And unfortunately it's difficult to scale your work. You get paid for the hours you put in, and there's only so many hours. Of course, if you're lightning fast you could increase volume, but that's about it.
I know lots of people in trade jobs that make a good salary, not too far away from what their company engineers make - but the downside is that they work 12 hour days, 6 days a week to earn that kind of money. While the engineer has a cushy 8 hr workday, 5 days a week.
Work and overtime culture completely depends on the owner. I've been at shops where you were expected to work OT every single day. Start 7, 30 mins lunch 12, 45 min dinner around 3-4, then back to work and keep working until 7-8-9 in the evening. repeat. 6 days a week, sometimes 7.
It's one of the few places where people have pissing matches over who's worked the most. Guys would come in and brag about only getting 3 hours of sleep, or working 16 hr days the whole week. Weird culture.
> It's one of the few places where people have pissing matches over who's worked the most.
Probably once the work is not intellectually challenging people need to create a challenge somehow.
In my experience, when you are used to intellectual challenging work, trades feel like a downgrade and becomes unbearably boring. Conversations fall to high school level. However, if you can deal with it and the physical risk, there's money in there.
Trades are probably more measurable, if someone lays 400 bricks in a day you know they have built a wall and can quickly see whether it is straight.
If I write 400 lines of code in a day it's quite hard to evaluate the quality or even if it satisfies the requirements.
This is why intellectual work tends to create more political problems. People know good work can't necessarily be measured so they start engaging in games to get ahead.
Also you don't get to brag in trades that you spent the week removing 200 of the 400 bricks, and the wall is still as straight & as strong, while being easier to repair later.
I know lots of people in trade jobs that make a good salary, not too far away from what their company engineers make - but the downside is that they work 12 hour days, 6 days a week to earn that kind of money. While the engineer has a cushy 8 hr workday, 5 days a week.
Work and overtime culture completely depends on the owner. I've been at shops where you were expected to work OT every single day. Start 7, 30 mins lunch 12, 45 min dinner around 3-4, then back to work and keep working until 7-8-9 in the evening. repeat. 6 days a week, sometimes 7.
It's one of the few places where people have pissing matches over who's worked the most. Guys would come in and brag about only getting 3 hours of sleep, or working 16 hr days the whole week. Weird culture.