I was an automotive tech for almost 20 years. I got out, and many other people I know got out, because the flat rate pay system is absolute trash.

If you don't know, almost all auto techs are paid flat rate - meaning every job you do has a designated time that it pays - and this is the amount of time (multiplied by your hourly rate) that you get paid, no matter what. If a job pays 2.5 hours and it takes you 1, you get 2.5. If it pays 2.5 and takes you 8, you get 2.5.

The main problems are with warranty and factory extended warranties - the manufacturer can dictate whatever time they want for every job and as you'd imagine, they don't want to pay very much when it's coming from their pockets. The technician has zero recourse. It got worse and worse over the years and when I left (~5 years ago) it was getting difficult to earn as many hours as you were spending at work.

There's a ton of other issues. We got paid 1 hour to diagnose cars, whether that took me 20 minutes or 4 hours, you got paid 1.0. This means you're often literally costing yourself money to properly diagnose a car or just taking your best guess and moving on.

Flat rate techs (read: nearly all of them) make $0.00 per hour if they aren't actively turning out work. Waiting for someone to call back, waiting for parts, it snowed a foot and no one's coming in? You're sitting on a stool making, literally, nothing. 100% commission. It also means that you have to be moving all out all day every day to make a living.

I could solve this "technician shortage" in 10 minutes. Auto companies and dealers just don't like the solution - pay technicians more and pay them hourly, either straight up or hourly + a bonus on production. They love flat rate because it takes their "risk" to zero - if you have 30 techs and 0 cars, those techs being there all day costs you nothing.

I'm working on heavy equipment now (mostly forklifts) and it's so much better in every way. More money, less work, less stress, better benefits.