Hacker News

I was in the IBEW when I was doing basic tech support for HawaiianTel 15 years ago... making $15/hr, union dues were nothing even at that wage and they rarely ever go up.

This cry of "OMG dues suck" is so stupid for what you get in return. But go ahead and buy more into republican propaganda.

Very true, it is difficult to even find an opening for the training to start the process, the schools are limited and have short enrollment windows that are fiercely competitive (at least in California).

Both have boom and bust cycles. They are different cycles, but they are still cycles. I wouldn't call either more stable than the other.

On a third hand, electricity is just movement of electrons.

While DC is driving electrons down the line, AC is basically just when you vibrate them around.

Anyway my point is the field (no pun intended) may change drastically in the increasingly electrified future. I'm personally excited for more wireless power in areas, and the concept of ambient energy - harvesting power out of the already vibrating electrons in the static in the air.

I think that age started over 100 years ago.

I'd imagine those 300K years they're not just working 40 hours a week, more like 70+ hours. Add higher taxes on those years and it becomes less attractive.

If it was a predictable & reliable 300k, 30k, 300k, 30k, 300k, 30k pattern, then yes.

But if not...

"It also prices out a lot of other better uses for their labor...."

"Projects I work on..."

tbf, I don't think Wagyu cows were that thrilled about their lot in life before Wagyu became a thing, either.

wouldn't the analogy be Wagyu farmers?

I am, exactly right this minuit, trying to explain that I am not able to quote competitivly for certain types of specialised metal work as there are specialists for that, but am facing insistent inquirys anyway.I do clean sheet custom one of a kind projects as a rule, for which, due to AI recomending my company through some imaculate process, I am exploring how much I can charge for helping the singuarity along, though all in all I am glad I have other skill sets to deploy should we run the whole thing into the ground.

> Projects I work on have seen prices soar.

Could you be more specific? Things are still competitive in the large commercial electrical market I am bidding in, if you’re bidding to make more than 10-15% you’ll get underbid by someone willing to accept a lower profit margin.

>a lot of other better uses for their labor

Who on Earth are you to decide what is the "better" use for labor? And do you scrutinize every construction project or only AI?

Is it a waste when contractors build a temporary set for a trashy reality TV show? A factory that makes cosmetics for dogs?

Having someone the arbiter of what is the "right" use of labor is communism. In capitalism, people get to decide for themselves what they work on and what they buy.

There's sort of no winning here!

AI unemploys middle-class workers: AI is stealing jobs from the middle class!

AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!

Nah. If USA returns to its senses we are going to need tons of tradespeople to build all the stuff we need for the billion Americans.

supply side jesus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Jesus

>however, it is never explained as to how he waves a magic wand and fixes the many, many entirely man-made problems we have.

It's explained in the Book of Revelations - Jesus comes back and kills everyone who isn't Christian (and actually most Christians too) with plagues and fire and violence and burns the world down to ashes. And then (something something multi-headed dragon something something Whore of Babylon) a giant cube-shaped crystal city drops down from space lit by God's radiance and all of the dead Christians come back wearing white robes to live there and eat and drink and praise Jesus forever and never leave because why would you?

And belief in this is legitimately a big part of why we will never take climate change seriously.

> home owneer and landlords don't get any contracts anymore and prices skyrocket for normal people

i like how you differentiated "normal people"

>50% of the US population live in single-family, detached houses. It is one thing to be combative, it is another to be combative and wrong. "normal" people live in detached homes

What passes for "AI" these days hasn't successfully replaced workers doing even the most menial jobs. Several efforts have been made by massive corporations to get "AI" to take fast food orders at the drive thru and so far they've failed. While I think there are still some trials out there, "AI" hasn't managed to take humans out of that workforce and that job is so simple that literal children often do it successfully.

I don't think we have to worry about "AI" being capable of replacing electricians and carpenters any time soon and that's ignoring all the unsolved problems with the robotics.

It's nice to have sci-fi fantasies and everything, but in the real world tradespeople are going to be around for a very very long time. They won't be building data centers for that long though. This is a short term hike in demand that just isn't going to last.

Sounds like Elon months, that means a decade of safe employment at least..

Doubt we'll see electricians, plumbers or carpenters being replaced anytime soon.

More like 6 years than 6 months.

So we had our central HVAC burn up, and I bought a mini-split heat pump to replace it, because the HVAC companies around me don't do mini-splits. Apparently they also don't just remove old systems unless they are replacing them. So for 30 minutes of demo work, they charged me $2900 to just remove the old system. I need to install the mini-split myself still, but for now, to get me through the summer and fall, I have a couple window units.

The electrical work I need done is because the previous owner (my grandfather-in-law) built the house and did absolutely NOTHING to code, and inspection found none of this. There are splices in the walls, there is yellow romex being used as power lines to sub panels across the lawn, strung from tree to tree to keep it off the ground. The electrical panel is installed 5-inches from the washing machine... where there is water, and lots of it. There are 4 sub panels strewn throughout the house - it is 1300 square feet. There are random nutted romex wires just poking out of holes in the walls. Basically we need the entire house to be rewired.

Same with plumbing, there isn't a single valve in this house. Everything is plumbed directly from the cold or hot lines. So when the shower sprung a leak, we had to turn the mains water off, rip out the shower to fix it, then re-install it. And that is all over the house, as well.

Don't buy a house built by a family member, even if that family member is a GC that builds houses for a living, because they aren't getting paid to build their own house, and will 1000% cut every corner known to man.

