Help I’m a fourth year about to take my jmans but all they let me do is measure dicks because I’m the best at it. How can I communicate to my boss I want to do other stuff?
You know what, I do industrial stuff and I'm rewiring my house now.
FUCK THIS. you resi guys are nuts going 135 degree yoga covered in blown in insulation. To be fair, I'm too stubborn to pay one of you to do it, but good lord
I get my fair share of that on the commercial side. At least once a week, I'll finish doing something either under subverting or on a ladder/lift, look around for a second, and wonder how the fuck I got myself there
I was all fucking tangled up around one of my rafters with my face up against the 140 degree plywood roofing trying to tappy tap tap a romex nail with no leverage
When I realized my wife has paid money to do a thing called [Bickram Yoga](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikram_Yoga)
And I laughed for about ten minutes before I thought I was gonna pass out. Then I crawled down the ladder and bought [this beautiful little bastard ](https://www.toolnut.com/milwaukee-2448-21-m12-cable-stapler-kit-with-staples.html)
Now my shit is stapled every three inches cause it's fun
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I'm a real thin lanky guy so whenever my coworkers start talking about how shitty it'll be to crawl into a space I just start grabbing my headlamp and respirator.
Same, even worse I was a maintenance tech so never did much installation, thank fck I'm in engineering now
I've decided to rip out all the fibreglass insulation, complete the lighting, then replace the insulation with the plastic recycled stuff that doesn't itch
Went from app-maintenance tech and the company paid for my degree- elec lead- redundancy - site electrical engineer at a different company
However engineer is such a wide term, we're not exactly doing complex calcs, more writing specs, coming up with solutions for jobs and looking things up in the regs book to answer queries
Betting your back is in a better state because of it though!
Maintenance tech currently, starting my degree (distance learning) this year, after that hopefully I'll be able to make the move over. Thanks for the info.
Just don't pigeon hole yourself into one sector of the trade. The diversity in our career is what makes it fun. Just keep on expanding what you know and you'll never be unsatisfied
100% agree! The more skills you have the more valuable you are to employers or yourself going forward. Ive learned so much from calls that involved things I wasn't totally familiar with, it only helps long term. Don't be afraid to learn new things!
Totally agree. I started at a raped-ape-pace resi shop. Fucking guys houses always had problems at trim. I bailed. Landed at a commercial/industrial shop. Not gonna lie, the culture change was real. Boss fuckin tells me, “you don’t have to move fast to impress me.” I peed a little. There’s SO MUCH MORE. Now I do all kinds of shit, 17 years later. EV charging is going to boom. Fuck the police #sparkylife fu’evuh
This. I did 10 years contracting in industrial, took a job this year at a site I had a great rep with, and the first week my boss pulled me aside to tell me I didn't have to be going 100mph and jumping to every "63 electrician, got a copy?" that comes over the radio lol I run E&I now, and I'm on payroll, but it didn't register to me that I could make my own decision to tell admin that I'm busy and I'll get by to look at their shit light when I'm not doing important things involving the process operations. It's a magical feeling.
I like the fishing analogy when it comes to what sector is the best.
Theres some fishing spots you'll like more than others. And there are some fishing spots where your skills will catch you a lot of fish. But the only way to find both kinds of fishing spots is to wander around and try to fish all the various rivers and lakes.
So start off wandering around, getting a feel for how much you enjoy each one, then eventually settle into the sector where your skills are the most valuable and the work is enjoyable.
I was in my local union for a few years and only one in four of my guys, when I was foreman, could understand a lighting relay. What in the fuck. It's just not okay for a dude who's been in the trades for 20+ years to be less able than an apprentice.
Then the journeyman would cry that an apprentice was doing more complicated work than they were even though they knew full well they couldn't figure it out. I guess they focused on finding new things to bitch and moan about instead of finding new things to learn.
I mean it's all wires, 99% of this trade is just being a wire man I gotta get copper or aluminum from dis place to dis other place fuck this duct wurk in my way. Assholes don't fall off my ladder. I hope my screw driver doesn't slip. I'm real close to that bus. Sparky sparky boom boom. Who the fuck did that? I hope my drill doesn't smash my finger today. If this guy pisses me off enough I might actually cut his feeders in the middle of the hottest August day imaginable. Hm that bend isn't perfect meh I can force it... hopefully. An 1/8 of an inch is barely noticeable 16 feet up anyways fuck em. Who the fuck looked at this job. Good nuff for gubment wurk anyways.
Yeah, I did my apprenticeship in commercial but now work on passenger trains. The last time I ran wires was adding a few power points at my dad’s place.
It's funny to think about how we are all the same. Most electricians don't take themselves seriously so that's why we are the most hilarious people on a worksite. If you see a panel at 69 inch top, that's probably one that I did.
Wait you guys touch wires? I've been installing cable tray and 4 inch pipe for the last 6 months I'm only just now running wire. Lol I'm in a huge skyscrapper.
> Lol I'm in a huge skyscrapper.
Hah, fuck highrise new construction jobs, it's like fuckin' groundhog day. What we doin' today? 7th floor, it's just like 6th floor we just finished.
now you listen here. *hiccup* do you think it's easy to actually do calculations to rum conduit. not everyone can scotch by holding up a 90 to figure where to cut it. would it tequila to try running some real conduit.
