Just wondering as I’m about 3 years from retiring from the Air Force and I’m really not happy working in the IT field.
I probably will get another IT job when I hit my 20 and retire, but sometimes I wish I could work with my hands and have some job satisfaction. The big problem I see is not salary/money, but the fact that I’ll be 45 when I get out. I do flashlights as a hobby right now as it’s really satisfying building or even repairing something that most folks wouldn’t have the inclination to do. Always wanted to get into welding as a side skill or hobby, but I’ve occasionally thought about doing it for a job. I know it’s not as cushy as an office job, but I’m getting tired of the office life.
I was thinking of general welding, but it’s always good to know companies are hiring.
I’m probably going Civil Service - stable, lower stress, but honestly I’d like to build stuff.
I werlded for about 20 years in the shipyard and refinery. I learned the basics in the shipyard. Over the years I taught myself more technics and a little more about metalurgy.
Check the local comunity colleges. Some offer welding courses.
The money is in pipe fabrication.
+1 on the schooling. Any welding courses you can take at a technical college will always look great on a resume. Plus, most of those colleges, if they are like the local one I go to, will help get you into the career field during or upon completion of your program. Just about every journeyman trade will always be hiring. World’s not running out of electricity or cars anytime soon and someone’s always needed to fix ’em!
I am an Ironworker by trade.
We do a lot of welding and so do plumbers and boiler makers.
Look into getting a welding course to start and get into a union to go through an apprenticeship. Look into shops too. (Pays less)
If you want to be in demand, learn stainless steel or aluminium welding. Lots of people know how to weld steel already…
Being a production welder isn’t much fun. I warned my cousin while he was going to school for welding that he should try to get in some robotics classes to go along with his certification. It wasn’t until he had a year of production welding under his belt before he saw the light and tried to get on one of the robotic cells at work. Had he listened while he was in school he could have been making a fair bit more money doing much more interesting work the whole time, now he’s about 50% production/repair and 50% robot operator, but still not making as much as he should.
And to be clear even the production welding where we work is leagues better than most places. It’s a clean, climate controlled shop, but that doesn’t change the physical and dirty nature of the work.
I recommend getting training in some form of specialized welding, I.E. Robotic, TIG in stainless or aluminum, or combining a solid understanding of all forms of welding with fabrication training so you can be doing one off type work in a start to finish type approach so that there is a variety to what you do.
That said some people love welding and can be happy chugging along as a production welder for years on end. I applaud those people, they are some of the hardest workers I know, but I know that a lot of people can’t hack it or their bodies just get worn out if they work for a bad shop that isn’t paying close attention to how they’re forcing their guys to work.
+1 for the last few posts. Iron welding is not specialized. And it is repetitive. It can be fun, but make sure you add a skill or two that makes your employer see you as different than the next.
Idea - you could use your IT experience as your second skill. Lots of small welding companies have a lame website. When you inquire about a job make it clear you can use your slow days to update their website. Bam. You’re that guy that is two for the price of one.
Lots of custom work done in tig welding. Aluminum bikes, choppers, even racing car frames. More pedantic is local water and waste departments. I learned welding from an old timer that worked on the Hetch Hetchy Dam to Crystal Springs Reservoir pipeline including some of the water towers in the Central Valley along the way. Stick welding is an easy place to start but as TL says it’s a fumey/dirty job no matter how you slice it and good eyes and a steady hand are a must.
If you have IT experience and want to work elsewhere than a desk, look into process controls… PLC programming, sensor calibration, understanding what the entire process entails to see why the section you just worked on wonked it all up… A lot of head scratching and problem solving, but the autonomy to fix it…
Plus so much is ethernet enabled nowdays… So IT plays into it, but is not the entire thing. Welding is a fine trade, but if you are 45 and retired from the USAF, put yourself in a position to work another 20 years without issue, welding has its hazards….