The same thing happened with the oil sands boom 15 years ago. Industrial sites were losing skilled trades people left and right as they went up north to make 2-3x their salary. Then that bubble popped and these folks were tossed onto the street before they could blink.
By all means go make money if the opportunity presents itself. I love to see well compensated trades. But be under no illusions that when the bubble pops (and it will) you’ll be tossed aside before you know what happened. So make money now, but just have a clear plan on what comes next.
Yes, that's good. It also prices out a lot of other better uses for their labor. Projects I work on have seen prices soar. I don't consider building the things everyone hates because they promise concentration of wealth and an attack on labor at the expense of building literally anything else to be somehow a big W for labor because a few people get a slightly higher temporary paycheck. Ask the Wagyu cows how they feel about the hand they are dealt.
Oh, so you are happy for them? You do realize that home owneer and landlords don't get any contracts anymore and prices skyrocket for normal people? That makes you happy, huh?
I would have thought this would be about electricians and carpenters with camera's on their heads to train AI. Apparently not yet. Imagine robots (humanoids or something more specialized) building datacenters...
might take a while I expect there's a lot of regulation around using a licensed electrician, that kind of thing needs more legislation to allow a robot to replace it, I am speculating
There are a few Data Centers going up within a couple hours of me, it has pulled all of the trades people away from us. I've called around to every electrician I can find online, or been recommended by neighbors, they are all out of town for the foreseeable future. Same with HVAC and to a lesser extent plumbers.
I've had to learn a lot of skills this summer trying to get some repairs done on my house, and I've had to pay some extreme "fuck off" prices for work that I couldn't do myself.
My father-in-law is a construction manager for a large power company, and they've been expanding their footprint as well for these datacenters, and hiring like crazy to speed up their construction.
He said it will be a few years before the independent trades people become more available.
You will get downvoted by the folks here. They are blind to the fact that AI is sucking the economy dry and making life miserable for everyone who's not getting paid by free AI money. Something is gonna crack eventually, they'll all be dumbfounded.
Before you decide to change jobs - the demand in electricians is caused by a temporary massive construction boom of data centers. Maintaining an already built data center doesn't require much personnel. It's a clickbait article.
If you get into any construction job you need to expect to move job sites regularly. If it is a single family house that might be as much as twice a day. If it is a large industrial site it might be every few years. However it is unusual to work at the same location for much longer.
You are also subject to the economy more than most jobs. When things start going bad you are the first one cut.
It can still be a good career overall, but it does have downsides and isn't for everyone. I'm not leaving my job even though I know how to do construction.
That is done, but it is more expensive so it isn't common. In most cases the trade is needed and busy in their local city so why would they leave to a different place. Trades that have niche skills fly all over, but electricians are something that you need all over and so most can stay busy working close enough to their house to see their kids every night.
When PE has taken over trades, it still is a good option to become a quality tradesman, who can start his own business. Quality = higher premium, high end.
Trades work is hard. Traveling to a far away job site every day and doing physical labor in a building that isn’t heated or cooled yet is the complete opposite of our comfortable office or remote tech jobs.
If you’re dreaming about escaping meetings and annoying coworkers, imagine if most of the people you work around aren’t your coworkers at all. They’re other trades people from other companies who run the range of being understanding and kind to total DGAF about you or your job requirements because they know you being upset has no connection back to their job safety. This varies based on the site and who’s running it, but that also changes from month to month or day to day.
I say this as someone who spent very little time in trades related work before graduating college and who has career electrician family members. Trades work is hard. If you work on computers in an office, we have it so very easy.
Yeah, it's exactly like that oil boom in North Dakota. There was a brief, massive increase in demand for construction labor to build oil rigs, and you had "man camps" an the like. Then once the rigs were built, the employment dropped massively because it takes a lot fewer guys to run an oil well than build one.
There was a high demand for trade jobs even before. Because people have been told to take a loans and go to college to make more $$$ for decades, there's been a labor shortage in trade jobs for quite a while now.
Carpentry tends to span beyond direct woodworking. Installing Drywall over steel studs is one example that might apply to DC construction.
>Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc.
I'm not sure carpenters do drywall, that's usually a specialized crew. But they might do the framing/assembly of the steel studs. And hanging doors, fitting the raised flooring, installing shelving/cabinets, etc.
Not usually, but the same standard framing and drywall techniques work using the more modern steel stud systems. Here are a few that came up at the top of a DDG search you can peruse to update yourself.
By all means go make money if the opportunity presents itself. I love to see well compensated trades. But be under no illusions that when the bubble pops (and it will) you’ll be tossed aside before you know what happened. So make money now, but just have a clear plan on what comes next.
AI unemploys middle-class workers: AI is stealing jobs from the middle class!
AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!
i like how you differentiated "normal people"
They're creating jobs. This is a good thing.
I've had to learn a lot of skills this summer trying to get some repairs done on my house, and I've had to pay some extreme "fuck off" prices for work that I couldn't do myself.
My father-in-law is a construction manager for a large power company, and they've been expanding their footprint as well for these datacenters, and hiring like crazy to speed up their construction.
He said it will be a few years before the independent trades people become more available.
You are also subject to the economy more than most jobs. When things start going bad you are the first one cut.
It can still be a good career overall, but it does have downsides and isn't for everyone. I'm not leaving my job even though I know how to do construction.
Trades work is hard. Traveling to a far away job site every day and doing physical labor in a building that isn’t heated or cooled yet is the complete opposite of our comfortable office or remote tech jobs.
If you’re dreaming about escaping meetings and annoying coworkers, imagine if most of the people you work around aren’t your coworkers at all. They’re other trades people from other companies who run the range of being understanding and kind to total DGAF about you or your job requirements because they know you being upset has no connection back to their job safety. This varies based on the site and who’s running it, but that also changes from month to month or day to day.
I say this as someone who spent very little time in trades related work before graduating college and who has career electrician family members. Trades work is hard. If you work on computers in an office, we have it so very easy.
>Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpentry
https://studcosystems.com/
https://www.clarkdietrich.com/products/structural-studs
https://www.steelconsystems.com/