I think the global pandemic sped up the inevitable reconsideration of the way our society is structured, and if you wanna buy me a beer, then one day maybe I’ll tell you all my thoughts on technofuedalism, China’s acceptance into the WTO, and Citizens United. The Morning Dump, which you are reading, is focused on car news, so I’m going to start today’s news roundup with a speech/post from Ford CEO Jim Farley that obliquely touches on a lot of the same topics.
With one big exception, companies are essentially non-partisan organizations, but the sense I’ve always gotten is that Ford tends to trend to the left of the Detroit automakers, which is to say: a politics that is something akin to Romney Republicanism. At the same time, the policies of Donald Trump are probably the least bad for Ford, and that creates a potential advantage for the blue oval brand.
The policies of the White House might be most bad for a company like Volkswagen, which is why it’s not a surprise that the company is pouring money into American EV startup Rivian. Things are also bad for Japanese automakers, which face massive tariffs that probably aren’t going away anytime soon.
This leaves companies like Nissan in trouble, which is perhaps why Nissan is reportedly asking its suppliers for a little relief.
Ford Wants To Support ‘The Essential Economy’
The focus on funneling every kid who could manage it into a four-year college made a sort of sense in the ’80s and ’90s, as the economy expanded into a software-based one that relied on a lot of Office Space-like coding and project management. It was also logical under more open immigration policies designed to encourage labor expansion that resurfaced under Ronald Reagan and continued until the first Trump Administration.
This country has long relied on cheap, imported labor for some percentage of its less glamorous work. With NAFTA, China’s acceptance into the World Trade Organization, and even the USMCA, a lot of this labor didn’t even have to be imported, as a lot of manufacturing was shipped abroad. This had all sorts of outcomes, some of which were positive (cheap goods, relative global peace), and many of which were negative (the hollowing out of American labor, the destruction of Rust Belt communities).
In both a LinkedIn post and a speech at the Aspen Ideas Festival, above, Ford’s Jim Farley explains why blue-collar jobs are the “essential economy” that is the backbone of our society, and how we’re mostly failing to uphold it. Specifically, he points out that the country is short 600,000 manufacturing workers and 400,000 auto mechanics. This is a big deal! We are, as a country, very much in need of people to fill these kinds of jobs.
As Farley points out:
Lately, the attention of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington has centered on exciting breakthroughs in A.I., quantum computing, and robotics. These innovations have brought huge opportunities to white-collar workers. But what about the 95 million workers who rarely sit behind a desk – those in essential industries like construction, service and maintenance, agriculture, energy, and skilled trades, who go to work largely in trucks and vans every day? I think, amid all that excitement, we’ve lost sight of the backbone of our economy: the Essential Economy.
These important people support 3 million businesses and critical industrial sectors across the country, generating $12 trillion of our GDP. They service our homes, repair our vehicles, and respond to emergencies. The Essential Economy transports our raw materials from mines and delivers our goods to stores – and even our doorsteps. It protects and sustains our communities. In short, it’s the jobs on which we rely every day that won’t be replaced by A.I. or automation – at least not anytime soon. Even more importantly, the Essential Economy continues to be the engine of the American Dream, turning hard work into upward mobility.
Consider that, since 2017, productivity in the white-collar economy has risen 28%, in part thanks to leaps in technology that deliver greater efficiency. But, according to new research by The Aspen Institute, those who are out on our roads and working with their hands have actually experienced a negative trend in productivity for a decade. Productivity is the key to unlocking profits for businesses and shareholders, lowering the cost of goods and services for consumers, and growing our GDP – so a problem for the Essential Economy is a problem for us all.
Taken at face value, all of this is extremely true, and Farley’s advice for what to do next is also quite logical:
- Make permitting easier and faster, reduce red tape.
- Spend more on vocational training/create trade schools focused on future jobs.
- Create a sort of “AmeriCorps for the Essential Economy.”
Specifically, Farley takes on the idea that AI is going to replace a lot of white collar jobs that require four years of expensive college:
“Artificial Intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S. You know what job is [not going to be replaced]? Well, I mean putting up that power line, building that factory, laying a new water system,” said Farley in his speech.
This isn’t just important for our workforce, said Farley, it’s also important for defense.
“What, is Google going to make the tanks?” he joked when talking to biographer Walter Isaacson.
You know who this is also good for? Ford. Not to discount anything that Farley said, because I think it’s all generally true, and I have no doubt that he believes it (Ford has put its money where its mouth is), but the company’s hardcore shift into advertising that it’s the most American automaker comes at a time when it is greatly to its advantage to do so. As Farley himself mentioned in the speech, if the country reinvests in blue-collar work and trade schools, the people doing those jobs will probably be driving Ford trucks.
From a competition standpoint, GM has had fewer quality issues and utilized Mexican production to post better financial numbers for years. Now GM finds itself somewhat on its back foot, as it’s having to prove its American-ness with bigger investments in the United States, whereas Ford already has the largest UAW workforce and has less production to shift. While Ford probably wants all of the investment in electrification to continue, Ford’s limited exposure there means it can focus on highly profitable trucks if all of it goes away.
The unsaid thing here is that, with unemployment so low, it’s not clear who exactly will take these unfilled jobs in the interim. Historically, this is where immigration has been greatly to the advantage of the American economy. In the long term, we can start training people to become electricians and not work for Salesforce, or whatever, but with the Trump Administration trying to limit immigration, it’s not clear how many people who work in offices are going to suddenly want to go back to school to become a plumber.
Volkswagen Puts $1 Billion Into Rivian As The Company Loses Less Money
Rivian is a curious company. It makes great software and good trucks, but not in a way that’s made it anything close to profitable. The future of Rivian is a cheaper electric car, which requires a lot of capital. Volkswagen has capital, but what it lacks is the ability to make great software. This is how we ended up with Volkswagen becoming a major investor in Rivian. Earlier this year, VW put even more money into the company.
