This is my comment to an article that was shared today on a forum that I frequent.
You can find the article here:
Before anyone runs and signs up for training to become an automotive technician because it looks like you can make a great income, you need to learn the facts. While mathematically it may be possible for a select few to generate a decent in...come the reality is politics inside the shiops usually come into play and will have a much greater impact on someone's ability to make a living fixing cars. One of the biggest challenges in a dealership is flat rate and how it works against the technician more than it does for him/her. The idea that flat rate is supposed to reward a talented, hard working technician gets trumped by warranty times that are often as little as half of the customer pay times. Imaging doing a major repair like a head gasket on a given engine, the customer pay labor time might be six hours, while warranty time for the exact same job is only two and a half to three hours. It's the same job, but there is nothing flat about the times that the technician gets pad. The young technician will hear a lot of excuses for why its done like that, but they have to put up with it or they won't get to last as a tech.
Then we have the electronics and especially the diagnostics portion of the job. Most manufacturers pay around eighteen minutes to perform a basic diagnostic routine. That time includes getting the repair order and punching onto it with the time clock, finding the car, roadtesting and verifying the reported symptom all while using the scan tool to retrieve the trouble codes and examine the data produced by the modules on the vehicle. The tech then needs to research the system involved and check for TSB's and today for software updates. Then its actuallytime to test the components and/or the wiring in the system to identify the failure. Once the problem is found, the technician still has to document the findings and access any required parts and set about doing the repair.
All of that in .3 hours, or eighteen minutes.
It would be fair to say that this is a rough draft of what it really takes to be that top diagnostic technician who by the story is supposed to make 80K a year. The problem is that it takes decades to achieve this level of proficiency and with the ever changing complexity of today's cars the need to study never stops. There is always something new to have to learn and the pressure to have to be fast at actually doing the work drives most of our young peope right back out of the trade way before they reach their full potential as technicians.
Before you go and try to become a mechanic/technician talk to the peope who are in the trade working as mechanics/technicians first. If you love cars and you like solving very complicated technical puzzles then this can be a rewarding career. Remember you will have to live on that median income mentioned in the article and still buy the $30,000 - $50,000 that you will have to invest in your own tools while you are learning the trade which will take some fifteen to twenty years. There is no finish line in this trade, you will only be as good as the billable hours that you can produce which normally will peak while you are in your forties.
Then we have the electronics and especially the diagnostics portion of the job. Most manufacturers pay around eighteen minutes to perform a basic diagnostic routine. That time includes getting the repair order and punching onto it with the time clock, finding the car, roadtesting and verifying the reported symptom all while using the scan tool to retrieve the trouble codes and examine the data produced by the modules on the vehicle. The tech then needs to research the system involved and check for TSB's and today for software updates. Then its actuallytime to test the components and/or the wiring in the system to identify the failure. Once the problem is found, the technician still has to document the findings and access any required parts and set about doing the repair.
All of that in .3 hours, or eighteen minutes.
It would be fair to say that this is a rough draft of what it really takes to be that top diagnostic technician who by the story is supposed to make 80K a year. The problem is that it takes decades to achieve this level of proficiency and with the ever changing complexity of today's cars the need to study never stops. There is always something new to have to learn and the pressure to have to be fast at actually doing the work drives most of our young peope right back out of the trade way before they reach their full potential as technicians.
Before you go and try to become a mechanic/technician talk to the peope who are in the trade working as mechanics/technicians first. If you love cars and you like solving very complicated technical puzzles then this can be a rewarding career. Remember you will have to live on that median income mentioned in the article and still buy the $30,000 - $50,000 that you will have to invest in your own tools while you are learning the trade which will take some fifteen to twenty years. There is no finish line in this trade, you will only be as good as the billable hours that you can produce which normally will peak while you are in your forties.
