Probably just that he’s already spent 4 years getting a bachelor’s degree and only now finds out it’s insufficient to land a job and now he has to do more school and cross his fingers that improves his job-seeking situation. (It should, but so should a bachelor’s degree.)
Honestly, “what’s wrong with a master’s degree” is almost as good a question, except that it would likely require going into more debt than trade school would.
Mechanics also have the cost problem. A good mechanic will have to put an amount of money into tools that is comparable to the cost of a university degree. A career mechanic will spend tens of thousands on their tools.
They accumulate over time as you work on different cars (and thus earn money) though, university degree is an upfront cost.
Yes if you want to start a VW dealer, you need like 100k USD worth of VW special tools alone in the US if I remember correctly from some Eric The Car Guy video from 10-15 years ago. If you want to just start an honest shop for honest people, you can probably get started for under 10k in tools and equipment, particularly if you have tools at home from fixing your own cars.
Or you can get a job as a mechanic and your employer should be paying for the tools you use.
It is more than likely a relatively shitty hard job.
Most shops have a shop time per hour, which lets say it’s 60, you would probably make like 20 an hour. But your hours are not time worked, they are what the body that sets the job time. So say you have to replace a water pump, and the job time is 10 hours. If you can do it faster you still make ten hours, but if it’s slower you still only make 10 hours.
There are pros and cons to every job of course, but generally speaking they get paid by the job, which can be profitable: if you’re quick, know what you need to do, and have what you need to do it.
OR the exact opposite, figuring out what is wrong,
doing a job, and you have to redo it because the parts that you got from the manufacturer are faulty, you still only get paid for one job. Or if that aforementioned water pump actually takes you 20 hours, it would hurt your bottom line.
My highschool autoshop teacher worked at a dealership with the only real exception I’ve heard about automotive, which is electrical. His shop time and pay was 100 an hour, but he hated that job.
That’s dealer mechanics, dealer mechanics don’t fix cars, they replace parts, often whole systems at once*, and the manufacturer tells them how long it must take to replace a part and for some marques even which part must be at fault for whatever symptoms. Seriously, factory repair manuals are INFURIATING to read sometimes as a shade-tree mechanic working on my own cars.
Independent dealers and outright third party shops that don’t specialize in any particular marque, will often charge you by the actual time taken, and the mechanic will get paid for time spent working. They’ll also be better at diagnosing the actual issue because they play by their own experience not a set of rules and might help you save money by replacing only what needs to be replaced.
* Good luck getting your auto transmission transmission solenoids replaced at the dealer. What do you mean 500€ for a set of solenoids? No, if it shifts wrong, the transmission is broken, it’s 21915€! And you’ll be paying twice as much per hour compared to the actual automatic transmission specialists who will replace the parts that need replacing and might not even drop the transmission. Also what do you mean transmission fluid change? It’s lifetime fluid, it’ll never go bad!
(variations of this transmission are used in like 20 different marques, GM’s 8 speed is also a variation of it, etc, I just used Audi because I could easily check their dealer pricing on a random model’s part code for the ZF 8HP and yes, a set of solenoids does cost under a grand even for such a modern transmission, with genuine ZF parts. I don’t know what the car manufacturers try to tell people on the 8HP, but for the 6HP most marques said the fluid is lifetime. ZF says it’s 5 years or 80 000 km between fluid + filter changes for 6HP. I wonder who knows these transmissions better)
Oh and for the price check to get a transmission part code, I used a model that’s depreciated enough that they now cost about 10k.
What’s wrong with being a mechanic?
Probably just that he’s already spent 4 years getting a bachelor’s degree and only now finds out it’s insufficient to land a job and now he has to do more school and cross his fingers that improves his job-seeking situation. (It should, but so should a bachelor’s degree.)
Honestly, “what’s wrong with a master’s degree” is almost as good a question, except that it would likely require going into more debt than trade school would.
Mechanics also have the cost problem. A good mechanic will have to put an amount of money into tools that is comparable to the cost of a university degree. A career mechanic will spend tens of thousands on their tools.
They accumulate over time as you work on different cars (and thus earn money) though, university degree is an upfront cost.
Yes if you want to start a VW dealer, you need like 100k USD worth of VW special tools alone in the US if I remember correctly from some Eric The Car Guy video from 10-15 years ago. If you want to just start an honest shop for honest people, you can probably get started for under 10k in tools and equipment, particularly if you have tools at home from fixing your own cars.
Or you can get a job as a mechanic and your employer should be paying for the tools you use.
and then he gets those degrees and finds out those degrees don’t get him jobs either.
It is more than likely a relatively shitty hard job.
Most shops have a shop time per hour, which lets say it’s 60, you would probably make like 20 an hour. But your hours are not time worked, they are what the body that sets the job time. So say you have to replace a water pump, and the job time is 10 hours. If you can do it faster you still make ten hours, but if it’s slower you still only make 10 hours.
There are pros and cons to every job of course, but generally speaking they get paid by the job, which can be profitable: if you’re quick, know what you need to do, and have what you need to do it. OR the exact opposite, figuring out what is wrong, doing a job, and you have to redo it because the parts that you got from the manufacturer are faulty, you still only get paid for one job. Or if that aforementioned water pump actually takes you 20 hours, it would hurt your bottom line.
My highschool autoshop teacher worked at a dealership with the only real exception I’ve heard about automotive, which is electrical. His shop time and pay was 100 an hour, but he hated that job.
So cut as many corners as you can probably get away with. What a great incentive…
That’s dealer mechanics, dealer mechanics don’t fix cars, they replace parts, often whole systems at once*, and the manufacturer tells them how long it must take to replace a part and for some marques even which part must be at fault for whatever symptoms. Seriously, factory repair manuals are INFURIATING to read sometimes as a shade-tree mechanic working on my own cars.
Independent dealers and outright third party shops that don’t specialize in any particular marque, will often charge you by the actual time taken, and the mechanic will get paid for time spent working. They’ll also be better at diagnosing the actual issue because they play by their own experience not a set of rules and might help you save money by replacing only what needs to be replaced.
* Good luck getting your auto transmission transmission solenoids replaced at the dealer. What do you mean 500€ for a set of solenoids? No, if it shifts wrong, the transmission is broken, it’s 21915€! And you’ll be paying twice as much per hour compared to the actual automatic transmission specialists who will replace the parts that need replacing and might not even drop the transmission. Also what do you mean transmission fluid change? It’s lifetime fluid, it’ll never go bad!
(variations of this transmission are used in like 20 different marques, GM’s 8 speed is also a variation of it, etc, I just used Audi because I could easily check their dealer pricing on a random model’s part code for the ZF 8HP and yes, a set of solenoids does cost under a grand even for such a modern transmission, with genuine ZF parts. I don’t know what the car manufacturers try to tell people on the 8HP, but for the 6HP most marques said the fluid is lifetime. ZF says it’s 5 years or 80 000 km between fluid + filter changes for 6HP. I wonder who knows these transmissions better)
Oh and for the price check to get a transmission part code, I used a model that’s depreciated enough that they now cost about 10k.