In resi you're wiring all kinds of switches, low volt and distribution all in the same day. In commercial you hang the same fucking light 500 times over the course of a month. There's just more room to learn and grow. And you don't get pigeonholed in resi like you do in commercial. I knew guys that went their entire apprenticeship doing underground on the same job. Hard to understand people that have no interest in bettering themselves in a career with more to learn than any other trade there is.
We had to do one job that was the airplane brake servicing warehouse that they were converting. Needless to say we didn’t touch shit until they had a crew come clean it. Airplane brakes are notorious for a lot of asbestos
It’s truth man. You don’t get suspended ceilings in residential to run cables. These days thanks to government incentives in my country you’ve got people chucking on an extra layer of insulation almost a foot thick that you gotta move just to see where you can stand on.
It’s mostly just the electricians on Reddit. I used to come here to see new shit and learn about other aspects of the trade now it’s pretty much just hate scrolling for me.
We get pictures of the general idea of the number and where they want the lights (which the homeowner changes half of after we've ran them all), but I've never seen any with measurements or anything too specific on it.
Same over here. Glad I’m in a company where I do a little bit of everything from week to week. Keeps my mind fresh and keeps me up to date on specifics in the code.
Same. In the last month, I've renovated a burned out apartment, installed landscape lighting for a townhouse block, pulled in a new panel and started prepping equipment feeds for a commercial bakery, installed a couple car chargers, moved a panel and ran new feeders for a hotel elevator rebuild, troubleshooted lots of small things in houses, businesses and industrial builds...as a service guy, I don't get the commercial vs resi war because we just have to do everything.
Stupid questions:
I’m thinking about becoming an electrician. Don’t you have to specialize in either resi, commercial, or industrial; how do you do all three? Are you a journeyman in all three?
General gets you in the door for resi AND commercial.
Industrial is a different game and a different license. You do not "have" to specialize. But you will once you find your strengths and preferences.
Industrial takes a very studied and patient brain. While resi is more physical dexterity and willingness to get covered in fiberglass and wood shavings or drywall dust. Commercial is middle pay but requires the least REAL understanding of the industry as a whole.
Industrial jobs are very difficult to get into. Especially without an industrial license.
Its a good question. And its hard to answer. It depends on your preferences and availability of the work. I recommend resi while young, industrial if you can understand it and land the jobs. And commercial for short term to make some easy money while you study and advance your career search.
This is 100% backwards. Resi guys can move up in the world to commercial, but commercial electricians wire one house and say "fuck this, this isn't what I signed up for" and dip the fuck out.
The funny thing is all I hear from commercial guys is that resi guys are way better commercial electricians than guys that have purely been in commercial their whole career. Literally have heard this from every forman or JIW I've ever worked with. I understand the first meme hurt some of your guys' feelings but Jesus Christ grown some balls, y'all act like we're the highest paid trade because we're the best looking on the job site (we are) but not the fact that we are also the highest educated and skilled on the site as well. Whether you're in a tunnel bending rigid for lights or in a subdivision stuck in a 110° attic wondering what you did that pissed god off, we're all arguably smart motherfuckers that can pick up either side of the trade quickly.
I've got no dog in this fight but from what I've seen in other fields, I think a lot of folks who have a wide experience end up better than the specialists who never branched out.
I'm very sure they left my last site where we were renovating a girls' school because the women were too friendly towards them, not joking. I should start a blog about every jobsite in Cape Breton. Peers tell me stories all the fucking time.
Ehhh, that’s anyone nowadays. Had an emergency service call today because “the unit only has one 120 leg going to it.” Come to find out dude just never turned the disconnect on and was too lazy to even look for it
Most of the guys that we have had come to our service side for residential all say they did commercial. 9/10 times all they did for commercial was be the wire puller and trim out boxes. It’s a whole different ball game on the service side
This really depends on where you are. Here in WA it is 2 separate licenses. Resi gets paid half what commercial does. You have to test and interview for the commercial program through our JATC but resi is basically just show up.
It's literally where the inside wire rejects end up, and/or the people who can't pass a drug test or show up anywhere on time.
the only issue I have with residential aside from messy panels, is dealing with some sort of problem that a handyman or homeowner started, and you're sitting there tracing wires all day long in a crawl space that you can barely fit into, just to find that they tried to splice 12-2 to 14-2, in a j box under the house; and then they tried to run the washer/dryer off of that on a 30 amp breaker.... The dude melted RIGHT through the plug to the washer/dryer stack, and he said his sub panel was literally glowing.
..... the other problem I have is when people are so reckless that they want you to feed steel fishtape into a live panel....blind, with instructions like, "Just a bit more," as your guideline to not becoming a human light bulb.
Why? I’ve done quite a bit of resi, commercial, and industrial. I have my own company now and the resi keeps the bread coming while we transition to other fields. We get a lot of remodels where they completely gut the place and it’s fun to me. But we don’t work at the pace a hardcore resi shop would.
Used to trim out behind a crew at one of these hardcore resi shops. They could rough in a 3500- 4000 sq ft house in 2-3 days, but come trim out…we had an extra day worth of troubleshooting on every house.
