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What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

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Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#271

Post by lordnacho »

Main thing I'd say characterizes the shitty job is that it leads to nowhere. People like to say that it builds character, especially if they dug themselves out, but it doesn't. I also cleaned toilets and bussed tables as a kid, and I can tell you unequivocally it did nothing to get me to where I am today:

- I had less time to do things I actually wanted to do, like studying.

- Didn't make me better at coding, how could it?

- It didn't teach me anything about finance, how could it?

- Didn't make me better at "time management" and other pseudoskills. Yes they are pseudoskills, people throw them in the conversation to pretend you are getting something.

You know what makes people good at their job? Doing their job. This is why you run into the people he mentions, they are ok at some other thing but they are spending their time doing a shitty job instead. They are running to stand still, and then running some more to leap off the treadmill. This is also why plenty of not-particularly-bright kids grow up to grab the prestigious jobs. They didn't have to do shitty work for no pay, they used their comfy middle class upbringing to connect with the right entry-level roles, and took it from there.

So then you get people who somehow manage to do it. They work at McDonald's flipping burgers during the day, and then they somehow learn how to reverse a linked list at night, and lo and behold it pays off and they get a job at Google. Everyone points at them as says "look, it can be done".

Don't be fooled. If you do two jobs (flipping burgers and learning to code) you are putting everything on the line in for a better future. If you get run over by a car, you will be lying on your deathbed thinking "why didn't I go out with my friends instead of memorizing quicksort". If you make it, think of all the disillusioned people who gave up whatever little free time they had for a dream that almost never comes true.

This is of course if you think of jobs as a pure money thing. If you like doing algo stuff (I like it a lot somehow), maybe you don't see it as a second job and you actually get some kind of satisfaction from it, which is what I'd hope for most people.

But for shitty jobs, most people simply do not think they are satisfying. They are exactly what we should work on automating out of existence.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#272

Post by hi_im_miles »

nameisname wrote: post #231
Spivak wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can’t afford to live in the city where you work then it’s pretty much the definition of “not a living wage.” Like are we really at the point where we’re totally fine with people commuting an hour one way every workday to a shitty minimum wage job instead of just building affordable modest housing reserved for people working in the city.

It's not the wage that needs to change it would be the prices of housing in the city. This can't change because it's not determined by some governing body. It's called gentrification. It's currently happening to me. I could not afford to buy my house now and I just bought it a few years ago. Of course there still needs to be staff in the area working retail etc. but I haven't seen anyone over 25 in a store near me fo…

I think absentee ownership and zoning laws have a fundamental impact on the availability of housing. It seems outside of governmental concern because their impact is already so normal. It’s normal for rich people to own/rent land they don’t occupy or use in perpetuity. It’s normal to see almost everything zoned for car dependent, single-family housing.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#273

Post by [deleted] »

Mezzie wrote: post #226
ng12 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reeks. There are a lot of good, honest, hardworking people out there without Bachelor's degrees.

There's no contradiction between what he says and what you say. My mother is a hardworking, intelligent person (good and honest? Eh...) without a college degree. She'd probably be identified as the person GP would bond with as having gotten unlucky; her parents wouldn't let her go to school for engineering since she was a girl/she had to run away due to being abused, which stuck her in low level jobs. Then she tried…

[deleted]

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#274

Post by lisper »

sandworm101 wrote: post #259
lisper wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had first-hand experience with this but in the opposite direction. Had a cop cut me a break on a ticket and charge me with a lesser offense than the one I actually committed. When I went to pay the fine (this was a long time ago, before the internet) I was told the ticket hadn't been filed and so there was no fine to pay. Fast forward a year and I get a court summons for this ticket. At this point I'm annoyed en…

>> Then the magistrate asks me point-blank if I was guilty. I take the fifth. That's not the fifth. Pleading not guilty isn't considered a statement or an admission of anything. Nor can it be held against you in any way. We don't double down by charging every guilty party with "perjury" because they lost. That was done away with centuries ago.

I was being a little bit glib there. The judge did not literally ask me if I was guilty and I did not literally take the fifth. What she did was ask whether the thing the cop claimed to have seen, which he could not possibly have seen, nonetheless actually happened, and I said I could not remember because it had happened more than a year ago.

It was a very weird situation from a moral point of view because on the one hand, finding me guilty was not supported by the evidence, but on the other hand, letting me get off scot-free would have been even more unjust because the fact of the matter is that I did commit a fairly serious moving violation, and the only reason we were in court at all was that the cop decided to cut be a break and then took a long time to do the paperwork.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#275

Post by Spivak »

nameisname wrote: post #231
Spivak wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can’t afford to live in the city where you work then it’s pretty much the definition of “not a living wage.” Like are we really at the point where we’re totally fine with people commuting an hour one way every workday to a shitty minimum wage job instead of just building affordable modest housing reserved for people working in the city.

