Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How has your work changed through the years

Plumbing has changed a lot since I started in 1971. We put packed oakum ( rope) in cast iron pipe, poured lead in the joint. It then went to rubber gaskets, then to no hub clamps. This is commercial work. They don’t use PVC, because it kills when it burns. We use PVC outside and underground, but cast iron above slab. Water pipe was all copper or threaded galvanize pipe. We don’t see much threaded steel now. It’s victaulic now, both steel and copper. Copper is also propressed. They have invented all of that to save labor. Years ago there would be thirty hands on a job, now fifteen. We laid our work out with a transit, tape measure, and string.
Now they use GPS on big jobs. You figured out dimensions by adding and subtracting from columns. Now you a computer will do that for you. Plumbing was once a better trade in my opinion.

Some jobs probably haven’t changed much. How has yours changed or is it the same?

The people I work with have all gotten younger over the years.

At my job (44 years), more work expected out of fewer workers. Two guys are expected to do what 6+ guys once did.

That and meskinized

I started Plumbing and Heating in 1971 also. All the underground was cast iron. I have a very new Reed chain soil snap cutter I've been trying to sell; guys don't know what it is! Most recently before retiring I worked as a residential boiler serviceman. Had to keep taking classes and continuing education to keep up with the electronics involved. I kept a paper map in the truck to find where I had to go...the helpers would just use GPS; then look up the solution to the problems on U-Tube. Glad I could retire!

for me the biggest change is telecommuting (working from home)

I'm still old school and go into the office every day, but 4 of the 5 people that work for me all work from home. 2 of them don't even have an office to go into even if they wanted.

I have the option to work from home, and occasionally I'll do it if I have a reason to be at the house that day, but I believe out of site, out of mind and I want people to see me contributing around the office.

The thing about people getting younger isn't just a joke though. We're losing boomers to retirement at an alarming pace and as such we're having to invest quite a bit of effort and money into recruiting young college grads. The average years of service at my company is 18 years right now.

Started out using slide rule.

Now it's Excel or Aspen or some other computer stuff.

I cover about five times the territory that I did just 12 years ago. There were seven of us salesmen in a region that now has only two.

The means for putting a crop in, making it more productive, and getting it out, have improved astronomically.

As muleshoe has ,said the crop farming has changed nearly altogether. Cows, not so much.

Everyone had a real telephone and a land line.

I work when and where I want to, and set my own prices. Such is the reward for spending 60 years developing the skills necessary to do my job, being in the top 1/0 of 1% of nationally certified automotive technicians, and being "retired". Now I only travel 1,000+ miles a week in 9 states, but I do it my way. Other than that, not much has changed.
Jerry

Cows themselves have not of course, but our means to care for them certainly have.

I used to work hard as I was labor. Now I am management so I pretty much just stand around. Or sit, if I want to.

When I started in International sales, you came in every morning to see how many fax had come in overnight. Very little phoning as international calls could cost $100+ for just a few minutes. Now, they can reach you by cell phone any time of the day or night. We occasionally get someone who did not pay attention to the time difference. After they woke me in the middle of the night a few times, I returned the favor. They caught on real quick to not call in the middle of the night here. Miss the friends I made but have not missed the travel or the work since I quit 12 years ago.

My job has really changed........I went from having to work, to now only working when I want to......because I'm retired. But, when you have a farm, you're never really "retired."

And you never really have a payday either

Hell no, private work career has, and always will be the same, cows, no there too, I live in the free state of Oklahoma, hell you can burn a brushpile with tires here if you want, the eco epa pussies won't venture out this far, they have a built in survival mechanism much like the cowardice coyote.

A retired farmer is one that wouldn't tell a mule to "Git Up" if it sat on his lap!
Jerry

And I bet you that it is the same two workers that they always rely on to do the workd of the other six.