See if I can contribute to this thread in a positive manner.
In Alaska, to test for a residential license, one must prove 4000 hours from a contractor(s), doing electrical work, with pay stubs, and letters from employers, normally 3,(this can be said in the same manner as liars can figure, and liars can figure).Normally, should be able to do house calculation, hook up 3 and 4 way, service, and wire, for a fourplex, be code book ready chapters 1 through 4)
At 6000 hrs you are allowed to test for a Maintenance license.
At 8000 hrs is the first time you can sit for an "open journeyman" card. Better be able to run pipe, build cable tray, and pull wire!
I will say, sitting for a license doesn't qualify you for that line of work neccesarily.
I have a master's from the state of Washington (since 93). The administrators test that I took, had 100 questions on code, 50 on theory, and 50 general osha, and industry safety (WA admin code) in three hours. The afternoon portion was 29 questions, in five hours, all calculations, some residential apartment complex stuff, a school, a hospital and miscellanous stuff. The questions were also "stacked", meaning if you got the previous one wrong, you had wrong data, to screw up questions downstream. The test was a bear for exceptions, and extrapoliating data. The administrators test, was designed more from a management point than field. State message was that the one with the admin ticket, was the responsible party for proper installation, and code, per legal standpoint.
In regard to "crossing over", I try not to do any residential, (have done a fistful of it) unless the money is right. I've installed telephone, cable, and fire alarm, in Colorado, for full on commercial journeyman wage,( plus per diem) in a residential complex, ( Yuppers George, we did the first big condo project at Winter Park, thanks Rusty of St. Andrew's Electric).
I'd just as soon run PVC coated rigid, with concentric bends in racks, and do the control hook ups on the way out the door. The reality of it is, that, today, it's miles of cable tray and MC, or MC-HL, for industrial romex (CLX), with a lot of "skids" to be "plug and played"(which normally have their own whole new set of problems). Kills the skill, but makes money.
Most people "go with what they know", so if they fail to get the training they want, to go the direction they want, it can happen for a number of reasons. First one is that they probably don't know about Mike Holt, and Company!
So for myself, I have no problem crossing over, in resi, comm, or industrial. Would like to work on more substations, but that seems to be a hard club to get into...Goofy in the west here, they cry for Sub station techs, but if you don't have their particular quals, they won't even talk to you! Liabilty issues, overide skill issues.
Sorry to have rambled so long E57, but that's it for where I'm from. I qualify for General Practitioner.
edit - verbage correction
Give me a break and this comes from a place that builds nuclear plants on a fault line.
