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Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

>In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We've elevated the importance of "higher education" to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled "alternative." Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as "vocational consolation prizes," best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of "shovel ready" jobs for a society that doesn't encourage people to pick up a shovel.

The reason for that is because the huge manufacturing automation and outsourcing wave that swept the nation in the 70s, 80s and 90s destroyed the association between skilled labor and a "good job". Its hard to make a living building things when a robot or a Chinese peasant can build the same thing for a tenth of the cost. Its hard to make a living fixing things when its cheaper to order a replacement.

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What you are referring to is mostly unskilled labor. Mr. Rowe was specifically talking about work that cannot be outsourced - welders, plumbers, electricians, carpenters.

We're not short of electricians, we're short of people who can repair televisions.

We're not short of carpenters, we're short of people who repair furniture.

We're not short of plumbers, we're short of people who repair washing machines.

Once specificity is injected into the conversation, the issues surrounding these shortages become more clear. Are you going to pay to repair a computer if the newest wiz-bang HP is only $400 at Best Buy or WalMart. Some might. After all, they may only have $200. Majority will probably just buy a new one. But there is currently a lack of labor to address the market of people who wish they could have the computer their aunt gave them 4 years ago refurbished.

It's also more clear why the shortage exists. People with the proclivity will gravitate towards the 'safer' route, being an electrician. We only notice a lot of laid off electricians because construction is in a downturn. But, and here I'm only speculating, I think most electricians or utility company linemen for instance, would not count refurbishing old pc equipment for minorities in ghettos as a viable replacement for the work they currently do. At least not financially.

Similarly for carpentry. There is a market outside construction for woodworking. Does it pay as well? Is it large enough to absorb all of the carpenters idled due to the construction downturn? Judging by the unemployment numbers for construction workers, I would bet the answer to at least one of those questions is 'no'.

The reasons for our imbalances are more fundamental. In the US, things are less expensive to buy than they are to build for instance. Presently, encouraging people to go to Vocational Schools sets the conditions for the same sort of disappointment as encouraging them to go to College does. Until the more fundamental equilibrium are established, we will always be short of people willing to do low paid work. And there will be an over supply of people to do the high paid work. Even on the vocational level.

FAR more vocational people in car repair for instance, than computer repair or woodworking. Consequently, it is tough to land a job in car repair and easy to be fired. Lots of people out there learning to do it. Meanwhile, no one wants to repair furniture or PCs because there is no money in it.

I searched this entire thread for the words "illegal immigration" and didn't find 'em, but surely it's gotta be an important factor here? A helluva lot of the carpenters I see around here are Mexican, and I'd be surprised if they were all in the US legally. If US-born carpenters are being forced to compete with under-the-table seriously-low-wages carpenters in the construction industry is there any wonder that it's an unattractive career path?

In Australia right now, skilled tradesmen are making money hand over fist, and the skilled trades are rapidly becoming more prestigious than the lower end of white-collar work (see the Sydney Morning Herald's "Australia's Hottest Tradie" competition for more details...)

But this will never happen in the US because there's an effectively infinite supply of semi-skilled workers being allowed in by an immigration policy which is highly restrictive for high-skilled workers (who leave a paper trail when they get hired) and practically unrestricted for low-skilled workers (who don't).

> If US-born carpenters are being forced to compete with under-the-table seriously-low-wages carpenters in the construction industry is there any wonder that it's an unattractive career path?

If immigrant (legal and illegal) are undercutting the industry by charging pennies for jobs that regularly cost a hundred per hour, then that is a problem with the industry, not with the unskilled immigrants.

I went to a vocational school to learn to be a wrist-watch repairman. I'm certified by both Swiss and American organizations. So why am I looking to change career paths after 8 years in the business? There's not enough people that have higher end watches that need repairing to justify doing this full time for the rest of my life. There's an Asian made movement out in the wild that I can buy 200 of at $1.50 each, which also powers 50% of all simple non-swiss watches in the world. This thing is plastic, heat pressed together, uses plastic form-injected gears, and does not have a single replaceable part on it. Got a little dirt in the gears? Replace it. Stem is broken? Replace it. In regards to high end companies, it took me 6 years to convince a Swiss company that I would be a good asset to help with their after-sales-service and obtain a spare parts account with them.

If the government is worried about Skilled Labor disappearing, then someone needs to provide incentive to companies to develop standards that allow laborers to get parts accounts with them, as well as have manufacturers of product create products that are repairable. This is obviously a multi-faceted problem.

