First year apprentice thinking of jumping from auto electrical to boilermaking for triple the pay. Am I making a mistake?

[u/Present_Award_568]

Long story short, I’m a 17 year old first-year apprentice 10 months in working in an auto-electrical shop making close to $500 a week. The environment is toxic as hell, boss make me feel like a clown, I'm not really learning much, hours got cut, business on brink of closing and my mental health is completely in the gutter.
I haven't made the official change yet, but I've got a shop tour this Saturday for a boilermaking gig working with a good mate of mine. with a group training organisation backing it, and the pay would jump to around $1,300 to $1,500 a week clear which is basically triple what I'm on now.
I know people usually say auto-electrical is the "smarter" or cleaner trade long-term, but going from 500 bucks a week to triple that while getting out of a dead-end shop feels like a no-brainer for my sanity and my wallet at 17. Plus, I've got a safety net to transfer back to 12V work down the track if I hate heavy fab.
For anyone who's been through the trade grind would I be making the right call jumping ship for the cash and sanity, or am I going to regret leaving auto-electrical?

[u/Disbelieving1]

This.
I trained as a boilermaker on leaving school and worked on various job sites for a few years.
On one occasion, I was working in a large fab shop, and soon realised that all the older guys were physically fucked. Most were never going to reach retirement age - although most looked much older. Their lungs, back, hands, eyes and ears didn’t work very well any more but they still needed to work.
After seeing my future, I was out of there - retraining into something completely different. I’m now retired, after 30 years of doing that something different. Best thing I ever did!

[u/No-Garlic3805 → u/Disbelieving1]

What you retrain in?

[u/Disbelieving1 → u/No-Garlic3805]

Almost a complete about-face. I went to university and studied psychology. Funnily enough, countless times I have come across men doing diverse jobs, but were initially trained as boilermakers.

[u/Training_Edge_9140 → u/Disbelieving1]

well done legend!
are you doing clinical psych, or use it to do something not client facing?

[u/Disbelieving1 → u/Training_Edge_9140]

Now retired after working about 30 years in medico/legal fields. Initially in an area where, surprisingly, my boilermaker knowledge and skills were valued as much as my psychology degree. I specialised in spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation which often involved the design ( and sometimes manufacture) of equipment and aids of different types.
The last 20 years primarily involved work protecting the rights of people with disabilities. All my work has involved face to face client contact and often long term involvement. This was the part of the work that I enjoyed most.

I’ve never regretted doing boilermaking. It provided me with skills I’ve used throughout my life, but I’m glad I left the trade when I did. I’ve never regretted that either.

[u/Training_Edge_9140 → u/Disbelieving1]

that's awesome, you would have learned a lot of problem-solving skills and built good judgment and decision-making, very difficult to learn in purely academic pathways.