The Future of Work

[BuildingFrugalHabits]

I read this Economist Article and thought of you folks:  http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21637355-freelance-workers-available-moments-notice-will-reshape-nature-companies-and

Services like Uber and Handy are utilizing technology to match freelance workers with jobs.  The Economist gives some in-depth consideration of the role that smartphone technology is likely to play in the future labor market. 

"The on-demand economy is unlikely to be a happy experience for people who value stability more than flexibility: middle-aged professionals with children to educate and mortgages to pay. On the other hand it is likely to benefit people who value flexibility more than security: students who want to supplement their incomes; bohemians who can afford to dip in and out of the labour market; young mothers who want to combine bringing up children with part-time jobs; the semi-retired, whether voluntarily so or not."

Seems like this would be a good thing for early retirees looking to supplement their retirement income.  Is anyone else here considering freelance work in FIRE either as a part-time option or as a contingency plan in the event of a market decline?  What lines of work or industries do you think this lends itself well to?  The article seems to suggest that industries like software engineering and law are potentially ripe for disruption.  Personally, I think the flexibility is appealing assuming that one has their bases covered.  A Mustachian should be well-positioned to take advantage. Thoughts? 

[Abe]

I agree with your assessment. There have been a flurry of articles on this subject recently. Assuming one has a stable financial support system these jobs are ideal for variety and side income. If they become too large a portion of the job market, we may be heading backwards in terms of societal stability that regular jobs have afforded us with industrialization.

My plan during retirement (which is admittedly far in the future) is to lecture part-time and cover calls or assist with operations as needed. It would more to have something interesting to do in between vacations than for the money.

[bzzzt]

As an electrician, I don't like the idea of Handy. Their rates don't touch my wages/insurance/etc. let alone have room for their fees or to cover overhead (shop, truck, estimating, etc).

I don't do much residential work and labor rates like that remind me why. It still amazes me that most people choose the lowest price without other considerations. You know what happens when people have to bid things with no meat left on the bone? EVERYTHING gets a change order.

The other thing is warranty work. One man companies can afford to work for less, but remember that when the phone is disconnected and your lights are out. My $.02.

[franklin w. dixon]

As an electrician, I don't like the idea of Handy. Their rates don't touch my wages/insurance/etc. let alone have room for their fees or to cover overhead (shop, truck, estimating, etc).

I don't do much residential work and labor rates like that remind me why. It still amazes me that most people choose the lowest price without other considerations. You know what happens when people have to bid things with no meat left on the bone? EVERYTHING gets a change order.

The other thing is warranty work. One man companies can afford to work for less, but remember that when the phone is disconnected and your lights are out. My $.02.

Plus, what I "love" the most is that the shitty Ted Talk TechnoWizard Uber/Washio brain trust didn't invent anything. Their "innovation" was changing to whom profits accrue from services which have existed for decades or centuries. Brave new world that has such disruptors in it!

[franklin w. dixon]

"Perhaps if we increase the rate of labor exploitation, we can have even more money!" said the capitalist innovators disrupting laundry in their ball pit board room. What incredible progress!

[ncornilsen]

As an electrician, I don't like the idea of Handy. Their rates don't touch my wages/insurance/etc. let alone have room for their fees or to cover overhead (shop, truck, estimating, etc).

I don't do much residential work and labor rates like that remind me why. It still amazes me that most people choose the lowest price without other considerations. You know what happens when people have to bid things with no meat left on the bone? EVERYTHING gets a change order.

The other thing is warranty work. One man companies can afford to work for less, but remember that when the phone is disconnected and your lights are out. My $.02.

Well, um... Get over it.  The days of arrogant "Expert Tradesmen" extorting usurious wages for sub-par work are over.  Residential wiring isn't that hard anyway, and as long as permits and inspections are done to ensure the work is right, who cares? I've met just as many hack electricals/pipefitters that held a certification as those that didn't hold a cert, anyway.

[bzzzt]

Well, um... Get over it.  The days of arrogant "Expert Tradesmen" extorting usurious wages for sub-par work are over.  Residential wiring isn't that hard anyway, and as long as permits and inspections are done to ensure the work is right, who cares? I've met just as many hack electricals/pipefitters that held a certification as those that didn't hold a cert, anyway.

Have at it then, slick. People usually try to do it themselves to get around permits and inspections.

I love it when I get to fix stuff that people tried to do themselves and screwed up or one-man contractors that disappeared. It always costs more money than doing it right the first time.

"While I'm here, you want me to fix the rest of your code violations too?"

