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Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

Plumbers make closer to 40k a year. Some tiny pcnt of them will get as high as the low hundreds, not as plumbers but as owners of successful plumbing companies. But the top tiny pcnt of software people who move into ownership and succeed become... stupid rich. if you compare apples to apples, the wealthy plumber fantasy fades quick.

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Haha. $20/hr plumbers hilarious. I am sure you can't, but please provide a link to this source.

https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Plumber/Hourly_Rate

https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/plumber/salary

When the data disagrees with your mental model, consider re-evaluating your mental model.

The amount a client pays per hour for labor != the takehome pay of the person whose time you're ostensibly being charged for.

*Thanks for the link. So my last plumbing job should have been $10!!! (Not 290$!!).

That's not how labor-intensive businesses work. Again, The amount a client pays per hour for labor != the takehome pay of the person whose time you're ostensibly being charged for.

Revenue is not profit, and "price per hour for labor" != "hourly rate I pay my laborers". This is even true in owner-operator businesses. Furthermore, in bursty markets, "annual income amortized over career" != "my hourly rate multiplied by 40-60 multiplied by the number of weeks I want to work".

The numbers from my links are INCOME, not "what the business charged the client".

My plumber charges me $80/hr in the bay area. Now that's ~50% above the poverty line, but it's >2x the median wage around me.

If only every employee received {total revenue generated by company}/{# of employees in company}.

:-)

Well, either he's pocketing a large fraction of that or he's up to his eyeballs in debt looking at his new boat and his fancy new truck. Methinks you're overanalyzing it.

To the contrary. We have actual data that directly answers the question "what is the typical take-home pay of plumbers". You just have to look at the damn table.

Why keep insisting on proxy variables and anecdotes?

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