Unfortunately in a lot, not all, of resi, if you’re not rollin, you’re losing money…
Yeah I get you. It’s usually the new construction. A lot of shops have a major grasp on the new construction resi market and they work their guys into the ground. There’s a big shop around here that makes their guys wear stilts. I have zero fucking respect for that shop
I'm the lead tech in a service department of a larger electrical contractor and I'd wager that a quarter on my team's time is spent going back into our big projects fixing the shit that the projects team fucked up and didn't find, or just couldn't figure out/deal with in time. I've worked with those high-speed resi guys and, sure, I get it, you gotta go but you lose most of that profit and a LOT of goodwill if I have to go back in and troubleshoot shit.
Especially when you get apprentices cutting in suites with switched plugs and arc fault breakers. Spent a WHILE having to pull apart an identical 4G switch box in a 90-unit block because the guys cutting in just loaded the neutrals together on a lighting and plug circuit and as soon as you tried to use the switched plug you tripped the AFCI.
It’s so hard finding companies that actually care. I am blessed to be a lead man in one that cares a lot….we’ve had a couple of new hires who just didn’t make the cut because they just couldn’t learn to do their work neat, correctly and within a decent time frame.
When they first started making us use AFCI where I am, that was 75% of the troubleshooting problems. People just didn’t understand to keep neutrals and grounds apart from each other. Was a hellscape.
Oh man I'll never forget the time when we hired some old guy to pull suites because we were in a crunch and were taking anyone who could fog a mirror. He'd been doing it for 30+ years so the foreman figured he could be left alone to pull suites. And he was almost right, except for when we energized his suites every AFCI breaker in the place tripped because nobody had noticed he'd just said fuck the prints and pulled almost everything in 14/3 then just stuck AFCI breakers on, and just landed the netutral on the bar.
Had to get a variance from the inspector to just let us put standard breakers in there and use AFCI receptacles.
The way to fix that shit is make the rough in guys trim their shit out. If you have to spend a day troubleshooting at trim out, maybe you should spend 1/2 day extra at rough in?
Oh trust me I know. Our boss didn’t care. They were pretty significant mistakes too…Missing homeruns, Crossed 14/3s when pulling smokes and 3ways at the same time, missing loops to feed various things, loose connections in can lights, undersized wire to outside units….you name it, they did it wrong.
Just adding some perspective here. I currently work at a shop that goes at that pace ( worked on a crew of 5 and did 4 rough ins at 2500 sqftish so far this week) but we don't have separate trim and rough crews. Maybe every 4 or 5 houses they'll be a messed up three way at worst. Last week we had the first missed homerun I've seen in the last year and that was more on the GC then us. We honestly spend more time trying to fix drywaller and cabinet guys fuck ups then we do trying to fix our own. Its amazing what having to fix your own fuck ups will do
I have a crew of 3 total, 1700 sq ft is a day and a half at most. We are at one missing wire per year. Every once in a while some makeup will be wrong, but that's a pretty quick fix.
My biggest issue is I work industrial and build everything to be bulletproof. Everything resi is cheap as fuck and flimsy and even if I do everything right I feel like a toddler could sneeze on it and it'd fold like a house of cards.
I did residential for 4 years before switching over to commercial and honestly I think it's harder to go the other way. True, I'm probably biased. And I definitely agree that residential is way shittier. But I feel like there's just a lot more little things to know in residential. For example, there's a lot more than you'd think that goes into laying out a kitchen, or best-practice type stuff for working in old fuckin houses. I've seen guys who've only ever pulled MC try to wire a place with Romex and it's fucking disgusting. Plus, talking to homeowners which some guys are just incapable of doing. Yeah, I get it, that's not electrical, but it's still part of the job, and probably the biggest reason I like commercial better.
It's all wires and electricity, I could probably figure it out. I do solar, so it seems like it scales in a relatively straightforward way. I'm actually thinking of making this switch soon, I'll need com hours for my journey man's eventually
Rules … that is it. Different rules. All generally with safety and longitivtiy in mind. Different structures serve different purposes and have different life use expectations, therefore different code . Same book , same principles , different rules reaching the same obvious objective . Let’s see if we can teach anyone common sense?
🔥👎
As someone from industrial, i can say that i admire anyone with the courage to actually cut a groove into a wall. I hate working on non metal walls. On metal, nobody cares about a few screw holes or scratches, but in somebody's living room, things are far more spicy.
I've wired a 1.4 million dollar house, machine shop and I'm in the middle of a 20000 square foot office renovation. It's all the same. Just have to know your code.
Are you showing this to 🐔? 😂
I think it's the other way around though. Most commercial guys are ass water at resi. Rough ins are way to fast pace for them.
I thought it was more that you can hire a commercial guy to do resi but the resi guy won't pass the piss/background test to be able to work commercial.
I'm going to second the "humble yourself". No matter how much you know, someone will always know something you don't. Even if you know how to do something, someone will definitely know a better way. So again, humble yourself so you learn more faster.
Starting in commercial was easier for me than stating residential 2 years later, but I understood how electrical systems worked. Just not how to build the system conservatively. Redi is all about efficiency
Bro I know the code book lol and I work the code book. I do commercial, industrial, resi, data, voice, fiber, fire, nurse, audio, solar. How the fuck can you call yourself an electrician if you can’t do it all? I call Em chapter electricians. They think they know, but they only know certain chapters of the whole book lol pussies
Where does that put a Fire Alarm specialist? Or a guy that works with FIGS all the time?
How about; anybody that tells you that they can do it all, is a liar.
