Anon is 23
(midwest.social)
🍹Early to RISA 🧉
GreentextHonestly, if you're in this situation, and you have any interest at all in education, or just think it wouldn't drive you mad, look into substitute teaching. In my area the only requirement to be a substitute is to have any bachelor's degree and to be able to pass a very rigorous background check. (Think fingerprinting.) I'm currently exploring a mid-career transition to K12 teaching, and I'm planning on doing a bunch of substitute teaching in the coming school year. Substitutes make about $260/day in my district. Not amazing money, but it still comes to a solid $30/hr or so. And there's enough demand at least where I'm at that they often have postings go unfilled.
And hell, just getting out of the house and regularly interacting with people will do wonders for your mental health. I wouldn't recommend substitute teaching as a permanent career. But for someone in transition or trying to get started, it's a great option. It's a very useful way of getting past the trap of "I need experience to get the job, but I need the job to get experience." At least in my area, if you've got a bachelor's and a clean criminal record, you can become a substitute.
$260 a day is quite decent
In my area, the average monthly rent for a two bedroom apartment is $1500/month, or $18,000 per year. If you maxed out substitute teaching, teaching every day you could? That would bring in about $45k/year. And the job comes with no health insurance, retirement, or other benefits. On days you don't work, you don't get paid. Full time teaching positions do have benefits and pay better, but those require more extensive licensing.
You could earn a subsistence living substituting where I'm located, especially if you got roommates. But it's not a long-term viable career if you want to have any hope of home ownership, retirement, etc. A great option for those in transition, but not a career.
I was going to say lol, that's double the average wage in my city
Although TBF it probably isn't an every day kind of thing.
DO NOT BECOME A MECHANIC
We have come to the point where me must accept that it is normal for people to spend their early 20s smoking weed and masturbating
was it ever not normal for people from middle class and upper middle class families to do that?
The social contract has been destroyed. Time to get the pitchforks!
If mechanically inclined, consider FAA Airframe and Powerplant mechanic. You'll never want for work the wages are great and there's contracting opportunities all over the world. Really the worst best part is that the defense and "war" sector of aircraft work does pay the best.
Idk if mechanic is a great job with EVs and all the internal tech cars have, but hvac, plumbing, welding, etc will always be in need.
EVs actually tend to use fewer ECU modules than IC vehicles - even Hybrids are driving a trend towards mechanical and electrical simplicity.
The IC manufacturers are fighting repairability tooth and nail, but the only ones who can afford their new shit are the last people who would embrace being locked-in to dealer repairs.
All that, and the dealerships/service-centers will always require mechanics, as the manufacturers themselves will always prefer to be able to fix and re-sell used cars.
I feel so sad for the younger people. At least companies seem to be hiring again, people are getting cold calls. I told my son not to go to college, he'll just become a debt slave.
My advice would be to find any entry level position at a company that does tuition reimbursement. Call centers often do this so they can hire from within to avoid paying market rates.
I got my career start as a customer service rep and ended up a senior IT engineer, and got my IT degree in the process, of which they covered 2/3. That's why I didn't mind being paid 50% market average.
My second piece of advice is to get your basics at a community college. Substantially lower costs, smaller class sizes, and the exact same classes as a university. Just make sure the desired university accepts the credits, but there's often agreements between universities and near by CCs. If you get your associates, some universities have scholarships for that.
Although if you're interested in IT, certs are a better use of money. A degree shows knowledge of theory, but many certs show technical knowledge.
What's wrong with being a mechanic?
Probably just that he's already spent 4 years getting a bachelor's degree and only now finds out it's insufficient to land a job and now he has to do more school and cross his fingers that improves his job-seeking situation. (It should, but so should a bachelor's degree.)
Honestly, "what's wrong with a master's degree" is almost as good a question, except that it would likely require going into more debt than trade school would.
Mechanics also have the cost problem. A good mechanic will have to put an amount of money into tools that is comparable to the cost of a university degree. A career mechanic will spend tens of thousands on their tools.
and then he gets those degrees and finds out those degrees don't get him jobs either.
