Lighting Technicians

Tasks largely resist digitisation. At 15 rather than 18, the ladder work, cable runs, truss assembly and mid-show fault-finding stay stubbornly manual, but a real slice of the job — writing cues, building plots and hookups, patching, and pre-visualizing looks in WYSIWYG or Vectorworks — is already software-assisted and gets faster with every release, so the trade resists digitisation without being immune to it.

Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. An 18 reflects load-ins on genie lifts and personnel lifts, focusing from catwalks and ladders, pulling feeder and multicable across a stage or location, and working in venues and on location where the temperature, the deck and the schedule are all somebody else's problem — this is uncontrolled physical work, docked from 20 only because a programmer's shift at the console is genuinely a desk job.

Certification preferred, not legally required. A 5 is right because nothing legally stops anyone from hanging a fixture: ETCP Entertainment Electrician and Rigger certification is a hiring preference and an IATSE credential, not a statutory gate, and when the work crosses into permanent branch-circuit wiring a licensed electrician has to sign it, not you.

Some relationship component. An 8 captures that gaffers and LDs rehire the hands who focus fast and don't argue about a note, and steady work comes from being on somebody's call list rather than from a resume — but the audience never knows your name and a producer treats the third electric as a headcount line, which is what keeps this out of the teens.

Meaningful discretion. A 10 reflects real calls made without checking in — how to trim a truss to clear a set piece, whether that dimmer rack gets bypassed or replaced with the house going in twenty minutes, whether a point can take the load — but the design intent, the cue list and the final look belong to the lighting designer, so the ambiguous high-stakes aesthetic decisions aren't yours to own.