Am electrician, can confirm.
To be fair, I don't get called out to fix good work. If something's fucked, it's usually because some "handyman" who "totally knows what he's doing" was there before.
Between that, and the fact that most of the people involved in wiring up houses are just laborers under an electrician's supervision (ostensibly), yeah, I get plenty to complain about.
It also makes it easier, I feel, for customers to stomach the bill if I can adequately explain how much better off they are now that I've done my job.
Can I ask a question: do repair electricians often cross paths with install electricians? I don’t know much about the business of the trade, but my feeling was that the folks doing installs in new houses / buildings rarely crossed paths with the ones going around repairing everything. In my mind these are like two separate worlds.
Kinda depends? But yeah they're mostly separate.
When I worked for a shop (self-employed now), they had us divided into Construction and Service, and the two pretty much kept to themselves. Service guys looked down on Construction guys because they didn't know much about troubleshooting; Construction guys looked down on Service guys because most of them couldn't build their way out of a wet paper bag.
Most of my experience as an apprentice was construction. I did some service calls now and then when jobsites slowed down in the winter. Now I mostly do service calls, and, frankly, it's a HELL of a lot easier.
Repair electricians definitely run into the work of install electricians, but my experience is they're mostly two different groups. Install electricians may come back to do repairs on their own work, or if there's a lull in new construction jobs they can pick up they might fill in the hours with some smaller repair jobs.
There are some some more specialized electricians that do a mix of both, for example my company is mostly generator focused. We're involved in both new construction and repairs for things that are generator/transfer switch/solar related.
Yeah, there's a lot of questionable work out there. Many homeowners underestimate the difficulty involved in some repairs too, so there's definitely a need to justify why it took as long as it did.
Even if it doesn’t take long, it’s helpful for some if they get an explanation that shows your expertise. Which is lots of what they’re paying for usually.
On my jobsite, working in new construction, we still complain a lot about what the people before us did. Everybody on the crew is a competent electrician, yet we still have plenty of times where we look at the most experienced electrician there and think "wth was he thinking??"
I feel love the ironic part is that both good and bad electricians can have the same outcome. Some wacky installation that works. The difference is that the bad guy probably doesn't know why it works and/or the pros/cons. The great electrician realizes that while it's probably not the "correct" way, it saves a ton of cost and work and is sufficient for what is being requested.
My previous house was a new build. I had some weird electrical problems. I called the builder and they sent someone out.
The guy looked at my panel and said, "Oh yeah, I remember this house. We had to fire the electrician who wired your house because he was always showing up high."
I had a new storm door installed through Lowe’s and the contractor they contracted to do it showed up real nice, we talked, then he went off and smoked meth and did the best fucking job I’ve ever seen.
50/50 I guess.
There's high and then there's high on meth.
I had a gas stove installed by Lowe's. The guys that installed it couldn't figure out how to get the gas to stop leaking, but wouldn't admit they had no idea what they were doing. They told me I would have to turn the gas valve off at the connection when I wasn't using the stove
I stopped trying to explain and let them leave, because I was over it. Installed the connection myself, I was just happy I didn't have to move it or the old one
I did call Lowe's and let them know about it though, so that those guys wouldn't inadvertently kill someone with their installations
50/50 for sure lol
I bought a fridge from Lowe's and one of the delivery guys asked to use my bathroom. When I went in there later, he had basically managed to pee on the floor instead of in the toilet. I'm a bit of a "tinkler sprinkler" myself but this was next level.
I feel like they shouldn't charge (heh) you for it
What’s fun is criticizing someone’s code and lack of proper comments/documentation, and then realizing you wrote it 3+ years ago.
My main project is in a private repo with me as the sole dev but I swear there is some dumbass pushing shitty code.
At first I get embarrassed when that happens. But then I take a little pride in knowing that means I've grown in knowledge in my field... Then I get mad at how past me was so dumb and now I have to fix HIS stuff! Screw that guy
Some days ago, I was complaining about some asinine decision on one of the systems I have to take care of with a programmer. The programmer then remembered that the thing I was complaining about was something that I asked to be added in the first place. He also reminded me of the why, but that knowledge simply made me wonder what the fucking fuck I was thinking back then.
The electrician equivalent is adding a 20A dedicated circuit along the wall and just snaking it all over the place through laziness (efficiency), and many moons later deciding to mount some tracks for a closet organizer but the voltage tester is freaking out like the wall is a game of Minesweeper
I work in municipal development. I was driving by and saw a hellscape development starting up and blocking traffic in the middle of Rush hour. So I pulled over, put on my City reflective vest, and went out to see who the hell authorized them for this bullshit.
They pulled out a permit with my signature on it.
I always tell every apprentice i work with that they need to make sure they weren't the last guy to touch ut when they start bitching about the dumbass that came before them
I was doing some construction work this past weekend, and encountered some wiring that I did about 20 years ago. I spent the first 5 minutes complaining about the crazy asshole who wired it up, knowing full well that it was me. I am in this picture and I do not like it.
I did elder care facility maintenance work 20 years ago and am confident/hope all of my work has been rightfully undone and replaced by someone who gave more of a damn.
I still remember my sprinkler system wiring giving me a warm buzz every time I had to manually switch zones because my wiring was such ass.
God I hope they've fixed that.
I have a couple of colleagues in the kitchen where I work who stand babbling, as if in a daze, if they see a mistake's been made, sometiems for up to a minute. Very frustrating for me, as I prefer to just solve the problem. I remember one time holding my hand out to ask for the pan as my colleague stood with it, stirring it with a pair of tongs, repeatedly muttering that there weren't enough peas in the linguine, and I was saying, fine, then give me the pan and I'll chuck more peas in, but she just kept yammering away. Really fucks me off, haha.