I graduated into Bush's recession, so I went to get a PhD in education. They pay you a small wage to do research, guaranteed for 5 years in my program. Graduated that into a healthy economy that... old professors weren't willing to retire from. Finally give up after several second place rejections and take a simple adjunct professor job just in time for the pandemic, cutting my classes to a third.
But hey, at least I didn't get that job at NCES; Trump 2.0 royally fucked all those education PhD federal jobs.
the problem with folks and their degrees is they fall into sunk cost fallacy. you have to get a job in your field or you have wasted your entire education. oh and if you can't do that, you have to get another degree in another field to get another job that field.
no, you don't. what you need to do is learn to market your skills to appeal to a broad range of employers, many of whom are looking for skills more than degrees. you may also have to be willing to move, or take on other compromises to find work.
but many folks can't do that because of a sense of pride, arrogance, or stubbornness. they'd rather work shitty low wage jobs 'in their field' and be forever fucked, than like, try something different. and they view those of us who chose that path as 'traitors' or something. it's totally absurd and is entire a problem of not being willing to give up 'the dream' and all the emotional expectation tied to it.
i'm glad i quit my PhD and tried something different with my life. higher education has distorted itself into a bureaucratic ponzi scheme run by petty people.
i won't even get into the stupidity of 'useful' vs 'useless' degree nonsense that so many mostly use as a way to punch other people who had different courses of study than they did, despite the fact generally higher education kind of teaches most students the same skillsets, but then again, the students are go out of their way to avoid learning those skills and part of how they justify that is by claiming such skills are worthless,
such a stupidly vicious circle of stupidity and laziness. that influences and idiots also exploit by defaming higher education as a whole based on loud cohort of people who choose to be helpless and blame their uni for not getting them a job they thought they deserved.
That's a fairly broad take that didn't really apply to me. I wanted to impact education policy in the US because I noticed how decrepit it was. I was denied that opportunity but managed to get some top tier data analytic skills through the process that I could capitalize on if I was willing to work in the private sector (such as health insurance or financial industry predictive models). There is still massive demand for those skills.
But I don't do that, not because of sunk cost but because I don't want to contribute to systems I find immoral. I took a job in a Psychology department, which isn't my field, since it lets me teach while taking care of my children.
You are right, though, the research field has some serious issues that need to be resolved. There has been some push for open source materials that people can contribute to, but given the current state of affairs globally, it's not something people can really deal with right now.
That said, a PhD in any research profession is a passion project. You don't do it for money, but for intellectual curiosity or some other reason. Towards that end, they should be stubborn -- they're already rejecting the idea that education is a means towards profit.
Unfortunately, that also means most PhDs are already wealthy going into it (especially those who can actually afford to finish) which means, at least in education and politics, those perspectives dominate the field. It's a real problem when they don't understand how 99% of the rest of us live.
Out of curiosity, which field did you need to leave? Each has their own problems.
I ducked into grad school thinking it’d help.
Then it was a single skill I picked up on my undergraduate that landed me a job. From there I just pick up experience where I can and take on responsibilities of higher jobs and then apply to those jobs elsewhere.
It took me 2 years to start making more than 80% of my graduate professors and 7 to make more than all of them.
This sounds like one of those things where for 299.99 you too can discover this one skill. Then you sell a 2 week bootcamp where you teach people that skill and it turns out the skill is just applying to lots of jobs.
This is me but I'm in my 40s with over 25 years experience in my field. My ex left me hi and dry when she left me and I can't find a job despite my applying anywhere and everywhere that might pay more than minimum wage. I've still got my own place, but the shame I feel having to ask my parents for money is unbearable at times.
I'm currently trying to start my own business, but I still need money to pay bills in the interim. Capitalism is a fucking cancer on society.
Yet folks on my Lemmy post said its the best time ever to start a business and everyone can do it. I do not understand how. Even though I have hard work ethic and a ton of ideas. I do not get how it works.
You can always start a business. It only takes a little bit of money to setup an LLC or something.
Whether or not that business makes money... Probably best not to talk about that.
it is easy.
just have wealthy family willing to give you start up capital, and who will give you money when you crash and burn your business.
anything is easy when you use other people's money to do it. including living life. hence why streaming and influencing is such an appealing lifestyle for so many folks.
