our pay scale is quite a bit higher than a residential electrician. We actually get x2 pay for Saturday or Sunday work.

I hear this a lot and it blows my mind. I don't know when it became optional. Most guys ask now will you work Saturdays? When I started you worked whatever the job was if you weren't there on Saturday you were looking for a new job on Monday. It's good that these guys have the option to opt out of OT but in trades you need to take it while it's there because it's not always there. The guys who turn down the ot the most are the first ones crying the first week they don't get there 40. Every single time.

I never could pass it up. About 10-12 years ago I did 2 outages at a power plant and made bank. Thanks to that job and Dave Ramsey my wife and I were debt free for a while. Now I'm salary.

There's a shortage of electricians in my area so companies can't afford to fire anyone. Guys are switching companies all the time or going out to start their own business after working under someone else for a few years.

 

[JDH]

Duct tape helps my tin foil hat. Better yet if it's the aluminum HVAC tape

Better buy all the tinfoil you can now. Within a few years you will have run out of your allotment of social credits to buy it.

 

[noharleyyet]

I never could pass it up. About 10-12 years ago I did 2 outages at a power plant and made bank. Thanks to that job and Dave Ramsey my wife and I were debt free for a while. Now I'm salary.

There's a shortage of electricians in my area so companies can't afford to fire anyone. Guys are switching companies all the time or going out to start their own business after working under someone else for a few years.

I was a wood, wire, and metal lather journeyman before becoming a contractor.

Built the shapes, supports, and set screed trim for plasterers...all but a lost art now except for screwing on metal lath over a sheathed substrate, and attaching termination and expansion control joints for stucco.

We had a saying regarding electricians and plumbers, "people will always need a light to defecate (slang)".

 

[Hunter4Life78]

View attachment 314539

I'm glad I started reading from the start. It's a bit eerie that I had thoughts along the same line. Not beat the dead horse or derail, I view cloning and AI along the same lines. Sooner or later gonna be bit in the hind end by both. With that said I'm starting the bunker.

 

[Hunter4Life78]

How long until AI can write it's own code? There won't be nearly enough disc golf courses then.

If you build it they will come

 

[noharleyyet]

If you build it they will come

It’ll be spooky to see the first Starbucks barista bot with a bun.

 

[Hunter4Life78]

Don't hold too tight, tinfoil can only take so much.

Use armadillo shells, dual purpose, protect you from microwaves and not even ai would mess with someone wearing an armadillo hat.

 

[noharleyyet]

Top 25% of lawyers win. Bottom 75% get replaced by AI for routine contracts, deal due diligence, document discovery etc etc etc. Even simple 2001-era search tools cut by 75% the number of litigation paralegals we need for discovery searching. And yea, that created a smaller number of lower paid jobs to scan the docs in. But trust me, "big law" is in the crosshairs on this one. But like with every other segment it seems there will be winners and losers - and it will like help the same 1%.

BS, I watched Suits….

 

[noharleyyet]

 

[Dave N]

Use armadillo shells, dual purpose, protect you from microwaves and not even ai would mess with someone wearing an armadillo hat.

 

[SilentBirdHunter]

I am no expert, but I work in a technical field and my son is working on his Masters degree in Computer Science, so we talk it about it often. People use the term "AI" for a lot of very different things and most of them are not what they think they are. It's like the people who only know about hunting from watching Bambi - not necessarily the same people, but the same level of understanding about AI from watching Terminator.

The current AI's are more like a sophisticated Google Search. For instance, if you have access to an AI, ask it a somewhat higher level math question. It will get it wrong. It's not 'smart' or 'dumb,' in fact it doesn't 'know' anything. It has all the information on the internet and it can string words together, quite well sometimes, but it is not thinking. It's a useful tool, but only if the user knows it's strengths and is aware of its weaknesses.

A crude example might be vehicles
. Control modules, Tire Pressure Monitoring System, Safety systems. How have these impacted the demand for mechanics and training requirements?

 

[Hunter4Life78]

View attachment 316994

Nailed it!!!

 

[buckbull]

View attachment 316991

So much truth here its scary.

I've been a software developer for 10 years followed by being an software architect 17 years. I worry about AI replacing me or the developers on my team exactly 0%.

AI would be great for a helpdesk; most likely a big improvement of what companies are currently providing. We had an issue with a set of clustered servers a few weeks back. I need a system administrator to take a look as I don't have root access. Specifically stated I needed a system administrator multiple times, mentioned the queue it needed to go to, the people in that queue. Could not have given better guidance for the ticket routing. 3 hours later the ticket was assigned to me. I'm thinking AI would be smart enough to not assign a trouble ticket to the user that called it in. Maybe.

 

[Benfromalbuquerque]

Is driver arrogance a common trait of Tesla buyers or does this come from owning a Tesla?

 

[brian flatlander]

The classic white collar blind spot - ignoring someone has to take out the trash and someone has to fix the leak in the roof. I have had to remind many whiny white collar folks griping about coming back into the office that our collegues who actually made essential products for this country during covid had to do so shoulder to shoulder before we had a vaccine. Even if the swede doesn't want to code any more (or whatever he does) how does a system work where he does nothing and gets a check, but the kid next door does the backbreaking job of shingling houses.

i dont know ask your boy Walz how that works ????????

 

[Irrelevant]

 

[Pucky Freak]

Rather than fixing a broken system the government (both parties) decided it was better to leave it as a wedge issue than resolve and in the mean time unregulated borders and immigration flooded cheap labor into the building trades and service sector ("blue collar"), etc. Whoops. Both of these decisions gutted our work-class ("blue collar") ability to share in the American dream while enriching the "knowledge worker" ("white collar") who still was in high demand, hard to outsource and now flooded with cheap stuff to buy with their growing incomes.

Common misconception that non-citizen workers displace citizen workers. They don’t. They do jobs that citizens can’t or won’t do. Remove the 24 million non-citizens from the US and the economy halts.

Blue collar workers didn’t lose the ability to work. They lost the ability to earn a middle class wage, which has little to nothing to do with immigration.

 

[VikingsGuy]

Common misconception that non-citizen workers displace citizen workers. They don’t. They do jobs that citizens can’t or won’t do. Remove the 24 million non-citizens from the US and the economy halts.

Blue collar workers didn’t lose the ability to work. They lost the ability to earn a middle class wage, which has little to nothing to do with immigration.

I am pro-orderly immigration and have said so often on these threads. But what has happened to “skilled labor” is complex and does include excess immigration, tax policy and trade policies. Immigrants are not just under paid farm migrants - it’s not 1970 anymore. They take jobs in construction, etc that had been a staple of mid-skilled middle class folks.

 

[D_Walt]

Common misconception that non-citizen workers displace citizen workers. They don’t. They do jobs that citizens can’t or won’t do. Remove the 24 million non-citizens from the US and the economy halts.

Blue collar workers didn’t lose the ability to work. They lost the ability to earn a middle class wage, which has little to nothing to do with immigration.

So, if cheap illegal immigrant labor wasn’t abundant, you don’t think demand would necessitate an increase in wages for citizens to do these “undesirable” jobs?