this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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I am mostly talking about the future. My feeling is that climate change is going to fuck up the world in a big way, and AI is going to fuck up pure-mental-computational labor as a reliable meal ticket in a big way. Neither of those are coming in the next year or two, but they're also not like 50 years from now either. You may feel differently but that is my prediction.
As of right now, the data is:
Skilled trades, $87k - $151k
Computer programmer Austin TX, $69k - $123k I picked those more or less at random. I'm aware that senior software engineers may make more depending on area or depending on advancing into a lead role. On the other hand, many other college-dependent fields probably make less than software engineers. Tradies may make more by opening their own company. It's hard to compare. But more my point was that going into someone's house and fixing their wires is likely to remain a lot more viable than programming a web site or doing admin for a doctor's office, in the long term, starting from today and planning for what you'll be doing to have a good life in 2064.
I hope you are right and stores are still operating and there is still food enough for everybody and finances are the main concern. I do not think that is going to be accurate 20-30 years from now though. Again that's more where I'm coming from with this, as opposed to talking about what would have been a good plan 20 years ago and landing in late adulthood right now and thinking through your retirement going forward.
That's where glassdoor is misleading. The best tradies are not employees - they do contract work and you might, for example, charge a thousand bucks to fix a shop's broken window. And it might only be one hour of work.