The Case For Working With Your Hands 386
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)."
IAAC (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Agreed (Score:1, Interesting)
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...)
Re:Home econ even... (Score:5, Interesting)
My mum once gave me a book called "Cooking for Blokes" as a joke but it's probably one of the best presents I've ever had. It takes you through the basics from boiling an egg upwards to making various types of cuisine such as chilli, curry, Italian and Thai. I don't know how available it is in the US but I'm sure there's a "Cooking for Dudes" or somesuch available there. Learn how - it's very therapeutic, not to mention healthier.
Dr. Crawford's complaint (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Very true (Score:3, Interesting)
Let them look down but I'm hauling in 50 grand a year fixing bicycles. And my buddy is grabing a good 65 grand mowning lawns. We both started our life long business when we where 13 and 15 years old.
Re:Very true (Score:5, Interesting)
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Working with the hands improves problem solving (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [ted.com]
(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/ [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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IAAC (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes of course. You are in University to learn.
As a Comp Sci/Physics person, I spent a lot of time programming basic data structures, well known algorithms, assembly, etc ... I have never done anything similar in my job.
Learning and jobs can be very different things. Hence the original poster's point.
Re:Well, DUH! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Err... what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Shoemakers and tailors are virtually non-existent in the US - when clothes and shoes are worn out we simply replace them with something new. Heck, we replace them with something new way before that.
Electronics: same thing. Who is spending money to have their 8 year old tv repaired when it starts to smoke. Who has an 8 year old TV?
I can imagine that at one point it is going to be cheaper to have your dishwasher swapped out for a loaner unit while your broken copy gets sent to Bangladesh and back for repairs.
But I agree that being a repairman or electrician is far more secure than being a programmer.
Triumph motorcycles and the bigger issues (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Very true (Score:5, Interesting)
today it requires that plus an understanding of computers and advanced electronics / electrical theory.
My first thought reading your post was about BMW mechanics. They are well educated and well paid. The job requires a surprising depth of knowledge.
If I was going to start over, I'd probably pick a trade fixing specialized industrial machines. It's knowledge that can easily be retrained in a number of fields and as more industries move to more automation, job security is not a problem. You don't see the copier repairman out of work very often.
Mining machinery, oil platform systems, medical devices, robotics repair...any of those would offer opportunities to travel to exotic places and make a lot of money.
I *chose* carpentry over IT. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Very true (Score:3, Interesting)
I completely agree. I feel that part of the problem is with programs like no child left behind and what not that basically says that all students have the capacity to go to college. This is something that I feel is flawed near completely. Some people are just better suited to working with their hands and there is nothing wrong with that.
These jobs are called trades for a reason. I personally feel that trade work is a great way to make a living or assist others. "Tell you what, I will fix your car if you can fix my computer" type of thing is something I have seen and been a part of many a time.
These are things that need to be encouraged in our society not discouraged by saying the only way to make a good living is with a college degree.
Re:Very true (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to know what the sad part about this is...
Let's say that you started making this about 18. This means by the time somebody who gets a degree hits the workplace and makes the same amount they are about 26. And they have debts to pay off, etc. So let's say around 30 they are pulling in the money.
If we do the math, with your 12 years you made an entire 600K! And if you were conservative and did not spend too much you could still have half of it.
Yes it is sad people look down on trades...
My brother went to German trade school (Industrial Mechanic). Me on the other hand I had two left hands as a tradesman. I was always dropping my tools. My strength was thinking, and oddly enough finance and financial products.
Though due to my German upbringing was never allowed to pursue it since it was not "real".
Re:Very true (Score:3, Interesting)
Speaking of copy repair people:
When I attended ITT (go ahead, laugh all you want), the instructors would talk about which jobs used to be the bottom barrel jobs in their day. In their day is was the guys who repaired copier machines. Then they mentioned these days it's not like that anymore. You need to have an in depth mechanical and electrical understanding of how it works. Copying machines are a highly specialized computer with a lot of mechanical parts.
Re:Highschool (Score:5, Interesting)
Your points are articulate and well taken, esp:
We as a society need to learn some egalitarianism about knowledge.
This is true, and I would submit, present society is completely upside down in its priorities, as the future is NOT going to need vastly MORE information workers, financial planners, psychologists, public relations assistants, etc. The energy crisis will see to that. Over the next few decades, the people who can frame a house, esp. a solar zero-footprint house will be useful. Someone who can install solar pv cells will be useful. Someone who can install insulation will be useful. Someone who can retrofit a house with non-lead pipe will be useful. Someone who can install a slate roof will be useful. Someone who knows how to set up a high intensity permaculture food garden will be of value. Etc and so on.
Assistant program managers for advertising sales account executives will not be useful. They perform no useful function as it is.
Psychologists helping people find their inner child will not be useful. We will need people to find their inner adult, and that happens through hard work done well.
Production assistants for crappy TV shows will not be useful, as there will be fewer and eventually no TV shows left that will be able to afford such luxuries. People will learn to entertain themselves and each other in a direct live and localised context.