All of this money is contingent on reaching certain goals, and the latest $1 billion from VW to Rivian is not dependent on gaining access to technology, but merely being less of a financial disaster, as Manager Magazin reports:
Rivian’s overcoming the hurdle for the second billion-dollar injection from Wolfsburg, however, has nothing to do with the project’s technological progress. It was only necessary for the partner to achieve its financial profit targets. The company, founded in 2009, has been struggling with losses for years, but has now closed two consecutive quarters with a gross profit.
This opened the door for the payment from Wolfsburg. Ultimately, however, Rivian also posted a loss last quarter. At least the net loss was significantly reduced – from $1.445 billion to $541 million.
While Rivian isn’t a VW brand (yet), under a new tariff regime, it probably doesn’t hurt Volkswagen to have access to a local company.
‘Mr Japan’ Is Unfair To US Automakers, Says President Trump
Trump: “I’m going to send letters. That’s the end of the trade deal. I could send one to Japan. ‘Dear Mr. Japan, here’s the story — you’re going to pay a 25% tariff on your cars.'”
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) June 29, 2025 at 11:17 AM
President Trump sat down with Fox News to talk about a wide range of topics, including tariffs, and the comment that stuck out to me was his insistence that Japan doesn’t allow cars to be sold there. Some of this may stem from his belief that Japanese regulators throw bowling balls at cars to disqualify them (which is not true). Japan has historically put up walls to foreign companies selling cars there, though the country actually has a 0% tariff on imported vehicles.
A big reason why America probably doesn’t sell a lot of cars in Japan? American car companies historically don’t design cars to Japanese tastes, whereas Japanese automakers are great at building cars Americans want [Ed Note: To be fair, the U.S. is a bigger market, so building a car specifically for it makes financial sense. -DT]. While Japanese car companies in this country do make similar models to those in that country, like the Toyota RAV4, there hasn’t historically been a huge amount of car exports from the US to them. Why not?
After WWII, it was greatly in the interest of the United States to build up Japan’s economy as both a hedge against future aggression/communism and to create another market for America. The fact that Japan has historically been great at designing consumer products has sometimes created freakouts here (see the Chicken Tax), but mostly America has viewed Japan as an important ally in Asia.
In this context, you can understand why Japanese negotiator Roysei Akazawa seems a bit flummoxed about what to do next, as Bloomberg reports:
Akazawa has repeatedly said that the US’s car tariffs are unacceptable, saying that Japan’s auto industry has made an enormous contribution to the US economy through the investment of more than $60 billion and the creation of 2.3 million local jobs.
Japan has insisted on keeping the sectoral tariffs on cars and other items included in the talks on the wider country-specific levies that are due to go up on July 9. Upon his return to Tokyo on Monday, Akazawa reiterated that stance while saying the deadline is a milestone in the talks.
“It’s a huge blow to us that the auto sector remains subject to the 25% tariff,” Akazawa said. “Taking this into account, we aim to continue vigorous discussions toward an overall agreement.
While I don’t see Japan suddenly importing a bunch of F-150s, perhaps American oil can help move the countries towards a deal.
Nissan Reportedly Asking For A Pause In Payments To Free Up Cash
Nissan is in a bad way, and it apparently needs a little cash to help dig itself out of the hole it created. How is it going to do that? Reportedly the answer is: squeeze suppliers!
Nissan has asked some suppliers in Britain and the European Union to accept delays in payment, according to the correspondence reviewed by Reuters and a person with knowledge of the matter.
The move would allow it to have more cash on hand at the close of the April-June first quarter and follows similar requests before the end of the last financial year in March, the emails showed.
It is not uncommon for companies to request payment extensions from suppliers to help free up cash. In a statement to Reuters, Nissan said it had incentivised some of its suppliers to collaborate under more flexible payment terms, at no cost to them, to support its free cash flow.
“They could choose to be paid immediately or opt for a later payment with interest,” Nissan said.
Nissan is good for it. Probably.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I love a good cover, and here’s Ted Leo covering both Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” and “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs! This is both a fun reimagining of these great songs and a reminder of the singing ability of both Clarkson and Karen Oh.
The Big Question
What career advice would you give to a 16-year-old kid today?
Top Image: Ford; depositphotos.com
I don’t necessarily agree with this but I heard an interesting take on AI recently. The jist is that best case scenario AI makes life good for people in 50 years, but the proceeding upheaval will be rough. Basically a combination of declining birth rates in developed countries, the decline of white collar work due to AI, lack of interest in college will initially lead to a boom in blue collar jobs, but they will also eventually suffer due to effect of AI (unstable economics, social upheaval, and less people means less people needing services and things made). Once we’ve hit rock bottom, AI can provide increased productivity to a smaller population that can better benefit from those potential increased wealth that comes along with increased productivity. Basically people get UBI or public services are so good and comprehensive that you won’t need much money. The person also makes an argument that this society would be much better positioned to be survive global warming and possibly start to reverse things.
Sounds like Star Trek level future optimism to me but as a white collar worker that will be fucked by AI there’s part of me that likes this idea
That’s a pleasant scenario, but entirely unlikely.
AI is owned by private corporate interests under the thumb of very few very wealthy individuals. The top 5 richest people in the US control over a trillion dollars. If they had any interest in making things better for workers, they could be doing it now.
Three of the top 20 are rich from WalMart, a company that could improve the lives of thousands immediately by increasing wages / benefits (same goes for Bezos and his Amazon employees). They don’t have to wait for the ‘poors’ to willingly suffer 50 years of famine for AI to maybe someday make things better.
My advice to a 16 Y.O.? What do you like to do? Figure out how to do that for a living. Trades are a good way to earn a living if you like to work with your hands. HVAC, plumbing, welding, electrical, carpentry, etc. are all good paying jobs. But you have to go to some sort of trade school after high school. I have 2 nephews who refuse to go to any sort of school, trade school or college, and are getting by, but constantly complaining about how their life sucks. Me? I got a degree in Elementary Education. Started my career in IT less than a year after I graduated. Always had a job, always made good money. 33 years later I’m the CIO of the company I work for. But to get here I had to put in the weeks where I billed 110 hours a week as a field engineer.
