The Myth of the Wealthy Welder - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/09/welding-doesnt-pay-as-well-as-republicans-think/597733/ <comment><USER5> My first career was welding. MIG welding to be specific. I learned shortly after MIG welding machines were first being produced back in the mid-1970s.

I made good money doing it, but the work was hit or miss and it wasn't really the welding I was getting paid for, it was knowing how to cut up vans and modify them for severely handicapped people and I'd learned how to do that by building "custom cars" with my father who was a "bodyman" by trade and went on to become a "custom car builder".

By the time I quit customizing vans for the handicapped the State of California required you be a "certified welder" to do the work I did on the vans and cars they purchased for people who were in wheelchairs so you had to pay to go to a "welding school" to get a certification.

But none of those welders I met who did that actually knew how to weld. How to lay down a bead that penetrated the steel. They all did what those I learned from called "bird shit" welds. A cold weld that laid on top of the metal and didn't penetrate all the way through, and were thus prone to fail. And none of them started those jobs for much more than $5-$7 an hour.

That's when I decided to learn how to code. It was only a few years after that when the Internet started taking off, so I learned HTML and Perl by buying books written by the likes of Steven Brenner, "Selena Sol", Lincoln Stein and Randal Schwartz and there were no college level classes that taught it. I got invited to teach some after hour classes at SMS because they didn't have any at the time.

Now, more than 20 years later companies want to hire someone with a CS degree, and really they often don't know any more about it than those guys who took those welding classes did about laying down a bead that stuck.

But in both cases those who sold the classes lobbied their State Reps to make them mandatory and raked in the cash afterwards.

<comment><USER6> You realize $7 an hour is $95,000 a year in 2019 cash? If i were offered that for hangover quality work burning rods at a good union job i would not think twice. id be able to afford the median home price in 1970 which was $23,000. These numbers seem to support the idea of the wealthy welder. Its entirely possible fossilized republicans are thinking in 1970 dollars.

Fast forward to 2019. auto mechanics START at just shy of 22,000 a year and thats assuming you keep track of your time and work for a shop that doesnt engage in the rampant practice of wage theft. master mechanic? depends, maybe $28 an hour in 2019? but nowhere near the $46 an hour a twice convicted tombstone welder made back when the Love Boat sailed.

The problem is not trade, or college, its the seemingly endless wealth gap between people who do work, and people who just seem to collect mansions and yachts.

<comment><USER7> The last sentence really hits the nail on the head. Just to add to that, during the 2008 recession I saw my portfolio swing pretty wildly going negative one day and positive another but the amount was more than I made that day or maybe even that week. It was then it dawned on me, American capitalism rewards ownership, not labor nor time devoted to a task. Those changes in my net worth would have happened regardless of if I worked or took the day off. Time and labor can get you to ownership but that's not guaranteed nor probable in some fields. I don't want our country to discourage property ownership and accumulation of wealth but the paths leading to that from working hard seems increasingly fewer and narrower.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash This comment shouldn't have been downvoted because it's completely accurate, and provably so: tax rates for earnings on capital are by and large less than earnings on labor. Warren Buffett has complained for years that he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary. The system we have rewards trust fund babies, and punishes hard working people.

<comment><USER8> See also Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

TLDR: RoI (capital) > RoI (labor), with the expected consequences.

<comment><USER9> Plenty of good subsequent research has shown this to be not supported. Go to google scholar and start looking through Econ papers citing Piketty.

<comment><USER8> Would you give me a link or two to start?

I get that Piketty's work isn't without controversy or criticism. Summers and others have criticized it, but their critiques haven't seemed very strong.

One article [1] (which discusses Piketty's shortcomings) claims the biggest reaction to Piketty is silence:

      "But perhaps the greatest rebuke of Piketty to be found among academic economics is not contained in any of these overt or veiled attacks on his scholarship and interpretation, but rather in the deafening silence that greets it, as well as inequality in general, in broad swathes of the field—even to this day."

...

      "The economics elite, it seems, answered by stonewalling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, so it would not have the impact on economics research agendas that it merits."

Anyway, it's not clear to me that Piketty's fundamental thesis is wrong. Happy to follow a link or two, thank you.

[1] [http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall- steinbaum-...](http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum- why-are-economists-giving-piketty-cold-shoulder)

edited for a typo

<comment><USER10> Even if it wasn't wrong in the past, it can certainly be wrong going forward. With all the governments printing money to cause asset prices to inflate, of course ROI of capital will be > ROI of labor, since price increases for labor will always lag price increases of capital.

<comment><USER11> Piketty looked at like ~200 years of econ data (wages, asset values, rents) and allowed for inflation and even depreciation.

His thesis is actually that r > g, wherein r = ROI of capital and g = _the rate of economic growth_ (gdp).

This _has_ to be true, because rich people exist and we can measure that they get richer and richer faster than others. You can gauge faith in the likelihood that it will continue to work that way given that funds like Y Combinator exist and are successful, and because activities like buying and maintaining rental properties "works" in terms of creating personal wealth faster than the rate of economic growth.

<comment><USER9> The research has shown multiple other ways to reach the current results without r>g (housing stock is one method, if I recall) and authors have shown r>g leads to results we do not see.

Thus it's not true to claim existence of rich people implies r>g. If it were that simple people before Piketty would have reached that conclusion earlier.

The papers linked in this thread show the flaws.

It's also the case the rich don't get richer, if you mean a rich person gets richer. For any dataset where you can track rich individuals over time, pick a level you call rich, track everyone meeting that definition, and you find they get poorer, reverting to mean. That is why most millionaires are first gen. It's why the Forbes 400 is mostly first gen; the rich that were top 400 lose wealth. It's why St. Louis Fed has papers showing the majority of the top quintile or the top 1% are not there 10 years later, or from generation to generation.

Sure some rich keep wealth. But for any level called rich, if you track all those in it, that group mostly falls out.

<comment><USER11> >If it were that simple people before Piketty would have reached that conclusion earlier.

Perhaps you've heard the expression, "The rich get richer while the poor get poorer"

What Piketty did was put extensive data and a pretty rigorous methodology to work to explain why. I've not read a critique that undermines his main conclusions in a meaningful way.

It's no secret that if you already have a pile of money or capital assets you can put those to work for you which will also generate income and you will come out ahead and faster than someone without the same pile of money.

Cf [https://boingboing.net/2016/08/23/bill-gates-net-worth- hits-...](https://boingboing.net/2016/08/23/bill-gates-net-worth-hits-9.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First, to quote the Drive By Truckers:

"If you want to feel old after 42 years, keep dropping the hammer and grinding the gears"

My dad did blue collar labor his whole life and his body _hurt_. He would take something like 6 ibuprofen every morning with breakfast. To do that kind of work requires you putting your family above yourself, which is a noble thing. I think what people miss in the old "you could support a family doing this" was that it was very much you actively harming yourself so that your family could be better off.

It's the same thing with coal miners. They get all sorts of terrible health consequences from the work, but it is a noble sacrifice to them.

My dad was adamant that we were going to college and living a more comfortable life than he did. So here I am, a software engineer with plenty of worries in the world, but at least a job that won't leave me broken and in pain after I do it for twenty years.

I didn't read this article word for word, but it seemed to have a bit of an agenda to it. The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if you're working class is how driven you are. If you are lazy, you'll struggle your whole life. There isn't any family safety net to keep you ignorant of that.

It's important to give people access to opportunity, but it's up to the individual to be self-motivated enough to take it. Education isn't some magical panacea.

<comment><USER13> > The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if you're > working class is how driven you are.

In my experience it's much more about how you manage the money you make, i.e.:

1\. live below your means

2\. invest the difference - put your money to work for you

For example, in the last week there was a bank that accidentally deposited $120,000 in the account of a couple. The couple immediately went on a spending spree, buying all kinds of very expensive items. By the time the police got involved, the money was gone.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank- acc...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank-accidentally- deposited-couples-account-they-spent-most-it-then-got-charged-with-theft/)

Criminality aside, the "gee I have some extra money, let's go shopping!" is how one remains poor for life.

<comment><USER14> This is underrated.

Not to mention people are encouraged to do zero planning for the student debts and get pressured by family to buy new cars.

There's so much of wealth that comes down to lifestyle and educating people on personal finance which would go way farther than just telling people to get a $100k degree and 'study hard (for rote testing)'. Here in Canada where I live the debt levels are still insane and didn't decline like the US did, even without the healthcare bills excuse.

