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Thanks, this is a good reality check. There seems to be a lot of romanticization of the trades happening these days, and I've always been a little skeptical. Sounds like hard but steady work that comes with its own set of tradeoffs. One of my sons is technically inclined but a bit ADHD/on the spectrum. I've been wondering if he would do better as a field tech of some sort rather than as a white collar desk jockey. Personally, my years as an IT dispatch tech were the most fun I ever had in my working years. Long hours and lots of BS, but a great crew, rewarding work (you can see the things you fix), and I loved getting paid to drive around and see different towns and the "backstage" side of many businesses. Sounds like working a trade has some similarities.
ADHD will not harm an HVAC career. Autism, assuming it's actual autism, probably will. Minimum social competency is required to move up the career ladder and if your son is the classic nerdy introvert with little physicality this will probably not come particularly easy to him. In particular electricians haze their apprentices brutally and HVAC expects either a salesman or an aggressive, takes-no-shit-from anybody personality.
The usual trades career path is grunt work with the jailbirds-apprentice-technician/journeyman-maybe master. Stupid people don't(because they can't) get their master's license but it's not universal among good technicians- manager pay isn't actually a big increase over hourly so lots of guys treat it as a meh/why bother. Both grunt workers and apprentices are basically doing the demanding physical stuff to pay for their learning and skinnyfats usually fail out. Grunt workers are, as I mentioned, on a crew full of jailbirds, near-actual retards, and fresh meat that may or may not make it, apprentices usually work one on one with a technician. Neither one is exactly a 'great crew'.
I found tech school easy to pay attention to compared to k-12. The curriculum was most like a science class, but very... applied? Hands on? Something like that. It shortens career progressions; it does not let you skip steps.
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