Dark Ox - I think you have it scoped really well. My only advice to you would be: learn how to play an instrument and sing as best you can. Then you'll never lack for entertainment. Guitar, flute, percussion, whatever - find some people (girlfriend/wife comes in handy here) who can also play or sing with you. Collect a bunch of songbooks. These become skills you can pass along, making society richer and better.
best regards,
Re:Reaction to blue competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me toss in a couple of anecdotal stories that might explain some of this. My wife used to work for a construction company. White, middle class boys would come into get a job and quit after the first week because it was harder than they thought it would be. One guy left at noon his first day for that very reason. My son refused to work at McDonald's because he felt it was beneath him. And I don't see any white boys standing on the corner looking for landscaping work. My step-son is unemployed, yet he refuses to do it.
Maybe the reason those foreigners are taking those local jobs is because many Americans don't want them. Some have gotten too elitist to do a day's worth of manual labor.
Yes
Someone in IT who is taking home a really good salary needs to make sure they are worth it. Not just in terms of what everyone else is making, but in terms of giving more in value back to the company than what they are being paid. I remember a young fresh-out-of-college job applicant telling me she wanted to make 80K a year 'because that's how much she can make in Boston.' I said we don't pay that much in Portland, Maine. She got visibly offended that I would even think of paying her less than what 'she was worth'.
She was wrong, I didn't even think of paying her less. I didn't hire her at all because she wasn't worth even $40K to me and I needed someone with more experience.
Re:If I had to start over... (Score:3, Interesting)
Aren't those the same homes in foreclosure right now? It seems like construction is more cyclical than other industries. Auto mechanics don't seem to have booms and busts like that.
Re:If I had to start over... (Score:1, Interesting)
I like IT work, always have... but damned if I wouldn't have preferred to work as some kind of tradesman.
As an employee (not employer), hours are typically fixed, they make a ton more than I do, few are on call in any way and they're not responsible for much. At the end of the day, they're DONE for the day.
Every day I go home and have to think about the health and security of a whole lot of machines, the data that the company needs to keep working, what outside comms might go down, what new virus might make it past all 4 lines of AV, who might call with some [non]emergency at 10pm, what bit of code I wrote might turn out to have a flaw in it, etc. I do all this alone, with nobody backing me up or checking my work, and I do it for less than an apprentice plumber makes.
Sometimes I do feel like I screwed up.
Re:Very true (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't speak for all trades, but the only construction trades that are viable are electrician and plumber. Every other construction trade is dominated by illegals willing to work 6-7 days a week for 12 hours a day for peanuts. People don't place much value on correct. They would rather have fast and cheap. I'm sure some of these crews can do correct work, but I've yet to see it and I've been around the business for a while now.
Re:IAAC (Score:4, Interesting)
Skilled trades are not paid peanuts, and are not easily replaced by unskilled immigrants.
Some kids just are not cut out for a life in an office. Some of these kids are very bright, but an office job just isn't going to work as there is no way they are going to make it through an acedemic highschool program, much less four years of university. Kids that have an apptitude for skilled trades should have the option of pursuing a trade starting in highschool. You'll have happier, more productive kids, and you'll have kids that grow up to have careers they enjoy that pay pretty well.
Re:Very true (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't see the copier repairman out of work very often.
Mining machinery, oil platform systems, medical devices, robotics repair...any of those would offer opportunities to travel to exotic places and make a lot of money.
Wrong. I spent over ten years as a copier repairman. I then made the mistake of gong back to colege and finishing my BA. Th eresult is that I have never made as much as I made as a copier repairman and have spent over half of my time after completing college unemployed. I am now stuck in the school grind, working on my MBA in hopes that it wil help lead to a job.
I have to say tha I liked working on copiers. I like working with my hands and I like machines. I disliked two things. The first was my knees were giving trouble (if you watch a copier thech, you will see that there is a lot of up and down). The second, and the big one, I was tired of the way I was treated. The cuustmers, the companies, and people who just know what you do all treat techs like idiots who are not capaible of doing "anything more" in their life. The subtule, and not so subtule, asumptions and associated treatment eventualy chased me out of the industury.
Re:Very true (Score:3, Interesting)
Of my 8 or so high school friends who I still keep in contact with who graduated between about 10 to 12 years ago: six of us went to school and got our degrees, one went into the airforce, one became a mechanic. Guess which two own their own their own home while which 6 are still puttering around still trying to figure out what they want to do or trying to finish school.
Sure, had some of them really gone after it and known just what they wanted to do in school they could have been making more than any of us, but the point is that there seems to be this myth out there that a degree automatically == a great job with great money. While maybe 10 more years from now some of them are going to be making more money then our mechanic friend, I don't think that any of us have or will have more job security or more job satisfaction then he has.
