A Mechanic Offered a Reason Why No One Wants to Work in the Industry

He fails to mention that AI engineers probably get 4x the pay with a job that is less physically demanding.

And eg

> There’s incredible dignity in emergency services, and people can have wonderful careers.

Not really. Ask anyone who does it; you'll hear minimum wage or not much above, and piles of transport of fat people. ie huge risks to the joint health for the people stuck moving them.

And of course, dignity ain't cash. This The whole thing is an extended whinge that rounds to I don't want to pay more.

Plus the implicit idea that society is responsible for preparing employees for Ford, not Ford.

Seems like theres either a demand for something or there isnt.

And the amount of demand sets the rate of pay.

The invisible hand.

1) Labor costs go up with inflation

2) Rent goes up

3) New vacuum prices go down

At some point in the past, the downward line of vacuum price crossed over the upward line of repair cost. That's when this profession cratered.

Cars may have a while until that price point hits. But the quoted mechanic's suggestion that engineers optimize for simpler repairs instead of simpler production may be something similar. If simpler production makes the price of a new car $X cheaper, but increases the labor cost of repairs over the car's lifetime by $Y, there could be a time when X > Y.

The article cites a mechanic commenting on Ford CEO's remarks on lack of mechanics by referring to how Ford fails to pay rates for warranty repairs that justify the volume of work required to pull them off.

This suggests the root cause is the automaker's refusal to pay for warranty work at a market rate.

The article raises some points on how Ford both designed cars that are too expensive to repair and fails to pay mechanics to make their product line attractive for any maintenance business. This doesn't sound like a market efficiency issue.

I'm not going to pay someone to punch me in the face but I wouldn't call that a shortage.

In your example there would still be people willing to do it, but the government doesn't allow it?

The car companies have basically set up a monopsony with cartels, squeezed the mechanics out, and are now complaining that they squeezed them out too much.

If there is a shortage of something, I would expect these trade companies to backfill with apprentices who will then grow into their roles.

If there's too high a risk that someone won't be worth the investment, then that seems entirely financial to me.

This was the whole issue with allowing guilds in the first place... If you only allow a guild to do a job (legally) and the guild also controls how many members they train and accept... The end result is a labor shortage.

Because it's better for the existing members of the guild.

If they train a large number of new members... they spend time and money on training, and they've increased their competition during bidding which drives down rates.

So instead you train the bare minimum for replacements. This keeps your members' rates high and competition low.

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Any time the "pay is great" but the "process to get it sucks!"... you're seeing this in action. It's not that the process really needs to suck, it's that the process roadblocks are there to maintain high pay for the existing trained members.

If there's one thing monopolies don't like... it's competition. And legally enforced certifications are wonderful monopoly creators if you don't manage them carefully.

As it should be. I’m tired of dumb roughnecks attending a 6-week course and then getting the ability to legally beat people up. It should be difficult to become a police officer, we should hold them to a high standard, especially if we’re gonna pay them so much.

Making less than $105k per year in SF is considered low income.

This got solved in tech 20 years ago. You don't look at credentials and instead design a very arduous interviewing process that selects for both high IQ and people who are willing to study/work at it.

Then you provide lots of training. 20 years ago at Google (or Apple etc) there were tons of well educated non CS hires who were given good training and became exceptional software engineers.

I reckon the San Francisco PD salaries are not really all that "fantastic".

And rightfully so, the cops here are fantastic.

We do have lower level “enforcement officers” though, but they also take 2.4 to 3 years. Just not a bachelors

I'm not convinced CAFE is the way to go for fuel efficiency. The obvious thing to do is put some kind of levy on the expected total emissions of the vehicle over its lifetime, regardless of size, which would encourage people to buy cars no larger than their needs dictate. The current system seems inefficient.

Exactly. It's basically fight club math. Spend $10 on a click-fit connector that can't be disassembled but that a $60/hr (though they only see a fraction of that) UAW laborer can plug in in half the time can't easily short-insert that can be visually checked.

The fact that it costs $200 the 1/10000 times it fails under warranty doesn't matter with those numbers. And you don't even care about the 100/100 times it fails at 2-3x the warranty period.

Of course, you're burning credibility doing this. But credibility doesn't have an obvious mapping to a number and stonk go up, KPI go up, bonus get paid, nobody cares.

My old protege even had an access port in the fender well added specifically to remove the crank bolt with an extension. If it were an Audi the FSM would point you to the engine removal process as step 1.

An advantage to the manufacturer, that is. For the consumer, it leads to never ending car payments for life, or surprise bills that approach the cost of a replacement vehicle.

If anyone here owns a car with that system I recommend taking it to your trusted mechanic and discussing with them to do additional preventive maintenance on it.

Source: I own one of these engines and I dread having to pay ~3k for this maintenance in 3 years. I like the engine, just not this maintenance ticket item.

BMW can be kinda a pain (its under a liner in the trunk, making you work at weird angles (and part emptying your trunk) but the benefit is your battery isn’t exposed to the elements and probably lasts longer for that reason.