Slashdot Mirror
The Case For Working With Your Hands
theodp writes "At a time when the question of what a good job looks like is wide open, a book excerpt in the NY Times magazine says it's time to take a fresh look at the trades. High-school shop-class programs were dismantled in the '90s as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers' in a pure information economy. Was this a huge mistake? A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic instead of accumulating academic credentials is now viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive, complains Matthew Crawford, who took his University of Chicago PhD and opened a motorcycle repair shop. Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, 'You can't hammer a nail over the Internet' (never say never). Guess we all should have paid more attention to Nicholas Negroponte's landmark-in-retrospect Being Digital (ironically, no Kindle version)."
I am a chemistry graduate and I've always said that for a high science, chemistry is very blue-collar. Let's look at the facts:
We are on our feet all day and work with our hands.
Most people I know in the field have burns, scars, or callouses.
We listen to Radio 1 all day.
'course, I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
I know the feeling.
I'm a sysAdmin at a mine and spend 50% of my day 5000ft underground and have my share of knicks and scrapes. (A few good stories too.... Cisco does not play well with bat guano...)
I don't have any regrets with my path and have had a long happy IT career but if I had to start over I would definitely get a couple of trades. So many opportunities to start your own company and thrive if you are good at it. Lots of hard work but the possibilities are endless. Look at the big expensive houses in your area and I bet there are quite a few "company" pickups with construction company advertising on them in the driveway. Of course you have to enjoy what you do, but how many kids today would have loved this kind of work, but didn't consider it because they were discouraged to?
while not in school, all of the engineering colleges here have basic workshop in the 1st semester for all branches, which teaches the basics of fitting,carpentry and soldering, sometimes it is handy to have these skills
So, with an undergrad degree in CS, and a masters in EE, and just about to get an MBA... I still am a shit cook. That's right, I am a horrible cook. I know some of you out there are probably excellent cooks, but I also think there are a LOT of us who think we are really smart, but still can barely make macaroni and cheese, fish sticks, or grill some chicken properly.
Why has my entire educational experience skipped out on something so basic. Yes, it may seem that it is basic and a common activity that we should "just know how", but really.. sometimes you just need instruction on vital things that you wouldn't otherwise grasp. (such as hygene, or balancing your bank accounts, or.. maybe social etiquite or public speaking)
They make us great engineers, but they completely skip over the parts of how to be good, well rounded human beings.
A skilled trade is an excellent way to make a good living; and is a way to do what you enjoy. cars need to be repaired, plumbing fixed, houses built and repaired. Those skills are both valuable and not easily replicated if you do quality work.
Of course, many trades require a pretty solid eduction as well. Mechanics once needed mechanical aptitude and the ability to work well with their hands; today it requires that plus an understanding of computers and advanced electronics / electrical theory.
Unfortunately, people tend to look down as anything not requiring a college education as lesser work.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
there are Industrial training institutes and different colleges have programmes where you can get a diploma in these trades
wouldnt that be better than a high school class?
"the latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries."
No, no they won't. Sure it's not as easy to push manual labor elsewhere - that doesn't mean it can't happen: Look at the engineering and textiles industries in Britain. Sure, there were lots of them, and their staff did work "in person and on site" - but that didn't stop the industry being screwed over by workhouses in distant countries that could produce the goods for cheaper. While the British equivalents may well have 'survived' to some extent, the shops and companies wanting the goods produced weren't willing to pay the cash to produce in Britain, and bought their goods elsewhere (Chinese textile mills, for example). Voila: your job is gone, whether you're manual labor or working via a wire.
Before I was in IT I gathered work experience in running a cash register, detailing luxury automobiles, auto mechanics, every aspect of building and remodeling a home from building forms for concrete to putting an attic vent on the roof, landscaping and lawn maintainence, fast food, babysitting illegal mexican painters, and odd jobs doing things I don't even know what to call.
Now if I can just find my way to put all of this together like Steve Jobs did with his background, I'll be good to go.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
No one want to discuss the fact that "average intelligence" means that half the people are at and below average intelligence. The idea that everyone must graduate from high school and go on to college is the root of the problem.
A simple example......it used to be you could stop at a gas station and a couple of guys would come out, fill up your car, check your oil/water and clean your windshield. They didn't need a BA in business. What are these guys supposed to do now?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The reason education shifted to producing knowledge workers over trade skills is because those jobs were disappearing in the 80's and 90's. They haven't come back and are still shrinking as a part of the economy. When we had a construction boom, much labor was imported. Our desire for cheap meat means most of the employees at meat packing plants are immigrants. Automation and cost effective foreign labor is driving most factory jobs away. Technology in autos is creating a situation where you rely on computer diagnostics to fix cars. The slack from not having trade in high school is being taken up by community colleges, and most HS graduates need strong math and verbal skills to do the remaining blue collar jobs. Now that a large number of knowledge worker jobs can and are being outsourced because it is cheaper, we must adjust education again to create the next generation of workers once we figure out what they are. The early 80's made us shift education in the 90's, the late 00's will make us shift in the late 10's. We'll have to wait to see what innovations come out of this downturn to figure out what the next job boom will be. Sorry, there are just not enough plumber, mechanic, or carpenter jobs being created that we can all move back to the 1960's.
People who choose to become mechanics instead of accumulating academic credentials are only viewed as eccentric in certain circles. I'm sure the satisfied customers (one hopes) at Dr. Crawford's repair shop will view the situation differently.
If a resurgence occurs in the vo-tech schools, it ought to include some kind of component of entrepreneurship. I don't run a business myself, but I think this would include a larger helping of the academic subjects (a more math-intensive business program, with a calculus basis) than it does now or has in the past. My main issue with vo-tech programs is that they seem to prepare students to be easily supervised, but don't provide much in the way of mobility or independence.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Whilst yes, I did indeed ignore the fact they're talking about repair/service trades, I think the point still stands, that you can never definitively say "My job is safe from outsourcing" etc.
Whilst you can't outsource plumbing etc. what stops a massive multinational company from controlling the entire market? (In the same way super markets came in and killed local shops etc.)
Even though blue-collar jobs might provide some job security in that they can't be given to people far away, that same quality keeps you chained to one community, nervously watching your few vacation times fall away. The best part of working in a "knowledge economy" field is that you can go wherever you want whenever you want. Sure, I have to take steps to ensure I keep my job in an unstable economy, and I have to be prepared to jump to another opportunity if necessary. But it's a whole lot nicer to travel most of the year and do my work from a laptop on some of the most glorious beaches in the world than it is to be trapped in a podunk town all but 1-4 weeks a year.
