The case for working with your hands

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?hp

Good Article.. I've worked with tons of skilled trades over my years in various engineering roles and many times have thought about what if I did that instead of being a choad ass engineer.

A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions.

Amen to that. My teachers said I was going to wreck my life if I didn't go to University.

I seem to be doing just fine and I'm not being outsourced to mexico.

Shawn

made me think of this: http://m.grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/the-philosophy-of-mike-rowe-dirty-jobs/6988/page1/

as an A/V tech.. I am caught between those two worlds. Nothing I really do has a concrete impact on the world around me, I have to deal with managers and middle managers without a sense of what the real world is.. and yet I have to use my knowledge and hands to wire things together and make them work.

I may have the worst of both worlds?

The things I design and build everyday are used to make others a fortune but can be destroyed by the application of a single magnet applied to the storage media. You can't touch them, really see them and the elegance of what they are and how they work is lost on almost everyone.

The things I build in my garage are tangible items that took the same level of thought, preparation and work to bring to life and seem more monumental (to me anyway) in every way... but they seem to have the opposite effect on fortunes. Sad really.

Trans_Maro wrote: A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Amen to that. My teachers said I was going to wreck my life if I didn't go to University. I seem to be doing just fine and I'm not being outsourced to mexico. Shawn

Just wondering, what is it that you do?

I am in a similar situation, and wonder sometimes if i really didnt make the right decision...

Well, I spent eight years as an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer, made about 38K a year at that. Got tired of little pay for lots of stress and went to work in a tool repair shop.

I'm the shop foreman and I get about 46K per year now, way better than fixing airplanes, no stress and I'm very good at what I do. It's hard to turn small repair jobs fast enough to make money but if you're fast, there's cash to be had.

Lately there's been a fair bit of B.S. going on at work and I'm thinking of leaving to start my own shop now. Sort of in the initial planning stages now.

I work on classic cars and hobby racers on the side and I've got enough work that I'm thinking of starting my own auto shop. The local race shop is backed up about 2 months so there's definately some room for competition.

I've wondered if I made the right decision more than once. Then I think how many guys sitting in cube farms would love to get out and wander around an airstrip, get to touch/ride in/fly some of the planes I've been in (Who wouldn't want a ride in a B-17?). How many guys stuck in an office would love to run a jackhammer or a bobcat just for the hell of it?

I get to do that stuff every day and you know what? I've never thought "Gee, I bet cold-calling prospective customers would be fun" or "Wow, sitting in a cube all day pushing paper sounds like a blast!"

Think about it, I get PAID to play with nail guns, powder actuated fastening tools, jack hammers etc all day long.

Sometimes any job gets you down but look at it through someone elses eyes.

Plus, repairing things tends to be a bit more recession-proof than some jobs.

Shawn

I've done the office job thing and it sucks.

I'm hoping that as a mechanical engineer I can have my foot in both worlds. Supposedly the job I will be starting on Tuesday will involve design as well as construction, testing and on-site work.

Great article.

Fantastic article. I've often thought about the sense of accomplishment I've felt when completing something around my home, or mucking out stalls vs the burned-out, detached sense of emptiness after several cramped hours at the computer, firing off my work into the ether never to be seen (by me) again...

One of the first real jobs I had was installing drainage lines and catch basins in what would be the parking lot of a huge mall that was going in. While I liked setting and checking the grades and elevations, I wasn't crazy about jumping in and out of the trenches(some were scary deep)to lay pipe, until the old timer I was working with told me " kid, we're just like doctors....we get to bury all of our mistakes". I never looked at doing ditch work the same, and actually take a bit of pride when I travel around and can point to various structures that I was a part of.

No matter where you stand the grass seems a little greener on the other side .

footinmouth wrote: No matter where you stand the grass seems a little greener on the other side .

Quoted for Truth.

Trans_Maro wrote: I've never thought "Gee, I bet cold-calling prospective customers would be fun"

That is what I do for a living. LOL

Seriously, I live in a neighborhood that has more union blue collar workers that us white collar guys and if you add their overtime, I know they make a killing compared to us white collar stiffs that work that overtime for free.

And they don't do any cold calling either...

I tried sales... I sucked at it. I also tried a desk job doing inventory control. All I got was fat.

at least in theatre and A/V I am on my feet and usually doing something.. unless I have to deal with idiot directors or paperwork.

it does not help that I make a LOT of money per hour... more so than the nation average. Our union scale is number 3 in the nation behind Local 1 in NYC and 3 in Chicago

I was talked out of going to a vocational school by my H.S. Guidence counselor who kept saying i was too smart to work with my hands. He convinced my parents that if I really thought I wanted to work with cars, which of course I didn't because that would be stupid, I should get an ME degree, even though I had just scraped by in math for four years. I drooped/failed out after a year and a half and after floundering around for a little while I was lucky to find a home with NYC transit, who will hire people with no skills, train them. and pay them decent money.

