re: Home Depot to start giving free training in trade skills

Takes 30min to find an employee that can cut me 10’ of #2 thhn.

And they can’t keep tweakers from robbing them blind then peddling discounted tools in their parking lots.

And you’re out here thinking they going to train you to sweat pipe or properly bend emt correctly? Com’on Baw?

And if you think their free certification will do anything but get your resume thrown in the trash, I got even more news Baw

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AI will destroy white collar jobs, skilled jobs will still be in demand.

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Technology is replacing skilled trades at a far faster pace than it is white collar jobs and has been for about 50 years. It has been going on for centuries but it has really picked up the pace in the last 50 years. I am a 5th generation member of the IBEW and have been around building trades people my entire life. The difference between analog controls and digital controls alone has eliminated about 99% of the labor required to wire a manufacturing facility. I can take any able bodied 20 year old today and teach them how to wire a house in 6 months and they will be able to do it as well as anyone with 40 years of experience and it won't take but 2 of them to rough 2-2500 square foot track houses in a 10 hour day and trim them out in another 10 hour day. 40 years ago it would have taken them that long to do the cable TV and phone outlets. They do not do those at all any longer.

There is not a welding job that a machine can't do more efficiently and better than the best human welder can do....the initial cost may be prohibitive but its is going down faster than a fat girl on prom night and the machines the human uses today are basically idiot proof and anyone who can see through a welding hood can produce a tolerable weld.

Plumbing consists of stretching little more than plastic garden hoses from point a to b and crimping them together and glueing up drain lines. Anyone who can walk and see and has at least one arm can do it.

Auto mechanics hook up a computer and replace whatever it tells them to replace...which means unbolting it and bolting on a new one.

Trouble shooting anything consists of replacing parts with a new one. There is no skill required other than a willingness to work in heat and cold and the elements.

And none of that addresses the fact that by the time a tradesman is 40 his body is unable to compete with the 30 year old and by the time he is 50 he is basically unemployable. The Mike Rowe's of the world have never worked in a trade beyond doing so for a family member or friend for a few months when they were kids....they are promoting an idea they could not possibly understand. Go to a construction site and see how many 30 year olds there are compared to 50 year olds. All it takes to know better is some simple observation and math.

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And you’re out here thinking they going to train you to sweat pipe or properly bend emt correctly? Com’on Baw?

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I don’t think anyone really thinks doing these trainings will make people job site ready but exposing more people to the trades is a good thing.


Of course there will be some guys who gate keep their trade as if nobody else can possibly understand the intricacies of doing it the way that they do it because they have been doing it for for 53 years and that entitles them to be king of blue collars.

They need to train the employees bc 90% of them have ZERO clue. That goes for Lowes also. I remember when a hardware store had "that guy" who knew what he was talking about.

If it's anything like what I've seen on This Old House or these renovation shows, they don't know jack shite.