Some people think you can retrain anyone to anything. I heard a pundit on Fox claim that construction workers (currently highly unemployed due to the construction slump) could be retrained as programmers for Google.
Right. Guys that do construction do it cause they like working out of doors in the sunlight and fresh air. They like working with their hands and doing heavy lifting. They like seeing something real, that they can touch, take shape under their hands.
Put a guy like that in a cubical, facing a PC monitor, and ask him to debug some ugly C++ code and it just ain't gonna work. It will drive the construction guy crazy. This just isn't what he considers work. It isn't a matter of training or intelligence, it's a matter of liking the stuff. No way is a real construction guy going to be happy turned into a code geek.
There are plenty of things construction guys might consider other than working construction. Mining, logging, truck driving, railroading, airline work, heavy equipment operation, shipping, plumbing, HVAC, and lineman (power or telephone) come immediately to mind. But forget programming, selling, and jockeying paperwork.
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