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Built to Fail Without Us: A Statistical Look at Electricians, Plumbers, and Modern Society
Electricians and plumbers have been arguing on job sites for generations. Who’s smarter. Who’s tougher. Who makes more money. Who the world actually needs more.
Built to Fail Without Us takes that long-running rivalry and does something dangerous with it adds reality and statistics.
Blending jobsite humor with real-world data, this book compares electricians and plumbers across income, injury risk, physical toll, training, job demand, responsibility, and long-term career outcomes. It looks beyond stereotypes to explain what each trade really does, how each one fails, and why modern society depends on both—often more than it realizes.
Along the way, the book explores union vs non-union paths, toughness myths, trade culture, engineers, diagnostics, and the growing role of system thinkers who live between trades. It doesn’t try to crown a winner. Instead, it shows how the rivalry exists because the work matters—and because failure has consequences.
Written by someone who’s worked across multiple trades and lived the culture firsthand, Built to Fail Without Us is part comedy, part reality check, and part respect letter to the people who keep the lights on, the water flowing, and the world from quietly falling apart.
Built to Fail Without Us takes that long-running rivalry and does something dangerous with it adds reality and statistics.
Blending jobsite humor with real-world data, this book compares electricians and plumbers across income, injury risk, physical toll, training, job demand, responsibility, and long-term career outcomes. It looks beyond stereotypes to explain what each trade really does, how each one fails, and why modern society depends on both—often more than it realizes.
Along the way, the book explores union vs non-union paths, toughness myths, trade culture, engineers, diagnostics, and the growing role of system thinkers who live between trades. It doesn’t try to crown a winner. Instead, it shows how the rivalry exists because the work matters—and because failure has consequences.
Written by someone who’s worked across multiple trades and lived the culture firsthand, Built to Fail Without Us is part comedy, part reality check, and part respect letter to the people who keep the lights on, the water flowing, and the world from quietly falling apart.
79 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 30, 2025
About the author
John Stephenson
169 books2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
John Stephenson is a consultant and writer on:
* e-learning
* work-based learning
* learner centred curriculum design
* development of capability strategies
John Stephenson is a consultant and writer on:
* e-learning
* work-based learning
* learner centred curriculum design
* development of capability strategies
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