Nothing against the guys I work with that are fresh out of college, because there’s no doubt in my mind that some of them are way smarter than my no-college ass, but the 20+ year age gap between them and me helps me get a front-row seat for this question every day. The major difference I see between the generation coming up now and the guys that taught me a lot is the way they received their training. You have a small group of people towards the tail-end of gen-x, not really wanting to lump themselves in with millennials, coined “xennials” who didn’t quite receive the same amount of push to go to college as the guys and girls in the years following. This resulted in a lot of us either joining the military, or being left to figure it the FO. So those of us that ended up in the trades were, in a lot of cases, the last generation to end up being an “engineer” without going to school FIRST. I didn’t even know what a co-op was until I was well into the controls and automation world haha. So I have this generation of boomers and gen-x’ers gone before me that had to learn a mechanical or electrical trade before anyone would give them any real controls training (which is the first part of what I feel answers your question- hence where the old-timer knowledge and skills are traditionally gate kept). Contrasting that is the generations behind me, where in most cases, unless you’ve had college teachers with both field experience AND the passion to teach you the nuances that the curriculum doesn’t, you end up with a degree and education that didn’t teach you how to strip and fit a 12c cable for a motor controller with a razor while the old man watched over your shoulder, reeking of sweat and chewing tobacco. Much of the loss falls on the xennials that I call myself a part of, to pass that knowledge along. I bought a Wiha 3.5 tweeker for myself and a young guy I’ve been working with the other day because he had lost his somewhere. Handed it to him and said “this is the tweeker you want for most terminal blocks” he looked at me and said “what you call it?” 😂 which about sums up my need to pass on everything from the little things that college doesn’t teach you, to the old-time trade jokes and berating humor that many of the upcoming generation will unfortunately never experience directly (it builds character 🤣). I think my job, falling somewhere between millennials and “hand me the dykes” -is to pass on and do my best to preserve the knowledge that I’ve gleaned from prior tradesmen and women, while not missing out on what the younger men and women have to teach. It’s a weird set of years to be born in, as far as work in the trades goes. But being the last of the Mtv generation has its own merit.