Politicians love blaming external factors and rich people/big corporations for all our upward mobility issues, which obviously play a roles but it's hardly the full story, I'm curious how far we could improve things through culture and how we teach our kids to spend money. This was a personal finance culture that was far more popular in the west in the recent past eras which we people constantly romanticize about and point to different single things to explain it all away (ie unions).

My girlfriend is amazing with money and saves everything, both her parents do the same, which is the opposite of me in my early 20s before I read into it and my parents growing up too. I'm convinced parenting combined with culture (she's Han Chinese and they tend to be thrifty similar Scottish people and Jugaad in India[1], among others) has a significant impact on these trajectories.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad)

<comment><USER15> "thrifty/crafty like Scottish people" This stereotype hasn't been true for at least a generation.

<comment><USER16> It could be "Scots have lowest debt in the UK": [https://www.pwc.co.uk/who-we- are/regional-sites/scotland/pre...](https://www.pwc.co.uk/who-we-are/regional- sites/scotland/press-releases/scotland-debt-figures.html)

I've inherited not spending money from my (not Scottish) parents. It's taken an effort to spend money in social situations, so I'm not seen as miserly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I work at a company that does heavy manufacturing. They're begging for welders. They only accept something like 30% of applicants, I hear drugs is a big problem with applicants. They thing is that you don't even need to know how to weld, they'll train you. They put you through their training program and eventually you'll be welding for them. And the type of welding they do isn't small scale thing but really heavy duty thick sheets of steel. And here's the kicker, their pay is terrible. Which is why they're constantly begging for more people to train.They totally know that they're basically the guys that train all the welders in the area. People come in to learn the ropes then about 2 years later or so they get a job down the street making a lot more. I'm not a business guy but I guess it works for the company because they've been going for a very long time and still growing. I guess it's cheaper for them to constantly be training than it is to retain their welders.

<comment><USER18> If you can deal with the variance, training people is a very good way to get cheap talent. I have no idea why it isn't very common.

<comment><USER19> I think the business case for it depends on training time, training costs, the odds of a person being useful after training, and how expensive it is to get someone already trained.

Training a batch of people for six months who will mostly be useful after completion and are mostly likely to complete training might be a good proposition. If training time is four years, 50% of entrants complete training, and 50% of those trained are useful... the case might be weaker.

<comment><USER20> I believe the biggest issue is people leaving.

Invest _x_ months of training at _y_ cost.

Then the person leaves right after training for a higher-paying job.

That dis-incentivizes training.

<comment><USER21> Or, increase psychological incentives by saying "raises for people who make it a year" or "signing on bonuses only for people who make it six months."

Those help a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a glorified anecdote by a smug Atlantic writer yutz; dripping with condescension "There is no doubt that Orry would benefit from high-quality face-to-face instruction from a caring and conscientious English professor.." It's also a red-herring. Nobody believes an average welder makes $150k a year. In fact, we know what they make: a lower middle class salary (admittedly linked in the column):

[https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters- solderers...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers- and-brazers.htm)

The guys who actually do well, and who do make $150k a year were not enrolled in some shitty associates degree program (this article should really be on the failure of the US higher education scam); they're highly skilled former Navy machinists.

And of course, the reason working class jobs like welder don't make more is simple: we keep importing new low skilled laborers, driving the price of low- skilled labor down. Mercantilism and labor laws could fix this. Instead we get dimwits from the Atlantic suggesting welders go to English class.

<comment><USER23> I object to the labeling of Associates Degree programs as 'shitty'. In my experience, AS programs are just far more practicality oriented than academic BSs.

You want to learn how the math behind Dijkstra's algorithm works, get a BS. You want to learn how to build a network, get an AS.

<comment><USER22> You might be right regarding computer associates: but getting a degree in something like welding is just increasing the number of firey hoops someone has to jump through to do a job he can be trained on the job for, or in a union apprenticeship program.

I myself learned welding on the job: at a muffler company, and again later in a government lab. The answer to social problems is not always "more school."

<comment><USER24> This is in fact quite common in the welding world. Several other comments mention companies that hire anyone and train them to weld. I've also read articles from the oil field companies that they do the same. So does the military, if you pass the aptitude test at least. That said, my community college will teach you to run a CNC laser welding machine, a CNC plasma table, a robotic arm MIG, etc. Getting into all of that off the street is rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm not a welder but I have friends who are and it seems like this is painting the most difficult, least lucrative way to go about this as the norm(ie the whole thing is a strawman) and then crapping on it.

My friends who got into welding mostly did so through aprenticeships with unions or on the job non union apprenticeships.

They will probably not become millionaires selling their time as welders but they are solidly middle if not upper middle class. They go on international vacations and eat at fancy restraunts. They are fairing on average far better than my friends with "soft" liberal arts degrees.

Yeah it's not a total panacea easy road to riches but learning a trade like welding seems like a super high EV move for a lot of people who want a stable career right now.

<comment><USER26> Although unions have their flaws, they do help to keep wages high for skilled workers, both in terms of the prevailing wage but also in enforcing overtime rules (double time for Sunday work, for instance). They also prevent out-of- area workers from coming into an area when times are good. Skilled union workers in the Bay Area can work 168 hours per week right now if they want to.

<comment><USER27> The primary mechanism unions use to keep wages high for union members is to limit supply by lobbying to keep "un-certified" or "non-union" members out of the market. This provides a nice buffer, keeping the poorer class poor and protecting the middle class.

<comment><USER28> Do you have a source for this?

<comment><USER27> Nobel Economist Milton Friedman, for one. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4) If you watch to the end he fully explains how the net effect of unions is to raise the pay of high paid workers and lower the pay of low paid workers.

You might also like "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell which talks about this phenomenon also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This article was horrible. Describing the costs/benefits of forgoing college for a trade would be the kind of discussion that I think Hacker News is made for, but not with this poor quality article.

First, it cherry picks a single example of someone who obviously had a ton of other shit going on (got fired for missing too much work) and then seems to draw from that the conclusion that "Welding won't make you rich". Then it complains that the 150k salaries for welders bandied about are rare, but so what? Did anyone think a welder right out of the gate would make that much money? I think most of us understand that your average developer isn't making 400k a year at Google, either, but that doesn't mean that's an invalid data point.

The reason people should be interested about the trades are:

1\. They are immune from offshoring, which has had a huge impact on other blue collar jobs like manufacturing. 2\. If they are a viable, and secure, path to the middle class, they should be supported.

There are lots of valid issues to discuss (the toll it takes on your body is a big one), but would be better to see it from an article with better data and less out-of-the-gate bias.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > it complains that the 150k salaries for welders bandied about are rare, but > so what? Did anyone think a welder right out of the gate would make that > much money?

If you read it, they say the 90th percentile welder gets paid $60k a year. That is, the average 15+ year experience welder gets paid way less than 50% of the original $150k claim.

<comment><USER29> Your response is exactly why I think the article is horrible - why not lets look at the source data and then discuss that: [https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters- solderers...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers- and-brazers.htm#tab-5)

What this says is that the 90th percentile for this entire group of "Welders, Cutters, Solderers and Brazers" was $63,740.

But the small table there also says that there is a big difference in the average between "specialty trade contractors" and "manufacturing", which isn't that surprising. It also says nothing about the age range (I don't know where you got your 15+ year experience data from), so when looking at percentiles, it wouldn't be surprising that the field has a ton of junior folks that brings down the average.

It _would_ be very interesting to see what the distribution looks like for master welders with at least 10 years experience, but the article has none of that data.

Furthermore, if you dig into the 150k claim, you'll see that that is almost always for welders in high demand areas, like oil and gas during the fracking boom. That doesn't make it apocryphal, just constrained to a specific industry.

<comment><USER30> A specific industry for a short period of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You shouldn't need to make $150k to get by as a welder. In any sensible society a person who knows how to do something useful like weld should be able to muddle along. Some of my friends from high school in Oklahoma became oil field welders in the 90s. They made good money, bought houses and raised children early in life. It seems like a square deal to me. Of course, that was possible because houses in Oklahoma were plentiful and cheap and the public schools were good and so forth. You know, the way civil society is supposed to work.

<comment><USER32> There's a piece of specialty equipment I just learned about recently while pulling on a thread regarding one of my hobbies. It's pretty expensive and I'd probably only need it four times in as many years so I was looking around for other options like rentals or tool libraries. Found nothing.

Then I end up in the DIY section, and for about ten seconds I think I hit paydirt. Then I realize that every. single. video. is by some guy who knows his way around an arc welder. And not like "This video is for people who know how to weld," just, "okay cut these pieces and then you weld em together and then you're done." Like everyone or their brother knows how to weld.

