The guy who figured out why techs quit

Ruchir Shah was not supposed to end up in the trades. But…

He kept watching the same problem replay itself: employers desperately short-staffed, and capable people unable to break in because nobody would give them their first shot without “experience” they couldn't possibly have yet.

It's the oldest catch-22 in the labor market.

So Ruchir built SkillCat.

Short, interactive, gamified courses that take someone with mechanical aptitude and zero field time and get them certified and hireable, fast.

He noticed that job satisfaction among trade workers is, counterintuitively, remarkably high. Higher than most office professions. The reasons aren't complicated: techs solve real problems, see immediate results, and go home knowing exactly what they accomplished that day. There's a tangibility to the work that most desk jobs quietly lack.

And right now, a different kind of person is starting to notice that:

• The accountant whose firm just announced an AI initiative.

• The project coordinator whose role got restructured.

• The office worker who has spent three years staring at a screen wondering if this is actually it.

They are not, as an industry, being invited into the trades. No one is speaking to them. No recruiting campaign is targeted at them. Most job postings still require two to three years of experience they couldn't possibly have.

Ruchir's bet (and it seems to be paying off) is that reaching these people earlier, training them faster, and meeting them where they already are (online, on their phones, in short sessions between other obligations) is how you solve the labor shortage.

This week, he joined Tersh and Josh to talk through exactly how that works:

👉 Listen to the full episode here → 

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