That do what you do is a key thing. One of the most valuable classes in college is the “weed out” classes. Stupid amount of work to get a bad grade. It makes you re-evaulate life choices.
For me, I was in Comp Sci and realized that I HATED working on computers. Just flat out loathed it. So, why in the hell was I taking Comp Sci? “Ow, everyone will need it, it pays well , etc. ” Yeah, F that I want to enjoy my job.
6 months later, I’m in a weedout class for engineering. Got worse grades because I was way behind in the program. My question wasn’t “Why am I doing this?” but “Can I get a good enough grade to not have to try again next semester?” The idea of NOT trying again if my grade was too low wasn’t even in my vocabulary. I didn’t understand the work, but I loved it.
Every things should have that. An auto mechanic that can come out from under a car when an oil line breaks and hoses him off with hot oil and say “well, that was dumb, let’s fix that right next time” is a guy that can keep a job. A guy that comes splashing out and calls it a day will be changing careers sooner or later. Same with you and network problems and me and engineering problems and whatever.
If you can find that thing you will do even when life sucks, that’s what you should do for a living.
Do that and you’ll scare EVERYONE out of the labor pool.
” An auto mechanic that can come out from under a car when an oil line breaks and hoses him off with hot oil and say “well, that was dumb, let’s fix that right next time” is a guy that can keep a job.”
Nope. He’ll be fired and blacklisted by an incompetent manager who thinks auto mechanic is a job can be done by a poorly trained monkey.
“My advice to a 16 Y.O.? What do you like to do? Figure out how to do that for a living.”
I dunno, I think the market willing to pay YouTube influencers and XBox players is pretty saturated.
I would recommend a career in power generation for a 16 year old. Anything from a lineman at a power company to a SRO at a nuclear plant to an engineer specializing in power distribution.
AI might take a way a lot of things. But to do so, it’s going to suck down the juice quicker than any thing before. All that power will still need to be generated and distributed or those AI systems are going to not work.
I work in power generation. Don’t forget oil and gas exploration, compression, separation, pipelines, storage, etc. Can’t power those AI and crypto computers with wind turbines and solar panels – not going to happen.
I work in Nuclear. My entire career, we have been just around the corner from a revival of nuclear power.
I think AI is actually going to do it. The new ideas of having a dozen 200MW reactors all in a single spot means that you can be making 2200GW 24/7/365 while one of those 12 reactors is down 2 months for an outage every 2 years.
*see also, the restart/purchase (by Microsoft) of TMI in Pennsylvania.
There are several plants being looked at being restarted. It’s an interesting technical challenge. For all these plants, someone did a cost/benefit analysis and decided to not do a modification or repair or whatever to keep the plant operational. Then when they made that decision, they didn’t do any of the required maintenance on anything else, since it was going to be scrapped anyway.
Now that people are saying “how do we get these operational again,” there’s a question of “how do we get these things back operational?” There are a lot of details to work through and since nobody has even asked this question before, the rules of what to do aren’t set in stone yet.
Hey, more work for me as an engineer in the nuclear world. I think now that I don’t have to worry about running out of work before I hit retirement age.
Related stories:
My father was a nuclear engineer. Many, many years ago he was asked to attend a seminar given by an engineering candidate. The guy had quite an impressive resume.
A few minutes into the seminar my father and the other engineers smelled a rat. The guy was saying the right words but in the wrong way.
They took it upon themselves to investigate. This was in the days before litigation adverse HR was a thing I guess. They called around discovered not only did the guy have no degree, nor any training at all, he was the CUSTODIAN.
Turns out he had picked up some lingo from work, just enough to put together a resume, a basic seminar and to dazzle HR and managers.
More engineering fun.
Soon after TMI there came a flurry of new government red tape. The company my dad worked for hired a team of wholly unqualified, disposable “engineers” from Pakistan to rubber stamp testing and compliance. It was clear to my dad these guys had no idea what they were doing. He went to the government regulators. They didn’t care. So he went to the press. They didn’t care either. That company is still in the business of nuclear consulting.
I hope the nuclear industry has improved its hiring practices since then.
Best advice for young people, which I gave my own Z kids-
H
V
A
C.
That ain’t NEVER goin’ away, and those people make some very tall cake.
Industrial HVAC is the one I always recommend, dealing with homeowners can suck ass.
I’ve seen HAC workers have to disassemble an air handler to reassemble it in an attic mid-summer in Florida. No thank you.
And that’s why they’re paid the big bucks.
OK, yeah, piece of advice #2 is “don’t live in Florida”.
Technically that should be advice 1. 😀
Depends on the kid. I’ve been begging one of mine to move there for years. He’d fit in perfectly.
LOL!
I work in the trades, quite literally. You can’t hold a Trade Show (or convention) without me or my coworkers. Electricians, Audio/Visual Technicians, Riggers, Decorators, Carpenters, and etc. During the 16-month shutdown of our entire industry, some folks, including me, watched as organizations held virtual trade shows, and we feared for the future of our industry.
Turns out, people like meeting in person. When things opened back up, we had quite the boom in our industry.
But now, we’re facing tariff and immigration concerns. Will Chinese companies want to pay tariffs on the millions of dollars worth of equipment and materials they ship to the US to create a 10,000 sq. ft. Trade Show booth? Will all of the employees they bring be able to pass successfully through US Immigration?
The biggest Trade Show in the world, CES, is 6 months away. Will it be the usual 1.2 million square feet, or 400k? Nobody knows.
I’m 60. When people encourage youngsters to go into the trades, nobody tells them that their bodies will be broken by their early 60s, but you can’t get your pension until 65 and you better wait until 67 to collect SS. I’ll be in a rough spot for the next 5-7 years.
A buddy of mine transitioned from being a licensed electrician to an electrical engineer in his mid-30’s. He said that the biggest motivation was the realization of how physically broken down the older guys he worked with were.
“Turns out, people like meeting in person.”
Only if the hookers and blow are on the company’s dime
Where do I sign up?
Anywhere. And it’ll only cost you your eternal soul.