[Capsu78]

I spent my first 20 years of adulthood assuming I could tackle any trade skill if I put my mind to it... I have spent the rest of my adult life paring down the skillsets that I obviously don't have...electrical work, plumbing and even painting I hire out to have done.  The "fee" I pay is for piece of mind that the job is done well and right, not having to invest or store the necessary tools and most importantly a completion date my wife can live with!
My adult kids may smirk when I say "I got a guy..." but when they have water in the basement or a fuse keeps blowing, they always seem to seek my opinion.
Bzzzt, I am in Chicago too, but unfortunately I already got a guy :-)

[dd564]

Well, um... Get over it.  The days of arrogant "Expert Tradesmen" extorting usurious wages for sub-par work are over.  Residential wiring isn't that hard anyway, and as long as permits and inspections are done to ensure the work is right, who cares? I've met just as many hack electricals/pipefitters that held a certification as those that didn't hold a cert, anyway.

Have at it then, slick. People usually try to do it themselves to get around permits and inspections.

I love it when I get to fix stuff that people tried to do themselves and screwed up or one-man contractors that disappeared. It always costs more money than doing it right the first time.

"While I'm here, you want me to fix the rest of your code violations too?"

I've seen this happen in the IT tech space.  It was a race to the bottom of people hiring the cheapest people possible.
At some point, people discover they just want it fixed right and again appreciate quality.
Problem is there is a period of learning that dealing with independent people isn't all that it's cracked up to be to save a few bucks.

[Annamal]

Well, um... Get over it.  The days of arrogant "Expert Tradesmen" extorting usurious wages for sub-par work are over.  Residential wiring isn't that hard anyway, and as long as permits and inspections are done to ensure the work is right, who cares? I've met just as many hack electricals/pipefitters that held a certification as those that didn't hold a cert, anyway.

Have at it then, slick. People usually try to do it themselves to get around permits and inspections.

I love it when I get to fix stuff that people tried to do themselves and screwed up or one-man contractors that disappeared. It always costs more money than doing it right the first time.

"While I'm here, you want me to fix the rest of your code violations too?"

I've seen this happen in the IT tech space.  It was a race to the bottom of people hiring the cheapest people possible.
At some point, people discover they just want it fixed right and again appreciate quality.
Problem is there is a period of learning that dealing with independent people isn't all that it's cracked up to be to save a few bucks.

It's Sam Vimes shoes writ large.

Spend money sensibly upfront and your total cost of ownership goes down (and if you're bright you try and pick up as many of the techniques that were employed so you understand why what you have works).

[CopperTex]

This is rampant in the photography industry. Everyone with a camera thinks they are a photographer. I've heard countless stories of couples that let their aunt, sister, "uncle bob", etc. take their wedding photographs and ruined an important part of the day - capturing the memory of it.

[DragonSlayer]

It's rampant in the writing world, too. There are so many places/content mills that pay incredibly low rates for articles that it's making it impossible for writers to make a living, unless you work in corporate/grant/technical writing and even there there are many people who balk when you quote them a fair rate for a job. They either figure they can do it themselves or they can hire someone to do it for $5. And the sad thing is, many writers "give" their work away for these ridiculously low rates making it that much harder on everyone.

[ChrisLansing]

"The company, which provides its service in 29 of the biggest cities in the United States, as well as Toronto, Vancouver and six British cities, now has 5,000 workers on its books; it says most choose to work between five hours and 35 hours a week, and that the 20% doing most earn $2,500 a month. The company has 200 full-time employees. Founded in 2011, it has raised $40m in venture capital."    

15 years ago I was a self employed house painter.   I made more than 2500 a month.   Let's all sell our services on price alone, and let's all be poor.   

[ImCheap]

Well, um... Get over it.  The days of arrogant "Expert Tradesmen" extorting usurious wages for sub-par work are over.  Residential wiring isn't that hard anyway, and as long as permits and inspections are done to ensure the work is right, who cares? I've met just as many hack electricals/pipefitters that held a certification as those that didn't hold a cert, anyway.

Have at it then, slick. People usually try to do it themselves to get around permits and inspections.

I love it when I get to fix stuff that people tried to do themselves and screwed up or one-man contractors that disappeared. It always costs more money than doing it right the first time.

"While I'm here, you want me to fix the rest of your code violations too?"

I have inspected my fair share of commercial and residential building over the past 30 years. Generally I would say the quality of work the trades produce has gone in the toilet. On the residential side their is a reason most jurisdictions allow the homeowner to perform the work, they encourage you to pull a permit and allow for an inspection. If you live in a jurisdiction where they disallow the homeowner to perform the work you will find the problems you speak.

