America's new millionaire class: Plumbers and HVAC entrepreneurs

There is this joke that goes: "A surgeon calls a plumber to unclog his toilet, the plumber arrives and 30 minutes later it's all back up and running. He tells the surgeon 'That will be $500'. And the surgeon replies, 'Hey I'm a surgeon and even I don't make $500 for 30 minutes work!', and the plumber replies, 'I get it, I didn't make that much when I was doing surgery either!'" :-)

But the heart of this is that somehow we brainwashed kids into thinking that they had to be "scientists" or "executives" if they wanted a fulfilling life and a comfortable salary and that just isn't true. If you're unable to find a 'tech job' consider learning how to hang drywall or wire up an outlet and overhead light. There is both work that can be done right now that needs those skills and it can be more rewarding than writing some dark pattern web site that helps a schmuck trick seniors out their money. /endrant

Nice story but I make far more as an engineer than someone doing electric. The owner of the electric business does well but they need to do office work not the labor you see.

I am happy for you, I really am. It is important to recognize that your experience may not be the experience of others right? While I too had no issue making a good salary through the various tech "crashes" I also know many many people who, for a wide variety of reasons, were not (and are not!) able to. There are a lot of people looking for work right now and their resume is kind of thin. Even with 'big names' in their CV like Google and Meta they are finding it hard to get interviews, much less call backs. Easily a dozen people I've known over the last 5 years have moved "to be with family" which was exactly code for "moving back in with the parents because they can't find gainful employment in an expensive place like the SF Bay Area." When they have asked for my advice I have shared that they are not their "job", they have agency and it is just as meaningful to be in the trades as it is to be in "tech." When I read this story about folks in the trades doing well I thought of those conversations and realized that not everyone has someone to tell them this. Fortunately for you the question hasn't come up, and that is great.

I hake known many people in the trades who can't always get a job.

Your advice to people in tech with Google and Meta on their CV who couldn’t snap up new jobs instantly was to go into the trades? Really?

No, my advice to people is always that you are not defined by your job.

I had a very memorable experience at Intel when I came to the Bay Area just as the "semiconductor recession" hit. A friend of mine there was a process engineer and getting laid off. He was super depressed and wailing about how there were no jobs for "people like him" any more and how he was going to end up homeless. Two weeks into his job search I asked him, "Why do you have to have a process engineering job?" and he said it was what he studied for, what he knew, so he felt the only thing he was qualified for. We talked about it some more and I suggested he had lots of skills that were transferable to lots of jobs. He spent the next 6 months as a math coach for AP calculus students and then got a job at an early ISP as an installer. He prospered in that job and from then on 'job flexibility' was more of his mantra than 'I'm a <can do this one thing> person.'

So my advice to people in tech with Google and Meta on their CV who are struggling to find employment again is to ask themselves if they are defining themselves by the job or by what they can do? I find asking them if they have considered the trades has two positive effects, one it pulls them waaaay outside their self defined box, and it gets them to actually think about how they define themselves.