When Cloudflare Went Down, One Thing Became Clear: Why I Help People Become Electricians in the AI Era

If you’re still exploring whether the electrical trade is right for you, start with the full overview: 🔹 “U.S. Electrician Career Guide: Training, Licensing, and Your First 12 Months”
Reading that first will make today’s topic easier to understand.

On the night of November 18, 2025, you open your laptop like you always do.

You’re ready to answer a few emails, upload a deck, maybe scroll Instagram a bit and ask ChatGPT to help outline your next project.

Except this time… nothing loads.

ChatGPT won’t log in.
Your go-to websites throw error pages.
Your favorite apps just spin.

A few minutes later, the headlines hit:

Cloudflare is down.
And with it, a huge chunk of the internet just face-planted.

In that moment, a lot of us had the same realization:

“Wow… my entire workday basically lives on someone else’s servers.”

In this article, I want to use that Cloudflare outage as a lens to talk about three things:

• What the AI era is really doing to a lot of white-collar jobs
• Why some jobs are less exposed to AI and “internet meltdown” risk
• And why I decided to spend my time helping people switch into electrical work instead of staying in the office

That Night When Even ChatGPT Wouldn’t Load

That night, I did what I usually do:
opened ChatGPT to draft some notes and outline a new article.

The page just sat there, spinning.

I thought it was my Wi-Fi, so I tried a few other sites:
same thing. Error pages, 500s, timeouts.

Not long after, the news started popping up:

Cloudflare had a major outage.
And when Cloudflare goes down, a lot of the internet goes with it.

For a few hours, people were stuck like this:

• Social feeds barely refreshing
• Cloud drives not loading files
• Video calls failing before they even start
• And the one tool a lot of folks now rely on—ChatGPT—was completely unreachable

You just sit there staring at a broken page thinking:

“So… I literally can’t do my job because some servers I don’t control are having a bad day.”

For many people, that was the first time they really felt how much of their job is tied to:

• cloud platforms
• SaaS tools
• and AI services they don’t own and can’t fix

When the Cloud Goes Down, You See How Fragile Some Jobs Are

In an outage like that, the people panicking usually aren’t the technicians in the data center.

It’s everyone whose workday looks like:

• Slides in Google Drive / Teams / Notion that won’t open
• Reports stuck in an online dashboard
• Project management boards that won’t load
• Clients waiting on links you suddenly can’t access
• “Let me ask ChatGPT real quick” turning into “uh… never mind”

For years, the headlines have been:

• “Will AI replace your job?”
• “Top 10 jobs at risk of automation”
• “Which white-collar roles are most exposed to AI?”

If you’re a knowledge worker, you’ve probably felt that AI anxiety:

“Is my job one of the ones that gets automated first?
Will my company decide they can do more with fewer people?”

Then the Cloudflare outage added a new layer to that:

It’s not just AI that can change your job.
Your entire workday can stall because a couple of external services go offline.

It’s not that people don’t work hard.
It’s that their work is chained to tools they don’t control.

That’s a very fragile kind of job security.

So it’s natural to start asking:

“Are there careers that are a bit more grounded?
Less dependent on whatever is happening with the latest AI model or cloud outage?”

Some People Didn’t Panic: The Ones Who Work on Physical Infrastructure

Here’s the part that stuck with me.

During that Cloudflare outage, there was a whole group of people whose day looked… pretty normal.

• Power plant operators doing their rounds, checking gauges and logs
• Field electricians pulling wire, testing breakers, troubleshooting panels
• Techs at substations and industrial sites walking the yard like any other shift

Cloudflare can go down.
AWS can have issues.
Your favorite apps can crash.

But electric power? That can’t just “take a break for a few hours.”

• Substations don’t get to say, “We’re closed for maintenance, see you tomorrow”
• Hospital backup systems can’t casually go offline
• Traffic signals, elevators, fire alarms—none of them can just opt-out for the day

Put simply:

The cloud can go dark for a bit.
But if the power really goes out, the whole city doesn’t even get an error message. It just stops.

AI only runs after a few basic things are true:

• Data centers are powered
• Networks are alive
• Buildings are wired safely and correctly

That’s why I keep coming back to this idea:

In an age where AI can do a little bit of everything,
the people who work on real-world infrastructure—electricians, linemen, techs—have a very different kind of stability.

It’s not that they’re immune to economic cycles.
But as long as:

• people live in homes,
• businesses need power,
• EV chargers, heat pumps, solar, and data centers keep spreading…

…there’s a steady need for people who actually understand electricity, circuits, safety, and code—and can work with their hands.

All over the U.S., you see the same story:

• We keep adding more electric everything
• A lot of older skilled workers are retiring
• Not enough younger people are entering the trades

On one side, you have white-collar workers worrying about AI replacing their job.
On the other, you have trades like electricians saying, “We can’t hire fast enough.”

That gap is exactly where I decided to plant my flag.

Why I Chose to Be the Guy Who Helps You Enter the Trade

I didn’t start my career on construction sites.

Like a lot of people, I began in more typical “office” roles—screens, emails, meetings, reports.
I watched entire teams shrink when the economy turned.
I watched projects get canceled overnight because the budget moved.