Now I bring this up because clearly there is some subset of people who are saving a great deal of money by making specialty tools out of stock or scrap instead of buying it. I know a bunch of amateur carpenters and a few woodworkers, but didn't think I know any amateur welders.

<comment><USER33> Small time farmers seem to be a lot more likely to know these sorts of skills, because it allows them to save an obscene amount of money on specialty equipment by modifying something inexpensive to do the job.

When the commercial offerings are $100,000+ but you can make something good enough yourself for $20,000 or less, well, yeah, it is well worth it to take the time to learn welding, since you will more than make up for it with just one such project.

<comment><USER34> Small time farmers are not trying to save money so much as time. When you are in the middle of nowhere with a broken part no amount of money can get you back in the field in 20 minutes (if the welder is sitting by the phone waiting for your call he can just barely get there in that time, but he hasn't looked at the part yet). 1 minute with your own welder and you have a repair that will let you limp to the end of the busy season where you can decide if it is good enough or you need to repair it right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I can't help but consider the wider background of this story.

Across the country, high schools have been cutting shop classes. Administrators push 4-year college as the only viable option. Anything else is increasingly viewed as irresponsible advice.

At the same time, 4-year college costs have been skyrocketing. Students are taking on levels of debt that the previous generation would have thought obscene.

Meanwhile, the breadth of degrees that can reasonably be expected to service the debt of a 4-year college stint, let alone earn a living afterwards, appears to be shrinking.

Just because some degrees are currently in high demand doesn't mean that will be the case in 1, 2, or 5 years. Tech recessions can be brutal given how leveraged the booms are.

At the center of all of this is automation in numerous forms. The changes we've seen so far will only accelerate. There's little evidence to suggest that today's economies will be up to the challenge of providing economically viable pathways for young people starting out.

The myth of higher education as the pathway to a middle class lifestyle has all the hallmarks of an idea that will die a slow, agonizing death. We're utterly unprepared for what comes next.

<comment><USER36> > Administrators push 4-year college as the only viable option. Anything else > is increasingly viewed as irresponsible advice. At the same time, 4-year > college costs have been skyrocketing.

Something tells me these things are related...

My old man taught wood shop in a high school. Year after year, there was less and less demand/attendance. To stay securely employed, as he was getting closer to retirement he pivoted over to teaching drafting and then CAD which had tons of interest and were supported by administration. By the time he retired the wood and metal shop classes were gone for good. Pretty sad and worrying to think that since then an entire generation has gone through that school with no opportunity to learn how to actually make a physical good with their hands. We have YouTube now if we want to learn, and it's a great resource, but it's hard not to think something has been lost.

<comment><USER37> > Pretty sad and worrying to think that since then an entire generation has > gone through that school with no opportunity to learn how to actually make a > physical good with their hands.

Welcome to globalism? 98% of the physical goods you buy are made in the developing world, there's not much point in acquiring these skills here.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash A crappy assemble-at-home Target organizer costs like $20 and probably cost a fraction of that to manufacture, but a fancy artisanal lacquered organizer made by the hobbyists across town can be sold for several times the cost of supplies and labor.

But a lot of folks feel the squeeze so they buy the crappy Target one instead.

<comment><USER38> This reminds me of my neighbor who had recently retired and began a side business making furniture in his garage. He was just looking to make a little beer money, but his business grew quickly just through word of mouth and he was complaining to me that now it was more of a job than he had before he retired. He was thinking about shutting the whole thing down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This article seems to imply 'welding' is a single level skill after you have jumped through X number of academic hoops. this is like saying 'IT' is basically one skill set that can be learnt. There are welders earning vast amounts flying all over the world working on mission critical projects with huge economic and safety dependencies at the top, large numbers of highly talented entrepreneurial artisan welders (who often have many other skills) and people trying to learn a skill at the bottom. The article is like saying someone going to junior college to learn python is discouraged because they aren't immediately thought of as a senior engineer once they get a few qualifications.

<comment><USER40> > The article is like saying someone going to junior college to learn python > is discouraged because they aren't immediately thought of as a senior > engineer once they get a few qualifications.

"Welders at the 90th percentile of income for the profession, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earn $63,000 a year before taxes. Those are, statistically, the top earners, and they are usually expert welders with decades of experience."

<comment><USER41> This just seems wrong? Welding varies a ton by state. The Bureau of Labor statistics also says that welders in Alaska earn an average of $65k a year. They aren't all expert welders, it just varies heavily by location.

<comment><USER42> It says "usually". That allows for exceptions like Alaska. (I just looked at the stats, and it looks like there is data on 510 welders in Alaska out of 389,190 total, so it's a tiny exception.)

<comment><USER43> And probably skewed towards remote oil extraction jobs, with high cost of living (everything has to be flown in) and a difficult overall existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The person in the anecdote was second to last in their high school class and got fired for missing too much work. No one thinks such a person should be sleeping in the gutter, but let's not beat ourselves up over the fact that they're not making 6 figures here.

<comment><USER45> They could well come to the same conclusion if they followed a similar person learning "coding"..

Cherry-picked example. Although I do think the Conservative opinion of skilled trades is not really rooted in reality. Most of the better-off tradesmen are sole proprietors.

<comment><USER46> Is it really a "conservative opinion"? I've heard positive stories about the trades from people across the political spectrum.

And of course, the trades aren't a panacea. Demand ebbs and flows and sometimes work can be hard to come by. But I see nothing wrong with suggesting it as an option to a college degree (and the debt that goes along with it). Even if the salary isn't that high, it still beats being unemployed with $20K in student debt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> A career with similar average salary would be teaching. Four year tuition is an average of 25k in state and 41k out of state.[0]

Welding school is typically 5k to 15k [1] and takes two years or less. Despite how things played out for the particular case covered by this author, there is a good argument for welding. It may not make you rich. However, if you don't like the traditional college route, then welding and similar trades offer comparatively good pay/training trade-off.

* [https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...](https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-college)

* [https://education.costhelper.com/welding-school.html](https://education.costhelper.com/welding-school.html)

<comment><USER48> One of the other nice things about welding - while it may not make you rich - is that you can do it to some degree almost your entire life. It's the same with a lot of trade skills.

I'm a software engineer - that is what I know, and what I do. But I'm already above the "age ceiling" that we all know exists - but somehow (maybe due to the fact that I keep my skills current?) I have stayed employed and haven't been subjected (to my knowledge) to not being hired because of my age. I'm also not in SV or any other "high earning" area, and I like small "mom-n-pop" vs large established companies (with all the politics and other junk) - <USER2> I've never earned 6 figs - nor will I likely ever. But what I do earn pays my bills and keeps a roof over my head, and allows for entertainment for me and my family.

For now.

But someday that won't be there. Then what? Well - I intend to work until I die - that is, code forever. I know there are plenty of software engineers out there much older than I am who are still employed. So maybe it isn't as bleak as I think. But I do know this: When I am not employed, I can't just "go around the neighborhood" or "advertise on craigslist" or "hang out a shingle" that says "Got a broken fence? I can weld it for ya! Call me @ xxx..."

Which is something tradespeople can almost always do. In their "retirement years" they can become handypersons, do side-jobs welding or carpentry, or maybe simple auto repairs (or even more complex ones if they have the tools and strength left). Plumbing and electrical isn't out of the question either. They may not make bank, but they likely won't starve, either.

For myself? I'm not sure what I could do. One thing I do know I can do - <USER3> not well enough to be employed at it - is weld. I can also use a hammer, saw, plane, whatever - I do have some wood and metal shop skills. I also work on my own automobiles. Whether I could convince someone else to let me fix their issues - well, that's just some marketing and hopefully doing it right for them (just hand me that grinder and paint - I'm no tig stacked-dimes artist).

So there's that to be said about the trades - that it is something that can be done to keep some form of food on the table, even if it's just helping out neighbors for a few dollars. Nobody wants to hire an aging software engineer to code up a simple website or something like that any longer it seems. Those older SWEs typically find their gigs maintaining aging and creaking software in a language nobody uses any longer (and fortunately for me, I do have skills in Perl, VB3 thru 6, classic ASP, some COBOL - and it seems PHP may be headed that way too).

<comment><USER49> That is an interesting take on it I haven't seen elsewhere in this thread!

And I'm with ya, "grinder and paint makes me the welder I ain't"

<comment><USER50> Added to [https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The unspoken claim here is that if he'd gone to college and pursued a liberal arts degree that he'd be better off now. The evidence in the article however says the opposite. He'd have even more debt and even lower prospects after failing to complete that degree.

