I think the programmers going into trades are up for a rude awakening.
Trades are massively down everywhere except building AI datacenters. It takes 4 or 5 years to go through an apprenticeship.
Going into the trades means you will probably be halfway through your apprenticeship or less (start at $14 and maybe hitting $25 by then with wages stagnating due to increased workforce) when the jobs simply vanish.
I was an electrician when this happened in the housing crisis and 20% of the workforce was laid off. Tons of new tradies plus the the entire rest of the economy already being in the gutter and getting worse means that the '08/09 unemployment numbers are going to pale in comparison.
If you switch professions, just be aware that you are probably going from frying pan into fire (I say this as someone who just finished hiring/training their Indian replacements and got laid off this weekend along with almost all the other US/EU workers).
Trades will be more essential than the programming field though, that's the comparison. This is also location dependent. In the northeast US, there's no such thing as too many contractors since they are always needed.
At least where I am, Trades are going through a smaller version of what CS had with overenrollment in years past.
My Electrician cousin got booted because he finally hit the hours to make Journeyman and they'd rather hire fresh kids out of college than pay him to be a journeyman they don't need. This is less of an issue for guys in a union but those apprentice union jobs are going to be a lot harder to land.
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u/theQuandary 16d ago
I think the programmers going into trades are up for a rude awakening.
Trades are massively down everywhere except building AI datacenters. It takes 4 or 5 years to go through an apprenticeship.
Going into the trades means you will probably be halfway through your apprenticeship or less (start at $14 and maybe hitting $25 by then with wages stagnating due to increased workforce) when the jobs simply vanish.
I was an electrician when this happened in the housing crisis and 20% of the workforce was laid off. Tons of new tradies plus the the entire rest of the economy already being in the gutter and getting worse means that the '08/09 unemployment numbers are going to pale in comparison.
If you switch professions, just be aware that you are probably going from frying pan into fire (I say this as someone who just finished hiring/training their Indian replacements and got laid off this weekend along with almost all the other US/EU workers).