Right the entire concept of a bubble is utterly alien to software people because none of them ever get laid off.

They might if many of the white collar people that pay them can't afford to pay them anymore.

They likely are. However you still need someone to connect the wires to each prefab section.

Things come to be only when the people with MONEY demand them. If you have no money your demand doesn't exist. A society this unequal serves only the rich (whether that's people or companies).

It’s a good career if your unionize ie electrician, plumber, HVAC, fire protection, steel, concrete, and it also helps if you’re operating within the radius of a large city and all the suburbs around it, ie Santa Barbara to San Diego, Los Angeles to Palm Springs within that radius, very good opportunities, and very good living if your unionized.

If the demand is great enough, they can fly trades to site and put them up in a hotel, just like any consultant.

Yeah I remember the excitement about oil field jobs... was it about 10 years ago already?

North Dakota's unemployment rate is 2.3%

> We were told that journeyman union pay in large metros like Chicago was about $50/hr. I'm not sure if any pay differential exists for master electricians if they are doing solo work

Journeyman union pay is over $60 an hour in Minneapolis and St Paul, $110 an hour if you include fringes. I feel bad for electricians in Texas.

Master electricians don’t earn any more than a journeyman, as an electrical PM I don’t care if you passed a test that lets you sign plans and open a shop. Union electricians have multiple levels, our locals use Journeyman, Foreman, General Foreman, and General Foreman in Charge. Each step up is $4-5/hr extra. The classifications are based on how many people they are supervising, but if you’re a good electrician, you’ll have no problem getting foreman or general foreman pay for solo work. Employers are only obligated to pay you foreman etc if you’re supervising but if you’re productive, they’ll pay you more to keep you happy since the company can make way more than $10/hr extra from a very productive electrician.

> Trades work is hard.

most of my extended family was hardcore blue collar (ranchers, welders, oil hands, etc). When they got older their bodies were pretty broken, most couldn't walk from one end of their house to the other after about age 70. That work is hard on your body year after year and it eventually just wears out. For comparison, my father was the typical white collar worker. He's a minor pickleball celebrity in Florida at 80.

> Trades work is hard

And lots of tradespeople do very well. Many of the bigger houses round here have work vans in the drives. Many of them are landlords too with significant assets. My street is slowly filling up with rentals, mostly by landlord tradespeople.

I was just chatting to a retired one yesterday at the station and he said he was going to have an extremely good retirement until he got divorced and she took half of everything.

If you don’t know anyone have family in the trades, generally most people outside don’t even know these jobs exist particularly fire protection, fire sprinkler pipe fitters (unionized), and fire sprinkler design/engineering no one outside, even knows.

If you know someone and you get into it, you can have a pretty good career I would not recommend being a non-union pipe fitter or even working for a non-union company in any trade (except a family business) not if you want to learn and do it right and have longevity and financial security, most of the unionized construction trades usually have educational training facilities thru the union or junior college for their apprentices coming up, non Union fire sprinkler companies are basically like picking people up from Home Depot.

Note: many junior colleges across the country have programs for the HVAC trade as part of their curriculum.

I'm not sure carpenters do drywall, that's usually a specialized crew. But they might do the framing/assembly of the steel studs. And hanging doors, fitting the raised flooring, installing shelving/cabinets, etc.

There is zero wood in a data center (or commercial building in general) excluding doors, millwork, and fire-rated plywood for mounting equipment on. It’s simply not allowed.

Data center are tip-up warehouses with walls made of reinforced concrete, metal bar joists, metal columns, and metal roofs. Any interior wall framing is made of steel.

Homes, not these buildings. Wood's a liability when it comes to fire suppression.

A mason would be doing the concrete work. Metal studs and doors is usually done by the drywall and framer subcontractors - which could also be a carpenter - but drywall at datacenter or any commercial scale is almost always done by a framer and drywall specialist. They headline is using the wrong term.

"Aluminium carpentry" is a thing around here: people that build and install window frames, metal gazebos, conference stalls, custom sheds and so on. These huge data centers probably aren't using the quaint standard data center server cabinets.

Electric utilities are certainly building out infrastructure. It's needlessly costly and slow in a lot of places, but it's happening.

>won’t really benefit the public at large when it’s done

Then the public should make them look like fools and not pay for AI. But if people are paying for it, then they are probably capturing most of the value it produces. Paying Anthropic $20/mo is a trivial cost to recoup if it assists with your work, even at $60 or $100 it still makes sense for many.

It’s also always been private companies doing the building no? Just funding and ownership could be public.

"this won’t really benefit the public at large when it’s done"

I'm currently enjoying subsidized AI usage at relatively cheap prices from these same companies. It's cheaper than a cell phone bill and most people can afford it.

"Or to put it another way, a semiconductor, car or airplane factory wouldn’t really count as “infrastructure”, would they?"

No, but flying on an airplane 50+ years ago was only for the rich. Everyone I know now has flown somewhere, and it's very obtainable. I remember cell phones in the 80s being > $1 minute and a sign of being wealthy.

Capitalism can and does bring the costs of these things down.

Data centers will definitely benefit the public, as long as the government doesn't decide on creating their own monopoly.

The datacenter buildout is just a buildout of the electric grid in a roundabout fashion.

If you are for green energy and the electrification of primary energy this giant wave of unlimited private investment is the best gift you could have ever dreamed for. The fact we are doing our best to squander it is amazing to me.

We have a generational chance to build entire industrial supply chains and rapidly catch up from multiple generations of lack of investment in our electric grid but instead we are going to resist it every single step of the way.