The key ingredient in most of these trade success stories is not trade per se but working their asses off to build a scalable business. It is a blue collar startup story.
I have a relative who worked construction after high school. Today he is "owns beautiful houses in exclusive neighborhoods around the globe" style wealthy. Yes he worked in the trades, but so did the hundreds of other guys he was working with when he first started out and I doubt any of them did nearly as well. His success wasn't due to him being in the trades, it was his ability to operate an efficient business that narrowly targeted a large business segment that had previously been under-served by generalist businesses, to consistently exceed customer expectations even under adversity, to build trusted business relationships, and to make all of this scale in practice. Which is a fair description of what a tech startup actually entails.
Most trade career success stories have a strong element of entrepreneurial effort and ambition such that I wonder if we are misattributing whence that success is largely derived.
I have a relative who worked construction after high school. Today he is "owns beautiful houses in exclusive neighborhoods around the globe" style wealthy. Yes he worked in the trades, but so did the hundreds of other guys he was working with when he first started out and I doubt any of them did nearly as well. His success wasn't due to him being in the trades, it was his ability to operate an efficient business that narrowly targeted a large business segment that had previously been under-served by generalist businesses, to consistently exceed customer expectations even under adversity, to build trusted business relationships, and to make all of this scale in practice. Which is a fair description of what a tech startup actually entails.
Most trade career success stories have a strong element of entrepreneurial effort and ambition such that I wonder if we are misattributing whence that success is largely derived.