It's not the wage that needs to change it would be the prices of housing in the city. This can't change because it's not determined by some governing body. It's called gentrification. It's currently happening to me. I could not afford to buy my house now and I just bought it a few years ago. Of course there still needs to be staff in the area working retail etc. but I haven't seen anyone over 25 in a store near me fo…

Tomato potato. If you make policy that lowers the cost of living then the living wage goes down and vice versa. I don’t think we’re at all in disagreement.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#276

Post by chefandy »

t-3 wrote: post #257
chefandy wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of worse doesn't make something good .

Amazon is a desirable and good job in the low-skill, low-wage world. The only people who think otherwise are rich 6-figure making degree holders.

> Amazon is a desirable and good job in the low-skill, low-wage world. The only people who think otherwise are rich 6-figure making degree holders.

So incredible that I'd find an authority on that right here in the HN comment section! Please tell me more about my opinion!

It's pretty close but I don't have a six figure salary and don't have a degree (but am getting one part time while I work.) 80% of my friends are grown adults working in the service industry, retail, and driving jobs with a few working in upper-level clerical jobs. My wife works in retail. Folks at work— mostly developers— are the exception rather than the rule in my life.

Not one single person I've spoken to about it considers working in a wage or independent contractor job at Amazon desirable. I know a few people that did work there and they quit because if you want to run yourself ragged under authoritarian management, at least UPS/a paving crew/a bar will compensate you well for it and probably give you decent career prospects.

Where I live, the $15/hr Amazon starts at is less than any McDonalds franchise pays entry-level openers and closers, less than you make as a prep cook, less than what you make working at CVS or Walgreens, less than what you make as a rideshare driver/delivery person. A impossibly cheap studio apartment— we're talking 200 square feet, probably not legal, in a crappy neighborhood— would take a minimum 70% of your take-home pay without considering health insurance or anything else besides taxes that might get deducted from your paycheck.

The estimated take-home is about 1/3 of the area's calculated AMI— the federal poverty level. You're so far into what constitutes low-income for public housing that the numbers on the city chart don't even go below 30%.

You're making the same exact mistake you're accusing people of here of making. There's a whole world happening outside of your own sphere of experience. No surer way to be consistently meaningfully wrong than assume nobody else knows what they're talking about.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#277

Post by jxub »

robertlagrant wrote: post #188
vasco wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a public website, there's no security check for "Is american, went to Stanford and lives in SF pulling 100k/yr". I know plenty of software developers that frequent this site and make around 20-30k a year in Europe.

That salary seems very low, other than maybe for a junior. And even then - maybe. What sort of company pays that in 2022?

Anywhere in Southern or Eastern Europe that’s pretty much always the case.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#278

Post by acomar »

t-3 wrote: post #257
chefandy wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of worse doesn't make something good .

Amazon is a desirable and good job in the low-skill, low-wage world. The only people who think otherwise are rich 6-figure making degree holders.

you're using relative terms to justify an absolute judgement. those jobs can be literally better than 100% of all other jobs available in a particular market segment and it STILL doesn't qualify them as "good" jobs because "good" is a moral qualifier. should people be forced to work jobs as shitty and destructive as Amazon's because the alternatives are either worse jobs or starving on the streets? you're answering that question with yes and using rhetorical sleight of hand to hide the fact.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#279

Post by Spivak »

cloverich wrote: post #222
Spivak wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your job is in that city then yeah kinda. Workers today are so entitled, demanding an entire studio apartment the audacity.

It’s been a while for me but i always remember single person apartments (even studios) being relatively more expensive than multi bedroom with roommates. Anytime I wanted to save money that was always the first place i started. In that sense i personally would consider an apartment all to yourself a relative luxury.

Sorry, I’m biased because I’ve literally never lived alone. Didn’t even cross my mind that one person’s salary can afford an apartment. When I say an entire studio apartment to yourself an entire studio apartment for you and your roommate or partner.

Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?

#280

Post by wonderwonder »

oh_sigh wrote: post #263
abxytg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynically untrue. Amazon is not even close to bottom of the barrel. And it's clear you haven't paid market rent in a major city since you bought that starter home back in the 90s - 42k is a joke when your rent is close to $2500 and you get no benefits.

I work at a FANG, total comp in 300k-400k range, and my rent is less than $2500. Can you tell me why someone making $15/hr needs to rent a place that costs $2500/mo?

This is a good point. My mortgage and escrow on a decent house in a nice suburb and good school zone on the outskirts of a large city is $2300. Spending $2,500 on rent is insane.
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