One point that most people miss is there are many different kinds of electricians who, often can't even do each other's jobs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Low voltage wiring is often a separate specialty. Modern smart buildings need enormous amounts of it.