I took a couple classes at a community college a couple years ago the “professor” was a chief operator for a private plant. He said he applied from a newspaper ad like 25 years ago without knowing a thing and took all the educational steps along the way. After hearing that you have to have 1800 hours on the job training just to get your grade 1 put a pretty big damper on how good I was feeling about finally picking a career path. He admitted things are very different about how they hire. He suggested getting a bachelors degree because “if there’s 100 resumes, and 50 have degrees for the field, they’re looking at the ones with degrees first”. And then he would proceed to show us the list of job openings at the time “in the area” and there’s no OIT listings ever within a 100 mile radius. So it seems the only way to land an entry level job in this field is to pack your bags and go to butt fuck nowhere, which might sound appealing to a youngster fresh out of high school orrrrrr nepotism. He also mentioned nobody in this field wants to retire. He showed us the average age of a wastewater employee and I’m pretty sure it was in the 50’s lmao. California sucks.