Electricians wiring AI data centers are hauling in $280,000 a year, while computer engineering grads stare down 7.8 percent unemployment. The career meta completely flipped. The New York Federal Reserve pegged anthropology grads slightly worse at 7.9 percent, but coding agents are the real culprit, gutting software roles. AI wrote the job description, and AI is deleting the job.
The electrician path isn't a casual side quest, though. It demands a 4-to-5-year apprenticeship with roughly 8,000 paid fieldwork hours and 500 to 900 classroom hours before anyone gets licensed. Data center specialization means stacking credentials in medium-voltage architecture and NFPA standards during that grind. Brutal, but that paycheck is genuinely absurd.
And the software side? It's getting unhinged. One Yahoo listing for a senior dev role demanded over a decade of experience with Claude Code, an AI tool that has existed for roughly one year. Maybe HR fumbled that posting, but it perfectly captures the impossible expectations crushing engineers while the trades quietly print money.
The electrician path isn't a casual side quest, though. It demands a 4-to-5-year apprenticeship with roughly 8,000 paid fieldwork hours and 500 to 900 classroom hours before anyone gets licensed. Data center specialization means stacking credentials in medium-voltage architecture and NFPA standards during that grind. Brutal, but that paycheck is genuinely absurd.
And the software side? It's getting unhinged. One Yahoo listing for a senior dev role demanded over a decade of experience with Claude Code, an AI tool that has existed for roughly one year. Maybe HR fumbled that posting, but it perfectly captures the impossible expectations crushing engineers while the trades quietly print money.