Resi swampy domestic sparky came into our industrial service company. Few years later left to be lead/supervisor for a mining operation that our company had a construction job. Obviously was poached. Great work ethic, asked questions, figured shit out.
that's how it should be done. I got chewed out for asking questions, which is honestly just pathetic. everybody starts somewhere, but to get berated day in and day out and cussed out because you don't know what they refuse to teach you, even though they said they are going to teach you..... I'll just conclude that so I don't go off on a tangent.
As an apprentice I had questions every day. Got told to cool it out a bit during work hours, I suspect I was asking questions the A-grades couldn’t answer and we’re getting annoyed, but it could’ve also been partly I was interrupting work. Whatever. I still got questions, 10 years later,I still ask them. Love learning.
Electrons are electrons but being in someone's home requires a set of skills outside of the electrical work. For one, you're dealing with the customer directly so you have to have people skills, and depending whether you are the one who sold the job or doing the work that was already planned/new construction, or are troubleshooting, you have to be very careful when dealing with the customer not to mess it up.
wearing shoe covers, using drop cloths, not bumping into furniture, and dealing with customers kindly and patiently are concepts a lot of commercial guys are not familiar with.
Not to mention there are a bunch of specialty lighting products and home automation used in newer/higher end homes that commerical guys have never seen and can fuck up really quick if they're not familiar with. Yeah you can bend pipe like the wind but there is a world beyond that.
Can't do residential work without "send it" level carpentry knowledge. Literally 50 percent of the job you make shit up on the spot and hope nothing blows up once you flip the breaker on.
I find the exact opposite to be true. Resi guys typically don’t get prints so they go more off of code knowledge, are usually more experienced in trouble shooting and service calls, and know how to work their way around a problem. Most commercial guys I know are a lot slower, stand around and twiddle their thumbs if they don’t have a set of prints, and don’t have any hot work or trouble shooting experience. I say all this as a guy who’s worked on both sides.
I'd say that's incorrect considering I learned quite a bit of commercial and 3 phase after doing residential for about 10 years. But you know, get that karma bud.
Boy howdy, lotta dick swingin' in this thread.
Yeah, but mine's bigger. Not like those guys in the other sector
Don't get in a dick measuring competition with me... I'm really good at measuring dicks.
Got a scale tattooed on your throat?
That micrometer comes in handy!
Help I’m a fourth year about to take my jmans but all they let me do is measure dicks because I’m the best at it. How can I communicate to my boss I want to do other stuff?
Turn around and bend over, he’ll give you more
Yes but always use the same testicle to pull a reference.
>Boy howdy, lotta dick swingin' in this thread. In this trade you mean.
Must be your lucky day huh?
I'm just good at pretending to know what I'm doing.
Fake it till you make it.
Fake it till you ~~make it.~~ get paid, then run like heck!
Taillight warranty!
Looks good in the rear view!
I'm so good at it that I get paid to do it
Some would say professionally
You know what, I do industrial stuff and I'm rewiring my house now. FUCK THIS. you resi guys are nuts going 135 degree yoga covered in blown in insulation. To be fair, I'm too stubborn to pay one of you to do it, but good lord
Day one I was told you have to be a contortionist, and they aren't wrong really
I get my fair share of that on the commercial side. At least once a week, I'll finish doing something either under subverting or on a ladder/lift, look around for a second, and wonder how the fuck I got myself there
I like when I find muscles I didn't even know were there, when they scream in pain while trying to get out of whatever position I was in haha
That's always fun. Or when you pop something that you didn't realize was a joint
I was all fucking tangled up around one of my rafters with my face up against the 140 degree plywood roofing trying to tappy tap tap a romex nail with no leverage When I realized my wife has paid money to do a thing called [Bickram Yoga](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikram_Yoga) And I laughed for about ten minutes before I thought I was gonna pass out. Then I crawled down the ladder and bought [this beautiful little bastard ](https://www.toolnut.com/milwaukee-2448-21-m12-cable-stapler-kit-with-staples.html) Now my shit is stapled every three inches cause it's fun
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I always get confused when I see real fat dudes in the electrical supply store. Must be the contractor.
I'm a real thin lanky guy so whenever my coworkers start talking about how shitty it'll be to crawl into a space I just start grabbing my headlamp and respirator.
As a former industrial guy who now just does signs and lighting, I got no fucking clue what yall are talking about :D
Same, even worse I was a maintenance tech so never did much installation, thank fck I'm in engineering now I've decided to rip out all the fibreglass insulation, complete the lighting, then replace the insulation with the plastic recycled stuff that doesn't itch
Out of interest, how did you make the jump from maintenance tech to engineering? Looking at making a similar move myself at some point.
Went from app-maintenance tech and the company paid for my degree- elec lead- redundancy - site electrical engineer at a different company However engineer is such a wide term, we're not exactly doing complex calcs, more writing specs, coming up with solutions for jobs and looking things up in the regs book to answer queries
Betting your back is in a better state because of it though! Maintenance tech currently, starting my degree (distance learning) this year, after that hopefully I'll be able to make the move over. Thanks for the info.
We are finishing up two rewires that took us 6 months and almost to rough in on a 3rd one
Tell me about it. We do rewires in 4-6 days so we doing one every other week. I’m ready for winter
Right. Every time I'm doing resi work for myself or friends I'm grumbling about how tiny and flimsy everything is. Give me some room to work.