The advantage of Chinese kitchen utensils, and layout is that I could just grab a ladel full of peas and dump them into the pan in such a situation. I had my own wok to deal with, but there's a surprising amount of down time in cooking.
Turns out that if you were doing software development but using wires instead, it's even more cumbersome, difficult and open to shitty solutions that other idiots before you tried out, and will also be fixed by idiots after you.
Because you know, solutions to problems are hard. And we all suck.
So instead... You look at the situation in disbelief, cursing, complaining, scoffing. Then you see a comment line and realise it's your code from two years ago and you had the audacity to put your name to it like it might be a legacy worth preserving one day.
As a software developer and sometimes home electrician, I am so glad that house wiring doesn't support git blame, but it would be nice to know who not to hire because the work in my house when I purchased it was appalling
Nice. You would probably shake your head at me because I still haven't fixed an issue w/ a receptical. Basically, the screw for the outlet box is completely stripped, so I couldn't actually attach the faceplate. Nothing bad has happened yet, but there are a few exposed wires.
Maybe I should go get the dremel out and fix it...
This right here is the proof that programmers are engineers.
git blame
Ah, shit.
Nope doesn't count. Me from a month ago is a whole different person. Fuck that guy.
And future me? What has that guy ever done for me? Fuck that guy too.
I worked on one project that was essentially one main app and then a plugin architecture where other companies could write modules that would be run inside the main app. My explicit instructions were to make it very difficult to actually write one of these modules (so that our competitors could not actually be competitive) and boy did I deliver! If my company had really wanted to deliver something like this that actually worked (in the sense of other companies being able to make real contributions) it would have been trivial to make everything HTML-based web apps.
I had to endure a roasting session where some junior developers laid into "grampa" for his absurdly bad design decisions. I suppose I deserved it, though, for my poor ethical choices.
I was about to say "Yeah, but electricians are pissed off because if they fuck up, fire happens."
But then I remembered THERAC-25.
THERAC-25 strikes me as a case of when programmers fuck up people get radiation poisoning
The worst is when you're also the previous engineer
My dad was a carpenter who did some electrician work. Can confirm. Living in any house not built by him was worth two years of complaining and a year of fixing it. Other than that, it was hard to frustrate him with anything else. Cool as a cucumber. Did beautiful work, too.
Yup. I had the furnace guy over and he complained about a surge protector the previous guy put on (apparently put in on wrong). It guess it comes w/ the territory.
The worst, for either career, is working out that it has to be this awful. Like there's an obvious right way, and that doesn't work because of some aggravating circumstance, and the simple workaround wouldn't fit the use-case, and properly doing what's necessary would be hideously inefficient... so... bodge.
Clunk clunk get it done.
That also 100 percent applies to cybersecurity
I'm in power electronics and its the worst of both worlds
i feel like Lua just exacerbates this problem so much. you have to reinvent the wheel so often in that language, and i often see people reinvent the wheel differently than i would have.
not to mention the nesting…. i don’t know why, but just about every lua file i read has so many nested loops and conditional statements. it’s scary.
Same thing in management.
So you’re a software dev with no idea of affinity groups?
I am one.
Wait am I supposed to get a affinity group assigned? Like pokemon elements?
This is how weird it is for you to give two shits about your problem space…
Well then… Okay. You don’t have to care about anything. After all your only value is to write code! You are hands on keyboard… while that function is slowly being replaced with AI…
Never look up and do not under any circumstance consider how your work matters! Or how it figures into your team, the larger org, or the company. DO NOT CONSIDER WORTH. You aren’t worth it, you write code so don’t think, we are inventing machines to do that instead of people like you…
Other folks think so you don’t have to. We’ll pay them. You’re not worth it. Just keep your mouth shut and wait to execute. We know your worth and will tell you what that is…
I am to mention. I’m sorry.
Lol, my current house's wiring is a bunch of DIY bullshit that even an ex-electrician spent an hour trying to figure out before telling me to pay for someone to take the time to get it fixed
They turned one of the light switches by the "front" door into a dummy plate, wired it and the fan to 2 switches in what used to be a spot for a plug, and managed to tie that whole system to the kitchen light and the outside porch light
Cannot find a consistent path with a multimeter to save our fucking lives, I gave up and we just don't have our kitchen light working for like 1.5 years
I bought a house last year and I was somewhat mystified by why the two light switches next to the door were horizontal instead of the normal vertical arrangement. Turns out they had tried to turn a single box into a double by basically just gouging a bigger hole in the cinderblock wall and filling it with a softball-sized lump of caulk into which they stuffed the two switches; somehow they could only get this whole mess to stay in place by putting the switches horizontally. For bonus points, one of the switches did nothing except producing a distant humming noise and then tripping one of the breakers after a few seconds.
My 5'x4' bathroom has 3 seperate circuits feeding it. There is one circuit for the lights, one for the fan, and one for the single outlet in there. Those are the only things on those 3 circuits.
My basement has fully wired electrical outlets in the walls that were just sheetrocked over when the previous owner "finished the basement".
My basement has an electrical outlet on every other stud throughout the whole thing; they are all on the same 15A breaker.
The the upstairs bedrooms are on seperate circuits except for one outlet on the north wall of each bedroom which both share the same seperate circuit.
I think my house was wired by M.C. Escher.
Do you have an attic where the kitchen light box is accessible?