Another factor in this is quality of work vs. how cheap it can be done. If the people they are doing the work for can't tell the difference between a well built house and a cheap one or between a well cooked meal and one thrown together, those who are skilled will be pushed out or forced to work at low quality and low pay.

This happens all the time in the technology industry... It's a constant struggle and for the most part the only way to deal with it is through marketing. See luxury brands as examples.

So we need premium carpenters/coders/electricians.

You would be surprised by both how many are legal and how many are illegal.

You don't need to be an electrician to repair computers. I would also think the guy who can wire your house to the code is not necessarily able to replace a burnt motherboard and clean out hordes of viruses (because that's what "repairing computers" often means), or to assemble a working machine out of bunch of components and install OS and a basic set of programs. This kind of computer work is mostly software, with elementary hardware troubleshooting skills, so you'll need more an admin than an electrician.

Cannot be outsourced... yet. Do you really think it will be very long before small welding robots scale and weld steel on new high-rise construction? A robot that can scale an I-beam doesn't seem too farfetched... and no worker's comp, no danger of people falling off the building, no overtime wages...

Same with plumbing and wiring. I would bet that within a few decades we will see massive use of robots in construction.

Now, for ad-hoc repairs you may still need a skilled human being, but for new assemblies I think the robots are going to take over there sooner or later as well.

I was talking to a boiler-maker friend the other day when he described an automated device that he places at the joint of two pipes to be joined, gets it aligned, and (it sounded like) presses a "Start" button and the unit moves around the diameter of the pipes, welding them together. No "by hand" required. It's not surprising, in a way, but when I stop to think about it, it's another case where people are being replaced by robots. I'm concerned for the future of human work.

I'm concerned for the future of human work.

I'm not. Afterall, somebody has to build the robots. It just means those welders will need to move on to more gainful employment.

It will be painful in the short-term perhaps, but I liken it to the situation with farming. A couple hundred years ago people spent most of their time just trying to feed themselves, but then we slowly automated a lot of that and people moved on to more productive means of employment. The current situation will only be tough for the people not willing to embrace change.

> It just means those welders will need to move on to more gainful employment.

Easier said than done. Not everyone can be a programmer, and robots can easily build other robots. There will be some room left for human work, but there won't be enough to cover 300 million people. The social danger I see is an incredibly high portion of the work force out of work and out of money (with no government support structure), if people become desperate for their basic survival needs that they're used to now things can get very ugly.

And if we expand the term 'robot' to include simulated human minds, we get into a worse position with "normal human" jobs.

http://hanson.gmu.edu/IEEESpectrum-6-08.pdf

"Would robots be slaves? Laws could conceivably ban robots or only allow robots “born” with enough wealth to afford a life of leisure. But without global and draconian enforcement of such laws, the vast wealth that cheap robots offer would quickly induce a sprawling, unruly black market. Realistically, since modest enforcement could maintain only modest restrictions, huge numbers of cheap (and thus poor) robots would probably exist; only their legal status would be in question. Depending on local politics, cheap robots could be “undocumented” illegals, legal slaves of their creators or owners, “free” minds renting their bodies and services and subject to “eviction” for nonpayment, or free minds saddled with debts and subject to “repossession” for nonpayment. The following conclusions do not much depend on which of these cases is more common."

And of course, those robots will need to be repaired which means jobs for welders,electricians and machinists

I'm curious how much longer it takes to attach this device to the pipe instead of simply welding it by hand.

Also, what will happen when the automated welder starts having issues because some slag got into the gas head (where the inert argon is released) and the welding quality tanks? There needs to be a skilled laborer that knows how to fix it, and it will massively suck if your entire business which revolves around metal being welded together has to stop for 2 days until some specialized worker has to fly in to repair your device, all because no one you employ knows how to weld by hand.

Or it uses replaceable nozzles which also solves that problem. Anyway, welding robots have been in use for a long time so I expect the basic mechanics to have already been worked out.

PS: how much longer it takes might be less important than how much cheaper it is per weld. If I can pay someone 12$ an hour for 8 hours to do the same work that someone making 50$ an hour does in 4 it's normally a huge net win. On to of that, it will probably become faster fairly soon.

But there will be a human somwhere in the chain. Just as IT made business more efficient AND more expensive at the same time. There will be someone that has to maintain the robots, someone who can program the robot to do what it needs to do, etc.

Unless of course you think these robots will have AI. In that case, why would they build buildings for us, vs ruling over us?

I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

Am I on slashdot?

I really don't think machine intelligence is quite there yet (or will be for multiple decades). There is a lot of decision making and experience in those jobs. Robots are fine for the factory, but in the field they lack the flexibility of a human.