<comment><USER52> Maybe I missed that part of the article where it was a direct comparison of welding to a liberal arts degree outside of the politician comparing philosophy to welding. Philosophers make more money than biochemists, FYI. What are your sources about the opposite occurring? If one goes to an instate school s/he can do fairly well with a liberal arts degree.

<comment><USER51> It's clear he doesn't do well in traditional liberal arts subjects. The question here isn't really liberal arts vs welding. It's that the narrative for a long time had been that college for everyone is a solution. For those students who will do well there, it is a solution. But it's not a good idea for everyone.

While it's true welders aren't rich, the question is actually how to provide education resources to allow everyone to see succeed to their ability, without making your parents' wealth the biggest factor. I think it's clear that vocational education is a part of this, and that college for all is not.

<comment><USER52> Oh, that's a completely different discussion altogether! I agree with you though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> People think welders regularly make six figures? Uhhh... I've been looking extensively at manufacturing positions lately because I'm helping a friend in his job search. All the welding ones I've seen in my area that have a salary listed pay around $28k-$38k (IIRC). Those jobs typically have benefits.

So much misinformation around anything to do with pay, don't believe anything you hear, I've heard some really outlandish numbers quoted from a variety of places. The BLS ([https://www.bls.gov/ooh/](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/)) is probably the most accurate source of information you'll get. (Quoted in TFA)

>Its premise was that in rural Ohio, there was such a shortage of skilled tradespeople that employers were regularly hiring welders at salaries of $150,000 a year and up.

So because In-And-Out pays managers $160,000 a year [1] we should conclude that fast food is (in general) a highly paid occupation?

[1] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation- now/2018/01/25/n...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation- now/2018/01/25/n-out-mangers-make-160-000-per-year-reports-show/1065434001/)

<comment><USER34> Some welders make good money. If you can weld the I-Beams of a 80 story sky scrapper you will make good money. (I'm told most construction workers hit a wall at about the 30th floor and will not work on anything higher). If you can weld while wearing scuba gear you make good money- you also get a full pension at 40 when you are forced to retire because of the wear it does on the body. There are a few other areas where welding pays good money - but they pay good money because so few welders can do them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> The salaries of welders does seem a bit over-hyped. That said, there are people out there working in the trades making decent money. I have a couple of friends that went to school to be electrical lineman and both are making close to 6 figures now with minimal student loans. I think it just requires a little bit of research and perhaps the help of a decent high school career counselor.

Average salary of electrical lineman: [https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/lineman- sal...](https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/lineman-salary)

<comment><USER55> Linemen in PHX make upwards of 95k plus shit loads of overtime.

<comment><USER56> Yeah, but you'd have to work for APS or SRP...That's a hard pass for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Looking at these official stats, median for plumbers is $54K per year, which is not such a bad money for a job that requires no school, just on-job training. Little bit less for carpenters, floor installers and masonry and construction workers, etc. But we need to take into account that none of them requires any special education, it's on-job training only, so you start your life with no debts which gives you a big head start and a lot of freedom. Unlike welders they also, with a bit of entrepreneurship, can expect one day to run their own businesses and earn more. Also, these days very important thing to think of, AI and robots will not replace plumbers or tile layers anytime soon. People working in maintenance will probably be the last to be replaced, if ever.

<comment><USER58> > median for plumbers is $54K per year, which is not such a bad money for a > job that requires no school, just on-job training.

Not only is it not bad, it's higher than the median salary of many college graduates, even of highly accredited known public schools.

<comment><USER10> There are other opportunity costs of trades, such as increased risk of morbidity and mortality due to all the driving/type of work/materials worked with, and working away from home. If one can land a well paying desk job, then currently it still has a greater value proposition, and who wants to be real and tell their child that they probably won't make it into the ranks of a well paying desk job?

<comment><USER58> > who wants to be real and tell their child that they probably won't make it > into the ranks of a well paying desk job?

Likely the successful tradesmen who has instilled a sense of worth in "dirty jobs" and working final product.

Anecdotally, I have some college educated friends that describe the majority of their desk jobs as tedious, repetitive, and duplicative data entry; A plumber or welder's job certainly has comparatively longer term viability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> _After a year and a half, Orry was fired for missing too many days of work..._

 _Orry had been working hard for five years..._

Isn't there some contradiction in these two statements?

<comment><USER60> Not necessarily. I worked at a company where if you missed two days of work without calling in to let them know, you were fired. You could stretch that to about 5 days if you always called in.

I'm not making a judgement as to whether those are reasonable terms, only pointing out that such jobs exist, and could be similar where this individual worked there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been taking welding classes at my local community college (Washtenaw CC, just down the road from University of Michigan) around my day job as a controls engineer in the auto industry. This program produces people who win national welding competitions on a regular basis, but they're very open that you don't have to complete the entire thing. The instructor for my summer blueprint welding class kept talking about open jobs in the region and how to get into it -- what certs you needed and what skills to practice. Crappy jobs that didn't require certs paid $20/hr starting + benefits. A couple of years in and with several certs under your belt in a union -- pipefitters or ironworkers -- you could be making north of $40/hr. That doesn't sound high- paying, but many of the people at that level are nomadic, coming into a plant being built and working 12 hrs/day 6 or 7 days a week. Which brings me to my main point -- the statistics on this are heavily skewed. The guy that does that nomadic thing spends some number of months on until he quits and takes 3 months off. Other guys with no certs make money welding art or fixing simple things (a much, much larger category). The BLS numbers aren't a question of what you _can_ make, they're a question of what the distribution looks like.

</comment><comment><USER61> Most people who go on about "the trades", I find, it's unlikely they ever personally worked them. Maybe their Father's. I doubt Marco Rubio has ever touched a hammer, let alone worked as a real laborer.

As for me, going to college was absolutley the thing that really changed my life course.

I grew up on a dairy farm in northern New York. Milked cows until I was 18 and then my dad sold the farm. So I joined the Navy. I did that for 6 years and then when I was about to get out in 2002, I can still remember an officer (you know, a guy with a degree) explaining to me that I was making this huge mistake getting out. Because I was successful in the Navy. Already an E6/FC1. My career was made.

So I asked him, if I'm successful on the inside, what makes you think I cant be successful on the outside? So I got a lot of reasons. It was a good pitch. He even talked to me about getting an associate's at the local college. I was almost there anyway, just a couple classes and I'd be done. At the end, he questioned if Bard, a private liberal arts school I was accepted to, was even accredited.

That's when I knew, not only did he not care, but he would seek to harm my potential future growth just for some metric.

Anyway, so I did go to Bard college. Graduated with a degree in economics, now I'm the CTO / CPO of a middle market company (7 or so years after graduating college).

Had I of stayed, I could have done other blue jobs on the outside someday. I know a guy who works on powerlines in Texas. Says he likes his job. Takes advil like its candy. It pays the bills.

My wife and I have saved a lot, even with two kids. Last year, after our company consummated its sale to a PE company, we've been able to buy our own house in Brooklyn.

If I became a truck driver like my dad did after the sale of the farm, I'm not sure I'd be in the same place today - but it's possible I suppose.

My brother is in the trades. Hes a master plumber and runs his own plumbing company. He's also been successful. His back is also totally shot.

</comment><comment><USER62> Only someone doing dangerous and rare types of welding, such as underwater welding, will make a ton of money. The trade-off is that it is extremely dangerous, and life expectancy is well below average.

<comment><USER63> I suspect a civilian contractor on site in places Afghanistan and other high risk countries make a lot more.

During IRAQ II I saw a local add (Uk) offering £40K tax free for a basic car mechanic going out to Iraq to presumably work for the Military or PMC

<comment><USER64> Like a £40K sign on bonus to relocate to Iraq? Or £40K per annum? Because the latter seems low.

<comment><USER65> www.totaljobs.com says an average car mechanic gets about 32K in the UK. That's about 24K take home. 40K vs 24K is a 53% increase in salary.

That's against 52K on glassdoor for being a military officer. But I am pretty sure that 52K is taxable itself so the actual different is smaller.

<comment><USER66> Not an apples to apples comparison, but my uncle got paid 250k/year USD to drive a big rig in Iraq for the US military. He knows Arabic and can "fit in", though. You can get paid a lot more for taking on a lot more risk, even if you don't have particularly unique or exceptional skills.

<comment><USER63> Yes this wasn't an experienced time served mechanic job this was basic shop skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I've seen a few people I've grown up with try doing skilled trades.

First, they seem to ignore that there is still education needed. And most people who claimed they were going skilled trades ended up doing low skilled manual labor.

