I left a corporate desk job to become a union electrician. Then got to wire my old office
TL;DR: I've worked the most corporate of jobs. From the "put the fire out" team at Ring and Amazon, and the team that launched the Apple Card at Goldman Sachs Bank. To say I hated my corporate masters is an understatement. Becoming a Union electrician was the best career decision I ever made, and I can promise you you're on the right path. Even if you don't end up working electrical.
Lately I've noticed a lot of posts on here expressing doubt, frustration, even rejection on the road to Journeyman. From current apprentices, yes, but also from hopeful applicants nervously waiting to hear back from their program. This is my apprenticeship journey so far, but really it's a message of reassurance to everybody in that boat.
In my early 20's it was call center central. $13–16 an hour, mostly second shifts. I got to party, stay up late, and blow my money on rent and whatever I wanted. At the time it fit my lifestyle, so it worked.
As the years passed and several call centers later, I graduated to higher caliber jobs that paid a little more. Through absolute dumb luck I landed a spot at Goldman Sachs Bank in downtown Salt Lake City in my midish twenties. My team was piloting the now famous Apple Card. I worked on the whatever-th floor of a downtown skyscraper with an amazing view, rubbed shoulders with people I never dreamed of meeting, and had a fully stocked break room kitchen. They paid me a whole $20 an hour and I was in heaven. I didn't realize it at the time, but corporate America really had me by the balls.
I was unsatisfied with my purpose, though. Didn't feel like I was achieving anything. So through destiny and a series of personal decisions, and a state away, I took a job at Ring, right as Amazon was acquiring the company. I got moved up to the "quick, put this fire out!" team, reporting straight to the founder. Handled some truly insane shit. But at the end of the day it was just another corporate job. Amazon, too, had me by the balls and I started to feel hopeless again.
I'll skip ahead to the apprenticeship.
My dad, a master electrician, finally talked me into applying to the IBEW apprenticeship through Local 354. The process was nerve-racking, like a lot of you have said on here. But it was the best decision I ever made. The application was typical. Apply online, jump through the 50 hooped process, and pray they bless you with a shot at the aptitude test. As a father of two toddlers, studying looked like "chug a Red Bull at 10pm and Khan Academy." I don't know what math gods I prayed to, but I passed the test, and later the interview. Many projects, sites, foremen, and school terms later, I'm well into the program and still going strong.
Moral of the story? The apprenticeship, and the trade at large, is a decision you make every day. There are going to be challenges, rejections, and frustrations that make you doubt your choice. But take it from somebody who's seen the other side: a trade skill, especially one backed by a Union, is the way to go for most. I'm not throwing shade at anyone who picks another path, especially non-trade ones.
The whole thing really hit me when a while back, working for Local 354, I got dispatched downtown to the same skyscraper I'd worked in at Goldman. It had flooded several floors from a burst pipe. I wound up wiring the exact office I used to sit in as a younger man in a shirt and tie. Same view I used to stare at every day, except now I was looking through new eyes, tools on my belt. That shit was a trip. That's the moment it all clicked.
So to the apprentices grinding through it, and the applicants sweating a callback: stick through it. It's worth it.