Amen. Get me drunk and ask me what I think about vocational programs. I wish someone in high school, or even middle school, would've grabbed me and said "You don't seem interested in any of this crap. You're probably not going to go to college. You're pretty creative and a decent problem solver. Let's get you into some kind of program to teach you the skills to make money straight out of high school."

That would've been nice. Instead, I got the typical gov't. school "You'll all be doctors and lawyers and engineers and I.T. pro's" garbage...which just made me even more bummed, and less interested in the useless rote learning.

Absolutely loved the article. Thanks.

The biggest problem with the tech schools is that they don't seem to be teaching diagnostic skills.

I went through an apprenticeship right out of high school instead of going to tech school. Got my ticket in the same amount of time but I was making money, not owing it.

We hired two guys straight out of tech school and all we got were part-changers. They didn't bother to figure out what caused the problem, just replaced the broken part. I've got a guy working for me right now that does the same thing and it's aggravating.

They treat the symptom, not the problem.

This is part of why I want my own shop with just me working it. If I have to re-do someone's work, it'll be my own fault.

Shawn

i agree that we too often push into college people who either aren't suited or aren't ready. not everyone needs to go to college, and certainly not everyone needs to go right away. i was one of those people; i wasn't nearly ready for college when i graduated HS.

but.

just b/c you're not a "craftsman," or an "artisan," or don't go home with grease under your fingernails at the end of the day doesn't mean: A) you do not produce anything of value; B) you don't work hard; or C) you're unhappy in your work.

shawn, i would argue that the school wasn't the problem, but rather the mindset of those two kids. they're representative of a lot of people (and societies) these days. thought is hard; it's easier to perform rote tasks and leave the problem-solving to someone else (while, of course, getting paid like a problem-solver).

solving problems rather than symptoms requires more energy and effort, and the payoff always seems too remote to warrant it.

The service advisor is a salesman first and foremost. There, I've gone and said it.

Still and all, the most satisfaction I get out of this job is NOT numbers but happy customers. I figger if they leave happy and their car is fixed, I have accomplished something. While that's not bad at all, I get more true satisfaction out of bringing something back to life or improving it. Others are different; I have a co worker who measures his success strictly by his paycheck and he is more than willing to at least bend the concept of morality to accomplish that.

Our society, through movies etc places more value on the so called 'professional' than the blue collar worker. I personally think that's backwards; Mike Rowe's 'Dirty Jobs' shows that those who do get grease under their nails etc. are at least as valuable (and some would say more valuable) to society than the so called professional.

Let me put it this way: if all the garbage men and all the lawyers in a given city went on strike on the same day, who do you think would be missed first?

+1 on great article. Spent 9 years as a garbage man, when they don't come people get MAD. Made 60k a year doing it too.

One of the biggest things I am worried about going into mechanical engineering is that I'll end up with a desk job. Thank god it has a motorsports concentration, I hope I can end up on a team like Redbull Racing.

I'd be really happy working at a high end shop. The kind that R&Ds their own performance parts.

Thanks for this. I've been going down the wrong career path for a while. I know I have been, but I didn't know what to do about it. That article puts into perspective what I've been thinking for the past several months.

Amen. I have been saying the same things for years. Just on Friday some co workers and I were talking about what we would do if we won the lottery, my response was I would go teach at a trade school. My co-workers are now convinced I realy am crazy. I have the skills and back ground, why not teach young people to make a living? Alot of the people I know who graduated from "real" colleges are not working in the fields there degees are in. I am a tradesman, I work with my hands, I have a technical degree, I have very good job security, I get paid very well for these things.

I wish this line of thinking occurred to me when I was finishing high school. The college-to-job career path was so ingrained that an alternative didn't even exist in my mind, even though I had no idea what I was going to study, since I had no idea what I wanted to do in life. There was no other way to do it.

So I flunked/dropped out of two private colleges in two different states before realizing it wasn't working. I thought I was the problem, and was beating myself up over not succeeding. For some reason - divine intervention of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, perhaps - I enrolled in culinary school, which, despite the curricular machinations to the contrary, is a trade school. I realized I didn't just love food and cooking, but I loved working with my hands. Hard work. Longs hours. Hazardous work. It's great.

Now, after a hiatus from the food industry (too many irrational people in charge), during which time I've worked in a motorcycle shop and am currently working with a good friend doing rehab and construction, I realize that for me, the nature of the work almost doesn't matter. It's the act of working that's fulfilling.

The best line from Crawford's article sums it up nicely. "The work is sometimes frustrating, but it is never irrational." That's a rare thing in life, and I think it's why I embrace straightforward trades so wholly.