Re:Err... what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Those jobs were not outsourced abroad, but look at what happened. A lot of local tech jobs were deemed not to be "core business" and got outsourced to firms specialised in such services. As a computer or software guy, suddenly you find yourself going from being an employee valued for your individual contribution while working for one firm, to working for a service company in a thoroughly commoditized role of "widget x specialist, grade 2", a role fraught with procedures and guidelines that aim to carefully bleach any individual contribution out of the work. And when you've been hammered into shape for that role, you will find that you are easily replaced with another drone just like you, which is also reflected in your pay I might add.
It is the same in other industries. The lunchroom chef at my previous employer complained that his once fun job had turned into something bad, after his employer decided to grant the lunchroom operation to a catering firm. He too now has to work to standards and according to company procedures, taking his individual contribution out of it. And is his job more secure? His former bosses had gone through the trouble of finding *him*, their lunchroom chef, and were pleased with the results. Now, he is just employee #123 for McLargeHuge CaterCorp, easily replaced with anyone meeting the minimum requirements.
Personally, I've found some satisfaction going freelance in IT instead of being one of the drones, but I notice that it is harder to find work for an oddball like myself. Even when a company finds it has a need for my particular skills, they have trouble getting the purchase order past Procurement because my profile doesn't really fit any of the 5 or so templates for IT people. And actually... the fact that my combination of skills isn't something offered by the regular agencies, the fact that I am an individual rather than a Grade 2 Systems Engineer, is what gives Procurement misgivings. For all their talk of what their companies are about, the truth of the matter is that companies as a whole are very much set up to hire resources rather than people. Specialised job agencies can provide those resources, but offer poor job sequrity, poor training and poor careers to their staff.
With that said, I also know a few people working freelance as plumbers and electricians. They are susceptible to changes in demand, but if they are careful and save against such bad times, they still make a decent living. In good times they pull in a deal more then I ever did as a salaried IT guy with a degree, so they ought to be able to save enough.
Re:Reaction to blue competition (Score:4, Interesting)
And we wonder why we have an obesity problem in the US?
After decades in system/network admin I got off my fat ass and took a job installing DirecTV. Lost about 30# that first year. Beat but HAPPY when I got home. I didn't pay anywhere near what the desk jobs did but I felt a hell of a lot better about myself.
Get your step-son to apply at DirecTV, they're always hiring. Yeah, it's hard work but you can take it anywhere and it won't be out-sourced. There is a lot of brain work involved too, no two installs are the same. It will really be hell in the Maine winters, hauling a 28' fiberglass ladder around in the snow but it can be worth it when you save the mom with three rugrats and no TV. Or when you upgrade someone that just got a new flat-screen and had never seen it work in HD before. How many jobs are there where 99% of the time you leave the customer with a smile.
Re:If I had to start over... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, you raise a critical point.
Maybe we look down on the "grease monkey" at the Toyota dealership who comes out from the back, hands so dirty they'll never come clean, and tells us we need to spend one million dollars for what sounds like a minor problem to anyone who knows something about engines. But, take that same guy, give him some basic business classes (if he even needs them--a lot of people don't), and put his name on the sign over the garage. Now he's not a "grease monkey," he's a small business owner, and if he's good, he'll cost a little less than the dealer and the car will actually be fixed each time.
I have never looked down on people in the trades. My dad is an insurance adjuster, which is a weird hybrid job (which is why he likes it). Out in the field, he's crawling under cars, climbing on roofs, wading through mud, and donning the hazmat suit in his trunk to look at meth houses. He gets back to the office and it's all math, policy, and law. But when I go on ride-alongs with him (I still do, sometimes, even as a bona fide grownup!), I'm always really impressed by what a good contractor knows about materials; I'm really impressed by what a good roofer knows about water damage and how to work with even a poorly-designed surface to avoid it.
Can I build a house? No. Can I put on a roof? No. Can I fix a car? Usually not. So how can I look down on these people, just because they can't read a table of IRT output and tell me which items are misfitting?
But even then, it's not really equal, because of what you bring up. Who can start their own business, build it up, become successful, hire others to work for them, and basically just ride around in a truck checking the work of younger up-and-comers for half the day, then go home and hang out with the grandkids for the rest of the day? It sure as hell ain't me, and it's never going to be. I will always have to work for a university. I can always get side gigs (already have had a few), but they are usually one-off jobs that pay well for the time, but there just isn't that much of a market for independent language testers. And don't even bother mentioning what happens if the economy totally crashes. We'll always need houses; reliable and valid assessments of second-language listening proficiency, not so much.
This might be a peculiarly North American problem, though. Here in Japan, it doesn't seem that the trades are so stigmatized. The pay is better (people at the tops of companies make a lot of money, but not the crazy amounts they do in the US--cue the "but we take the risk" apologists, to which I will preemptively retort "how's that golden parachute treating ya?"). Even if you're an employee, and not a business owner, you'll still make enough to send your kids to college or a trade school. Hair stylists here study for 6 years (and you can actually get a good haircut--something that is impossible in the US).
The trades are incredibly important, and there is a lot of personal earning potential there. Many, many times I wonder if I would have been better off learning how to do something.
Boredom (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:It's all about the money. (Score:3, Interesting)