Have to say, this is an extremely self-defeating attitude.
Yes, you'll have trouble if you want to start a business that requires millions in startup capital or highly specific skills or hard-to-obtain licenses. But immigrants come to this country, often not even knowing the language, and they manage to start up businesses without any family help or advantages.
The key is they focus on businesses with minimal startup costs, or ones where you can start small and reinvest the profits into growing the business. You don't try to open a car factory. You start mowing your neighbor's lawns, possibly even using their mower. Use the money from that that to buy more equipment. Iterate. Pretty soon you're operating a whole lawn care business.
You can search for lists of business types that require little start up capital or licensing. Research those, find something that appeals to you, and give it a go. If it fails, try something else. If everything fails despite your best efforts, at least you can sleep at night knowing you tried your best.
just having a job these days is you being ahead.
If you got the degree you can land a basic government job that isn't in a major city. Process permits for 20 an hour in a small town easily. And the smaller more rural towns don't usually require a degree and will consider someone who will just live in town.
And from there you can work you way up way better than any corporate environment.
Honestly? You don't need a degree for any of those admin jobs in mid-sized cities either. At least in the US, give or take.
I don't just mean the admin jobs though. There's some field jobs, especially in water (drinking and waste, which I followed) and food (inspecting restaurants I avoided.) Health departments, for example, are in need of staff across the country, especially after the 2023 culling of covid funding. Public service is retiring fast.
Agreed, I think I sorta group those types of jobs as admin in my head which is inaccurate. Like working in a health department seems administrative, but clearly there’s field work there.
Public service can be hard to break into as well. It often takes months to years to land a local government job.
Definitely can be, though I walked into a rural health department who had paper applications. They didn't use online applications as a screening method. Got the job that month. They were also a weird teamsters union department, and probably wouldn't have hired me if I weren't white. So the mileage definitely varies.
(And yeah I processed paperwork 80% of my time there.)
It’s terrifying though. Don’t these people worry what will happen when their parents die? Even if the house is paid off, you still have a lot of monthly expenses.
OTOH, a paid off house is all you need for basic subsistence. If you only have to pay property taxes, insurance, and maintenance, getting a couple of roommates would cover that plus something left over for food and other essentials each month. Not a glamorous existence, but it will keep you off the street.
Remember, every home is a potential revenue stream for its owner.
This is why there's a homelessness epidemic
No alternative than to keep looking for a job. At least evictions take months to years to complete. They're lucky that they have parents to live with currently.
you will inherent your parents money when they die. most likely.
and if you can't afford the property, you sell it, and live off that money with which you can downsize or rent.
or you can rent out the spare bedrooms
Or the parents are in terrible debt too, or they need to go to a nursing home so you sell the assets they have to cover the costs until they're exhausted. For many there's nothing to inherit.
yeah, so those people better get jobs and start saving. and not repeat the mistakes of their parents.
but if you can live at home after graduation, it's unlikely your folks are in terrible debt.
I got my degree in 2014 at 22, and it still took scores of applications to get even a handful of interviews and one job offer for $17 an hour. I can only imagine what young people deal with today. I know it's only worsened in the last half decade or so.
Coming out of grad school in 2024, I had to submit ~300 applications to get 4 interviews and 2 offers for engineering roles. From what I hear, it's gotten even worse since then- companies are posting fake positions to look busy even in the middle of hiring freezes and ai bullshit has infected the recruiting process too.
Yeah.... The early 00s seems to be the last time when just getting any practical degree seemed to be a decent investment. After the 08 recession things seemed to only really bounce back for people with specified graduate degrees.
At this point I would say that it's better to wait to go to school until you know what you want to do, and only if that job requires a specific degree. Anything else just seems to be gambling with loans.
I encouraged my sister to not go to school (against what everyone else in my family told her). Now she's in several thousand dollars worth of debt and has no degree. She wanted to do nursing, but she actually does not enjoy caring for super needy people. It took a couple months of wiping butts in the old folks home for her to flunk out.
She didn't take out a loan, but they take what tax refunds she would get each year.
She can be a nurse and have minimal patient care... Like surgery or other out patient areas.
