Sparky's with apprenticeships (in Australia at least) have the advantage of earning while learning while also segueing into the interstitial Hardware / Software zone.
A good many I've known have pulled cable and slogged for several years, invested in shitty old house after another (renovating and flipping), transitioned into running electrical subcontracting companies, and "retired" out of trades and into software careers (in GIS or other domains) in their mid thirties to early forties.
Neither trades nor university education are lifetime commitments or mutually exclusive.
rocket electrician, ... obviously they mean the one that comes and fix your house or breaker panel.
look my brother is an electrician. I do this work too, but for a different reason: in my area they make as much or more than mid level software engineers, so when it's about adding a breaker box they want 8k and if it's not absolutely perfectly easy they might still drop the job. enough of them do and eventually you do it yourself.
obviously, it's quite different for the ones that gotta go daily for a lot less pay, like my brother, and while it doesn't tax your mind as much as tech companies, you do have a tax on the body. plus, they always do quite a bit more than just the electrical wor
Salary.com says median compensation for a “mid-level software engineer” is $132K (<a href="https://www.salary.com/research/salary/listing/mid-level-software-engineer-salary" rel="nofollow">https://www.salary.com/research/salary/listing/mid-level-sof...). I agree that I’d find it unusual for most electricians to make more than that.
I've done too many jobs around my house that should have been done by a qualified <whatever> because none of them are interested in a shitty little repair job, or if they are, the quote is astronomical because there's a huge cost overhead of taking a job and getting your shit onsite.
In my experience, datacenter industrial electricians seem to take a dim view of the skills of residential specialists as guys who just spend all their time pulling romex, but it's sometimes a lot more complicated than that... Residential has to deal with individual home owners, house flippers, renovation GCs and weird change orders in a way that people working in more technically structure and high-budget environments don't.
This is true in tech as well. Big Tech folks with figuratively infinite budgets believe they're all that, but they basically are incapable of understanding the day to day problems small organizations face, or develop the ability to jump between completely different fields of technical problems several times a day.
Larger organizations come with more specialization and greater resources, but you will never find a jack of all trades there.
Living in a 200+ year old house, I've seen a lot of this first-hand through both planned and unplanned renovations and repairs. In my experience, some contractors are better able to deal with all the uncertainty than others and, if you find the right people (which I have again), hold on for dear life--and, of course, be prepared to write some substantial checks and make potentially expensive decisions.
Had a kitchen fire caused by an appliance in the middle of the night a couple of Januaries ago. Was a complete nightmare to deal with which basically ended up redoing much of my interior because of smoke. Insurance covered a lot, but it took a lot of time and something north of $50K out of pocket.
> Residential has to deal with individual home owners, house flippers, renovation GCs and weird change orders
In other words, the customers are awful. I sell and run commercial and industrial electrical work, I’d rather go do something completely different as a career than deal with homeowners, flippers, and residential GCs. The work itself has zero challenge and requires almost no thinking, it’s not hard to pull and fish romex through finished walls.
Residential also has to deal with regulators who are capricious jerks and might (have a boss who does) not like your boss, the contractor who hired your boss, the property owner, etc, etc. and will happily screw you out of thousands of dollars of opportunity cost to get at them.
Working for BigCo you never get that stuff because anyone who wants to screw you has to go through BigCo's legal team to do it.
r/electricians is a good place to lurk to get more inside information about this trade. As you note, there are definitely sectors, like resi(dential), commercial, industrial, and they work by different rules.
The speed needed by a residential electrician is very different than the long-term outlook you hear from industrial electricians (“label that box because the next guy to service it could be you”).
Another recurring trope is the perceived hierarchy between the trades. I lose it when a plumber is described as a “turd herder.” And drywallers get no respect.
I find this especially unfortunate given that, in my experience, drywallers understand the rest of the trades far better than vice versa, since they're in the position of being able to see everyone else's completed work.
seeing someone else's work does not mean you really understand it. We've all seen Michelangelo's David, but none of us could recreate it. Just because you've seen the wiring/conduit in the wall does not mean you know the hows/whys about it.
