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I was fired from my tech job. Here's why I picked up the welding gun

I was fired from my tech job. Here's why I picked up the welding gun

Times2 days ago
For eight years, the most physical work Tabby Toney Douglass did was to move a cursor around a screen. Three months ago, she swapped her mouse for a welding gun and a fire-resistant jacket.
Douglass is one of nearly 250,000 tech workers who have been laid off in the United States since the start of last year.
Artificial intelligence and cost-cutting measures are causing havoc in an industry previously considered best equipped to cope with technological advancement. Software engineers, whose area of study was once seen as a sure-fire path to a reliable six-figure income, have been particularly affected.
Instead of trying to stay in the industry, Douglass decided to follow her creative passion: welding.
She is not alone. Many former tech workers are turning to traditional blue-collar jobs as a fallback option. We spoke to three of them.
Tabby Toney Douglass, a 37-year-old living in Oklahoma City, graduated with a PhD in history from Oklahoma State University and initially worked as a lecturer and in museums. She discovered that the non-profit world did not provide her with a reliable salary, and decided to teach herself to code.
She initially worked as a software tester, and was later hired at a payroll and human resources company as a software engineer.
Douglass said she first noticed the emergence of AI in her work about a year ago. At first, it was useful to have a new tool to reduce her workload.
'Then a lot of companies started to think 'Oh, we can replace people with that'. It's very short-sighted,' she said.
In May, Douglass was laid off for the second time in three years. She was burnt out and unsatisfied with the long hours chained to a computer, and decided to take a month's break to recharge.
Douglass grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, and was introduced to welding as a toddler in her grandfather's garage. She recalled wearing his protective mask and it coming down to her knees. 'I remember him telling me, 'Don't look at the spark',' she said.
While deciding her next career move, Douglass borrowed a welding gun, clamps, gloves, glasses and fire-resistant jacket from a relative.
'I enjoyed the creative side of it,' she said. 'Metallurgy involves knowing what tools to use and how to execute it in certain situations, so there's still a thinking aspect to it. And that's when I realised, 'I don't want to work in software any more'.'
She applied to get into several welding trade schools, but found they were fully booked for two years due to the high demand for tradespeople in Oklahoma's oil and gas industry. Douglass said she eventually 'got lucky' and was accepted into a five-month intensive course.
She feels confident she could go straight into work, but would rather be certified. 'I don't want a building to fall down,' she said.
Douglass is not concerned about the physical side of the work. She has a black belt in karate and lifts weights at the gym. Besides, it will be a breeze compared to having to sit in front of a computer for eight or nine hours a day. 'I don't sit still well,' she said.
Neither is she bothered about working in an industry where men make up about 90 per cent of the workforce. 'There aren't too many female welders, but there aren't many female software engineers either. I was usually the only woman on my team,' she said.
Recruiters she spoke to said some employers preferred to hire female welders because they showed greater attention to detail in their work.
Mid-level software engineers can make anywhere from $66,000 to $90,000 in Oklahoma. Salaries for remote workers are higher, ranging from $100,000 to $120,000.
Douglass said she would make $40,000 to $50,000 for her first two years as a welder, but could easily double or triple that within a few years.
'It'll definitely be a huge pay cut at first, but once I get some experience I'd like to travel interstate and work at shipyards. That's where the money is.'
Travis Ross, 49, started out in tech in Los Angeles in the late 1990s working as a 3D graphic designer in film and television. He created computer-generated replicas of human characters, known as 'digital doubles', for movies like Blade: Trinity and Batman & Robin.
When the dot-com crash hit, Ross moved to San Diego and found work on early Sony Playstation NBA and Major League Baseball video games, doing 3D scanning of baseball and basketball players' faces.
'We had a lot of fun in those days. We were innovating, we were creating new techniques and it was a blast,' he said.
A few years later, in 2008, the bottom fell out of the tech world again as the financial crisis rippled through economies worldwide.
'It was really rough, and I ended up getting laid off with very small kids in a terrible economy,' Ross said.
Film production studios began chasing tax incentives in Canada and Asia, many of Ross's friends in the industry followed the work overseas. But with three young children, that was not an option for him.
When the pandemic kicked off in 2020, he wound up moving to Nashville to do user research for a media company.
'Then in late 2023, I was driving home after being laid off again and I just thought, 'I'm going to be a handyman, I would rather swing a hammer',' he said.
