Im working in IT (kind of obvious on HN) and I’m playing with the thought of buying some kind of business from someone who is retiring. Something completely different (like plumbing or electrician), where my knowledge is close to zero. It would be quite a risk, but in IT we are used to learning a lot of new things quickly. And I would need to have employees who are experts in that field anyway.
A lot of those professions became way more complicated in the last years (smart homes, computerized appliances, …), and many people who stepped up their career from being craftsmen have trouble running those businesses nowadays.
I did exactly this. Bought a tiny zero-tech business from an old guy. He wants to retire and nobody wants his business, so I got a steal of a deal.
My plan is to turn off the fax machines, start using email and see if I can automate parts of it or combine with another similar acquisition in a couple of years.
Just beware that buying a business is complicated and you need to keep your end clean, legally speaking.
I am getting this year this nice electrician’s certificate. If you’re studied electrical engineer 2 week course is enough. At least in Germany. I think it’s fair deal.
From a circuitry perspective, what most electricians deal with is relatively simple and obvious to an electrical engineer. Diagnosing issues in an electrical system is certain a familiar skill to any electrical engineer, so that part of the job is easy enough.
I would seriously expect a certification to be based primarily on the electrical safety/building code, possibly with some fault diagnostics stuff and basic theory of operation of the circuits involved mixed in.
I would expect little if any of the practical skills to be tested in most such certifications, so the required studying would mostly be about what the safety/building code required.
The regulators really won’t care about your skill at snaking wires through walls, ability to bend conduit into a nice curve, etc. Most practical skills needed fall into this category. If you are bad at those things, it might slow you down, require you to redo things more often, or even require you use more expensive parts to avoid needing those skills, or whatever.
Lacking such skills mostly just means you won’t be price competitive with others, which is your problem, not the governments. The government just cares that the result (and possibly intermediate steps) is safe and meets code. The fact that it took you longer than most competitors, and you made a much bigger mess than most of them isn’t really a major concern.
I would not expect it to take too terribly long to study up for the safety/building code portions enough to pass, if already familiar with how electricity works.
I would find a 2 week course entirely plausible to get up to speed enough to be able to pass such a certification test, if you already know the basics of how electricity works, which makes some of the safety rules relatively obvious, and should make learning the remaining rules easier.
A lot depends on the jurisdiction and what they want to test. For example some jurisdictions might want to test all electricians on the >600V stuff rules, but since many electricians will never touch that stuff working is residential or non-industrial commercial, other jurisdictions would omit that from the certifications, or have a sperate certification for that part of code.
A lot of complexity of the code comes from the code laying out general rules, and then some exceptions. While I'd expect such a test to cover some of the more commonly used exceptions, and exceptions that are more restrictive than the general rule, some jurisdictions probably won't test about less common exceptions that make rules more permissive. In those scenarios knowing the general rule is probably good enough for safety. Applying the more restrictive general rule when an exception was available often won't harm safety.
2 weeks may be a bit short, even for somebody who learns quick, but 6-12 weeks should totally do it. And that’s still feasible. It’s not rocket science after all.
