Everyone is Wrong About the Skilled Labor Shortage

You keep hearing it... "We're running out of plumbers!" "Nobody knows how to fix HVAC anymore!" "The trades are DYING!"

It's a FAILURE OF IMAGINATION.

We don't need more master plumbers (i mean, sure we do, but there are a lot of ways to solve that problem).

First and foremost, we need to separate the BRAIN from the BODY.

This is already happening.

Right now, in a variety of industries.

Caterpillar has a 22-year-old standing next to a $5 million turbine. Kid doesn't know shit about turbines. Doesn't matter. he got a week or two orientation on how to use the tools & he's wearing a RealWear augmented reality headset.

On the other end?

A master tech sitting in a climate-controlled office in Frankfurt or Detroit or wherever.

The expert sees what the kid sees. Draws a red circle around a specific valve. "Turn that one. 45 degrees. Not the other one. THAT one."

The kid turns it.

Done.

Twenty years of expertise channeled through twenty-year-old hands. That's the future.

Here's what everyone's missing...

They think we need MORE Level 3 technicians. We don't. We need to MULTIPLY the ones we have.

One master plumber used to serve one job site.
Now?

That same plumber can guide ten jobs simultaneously. Different cities. Different states. Doesn't matter.

Picture a Grand Master in chess playing 20 different games at the same time.

"Hey, cut that pipe and pour that cement (easy easy shit). Ping me when you're done because we need to make sure that the drain is set up right. "

(he switches to a different job)...

The future has three levels:

Level 1 — The body. Shows up. Follows instructions. Turns things. Cuts things. "Look under here." No problem wasting 45 minutes getting the paperwork signed and putting little booties on, digging trenches, whatever.

Level 2 — Mid-tier. Handles routine stuff solo. Calls for backup on the weird shit.

Level 3 — The brain. Sits behind screens. Sees through multiple sets of eyes. Solves the hard problems remotely.

I have no idea if this is right but you get the idea.

And here's the kicker... Level 3 doesn't even need to be human forever!
You can train an AI model on ten thousand water heater installations. Eventually, the AI draws the circles. The AI says which pipe to cut.

The skilled labor shortage is a failure of imagination.

Sure we need "more skilled trades labor" but even more we need better SYSTEMS for distributing expertise.

We need to stop pretending every person on a job site needs a decade of experience.
The wrench doesn't care who's holding it... as long as someone smart is saying where to point it.

That's the future. It's not coming. It's here.

And most people are looking the wrong direction.

Yallah Habibi,

Jon