Hi new welder, Welcome to the forum.
We are a Structural Steel fabricator. We currently use SMAW and FCAW for all of our welding needs. We fabricate the steel skeleton of buildings. We order lengths of beams or columns from a steel mill. We then cut to length, add any and all connections, then load them on a truck and ship them to the jobsite where an erection crew hangs the steel. We fabricate/weld steel items from 1/8" thick on up to as much as 6" thick (we could weld thicker, but that's about the thickest I 've seen in my 21 years with this company). As for codes to weld/inspect by, we primarily use AWS D1.1:2006.

If you have any more questions about our type of work, just ask.
We also do our own in-house weld inspection using visual(VT), liquid dye penetrant(PT), magnetic partical(MT), and ultrasonic testing(UT) methods of inspection.
John Wright

I have what I think is the best welding job there is.

I teach at a community college and this lets me work with, Mig, Stick, Flux Core, Sub-Arc, Plasma, GTAW, and Robots, not to mention quite a variety of materials.

Don't worry about robots. They only work if the folks who program and operate them know a thing or two about welding.... The manufacturers who forget about this are dying on the vine. And there are plenty of projects out there that just can't be automated.

A good craftsperson will always land on there feet.

Hey New-Welder1,
You are starting your career interest at a very informative forum. You WILL learn here. Even after 35 yrs of welding, I still learn new welding techniques and methods here.
I work at an office system manufacturing company and do all the metal fabrication for our system. In addition, I have a home-based design & fabrication hobby shop and do general repair work.
Do as much reading as you can absorb and read all the posts here to learn about problems and solutions. There are some great welding minds here and they also love to share their thoughts, applications, and wisdom they learned thru the years of mistakes and triumphs. AND.....remember....there are no dumb questions....sometimes dumb answers, though..... welcome....Denny

Hi New Welder, welcome.
The contractor I work for is split about 50/50 on materials stainless steel or carbon steel and so we generally use Tig & SMAW. We (my employer) put piping systems together. Carbon is mostly stick welded depending on the code. Stainless pipe is generally GTAW ed. Seldom will we use Gmaw as it is not as mobile. 90 percent of our work is done "on site" so whatever process we use......we have to be able to move it.
We don't use robots, but we use automated welding machines, "orbital welding" which is required for biotech and pharmasuidical plant fabrication. This type of welding uses a computer to control the welding parameters and specialised equipment to perform the weld. This welding makes a single pass fusion weld on stainless.