Wiping butts is usually a cna or licenseless role in my experience....but nursing homes are about the worst place to nurse.
Unfortunately there are a lot of different types of nurses with varying degrees of education and ability to discharge care. Some of the stuff that nursing assistants and even some LPN have to do is pretty grueling. I think a lot of nursing schools that act almost as certification mills kinda mislead a lot of students on what they're going to be doing.
But overall nursing is a great job if you have the right education, a lot of RN and especially APRN can basically find a job anywhere in the country virtually overnight and make pretty good pay.
If she is still interested in nursing, I would suggest a more traditional education route instead of an LPN school. As an RN or APRN you can pick and choose where you work and with what patient population.
Why is learning a trade only considered a last resort? Even on lemmy, I got downvoted to shit when I commented that people should focus less on degrees and more on industry certification, to have some actual value they can sell to potential employers. An electrician certification proves that you can do something. A bachelor's degree is just a checkbox to prove you went through the motions.
Relying on just degrees that virtually everybody else has is stupid. Anon has nothing that stands out from the soup of zero-experience job seekers.
I went to electrical school right out of high school and was an electrician for 10 years. Learned a ton of practical skills, can fix just about any household or mechanical issues, and bought my first house 5 years in. Best decision my parents ever encouraged me to do. Would recommend and also not sure why it gets so much flak
What did you end up doing afterwards? I'm interested in becoming an electrician out of interest, for the practical skills, and the fact it seems there would be work wherever I find myself in the future. I just don't want it to be my final stop necessarily. I'm curious what kind of things the trade can lead too.
Why is learning a trade only considered a last resort?
Because it's not even an option for most people.
https://hcs.la/life/story/2025-12-18/the-disappearance-of-young-people-in-trades-and-how-the-education-system-is-responsible/
Why is learning a trade only considered a last resort?
Because a lot of trades are pretty bad for your health. They require getting in potentially unsafe environments, dealing with substances or byproducts that can lead to cancers or other occupational diseases. They also require a lot more physical work. So of course people would prefer a cushy office job to trawling through crawlspaces lined with asbestos to plug in a light. Not to mention that a lot of trade jobs are not that great paid when starting out, the good pay comes with years of experience and until you get there you have to suffer through all the above. Sure some office jobs don't pay well starting out either but you just sit on your ass in a air conditioned office instead of nailing 2x4s in the hot sun for 8 hours.
People always ask this question but they never consider that there are actual valid considerations that make trade jobs unattractive compared to other jobs.
Edit: Oh also a lot of well paid trade people run their own companies which is an additional stress and a lot of people don't want to deal with that. My father is in trades and he ran his own company and I watched him age 20 years in the span of 5 due to all the stress and physical work he was doing. Running a company, even a small one is no easy job.
Sitting on your arse all day, everyday is equally bad for your health. I'd probably argue even worse, you can't get PPE to help protect you from sedentary working conditions.
Yeah you can. Adequate breaks for eyes, standing desks, under desk elliptical/treadmill, etc... not that most employers will supply or allow it, but it can be overcome.
It's not even close. When I went from 50:50 lab/office to 10:90 lab/office I gained like 12 kg and outgrew all of my pants in a year. Granted a bit of that was stress with my asshole bosses but I believe that just working on my feet a couple of hours versus being sedentary made a massive difference.
you can't get PPE to help protect you from sedentary working conditions
Wrist braces, chairs that encourage you to sit upright, risers for your monitor, a standing desk, etc...
You can also choose to be active in your time off, or during breaks or while waiting for something to load. If you work a physically demanding trade, no amount of elective sedentary behavior in your free time will compensate for the damage and strain you're putting your body through at work.
Also, this is all without mentioning the fact that some people have disabilities that prevent them from doing many trades.
It’s definitely no where close to worse.
Depends on which trade and location you're comparing with. Things vary wildly in the trades.
Name one that is better for your health than (checks notes) ... sitting down.
Locksmithing and similar type trades. Not construction trades. You're on your feet, but you aren't necessarily breaking your body lifting and such.
Yep..... Certain trades are worse for your bones and joints, but not much is going to be worse for your systemic health than sitting for half the day.