Ross started researching how to set up a home improvement company. He had always had the practical skills to fix and maintain his homes, and helped friends with renovation projects.
'But I knew if I wanted to be taken seriously, I needed to get a licence as a home improvement contractor. I got bonded and insured. Here I am a year later and I'm still doing it,' he said.
Ross does kitchen remodelling, floor installations, and builds patios, playgrounds and sheds. But he prefers custom-designed work: furniture, walk-in closets and faux fireplaces that he designs with his clients, fabricates and then installs the finished product.
'I was recently hired to be a subcontractor for a home building project, and I went in and literally nothing but the foundation had been poured,' he said. 'The little kids were running around, they're like, 'This is our home, this is going to be the bedroom, this is going to be the bathroom.'
'When you see that, it's very gratifying. Whereas in tech, you don't see the results of what you're doing for months. It's a slow, grinding, weird process that my brain never enjoyed.
'I wanted to build up my skills in an area that AI can't completely dominate.
'My three kids are teenagers now and they're all involved in the business.'
Ross used to earn between $110,000 to $150,000 a year in tech, which comes out to about $72 an hour. Now he makes $125 an hour, a standard for handymen in the Nashville area.
'The money is inconsistent and cash flow is always an issue for me but it's worth the effort,' he said. 'What I'd say to someone coming out of the tech space who is disenchanted or unemployed, is 'What is it that gives you energy? That you lose track of time in?' And then just keep doing that until you have a business.'
Chris Jeffs, 58, was born in the UK and began his tech career working as a software developer in Germany in the 1990s before moving to the US in 1995.
'It was incredibly rewarding to build a technology platform from the ground up because you see the entire evolution of the product,' he said. 'Then I moved into software management roles at mid-sized multinationals, and started to run into the kinds of headaches associated with the way larger corporations work. I enjoyed the work, until I didn't.'
By 2018, Jeffs had lost his passion for tech and was ready to take a leap. He had two school-aged children and the extensive travel that the job required had become exhausting.
Jeffs came from a family of accomplished carpenters and always found the work appealing. His eldest brother does custom joinery for old cottages in the UK, and his father dabbled in it as a hobby. 'I admired what they did,' he said.
When his son joined a theatre group in Atlanta, Jeffs volunteered with a couple of other dads to help build the sets.
'I wouldn't say I wasn't a craftsman by any means, but I knew I liked it enough that I could give it a go when I quit the corporate world,' he said.
Over the Christmas holidays, Jeffs brainstormed how to set up a woodworking business and came up with a basic business plan.
'I had a budget of like $20,000 to get started, and I figured if it failed after a year, I could go back to the corporate world,' he said.
Jeffs converted his 14 sq ft basement into a workshop. He bought a table saw and an air filtration system for the sawdust for about $7,000.
'I didn't know what I'd make or what I'd be able to sell, so I tried a handful of different things to see what would stick,' he said. 'I built backpack organisers and picket fences to put around a Christmas tree. I'd always had this idea to make custom-designed drawer organisers for silverware, and at that time I was one of only a handful of people selling them on Etsy.
'Within six months, they took off. After a year and a half, I had outgrown our basement and managed to find a lease on an 800 sq ft workshop,' he said.
'I take a lot of pride in my work. I'm really scared that customers won't like what I do, and when you start getting bad reviews on Etsy, that can kill your business.
'A lot of people ask me, 'do you get bored?' And I say 'not really', because each drawer is different. They're all designed uniquely for that customer.'
During the first few years as Jeffs was building an online presence, his income was a small fraction of his corporate salary.
'By the third year, I was making around 60 per cent of my corporate income, and it now fluctuates between 75 and 90 per cent,' he said.
Being his own boss brings a tremendous amount of freedom. Jeffs typically works four to five hours a day in the workshop and another one or two hours talking to customers about orders.
'Compared to the ten-hour days of the tech-corporate world, I am now able to dictate how much I choose to work, and therefore my income,' he said.
'In the tech world that I came from, as you get into your fifties and sixties, it's very, very hard to find new opportunities. You're perceived as having aged out.
'If you're fortunate enough to have a little bit of wiggle room with finances or personal life or whatever it may be, I'd encourage people to take a leap of faith. Worst-case scenario it fails and you go back and get a proper job.'
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