And second, they overvalue their education. I've had people claim their skills were good enough to call them an engineer. (But if you give them a real world engineering question, they don't make an attempt)

Third, I've seen fantastic technicians, able to solder a board-mount LED by hand saved us literally thousands of dollars. There is value here, but this person was physically talented from decades of experience.

<comment><USER68> For a couple of semesters I roomed with a guy taking an electrical engineering technician course at a college while I was taking an electrical engineering degree at a university.

We were both surprised at how similar many of our courses were. The big difference was that the standards for pass/fail were lower at his, and that he didn't have any of the 300 or 400 level courses where all the interesting stuff was IMO. And I didn't have any of the hands on courses that was the interesting stuff in his opinion. He had an advanced soldering course. I had an "optional" 3 hour tutorial in it -- it was optional in the sense that you didn't have to attend, but you'd fail your labs if you couldn't solder...

<comment><USER48> And that's where you have this divide of people who have an EE degree but can't assemble their own designs to save their lives, and those with just a technical background who may struggle to design and understand their own circuits, but who can build them to expert level standards.

There are plenty in the middle who can do both - and more than a few of them with such knowledge have never take a college or university course in their life.

You see the same thing with software engineering sometimes - the CompSci graduate who can't code their way out of a wet paper bag even if given a github of fizzbuzz, versus the person who never went to college yet makes 6-figs in SV hacking on code (yet doesn't have the "book understanding" of data structures or algorithms).

...and tons of people in between those who can combine both.

Slap 'em together with similar people in the trades - well, you'll find yourself a myriad of people at all levels and understanding of "mechatronics" and/or robotics and such.

It is quite likely that your roommate could learn what you learned - and you could (or have) learned what he knew. It ultimately all depends on having the motivation and desire to pursue it.

Where you might have the advantage is that you could probably pick up his skills from online resources and simple practice projects or whatnot. He would probably struggle to do the same, without actually going into debt and attending some kind of university course(s). Some of it can be approximated with self-study and some online MOOC training, but not all of it, unfortunately - and he wouldn't have the "piece of paper" at the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> > Welders at the 90th percentile of income for the profession, according to > the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earn $63,000 a year before taxes. Those are, > statistically, the top earners, and they are usually expert welders with > decades of experience.

I know one anecdote doesn't mean much, but I have two friends who are making around $100k/year as stick welders (boiler type work) in the New Jersey area. They do more than just weld though - I'd say that 50% of their job is actually welding and the other 50% is miscellaneous boiler repair work.

One of them has only been doing it for about 4 years, after going to a two year school.

My other friend is making around $80k/year as a "burner mechanic" with absolutely no schooling at all. His only prior experience was that he was a DirecTV installer. He is very mechanically inclined though.

The key is getting into one of those companies that does work at state locations - I'm not sure exactly how this all works, but it's something like "if you're working on a state site, you have to get paid the prevailing wage", which is usually very high. Couple that with overtime and you'll see welders making $80+ an hour.

I'm sure there are welders who make far less, but that's probably the case with any industry. My friends are probably at a gig equivalent to FAANG in the software world.

</comment><comment><USER70> In fairness, where I live in flyover country, people are pretty realistic about how much money you can get as a welder. Or carpenter. Or plumber. Or what have you. They are relatively good jobs, _for around here_. But everyone knows you're not gonna make six figures being a welder. Not even close. (Maybe if you're working on a pipeline, that's underwater, but even that's temporary.)

</comment><comment><USER71> The way you make money as a welder is the same as every other trade

a) Be willing to do it in conditions nobody else wants to.

b) own a business and employ other people who do it.

</comment><comment><USER72> Just today the AC unit at our house sprung a leak. Due to California's laws you have to replace old ACs with more efficient ones. In the middle of the summer installation costs run 3-10k. Instead I did it my self and just paid a welder to connect the copper tubes. He worked about an hour and I paid him $500.

</comment><comment><USER73> It's actually even worse than this. I'm on the fringes of a community that does a lot of metal art, so I know a few welders who make good (but not great) money doing welding. But they all are artists, and they all have college degrees, and couldn't attract the art contracts they do without their college pedigree. It's disingenuous to say "Welding makes good money" and "Welding doesn't require a college degree" in the same breath, because many of the higher-income welders actually _do_ have college degrees which increase their income, which skews the statistics.

There are three people I know who weld but don't make much money. One makes most of her money on banking software, and the other two don't have degrees.

</comment><comment><USER74> I was hearing this back around 2004-2005 that welders could make $150k if they take this remote oil pipeline jobs and "all your expenses are paid for while you're out in the field".

I heard a lot of people talk about taking these jobs but they never seemed to exist.

</comment><comment><USER50> Does anyone with deep experience within welding have any pro tips on fixture design? Even willing to do some consulting? We are tackling this at the moment and getting some grossly conflicting inputs from manual welders, automated welding equipment suppliers, and other sources. Basically we want to produce precise and repeatable assemblies mainly out of 304 beam stock, but with a view toward validating precision before investing in automation we've become aware that fixture design will be critical, yet lack experience. Our initial prototype fixture already functions successfully with pneumatic work holding, but has numerous design flaws.

</comment><comment><USER75> White collar people LOVE recommending blue collar jobs. It's very similar to the FB execs who cash out and then suddenly say talk about how bad FB is.

"Don't do what I did to get rich, it's not a good idea."

<comment><USER76> Probably because many of us dream about blue collar work at our desks.

<comment><USER66> Just like how many of them dream of white collar work at their mine/construction site/shop. The difference being is that when they find some white collar work, they no longer dream of blue collar work (because it sucks and kills you a day at a time).

<comment><USER56> It depends on what blue collar work you're talking about...I went blue collar (power plant operator)...obtained CS degree and got a job as a programmer...then after a year went back to blue collar...operations is more interesting to me, plus I get to be on my feet, moving around all shift...it suits me much more...plus the pay for an operator is >$140k in a rural area

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> If not college, though, your options are kind of limited.

Other (used-to-)pay-pretty-ok blue collar jobs are things like plumbers, electricians, and union telco work, if you can get it. Plumbing isn't too hard to pick up; I don't know if you need licensing for that (or why), other than a professional liability insurance policy of some kind. AFAIK there's still pretty good demand for plumbers and electricians, although I haven't done any kind of research on the market and expect it varies a lot by locale.

</comment><comment><USER78> Another frequently overlooked problem with the 'trade school' mantra is that women need jobs too - and I'm willing to wager that the prejudice women are going to face in a welding shop is going to be a lot higher the frequently cited problem of women in engineering.

Never mind if they try to hang out their shingle as a plumber or electrician. It'd be an interesting study to compare the number of calls that Charlie vs Charlene would get in that field, but I think we all know the answer.

<comment><USER79> My aunt owned and managed a welding shop for over 50 years. She'd disagree with most of what you wrote. The opportunity is there for people that want to work hard and learn. There is in fact a fairly good tradition supporting women in the trades, (in the US at least) especially during and after WWII. See "Rosie the Riveter" for example, which is where my aunt got her start.

<comment><USER80> This harkens to some of the points some other commenters have made in this thread. Earning $7/hour in 1970 for a welding job is equivalent of $95k/year in 2019 money.

Similarly, getting a start and sticking it out is just as difficult for women today as it was in the pre-war era. The post war period has been ingrained as the normal baseline in our collective imaginations, though it is anything but normal.

I am willing to wager that Rosie the Riveter isn't the norm for the US and if she or your aunt was trying to make it as a welder, they both will not find the supportive environment that existed post-war

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> This article surprised me by how biased and bad it is.

And although it claims the "myth" started in 2015, I started to hear about this (and I am from Brazil, not US even) around 2005 or so.

I finished college around 2009, and know from personal experience, that the "politicians" the article is against, are saying the truth, I ended college with huge debts, didn't got any decent jobs, and right now I work in a field not related to what I learned in college, I finished paying the loans only last year, and will finally marry this year, and will live in a tiny cramped apartment with my wife, with no vehicle.

The friends I had at high school, the ones that went to college, are in similar situations... But the ones that went to trade school, all of them own their own house, are married with kids, own multiple vehicles...

So I have no idea where the idea that this stuff is a "myth" came from.

And I am sorry of how much I belittled a friend in high school, when he said he would not go to college, and go learn welding and how to operate CNC machines... Back then all "adults" convinced me he was going to be low class and poor, and that I should aim to enter a pretigious university. That guy while I was still in college, had bought the motorcycle of his dreams. When I finished college, he was paying for his house. When I was strugglign to find jobs, in part because everyone wanted experience instead of education, and thus I was 5 years older with zero experience compared to my competitors (either 18 year old guys with lots of energy, or people same age as me, that skipped college but had 5 years of experience on the job), he was complaining of how many job offers he had to turn down...

