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Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

theguardian.com

381–390 of 546 posts

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#381

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Sorry, you commute two hours EACH WAY EVERY DAY? Nothing is worth that. I'd expect serious money for putting up with that, and at that point, you could just afford to live closer.

Nobody pays you more based on how long your commute is. It's a tradeoff lost of people make. 1. Live in a garage, 2. Long commute, or 3. Live in an area with fewer job prospects?

Nobody pays you more based on how long your commute is.

Somebody has never negotiated a salary... The answer is yes, a lot more, you just go "This commute is unbearable and I won't move to your stupid neighborhood so if you want me, pay me 20k more" (not a joke, I did that, for a 45 mins commute).

Just think about all the stuff you've missed out by being so closed minded and not saying it, many people will pay you more if you complain about your commute, that's a fact.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#382
post #360
post #341

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And some people still say that "single payer healthcare" is non-sense. Amazing..

Is this sarcasm, or are you suggesting that the same institution which set up these perverse rules has done such a great job that it should be given control over the funding of health care for 99% of the population?

It's not like private enterprise is doing such a great job.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#383

> A spokeswoman for Facebook said none of the company’s contingent or contract workers have access to facilities such as clinics, gyms, or bring-your-child-to-work days One thing I liked about AirBnB was their entire staff including cafeteria workers and security guards were full-time employees who ate the same food, had access to the same facilities and events, and went through the first week 'bootcamp' alongside de…

See also senior and older FB engineers being discouraged from participating in perks and events intended for younger and junior employees because FB can multitask at sucking.

i'm old af @ fb and have no idea what you're talking about.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See also senior and older FB engineers being discouraged from participating in perks and events intended for younger and junior employees because FB can multitask at sucking. Can you elaborate? I don't recall ever seeing anything of the sort while I worked there.

There are all sorts of wonderful shop classes and related perks at FB. Older and senior talent in my experience is discouraged from attending these classes. Maybe they weren't always that way or maybe someone smacked them with a clue bat over that behavior, don't know...

are you just making this stuff up? it's totally wrong. and if it did happen, there would be a public discussion about it very quickly.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#385

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>I have to travel to Facebook HQ once a month, unless I'm traveling to some other FB facility. I'm curious, is this because of your role or do all FB employees do this if they work outside of MPK?

Most FB employees are expected to work in a specific local facility most of the time, and have no particular travel requirement. I flipped that on its head; I save on my daily commute by WFH most of the time, and pay it back with the monthly trip. In the end I think it works out roughly equal. It's partly tied to my role, partly to leverage applied when I was being hired, and it seems to be unusual enough that my col…

That's incredible! I'd like to do that someday.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#386

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That's the dumbest goddamn thing I've ever heard, least of all because a TV on sale on Black Friday is pretty far from a nice sandwich. This sort of selfish reasoning--"but but but what about the poors that might somehow abuse the system"--is cancerous, and you sir or madam are a shitty person for suggesting it.

We used to allow employees to take home any food left over at the end of the day. Worked great for about 4 months. Then the food cost started creeping up, then it nearly exploded. Seems that the late shift discovered that if they simply made a lot of food right before closing they could take it home so it wouldn't be "wasted". You know it has gotten bad when people are starting to argue about who gets to work the clo…

Sounds like a management issue. This is like designing public benches so that people can't sleep there - a passive-aggressive "solution" that really just avoids the problem.

Why not let people buy the "waste" food at the purchase cost? Or just you know, fire the people who waste it on purpose for misconduct?

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#387

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You can also invest in improving public transit and shoring up what you already have - for example, BART and systems like it could be used to link areas more effectively/reliably. In talking with some friends in the Bay Area, all feel that East Bay is just too risky with problems BART has been facing in reliability, but all love the less congested feel of say Moraga or Walnut Creek. The article focuses on the fact th…

Yup, those outlying areas are great. But they're getting expensive too - you're looking at $700k plus for a townhouse in Walnut Creek, and homes are over a million. And you're already looking at a 45+ minute commute to the city via BART. There's simply no affordable place within an hour of the city. That's not just because of bad public transportation - that's because of poor housing policy.

For sure - these investments need to be made together, otherwise it won't work.

Say we build more housing but it's across the bay. Those bridges and BART can only transport so many people.

That said, I do think that transportation investment is lacking and should be increased.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#388
post #369

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Nothing stops a single-payer plan at the legislature from including the submission to voters of a ballot measure clearing funding allocation barriers away. Proposals that exempt something from those barriers are not uncommon. Single payer in California is actually blocked by the absence of an actual concrete proposal (covering, among many other things, a funding mechanism) rather than merely a vague descriptive goal.

Right, and the authors of SB 562 chose not to include such a submission.

The authors of SB 562 chose not to include a concrete proposal at all. (It was pretty clearly a placeholder that was intended to be amended into concrete form that was passed by the Senate to keep it alive for timeline related reasons; the real work would have had to occur in the Assembly version and then gone back to the Senate.)

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#389
post #371

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It's not a loaded statement. No one is making you live a the place with the highest cost of living in the US.

"Just move away" is not a legitimate response to these problems.

There is a limited supply of housing and they have no interest in building more. That means only a limited number of people can live there. Someone has to move. Rents will just keep increasing until they do. Paying them more will just increase rents more until someone else is forced out.

And I do see it as a lifestyle choice. You can't choose a lot of things in life, but you can choose where you live. I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for people who choose to live in the most expensive part of the US, and then complain about the cost of living. Despite making boatloads more money than me. I certainly don't feel like I should be forced to subsidize their lifestyle choice (I know that isn't the argument presented here, but it is an issue that often comes up with these issues. I don't think cost of living should be taken into account with regard to government programs and subsidies.)

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for having to be "that guy" but they're living in Menlo Park for crying out loud! I'd love to live in Menlo Park too, but I can't afford it, so instead I live 2 hours away and commute to work like everyone else. In the Bay Area, living close to work is pretty much a luxury for the rich.

I suspect this is actually East Menlo Park, since the homeowners in Menlo Park proper are very unlikely to rent out a garage like this. East Menlo Park is substantially more affordable than Menlo Park, though at this point more costly than many East Bay areas. Living in Hayward for example would make housing more affordable, but as you allude to, commute times would likely 4-5x (because bridges) and their kids' educa…

What is East Menlo Park? Do you mean East Palo Alto?
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