Dummy Answers to Ambiguous Questions

An electrician at work

One of the reasons our staffers spend so much time in the Leaf Group niche sites¹ is that the sites' "contributors" are so often incapable of answering open-ended questions. That fault may well have lain with eHow.com – the niches are filled with old eHow content moved by the successor to Demand Media – because of the site's strict limitations on content size. Then again, the fault may be the freelancer's lack of vision, such as that displayed by Denise Brandenberg. She apparently didn't think through the definition of "best" when writing, "The Best States to Work as an Electrician" at BizFluent.com (now at CareerTrend, which makes a lot more sense).

Perhaps because Brandenberg, apparently unable to leverage that English BA for a real job, was only concerned about money, she devoted half of her post to money ("Best-Paying States" and "Other Considerations"²) and the other half to the employment statistics ("States with Highest Employment Levels" and "States with Highest Concentrations").
We submit that Denise's apparent criteria are just part of the definition of "best." Although she pays brief lip service to cost of living in "Other Considerations," most people who don't have English BAs are aware that the cost of living in Alaska and Hawaii – states with high mean wages – is far higher than in Wyoming; likewise, Boston is a more expensive place to live than Oklahoma City. On the other hand, quality of living is also a factor in "best," and a job with moderate pay in Colorado's Front Range beats the bejeepers out of a high-paying job in central Illinois (at least according to our founder, who's lived in both places).

Mostly, though, money isn't everything... a thoughtful would-be electrician (or one considering relocation) might be interested in states where safety standards are high, where there are opportunities for advancement, where on-the-job training or apprenticeships are available, or where a worker can choose from varying career paths. Union electricians might also be leery of self-described "right-to-work" states like Texas or Indiana.

No, Brandenberg's focus on compensation is typical of her failure to understand technical careers and trades; a niche where she's failed before. Claiming that the states with the highest mean annual salary are the "best" states is similar to saying that McAllen, TX, is the best place in the country to live because it has the lowest median home price. Sorry, Denise, but there's more to the equation – but you missed it, which is why you're our Dumbass of the Day again.

¹ Besides the obvious, lots of unemployed J-school grads rewording Wikipedia articles they don't understand.
² Use of a section headed "Considerations" should be a dead giveaway that this post originated at eHow.

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