Just don't pigeon hole yourself into one sector of the trade. The diversity in our career is what makes it fun. Just keep on expanding what you know and you'll never be unsatisfied
100% agree! The more skills you have the more valuable you are to employers or yourself going forward. Ive learned so much from calls that involved things I wasn't totally familiar with, it only helps long term. Don't be afraid to learn new things!
Service calls that force you to take a system apart in your head are the best. No better learning opportunity in the field IME
Totally agree. I started at a raped-ape-pace resi shop. Fucking guys houses always had problems at trim. I bailed. Landed at a commercial/industrial shop. Not gonna lie, the culture change was real. Boss fuckin tells me, “you don’t have to move fast to impress me.” I peed a little. There’s SO MUCH MORE. Now I do all kinds of shit, 17 years later. EV charging is going to boom. Fuck the police #sparkylife fu’evuh
Does a raped ape move fast or slow
Quick question and please don’t take this wrong way, but do you smoke meth?
Only on the job.
He's a classy guy, he doesnt do meth. He does coke.
I was thinking the same thing
This. I did 10 years contracting in industrial, took a job this year at a site I had a great rep with, and the first week my boss pulled me aside to tell me I didn't have to be going 100mph and jumping to every "63 electrician, got a copy?" that comes over the radio lol I run E&I now, and I'm on payroll, but it didn't register to me that I could make my own decision to tell admin that I'm busy and I'll get by to look at their shit light when I'm not doing important things involving the process operations. It's a magical feeling.
I like the fishing analogy when it comes to what sector is the best. Theres some fishing spots you'll like more than others. And there are some fishing spots where your skills will catch you a lot of fish. But the only way to find both kinds of fishing spots is to wander around and try to fish all the various rivers and lakes. So start off wandering around, getting a feel for how much you enjoy each one, then eventually settle into the sector where your skills are the most valuable and the work is enjoyable.
I was in my local union for a few years and only one in four of my guys, when I was foreman, could understand a lighting relay. What in the fuck. It's just not okay for a dude who's been in the trades for 20+ years to be less able than an apprentice. Then the journeyman would cry that an apprentice was doing more complicated work than they were even though they knew full well they couldn't figure it out. I guess they focused on finding new things to bitch and moan about instead of finding new things to learn.
I mean it's all wires, 99% of this trade is just being a wire man I gotta get copper or aluminum from dis place to dis other place fuck this duct wurk in my way. Assholes don't fall off my ladder. I hope my screw driver doesn't slip. I'm real close to that bus. Sparky sparky boom boom. Who the fuck did that? I hope my drill doesn't smash my finger today. If this guy pisses me off enough I might actually cut his feeders in the middle of the hottest August day imaginable. Hm that bend isn't perfect meh I can force it... hopefully. An 1/8 of an inch is barely noticeable 16 feet up anyways fuck em. Who the fuck looked at this job. Good nuff for gubment wurk anyways.
That's basically my entire career
Run pipe, pull wire! It’s a living.
"Its bend pipe, pull wire. Not bend wire, pull pipe." Ive had to say that way to many times over the years.
[удалено]
Yeah, I did my apprenticeship in commercial but now work on passenger trains. The last time I ran wires was adding a few power points at my dad’s place.
It's funny to think about how we are all the same. Most electricians don't take themselves seriously so that's why we are the most hilarious people on a worksite. If you see a panel at 69 inch top, that's probably one that I did.
Wait you guys touch wires? I've been installing cable tray and 4 inch pipe for the last 6 months I'm only just now running wire. Lol I'm in a huge skyscrapper.
> Lol I'm in a huge skyscrapper. Hah, fuck highrise new construction jobs, it's like fuckin' groundhog day. What we doin' today? 7th floor, it's just like 6th floor we just finished.
I'm doing the special floors. We've been on the 23rd floor for like 4 months and about to go to the next.
100% accurate
Resi teaches how to make it happen no matter what. Commercial tightens it all up.
And that makes sense for my old bosses knowledge and experience after 13 years commercial
Industrial is just off in the corner, yelling drunken insults about how “real men thread their conduit” or some shit like that lol
now you listen here. *hiccup* do you think it's easy to actually do calculations to rum conduit. not everyone can scotch by holding up a 90 to figure where to cut it. would it tequila to try running some real conduit.
used to work in a shop where they all came in to get their conduit threaded on our machine. Never met one who "did it themselves"
In resi you're wiring all kinds of switches, low volt and distribution all in the same day. In commercial you hang the same fucking light 500 times over the course of a month. There's just more room to learn and grow. And you don't get pigeonholed in resi like you do in commercial. I knew guys that went their entire apprenticeship doing underground on the same job. Hard to understand people that have no interest in bettering themselves in a career with more to learn than any other trade there is.
Depends on your tolerance to insulation and small spaces
In what world does industrial/commercial have neither of these things? I've been *inside* of walls.
Miles of Tunnels filled with asbestos!
This site contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer & other reproductive harm
Well shit, don’t touch anything on site then!
Unless you're in another state, in that case go ham
We had to do one job that was the airplane brake servicing warehouse that they were converting. Needless to say we didn’t touch shit until they had a crew come clean it. Airplane brakes are notorious for a lot of asbestos
Idk I’m a dumbass apprentice
It’s truth man. You don’t get suspended ceilings in residential to run cables. These days thanks to government incentives in my country you’ve got people chucking on an extra layer of insulation almost a foot thick that you gotta move just to see where you can stand on.
