Tech, Mechanic, or Craftsman? Finding Your Fit in HVAC

HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs

Brian and Bert explore three overlapping archetypes in the HVAC trades—technicians, mechanics, and craftsmen—to help professionals understand their natural inclinations and workplace frustrations. They break down how each

Key takeaways

Technicians thrive on abstract troubleshooting and diagnosing invisible system problems, often preferring chaos and dopamine-driven challenges.
Mechanics focus on physical assembly, spatial problem-solving, and executing repairs with tools, operating as 'normalizers' who accept reality as it is.

Main topics

Technician vs Mechanic vs Craftsman archetypes
Chaos tolerance and preference in the trades

Notable quotes

Technicians are definitely chaos tolerant at minimum, but most technicians are actually chaos preference.

Conclusion

Understanding these archetypes helps tradespeople align their daily work with their natural

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Music Speaker 3 (0:03) This episode of the HVAC School Podcast is brought to you by our partners. Refrigeration technologies and specifically Viper Wipes. The all-purpose wipe that is really amazing what it can cut through. Everything from mastic to oil grease, tar, grime, and it's nice on the hands. Makes them nice and soft when you're done. So that way you can go home and head out a-dancin' when you get back to the house. Find out more at refrigtech.com slash viper dash wipes. refrigtech.com slash viper dash wipes. Carrier at carrier.com. NAVAC at navacglobal.com. And the Nexus digital manifold gauges, the NX1 and NX4, which also comes with temperature clamps. The NX1 is NAVAC's classic digital manifold. Supports 72 refrigerant types, including the newer A2L refrigerants. Has a working pressure of 600 PSI, which most common refrigerants won't go anywhere near. Has quarter-turn ball valves for easy operation, for charging, recovery, and the like. And the NX4 just takes the NX1 a step further. Four valves and a three-quarter inch vacuum port. Not that we recommend that at HVAC School, but a lot of you do like that. They have a wide range of operation with four modes, manifold, leak test, evacuation, and decay test, and integrates with NAVAC's NM-V1S micron gauge, as well as the MyNAVAC app. Find out more about NAVAC's products, including the Nexus and other manifold gauges, at navacglobal.com. FieldPeace at FieldPeace.com. The 2027 AHR Expo is coming to McCormick Place in Chicago, January 25th through the 27th. See the newest HVACR tools and technology, as well as catch live podcasts at the podcast pavilions. Register now at AHRExpo.com and you'll see me there. Speaker 2 (2:16) He keeps a sling psychrometer like a sidearm. Isn't afraid to use it. It's your host, Speaker 3 (2:22) Brian Orr. Hey, hey, this is the HVAC School Podcast. I'm Brian. This is the podcast that helps you remember some things you might have forgotten along the way, as well as helps you remember some things you forgot to know in the first place, at least sometimes. But today, Bert and I are talking about technicians, mechanics, and craftsmen or craftspeople, if you want to be more politically correct, which I don't, but... We don't want to exclude anyone. Lots of great women in the trade, but I digress. Technicians, mechanics, craftsmen, one person wants to figure out why the thing quit. Another one wants to get a wrench on it. And the third really cares about doing it the right way and making it look great. And HVAC needs all of these different people. That's what we're going to talk about. So we talk about how to notice these tendencies and apprentices, why work you're good at can still wear you out. And how to appreciate the person who's wired differently than you are. This is not about labels. It's about being able to really understand yourself and understand others better and hopefully build better organizations that work better and more smoothly. So here we go. Here's my conversation with Bert. Speaker 3 (3:29) Hey, Bert, how are you? I'm Speaker 2 (3:30) pretty good. Yeah? Yeah. Speaker 3 (3:32) How are you, Brian? I'm doing pretty good. This is the podcast. So that's what we're doing. So what I want to talk about was a couple different, the fancy word is archetypes, but it's different types of tradespeople, specifically contextualized to HVAC, because this is the HVAC School Podcast. Speaker 2 (3:47) Yeah, it is. Speaker 3 (3:48) You know, and that's a big part of what we do is HVAC, but it also applies to refrigeration, electrical, plumbing, lots of different trades, some different trades. suit certain types of tradespeople, but one thing that's unique about HVAC specifically is that we actually need a lot of different types of tradespeople in one Speaker 1 (4:04) group. Speaker 3 (4:04) So are you digging this? Yeah. Are you digging what I'm saying? Absolutely. That's Speaker 2 (4:07) what Speaker 3 (4:07) I'm laying down? Okay. So I'm going to just start with the technician. Okay. And we're going to juxtapose the technician against the mechanic. Speaker 2 (4:17) Okay. Speaker 3 (4:17) Because I think that's the hardest one for people to get their head around. So I just want your, you've probably already read stuff that I've written on this. Yeah. So you're already kind of familiar, but I don't want to influence your perspective on this. But do you see a