The myopic part of the “go into the trades” idea as a solution is that if there aren’t any consumers, there won’t be anything to build.
That is similar to what I’ve been saying: After the corporations outsource all our jobs overseas, how will we have any money to buy their products?
BTW, I graduated in Industrial Engineering in early 90s just as our region began it’s slow loss of most of it’s manufacturing. I ended up in a commercial construction adjacent manufacturing industry…tried to bail several times, but keep getting sucked back in. At least another decade to go.
Honestly, I’m surprised given your user name you don’t recommend a masters in Midlevel Theology with a minor in Geometry.
There’s never not a need for that.
It has never been more useful!
Is Farley prepared to be part of the 50% who loses their jobs to AI, or does he just believe that’s a problem for those beneath him?
If he was really at risk of financial ruination from this, he could end up living in a van, down by the river.
Which is the modern “starter home” for people of low to median income if they don’t want a lifetime debt burden where they’re always a job loss, illness, or missed paycheck away from losing their home at any time for the duration of the payments(A LOT can happen in 30 years). Most of the workers whose jobs are going to be eliminated are already in this category, and purchased a home with a mortgage, even though the financially prudent thing to have done was live in a van, down by the river.
Couldn’t agree more. Mobility is key in this economy, and a house you’re tied up in years of payments for, or even rent for that matter where your ‘investment’ nets you nothing, are not mobile.
A quality camper trailer, a quality rig that can pull it, and work where you can live on site does a lot to save you money. It’s not how much money you make, it’s your take home pay after taxes and expenses that counts.
For career advice I would encourage staying in school as long as it is still engaging and interesting because while degrees aren’t always required there is a benefit to being exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking, and you will meet interesting people who can open additional doors. I did six years of college to get a 5-year B.Arch degree because of some not so strategic major changes early on but by year six there was no way I was going on to a masters degree because I was done.
As for the field, find something you are at least mildly interested in and find the broadest possible way to study it. You can get a specialized degree later but for most things you can learn the specifics on the job and flexibility is valuable. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I settled on architecture school – I just knew I didn’t want to deal with quite as much abstract math as computer engineering was going to require.
An architecture degree seems specific but my class alone has architects, developers, contractors, a movie SFX designer, fashion and jewelry designers, sales reps, a coloring book “author” and probably a few other jobs. We all competed for limited slots in a program that required an extra year of school with several semesters of 18-21 credits but entered the workforce with a work ethic and problem solving skills to be successful in a variety of situations.
As someone who spent WAY too long earning a BS, MA, and PhD. I can’t disagree with this strongly enough.
If a degree is what it takes get in, get it done, get out. You’ll waste less money on useless tangents, meet better people on the job and actually make money doing it.
If you want to study something there’s always Great Courses DVDs at your local library.
I remember being 16 and completely disillusioned with the idea of college and the 4 year degree. I remember wanting to chase one of those high paying, fancy pants CNC jobs so I started to stop giving a shit in Highschool, got a job at Valvoline, and started working with my hands. I remember a Vice Principal pulled me out of class and took me for a walk to ask about what college I was going to as I was still “Undecided” senior year. She was quite unpleased when I said I wasn’t going to college and let me know that I was “Wasting my potential to end up doing something below me.” If that wasn’t fuel for the fire against college, nothing else could be.
I learned pretty quickly that while my friends were partying, studying, cramming and testing that I was busting my ass doing 70+ hour weeks for meager cash and benefits. I never did regret what I did, as it got me to where I am today in a good paying job within a pretty “recession proof” industry. I think being honest with teenagers that you’ll either pay with your dollars or your body is a good way to approach career advice for their future.
We need more plumbers, more electricians, more auto mechanics. The problem is that AI and other horseshit is hitting those industries too. People Google “How much does it cost to replace X” and when they call the respective trade they are outraged that it doesn’t match what Google said. Everyone is buying the cheapest parts, asking for the cheapest service, it’s a race to the bottom and someone will lower to match it. This hurts that respective industry as a whole.
Hopefully a resurgence, and investment, in the trades will see the growth of unions as well. You can’t be a welder or a carpenter forever, so having a good representative for your benefits and retirement will be key to keeping the pay good and these blue collar jobs as stable options after Highschool.
One of the biggest shames out there is the number of College Attendees I see. They went to college, partied hardly and dropped out without a degree of any form. So, their job skills are in beer pong and hardening their livers, and they have 3/4rds of the college debt someone that has an actual degree has, without the actual degree.
I see them all the time on the job market and college sets them back at least 10 years when it comes to career and money.
Detroit’s decline started in the 1960s.
This was well before NAFTA (or CUSFTA before it), and USMCA.
The failure to compete largely impacted American automotive’s decline.
Wasn’t just automotive though, manufacturing of tools, fasteners, bearings, sheet metal, all of that was moved out of the US in the late 70’s and 80’s. Being from Wisconsin, we kept a lot of our industry but the majority of items we used to make our goods all now come from foreign countries.
Yep, it happened across a lot of manufacturing industries.
To blame on NAFTA/CUSFTA and USMCA is lazy reporting or attempting to create a narrative is blatantly wrong.
This x1000
Definitely a COTD finalist!
The chicken tax, different-but-not-better standards, Detroit’s failure/refusal to compete and adapt did them in.
Been a fan of Ted Leo for a long time. Thanks for that…
I actually have a 16 year old at home. My advice has been to get a degree in something engineering related and learn to do stuff with your hands. I drag him out every time I work on a part of our “fleet” so he understands the basics. Having a varied career myself, I don’t want to push him to something specific but seeing what the eventual AI overlords are going to need gives a little insight.
Don’t try to chase whatever everyone says is going to make money, because everyone else is going to do that, too.
We told a generation to learn to code, and now that market has been depressed by the glut of coders. There are a ton of attorneys my age, and they are all in competition to put in 80 hour weeks at big law firms or settling for a lot less money than we were told we’d make.
Find something that you don’t mind doing and go for it, especially if it’s something we always need (medical, trades, etc.). You may not get rich doing it, but chasing some fad job like AI prompter is almost certainly going to lead to a career pivot down the line and learning a skill that makes you miserable is likely to do the same.
