Mixedpotatoes said:
Electrician! You just need to go electrician school or whatever it's called. In norway it's called that. You get to put **** up and you have a good environment around you with laidback guys who drink coffee.
Sources: My brother, i dont really know anything about being electrician.
I'm an electrician in Norway. The pay is decent, but you can have some very hectic workdays, depending on your company, where you work, how many other electrical companies are competing in the same area and so on. There is a difference between being a regular house/building electrician and an industry electrician though.
You want decent money, get yourself into the oil industry and/or offshore work. Work 2 weeks straight, then get 4 weeks off. Doesn't get better than that.
I started out digging cable trenches with a shovel as an apprentice in the power company, then started working in a company building platforms and modules for platforms as a high voltage electrician. Now I'm doing inspection and quality control for electrical, instrumentation and telecommunication systems that are being built for the modules/platforms. It's nice work, get to lead other people (read: delegate the work you hate doing yourself) and it gives me a nice option to split my time at work between being at the office and being out in the field.
One thing that is for certain though, this world is just going to need more and more electricians. One area that they really need more people in (at least in Norway) is automation. Basically it's a branch of the electrician education where you learn how to build, troubleshoot and service automated systems such as robots, the oil process (how sensors, transmitters, gauges and valves all work together automatically to control temperatures, pressure, flow rates, level of fluids and such within storage tanks and so on).
Not sure what options you (the OP) have, or where you live. What type of work you can get is very often dependant on where you live, not to mention your own motivation to either relocate or commute.
As a tip though, aiming for larger companies is always a good way to go since they very often have the most opportunities to climb the career ladder. In a company with only 15 employee's you'll have a hard time working yourself up from being just the new guy. In a company with 500, 1000 or more employee's it's alot easier to find vacant positions further up that you can aim for.
Granted, if you want decent pay you need to be able to take responsibility, and quite often be able to either lead or instruct other people. Alot of people prefer not to have extra responsibility, and well... if you want to be a sheep, there's nothing easier than just doing nothing and chew on whatever grass others decide to throw your way.