distinction between those two? Speaker 2 (4:30) Yes. Okay. In interest. In interest, right? Yeah. What people are interested in between those two. So I think more often than not, the technician is really interested in finding a problem. and like unwinding the story that was there that took them to the problem and then fixing it. And it's often also tied to helping people in situations like immediately find a resolution, get back to normal. So there's this diagnostic element, this chase, if you will, chasing down the problem that a technician has. Whereas maybe a mechanic is more focused on how things work, why they work, and building, assembling, even leaving the machine in a condition that this is going to run forever. Whereas the technicians often chasing that high of like, I solved this crazy hard problem and look, it doesn't matter how crazy the jerry-rig was or how wild the fix was, it's running now. Speaker 3 (5:28) Took a broken thing, got it working, but in a different way. I think the way you said it's better than I could probably say it, but here's the way that I split it up. Abstract, thinking-based, abstraction-based. The invisible often at play is where technicians love to operate versus the physical and the spatial. Speaker 2 (5:47) It's also what makes them really good because they're soft and a lot of things going on in the background with problems and issues that aren't technically the equipment and it's like process, it's system. You got to see the customer, you got to see the interaction, you got to see the weather, you got to think about the house versus like I'm looking at my equipment, I'm looking at my readings, I'm replacing a broken part. Speaker 3 (6:08) And I think that if you look at the concentration of people who are like the best, it's easier sometimes because here's the mistake that I think I make or a lot of people can make when they think about these things is they try to put people in boxes and that's not the point. And I think when some people hear that's what they are hearing is like, oh, you're trying to put me in a box. Right. I think there's a recognition that all of this is on a scale. Most people have a little bit of all of it, but there's some people who are really extreme cases. And that's the easiest way to think about this. So that's what I'm going to ask you to do as you're listening to this is think about the most extreme example of someone that you know. And some of the most extreme examples of technicians that I know often also come along with, they are often kind of emotional. They like to think about things from a lot of different angles. And so they tend to be complicated. They can be sometimes hard to follow, even their thinking around something because they're just hitting it from so many different directions and angles. I think the same skill that goes along with being able to break a problem down in your mind Speaker 2 (7:05) without Speaker 3 (7:06) necessarily even being able to see it or not to be able to see parts of it. Like a big part of what we have to troubleshoot in systems are the unseen or the invisible. And it's fun when we can visualize it. But often I find for technicians, at least the ones who are really attracted to being a technician, who aren't frustrated by being a technician, those are two different things. People who think about what it means to be a technician, a really good one. being able to troubleshoot problems, diagnose problems, find difficult things. A lot of it's the unseen and they thrive in the unseen versus are frustrated by the unseen. So I think that goes along with some of the, and again, I was just pointing out this archetype technician. Think of Speaker 2 (7:42) the Speaker 3 (7:42) best tech you know. They often tend to be a little bit complicated mentally. They like complication mentally. I'm thinking of some of the most extreme cases that I know, even in the industry. I can't name any names, but they tend to be a little bit of what people call head cases. And head case is an insult, obviously, or most people mean it that way, but it isn't really always because being somebody who can break things up and look at it from a lot Speaker 2 (8:04) of Speaker 3 (8:04) different angles is actually a huge advantage when you're trying to troubleshoot a problem. Speaker 2 (8:07) That's really good. It's like in training, you suddenly see those people faster. I think I'm more that way, so I gravitate towards that myself. And you see a person that is piecing things together without the whole story, and they're coming up with three or four different stories. And Speaker 3 (8:22) they're really enjoying each Speaker 2 (8:24) of those Speaker 3 (8:24) possibilities. Speaker 2 (8:26) Whereas maybe the mechanic and a lot of other personalities are just like, I don't want all of the ifs and maybes. Just give me the thing. Where's my process? Speaker 3 (8:35) Yeah. And again, that's another way to break it up. People who like to have things clear and explained and straightforward and then just do the thing there is to do. That's not a technician. So that's a way to think about that. And again, I'm not saying that you can't be a technician. I'm just saying there's going to be big aspects of what that means. And that not necessarily talking about a title. You could have the title as a technician and operate more like a mechanic or a craftsman. But I'm trying to make that