But I’m not a great source of advice. I got my BA, then worked retail and security for a few years until I ended up where I am…a job that doesn’t really require a degree, though they prefer it (and being able to write technical documentation/training is a pretty big plus). It’s a good job, but I didn’t put myself on a good path to success at any point leading up to it.
If I had it to do over, I would have joined the engineering program at my university when they tried to recruit me. It would have probably entailed working less and taking on a little debt so I could focus on the program, but it would have been a better move than making it out of college debt-free, since the engineers I knew all got great jobs right out of college. Boeing was a big recruiter and really took care of people.
Mechanical engineering is interesting work, but the education is a lot of work. A lot of people took 5 years to get through it.
I took 5 years. It sort of was a 5 year program when I was in it, but if you took 20 hour semesters for 4 years, you could get a degree (yeah right).
What isn’t talked about with engineering is the drop out rates. Because I was one of those odd-ducks that switched into Engineering, I didn’t take Freshman Drafting until I was a 5th year senior. There were about 1000 freshman at my school that were declared majors of Mechanical Engineering. My graduating class was under 100.
The secret of engineering is the “weed out classes”. In retrospect, these were the most valuable classes in college.
See, I got weeded out from Comp Sci. Half way through the weedout class there (programming in Hex), I discovered that I hated computers. Absolutely loathed working on one. Which made me wonder why I wanted to work hard to get a 30+ year career in working on computers (oh, because I was told “learn to code”.)
I read through every major in my university and only Mechanical Engineering was something I wanted to do. So, I switched majors (long story there, I didn’t until my senior year).
When I ran into Thermodynamics 1, 3/4 of my class switched majors after the first test. Me? I figured I needed to find a way to work 3 times as hard to get my 25 to a 75. And I did. Class after class, I got crappy grades and learned to work harder and harder and harder.
By my 5th year, the classes weren’t that hard. They weren’t easy, but they weren’t that hard anymore. I got a B in most without working too hard and an A in a couple that I was interested in.
I had learned how to study. I learned because I had to. I had to because I was going to be an engineer. It was (and still is 35 years later), my passion. Although I still think my Thermo professor was a jerk, I am thankful for him. Because he made me learn myself. I not only had to learn all the stuff he was “teaching” on my own because he wasn’t a great teacher, I also had to learn about ME.
I think EVERY degree should have these stupidly hard weedout classes. Make someone REALLY learn if they want to be X or Y or Z. Because everything beyond that in productivity and career builds off of that passion and stubborness.
That sounds a lot like the engineering program at my school. The few people who made it through in 4 years were the ones who picked their major before they ever stepped foot on campus and pushed themselves to make it. I decided not to because I was a sophomore when the department said I should join. I really regret going for poli sci and do sort of wish it had weedout classes, because it’s not worthwhile. I also majored in English, and that one is both a bit more versatile and tried to weed people out a bit.
Fun fact, I took a weird math class in college (titled “Math in Modern Culture”) that covered a pretty significant assortment of things, ranging from algebra to non-Euclidian geometry to a touch of special relativity. It was a fun class, but a lot of people who took it absolutely bombed out at non-Euclidian geometry, since they wouldn’t let go of the rules they learned in high school. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a required class for math, science, or engineering (just an elective choice that could cover a general math credit), but it would have been a great way to weed out and sort people.
I really think that the first year of college should be spent taking classes that help sort people into what works for them. Weedout classes and overview classes that help find interests. I think you’d see a small uptick in first year dropouts, but a drop in later dropouts and major changes.
“What career advice would you give to a 16-year-old kid today?”
This is indirect career advice, but my advice would be to strongly consider the cost and return on investment of any educational program you are considering. Student loan debt really sucks and can limit job opportunities (i.e. creating a need to stay in a better paying but less desirable job to pay down loans or staying at a lousy job that offers loan repayment assistance).
When I was in high school, I don’t think anyone spared a single word about the cost of education and how that might impact my future. On the other hand, I got a lot of shit advice about how student loans are “good debt” and the responsible choice. Today, the youths appear to be getting equally shitty advice about how the government will forgive their loans, so the cost of education doesn’t need to be considered.
I still think college, trade programs, and other training programs can be great, but look at the numbers first and remember that loans need to be paid back in actual money and not fake internet bucks. Also, it is worth remembering that more expensive schools/programs don’t necessarily lead to better jobs.
Things worked out for me eventually (I paid back over $300k in student loans), but there was a time when I seriously considered faking my own death and fleeing the country to get out from under my student loans. It is best to avoid being in that position.
OK, but they’re no going to want to pay mechanics what the deserve, cause it’s going to be “lower skilled” with AI diagnosing issues with car by plugging something into the car. Especially if it’s electric.
It will also be interesting to see who will responsible if AI poorly designs something that hurts people, and causes a Class Action lawsuit. Will AI be responsible, or, say Ford?
And a flood of mechanics in the market will also reduce wages.
The fact that there aren’t enough auto techs will ABSOLUTELY NOT change the pay scale of new incoming techs.
Oh boy, you guys hit a nerve this morning and I had to get up too early to do Professional Grown-Up Things (my night owl feral engineering ass having to interface with morning glory dadcore ex-mil types who think an 0800 meeting is not a human rights violation) so I am ~angy~. Take note, this is what happens when you wake me up before 10.
I, the graduate of one of the most prestigious private engineering/technological schools in the world, having been an instructor/lab manager at said university, and previously a member of the upper-middle-class suburbanite cohort stamped to become future lawyers and politicians and scientists, have been asked to my face without any hint of irony why I wanted kids to pursue vocational training and hands-on technical work.