As someone who's worked in construction and now works in orthopedics and rehabilitation, I think the biggest issue with a lot of people in trades like residential construction is that they don't really learn how to prioritize their physical health until a lot of the damage is already done. Once you're a bit older you kinda learn that even if carrying that 80lb bag of cement by yourself is faster, it's still better to take the time to grab a dolly or another person. Most of the issues would be solved if we had better regulations.
The effects of sitting on your arse can be mitigated with 30 to 40 minutes of daily vigorous exercise. There are a bunch of studies showing this. It's not remotely the same thing.
Standing desks to transition from aitting to standing and exercising on breaks is the PPE for office work.
It'd be lovely if the US had more requirements for providing better tools for office workers. I've never had a job be willing to fund anything outside of pointing me at a used desk with a 15 year old computer.
The pay part of that equation is dependent on where you are, and what trade you're talking about.
Where I am, trades generally get paid more than any office job you're going to get with just a random bachelors degree. And if you join one of the trade unions, especially one of the higher skilled industrial ones (so like electricians, pipefitters, millwrights, etc, as opposed to general labour or residential construction), your pay will be much higher than entry level office positions, and will likely stay higher than anyone who doesn't get themselves into an upper management type position.
electricians, pipefitters, millwrights
Electricians, pipefitters, and millwrights have really hazardous jobs. That’s why they get paid so well, directly and indirectly (because it takes a lot of training to do those jobs safely).
I’m not trying to discourage anyone from taking these jobs, but they’re not risk free.
Define "really hazardous".
What are the rates of workplace injury for trades compared to the rates of people getting long term health effects caused by sedentary work conditions?
Per 100k full time employees, 1.6, 3.1, and 1.8/year versus 0.8/year for electricians, pipefitters, and millwrights, respectively, vs office workers.
So based on those statistics, I will say that those trades are definitely not "really dangerous". Tortilla manufacturering is twice as dangerous at 6.2, and hospital workers were up above 10. Going from 0.8 to 1.6 is like going from laying on your couch to walking down the sidewalk.
Trade jobs frequently require buying a lot of the equipment and protective gear. Most of the high pay examples include a lot of overtime, and may be limited when work isn't available. A lot of trades don't have a regular 40 hour work week, if the weather is bad for a week they may not make any money.
It really depends and is a lot more complex of a comparison. Trades are important and I think they should have more stability and require less personal cost, although most of that would be addressed if we had single payer healthcare and UBI.
When I started in construction 20 years ago minimum wage was $10, but most trades start at $15, this is for a laborer, apprentices got $18
After 4 years I was 33.50 an hour and still had room to move up. My direct supervisor was making $50, but he had a cash bonus to pay for his truck, instead of them giving him one.
Now minimum wage is $15 and most trades start at $21 and hour.
legally the company is supposed to pay apprentices 60% of the lowest paid journeyman, but they can hire people specifically to lower this -.- fourth years get 90%, it goes up each year. It forces a raise after finishing each schooling section.
I'm not saying that everyone who doesn't get an office job should immediately become a tradie. When you have nothing else to offer, just having some industry certificates is an advantage. Even if the certificate is unrelated to the job. My first job was assembly machine operator in a factory. My boss straight up told me that he hired me because of my Cisco and ECDL certs that I got in high school (for free because Europe).
If you don't get the office job you wanted, you've still opened up some options. Tradie life isn't glamorous, but it pays better than complaining on an internet forum.
And if you do get a job and it doesn't work out, you'll still have something to fall back on.
Of all the working class, they are often worked the hardest.
Nobody I knew that went to trade school was ever able to get a job doing that trade. Granted, we all graduated during the 2008 crash, and were in a very economically depressed rural area.
An electrician certification proves that you can do something. A bachelor's degree is just a checkbox to prove you went through the motions.
Why is it that you think that an electrician certification is less about checkboxes than a 4-year university degree? Or that the checkboxes are somehow more difficult to game? Most trade schools themselves are a joke, so you have to play the meta game of getting the cert and networking your way to a job. You know, same as your university degree.
