Trades—plumbing, electrics, carpentry, general building and maintenance. I think there is room for at least 1 or 2 EAs with these kinds of skills. Maybe it’s peculiar to our situation in the North-West of England, but we’ve found it very difficult to hire reliable and competent tradespeople to do jobs that need doing for the EA Hotel. The good people are always busy, and the rest are very unreliable (it’s often a surprise if they turn up at all). Having someone aligned with our mission would greatly help with reliability and quality of outcome I imagine—this is an area where knowing the right person is a key factor. With the proliferation of other EA hubs (who may face similar challenges in terms of hiring quality tradespeople) there could be opportunities to travel, help build infrastructure, and get more involved in the community. Also, expected earnings are reasonably high, so a decent level of earning-to-give would be possible too.
This remains as true now as it was then. We are still struggling to find reliable tradespeople. The norm seems to be for tradespeople to take on many more jobs than they can do, make unrealistic promises (likely to many different people simultaneously), and just not turn up (more than) half the time. Many of our maintenance issues at CEEALAR (the EA Hotel) have been extensively prolonged because of this. To add to this we’ve had experiences of outright dishonesty and being left out of pocket paying for things that have never been delivered. Having community members with a shared common mission (EA) in these roles would help a lot with reliability.
Someone needs to start a website that is like Check-a-Trade, but where the tradespeople pay a deposit that they only get back if they show up, and payment for jobs is (part-)dependent on them being completed on time.
The leading rationale of “Learn a trade --> use it for EA projects that need it” looks weak to me:
There’s not a large enough density of ‘EA’ work in any given place to take up more than a small fraction of a tradepersons activity. So this upside should be discounted by (substantial) time to learn the trade, and then most of one’s ‘full time job’ as (say) an electrician will not be spent on EA work.
It looks pretty unlikely to have ‘nomadic’ tradespeople travelling between EA hubs, as the added cost of flights etc. suggest it might be more efficient just to try and secure good tradespeople by (e.g.) offering above market rates.
As you say, it could be a good option for some due to good earning power (especially for those with less academic backgrounds, cf. kbog’s guide) but the leading rationale doesn’t seem substantial reason to slant recommendations (e.g. if you could earn X as a plumber, but 1.1X in something else, the fact they could occasionally help out for EA projects shouldn’t outweigh this.
Good points. With growth of hubs it could become more viable even if it isn’t now. Transport costs (time, money) are probably low enough to make it efficient to travel at least a few times a year. Offering/accepting above market rates might help a bit, but it would still require costs of the search and vetting.
Given training costs and counterfactuals, another option might be to find good tradespeople and get them on board with the EA mission.
Trades—plumbing, electrics, carpentry, general building and maintenance. I think there is room for at least 1 or 2 EAs with these kinds of skills. Maybe it’s peculiar to our situation in the North-West of England, but we’ve found it very difficult to hire reliable and competent tradespeople to do jobs that need doing for the EA Hotel. The good people are always busy, and the rest are very unreliable (it’s often a surprise if they turn up at all). Having someone aligned with our mission would greatly help with reliability and quality of outcome I imagine—this is an area where knowing the right person is a key factor. With the proliferation of other EA hubs (who may face similar challenges in terms of hiring quality tradespeople) there could be opportunities to travel, help build infrastructure, and get more involved in the community. Also, expected earnings are reasonably high, so a decent level of earning-to-give would be possible too.
This remains as true now as it was then. We are still struggling to find reliable tradespeople. The norm seems to be for tradespeople to take on many more jobs than they can do, make unrealistic promises (likely to many different people simultaneously), and just not turn up (more than) half the time. Many of our maintenance issues at CEEALAR (the EA Hotel) have been extensively prolonged because of this. To add to this we’ve had experiences of outright dishonesty and being left out of pocket paying for things that have never been delivered. Having community members with a shared common mission (EA) in these roles would help a lot with reliability.
Someone needs to start a website that is like Check-a-Trade, but where the tradespeople pay a deposit that they only get back if they show up, and payment for jobs is (part-)dependent on them being completed on time.
Would be interested to hear why people think this is a bad idea.
[Not one of the downvoters]
The leading rationale of “Learn a trade --> use it for EA projects that need it” looks weak to me:
There’s not a large enough density of ‘EA’ work in any given place to take up more than a small fraction of a tradepersons activity. So this upside should be discounted by (substantial) time to learn the trade, and then most of one’s ‘full time job’ as (say) an electrician will not be spent on EA work.
It looks pretty unlikely to have ‘nomadic’ tradespeople travelling between EA hubs, as the added cost of flights etc. suggest it might be more efficient just to try and secure good tradespeople by (e.g.) offering above market rates.
As you say, it could be a good option for some due to good earning power (especially for those with less academic backgrounds, cf. kbog’s guide) but the leading rationale doesn’t seem substantial reason to slant recommendations (e.g. if you could earn X as a plumber, but 1.1X in something else, the fact they could occasionally help out for EA projects shouldn’t outweigh this.
Good points. With growth of hubs it could become more viable even if it isn’t now. Transport costs (time, money) are probably low enough to make it efficient to travel at least a few times a year. Offering/accepting above market rates might help a bit, but it would still require costs of the search and vetting.
Given training costs and counterfactuals, another option might be to find good tradespeople and get them on board with the EA mission.
(for the curious: kbog’s guide)