</comment><comment><USER82> This is so true. Every comment I see on HN regarding welding paints it as the counterpoint example to a college education/getting a white-collar job. I have a brother who gets worked to the bone welding for about $15 an hour. He can get pretty good incentive for producing more than the hourly "expected" rate, but it's hard work! He welds I-beams and lifts between 20-60 pounds per beam, depending on the specs of the specific beams, all day every day that he works. He does somewhere on the order of 40-60 beams per hour. Between his job as a welder and my cushy job as a software developer (making twice as much) I would choose the cushy software developer job every time. Not sure I would be saying the same thing if I had gotten a liberal art degree, but I certainly wouldn't use welding as the prime example of a trade-school "easy way out" from going to college.

</comment><comment><USER83> There is nothing wrong with vocational education. But the reality is that, on average, how well you do with college education largely depends on what degree you pursued and same is true with vocational education as well. If there is a lot of demand for your vocation, salaries will be higher regardless of whether it requires college degrees or not.

</comment><comment><USER84> I know of two wealthy welders. The one lives in Northern Ontario, is technically pensioned but both the local steelmill (Sault Ste. Marie) and a large mining operation kept asking him to solve their 'unsolvable' problem, which he would do without much ado or noise. He would fix stuff _while it was running_ because shutting down a smelter is very expensive, either through remote control (pantographs) or other trickery to get close to the welding spot.

The other is here in the Netherlands, works in off-shore and has gradually transited from welding to safety officer. He made a ton of money doing welding though (diver / welder) and has a lot of property that he rents out. He could retire anytime he wants (and is still < 40).

</comment><comment><USER85> I suppose what's called welder is not "Schweißer" in German, but a "Schlosser", which would be subdivided by application, and had a lot in common with a mechanic (a wrench is a "Schlüssel", literally a key, compare French "cle anglaise" \- monkey wrench).

Welding would just be learned as part of the job, whether as plumber or mechanic, once upon a time even as electrician (who now doesn't even learn to solder).

I say "had", because the mechanic nowadays is taught mostly as a "Mechatroniker", since electronics have become ubiquitious in machines.

The secondary education systems differ from the US, I hear. Nevertheless, most training happens on the job, with one school day per week over 3 odd years in case of these jobs--which ammounts to 6 month of schooling. Pay starts at ca. 15 Eur after graduation (and is miserable, below minimum wage, for the apprenticeship). Several possibilities to diversify afterwards exist, but many slug along without going for e.g. technician or master studies. The exams can be taken out of school under certain limited conditions. etc. p. p.

"Schweißer" is not a registered apprenticeship, but qualification is offered and eventually necessary; job opportunities exist, almost solely through temp agencies, starting at ca 12 Eur; no publically indexed opportunity in Berlin. One adverisement mentions that up to 100 different welding techniques exist (need to be known, as they say) from once a mere five.

I'd imagine kinds of certificates in welding can be optained in crash courses. In contrast, professional-welder does not strike me as an entry level position, nor as a common job. I haven't met any, to say the least.

I do remember a special note about the welding jobs done on the Wendelstein-X project, mentioned in a podcast with the leader of the programm. That was followed by a note about a Swiss specialists detecting defects in custom coils, who was described like the master of an arcane art in the best tradition of swiss watchmakers. (check alternativlos.de if you understand .de)

</comment><comment><USER86> 1st world to 1st world - doubtful.

3rd world to 1st - that gets more interesting. I recall a story about EU tunnel boring machines where the drilling head was welded together by a team flown in from south africa. Thought that was weird - that's a country with zero tunnel boring experience.

Bit more thinking later I realised...that's actually not a bad strategy. Throw some Euros down and get the top 0.1% of the skillset of a 3rd world country. Welding is welding and top 0.1% is pretty grand.

<comment><USER80> I suspect the top 0.1% would realize that they are the cream of the crop and wouldn't be so easy or cheap to fly out by "throwing some Euros".

If there was any price differential between the best welders in these two countries, it would be rendered nil by the cost of flying and housing a team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Skilled trades are still a good idea in the UK. I estimated that experienced self employed electricians could probably pull in $80-120k per year excluding office costs at 80% utilisation.

It's not _huge_ money, but once you start factoring in that tax is much better for the self employed, costs of living, commute time etc it does look like a good deal. Even if you discount the estimate by 1/3 it still compares very favourably to most white collar careers.

</comment><comment><USER88> My take: the college-educated class (of which I am one) is feeling nervous, and started to spew negativity at the idea of trades or apprenticeship. The college (loan) industry is in for a decline, and is feeling defensive.

I don't recall ever hearing that welders were "wealthy", I heard (and continue to hear) that they can be middle-class. Which is something that some who took out big college loans to get a journalism degree, struggle to do.

</comment><comment><USER89> > it absolves us of our shared responsibility to address the reality of his > limited economic prospects.

Why do I have a responsibility for someone else's economic prospects? The man profiled in the story didn't sound like he was a victim of anything I'm responsible for: I didn't make him late for work so much he got fired. I didn't ask him to get married and have two kids at age 21. There is a whole bunch of "not my problem" going on there.

I'm also not convinced _only_ $30-40 per hour in a pretty cheap cost of living area is a bad wage. That's much more than many degreed people working in the city make. Also the potential with welding is that he could start his own shop and be making some serious money. The national demand is huge. My dad is a retired precision machinist and his "side business" in his garage makes him more money than his job working with physics Nobel laureates at a major university ever did. Most of his business is contract work for universities and oil field tooling companies and he hires welders almost continually. Most welders he works with are at full capacity and can't hire people fast enough. The problem is that many people that go into the trades are like the guy profiled in the story: unreliable, often losers, who don't stick around very long. The good ones, the sky is pretty much the limit. The economy is flying — there is a lot of work. Same thing in the construction trades as well, especially plumbing.

</comment><comment><USER90> A relative a mine works for an engineering firm that hires a lot of pipe fitters and welders for jobs they bid (beverage industry). The hourly and (frequently) overtime wages they pay welders often sound good, but the work is also somewhat intermittent and almost always involves significant travel. The welders they hire have pretty significant wage variability year to year.

</comment><comment><USER91> What the title of article should be: "The Myth of the Freelance Wealthy Welder in Nowheresville, Anystate USA".

Welding, and trades in general, pay big money in the big cities along the coasts. I bet the union welders putting up sky scrapers and fixing public works are making six figures, minimum.

</comment><comment><USER92> > If we are able to persuade ourselves that there are plenty of lucrative > opportunities available for young people like Orry who didn't much like high > school, it absolves us of our shared responsibility to address the reality > of his limited economic prospects

Mic drop

</comment><comment><USER93> Every welder and tradesman I know back home where the median home value is $75k is doing pretty good.

No student loans, dual-income with a CRN, and you're living pretty high in the rust belt.

</comment><comment><USER94> Despite my handle, I'm not a welder.

In all seriousness, it sucks people were duped into a welding career not all it's cracked up to be.

</comment><comment><USER95> > One of the many odd things about the rhetoric that posits welding as the > antithesis of college is that in order to become a welder, you actually have > to go to college. You can learn the basics in a high-school shop class, as > Orry did, but to do it well, you not only have to master multiple precise > manual skills; you also need a pretty deep scientific understanding of the > metal you're working with and the electrical and chemical processes you're > using to manipulate that metal. To earn an associate's degree, Orry would > need to pass 12 separate welding courses, plus basic courses in math and > English, as well as more conceptual courses in welding metallurgy.

This right here. Says it all.

I've worked in machine shops all my life, and while it is true that welding was one of the highest paid occupations in that environment; it's also true that it's not something that anyone can do with a week of on-the-job training.

Most welding jobs are sticking wrought iron railings together, or playground equipment, or repairing mufflers. It's easy. It's cheap. It is, quite literally, something for a disposable employee to do. It doesn't take skill or experience to replace a muffler. It takes a hack-saw and a MIG welder. There's no reason anyone would or should pay a Jiffy-lube muffler installer $150k/year. It's not a job that warrants that kind of pay. But most "welders" go into the trade thinking that's what they're working towards. It's not comparable in any way to the work performed by a professional welder. They really shouldn't even be called the same thing. It's like labeling a script kiddie a programmer. Misrepresenting the script kiddie takes more away from the actual programmer than it gives to the fake one.