Yes, but a person who has visited hundreds of art museums will have a better understanding of art than a guy who only paints landscapes or carves wooden figurines. You can learn a lot by observing what is good work and why, even if you didn’t produce it yourself.
The best advice (a good) spackler ever gave me, started with his question "why do you make all your wiring holes so small?"
In my apprenticed ignornance, I figured I was "doing the gypsum guys a favor" (by not cutting large holes everywhere) but it turns out cutting larger holes made both trades' lives easier.
Making a large cut-out "disappear" is actually much easier to conceal than a smaller opening.
----
That, and wet sanding (it's incredible how many people dry sand - all the dust!).
Drywallers don’t understand anything except “it’s my turn to hang gypsum board.” It will be one of the first trades that is completely automated.
Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing contractors need to understand the most since their work goes all over the building and they’re on the project from start to finish.
Drywallers just come in and put up gypsum once walls have been framed and MEP has been roughed in, and then they leave.
Tapers and mudders command my respect, that’ a difficult trade to perfect. Holding up 4’ x 8’ sheets of gypsum and screwing it to studs might be hard work but it’s dead ass simple.
I became a licensed ship's electrician a decade and change after doing my MSc in RF design - turned out that in the line of work I stumbled into, doing control systems for heavy offshore equipment, it was a massive benefit to be able to work hands-on on the systems during commissioning, rather than pointing at the stuff which needed doing and trying to agree with some poor guy I more often than not did not share a language with as to what I meant.
The supervisor at the local trades office had a laugh at that when I called and asked if I could get to take the test(s) based on relevant work experience rather than by having served a conventional apprenticeship.
Most often, the ones asking to take that path had started working as cable pullers and helping hands at fifteen; having an MSc ask was... ...uncommon.
It was quite the experience learning HOW to do all the stuff I knew needed doing.
Anyway - I can now do all sorts of rather competent work on a ship.
I'd be utterly useless (as well as in violation of the law) if I ever attempted to do anything in a house.
The latter has been very helpful - seeing as I've been asked often whether I can help out friends and relatives with electrical installations at home, seeing as I'm an electrician and all.
Tangentially related... Back when I was a product manager for fairly large old-timey computer systems, it took a while for me to wrap my head around the fact that all these super-smart digital designers basically didn't know jack about anything remotely related to AC power. I needed to talk to the mechanical/power systems people directly.
airbreather · · focus · HN ↗
There is the house wirer, the panel builder, automotive electrician, HV, marine, drilling, industrial, maintenance etc etc.
Some kinds pay better, others yield work almost wherever you go, others lend themselves to starting your own business better.
It is nowhere near as homogenous as often described.
defrost · · focus · HN ↗
A good many I've known have pulled cable and slogged for several years, invested in shitty old house after another (renovating and flipping), transitioned into running electrical subcontracting companies, and "retired" out of trades and into software careers (in GIS or other domains) in their mid thirties to early forties.
Neither trades nor university education are lifetime commitments or mutually exclusive.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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zobzu · · focus · HN ↗
look my brother is an electrician. I do this work too, but for a different reason: in my area they make as much or more than mid level software engineers, so when it's about adding a breaker box they want 8k and if it's not absolutely perfectly easy they might still drop the job. enough of them do and eventually you do it yourself.
obviously, it's quite different for the ones that gotta go daily for a lot less pay, like my brother, and while it doesn't tax your mind as much as tech companies, you do have a tax on the body. plus, they always do quite a bit more than just the electrical wor
sarchertech · · focus · HN ↗
If you’re in the US, the top 10% might. But the median residential electrician certainly does not.
sgerenser · · focus · HN ↗
astura · · focus · HN ↗
Where's that? In the US the median annual wage for electricians was $63,190 in May 2025 whereas it's $135,980 for software engineers.
<a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electricians.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electric...
