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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

In addition to the inherent physical nature of the work, another problem is working for small businesses that fly under the radar of OSHA and other regulations. Also, family owned businesses don't have a "normal" career advancement process unless you belong to the family.

When people come to work on my house, I've noticed that everybody who is around my age (58) is hobbling and broken.

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On the other hand the family sized ones do jobs that aren't economically viable for a large unionized one because of too much overhead. The difference between a large construction company and a small one remodeling your home can be in the five figures. I think it's not fair to say that a family one lacks career advancement, it's like saying that a small web development shop doesn't have the same career advancement opportunities as Microsoft. It doesn't mean that working for a small shop is a dead end job. In reality an experienced tradesman is always in high demand by larger firms or has the ability to be an independent contractor, regardless of where he started. In large cities a licensed plumber or electrician can make six figures and trying to get them to come out to your house can take weeks because they're so busy. The independent nature of the work makes it very resistant to national franchises, and different start ups have tried to make "uber-like" services for contracting tradesmen, Amazon has tried upselling "pro" installation services but nobody's been able to really centralize it yet.

> The difference between a large construction company and a small one remodeling your home can be in the five figures.

I work by myself, for myself, and I'm able to charge much less than most simply because I have almost no overhead and almost everything goes in my pocket. I don't need to pay for a building lease, employees, company vehicles, etc. But it'll take me a week to do what those other companies can do in a day.

I hope you experiment with raising your prices from time to time.

Indeed, I just recently raised them.

Oof, the flaky radar of regulatory agencies... I wonder if it's the same in other comparable countries -- not just OSHA, but all DOL enforcement broadly is just such a joke in the US that it seems reasonable to expect almost any random place might be doing better.

I've been fortunate in finding a remodeling contractor that hires people who know what they are doing and pays them minimum of $30/hr and is insured/licensed. So far most of them have done excellent work. Some are purely carpenters, some are mostly painters, some have multiple skills. I talk with them and most could work for large construction companies building hotels and apartments (lots of that going on here) but prefer working 40 hr weeks working on people's homes. The carpenter (now retired) did a bunch of work in my house and was amazing to watch.

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