Yeah, very rarely do tradespeople get rich, but most I know live very, very comfortably, don't have insane hours or overtime, unless they provide emergency services, which usually pay insanely by the hour, have absolute job security. One of my son's buddies is an Electrical engineer. He quit his job at a corpo, took the certification exam, and became an electrician. Makes way more that as an engineer, and has much higher QOL.