That being said, "real" welding is where the money is. It's being certified by some authoritative body to perform your job, whatever that may be. Aerospace, architectural, nuclear, underwater, ect. It's being able to read a complex blueprint and create assemblies that are conforming to a long list of criteria. Criteria that come from a) the government, b) the customer, c) your own quality department, d) your engineering department, e) your own experience. I bet you that if you took most bicycles from Wal-Mart and had the welds x-ray'd that 100% would fail standard NDT testing like X-Ray, FPI (fluorescent particle inspection), MPI (magnetic particle inspection). It requires a _very_ low-level understanding of the science behind welding. On a molecular/chemical level.

The welders who take their job seriously, climb to the top, take their time, can read a blueprint, and are professional in their appearance, work ethic, mannerisms, and products do well. They will reach $150k by working on mission- critical components that people's lives depend on. You can't substitute an actual welder for "a welder." They need to be responsible, talented, and intelligent.

Sadly the people being pushed/drawn into welding careers aren't any of those things. They are simple people looking for an easy way out of poverty. As a result, there are now hundreds of thousands of under-qualified people trying to get into a career with mere thousands of openings. The ones that do get in hover close to the bottom because they need the same skills to be good at welding that they needed all along. The bar for welding is just as high as for being a doctor, or a programmer, or any other _profession_.

So in the end, you can be a wealthy welder or a poor welder. You can be a wealthy programmer, or a poor programmer. It all comes down to the word "professional". If you're professional chances are good you're intelligent and will do well no matter what field you go into.

My last shop was NADCAP certified (for aerospace with 5 x-ray certified full- time welders. We had one who only made it about 9 months or so. His welds were _GORGEOUS_. This guy should have been working in a motorcycle shop. His work was just so neat and tidy! But he couldn't pass X-ray or FPI to save his life. He would wait nervously for his parts to return from NDT vendors to count the parts he would have to rework.

After he porked 400 or so inconel rings for tungsten inclusion we had to let him go. He was a _good_ welder, but he wasn't good _enough_ to be working on airplane parts.

<comment><USER96> I don't think I will look at welds on an airplane the same after reading this. Very interesting, thanks for posting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Skilled trade demand varies across the United States. Welding is not a major trade in the western North Carolina. You can jump right on over to the eastern portion of Virginia and find a large number of welding opportunities. The temp agency I work for as opportunities from 13 to 21 and beyond for 5XXX and CuNi in South Carolina, Norfolk, Knoxville, Tampa, and Columbus. Several of these go so far as to offer per diem.. When I got hired I was in initial OSHA training with a guy from VT Halter in Mississippi who came up here on per diem and was being paid 29 + per diem. The skilled trades have a good amount of opportunity if you're available and able to reside where industry is located.

This guy was fired twice for missing work. So that's just a bad sign off the rip. I think welding is being pushed too hard. Every one needs to do their research and see what trades are in demand where they reside.

12 -18

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/26693cff-8967-4b2c-a62...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/26693cff-8967-4b2c-a629-1e645d269310#.XXu3-IvwkBQ.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/e30dd4d1-fe81-4f71-825...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/e30dd4d1-fe81-4f71-8253-4f2690024c5b#.XXu30bUUz18.link)

20 - <USER4>

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/2541dfe5-4f21-41fa- aef...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/2541dfe5-4f21-41fa- aef4-553e819da88a#.XXu3-A8LKmg.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/59ec0ea9-e975-4ff8-931...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/59ec0ea9-e975-4ff8-9312-3e8336b14d4e#.XXu3-JCMfwk.link)

Unlisted, but based on reading 20+. Mostly 5XXX, CuNi, etc.

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/cf1967b7-0e04-4a5f-9ff...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/cf1967b7-0e04-4a5f-9ff3-98934b40ad5a#.XXu3-JP29Jg.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/b3482924-7abe-44bd-b76...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/b3482924-7abe-44bd-b76d-b415c960830a#.XXu3-EVTmZM.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/29c1474d-a58c-4299-aba...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/29c1474d-a58c-4299-aba5-091afa5e08c7#.XXu3-Ev5w7c.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/d5ff023f-c22e-4ad9-95d...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/d5ff023f-c22e-4ad9-95d5-61be36e1e0dc#.XXu3-DmUnvg.link)

</comment><comment><USER98> Not unless your this guy:

[https://www.nboler.com/](https://www.nboler.com/)

</comment><comment><USER99> >To earn an associate's degree, Orry would need to pass 12 separate welding courses, plus basic courses in math and English, as well as more conceptual courses in welding metallurgy.

>His first year at CVCC went well, mostly. It wasn't completely smooth—he failed his required English course, which was offered only online. But in his welding classes, he earned nothing but A's and B's. After that first year ended, he ran into some bureaucratic trouble with his financial aid, he told me, and he took both the summer and the fall of 2017 off from school. For a while, I wondered whether he might just be finished with college. But then he started up again as a full-time student in January 2018.

Why would anyone pay to go to college for welding? Unless it is some specialized area (Underwater welding), you can join the Iron Worker's 4 year apprenticeship program.

4 years of work/classes once a month. Start at 60% scale (16-18$ depending on state) in year one. 10% pump in pay each year so by the end of your program when you have your journeyman's card you get (26-32$) depending on the state.

You have to pay like a $400 sign up fee to get in the union (way cheaper than college) and continue to pay your union dues, however that gets you the benefit of getting on a list to be called when contractors need to man a job.

A lot of times it just takes one job with a contractor where you do well, and they will call you direct anytime they need a job.

There are lots of Iron Workers in my area at least who only work 9 months out of the year and make $100,000 + by working shutdowns (emergency repair jobs) through the union hall.

You can get all your welding certificates without going to college which is what any job requires. Experience and certs proving your welds are up to par.

Also FTA

> It was hard work, loud and dirty and repetitive, but it paid $13.90 an hour, > more than Snappy Lube. After a year and a half, Orry was fired for missing > too many days of work, but he soon managed to land a job at another steel- > wire factory. Then he got fired from that job as well.

> It was by that point the spring of 2016, and Orry was 24, separated, and > unemployed. He was raising two children with his ex-wife, Katie, and he was > living with a new girlfriend named Crystal. Orry had been working hard for > five years, and yet he was broke, with nothing saved.

It doesn't explain why he was fired other than 'missed too many days' \- and doesn't say any reason for the 2nd. This sounds to me like it's more about the personal work ethic of Orry and budgeting skills vs being a welder you will be poor.

Anecdotal I know, but a friend of mine right out of high school got into the trades with the above mentioned path. By 24 (2 years into his journeyman work), he had a modest two bedroom house, wife, two kids and had no issues with money or bankruptcy. He also only worked shutdowns where he may work 28 days in a row, 12 hours a day, and then have an entire month off until the next job. This life isn't for everyone but hey for some it works some it doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER100> I just don't get it. Education is everything! How is the United States placing such a low priority on it!? It is really only a matter of time until we are blown out of the water by Asian countries, who seem to understand its importance.

<comment><USER101> There's an image problem with college in the US, largely the fault of some of the students/student organizations. Like that protest that took over a whole unrelated building, barring an innocent professor from accessing his research, and resulted in the professor being fired for trying to get it back. I hope we can return to respectable academia at one point. Where universities put furthering the body of human knowledge before bending over for their 'customers' who are more concerned with using the place as a playground to push their political views. I wouldn't be surprised if some medical university research program was on the verge of curing cancer but let their program be delayed because the students wanted to do a walk-in over something or other.

<comment><USER101> Wish the downvoters would give some explanation. I left my college with a vague sense of shame over the frivolous protests the student body participated in and the admin/professors allowed to disrupt class/activities/common-use areas. I'd have paid more togo somewhere protests had to be done off-campus or in a designated zone. At least in theory you're supposed to be there to learn.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon uses data from its sellers to develop competing products - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-took-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-develop-competing-products-2020-04-23?mod=mw_latestnews <comment><USER2> "An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com"

Discussion of the WSJ article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22956182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22956182)</comment>


Put That Techcrunch Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.growdetroit.com/put-that-techcrunch-down/

<comment><USER2> Last I checked, TechCrunch is not a definitive indicator of local innovation and entrepreneurship. It's a blog. They don't heavily cover lots of places. That's not the point.

Yadda, yadda, "Go Detroit," etc., but what are you talking about? Maybe you should encourage more Detroit and Ann Arbor startups to send their press releases to TC. PR effort is likely more correlated with your exposure than Detroit being the victim of ignorant blogging.