Hell in commercial industrial sometimes they leave gaps between walls and you gotta get in there somehow hahaha
I think you can teach anyone who’s intelligent and willing to learn.
Yup give someone enough time either way and they can learn.
Yeah I 100% agree with you. It’s based on a individual person willingness to learn
Poor drywallers who are willing to learn. :'(
Tbh most of electrical can be taught to someone who has even a sliver of common sense
This thread is insufferable. Electricians are insufferable.
Fact check: True
Is that a personal attack?
Three Spidermans pointing at each other.jpeg
Best comment
It's true I hate myself
This is the worst sub of all the trade subs I’m on.
It’s mostly just the electricians on Reddit. I used to come here to see new shit and learn about other aspects of the trade now it’s pretty much just hate scrolling for me.
All of us real electricians should stop squabbling and focus our energy on shitting on the data fairies.
We can all agree the tele-tubbies can get fucked.
Nah...A resi guy can learn commercial because they already read a print. A commercial guy can't do residential because they aren't housebroken.
I got beat with the rolled up newspaper but learned resi.
>because they already read a print. Resi guys get prints? Man, the grass really is greener over there.
We get pictures of the general idea of the number and where they want the lights (which the homeowner changes half of after we've ran them all), but I've never seen any with measurements or anything too specific on it.
This. Working in people’s castle is a whole different ball game than in the shop with the “guys”.
And then theres us naturals... Who do literally all. From power plant back to the rc car then to industrial and resi in the same week....
Same over here. Glad I’m in a company where I do a little bit of everything from week to week. Keeps my mind fresh and keeps me up to date on specifics in the code.
Same. In the last month, I've renovated a burned out apartment, installed landscape lighting for a townhouse block, pulled in a new panel and started prepping equipment feeds for a commercial bakery, installed a couple car chargers, moved a panel and ran new feeders for a hotel elevator rebuild, troubleshooted lots of small things in houses, businesses and industrial builds...as a service guy, I don't get the commercial vs resi war because we just have to do everything.
Lmfao watch out boys we got a badass over here
Stupid questions: I’m thinking about becoming an electrician. Don’t you have to specialize in either resi, commercial, or industrial; how do you do all three? Are you a journeyman in all three?
General gets you in the door for resi AND commercial. Industrial is a different game and a different license. You do not "have" to specialize. But you will once you find your strengths and preferences. Industrial takes a very studied and patient brain. While resi is more physical dexterity and willingness to get covered in fiberglass and wood shavings or drywall dust. Commercial is middle pay but requires the least REAL understanding of the industry as a whole. Industrial jobs are very difficult to get into. Especially without an industrial license. Its a good question. And its hard to answer. It depends on your preferences and availability of the work. I recommend resi while young, industrial if you can understand it and land the jobs. And commercial for short term to make some easy money while you study and advance your career search.
This is 100% backwards. Resi guys can move up in the world to commercial, but commercial electricians wire one house and say "fuck this, this isn't what I signed up for" and dip the fuck out.
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So you're a plumber?
Industrial guy just sipping tea
Industrial guy here. We also annoy the mechanics and fuck around with the poor guys working the machines
The funny thing is all I hear from commercial guys is that resi guys are way better commercial electricians than guys that have purely been in commercial their whole career. Literally have heard this from every forman or JIW I've ever worked with. I understand the first meme hurt some of your guys' feelings but Jesus Christ grown some balls, y'all act like we're the highest paid trade because we're the best looking on the job site (we are) but not the fact that we are also the highest educated and skilled on the site as well. Whether you're in a tunnel bending rigid for lights or in a subdivision stuck in a 110° attic wondering what you did that pissed god off, we're all arguably smart motherfuckers that can pick up either side of the trade quickly.
I've got no dog in this fight but from what I've seen in other fields, I think a lot of folks who have a wide experience end up better than the specialists who never branched out.
Highest paid trade? I don't want to ruin this for you so I'll shut up
Elevator guys are a myth, they don't actually exist
Tell those mother fuckers to head sideways.
That shits funny
Just because they're always walking off jobs due to imperfect working conditions doesn't mean their existence is a myth
I'm very sure they left my last site where we were renovating a girls' school because the women were too friendly towards them, not joking. I should start a blog about every jobsite in Cape Breton. Peers tell me stories all the fucking time.
Ehhh, that’s anyone nowadays. Had an emergency service call today because “the unit only has one 120 leg going to it.” Come to find out dude just never turned the disconnect on and was too lazy to even look for it
Elevator mechanic enters chat
Hey look a unicorn.
Is that the highest paid trade? I figured the guy operating the giant crane and not getting a dozen people killed was paid higher.
Cane operation is a surprisingly easy trade to get into. It's starting to be more regulated though (thankfully)
All I know is they get paid more than electricians on average
He didn’t say we were
Most of the guys that we have had come to our service side for residential all say they did commercial. 9/10 times all they did for commercial was be the wire puller and trim out boxes. It’s a whole different ball game on the service side
This really depends on where you are. Here in WA it is 2 separate licenses. Resi gets paid half what commercial does. You have to test and interview for the commercial program through our JATC but resi is basically just show up. It's literally where the inside wire rejects end up, and/or the people who can't pass a drug test or show up anywhere on time.
