Ask HN: Do you feel bad for having a good job?

I hate my job and am not that well paid. I have also worked jobs like warehouse worker, janitor, retail, etc. So I've been there and it wasn't that bad.

I have slightly considered quitting and working in a warehouse. They are advertising $25-30/hr jobs plus overtime. At least I wouldn't have to deal with the bullshit at my current job. Unfortunately, I can't really do that since I have a family.

I grew up poor, now I'm 26 and making 6 figures. Yes, being smart and working hard is part of the success story, but it's not the whole picture.

The reality of the situation, is that I got lucky at a young age with math and logic skills, got lucky to have some decent teachers who helped me develop those skills, then got lucky to adopt video games and computers as my main interest. I was lucky that software engineering just so happens to be a lucrative job. Everything else that has happened since I was a child has been an extension of that foundation.

Most people's success trajectories are not largely defined in their 20s, it just feels that way because that's the point in which you start really having agency and independence. Your 20s don't really determine if you are going to be successful or not, but rather how successful are you going to be.

Pitfalls exist, you can definitely be on the right track until the age of 22 and then screw up so badly that you never recover, it happens.

You got lucky, now go help other people get lucky, because the system isn't robust enough to perfectly equate success with hard work and/or intelligence. You got lucky, and that's ok, but there's no reason to look down on people, even if it seems that they are the ones screwing up their own life. You may have more wisdom than them that brought you to your current situation, but the idea is that you got to your level of wisdom through a series of lesser and lesser wisdoms at earlier and earlier points in time. You are not living the same life as that person, so you can't expect that person to do a full 180 overnight. Success takes a long time, you just didn't realize it at the time.

> You might say I "deserve" my current place in life. Nothing has been handed to me, and I'm unusually smart and hard working. But I believe that I was born smart, and I've always had a compulsion to work hard.

> I feel uncomfortable interacting with people of lower social classes.

I think these are the parts that one might read less as "a sign of empathy and humility", and skew more towards "superiority".

People who are known for their aptitude for empathy and humility are more likely to see people as individuals (rather than placing them into bins such as "people of lower social class"), and less likely to assume that their personal life experience is comprehensive enough to make definitive-sounding statements on pretty subjective matters (such as classifying themselves as "unusually smart", where "smart" is a contentious thing to quantify at the best of times, or saying "nothing has been handed to me", when it's rather likely they're the beneficiary of at least some amount of privilege). I think this is what codingdave is referring to.

Just be very woke to compensate.

It costs you nothing as all you have to do is express an opinion. And it allows you to feel morally superior (in your own mind) to all those poor people around you.

Its an excellent zero-effort, cost-free way to erase that guilt.

> I feel uncomfortable interacting with people of lower social classes. I don't care what they think about me. I just feel bad that they might lack respect or comfort in their work, or that their general life position may be unpleasant.

Just so you know, starting at say $80K for family income there's no difference in happiness between the lowest and highest ends of the income scale. Do you think Will Smith is happier than you?

Also watch any of Mike Rowe's shows, namely "Dirty Jobs", and tell me that these people are less happy with their jobs than you.