When I was a child my daddy told me to be a plumber or a Volkswagen mechanic. I did not listen and got a degree in engineering and had a long and enjoyable career in IT. However, I ALWAYS was "hands on" and enjoyed it. I have more respect for the people who really know their trade than for many with advanced degrees who only know the theory. I learned as much from LISTING to and watching the people actually doing the work as I ever did sitting in a class room. If this country is going to recover from the economic disaster we have created we have GOT to start MAKING things again. As most of the readers of Slashdot know being totally dependent on "Intellectual Property" for your existence is total Bull. IP can be part of SOMETHING but it can not stand alone. USE YOUR HANDS not just your mind.
I am fortunate in my career as I turn a screwdriver and route information "over the wire".
I am also renovating my house, an old barn, myself.
If my chosen profession goes away, unlikely as it is, I can always be a carpenter or an electrician.
As I tell my daughter "only a fool refuses to work with their hands".
There were two problems with HS in the late 90's I know I was there. The first problem was this weird stigma attached to anyone who was interested in the industrial technology or shop courses. They certainly were viewed in a negative light by most of the administration. The instructors of those courses were treated badly compared to the other teachers as well. The pervasive view was that that those courses were offered for people who could never complete enough credit hours in academic courses to graduate any other way. This certainly was true for some of those students, Having told my parents and guidance there pleas to avoid these subjects were falling on deaf ears, I know that there were plenty of other plenty smart people in those programs who like me could breeze through just about and HS course except maybe a subject or two that did not come entirely naturally.
The next problem was that they scheduled shop courses so they were only offered in periods that would conflict with the upper level academic courses. You could not take honors English and drafting, for instance. There was no way to schedule electronics and AP physics ( which ironically cover much the same materials ). The entire system was built to separate students into two groups and make sure that they never met again.
Well after being on the college preparatory side of the wall for the first two years, in possession of a 3.9+ GPA, I elected to jump the shark. I am not going to pretend there was not some adolescent neo-punk motivations as well driving me in what I was being lead to think was a radical direction. I could always read whatever literature the honers English group was working, all you had to do was visit the library. I did that, I still had friends over there so I knew what they were doing. I could not as easily afford a serviceable O-Scope or a drafting table and tools. It made far more sense to me to "run with the tough crowd." I could just as easily grab a calculus book from the school library and build on the math skills I had. Which again I did because it let me understand things in my electronics course.
I found most of the instructors of those courses were better teachers too. They had lots of problems the other instructors did not have. The biggest being all those kids who did not want to be there that had been put there for under performing in the other programs. Still if you were interested they were largely willing spend some extra time with you and go into the subjects in greater detail or let you work on your own more advanced projects for credit. They also were tell you when you made a mistake. They had all been there forever had tenure and nobody they could impress even if they were trying except us students. It was a much more honest and much more educational environment if you were as a student willing to participate and invest a little in it.
Despite the warnings from the establishment, shunning for the other prep students, I turned out ok. I went on to attend a good liberal arts college, where I graduated with honors. I never regraded or felt I had done myself an disservice by my decisions in high school, much the opposite.
We as a society need to learn some egalitarianism about knowledge. Its always good to know things. Sometime its more useful to spend your time learning one thing than another but knowledge is never bad. I am not some sorta hick because I can rebuild an automobile engine, frame a house, or any other odd skills I might have picket up. I can know those things still write SQL as well as one while I grow pale sitting in an office chair.
People are generally better at things they are interested in doing. It takes all kinds to run a society and we should value all skills.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I can think of a few criteria.
* Steady paychecks
* Excellent benefits
* No dress code
* Only ever have to deal with cool, smart people
* Don't even have to deal with those, most of the time
* "Full-time" arrived at by working long hours for 5-7 nights, building up comp time at 1.5x
* Comp time then gets used, resulting in a 5-10 day "weekend"
* Unless you run out of comp time, no one expects to see you at the office.
* Cool duties
* Cool shiny toys (my new one is an 8.3-meter mirror - that's bigger than my house)
* Chance of being involved in something profound being discovered/created
Skilled trades may very well meet a bunch of those criteria too. I know there are plenty of top-notch mechanically or electrically inclined engineers, technicians and general fixers of things where I work.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
The trades weren't pushed out of high schools because they were "retooling" they were pushed out because there was no money to teach them. Teaching trades requires expensive equipment that must be kept up and insured against accidents. Teaching IT requires obsolete donation computers that cost nothing and have very little upkeep. If Moore's law slows the donation computers will probably dry up too and then there will be nothing at all.
Too many IT people have no clue when it comes to basics like stacking equipment, safely handling heavy loads, threading cables, or airflow. Worse, they're positively dangerous with screwdrivers, wrenches, or wire cutters. And basic mechanical skills lend awareness for programmers to the concepts of "big bulky modules that you have to leave space for", "leave enough slack in the interfaces for you to be able to put things where you need them", "leave in accessible test points where you can check your signals". And I'd vastly recommend basic electronics classes in "why clock signals lie" and "why you use _one_ voltage, _one_ data format, and synchronize to _one_ clock signal throughout your system". The lessons of "why would I do this as a bulky, parallel transfer rather than a serial transfer" are also illuminated by having to run your own wires.
Like system security, such physical constraints are best learned early, rather than brought into the design after the fact when you've already laid out your circuits or your data flow.
I mentor HS students. Most that I deal with are so incredibly incompetent that I am truly afraid for our society- these babies will be asking their parents to carry them out into the world with no prep.
There are kids that don't know what a screwdriver is or how to use it. Seriously. I had to hold a session on how to use a screwdriver. Gave them a drill with a bit in it and they could not figure out how to drive the screw into the wood.
This is also the group that would intentionally break their cell phones so their parents could pay the 50$ 'insurance fee' to get a new one. Just repeatedly drop the thing over and over and over and over.
I also watched one of them stare at the table saw blade as it was rotating- asked him what he was doing- and he said he knows he's not supposed to but he was wondering if he could tap the blade while it was spinning- if he was fast enough (look up table saw finger injuries- you'll understand why I was sickened).
Shop class, like gym class, should be mandatory for all students. So what if all they turn out is a crummy pencil holder- they did it. Want to make shop more interesting? Show them how to do CNC on wood- that's programming and wood working all in one go.