As if the premise was that someone of my alleged caliber should innately look down on the makers and doers. Shun those who make use of their hand-eye coordination and physical perception. That’s what I grew up with, not gonna lie. Probably a lot of you guys reading, too, if you’re Millennial (RIP our knees and backs) and Gen-X or so. We were told “America is becoming a service-oriented economy! We only do high value manufacturing here. If you go to college and get a degree, you’ll have an easy life in an air-conditioned office and a big house, unlike people who have to work with their hands!” over and over. I was threatened with the promise of being an electrician or plumber. I am convinced, to this day, that my mom still thinks I went to MIT to become a mechanic. Asian parents tend to not hear the “-al engineer” part and assume it’s all the same.
(tbh with all my van rebuilding shithousery that you’ve seen, was she that wrong?)
And now look at us. A society hollowed out from the inside because we told two and a half generations of children that we work on knowledge now, that manufacturing and skill training is for brown people in the third world (be real, the undertone if you grew up in a upper income mostly-white suburban area was always this). We look like one of those North Carolina coastal houses built on stilts after the last hurricane filled the basement in and blew away the first floor, and we’re all huddled in the attic wondering how the hell we got into this position. We’ve become a nation where for some reason we revel in not doing stuff, but even worse, we revel in telling other people they can’t do stuff. Zoning, HOAs, administrative overload in schools (ask me about this), siloed bureaucracy in local and regional governments (ask me about this), and well-meaning but conflicting and multi-layered regulations preventing people from building housing and industry (Don’t even fucking @ me about oH No YoU JuSt WaNt No reGulAtIoNs DiRTy LiBeRtaRiAn hEaThen, you and I both know damn well what I mean).
I believe the tide has finally begun to turn on this weird entrenched “We’re too good for that stuff” ideology of the roughly 60s-00s, but IMO it’s turned 20 years too late. The best time to plant a bad idea in someone’s head might be 20 years ago, but the second best time is now, or whatever they say.
So I’m all for it. A comprehensive plan (hah, good luck with this Congress and administration) for Americans to DO again. We’ve done a good job bringing shop classes back to a lot of secondary schools in the form of STEM initiatives. Great, but we need to follow through with that and focus on racking people up with skills that will benefit their communities and cities first, instead of some nebuluous white-collar C-suite vision of “Success”. We need to be honest with the fact that, unlike Buick, society does need a full top and bottom market structure. One made of both people who create and those who consume. We can’t just all assume consumption will go on forever.
Trillions of dollars in student debt and trillions more in overpriced mortgages are doing a good job of telling the past generation of students that we got sold a bill of goods. It will be a lot farther on the AI event horizon before people who pick something up and do something and put it back down every day get “replaced”
anyways back to the meeting
There is a shortage of Technical classes that teach people how to think, and troubleshoot, and work with their hands. I am a Senior Engineer, but the skills I learned working on Cars, Bikes, houses, etc. Make me a BETTER Engineer. I am able to empathize wit the people who have to work on what we make, to make their job easier.
There a lot of cars that I have worked on, that were clearly engineered by someone who never had to turn a wrench to fix it.
I’m a design engineer for an OEM. Some of us fix cars, and it really fucking shows with the quality of our work.
Some of us don’t, but if the guys they report to are also manually challenged then all kinds of bullshit can get to a production line without being spotted.
However some of the “can’t fix this” stuff is the result of optimising parts or assemblies for cost, manufacturing (also cost) or assembly (also cost). Engineering is compromise.
Having worked with design engineers: it would be such a valuable experience for all of them to spend some time assembling their own, and their colleague’s, creations. And then, go back in 3-6 months, and maintain it.
There’s too much impractical design done.
If nothing else: it’ll ensure that there’s space for your knuckles to turn an allen key.
I make a point to always fit the first one of anything I’ve designed. And if possible strip down the previous version before I start on the new one.
Apparently this isn’t possible in a unionised business, because engineers can’t touch tools.
Dude, that is what I try to get people to understand. I’m not the designer-fabricator-test-pilot I am because of a fancy engineering degree. It was almost in spite of. I am the summation of everything I’ve tinkered on from middle school onwards (often, back then, against the current and in the face of “Are you sure about this?” chiding).
There are very few things I am proud of in my life*, but one of the things I am is that, as an instructor (not a professor), I was 8 for 8 in placing my former students, who went through my lab class and shop training, in internships and graduate/doctoral programs. They asked me, not a real tenured professor of the department, for letters of recommendation. And I wrote them, detailing what real-world skills my class and shop made them demonstrate and the growth they were able to achieve therein. No fluff words, no hand waving.
I do wish I could have done more with that EV building class, but it became big enough that the department needed me to secure funding and with it the implication that a Real Professor had to helm it.
*ok i don’t mean it like THAT, just that this sticks out in terms of interpersonal accomplishments
At my workplace, they actually require people to take troubleshooting classes because they know that people aren’t getting those classes. They have them for trades and engineers, and others are also allowed/encouraged to take them. They also have a lot of basic grammar/writing/communication classes because some of the technical sorts miss out on or ignore those classes, too.
COTD
I, an engineer from a less fancy university than MIT, have another thing to say.
Engineering can be a high impact career. (If a company doesn’t use high end engineers just to make fancy powerpoint presentations.) Engineers can be the guys that give the tools to the actual DOers’ to DO something. “Here’s a new design for a widget and here’s training on how to make it” or “Here’s a new way to do your job which is more efficient and safer.” or the like.
But we have far too many “workers” that work extremely hard and don’t do anything or provide anything but a hinderance to those that do DO work. I would say that 50% of any company employees seem to be more focused on “internal metrics” that the ultimate customer never sees nor never cares about.
This is the real problem. Too much focus on stuff that doesn’t matter because it has no impact on what the DOers DO and not enough on providing the right tools to keep the DOers, DOing.
Thank you spelling out my gut feeling on this, I’m older than you and my generation was definitnely heavly bullied into the “You go to college or your life will be pain and suffering foever and ever”
The only good choice I made out of highschool was refusing student loans, I didn’t understand howw that could possibly make sense and wasn’t willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year for an incomplete and uncertain plan.
There’s gonna be a huge need for wildland firefighters in your lifetime lil Johnny.
TBH, I think I’d enjoy being a mechanic a good bit but I’m not willing to take a 75% pay cut to switch jobs.
