Electrician career? decent

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Syd_spark

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sydney,australia
hi, hows it going

i have finished school last yr (from australia), and i decided i wanted to be an electrican. Originally i was being trained to be a lab assistant but it didn't turned out what i expected so i quitted. Secondly i thought about being a chef, but it from people i spoke too, it involves long hours,weekends and you have basically have little time for social life. So it was down to either Plumbing, Carpentry and electrician, and i picked electrician.

I seriously don't know what else to do, those are all the career choices i researched in high school and i don't want to do some office work!.

To sum up these are the reasons i want to do it:

*UPSIDE*
-High demand, stable job due to skill shortages in australia with the ageing population(australia only has about 20 million population).
http://www.jobguide.thegoodguides.com.au/skillsShortages.cfm

http://jobguide.thegoodguides.com.au/statespecific.cfm?mode=showstate&jobid=706&state_id=NSW

-Financial rewards are generally good in all building trades you can command way above minimum wages if your really skilled.

-You can work for yourself. Start early and finish early, i like the sound of that.

-seeing your work complete a house is pretty satisfying

*DOWNSIDE*

-Being poor for the 1st 4 years of training.
-dirty,scratches and callucse on your hands
-Doing most crappy jobs other electricians gives you
-long-term back injury?

i work for an small company for a week to try it out and it was pretty decent. I did this big houses running wires through the house and setting up power points,pretty laid back. I did this other job for a factory and it god damm tiring, you had to feed these pipes underground through around 4 big cable.....and those cable were damm heavy. I mainly want to do domestics houses, those are pretty much laid back and clean.

so what do you think? the only thing im pretty concerned is is getting shocked and falling down from a ladder and a back injury?.
 
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It sounds like you should play the lottery and if you are lucky you may hit for a few million and then you can be " laid back and not worry about back injury"
 
I'll tell you this: As far as I'm concerned there is no better job than being an electrician. From the sounds of things; in your case I would look for something else. If you are not willing to work hard, study hard, and listen to older (usually wiser) electricians; do the grunt work and so forth; you probably wouldn't live long enough to get a back injury.:(
 
Syd_spark said:
*DOWNSIDE*

-Being poor for the 1st 4 years of training.
-dirty,scratches and callucse on your hands
-Doing most crappy jobs other electricians gives you
-long-term back injury?
Click to expand...

"-Being poor for the 1st 4 years of training."

I was 27 yrs old when I started as an apprentice. I could have had this job since I was 22, it was offered to me multiple times. My ex-father-in-law offered me the job and I'm glad I took it. Money was always the factor in turning it down because the starting wage is so low. I worked 2 jobs for 2 and 1/2 yrs but now my pay is more than decent now.

"-dirty,scratches and callucse on your hands"

Yup, these things suck. Ever play any sports?? Don't you get those same things from playing sports?? You have to enjoy what ya do, if you don't everyday is gonna be a very long day.

"-Doing most crappy jobs other electricians gives you"

And like it! :)

"-long-term back injury?"

Concrete guys and masons have more with this problem, in the construction field, than we do as electricians. With every job there's risks,
if you sat your butt at a computer everyday for a living, there would be risks.




Every job has down points. You have a long ways to go in life, so you have plenty room for trial and error.
 
I can't put my finger on it, but for some reason McDonalds comes to mind.

Roger
 
This week I have been an electrician, a laborer, and concrete finisher. It all comes with the job. As electricians, we end up doing everything except plumbing for the most part. So if getting dirty and callouses is not your thing, then forget about it.
 
peter d said:
Get it right Bob, it was an 80 lb!
Click to expand...

I don't know about that, it looked kinda small to me. ;)

Besides I have never run into a 80 lb jack hammer.

Of course a 60 lb with a large chisel could be 80 lbs total.

Here is a 60 LB

airham60.jpg



Here is a 90 LB

airham90.jpg


Either way you did a fine job of destroying a brand new floor. :D
 
Yeah, I guess it was a 60 after all. I don't think I could've handled the 90! :eek:

Well, at any rate, you're right, it did a wonderful job of destroying the floor...twice! :D
 
iwire said:
Besides I have never run into a 80 lb jack hammer.
Click to expand...

After my last 2 high school years in an electrical program of a vocational school, I spent 13 years running my auto trim business before I went back into the electrical trade. At 31 years old I started my apprenticeship and in the second year I worked 4 10s 3rd shift. For about 3 months I was running a 90 lb jack hammer all night. I had a partner and we traded back and forth between jack hammering and prying up concrete [which was actually a much worse job than the jack hammering]. Once the concrete was pried out a laborer came and loaded it in a wheel barrow and took it away.

I ended up with tennis elbow in both elbows. My right elbow got so bad that I had to get Cordizone shots.

Damn ! did that whole experience suck !

But as a whole I've enjoyed most of time in this trade.
And now I'm an inspector so I only have to drive around, look around, write things down, and talk on the phone.

Not a bad gig

David
 
I have to reply here. Most electricians that I know have worked hard all of their career. You are looking for a "pipe dream" that does not exist in this industry.
Regardless of this industry or any other job you may wind up with, you are going to be sorely disappointed. At your age there are many times you will be picked on to do the worst work any job has to offer. Like has been said, your best prospect for a job is buying lotto tickets (or the Autralian equivalent) and hope you win in the next 20 - 30 years. Wait til you have the responsibility of rearing a family... maybe your train of thought will change with such a responsibility.
Good luck
 
I love hard work and apparently so does my 15 year old son He has given me a hand this summer on a few jobs and he is a work horse. I am worried about my 14 a 9 year olds. I am happy to be doing the work I do. so many up sides that i can't really see the down sides from up here.
 
SYD SPARKY,This is a field you can work in coast to coast and world wide.I started when I was 16,that was in 1975.The first guy I worked with his name was ritchie and the first thing he told me was that he was a %#@* bag and proud of it but after almost a year he turned to me and said well IGGY (his name for me ) you`ve lasted this long so it`s time to teach you.The point is in this trade we have to eat dirt and do the grunt work before we are allowed to learn and be ELECTRICIANS.Even as electricians we still dig ditches,do dirty work so if you want clean non caloused hands find another field in which to work.
 
Around here you have to have a seperate licence to perform low voltage work...as I understand it, they do not get very dirty....hardly dirty at all....good pay, though! Maybe you should try a low voltage electrician...??
 
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