Right now this generation is nothing but consumption- they'll play their ipods, their little online games, and they go on to college coddled the entire way without a single original thought in their body.
Then again, perhaps I only see the stupid ones.
Here's the speech by Mike Rowe from Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVdiHu1VCc . He raises some interesting points about hard labour while still remaining funny. Just thought I'd share.
No matter what your profession, it seems that working with the hands improves anyone's problem solving skills. Boeing and NASA are now requiring R&D personnel to have experience working with the hands, no matter how strong their academic record is.
Watch this video - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital.html
(20 minutes)
The research linking the hand to brain development is found in the book - The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture. By Frank R. Wilson.
Here's another article about handiwork and education (left sidebar - Why should a kid build a catapult) http://www.catapultkits.com/
In my work I regularly get feedback from teachers who say that nothing has inspired their kids to *want* to study math and physics more than the catapult project they did.
Considering the daunting issues we face as a culture, with Global Warming and the problems with fossil fuels, we need more and better problem solvers in the world than ever before.
If it was up to me, shop class would be mandatory in every high-school, and it's curriculum would be coordinated with the physics and math courses too.
I for one wish every Engineer, and every Mechanical Engineering student had to spend a year as a mechanic. Once you realize how bad some things are designed from a repairability aspect, it changes your perspective on design. I've torn into many a machine, and seen bad designs first hand. Overcomplicated parts, too many parts, too many different size bolts and nuts, parts placed so close together you have to remove 10 things just to change a belt.
The same could be said for any designer. I feel before you're able to design anything, you should be forced to use it, fix it, and understand the consequences of bad design. It would improve the quality of things that do get built.
Is colleges think so elitist sometimes that they look down on even teaching people how to TEACH people how to do trades. My college (Montclair State University) had one of the oldest tech-ed/vocational-ed programs in the country when I joined. The president erased the ENTIRE program and created a "Fine Arts Masters" program, breaking up our shops and labs into mini rooms that each FAM student got full use of, shunting tens of thousands of dollars of wood and metal shop equipment into those labs for FINE ARTS use only, most of which we as a department had paid for ourselves though the auto shop the school closed on us 2 years before.
And what was their justification? Well NJ that year had changed the wording of the standardized curriculum from Fine AND Vocation arts to Fine OR Vocation arts, and since Fine arts was easier to teach in high school, there was no need for vocation arts anymore. The other justification? The US is not a industrial nation anymore so there is no need to teach kids how to work that type of equipment or in those trades. This was 2002 BTW.
Oh and that curriculum change? The next year NJ changed it back, making only one out of ALL of its state schools, 3 of which had programs that dated back around of even before WWI capable of churning out teachers who can actually teach Tech Ed. Now NJ has to back door most of its vocation teachers and even then, nearly half the jobs are being left unfilled with more retiring every day.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I couldn't help feeling that the author was channeling Robert Pirsig. I kept expecting a lecture on "quality" at any moment.
Apparently it did not make some people "knowledge workers"
Now... does that not sound like a challenge? I bet it CAN be done!
The real money in many of the fields is at the interface, the guy who can program controls and work on controls and know all about the inner workings of them, has a job at the manufacturer, but the guy who can fix it, who can work on equipment that is controlled by computers, is often getting a really nice paycheck. Ditto for the innovators who can invent upgrade etc. How much to install an ethernet? I know there was a quote for $10,000 to interface all our machine tools via ethernet. So there's about $1,000 for the conduit and cable, $200 for ethernet. $8,700 for putting network cards in machine tools? Doesn't sound like a bad gig to me. But yet "shop class" would be required.
There are a lot of factors that are contributing to this trend. Vocational programs can require expensive equipment. For example, the community college where I teach physics recently spent a large amount of money to upgrade its printing program to digital equipment. I'd also imagine that insurance would be more expensive for a machine shop class than for an English class. At the K-12 level in the U.S., they're so focused on standardized testing these days that everything else is going away: music, vocational education, etc. Another vocational program at my school is horticulture, and I think one of the problems they're having is that they can't teach large sections, because the students need a lot of personal supervision. Small sections are seen as less cost-effective. I think there's also a heavy layer of class and racial prejudice that affects the horticulture program negatively, because here in Southern California, gardening is supposed to be what you hire Mexican immigrants to do.
Find free books.
Ya, I agree a lot of people do consider it 'mineral uneducated work', at least until they need their roof fixed or their plumbing stops working and they cant figure it out on their own..
Of course back when i was in school, the 'computer techs' down the hall from our engineering classes were considered a 'trade' as well, to be lumped in with the HVAC guys and made fun of.. ( not that i did, but far too many so called "educated" engineers did )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article goes on at length to (rightfully) decry the chasm between work and the management of it, how actual tasks that are useful tend to get divorced from policy, procedures, and presence on the management radar. At its root, this attitude is what makes it possible to outsource to other continents. There's no longer a feeling that management and directing vision need to coexist in the same space in order to stay aligned and keep working well and synergistically. (And that may be the only time in the last few years I'd consider it appropriate to use that management-jargon-co-opted word.)
Since the author is a motorcycle mechanic, I thought I'd toss this out. When I was a young man, bike enthusiasts were decrying the fall of Triumph. That once-great motorcycle company was dying. They sold few bikes. They had run through many unsuccessful models that weren't very good bikes when they were working well and didn't work well very often because they were poorly assembled. It was enough to make an old gearhead shed a tear.
And then a story came out, perhaps apocryphal, that pinpointed the precise moment when Triumph stopped their forward progress and began their long fall. Some time in the early 1960s, so the story went, the upper management had gotten so successful that they started looking like upper management. They were driven to work. They dressed in expensive suits. They came to view themselves as businessmen. Or, rather, as typically happens with businesses as they become big, the guys who were bike lovers gradually got replaced in the executive suites by guys who were supposed to be good at the business of business, guys for whom the actual product was unimportant.
Finally, one day, there was a big, routine board meeting and one of the last of the old guard, who had ridden his bike that day, showed up to the meeting room in full leathers. He was informed that such was not appropriate. A rule that "proper dress," specifically meaning "no leathers," was required at all business meetings. The break between management and the iron on the road was now complete. Management had been outsourced to people who were distant (mentally, emotionally, and philosophically, if not physically) from the actual work.