I dropped out of college to try and become a mechanic, but this was 2008-ish so I couldn’t even get an oil change job without years of experience. After a few months of sweating my ass off covered in oil in an automotive machine shop for $10/hour I said fuck this and went back to college.
The real eye-opener was while waiting to take my ASE cert test hearing all the middle-aged mechanics grumble about how fucked up their bodies were after doing that work and they hated that their kids were following in their footsteps.
If you want to like people as you do now, do not work on their cars. If you do that anyway, you will never see the general public favorably again. Not sarcasm.
I help lots of friends out with fixing their cars and quite enjoy it, but it comes with several rules. Generally you do it at my place as that’s where all the tools are for when $hit gets out of hand. (surprising how often a welder gets used in routine maintenance when dealing with rusty neglected cars) No overnight jobs unless it’s cool and you find safe secure parking for my car we’d be kicking out of my garage. (I live in an apartment in one of the most urban parts of Chicago but am fortunate enough to have my own private 2 car garage) Lastly, you provide the beer, I’ll sit here telling you what you need to do, assist or take over when 2 people or skill are needed, and I’ll point out the 3 way’s you f’d up over the last 3 months by ignoring a routine $100 problem and causing you to now spend $500 in just parts.
This has gotten me to get several people into cars that otherwise wouldn’t have, get people to get rid of cars they shouldn’t have given their lifestyle, and kept away people that have no interest in learning and just want to take advantage of friendly favors.
Re: Japan. Wouldn’t another factor be that America would have to export their automobiles to Japan in RHD configuration? Or are those vehicles going to have to be built in Japan (or another location that already manufactures RHD vehicles for American companies)?
Has Ford and GM (I’m leaving Stellantis off this list) decided that the tooling to do so for a limited market isn’t worth the costs? Is that why Ford and GM no longer assemble vehicles in Australia?
I’m surprised Trump hasn’t tied tariff relief for Japan to forcing them to change to LHD.
I remember when Saturn manufactured right hand drive vehicles for export and made commercials for the US market crowing about it.
On a similar note, Honda built RHD Accords in the US for export, which carried a certain air about them in Japan too. The coupes and wagons were at one point/always only built in the US, and exported to other markets, typically with a Honda of America badge on the C-pillar.
LHD vehicles are sold in Japan, it’s part of the “prestige” of owning a foreign car there. Even back in the 2000s the highways had toll booths and machines for LHD cars. American cars don’t sell well in Japan because they just don’t make sense for most people. They’re too big for the narrow roads, not fuel efficient enough, and the vehicle tax system based on weight and engine size makes them expensive to own. Dealerships for American brands are nearly non-existent and they don’t do much (any?) marketing. When you’re going to all that trouble and expense to own an imported vehicle, most people opted for a more stylish and luxurious BMW or Mercedes. At least, this is what I observed when I lived there during the 2000s.
So Nissan, like most people who own Nissans, is going with a “deferred payment” plan?
Underrated.
Can we replace CEOs with inane AI babbling machines that spew garbage that has no connection to reality? Seems a good way to save a few bucks the the C-suite level.
Anyway, advice for the sixteen-year old (cynicism incoming): Demographics says a large group of people are rapidly coming to the age where they’re going to need a lot of very expensive healthcare. Those people will sell their children and grandchildren up the river so they can have that healthcare without paying for it via taxes. It’s not like they’re going to have to deal with the fallout of their choices.
Sell your soul to them so they can try and live forever (spoiler: life ends the same way for everyone) without paying for it, and the sting of all this coming to roost will at least hurt somewhat less.
“Can we replace CEOs with inane AI babbling machines that spew garbage that has no connection to reality?”
Yes, yes! That’d be a great…pivot.
Most times a CEO speaks, I think of the Far Side comic with the ‘what we say to dogs vs. what they hear.’ Blah blah blah.
My advice would be to go into guillotine maintenance.
or mechanical ventilators (iron lungs)…
I think career advice I would have given to myself it to look at getting into trades school or pursing a different degree (got a computer engineering degree) as I have not really had any actually engineering positions my whole career and have always been a tech/operator as I prefer being hands on.
I’m the same way. The software might be able to write itself but the computers still need folks to fix ’em, at least until the terminators… I mean robots get good enough for that.
Nursing, and aim to be an RN. The opportunities for career specialization are boundless, the pay is good, demographics would indicate an increase in job openings, and AI will never replace feet on the ground in hospitals and clinics.
Are there that many people out there who do so little that their work can be replaced by a supercharged chatbot/search engine?
(Don’t ask me how I have time to comment on posts here during work)
Most places I have worked most HR could be replaced by AI since most the time I would ask about benefits like 401k info or health benefits or family leave they have been almost useless and just send me a link to a webpage that I already know how to access but the info I am looking for is nowhere to be found and was only given to me when first hired.
Our HR person just left, and I have no idea what she did besides loitering around the office of the good-looking engineering mgr.
It’s funny, when I’m in the office I’m here in the comments a huge percentage of the day. On weekends and days that I work from home I barely have time to bring up this site.
Ha! Same here. My job is automotive related so I sorta consider this work.
I have a coworker who thinks that AI is going to write all of our technical memos for us, and I just want that to happen. It’s the worst part of the job, basically rehashing a bunch of reports into plain English. I always say we should just share the reports and call it done. The dirty secret about most of corporate America is that it’s just taking the same information and repackaging it 3 different ways (or more) depending on audience. Good riddance to drudgery. I think technical writing more broadly could be replaced.
The “Big Idea” part of this would be that we collectively accept AI, cut almost all of our hours down, and it could be partially replaced by some kind of UBI based on a combination of net productivity gains and taxes on the AI providers. There won’t be much political will to make that happen, but it’s almost like a century-old Keynesian idea coming to fruition: That we get so productive, we just take a step back and enjoy it, rather than pressing forward to make even more things happen. Humans are pretty insatiable and don’t know when to say when. At least the 1% are often like that…
But this would require many governments working together in a cartel fashion, which isn’t likely to happen. I think we’ll more likely see years of unrest due to AI job displacement because nobody had the will to prevent it.
