Comment by DrewADesign

A career change that left me as a recent graduate in a decimated marketplace missing the bottom ten rungs on the ladder and no interest in getting back into the software world has led me to advanced manufacturing as a metal worker. I code a little, move heavy steel pieces periodically which is a nice way to break up the standing/sitting but not nearly as much as a general laborer, solve lots of problems, keep my trigonometry muscles toned, am forced to take breaks, get paid for my overtime, there’s a union that the company ownership is totally willing to work with, and when I’m not at work, work isn’t with me. There’s something very satisfying about leaving work with exercised muscles, smelling slightly of cutting oil. The money sucks comparatively so early in my career, but the rate increases more for performance than seniority so its rising quickly, the benefits are good, the career trajectory is pointing upwards, and longevity-wise, it’s certainly a whole lot better than gig work.

There’s a huge crisis in US manufacturing: we’re bleeding craft knowledge because off-shoring let companies hire existing experienced workers for decades, so they never had to train a new generation of tradespeople. Now all those folks are dying and retiring and they need people to pick up that deep knowledge quickly. Codifying and automating is going to kill jobs either way, but one factory employing a few people making things for other factories with local materials is better than everything perpetually shifting to the cheap labor market du jour. I’m feeling much more optimistic about the future of this than the future of tech careers.

I think over the next few years, a very large percentage of folks in tech will find themselves on the other side of the fence, quickly realize that their existing expertise doesn’t qualify them for any other white collar jobs where vibe coding experience is a bullet point in the pluses section, that tech consulting is declining even faster than salaried jobs, and that they’re vastly less qualified than the competition for blue collar jobs. Gonna be a rough road for a lot of folks. I wouldn’t invest in SF real estate any time soon.