At that point, Triumph was toast. It took years for the motorcycle brand to die. I remember one of the (perhaps the very) last bike they produced, a brilliant triple in sporting trim. I remember thinking it was a death rattle, the last gasp of a company that didn't know what in the bloody hell to do to stay alive and had, in desperation, actually let the engineers and bike lovers have a crack at producing something. It was far too little, far too late.
What I'm saying is the same as, in part, the article. Not only is working with your hands a good thing, when any company is run by people who are *incapable* of hands-on work or, at minimum, hands-on appreciation of that work - the company is doomed.
How do you outsource the electrical and plumbing of a building project in your city to India?
HTH.
Deleted
I used to be a self taught IT technician. Nothing overly high reaching, but enough to manage a network and look after pc's. The long and the short of it was the job burnt me out. With no official quals under my belt I had a hard time getting another job in the industry (circa 2004). So I decided to become an electrical apprentice with the local government supplier (distribution).
Best thing I've done:
PROS:
Pay's not too bad as a second year adult apprentice
working conditions are good
I haven't worked hard since I started, no pressure.
I can still utilise my IT skills in scada and maybe later on in the network control side of things.
The pay is as a first year tradesman out of their time is about the same as a recent graduate (and can go up from there)
Awesome job security (everyone needs power)
Working is still challenging and interesting.
Out and about without a boss breathing down my neck
Scope for further study
Cons:
The risk goes up, but the company is *very* safety conscious
Some occasionally filthy environments
Attitude exists that you know nothing because your 'just the apprentice'
All in all, having the general IT skills gives me an edge in an industry where some tradies still struggle to use a computer (usually the older ones, but some of the younger ones aswell).
Think about it, it might be worth in your area/state/country or then again YMMV
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao
I came from a relatively poor family, but was blessed with parents who were hard-working and skilled in many 'manual' areas. Whilst other kids were playing at the week-end, I was helping my Dad grow vegetables, fix the car, wire the house, whatever. Evenings after school were spent helping my mother cook, repair clothes, clean the house...
I'm now doing OK, (thanks to them pretty much forcing me to get a decent education), and live in an expensive area. I'm in much demand when my 'professional' neighbours cannot get the car started, the lights to work, the sink unblocked, whatever...they're sick of paying a fortune to wait hours for some idiot to come out and half-do something I can fix for free in 5 minutes.
Let's stop blaming schools and education systems - parents have a role to play too! (I'm trying to teach my kids practical skills too).
... and they get to have a van full of tools
I wish I'd never gone to university - I regretted the first time and the second time - I should have been a plumber, met a not-so-nice girl and settled down to a real life.
Instead I play at being an IT consultant and post to Slashdot.
- Bah
While I'll wholeheartedly agree that there are too many physically incompetent people out there who have no clue how to change their own car's oil and then bitch and moan when Jip-me Lube screws them over for stuff they didn't need, being a skilled laborer does not lead to becoming a captain of industry. Quite the contrary, IMHO. What's needed is FAR FAR FAR less glorification of athletics and deification of a complete lack of musical talent and MUCH more encouragement towards scientific and engineering creativity for it's the latter that solves problems and builds strong economies. IMHO, the trend towards a service-based economy is troubling. To that end, I'd encourage a campaign to get the entire FIRST robotics season on mainstream television. Surely we can all live without yet another pointless reality TV series that glorifies the slimy, the manipulative, the talentless and elevates true brainpower to rock-star status.
K-12 is reserved for learning the CORE curriculum and should be for all students. Skip the shop. Or at the least, allow it only in the last year. Personally, I think that shop should be done in Community colleges. Have a person continue for another 1-2 years and make the curriculum work for young AND old adults.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I always thought the US of A was the most rebellion if not a 100% accepting of all when it comes to choosing what one wants to do their hands. I still think it is easier to live a happy life in the US opening a bike repair shop than it is back in my home country. ;)
In fact where I come from I always hated parents dictating children what to do and society belittling young people who chose to do something different. Heck even today most parents won't marry their daughter to a person who has got a bike repair shop - they would much rather marry her to a dim with with an IT job
I guess the problem is with pandemic illogical comparison - that guy is in a call center job and earns lots of money just sitting and you dirty your hands every day and struggle to make a living. The flaw of course being that it totally ignores the possibility that I can be happier, healthier and more productive doing bike repair and be able to sustain a good income as opposed to the possibility that the call center worker might have fissures sitting on desk all day and may never "achieve" anything in life - notice I said these are possibilities.
But I guess the so called "society" is same every where you go - children need to be raised to not only do what makes them happy and the most productive but also develop the right skills and mindset to do it.
I left my IT job of running a small non-profit doing video production, creating web apps , pretty much whatever we could come up with to assist small manufacturers compete in the govt. procurement supply chains.
It was a *great* IT job, but I chose to leave it to rehab/restore/remodel older homes and pursue carpentry.
Honestly, it gives me a satisfaction I just wasn't getting in IT. My families reaction was, are you fsking daft??
I redid a first floor full bath for some friends and since then, every morning when they wake up they step out of their second story bedroom, pass by the master bath right across the hall and go downstairs to the bathroom I made to do their morning routine and get ready for their day.
*Nothing* I have done in IT *ever*, has given anyone that much enjoyment.
My "lowly" shop classes in middle school opened my eyes to the world of engineering. I may not have pursued engineering/computer science if it were not for those classes.
I actually had a "guidance counselor" try to steer me away from mechanical drawing class since I was "college bound".
Guess what class ALL first year engineering students MUST take - Mechanical and Computer aided drawing.
I am amazed that we (the United States) produce as many engineers and scientists as we do. We do that in spite of our educational system, not as a result of it.
-ted
I lasted less than a year in my programming job after college. The work was interesting (I love coding), and I worked with good people for a great company - I just couldn't stand being inside all day, cooped up and sedentary.
I went on to work for a general contractor, eventually working on every phase of projects from estimating/bidding to finish carpentry. Then I worked for the US Forest Service, building and maintaining hiking trails in the frontcountry and deep wilderness (by far the best job I've had work-wise, but I recently left due to my inability to comprehend or deal with the machinations of the ass-backwards bureaucracy).