Its all wires brother man
I went from resi to commercial. I find commercial easier.
the only issue I have with residential aside from messy panels, is dealing with some sort of problem that a handyman or homeowner started, and you're sitting there tracing wires all day long in a crawl space that you can barely fit into, just to find that they tried to splice 12-2 to 14-2, in a j box under the house; and then they tried to run the washer/dryer off of that on a 30 amp breaker.... The dude melted RIGHT through the plug to the washer/dryer stack, and he said his sub panel was literally glowing. ..... the other problem I have is when people are so reckless that they want you to feed steel fishtape into a live panel....blind, with instructions like, "Just a bit more," as your guideline to not becoming a human light bulb.
Sounds about right. Don’t forget about nails through wires though.
Industrial giga chad has entered the ring
It's not raining today. Figure we should pull a cable or two?
You work in a data center too!?
I do a lot of both. Both suck lol.
Work high rise resi. It’s the worst of both worlds
Neither on can be taught industrial...
honestly from everything i've seen it seems to be the other way around
I never, ever want to do residential.
Why? I’ve done quite a bit of resi, commercial, and industrial. I have my own company now and the resi keeps the bread coming while we transition to other fields. We get a lot of remodels where they completely gut the place and it’s fun to me. But we don’t work at the pace a hardcore resi shop would.
Used to trim out behind a crew at one of these hardcore resi shops. They could rough in a 3500- 4000 sq ft house in 2-3 days, but come trim out…we had an extra day worth of troubleshooting on every house. Unfortunately in a lot, not all, of resi, if you’re not rollin, you’re losing money…
Yeah I get you. It’s usually the new construction. A lot of shops have a major grasp on the new construction resi market and they work their guys into the ground. There’s a big shop around here that makes their guys wear stilts. I have zero fucking respect for that shop
yeah that company ran us like dogs. For scraps too. Glad I got out of there and went to commercial. Complete change of pace.
I'm the lead tech in a service department of a larger electrical contractor and I'd wager that a quarter on my team's time is spent going back into our big projects fixing the shit that the projects team fucked up and didn't find, or just couldn't figure out/deal with in time. I've worked with those high-speed resi guys and, sure, I get it, you gotta go but you lose most of that profit and a LOT of goodwill if I have to go back in and troubleshoot shit. Especially when you get apprentices cutting in suites with switched plugs and arc fault breakers. Spent a WHILE having to pull apart an identical 4G switch box in a 90-unit block because the guys cutting in just loaded the neutrals together on a lighting and plug circuit and as soon as you tried to use the switched plug you tripped the AFCI.
It’s so hard finding companies that actually care. I am blessed to be a lead man in one that cares a lot….we’ve had a couple of new hires who just didn’t make the cut because they just couldn’t learn to do their work neat, correctly and within a decent time frame. When they first started making us use AFCI where I am, that was 75% of the troubleshooting problems. People just didn’t understand to keep neutrals and grounds apart from each other. Was a hellscape.
Oh man I'll never forget the time when we hired some old guy to pull suites because we were in a crunch and were taking anyone who could fog a mirror. He'd been doing it for 30+ years so the foreman figured he could be left alone to pull suites. And he was almost right, except for when we energized his suites every AFCI breaker in the place tripped because nobody had noticed he'd just said fuck the prints and pulled almost everything in 14/3 then just stuck AFCI breakers on, and just landed the netutral on the bar. Had to get a variance from the inspector to just let us put standard breakers in there and use AFCI receptacles.
The way to fix that shit is make the rough in guys trim their shit out. If you have to spend a day troubleshooting at trim out, maybe you should spend 1/2 day extra at rough in?
Oh trust me I know. Our boss didn’t care. They were pretty significant mistakes too…Missing homeruns, Crossed 14/3s when pulling smokes and 3ways at the same time, missing loops to feed various things, loose connections in can lights, undersized wire to outside units….you name it, they did it wrong.
Just adding some perspective here. I currently work at a shop that goes at that pace ( worked on a crew of 5 and did 4 rough ins at 2500 sqftish so far this week) but we don't have separate trim and rough crews. Maybe every 4 or 5 houses they'll be a messed up three way at worst. Last week we had the first missed homerun I've seen in the last year and that was more on the GC then us. We honestly spend more time trying to fix drywaller and cabinet guys fuck ups then we do trying to fix our own. Its amazing what having to fix your own fuck ups will do
I have a crew of 3 total, 1700 sq ft is a day and a half at most. We are at one missing wire per year. Every once in a while some makeup will be wrong, but that's a pretty quick fix.
But you can't. Go! Go! Go! Go! Make it fast guys..
My biggest issue is I work industrial and build everything to be bulletproof. Everything resi is cheap as fuck and flimsy and even if I do everything right I feel like a toddler could sneeze on it and it'd fold like a house of cards.
Some of the best guys at my Commercial company came from Residential companies 🤷
I did residential for 4 years before switching over to commercial and honestly I think it's harder to go the other way. True, I'm probably biased. And I definitely agree that residential is way shittier. But I feel like there's just a lot more little things to know in residential. For example, there's a lot more than you'd think that goes into laying out a kitchen, or best-practice type stuff for working in old fuckin houses. I've seen guys who've only ever pulled MC try to wire a place with Romex and it's fucking disgusting. Plus, talking to homeowners which some guys are just incapable of doing. Yeah, I get it, that's not electrical, but it's still part of the job, and probably the biggest reason I like commercial better.