The fact is, most trades pay shit, and their big advantage is that you get to start earlier in life, and that you have more opportunities to get overtime pay. That can be a good option for your 20's, especially during a jobs boom (most trades are infamously boom and bust cycles), but by your 30's you will get passed up by most of your degree holding peers (and you'll totally get left in the dust in your 40's and 50's).
It's not good advice to young people. Electricians, plumbers, welders, etc. don't get paid very much on average, and the ones who break out from that low pay are either highly specialized or climb the small business/management ladder (at which point they benefit from concepts taught in school as well).
Where are you that plumbers don’t get paid well? At least where I live, plumbing is the default “I want to make a lot of money and don’t know what to do with my life” recommendation. Most trades people I know, on average, make more money than most office people I know, on average. Office jobs may have a higher ceiling but that doesn’t necessarily mean most people are making more. Cut out the top and bottom extremes in pay and trades are definitely the better route to decent pay cheques, at least where I live.
Where are you that plumbers don’t get paid well?
I'm in the U.S. Here's an interactive, searchable table of U.S. stats for all job codes Note that you can dig around the site by state, as well.
It shows the mean, median, 10th percentile, 25th percentile, 75th percentile, and 90th percentile wage, plus the number in each job, by both hour and by year.
For 47-2152, "Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters," we have 465k people making an average of $72k. The 10th/25th/50th/75th/90th percentiles are $44k/$50k/$63k/$85k/$108k. Those numbers are exactly what I'm talking about: a high floor and a very flat trajectory, where the 75th percentile doesn't even double the 25th percentile.
Compare to something like Human Resources Specialist, one of the more unremarkable college-educated office jobs. They're averaging $82k, with $47k/$59k/$76k/$99k/$129k on those percentiles. And they have a clear pathway towards Human Resources manager, where the average is $164k and the spread is $88k/$111k/$149k/$199k/$268k.
Note also that the U.S. employs almost twice as many HR specialists (912,000) as plumbers (465,000) in our job market. And HR Managers are over 200,000 people.
Start digging into different jobs and you can see a lot of the same trends. Non-college educated white collar jobs (secretaries, assistants) don't pay well, and jobs requiring a bit of a certification but not full blown bachelor's degrees (paralegal) are comparable to plumber incomes.
But my general point is clear: the trades have a high floor, very flat trajectories, and a low ceiling. They deal with higher unemployment rates and the jobs are harder on the bodies. The college educated pathways have a huge up front cost (tuition and late entry into the workforce), and take up to a decade to actually catch up. But most of us work 30-50 year careers, so a 10-year break even point is actually pretty good.
And if you want to work with your hands, the educated blue collar job fields can be super lucrative: field engineers, outdoor researchers, even things like surgeons.
Here too. Our friend's kid went into plumbing, he gets steady well paid work with a company plus under the table jobs at least one per weekend. He's raking it in & happy about it. It is a demanding and often stinky job but very lucrative.
An electrician certification doesn't mean a whole lot either. Both are just paper. Degrees with work experience and trades with apprentership time hold a little more value, but its still hit and miss.
Where are you that a trade doesn’t require 4 years of schooling and on the job training?
Most places won’t even let you do the schooling without being indentured and working for a minimum amount either.
They know you need both.
I'm in the US and I never got any formal education in my trade (HVAC-R). Most of the techs here didn't. The few techs we've hired who did go to trade school came out of it with practically no knowledge which couldn't easily be taught on the job in a couple months. It seems like, for HVAC at least, the tradeschool programs teach enough that maybe you could manage some light residential work, but they barely touch on refrigeration, let alone the heavy commercial and industrial refrigeration we often do. When evaluating candidates, a tradeschool cert means less than a year of experience in some sort of maintenance position.
The same seems to be true of many other trades. At least in my state no certs are required or even beneficial to become a licensed plumber or electrician. Those liscenses are all based solely on years of experience. Technically you can become a master electrician solely with an electrical engineering degree and 0 years of experience but if you have that degree then you probably have better jobs available to you.
The same seems to be true of many other trades. At least in my state no certs are required or even beneficial to become a licensed plumber or electrician.
No certs necessary for locksmithing either.
Australia. And yes, you have to do on the job training, but that doesn't mean anything. The quality of the work experience is highly variable, so you could spend all of it learning, or all of it buying coffee and sweeping floors.