I am by far the happiest when I'm using my mind and body in tandem, instead of putting one on the backburner, be it body in office, or mind in base grunt work. My only regret? Not staying with the coding just long enough to pay off my student loans, and build up a decent nest egg (I'm still glad I went to college, I just struggle with the debt). My first job out of college paid $65k a year - since then, I've not made more than $22k in a year - but I'm astoundingly happier.
the united states is a nation of laws; badly written and randomly enforced -- frank zappa
Both parents and schools should be teaching kids hands-on stuff as well as knowledge. Society can't function with everyone being a "knowledge worker" or with everyone being a manual labourer.
If you prepare kids with the basics for both then it will make it easier for them to decide what they want to do with their career and hopefully with a more balanced education, society won't end up with an excess of one type of work and a shortage of another.
is the problem that dogs education. Where universities and colleges are independent of the demands of the market they continue to produce graduates from the faculties they have using the existing staff, who in many cases have life tenure. Where the institution has some response to the market - sudden shifts in technology or changes in employment patterns, the lead time required to create the resourcing and skilled staff and generate a syllabus is often a lengthy trial by form. In a normal Scottish College it takes at least one year to have a new course accepted and then there is the further time needed to recruit staff and purchase resources ( a trial all by itself). By the time the course is on-line at least two years have passed and who knows then whether the external demand for skilled labour hasn't already changed.
It is axiomatic that institutions provide courses based on their existing staff and resources which makes the head count much easier. In my college their was one member of the administration for every member of the teaching staff. Who knows what all these people did and why but one thing was certain change was to be resisted and all of the irreconcilable differences between what could be taught and what the market needed was something to be glossed over by the marketing department. At that time the country needed plumbers but we churned out Communications Graduates (whatever that mickey mouse qualification is.) whose first words in their new job would most likely have been "Shall I supersize that for you?"
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I think you should have a hobby that is not relevant to your occupation. For me it's wrenching on my Jeep. It's something different
I was thinking the exact same thing about those wall street goofballs in charge of Chrysler and the Jeep brand. If ever a company could go off by themselves and prosper IF it was run by actual *enthusiasts*, there is an example right today. They've just constantly destroyed it over and over again and think they can keep charging more and more money. They've turned what was an actual niche product that worked and filled that niche, and was built very simple and rugged, that had about the best brand loyalty you can get, into "me too" bastardized yuppie SUV vehicles type company, and are driven now by people who, for the most part, are afraid to get them dirty. I mean, dang, what a waste. Here's an example, take what should be the flagship, the traditional short wheelbase good ground clearance CJ type vehicle, designed to get you from point A to B in about any terrain you can throw at it, in any weather. Where the heck is a high torque fuel efficient simple and rugged diesel option for the USA market? Unobtanium. Export they have some, and barely at medium quality and still way too expensive and complex and not as rugged as could be, but for the US, no see'um, they don't even offer that.
One of the serious concerns of faculty in the undergraduage and graduate IT degree that I teach in is that as corporate America offshores application and Web development, help desk, and even system administration, we will be left with corporate IT departments made up solely of network technicians. As we all realize, you cannot plug in a network cable in Gary, Indiana if you are in Bangalore, India. Since networking requires hand work that cannot be offshored, the concern is that corporate IT departments will come to be dominated by CCNAs as there are fewer and fewer on-site roles for any other IT speciality. As these network specialists mount the rungs of management, we encounter the old adage that "when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail". We see one of two situations then: IT managers from the network staff who have a very narrow range of vision and technical knowledge outside of networking, or IT managers drawn from the ranks of MBAs who do not have the necessary technical knowledge to make the best decisions (aka the "Pointy-Haired Bosses"). We strive in our program to ensure a broad technical education for all of our graduates. Our degree is "Information Technology and Management" and we face a serious problem with students who want to come into our graduate program and try to duck our technical core couses to focus entirely on management. Consequently we have just made an intermediate-level software development course, currently taught in Java and C#, a requirement for all graduate students. Other core courses include networking, databases and Web development. Forcing everyone to code is intended to weed out the "pointy-haired" bosses, and ensure that every graduate of our program leaves with an adequate understanding of core technologies. We can only hope that as corporations look for IT management expertise thay will realize that they may have to go outside their narrow network-centric staffs and draw from industries that have done less offshoring such as financial services and hospitals. Of course we hope they look to graduates of our program as well...
I'm an accountant, I see pretty much the full-spectrum of what everyone gets paid, whether as the business owner or on it's payroll.
Everything they tell you in school is total bullshit. Everything everyone tells you after school is total bullshit too.
Do what you want to do. Do it well, do it smart, work hard, make friends and retain contact. Do not do what they tell you in school, which is to be the insignificant guy in the office who slaves away with no impact in his pay packet because there's a queue of other guys available to replace him. You do not get special money unless you have something special to offer.
Do study hard at school though - even if you plan on being a bricklayer. You will find yourself negotiating contracts and maybe even being the contractor one day. But most important is understanding the process of learning and being able to set your sights on the end game.
Festo, the German automation manufacturer, has a line of training products, with a curriculum to go with them. They do this because they see a need for more people who know how to put together and fix automated production facilities. Some community colleges are now on board. There's a US competition and a world competition for mechatronic skills.
Festo's gear is very high quality and isn't cheap. It's serious industrial stuff. In Germany, vocational education is taken seriously. The US has forgotten this.
Companies that have the ability to design and implement an automated production line find outsourcing less tempting. Why deal with some unknown supplier in China who will keep reducing their quality, when you can just order some production equipment, hook it up, program it, and start banging out whatever it was you wanted to make?
I seem to recall reading the original of this article (and, presumably the book it is drawn from); at the time I read it, the book was titled, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
Robert Pirsig--the author of the original--seemed less convinced of his status of a policy-wonk than does Matthew Crawford.
Of course Pirsig "supplemented his income" by teaching rhetoric and not--as Mr. Crawford does--by having essays published in the NY Times.
ps--if he's really a mechanic then why aren't there any greasy finger prints on his article?
I've been fortunate enough to have been involved as the lead tech/designer/architect/coder/whatever in co-founding, building and selling several successful software companies. I'm now in physical design manufacturing, and it is very satisfying, and there is a surprising amount of crossover.
Even those purely software ("information economy"?) projects benefited heavily from by earlier experience in physical/manual work through my HS/college years. I tended to strongly emphasize initial design to minimize coding and minimize machine loading before starting to code.
