You can still make a living in this industry. I did not say a good living. With MSO’s wanting more for less, primes willing to accept what the MSO’s or offering just to keep or get the contracts, sub primes willing to do anything to get their money, all the cheap labor on the market, it is unlikely that the industry will ever go back to paying what it once did. That is just a fact. Yes the industry will always need people to build, maintain, install, service, and sell their product but it has learned that they can get it done cheaper than they use to, and now that that has happened you will never get the genie back into the bottle.
If you truly want to make a good living and stay in this industry you need a broad set of skills that can crossover and branch out into other elements of the communications industry. It’s a matter of staying ahead of what’s coming up and not waiting for it to get here. Knowledge is power, power is money. I started as a installer back in the mid 80’s worked my way up through the ranks to system manager, I’ve left that and now work for the government still doing cable and making good money. I was able to accomplish this not only by learning how to do my job but grabbing any opportunity I could get to further my education, NCTI, SCTE, RCDD,BICSI,Cisco to name a few. It’s taken 28 years to get here but I’m doing what I love to do and able to make a living.
Bottom line is the industry is never going to pay what it use to for the hard honest work that it needs done. If you want to make money you got to know how to do more than the guy next to you then prove it. This is just my opinion, this and $5.00 will buy you a bottle of Bud at the local bar, so take it as you please..