distinction. Whereas now let's talk about how a mechanic thrives. You think about the best mechanics, you know, what really makes them good? The Speaker 2 (9:04) best mechanics, they build processes into their workflow and they thrive when you don't come in and interrupt it. Yeah. They also. They thrive by having all the information, all the expectations on the table, the manual sort of thing. And then being able to feel the satisfaction, I think, in the quality of work, satisfaction in, I think, a long-term value that they're bringing to whatever they touch. It's something that's going to be in a mechanic form. Speaker 3 (9:36) So I don't disagree with most of what you've said, but most of what you just said is what I would generally call a craftsman. Craftsman. Speaker 2 (9:42) That makes sense. Speaker 3 (9:43) And so you can think about our best installers and residential tend to be craftsmen. Yeah. They really care about how things look. They're not like amazing problem solvers to a technician mind. A technician mind is like you hit this low voltage short. Like I've showed you five times how to troubleshoot this. Why is this so difficult? It's because it's not really a manual for that. Like there's Speaker 1 (10:02) not Speaker 3 (10:02) really clarity for that. There's not really a process. I mean, there is actually, and you can teach it, but it's not the same. But a mechanic to me is. Somebody said, let's talk about chaos. I think this is helpful way to think about this. Technicians are definitely chaos tolerant at minimum, but most technicians are actually chaos preference. They actually prefer chaos. They prefer the dopamine hit of that. We're going to talk about the quiet rack room and refrigeration. You walk in and all the compressors are off and you're like, you got to figure it out in two hours. Otherwise everything's going to fail. And you don't like necessarily the reality, the financial reality of that, but you like the challenge of that. Whereas mechanics. often are a little bit more tolerant than a craftsman. If you imagine a craftsman, I can think of a couple people right up top of my head, they tend to be like really good woodworkers, or really good at like, if you needed furniture built, they can make it. They have zero chaos tolerance. Right. Like, zero. Their workspace, their preparation, everything has to be perfect, and if anything goes wrong, they are just down and out. Like, they're out. Whereas a mechanic... usually has pretty high chaos tolerance still. And I think of, I'll use Chad Menear as an example. I don't think this is a compliment. He's Speaker 2 (11:10) a Speaker 3 (11:10) really good mechanic. Speaker 2 (11:11) And Speaker 3 (11:12) that doesn't mean he's not a good technician too. And it doesn't mean he's not a craftsman too, but it means that if there's a compressor that has to be rebuilt or you got to swap a compressor, you got to install a TXV, you got to clean a strainer on something. Like there's nobody who's probably going to do it faster than him because he's not afraid at all of like the physicality and the spatial aspect of the work. It's like, give me a wrench and let me go. Dan Riggs is an example of somebody who we know who's like a really good mechanic. And that doesn't mean he's awesome because he's also a good technician, but he's really a good mechanic. He's not afraid of the hard situation, but it needs to be spatial. You start getting a little too much with a mechanic into that abstract side of things. And sometimes they don't prefer that. They get overwhelmed. They don't prefer that piece. They want to work on what's in front of them. Speaker 2 (11:52) Yeah. Yeah. It's actually a mark of a mechanic is that. You find people that you think, oh man, this is a really hardworking person. Like you usually surprise like, oh wow, look at the work ethic there. And they are like enjoying it. Yeah. Like really into what's happening there. Speaker 3 (12:05) Yeah. And then another distinction that I make, and this does tend to go along with your level of chaos tolerance. So again, there's chaos averse. You hate chaos. You will avoid it at all costs. And you usually do that through preparation. There's Speaker 1 (12:17) a Speaker 3 (12:17) chaos tolerant, meaning like you can work with it. You don't prefer it, but you can work with it. That's how I am. I do not prefer chaos. And to that degree, that actually makes me a worse technician than people like my brother, for example. Nathan is chaos preference. Like, he loves chaos. You're more that way. You love it. You thrive in it. In fact, things get too rigid and it kind of gets boring. I'm sort of in the middle and that does limit me in some cases because if I don't have the right tools or the right thing, I start to get a little frustrated. I get a little irritated. But there's another facet of chaos, which that is, and I just recently learned this. This is a concept in... psychology that I was not aware of until I read up on it. And so now I'm a little over interested in it at the moment. And that's the difference between a normalizer and a moralizer. And we say moralizer, a lot of people put like religion or like other things to it, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that. It's just that deep sense that there's a right way and there's a wrong way to do it. And you'll hear some people say that, well, there's the right way and there's the wrong way.