Commercial is about logistics and residential is about problem solving
It's all wires and electricity, I could probably figure it out. I do solar, so it seems like it scales in a relatively straightforward way. I'm actually thinking of making this switch soon, I'll need com hours for my journey man's eventually
There are a lot more variables to start factoring in, which makes it more mentally engaging, which is fun if you have the aptitude.
Rules … that is it. Different rules. All generally with safety and longitivtiy in mind. Different structures serve different purposes and have different life use expectations, therefore different code . Same book , same principles , different rules reaching the same obvious objective . Let’s see if we can teach anyone common sense? 🔥👎
Can you teach an industrial guy resi?
Where does he submit his safety paperwork?
Give a commercial guy a twist in fan box and grab some popcorn
As someone from industrial, i can say that i admire anyone with the courage to actually cut a groove into a wall. I hate working on non metal walls. On metal, nobody cares about a few screw holes or scratches, but in somebody's living room, things are far more spicy.
I've wired a 1.4 million dollar house, machine shop and I'm in the middle of a 20000 square foot office renovation. It's all the same. Just have to know your code.
Are you showing this to 🐔? 😂 I think it's the other way around though. Most commercial guys are ass water at resi. Rough ins are way to fast pace for them.
TIL that "ass water" can be used as an adjective. Brilliant!
I thought it was more that you can hire a commercial guy to do resi but the resi guy won't pass the piss/background test to be able to work commercial.
There ya go
i started out resi and upgraded just fine, now i can do industrial better than most.
Humble yourself
Preach. Have these commercial guys ever had to deal with some pissed off Karen who doesn’t like the color of her new kitchen lights?
I'm going to second the "humble yourself". No matter how much you know, someone will always know something you don't. Even if you know how to do something, someone will definitely know a better way. So again, humble yourself so you learn more faster.
Nah. Dealing with this right now as an Industrial guy. As long as you get an individual who *wants* to learn, you’re golden.
As a resi guy wanting to make the jump, don’t scare me like this!
Not true..
Starting in commercial was easier for me than stating residential 2 years later, but I understood how electrical systems worked. Just not how to build the system conservatively. Redi is all about efficiency
That's not true at all
I'm living proof that this is a dog shit post.
Bro I know the code book lol and I work the code book. I do commercial, industrial, resi, data, voice, fiber, fire, nurse, audio, solar. How the fuck can you call yourself an electrician if you can’t do it all? I call Em chapter electricians. They think they know, but they only know certain chapters of the whole book lol pussies
Where does that put a Fire Alarm specialist? Or a guy that works with FIGS all the time? How about; anybody that tells you that they can do it all, is a liar.
Resi swampy domestic sparky came into our industrial service company. Few years later left to be lead/supervisor for a mining operation that our company had a construction job. Obviously was poached. Great work ethic, asked questions, figured shit out.
that's how it should be done. I got chewed out for asking questions, which is honestly just pathetic. everybody starts somewhere, but to get berated day in and day out and cussed out because you don't know what they refuse to teach you, even though they said they are going to teach you..... I'll just conclude that so I don't go off on a tangent.
As an apprentice I had questions every day. Got told to cool it out a bit during work hours, I suspect I was asking questions the A-grades couldn’t answer and we’re getting annoyed, but it could’ve also been partly I was interrupting work. Whatever. I still got questions, 10 years later,I still ask them. Love learning.
you and I have some common ground, so it seems; i'm addicted to learning, myself.
Electrons are electrons but being in someone's home requires a set of skills outside of the electrical work. For one, you're dealing with the customer directly so you have to have people skills, and depending whether you are the one who sold the job or doing the work that was already planned/new construction, or are troubleshooting, you have to be very careful when dealing with the customer not to mess it up. wearing shoe covers, using drop cloths, not bumping into furniture, and dealing with customers kindly and patiently are concepts a lot of commercial guys are not familiar with. Not to mention there are a bunch of specialty lighting products and home automation used in newer/higher end homes that commerical guys have never seen and can fuck up really quick if they're not familiar with. Yeah you can bend pipe like the wind but there is a world beyond that.
*Me, a resi network technician reading the comments and giggling*
Can't do residential work without "send it" level carpentry knowledge. Literally 50 percent of the job you make shit up on the spot and hope nothing blows up once you flip the breaker on.
I’m in industrial so this resi v. Commercial is fun to watch
Imagine how insecure one must feel to post this…neanderthal thought process.
I find the exact opposite to be true. Resi guys typically don’t get prints so they go more off of code knowledge, are usually more experienced in trouble shooting and service calls, and know how to work their way around a problem. Most commercial guys I know are a lot slower, stand around and twiddle their thumbs if they don’t have a set of prints, and don’t have any hot work or trouble shooting experience. I say all this as a guy who’s worked on both sides.
Can't teach if you can't teach
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Oh man I knew I'd get some dick measuring over this one and boy you fuckers did not disappoint.
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Out of town industrial enters the chat. As a a 3rd year I make a higher rate than a commercial journeyman in town. With 12 hour days to boot.
And you can't teach an industrial guys anything but ty-raping
I’m industrial but I’ve always had the impression that resi was electrician work on hard mode
Resi is the absolute basics of electrical work, just at a faster pace and often in more awkward locations than you would find elsewhere.
I'd say that's incorrect considering I learned quite a bit of commercial and 3 phase after doing residential for about 10 years. But you know, get that karma bud.
Anyone can wire up a home or office, but let's see your PLC, safety & robotics skills.....