To get back to the OP (and my take on why the trades quality has gone in the toilet). I'm not sure why contractors do this but you can send out a little 50,000 square foot office plan that contains full Architectural, Mechanical and Electrical drawings (a decent simple complete set of drawings) to 3 Electrical Contractors, 3 Plumbers, 3 HVAC Contractors, etc. and rather than just bidding the plan they spend all kinds of time trying to take every nickel out the project, looking for inferior products to substitute,  its like a pencil race to the poor house.

Half way thru the project they are whining about loosing money on the project because they forgot to price in 3 wire nuts.  Maybe this new generation of contractors is just trying to get used to always being the cheapest guy on the block because the cheapest working app is just around the corner.

30 years ago I could bid a project per plan, the contractors would give a decent number with a reasonable margin, they would perform the work without trying to nickel and time for every extra wire nut with a change order. I so long for those days. I should not be so mean, I have some really good contractors but the scale has been tipping to wrong way for some time now in the work ethic/pride side of things.   

No way in hell would I use some smartphone App to find the workers for one my projects. If I found out my Tradesmen  was using an App to pull people from god knows where it would be the last project they do for me as well. You are just asking for a mess.

If you are too lazy to change a door knob or not sure what end of a screwdriver to pick up a service like this may be fine.

I'm really starting to sound like an old geezer, I do enjoy all the new micro brews so I can't be to old!

[ncornilsen]

Well, um... Get over it.  The days of arrogant "Expert Tradesmen" extorting usurious wages for sub-par work are over.  Residential wiring isn't that hard anyway, and as long as permits and inspections are done to ensure the work is right, who cares? I've met just as many hack electricals/pipefitters that held a certification as those that didn't hold a cert, anyway.

Have at it then, slick. People usually try to do it themselves to get around permits and inspections.

I love it when I get to fix stuff that people tried to do themselves and screwed up or one-man contractors that disappeared. It always costs more money than doing it right the first time.

"While I'm here, you want me to fix the rest of your code violations too?"

I love it when I pay the premium price for a tradesman and get hackjob results, and have to fix it myself anyway.
 
When I bought my house, it didn't have any 3 prong outlets or grounded circuits. Someone replaced the panel with a modern panel, 200A service, etc... but didn't upgrade the branch circuits. It was the old cloth-sheathed 2 wire non-metalic wire... not sure what it is, but it was almost oily. never seen it before. It was brittle as shit, so anything you did to move it started cracking the sheathing. I needed it replaced, with grounds pulled back to the panel for all the circuits. So, I hired an electrician. He makes a big deal about how he used to be a union electrician, so I can trust his quality work. Same speal you're giving about hack jobs. Billing rate is $80/hr.

I came home in the middle of the day to get something when he was 2 days in, while he was away at lunch. I start looking at the electrical box he was working on, and find that he didn't pulled a single goddamned new wire. He simply added 1 foot of new 3 wire romex to the existing 2 wire, by 1) attaching the ground to the neutral, 2) using no wire nut to twist the new and old wires together, 3) wrapped it with tape, and stuffed it through the knock-out hole in the original wall box, into the wall. Did the same thing on the other end at the breaker panel, and had done it on about 15 wall boxes by that point.

That professional, quality, fair-priced "union tradesman" would have burned my fucking house down. He got the permits too.

Needless to say I fired him and lodged a complaint with the CCB. Somehow he was in good standing. I wonder how many other houses he's done that to.

So if you are a true tradesman, good for you. But alot of people have paid quality prices and gotten crap. They probably figure, like I do, that if I'm going to get crap, I may as well get it priced accordingly or do it mysel. I've known lots of these one-man shows who do excellent work at a low price as well. 

[bzzzt]

I have inspected my fair share of commercial and residential building over the past 30 years. Generally I would say the quality of work the trades produce has gone in the toilet. On the residential side their is a reason most jurisdictions allow the homeowner to perform the work, they encourage you to pull a permit and allow for an inspection. If you live in a jurisdiction where they disallow the homeowner to perform the work you will find the problems you speak.

To get back to the OP (and my take on why the trades quality has gone in the toilet). I'm not sure why contractors do this but you can send out a little 50,000 square foot office plan that contains full Architectural, Mechanical and Electrical drawings (a decent simple complete set of drawings) to 3 Electrical Contractors, 3 Plumbers, 3 HVAC Contractors, etc. and rather than just bidding the plan they spend all kinds of time trying to take every nickel out the project, looking for inferior products to substitute,  its like a pencil race to the poor house.

Half way thru the project they are whining about loosing money on the project because they forgot to price in 3 wire nuts.  Maybe this new generation of contractors is just trying to get used to always being the cheapest guy on the block because the cheapest working app is just around the corner.