"work that cannot be outsourced welders, plumbers, electricians, carpenters."

The company I work in in Spain, big European hi tech multinational is planning to replace 92% of all welders with laser automatic machines.

Laser machines work 24/7, no unions, much less safety cost, better precisions, faster, and way cheaper.

Laser or plasma has been there for a long time, the cost is the thing that goes down and down.

Plumbers-> Now pipes are pre fabricated. Electrician-> Very easy to do it yourself. Carpenters->IKEA

No, people do not need people to fix the TV. They could go to the shop and buy a new one by 600$(in the near future is going to be 300$), people could buy a 30$ pendrive to see it on their computer.

You hit on part the problem. People see "vocational" and think "factory". Factory jobs can be outsourced, but you cannot outsource construction work. We need more skilled labor not factory workers.

While many of those jobs cannot be outsourced in the sense that you cannot send them overseas, they can be outsourced in the sense that you can ship in cheap labour from abroad, have them do a job for a fraction of what you'd have to pay a local, and then ship them back.

If that's true, then why is there a shortage? Labor can be replaced easily, skilled labor can't. Try waiting to ship over a cheap plumber next time your toilet won't flush.

If there is a shortage it's because the government has made it artificially hard to ship in cheap plumbers.

Here (Sweden) the last two times I called a local plumber what happened was that the plumber showed up looked at what needed to be done for 10 minutes, leaves and call in a couple of Eastern Europeans he had in 'inventory' to actually do the work. Once they where done he came back to check over their work and hand me the bill. Shipping in and out cheap labour to keep waiting times to a minimum essentially then becomes and inventory and logistics problem, just like any other, for the company acting as a middleman.

That's true, but he's also talking about the kind of skilled labor that robots don't, and probably won't, do for a very long time: handy man, around-the-house kind of work.

I just had a guy come over today and fix my sink. I was sitting down editing in another room the whole time. It brought home that difference between "higher education" and "vocation" pretty strongly.

I always try to ask what to do so he doesn't have to come over in the future, but this one was particularly gross. But, really, I should have learned how to deal with gross clogged sinks in high school, so I wouldn't be squeamish about it now. It's our responsibility to learn this stuff, because this stuff, and the people who work on it, is really makes society tick. (Google a great Long Now talk, "World Without Us," to see how the only people keeping nature from retaking everything are maintenance guys.)

You don't know how to unclog a sink?

Seriously?

Where have all the hackers gone?

I code during the day, fix my jeep when it breaks, fix my lawnmower, remodeled my basement, take apart kids toys, etc, etc.

You should give it a try. Don't be afraid to make mistakes (you will) and you can always call in a guy to fix it if your really break something. Trying is learning. And, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing how things work in your home.

Since I've been an adult, I've never lived anywhere I'm really allowed to do anything home-repair-ish, because the apartment complexes I've lived in prefer to pay a professional to do maintenance, rather than take the chance that one of their tenants will break things. So my rental agreements have all had clauses explicitly banning me from even taking apart the sink. I suppose I could learn if I bought a house, but that takes a lot of money!

Yes, I've been in that situation and it really sucks.

You can't modify your living environment. You can't just string cat6 and wire up your place.

I think this speaks somewhat to the principles of Christopher Alexander http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander

Paraphrase: Humans should be able to modify their living/working space.

There is nothing quite like building something real. Programming is cool and I love it, but building something real (and that other people can use), modifying your environment and customizing your space is just so damn satisfying.

If you can afford to rent a decent place you can afford a small house. Just need to get the down payment, which is a matter of discipline to save it up.

That's not really the case in the Bay Area... I was renting a decent apt for $1k/mo, but a small fixer-upper house was $500k, which was way out of the range of what I could get a mortgage for.

I live in Seattle. In the area where I live it would take over 30 years of rent to pay for the cost of a condo, and that condo would be bigger and newer (and therefore more costly) than the tiny studio I live in.

Everyone has options, I just happen to like living close to where I work (and therfore not need a car). If that means that I can't paint the walls without asking my landlord I'm ok with that.

My lease agreements say that, too... but I'm too impatient to wait for the landlord. Things need fixin'!

All I want to do is live in a future where robots do all the work, and I get to build and program the robots... But with that said, it's going to be a long time before robots can do all the things Mike's grandfather could do. (Installing electrical lines, replacing sewer lines, replacing roofs, etc.) Sure, manufacturing automation killed a lot of jobs, but there plenty of skilled labor jobs that robots can't do today.

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