I am either a pessimist or optimist (depending on your perspective) on AI, in that I don’t see it actually replacing a lot of jobs in the near future.
I certainly expect people to use it as a tool to boost their productivity, but ultimately its limitations will become more evident as we go along.
My job as a project manager is mostly a stereotypical “email job”, but I struggle to see how AI as it currently exists could do a lot of what I do, even at my desk (let alone in the field).
Yep, I’ve done my fair share of project management on the side (18-month policy and software rollouts, mergers, etc) and I tip my hat to anyone who can do that full time for years 🙂
There will possibly come a time when AI could do those things, but if you’re herding cats, your work is only as good as what the cats are willing to tell you. I don’t see the human side being replaced for a very long time. There’s just too much nuance in trying to extract what you need from people without alienating them along the way. The balance between perfection and participation (ie, don’t make things too complex or demanding or you won’t get what you need). Machines are innately trying to be perfect. I work with people who resemble computers, it’s exhausting, but at least I can talk to them as humans.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s chatbot told me last week they’d be happy to replace my item that never arrived. Nothing actually happened.
Ok, I’m not sure if I’m a pessimist or optimist on this. It could be bad and I apologize for how long this is going to be.
There are certain realities in the world of AI that can’t be ignored and most of it has nothing to do with the capabilities of the AI tools.
Here we go…
AI is not different from a lot of hyped technologies that have come along over the past 10-20 years, except for one; it actually does have a lot of potential to be both hugely beneficial and also completely misunderstood.
I am in the corporate America world and there is a sort of shadow-economy that exists inside most corporations. Typically what happens is there is a new technology that gets talked about and hyped. Corporate executives talk about how it could be used doing one thing or another at team events or whatever. Middle-managers take that and produce studies showing what they are doing or what they need to do to prepare for the eventual total world takeover by said technology.
Budgets get created, consulting agencies get hired to research all the ways this new tech will disrupt our current ways of working, business models etc.
New budget proposals are created. Sometimes completely new teams are built and installed to take advantage of this new and exciting market.
By the time anything tangible comes out of all this we’ve learned it was overhyped and doesn’t have any material impact on the day to day workings, or the business model and profits, of the company. At this point it is largely forgotten and ignored.
This actually does not matter. Because the only reason all of this time, money and effort was spent is so it provides talking points for the CEO or CFO during investor calls or if they go on CNBC or whatever for interviews. So it served its purpose.
So what’s the deal with AI you say?
The fact is, I agree with you that AI is unlikely to actually replace most anyone other than a few specific role types. For now, this is all hype and Farley probably wants investors to think he is forward thinking. That’s the biggest fear most CEOs have; that investors will think their company is stuck in the past.
I do see this AI thing going a few different ways though:
There is a real chance AI will continue to be used to generate content and edit copy. I would not want to be a copywriter right now and I do think there will be some shrinking in that particular field as well as things like translating copy to other languages and the like. There should be a human copywriter overseeing and managing the tech but bosses don’t always see it like that. Rinse and repeat with a lot of various white collar jobs.
I think there will be experiments and likely there will be some embarrassing failures in these experiments. What will be interesting to watch is how the failures are handled. Do they go back to having people in the roles and abandon AI? Do they add people to the mix with AI? Do they ignore it and go forward with the plan to eliminate everyone?
As others have said, the economy shrinks and profits drop if everyone is out of work due to being replaced with AI. Something has to give because you can’t sell your product to people without incomes. I actually think it’s worse (here comes the pessimist view).
I think there will be a transition period where we will have to learn that AI can’t do everything. It will be tried and lots of people will go through the pain of losing jobs and we’ll have to see if we’re able to transition to new jobs quickly (as has happened with past technology advances). But if it lasts too long I don’t know how long the country can hold out. We’re already $36T in debt with the interest payments on that debt taking over 3/4 of all income taxes collected (note income taxes are not the only revenue source for the govt). If this AI thing brings about a prolonged recession or depression I don’t know that we don’t default on that debt and things get real bad, real fast.
But realistically, with my experience in corporate America (here comes the optimist part) my money’s on it settling down and being mostly ignored once everyone has their expectations set on what this AI thing is really capable of.
Please don’t ever apologize for extra length or detail when replying to me.
Great post, aligns with my experiences as well.
I think we oversell what AI is actually going to do for businesses. It’s certainly going to be a powerful tool, but someone is going to have to wield it.
We’re using AI to help us put together code for simplifying a bunch of processes, and I’m sure that might result in a slight reduction of office people down the line for us. If you’re doing menial tasks and data entry, watch out. But the idea that we’re suddenly going to eliminate the entire office because “AI runs things now” is pretty idiotic. Someone needs to sell things, someone needs to negotiate, someone needs to be responsible, someone needs to design things based on more than just prompts (especially when you’re doing custom manufacturing based on customer desires and fabrication limitations and a whole host of other factors). There’s still going to be work to do.
How about a 14yo? I have one, and after years and years of struggles (mental health, academic, etc) we finally got a coup: We’re sending him to a new charter school that focuses equally on Vo-tech and academics — notably for aviation, but not limited to that. He can dual enroll with numerous colleges to get a leg, but he can also graduate from high school with an Airframe & Powerplant certification AND a private pilot’s license — for a lot less money and time than doing it on his own.
So that’s my answer. We have to straddle pure academics with hands-on, experiential work. I wish I’d had something like this in the mid-90s, but I’m also glad I had the college experience because it really taught large-scale critical thinking and indepdent thought. That alone is a luxury, because working long hours at a physically demanding job wouldn’t have allowed that level of reflection. I think society as a whole is trying to find that balance right now. (For my “hands on” piece, I worked hard to teach myself to work on cars, home stuff, etc. I would have loved formal instruction on all of that.)
That sounds amazing and I wish public schools had the same approach.
please make sure they don’t burn out or have unreal expectations for success outside of school (eg. everything comes to them easy so effort/grit is low).
I hope they like what they’re lined up to do!