Later, I moved closer to the field side—MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing), job sites, real equipment, real buildings.
And a few things became very clear:

• Many jobs that look “dirty, hard, risky” from the outside actually have deep skill and real satisfaction inside
• The electrical trade isn’t disappearing—it’s short on people
• A lot of adults are interested in switching, but they have no idea where to start

At the same time, AI was taking off.
And you could feel the split:

• Office jobs: rules changing fast, tools changing every year
• Physical infrastructure: codes and fundamentals changing slowly, demand long-term

So I made what some people see as a strange decision:

Under the name Engineer Tsai,
I decided to focus on helping people in the AI era build a realistic path into electrical work.
In short, I want Engineer Tsai to be one of the first names that comes to mind when someone in the U.S. thinks, “Maybe I should become an electrician instead of fighting AI for another office job.”

What that looks like in practice:

• Short videos explaining “what electricity actually is” in plain language
• Blog posts that break down electric concepts, safety, circuits, and applications without the usual jargon
• A step-by-step “Electrical Transition Path” so you’re not just randomly watching YouTube and hoping it adds up

My core belief is simple:

You don’t have to quit your job tomorrow.
But you do deserve to know:
“If I ever want to pivot into a trade like electrical work, what would that path look like?”

That’s why I’m building content around:

• “Should You Become an Electrician in the Age of AI? Why I’m Helping People Make the Switch”
• “3–12 Months from Zero: A Realistic Roadmap to Switching Careers into the Electrical Trade”

The article you’re reading now is the “real-world proof”:
a Cloudflare outage that showed how fragile some jobs are—and how grounded others can be.

The Next Time the Internet Breaks, You Could Already Be on a Different Path

Let’s bring this back to you.

Over the past year, you might have seen:

• AI writing code, emails, and reports
• Tech layoffs and hiring freezes
• Friends quietly wondering if they should switch industries or learn a trade

But deep down, your thought might not be:

“How do I become an elite AI engineer?”

It might be something more like:

“I want a more stable, useful skill set—
something that still matters even if my favorite AI tool or SaaS platform disappears.”

The Cloudflare outage was a funny meme day for some people.
But it can also be a wake-up call:

👉 Real security doesn’t come from finding a “perfect, unbreakable cloud service.”
It comes from building skills that are still valuable when the cloud is having a bad day.

If the idea of becoming an electrician or getting into the electrical trades has ever crossed your mind, here’s how I’d suggest you start:

1. Read the two cornerstone articles

• “Should You Become an Electrician in the Age of AI?Why I’m Helping People Make the Switch”
  A big-picture look at AI anxiety, white-collar fragility, and why electrical work is worth considering.
• “3–12 Months from Zero: A Realistic Roadmap to Switching Careers into the Electrical Trade”
  Not a miracle promise—just an honest breakdown of what you can actually do in a year to move toward the trade.

After those two, you’ll at least have a clear mental map of:

“If I wanted to make this switch, what would the steps be?”

2. Check out the Electrical Transition Path

I’m building an “Electrical Transition Path” page that organizes my videos and blog posts into six learning paths, from:

• “Electrical Basics & Measurement”
• all the way to
• “Applications & Real-World Practice”

So instead of just binging random content, you can say:

“Okay, I’m at this stage.
These are the 10–12 pieces of content I should go through next.”

3. Treat the next 3–12 months as a “test drive”

You don’t have to label it “I’m changing my whole life.”

You can just say:

• “I’m going to build a real foundation in basic electrical theory”
• “I’m going to learn what licensing, apprenticeships, and training look like where I live”
• “I’m going to take the first few realistic steps toward an electrician career path, even if I’m not 100% sure yet”

By the time the next big internet outage hits, you could be:

• shadowing electricians on real jobs,
• attending night classes or a pre-apprenticeship program,
• or already working toward your first license or certification.

At that point, AI headlines and cloud outages feel a little different—
because you’re not just reacting to them, you’re building something more resilient underneath your life.

I’ll end with a question for you

When Cloudflare went down, was it just a funny “internet broke again” day for you?

Or did it make you pause and think:

“If something outside my control can stop my work for hours…
what am I doing to build skills that still matter when that happens?”

If you’re comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear:

• What job are you most worried about AI or the economy impacting?
• And have you ever considered putting a trade—like electrical work—on your list of backup plans?

Drop it in the comments, or save this as the nudge you needed to start exploring a different path.

Further reading

You can adapt this to your theme:

📌 Further reading:

“Should You Become an Electrician in the Age of AI?Why I’m Helping People Make the Switch”
A deeper look at AI anxiety, automation, and why I believe electricians and tradespeople matter more than ever.

“3–12 Months from Zero: A Realistic Roadmap to Switching Careers into the Electrical Trade”
A practical, honest breakdown of what you can actually do in a year to move toward the electrical trade.

“6 Electrician Learning Paths | From Zero to Job-Ready”
A structured way to go from zero to a solid foundation, using curated videos and articles instead of random YouTube rabbit holes.