Possibly the biggest lesson transferred from physical work to software work was the lesson to work hard to avoid excess work. I found it worth it to spend many hours to AVOID writing code. This was not being lazy, as it is often initially faster to write code than to not write code. The basic lesson is: What takes time to run? Code. Where are the bugs? In your code. So, write no code that not absolutely required. Simplicity. It takes discipline and work, which is best learned from physical work, and not in a cubicle.
Especially in the late 90's, I became flabbergasted by the people that just wanted to start-writing-code and fix it later. Or, who wanted to just take the short-cut of sticking their fingers in everyone else's code and data structures. Fortunately, I prevailed in most of those debates, and in one company, in about 2yrs we were taking business from a much larger and better funded competitor who (surprise) had scalability problems that we (no surprise) avoided. When you work in the physical world, you learn well that short-cuts are almost always bad ideas, and that time spent sharpening the tool will more than pay off when it comes time to cut your material.
Since selling and leaving the last company, I did a lot of thinking about what to do next. Rather than doing another software business, I chose to start a business in advanced materials, which wound up mostly in composites (carbon fiber, Kevlar, etc.).
What I find remarkable is how much this feels like the computer industry did in the 1980s -- vibrant, interesting new developments and tools popping up all the time, good access to people who know about the tools and materials I'm using or considering (vs having to teach so-called tech support how to do their jobs just to extract an occasional clue). And, while it was really cool to see people happy to use software that we built that helped them do their jobs better, it seems even more satisfying now to build something physical with my own hands and see it used (but, maybe that is just because it is what I'm doing now).
This change, especially since the last economic crash, has also made me think even more how fundamentally bad an idea it is to oursource our manufacturing. It is an extremely dangerous and long-lived MBA fad (and I'm definitely glad to see the MBAs being properly skewered in Dilbert last week).
For our society, I only hope that the lesson is soon learned and that we can reverse the trend. Information Technology, and even management techniques, do have a place. BUT, that place is in support of the actual act of building something. If you never get around to actually building or growing something, you haven't done anything. And, one only need to glance at the trade deficits to see that we're building far too little.
Hello Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your article. Also to pass on some history (mine and society) and an observation. Quick personal history, I am what I refer to as "Corp Refugee" ,worked at Hughes
before that was with Amex/FDC as LAN Admin, Before that for a bank. All 80's-90's IT jobs.
But long before, Like you I worked with my hands, automotive and MC mech, construction, etc.
But the pressure from friends, family and My self (your so smart your wasting your self) pushed me to go back to school and not following my natural inclinations to create,build and repair.
So I got into IT, which uses some of the same type of diag skills.
So now I am self employed and try do more hands on type of stuff, camera installs and wire, etc.
I build stuff when I can, drag race cars,build bikes,do fabrication, etc. Balance.
Observation: One of the things that drove me to IT was the way society "looked down on" people that work with their hands, mid 70's thru the
early 90's. I would have to deal with some white collar persons attitude, and as you note, thinking I was stupid. In some instances it
seemed as though lack of skill made them angry and they wanted to take it out on me any way they could.
It wasn't enough that I made more money than most of the white collar types, I wanted clean hands and a tie too.
One thing I do try and pass on to young people is that unless your going for the upper management/income levels everything "pays" about
the same when all factors are considered, the skilled mechanic or electrician that makes about the same as upper middle management in a
cube or a side office. Go for what makes you happy and satisfied at the end of the day or week or ?.
Thank You for explaining "Us"
Looking forward to reading your book.
Just another Geek
Brian McGinnis
Tucson AZ
I kind of fell into doing IT, because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I had been programming since age 10, and had fun doing my little projects, and thought, "oh sure, I suppose I could do that for work."
When I had originally gone to college, it was to a photography program (pre-digital, all wet process). I burned out on that, and went to a different school, and decided that since I have always loved cars, I wanted to work with designing and building them. The engineering program where I was quickly quashed any such notion. So I just kind of fell back to what I knew best. I got into the CS program, coasted through it, and here I am, <mumble> years later, in a job about which I couldn't care less.
I'm at a salary level which I couldn't hope to match with any other profession, especially considering that I'm unexperienced in any other field. I think that I would just have to swallow the pay cut, and make a clean break, because IT just doesn't do a thing for me any longer.
So now I just have to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. Most of my hobbies involve some sort of hand craftsmanship - cooking, baking, woodworking, photography, even sewing. I'm sure doing something similar would be awesome.
"High-school shop-class programs were dismantled in the '90s as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers' in a pure information economy. Was this a huge mistake?"
Machines need maintenance. Buildings need building and repair. Pipes need plumbing. Trucks need driving. Plants need growing. Packages need delivering. Photos need taking and film needs developing.
Hell, somebody needs to make a mug so I can put tea into it. Oh right, somebody needs to make the tea, too. And build and maintain the infrastructure that lets me get water out of a tap, start a fire under a pot (that I bought at a store that somebody built and somebody else stocks and inventories and keeps records for...), take the tea bag wrapper and put it into a landfill (assuming I bought tea bags this time)...
Sure, theoretically we can automate all that. But who is going to build the machines to supply the automation in the first place? Somebody has to sling a wrench.
What happens when 100% of our children are knowledge workers? Well, then we get 100% unemployment, because nobody is building the bloody computers for them to work on. Oh, they'll have to haul their own garbage, too...
You could say that I think this is short-sighted and ignorant. How about bloody stupid? No, but you're getting close.
See me? I'm an embedded software engineer. Firmware programmer, if you prefer. See, I like to work right down to the bare metal, and that means that I work with the hardware, too. I know how to solder and use multimeter and a 'scope. And wire-wrap, which is passe these days.
And what did I just finish doing 15 minutes ago? I fixed the screen door so it would close properly so the dog couldn't just push it open and get out. Guess what body parts I used for that? No, go on, you'll never guess.
I think EVERYBODY should have some shop time. Elective, my ass, at least a minimum should be mandatory. And what we used to euphemistically call "home economics" should be as well, everybody should get at least the basics of cooking and sewing and so on.
I don't particularly enjoy sewing, but I can do it. By hand or by machine. And I'm no chef but I can make a few simple dishes and follow a recipe. Want my recipe for Bachelor Chow?
What are we going to do, give all the non-knowledge jobs to illegal immigrants?
