30 Days to Job-Site-Ready: Josh Nieves on Building the Trade Professional Academy

"If you don't know your why and you don't have purpose or, or a plan for your career, that will break you. 110% that will break you," says Josh Nieves.

In this episode of Commercial Grade, Josh Nieves, Director of Workforce Development at Quanta Services, licensed master electrician and contractor, and proud member of IBEW Local 3, talks about what it really takes to build a career in the trades today, and what leaders owe the next generation.

A career path that didn’t look traditional

School never felt like a natural fit for Josh.

"I wasn't an academic. I had a very entrepreneurial kind of mindset at a young age. I questioned everything, and I still do to this day."

The turning point came when he enrolled in a high school vocational electrical program alongside his regular classes. That experience treated teenagers like they were already on a jobsite: showing up dressed for work, bringing tools, and being held accountable.

By the time he entered IBEW Local 3 at 18, Josh already knew how to organize material, wire receptacles and switches, and bend offsets and saddles—so much so that journeymen asked, "Where did you learn how to do this?" That head start became a 17‑year career at EJ Electric, from apprentice to general foreman.

Workforce development became the real problem to solve

Years into his field career, Josh started to notice something: a widening gap in both skills and leadership on the jobsite. Young workers were stepping into foreman roles because they were good on the tools, but hadn’t been prepared to lead.

When he was first asked to move into workforce development, even the term was fuzzy. 

"It is a practice of attracting, developing, and mobilizing talent, right?” he says.

That simple definition—attract, develop, mobilize—now guides his work. He helps stand up training pipelines that don’t stop at basic onboarding but follow workers as they grow into leadership.

What it really takes to earn those six‑figure headlines

Josh spends a lot of time talking with young people who see viral posts about high‑earning electricians and “blue‑collar millionaires.” He doesn’t deny the upside, but he refuses to skip the hard part.

"Electricians are making $260,000 a year or electricians and plumbers are gonna be the next millionaires, which is all great,” he says, “but we have to be very careful about how we pitch this to young people” 

He wants more of the focus to be on what it takes to get to these results. 

“It's not gonna happen overnight. You still have to earn your keep, and it's gonna require a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.'

To make the point, he shares a story from a job at One Vanderbilt in New York City, working 80 stories up in a negative‑30 wind chill. In those conditions, he says, knowing your purpose is the only thing that keeps you going.

When apprenticeship seats run out, you need a new playbook

Josh describes visiting a local training center where more than 600 people applied to the apprenticeship program. Only 60 were accepted; they eventually stretched that to 100. The rest were simply told no even as nearby data center projects needed people.

From his perspective, that’s where true workforce development kicks in. In his work, when the union can’t fill every call for a major project, they direct hire entry‑level electricians and run them through an accelerated internal program focused on safety, tools, and the exact tasks they’ll face on site.

"We know they're not gonna have the skills, that's okay. We need to give them safety immediately, and we need to give them the immediate skills they'll need when they hit this data center site to hit the ground running."

It’s not a replacement for apprenticeship, he stresses, but a force multiplier for a moment when the industry needs thousands of new electricians fast.

Culture and leadership are the real bottlenecks

One of Josh’s viral LinkedIn posts reads: Construction workers don't want another pizza party. Loyalty costs more than a few slices.

Josh explains that while fair pay and security matter, people on the tools are also looking for respect, clear communication, and a path to grow. When those are missing, he traces it back to one root cause: leadership.

For younger workers who are more purpose‑driven than paycheck‑driven, that difference is often what keeps them in the industry.

Want the full conversation?

To hear the full episode, including more on bridging generational gaps, building internal training pipelines, and telling a better story about the trades, check out Commercial Grade on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.