That’s just how everything works though?
Not every electrician is going to be working on panels, some just wire plugs instead, people specialize and are payed differently depending on the tasks. Very rarely do you find someone who does the entire trade regulary. They’re not going to be as good or fast as the ones that specialize, so it’s a delicate balance.
Just like every graphic artist may not be being Mona Lisa’s, they could be doing mangas or just heads or something.
Not all doctors are cancer specialists, some are just family doctors, that’s literally how every job and training works everywhere.
Do you think that everything you learn with a degree is used while working? Because they’re taught useless shit too.
My point is that by the time you have the paper, in either case, there is zero reliable proof that you can do either job. Real world work experience (successfully ran a sparky business, or successfully held a job for a few years) counts far more than the paper does.
If you can’t handle the trade, a company’s not going to keep you on, and the next company will look at your apprenticeship record and see your lack of training. From there you’ve flunked out.
The system protects itself. So yes if you have a ticket, you can atleast do something in that trade. A degree, IS just a piece of paper. A trade certificate shows you are competent and able to complete tasks. And be able to stick something through to completion (4 years). So yes, that “paper” holds a lot of information. The person while training also builds up a portfolio that they can use to show to future clients or employers of the work they did. A degree doesn’t allow any of this, or provide any information about the person. Other than they could “afford” to sit in a class for a few years.
To finish an apprenticeship you need to hold that job for four years dude… while working on the jobs that entire time…. they’ve met your arbitrary distinction lol.
Your point is, you apparently don’t know how an apprenticeship works.
I agree with you overall - the paper is important and it holds a lot of weight.
There's also a lot of hiring in smaller companies that overlooks certificates. On the job experience is weighted pretty heavily as well in the trades. If you can't handle it, you'll get fired eventually, but companies are happy to employ mediocre trade workers without certs.
You are assuming that the company cares about training, and not just a source of cheap labour. Apprentices are paid barely above minimum wage in Aus, and there are kickbacks to the companies to encourage employing them.
If it worked as you described (which is how it should work), I would absolutely agree with you, but the system in Aus happily churns out some absolute duds. Just like the uni system.
Also, for what its worth, many uni degrees include a year of paid internship, but there are similar issues that allow duds to sail through there as well.
Depends on where you are in the world. Here you have to have a portfolio and working experience among other qualifications before you can take the assessment. You're not an electrician until you're on the register after all that.
A bachelor's degree is just a checkbox to prove you went through the motions.
That really depends on the program. A general studies BA from a correspondence school might not indicate much, but a BS in the focus of a highly specialized university does.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a skilled trade.
That said historical opinion on the quality of jobs they offered has lead to lower enrolment. Combined with an aging population has people aging out of the workforce creating demand in the “labour market”.
When the underlying reason to pursue any career is capitalisms incentive structure and you can see those wheels grinding it gives the jump on the bandwagon vibe of suggesting a trade the ick.
From personal experience there are two sides of the trades.
Do well entrepreneurs who earn a good living offering services and exploiting labour as any good capitalist does.
Commodified labour who is paid a “fair wage” for their skills but are generally not benefitting from the systemic demand of their skills beyond that.
It’s fair that the hand we’re dealt gives us a choice between a useless degree and a diploma that offers a job
It’s also fair that game is bullshit lol
Agree, I am 3 years into a bachelor's degree and like 9 months ago I realised I haven't really developed any meaningful skills. I have no idea what job I even could have anymore. I chose to pursue BBA because at the time it seemed like an easy way to get a decent office job, and at the beginning all the teachers assured that i'd find my specialty during the studies. Turns out, I do not want to see money, count money or think about money, I just want a job where I create something, do something. So after i'm done with this shit, I think I'll try to just get a source of income and work on a game or maybe just go to a trade school later
That's a big sandwich.
Uhh, yea
Additionally these days anyone can cheat and get through college knowing damn near nothing. I think trade schools (i think) usually still require in person testing of the hands on skills.
