Career Change at 29, Am I crazy?

[BarrieJ]

Don't get your hopes up earning those sort of figures as a production welder companies don't want perfection, they want product out of the door so welds need to be quality acceptable not perfection.

Absolutely agree.
I was once told by a manager: "I don't want it good, I want it Tuesday".
A quote, I've repeated several times.
I changed career, age 40 and certainly never regretted it.
How can anybody age 16/18 possibly know how they want to spend the rest of their working lives?

 

[premmington]

Absolutely agree.
I was once told by a manager: "I don't want it good, I want it Tuesday".
A quote, I've repeated several times.
I changed career, age 40 and certainly never regretted it.
How can anybody age 16/18 possibly know how they want to spend the rest of their working lives?

You can't mate....

 

[Robotstar5]

Absolutely agree.
I was once told by a manager: "I don't want it good, I want it Tuesday".
A quote, I've repeated several times.
I changed career, age 40 and certainly never regretted it.
How can anybody age 16/18 possibly know how they want to spend the rest of their working lives?

I wanted to work with electrics so did an apprenticeship as a maintenance electrician when I left school, spent pretty much all my working life in maintenance and retired as a maintenance electrician a couple of years ago, obviously I had no ambition

 

[DeBangis]

Welldone! I have a coursemate apprenticing in electrician.

 

[Morrisman]

Thanks for the advice but I’m looking at indeed and seeing 16-32 £ P/H after a few years on the bench, by trade I’ve been a self-confessed perfectionist and if this skill can move across with me I’ll be good to go in no time.

£32 an hour? I think you’ll need to find just the right niche, and be at the top of your game to get that.
Back in the early eighties we had a couple of specialist tig welders do some work for the company I was working for. They welded finned inconol tubes onto header boxes to make what were essentially giant cooling radiators, for a nuclear power station. 100s of 1” tubes, row after row, tig welding almost blind on the back side. If one weld were to leak, when the finished job was pressure tested, dozens of tubes above it would have to be cut out to fix it.
Those guys were earning £100 a day, in the early eighties, while I was on about £80 a week as a freshly qualified machine shop apprentice.

The company is still going, same place, but the name has changed, used to be called GEA Air exchangers in my time there, 40 years or so ago.

Air Cooled Heat Exchangers - Air Cooled Heat Exchangers

spiro-gills.com

 

[northwest]

I was thirty five, or thereabouts, when I decided what I wanted to do and even then I wasn't quite certain. One thing I do know for sure though is I am now too old to start something else (maybe) so get on while you can and do what you want to do now, in forty years time it will be far too late.

 

[Bobupndown]

I'm turning 50 this year and coming close to 28 years in my career which has a normal 30 year expectation before retirement. Its not the job it was and I'm at the stage where I'm ready to leave now if I could. I'll stick at it for the pension but I fancy doing something less taxing for my next job. Don't know yet what that might be, a driving job of some description possibly.

 

[Ged93]

Hi there.

Becoming a welder/carpenter could be a very satisfying career , really , if you enjoy steel construction , mechanics .. on the other side it's a heavy and hard job , you need time to get enough experience , you stay hot in summer and cold in winter , noisy and dangerous environments and so on.. .

Personally at 20 years old I decided to quit with university ( mechanical engineering ) , just because it wasn't for me , definetely .
My dad took me at the shop the day after I left books , now I'm 31 , and that's the job I love , learnt a lot and still learning .
Welding , machining , designing , getting in touch with customers , solving problems , beeing always flat out .
Then most funny thing is when I need to explain to graduated designers how to properly design this and that or how to solve the problem they caused thanks to their faulty ideas ...

 

[northwest]

Its not the job it was and I'm at the stage where I'm ready to leave now if I could. I'll stick at it for the pension but I fancy doing something less taxing for my next job. Don't know yet what that might be, a driving job of some description possibly.

Pal of mine was getting ready to retire after (almost) thirty years being a cop so for the last six month decided to keep his head down and go down the dungeons booking in the scumbags clients.

One day the know it all is in front of him: Okay sonny, name, "Jimmy Smith" and your occupation? "Professional thief"

Well sonny, you are in front of me so not very professional, we will change that to amateur thief shall we?

My pal was put on report for that and got his first ever warning letter, you are not kidding the job isn't what it was, the lunatics are in charge!

 

[Bobupndown]

Pal of mine was getting ready to retire after (almost) thirty years being a cop so for the last six month decided to keep his head down and go down the dungeons booking in the scumbags clients.

One day the know it all is in front of him: Okay sonny, name, "Jimmy Smith" and your occupation? "Professional thief"

Well sonny, you are in front of me so not very professional, we will change that to amateur thief shall we?

My pal was put on report for that and got his first ever warning letter, you are not kidding the job isn't what it was, the lunatics are in charge!

That's the truth, the PC / snowflake brigade have made it a place where you have to watch every word you say for sake of someone getting offended and with me not being very PC at the best of times I find myself biting my tongue quite a lot.

 

[dave h 2]

People who don't like to stay to long anywhere normally go contracting through an agency, for that you need the skills up front and a certain flexibility of location.

10 years at a job is fine, changing permanent rolls every year or two makes the HR lot nervous except when you go agency because they don't care when it's only 6 month appointments.

 

[dave h 2]

That's the truth, the PC / snowflake brigade have made it a place where you have to watch every word you say for sake of someone getting offended and with me not being very PC at the best of times I find myself biting my tongue quite a lot.

It's legal and statements like that don't go down well in court, much like turning up at the airport and answering Customs "what's in the bag" with "a bomb" expecting a laugh, but getting handcuffs instead.

 

[xillent]

Don't worry in the least about career change. It'll be a good thing and you'll gain all sorts of experience to add to what you've already got. Don't worry too much about earnings. I realise we've all got to live but if you find a job you love it's like a lottery win. My favourite saying is that you make your own luck. It's amazing how if you work hard opportunities often appear. If they don't you can still hold your head up and know that you made your best effort.