Posted on 09/03/2017 5:00:45 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Lots of great skill job opportunities out there. Skip snowflake saturated academia that trains you to hate success. Go learn a hard skill and earn real money.
We don’t have much of a machine tool industry here and haven’t since the early 1980s. Without it, we probably could never be the “Arsenal of Democracy” again, even if we had to.
We need to bring back shop classes in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade.
I live in Silicon Valley.
A journeyman CNC machinist can pull 120K easily here.
I self learned machining 25 years ago and know G code for easy stuff, sell some motorbike parts online made on a friends mill.
My home shop is an Ecello mill and a vintage South Bend 10K heavy lathe.
Talked my millennial nephew into taking CNC classes, there is a future in it.
Yep, and building trades. A high school graduate should be able to walk away with a basic certification for any number of skills (welding, carpentry, plumbing, masonry, auto mechanic, sheet metal fabrication, etc...).
My wife was a journeyman electrician when I married her 25 years ago, and I have two nephews who are journeyman machinists. My nephews are both in their 20s and are making in excess of $50K a year each. If they had gone to college like their mother (my sister) wanted them to, they would probably be like most of the other college grads whose future is uncertain.
My Dad was a trained machinist who went on to get a Mechanical Engineering degree. He made his living as a design engineer for some big companies then set up on his own. He was always working in his shop creating prototypes to see if his designs would work. It’s just a great skill to have.
You don't live in Texas. I have over 35 years of machine shop experience.
This is just one of the various types of things Mike Rowe (DIRTY JOBS) is trying to get high school kids interested in. I think he even has scholarships and apprenticeship leads for youths of all colors and stripes. Plumbing, electrician, HVAC, machining, etc. GOOD PAYING jobs, begging for somebody to come and DO them.
I suspect that equaviator was talking about the the industry that makes machine tools, not the machinists themselves.
I admit to not knowing anything except to suspect that sentiment may be true.
What is your take on it?
The median pay for machinists is $41,510 per year?
In CA that would come out to about 22k after taxes.
In the SF Bay Area, machinists make well over $100k a year. The key is to know advanced programming and to stay current on the rapidly changing technology.
Even at 100k, in SF that comes to about 55k per year. You can’t even buy a home in SF on that.
That's exactly right. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I had a choice. Go to a four-year college and go back to living with my parents in the meantime or acquire a skill fast and get out into the workforce to make some money. So what I did was get a job and then went to night school learning a trade (electronics and computer repair). My daytime employer reimbursed 80% of it and my military college benefit (VEAP) covered the rest. Within two years, I had my certifications and was making as much as any college graduate with zero debt in student loans.
A college education is a good thing and I did end up taking college courses at night and cobbled together enough credits for a business degree which got me on the management track. But my advice to young people today is to only go to college if you are going to learn a profession, such as engineering, law or medicine. Don't waste your money on college loans if you are going to major in something stupid like Liberal Arts, Fashion Design or Sociology. If you got rich parents who will foot the whole bill, go for it, but don't expect to set the world on fire in the workplace.
I think if more kids got to see, up close, what skilled trades operators actually do, they would become interested in "vocational" (what a "weasel" word) education.
I had Wood Shop in 7th Grade; Metal Shop in 8th Grade; Drafting in 9th Grade. Those were the greatest classes ever. It’s such a shame they all fell by the wayside in so many school districts across the US.
I hope to go to night school for industrial applications and some machine type stuff early next year.
I’m getting burned out on IT.
Couple that with some 3d modeling for 3d printing and you'll be in business. You could design both subtractive (material removal) and additive (3d printing) prototyping & manufacturing.
It’s been 15 years since I or anyone else in the shop I worked at, put any tool in any machine that wasn’t Made in China, down to the lowly drill bit.
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