Even if we do, I want to revisit my earlier remark about the unemployment rate. So for a few years there's a big surge in, hmm, let's say, yoga. "Yoga's the big thing, that's where all the money is! We can't see an end to it!" Advisors start directing everybody towards being a yoga instructor. A few years later we get a graduate class of nothing but yoga instructors, and guess what? THERE'S NOBODY TO INSTRUCT. Why? First, because the fad passed and everybody is doing Tai Chi. Second, because EVERYBODY IS A YOGA INSTRUCTOR AND DOESN'T NEED TO BE INSTRUCTED.
Sheesh. It's like our entire society is suffering from clinical depression or something. Think, people! We need all kinds of thinkers and workers, not just one kind of person. OK, today we need a few extra specialists, but things are constantly changing.
And not everybody can be good at the same thing. One problem you get when you turn everybody into a specialist at one thing is that you get a lot of really mediocre specialists. The ones with the native proclivity will take the best jobs and the rest will end up unsatisfied or unemployed.
Don't plan for a specific future. When it doesn't happen, you're going to be stuck high and dry. Find out where your skills are, hone them as best you can, and find a place to use them to their best advantage. Not just your top skill or your favorite, but all you can find. Narrow specialties can be very lucrative, but if there's no call for yours, it's good to have a fall-back. And most people prefer a life with some variety.
And I don't mean flipping burgers.
How can such smart people be so incredibly stupid? Open up the damned shops again. Get the kids working with their
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
I shower about twice a day, but I don't know about the other slashdotters, they might be saving the environment and going green...
But even if they don't shower that often, as long as no germs are added, their immune system can probably cope with whatever germs are on that body part - at worst it's a stalemate... So if they don't wash their hands and add germs they might "tip the balance" and lose the war.
That said, do you wash the tap-knobs before washing your hands? I wonder how clean those can be...
1) Person with dirty hands touches the tap knobs to turn them on.
2) Washes hands.
3) Touches tap knobs and re-dirties hands.
4) Touches door handle on way out.
5) Next person comes and adds yet more stuff to the tap knobs.
6) Washes hands.
7) Touches tap knobs
8) Touches door handle on way out.
The tap bit is not a problem if it's one of those automatic taps. Less of a problem if it's one of those lever taps - you can use the lever with some other part of your arm that you are less likely to use to touch sensitive/vulnerable body parts.
So keeping clean is not so simple. Anyway, most people manage to survive...
I always made extra cash as a House Painter and as an Amateur Carpenter while working in IT. I did this full time during the IT dark days of 2002-2004.
One thing that hasn't been pointed out is that the reason I was able to learn these skills is because my father and uncles were tradesman. If you have family ties to tradesman you are going to pick up skills and have the opportunity to work on large construction jobs when you are young.
A few times a year I get calls to work nights/weekends for general contractors where I temporarily make more money than my salaried day job.
If a person doesn't know any tradesman/contractors from ages 16-25 then they are much less likely to learn the skills.
The famed astronomer who single-handedly brought down a KGB spy ring regularly rants about how educators are missing the point replacing shop, art, and music with computer classes. He makes some valid points in his quirky rants. Google Cliff Stoll and watch some of his lectures on youtube.
My 17 year old nephew comes from a long line of mechanically inclined men from both side. Recently he started playing guitar in a horrid hard core band. He won't string his own guitar. He takes it down to the local shop and pays an extra 20 bucks for them to do it. It's hard to come to terms with that mentality.
In the EU the humble Polish plumber has become an institution.
They do a better job, they are cheaper, they don't come to your place stinking or drunk. And they quit plumbing as soon as they can because it is an unpleasant, hard, difficult job.
If plumbing is the plan B of people that work in IT then frankly they deserve to do plumbing.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They don't earn that much, there is not s single shred of evidence of this.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Turner tried to save money consistently by under-engineering. Main bearings and big ends were too small, bosses too thin and narrow, meeting faces too narrow. Frames had unnecessary design compromises to reduce costs. Triumphs were light but too fragile. Thermal management in the cylinder heads was poor, which gave an opportunity to people like Harry Weslake, but when I talked to him about this after his retirement he agreed that the Triumph bottom end was not up to the breathing of the Weslake top end.
The company to which you are referring is BSA, and their main problem was spending far too much on sales and marketing to cover up the product deficiencies. In the case of BSA, it was the change from the solid but slow separate engine/gearbox machines to the unit twins where standards slipped.
Simply putting development engineers in charge was no solution. Look at Norton under Joe Craig. They won races, they looked nice, but the product was crap.
The simple fact is that for a bike business to succeed, all components of the business must run in harmony and do their jobs properly. As with the bike, so with the company.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Parent site
http://www.ted.com/
Their Youtube Page
http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector
Worth a look!
(I'm not a shill/sockpuppet)
Two observations, having just read the article in the New York Times today:
(1) The author's primary argument (moreso than physical work being an economic defense against the Internet) is that mechanical work gives the worker a more fulfilling life. One that is fully present, immediate, using our moral and intellectual capacities to their utmost, grounded in a community, and dealing fairly and face-to-face between owner/worker and customer.
(2) The danger I see here is that the independently-owned mechanical work (on motorcycles from the 70's, in this example) presumes the right and capacity to actually, independently, work on these machines. Once companies put enough computer-controlled parts and DRM-equivalents into the machines, this may no longer be feasible; if so, the intellectual property regime will force even this job under its corporate knuckle.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
A lot of this snobbyness from college educated trade vs. vocational training comes from the fact that getting a college degree requires a lot of extra work and time, and the monetary payoff after you graduate is probably less then those who are vocationally trained. So they just become snobs show off their degrees just to show how smart they are.
Medical Doctors, they are the worse, they are trained to act confident, society gives them high status and recognition. However they will get fully insulated and very rude if you ask them questions to help solve the problem that they called about. Fine you studied 8 years in medical school, but I studied 4 in Computer Science and 2 In business. I may not know stuff about the human body but I can fix your problem on your computer if answer my questions truthfully, so I can diagnose your computer problem in the software.
College Professors, not as bad medical doctors but they have an issue where they think their problem is top priority. While in truth it is near the bottom of the list. In running a college the professors are a small problem if he cant check his email. vs. problems with having to operate a network that is open enough to allow enough freedom for education. But yet secure enough to protect against a rather hostile internal intranet user group.
Engineers with PHD Degrees most of them are OK, However they do get in your way. Especially Engineers who don't have degrees in your area. I am sorry I am more qualified to analysis and fix your problem with your computer then you are with you PHD in Crio-Engineering.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I never took any vocational education classes, because I was self taught in basic carpentry, electronics, circuit design, wiring, and so on. But it would have been much more difficult to acquire many of those skills growing up in a small urban apartment or in a pristine and untouchable house. The arguments for providing preparatory vocational education for such students in particular is compelling. Sometimes we graduate electrical engineers who have never soldered a connection in their life. I never thought about the problem because I started soldering many years prior.
