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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

I actually think it would be fun to "retire" and go to trade school to become an electrician. Not forever, just long enough to learn the trade. I practically have an EE degree, but since I only ever worked with low voltage, mostly digital circuits I still have poor electrical intuition for things like residential AC.

Realistically though, I think my secondary post-retirement career will end up being a teacher of some sort (high school or community college -- I'm mainly interested in teaching, not research, so university is largely out of the question).

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The amount of knowledge you need for residential is minimal, there is only one voltage (ok maybe multiple phase) and you should only have to think of load per circuit. Don't know what kind of intuition you really need for new install.

A lot of the knowledge is just practical stuff like knowing how to correctly use a wire nut, where to buy the best brands of equipment for good prices, and lots of rules of thumb. The other half is code. The code can be surprisingly complex. There are all sorts of things to know like how much you can legally stuff in a junction box.

I have an EE degree but find there is little overlap between that knowledge and electrical work.

Being an electrician sounds great until it's the middle of summer and you have to go in an attic or under a trailer.

You could just not take jobs like that. It sounds like a semi-retirement job means you'd be financial stable enough to not need to take every request you get.

I'm not sure what electrician work you think you'd end up doing that doesn't involve some kind of shitty situation, aside from maybe some types of new construction. On top of that, AFAIK in the US, to become an electrician you need to start out as an apprentice working under a journeyman or master. Which means you get the shit jobs (sometimes literally, like septic wiring).

Leaving aside problems with heat, it really helps to be small. One of our electricians was about 5' 2" and previously served on submarines in the US Navy. Another job where being of small stature is a benefit.

A plumber can be similar. In a craw space, I've soldered a coupler where I couldn't get the torch to light in the small space I had. Yep, there wasn't enough oxygen to sustain combustion.

Yikes. Here in California in addition to size of the space, you really don't want to be there if the ground moves. (Which fortunately is very rare.)

What do you mean by "practically have an EE degree?"

I have a computer engineering degree which requires all the electrical engineering core classes but swaps out some EE electives for CS electives

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