Comment by fierycatnet
1 day ago
I've done it with Local 60. I didn't last long. The work is legit heavy and hours are crazy. I lasted 4 months before I figured it is not for me. 6 am safety meetings and talk about injuries or someone getting decapitated was not a good motivator either.
My programming cohort in the '90s were predominantly ex-trades and service and the pay was initially a cut. The work environment and the people were almost a middle finger to everyone I couldn't stand in the real world, and they paid me to solve logic problems.
A large part of the trades is learning how to deal with toxic coworkers or shops, or understanding that you're being worked like a rented mule for no real reason. And I was able to leave all that behind for a moment.
You weren't kidding, one of the first things that popped up when I searched Local 60 was the regional chapter talking about their Death Benefits!
It's easy to insulate a robot.
The difficulty with human abilities in vision, locomotion and particularly coordination and manipulation is due to their arithmetic complexity being high. Modern deep learning solves that, LLMs provide the "interface" for planned action.
From the outside, this process of "solving" perhaps looks like "robots stumble around haplessly". But it's just the same as with mathematicians in the intellectual realm: when the level of ability surpasses that of humans, it appears as a "sudden event" to outsiders, having occurred far faster than anticipated.
There are no "safe havens".
The reality is that humans are far cheaper than robots in most real world situations. The only real exceptions so far are heavily controlled environments like factories.
Where robots ‘win’ is following orders with no regard to self preservation or long term survival.
Ponder that for a bit, and it’s consequences get a bit scary.
4 replies →
Back when I worked shifts I had a colleague who looked like he had 'flu after a set of early starts.
The safety brief is supposed to motivate you to work safely so maybe they need to work on how they present it. I saw a couple of colleagues injured in my old job (EMS) but only seen a member of the public decapitated.
Arc Flash training will get your attention.
I don’t know where you live but here in the Netherlands we always turn the power off first. (Another thing I like about the trades so far are jokes like this.)
Last I checked, one of the biggest causes of arc-flash deaths were linemen turning off the lines and someone turned on a generator in response to the power being off and back-feeding the power through the lines because they didn't use a transfer switch.
I got lit up by 277/480 when I worked as an electrician because someone removed a lockout and turned on the breaker.
In any case, not all jobs can have the power turned off.