The main thing that I think would be helpful, however, is to take the depth of preparatory vocational educational classes up a notch, so there is a greater balance between academic and hands on content. They should more closely resemble practical pre-engineering classes, so that eventual 2 year vocational school graduates leave having skills preparing them for work as independent designers and craftsmen not just entry level apprentices. Legal, regulatory, and business issues should be included.
Ah one of the self absorbed one's No one can be better, happier than you Huh I've been in IT for 20yrs IT'S Boring. One of my IT customers is an auto shop here in Tucson and the Tech's have the potential of 70 to 90+K a year. with no calls in the middle of the night or any of the BS we put up with. a 8 to 5 guy.
Mechanics do a lot more than rebuild engines and change oil. Even if electric, cars will still have all the suspension and steering components: bushes, ball-joints, wheel bearings. Sure, there may not be an alternator, but there'll be a motor running the pump on the power steering.
Then someone will have to diagnose the fault code that says which cell in the battery pack has failed. or which board to replace in a controller. That will cost the customer $1000 for a new board shipped direct from manufacture in China - because it's cheaper to source a new $50 board, rather than pay $100 to fix the existing one.
I think the real idea is to have assorted useful skills. Someone that can work with motors, circuitry, and programming is going to be more useful and more secure than someone that works with only one of these.
In the end anyone that can create is going to be more useful than those that just shuffle paper or do unskilled tasks. The more you can create the better off you are. Take shop class, art, electronics, computers, business, public speaking, and go out for sports.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Exotic dancers get bigger tips, and don't have to take shop classes with drooling delinquents.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I'm as susceptible to urban myths as anyone, I suppose. Especially when they dovetail so well with my prejudices.
Nice to be corrected, nice to learn something.
I read somewhere that, in Germany, the technical schools where mechanics are trained are highly sought after, have high tuition, and are hard to get into. The social value of being a mechanic in Germany is high. In the USA, being a mechanic is considered a low-status position.
I think that, at root, the problem is class consciousness. All societies have social classes, but people in the USA are, strangely enough, convinced that social classes do not exist in their country. The myth that anyone born into a low class can make it to the top is a pervasive lie in the USA. Statistics (and common sense) consistently show that such freedom is a rare exception.
In other countries (European countries in particular), people know what class they belong to, and people believe less in class mobility. As a result, people in such countries value the position they have been born into, and make the most of it.
On the other hand, Americans are constantly unhappy with their social position and hoping to better it. Hence being born into a working-class family carries a taint of shame; you're not supposed to better yourself within the world you were born into: you must devalue that world and leave it behind.
That's the reason that trade schools and high school courses for manual trades have been neglected in the USA. Those professions carry none of the sense of nobility that they hold in other countries.
It hurts the nation's competitiveness, and it leads millions of miserable kids to try to learn computer science when they would be happier and more productive sharpening their minds on the challenges of the physical world.
Alejo
Of course he'd read Pirsig. He cites Pirsig.
This author is writing from the viewpoint of someone who repairs existing things, rather than designs new things. Good machine design is a rare skill; it was rare even in the era of mechanical invention. The great machine designers were once famous in engineering circles; Edison, Burroughs (who designed the first reliable adding machine), Ed Klienschmidt (designed most of the good Teletype machines), and a few others. Dean Kamen is probably the best known person in that field today. There are so many subtle tradeoffs in machine design that few people can do it well.
All I know is my mechanic works for himself, sets his own schedule & charges about $65 an hour for labor. He's also one of the most cheerful people I know.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Another aspect of learning a trade as opposed to higher education is the money. In many countries, if you go to university you have to live on loans as well as having a low-paid job in the morning or evening - I got up at 3:30 every morning to work as a cleaner while I studied. So when you are ready for your first real job, you are already deeply in debt and then you find that your salary isn't sky-high, your work-conditions are lousy, you have to work 60 hours a week, but no overtime-payment.
On the other hand, if you had chosen learn a manual skill, you would probably have been an apprentice - which would have meant that you got paid while you learned - and you would have had a contract that you had the right to overtime-payment; and that's before you even get a real job. So when you've finished your studies, you probably don't have a huge debt and your salary is not actually that much lower than an academic's. I don't know if you can spot the difference here?
I have to say, I find it hard to justify to my children that they should go to college and study hard. It seemed obvious when I was young; well-educated people were admired and they had what seemed a brilliant career. I'm not sure what has happened in the meantime - part of it is probably to do with the celebrity culture. I mean, everybody has heard about Einstein, Niels Bohr and the others, but nowadays scientists are just nerds - ie. completely un-cool - and being well-educated is fairly low-status if not outright suspicious.
Another part is that young people have been lured away from protecting their own interests - you are almost certainly an un-savoury individual if you are in a trade union and your character is considered flawed if you are not willing to give away your overtime for free. It makes you wonder why intelligent people have let this happen, but it not hard to see who benefits from it.
The BSA management was in fact just as crap as you describe, and I should have given you more credit.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
After a while, don't you get bored a little? Copiers aren't that interesting machines, and I'll assume most of the copiers you get called in for, have the same small problems. So you were doing the same things over and over again. I guess one good thing about a copier repair person is that you get to visit different businesses. With the MBA, you will have a larger range of problems to solve. You will be challenged to progress, or your competetitors will pass you.
A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic instead of accumulating academic credentials is now viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive...
Only by a very small, very insular subset of the population--snobby people entirely too proud of their educations. Most of the world sees a very smart mechanic or plumber or what-have-you as a real asset.
But where to go from there? He didn't want to open his own shop, and he didn't want to contemplate doing the same thing for another 30 years.
So he went back to school and now he's a licensed practical nurse, with lots of career progression options available, and he's much happier at work doing something that is challenging and working with people.
I would happily have hired him--who knows next to nothing about computers--as a desktop tech over most of my coworkers at any of my jobs. You can teach computers, but some people cannot seem to grasp cause and effect and customer service. I could have made him a fantastic computer tech in a few months.
On the other hand, I threw away a viable (if unexciting) career in IT to become a soldier, so maybe I'm the wrong guy to offer perspective.