Be me
Min wage job
Go to college for game programming in 2019, think ill be a game developer
Degree in '23
130k debt
Companies hiring Grok over actual programmers
Still only min wage job
MFW
I don’t envy anyone trying to break into the games industry right now - you graduated at exactly the time all the investment left, layoffs hit, and jobs dried up.
It’s hard enough trying to find positions right now if you have years of experience, let alone as a fresh grad with none.
Exactly. Shits fucked, I dont think i deserve the debt im stuck with.
Me in game dev school right now 🥲 Fortunately I have previous experience and while I'm studying for design I've already been a programmer for a number of years. I'll make it but yeah... Applying for jobs won't get me anywhere I'm gonna have to know a guy who knows a guy
Ain’t that the truth. I’ve worked in games for about 15 years and almost every job I’ve had has been because I knew someone at that company already.
Not saying regular applications without a referral never work, but the odds against you are astronomical.
Fortunately, the indie scene is still booming. If you went into games because you love it, you still have a fair shot at making something you want and finding an audience.
Even white privilege will run out as the planet continues to be destroyed... at least for non-billionaires...
yup, that's my murican right there. and now get your pitchfork and throw over your billionaire government!!!!!!!!!!
Anon discovers capitalism and for-profit post-secondary education.
Could be worse. Could be living in China with even more capitalism.
Could be better?
There should be more of a plan for young adults and society than "good luck," if they want it. The fact that it's basically chaos is insane to me.
Its the effects of the long lasting ageism. We have been indoctrinated to infantilize those that are the most in need of protection - and now when they become legally of age - full competency is expected.
The deprivation of basic human needs and the concomitant necessity of serving capital... These are foundations of capitalism.
If your search for being used (ie. "employed") is chaotic and fearful, that's a benefit for those who might want to use (i.e "employ") you.
It's a feature, not a bug.
That is what market socialism would be. A Nordic model, but with decentralised planning and ownership in the hands of the workers, rather than the CEOs.
Just in time for the EV revolution. How about drones? I hear they're all the rage.
Yeah mechcanic is a dead job. You want to be an EE or CS degree, cars are rolling spyware with a billion chips now.
However, body work will always exist!!
AiEvDroneCoin is the next big thing.
Don't look down on trade schools. The trades are a great way to make good money and not likely to be replaced by AI... If I was that age today, I would be very strongly looking at that type of work. Or something in the medical field.
You're assuming this exists tho....
https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2026/04/the-death-of-education-the-death-of-vocational-education
Personally, I’m pretty sure society is going to collapse (or at least begin to) within our lifetimes. Having strong knowledge of a practical skill will be priceless. Trade school is the way to go.
I just got my PhD in December and still jobless. I agree with this sentiment.
You just gotta accept a job that's way worse than what you got your PhD for.
\s but not really \s
If only Anon could find a career jacking off and watching TV.
I think that's called being an influencer.
Porn film quality assurance
/j
Fluffer
Trade school is a good idea. I wish I had the money to go back to school for that. Just pick a trade that's hiring.
Honestly as someone who spent ages getting into Tech and Linux. If I could do it again, Trades school would be my route. Constant work, no AI bullshit and you can run your own business very easily since your in high demand
I keep telling myself I need to get off the computer and get into the garage and do some real shit. I just really enjoy computing in general though, especially learning Linux. The other issue is that "real shit" allllll costs money. Its free for me to learn Linux all day. It costs thousands to to an engine swap. Even building some wood shelves...hundreds of doars in wood and screws. Plus its hard on the body...idk man. I'm glad I'm old so I dont have to think much about future shit. If I were graduating now I'd be ultra depressed.
2meirl4meirl
USA is a shithole. If op lived in a developed country they would still have healthcare, vacation time, childcare, public transportation, and a better minimum wage.
I live in Canada, have all of those things, does not change job prospects whatsoever.
Do you want to reject society and become homeless tho?
And in the US, you wouldn't have any of those things if you don't have a job.
And on top of that, a job doesn't guarantee any of those things either.
This is not the topic
USA being a shithole is always the topic.
They're not wrong though.
Classic quarter-life crisis. It'll get easier eventually. The problems will remain, but you'll learn to live with it and to navigate the waters. If you're lucky, you'll even find your way.
He's got a real case of the Mondays doesn't he ?