<a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
raffraffraff · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
ocdtrekkie · · focus · HN ↗
Larger organizations come with more specialization and greater resources, but you will never find a jack of all trades there.
ghaff · · focus · HN ↗
Had a kitchen fire caused by an appliance in the middle of the night a couple of Januaries ago. Was a complete nightmare to deal with which basically ended up redoing much of my interior because of smoke. Insurance covered a lot, but it took a lot of time and something north of $50K out of pocket.
quickthrowman · · focus · HN ↗
In other words, the customers are awful. I sell and run commercial and industrial electrical work, I’d rather go do something completely different as a career than deal with homeowners, flippers, and residential GCs. The work itself has zero challenge and requires almost no thinking, it’s not hard to pull and fish romex through finished walls.
kube-system · · focus · HN ↗
cucumber3732842 · · focus · HN ↗
Working for BigCo you never get that stuff because anyone who wants to screw you has to go through BigCo's legal team to do it.
UltraSane · · focus · HN ↗
mturmon · · focus · HN ↗
The speed needed by a residential electrician is very different than the long-term outlook you hear from industrial electricians (“label that box because the next guy to service it could be you”).
Another recurring trope is the perceived hierarchy between the trades. I lose it when a plumber is described as a “turd herder.” And drywallers get no respect.
cperciva · · focus · HN ↗
I find this especially unfortunate given that, in my experience, drywallers understand the rest of the trades far better than vice versa, since they're in the position of being able to see everyone else's completed work.
dylan604 · · focus · HN ↗
MisterMower · · focus · HN ↗
gjvc · · focus · HN ↗
ceejayoz · · focus · HN ↗
But you can probably tell the difference between it and a crappy version.
edoceo · · focus · HN ↗
ProllyInfamous · · focus · HN ↗
In my apprenticed ignornance, I figured I was "doing the gypsum guys a favor" (by not cutting large holes everywhere) but it turns out cutting larger holes made both trades' lives easier.
Making a large cut-out "disappear" is actually much easier to conceal than a smaller opening.
----
That, and wet sanding (it's incredible how many people dry sand - all the dust!).
quickthrowman · · focus · HN ↗
Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing contractors need to understand the most since their work goes all over the building and they’re on the project from start to finish.
Drywallers just come in and put up gypsum once walls have been framed and MEP has been roughed in, and then they leave.
Tapers and mudders command my respect, that’ a difficult trade to perfect. Holding up 4’ x 8’ sheets of gypsum and screwing it to studs might be hard work but it’s dead ass simple.
ProllyInfamous · · focus · HN ↗
This is incorrect; they know what my hammer means. Not just anybody's, mine.
–(former data center) Electrician
contingencies · · focus · HN ↗
lb1lf · · focus · HN ↗
I became a licensed ship's electrician a decade and change after doing my MSc in RF design - turned out that in the line of work I stumbled into, doing control systems for heavy offshore equipment, it was a massive benefit to be able to work hands-on on the systems during commissioning, rather than pointing at the stuff which needed doing and trying to agree with some poor guy I more often than not did not share a language with as to what I meant.
The supervisor at the local trades office had a laugh at that when I called and asked if I could get to take the test(s) based on relevant work experience rather than by having served a conventional apprenticeship.
Most often, the ones asking to take that path had started working as cable pullers and helping hands at fifteen; having an MSc ask was... ...uncommon.
It was quite the experience learning HOW to do all the stuff I knew needed doing.
Anyway - I can now do all sorts of rather competent work on a ship.
I'd be utterly useless (as well as in violation of the law) if I ever attempted to do anything in a house.
The latter has been very helpful - seeing as I've been asked often whether I can help out friends and relatives with electrical installations at home, seeing as I'm an electrician and all.
Sorry. Against the law. Phew.
ghaff · · focus · HN ↗
aucisson_masque · · focus · HN ↗
And the skill you learn, you can use it to build your own house and save money.
White collars usually aren’t that good at manual work, at least not to professional levels.