Heard a guy at a supply house say wireless panels are killing the trade

I was picking up parts over at Apex Supply in Phoenix and some old school installer was going off about how wireless systems are making us lazy. He said since we stopped running wire to every sensor, we lost the skill of fishing through finished walls and hiding cable clean. The other side is my partner who loves how fast we can do a full house now with wireless gear, sometimes 4 or 5 hours instead of 2 days. But I wonder if he has a point about quality vs speed. Do you think wireless installs are dumbing down the trade or just making it more efficient?

2 comments

2 Comments

patkelly25d ago

Hear the same thing every few years about whatever new tech comes along. People said the same thing about keypads when they replaced punch code locks and nobody stopped getting paid then. Yeah maybe we don't fish as much wire but that just means we spend time on other stuff like programming and troubleshooting.

stella90425d ago

Aging myself here but I remember when people swore the internet would kill our entire trade (and here we are, still pulling cable). Totally agree with @patkelly on this one. Every new gadget or protocol comes with the same doom predictions and somehow locksmiths keep finding work. I've been doing this long enough to know that the more tech changes, the more people lock themselves out of something digital and need a human to sort it out. Honestly, my biggest fear is getting replaced by a robot that can actually understand my terrible handwriting on work orders.