For the record, I've done startups in Ann Arbor and Detroit. It is getting better, but playing the victim isn't going to help.

<comment><USER3> I dont think anyone is playing the victim. It's intended to be more observational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with you and my company Entrepreneurs Unpluggd is working to increase the highlighting of entrepreneurs elsewhere (including Detroit - would love to get your thoughts on the scene there -> tim at entrepreneursunpluggd).

Personally, I think TechCrunch will be much different in a few years in terms of it's popularity. Right now, Silicon Valley is the mecca for traditional tech startup folks. That is gradually (this is key - NOT overnight) changing though.

Detroit, Chicago, Boston, New York, Portland, Boulder, Durham, Miami, Cincinnati, Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City, St. Louis, Austin....the list goes on and on.

Over time, the scenes in all these cities is going to continue to grow and more attention will be paid. There will be more "TechCrunches" of these areas, and I think the coverage will be much more distributed then it currently is.

<comment><USER2> Tech.li is trying to do that. They've got a long way to go in terms of quality, but they're collaborating with local bloggers writing about startups.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, thanks for pointing them out.

I know the Tech.li team (and founder Ed Domain) very well and they are a prime example of the type of publication I'm referring to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> if you want a blog that covers detroit start ups, start one. techcrunch has always been a silicon valley site, i'm not sure what you expect to change by posting a rant like this.

if you want press, the most important thing to remember is that journalists are lazy. most of them would much rather publish a story that is almost written for them than they would research and write their own stuff. do something newsworthy, do a write-up, and submit it to as many journalists and bloggers as you can. this _will_ get you coverage. if you're not getting the coverage you want, it's either because you're not doing anything interesting or you're not promoting yourself enough. getting angry at bloggers won't change that.

<comment><USER6> You need to read it again. It's definitely not a rant about techcrunch.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. The first thing you need to understand is that this is targeted at Michigan people, not Bay Area folks.

He's basically saying "Look guys, we're outside the TechCrunch universe of big VC money flowing to tech startups, but that doesn't mean we're not on the right track to creating a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem. Keep doing what you're doing - building cool shit."

<comment><AUTHOR> Think nbashaw nailed this. Thanks for weighing in.

<comment><USER3> Nbashaw, exactly. On another note, we outta' do what Arrington suggested. :]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yep, this true not just for Detroit but for "the rest of us."

<comment><AUTHOR> While this is an opinion piece, in our interpretation we did not see ANY of what was said there as a "woe is me" mentality.

Moreso, a call-to-action, and a request to put things in proper perspective, as opposed to judging the quality of your startup against the TC darlings who raise $41mm in a series A. ;)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clarifying. I can see that better now. Pointing the finger (at a news source or particular story) seems like a poor starting point. What are some new sources you can recommend that focus on startup activity in Detroit? I feel that should have been part of the article.

Without recommending a better place to look, that's just throwing stones.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem. Glad you commented. If anything, I interpreted it as less about where to look as a source for media, but more as what the mindset of an Entrepreneur should be.

You have to admit...TC has an interesting habit of glorifying the funding round, and as Gary Vee would tend to agree (see the first link in the article), what should be glorified is the bootstrapped startup that manages to attain profitability on its own.

There's a local startup we recently interviewed (article coming soon to the site) that bootstrapped it's way to roughly 3.5mm in annualized revenue in just a few short years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cannot remember the last time I read an article about a startup, technology, or general science where I paid the slightest bit of attention to what city the company/events called home. If you're an internet company nobody cares where you're from, aside from nationality and its accompanying laws. The article's author seems to have an obsession with Detroit and its image. I did a techcrunch search for my city, and again for my state. Zero articles in the past year. I don't care because it makes no difference.

I do thank the article for teaching me a new term today: "persecutory delusions."</comment>


PureDarwin – An Informal Successor to OpenDarwin - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin/wiki <comment><USER2> Other than moving it to github, is there actually anything new here? They're still talking about the xmas release (2008), and of targeting Darwin9 (2007) and Darwin10(2009).

<comment><USER3> Exactly -- the latest major release is Darwin 15 (corresponding to OS X El Capitan / 10.11). I'd love to see this (or a similar) project succeed and remain relevant, but it just seems to be falling further and further behind the official releases.

(To be clear, I know there are good reasons for this, and I'm not trying to imply that a lot of work hasn't gone into what has been released ... but I can't help but wonder if there's no longer any hope of it catching up with (semi-closed) Darwin.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I fully appreciate the "doing it for the fun of it" mentality. Am I wrong in assuming that is the "why" behind this project?

I have used OS X full time for 7 years now, and I love it, but I never thought the kernel had much to recommend it.

<comment><USER5> My interest in having a running Darwin system is the ability to build OSX things on an openly licensed platform. I know that it is permissible to virtualize OSX on top of OSX, but even that is a PITA and more so in a TeamCity/jenkins/etc setup

Giving what the mingw project has contributed to being able to build Windows binaries on Linux, I'm pretty sure it would be possible to do something similar for OSX, but since so much of it is already open source, it seems a waste to discard the _exact code_ that OSX is running

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is something I've been waiting for. After years of standby I've been working on Arch OS X again lately (fully operational but currently waiting for trademark approval from the Arch Linux team) and Arch Darwin is something I was contemplating to do for fun at some unspecified timeframe in the future.

<comment><USER7> If you don't mind me asking: Other than intellectual curiosity, why would you want to run Darwin, and not just one of the BSDs? Aren't a large number of the drivers still closed source?

<comment><USER6> The kext mechanism is pragmatic and interesting: as opposed to Linux kernel modules, binary kexts are compatible across whole kernel versions.

Also, having alternatives is always interesting. I was also interested in making the core of OS X† have some form of FOSS liveliness, but I've been quite disheartened about OS X and openness (however limited) since this[0] happened.

[0]: [https://github.com/lloeki/xbox_one_controller/issues/2](https://github.com/lloeki/xbox_one_controller/issues/2)

† I do believe that FOSS is very important, but I also recognise the critical effect of closed source innovations, and believe that a delicate balance and synergy between both aspects can produce fantastic results.

<comment><USER8> Strange The OSS kext I use for SMART USB HDDs [0] is also signed, but obviously not the source. You can download the compiled and signed driver here [1].

[0][https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART- Driver](https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver) [1][https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx/usb-drive- support](https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx/usb-drive-support)

This sounds like one reviewer has it in their mind that the signing is for licensing (commercialization) and not for security (authentication).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Darwin was cool until Apple quit releasing ISO files and just the source code that needed a lot of work to debug it and put it back together.

I'm glad to see someone took it over and has a goal of making Darwin ISO files. I hope it also gets an OSX themed skin for whatever Desktop GUI they decide to use with Cario Dock or something to look like OSX.

<comment><USER10> Without the whole Objective-C/Swift userspace libraries it will just look like OS X, but it won't be OS X.

<comment><USER11> KDE is better than Aqua. One needs Darwin for drivers and other subsystems. You can even run cocotron on this.

<comment><USER10> I cannot seat a Mac OS X user, or developer in front of it, and they will be able to use it just like Mac OS X.

<comment><USER12> Try to tweak KDE to mimic OSX

<comment><USER13> And then you'll have a bad copy of a bad copy.

The fit and finish of linux desktops, especially KDE, are nowhere near as good as the Mac, and adding a theme which kind of sort of makes it look like OS X only serves to highlight where it doesn't match up.

As a long time Mac user and now Linux user the only desktop which is vaguely tolerable is Elementary OS as at least someone there with a good eye for detail went through and made sure it all fits together.

<comment><USER14> > The fit and finish of linux desktops, especially KDE, are nowhere near as > good as the Mac

I beg to differ, but only with the "especially KDE" part. KDE is a different beast than most other modern desktop environments, in that it does not try to mimic OS X style in any way.

KDE was started way back when with a goal of replicating a Windows-like UI, with a Start-menu like launcher and a Start-bar like task bar with applets.

It may not be to your tastes, but the fit and finish of KDE3, 4 and now 5 is excellent. Integrated application sets (K[Anything]) with integration into a centralized control/config panel for shortcuts, MIME type handling, ...

The only problem with this is that other popular applications do not bind this tightly to KDE (understandable from application developers - KDE is not the only game in town).

Previously, GTK applications in particular acted and looked like they were from '93 when run outside of GTK-centric desktop environments (XFCE, Gnome). However, Qt has developed a GTK2 and 3 engine that uses Qt and Qt themes under the hood, largely solving that problem when properly configured (try any stable OpenSuse release, for instance).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>