30 years ago I could bid a project per plan, the contractors would give a decent number with a reasonable margin, they would perform the work without trying to nickel and time for every extra wire nut with a change order. I so long for those days. I should not be so mean, I have some really good contractors but the scale has been tipping to wrong way for some time now in the work ethic/pride side of things.

This is the problem with people always going with the lowest bid and there not being any meat left on the bone. Have to be the low bidder to get the work. I also blame GCs and "labor management" companies. There used to be a time when subs bought their own material (addt'l margin through markup), actually got time to do the work without all subs being stacked on top of each other, and actually got paid for change orders.

I can't tell you how many times the GC or the customer orders their own rooftop units, switch gear, or countless others "to save money" and it's wrong. They expect you to help them fix it with no extra cost or they will have someone sign the change order and at the end say "Oh, he wasn't authorized to sign change orders". We had one GC who told us to eat $250,000 in legit COs. "Chase us."

This is also the cause of the trades going downhill. The contractors only keep around the fastest guys, not necessarily the best guys. The fast guys train the apprentices who learn the fast way to do it, not necessarily the right way. "That looks great" has turned into "Shit it in to get it in", "it's above the ceiling grid", or any number of other dumb sayings.

I love it when I pay the premium price for a tradesman and get hackjob results, and have to fix it myself anyway.
 
...

So if you are a true tradesman, good for you. But alot of people have paid quality prices and gotten crap. They probably figure, like I do, that if I'm going to get crap, I may as well get it priced accordingly or do it mysel. I've known lots of these one-man shows who do excellent work at a low price as well.

The hacks piss me off as well, makes it harder to do business. Not much you can do other then ask friends for referrals like Capsu78's "I got a guy..." That's definitely a Chicago thing and most of my friends in other locales don't understand.

[ImCheap]

I can't tell you how many times the GC or the customer orders their own rooftop units, switch gear, or countless others "to save money" and it's wrong. They expect you to help them fix it with no extra cost or they will have someone sign the change order and at the end say "Oh, he wasn't authorized to sign change orders". We had one GC who told us to eat $250,000 in legit COs. "Chase us."

This is also the cause of the trades going downhill. The contractors only keep around the fastest guys, not necessarily the best guys. The fast guys train the apprentices who learn the fast way to do it, not necessarily the right way. "That looks great" has turned into "Shit it in to get it in", "it's above the ceiling grid", or any number of other dumb sayings.

Why in the world would a GC want to buy a subs equipment, to much liability for something they know squat about. Glad we don't pull that around here, its not worth the 10% markup in my book.  A HVAC person needs to stand up and to the GC and have a backbone, this is the part of the problem.

I try hard to use and spec decent equipment so the Owner gets a good building at a fair price. Then I will get some smart ass contractor that wants to sub in a $50 light fixture from China rather then use the $90 USA made one we want. They are going to take a 10% markup on either fixture, like I said its a race to the poor house.

Let everyone in a secrete, don't always select the low bidder and don't all ways work with the same contractor, its not healthy. For subs we tend to get 4-5 bids and spread the work around them. I don't want all your work just part/most of it:)

[bzzzt]

Why in the world would a GC want to buy a subs equipment, to much liability for something they know squat about. Glad we don't pull that around here, its not worth the 10% markup in my book.

Greed... and bonuses. As a skilled tradesman, I make a living hourly wage. I don't need or expect bonuses. However, most project managers are now coming out of college with crap salaries based on 40 hrs/wk and they're putting in 50+ hrs/wk. They're picking up pennies and tripping over dollars most of the time doing "cost control". Certain contracrors we can't order our own material from the supply house. The order has to be called in to the office, somebody gets quotes at different houses, then the order comes out in 2-3 days... with the wrong stuff. Right now, materials are cheap and labor is expensive. What's the real cost of the material if I have guys being less/non productive for hours a day?

I once had a PM chew me out over the amount of PPE (gloves/safety glasses/vests) our guys were going through. It was a year job with a bonus for 0 OSHA recordable incidents. Guess what? We made the job with 0 recordables and that PPE spending looked cheap on the flip side.

Damn, I can't wait for FIRE. ;)

[Aprés-ski]

With Basic Income and Obamacare it won't matter what you make!

JK'ing.

A knowledgable and fair tradesman is worth his/her weight in gold in my opinion.  I've seen enough confusing, dangerous, or chronically malfunctioning DIY jobs to know the value of skilled labor ... as long as no corners are cut.

Apps will certainly make work more competitive and less profitable in the years to come.