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.
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.
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.