I got reprimanded for going to urinate at unscheduled times.
I worked as a busser and at multiple fast food places before getting a job as a software engineer. I have also been reprimanded for going to urinate at unscheduled times. I don’t think that gatekeeping the experience of being exploited for your labor is useful. Creating divisions between people who are only exploited, vs those who are exploited even more doesn’t help anyone except for those who are exploiting.
We're all exploited in different ways.
People who are self-employed and wealthy are just exploited much less
I gave up on this article about 1/3 of the way through. I could fill dozens of pages with my aimless years after I quit college, but I wouldn’t think to bore people with it.
I got 10% through. Says more about me, or at least my mood. Clicking a HN link I al not sold on reading so much. But if this article was a book I purchased I would read it over a few days. The writing is good though at a micro level. I think it needs more structure and hooks. Chapters with interesting titles “The positive consequences of lying in my first interview” for example (I am not a writer so sure HN could do…
I think it's like a less spicy version of Stephanie Land's article on cleaning houses (led to the excellent Netflix series Maid), which had a lot of tantalizing hooks because of the nature of the work I guess. But overall this trend of written accounts of unprivileged work by increasingly college educated people, is a good one. If it was in n+1 it would have been tied to the rise of unionization, income inequality, probably Tolstoy's concept of working class virtues. But giving more voice to pink collar, blue collar workers is a good thing.
I got reprimanded for going to urinate at unscheduled times.
I worked as a busser and at multiple fast food places before getting a job as a software engineer. I have also been reprimanded for going to urinate at unscheduled times. I don’t think that gatekeeping the experience of being exploited for your labor is useful. Creating divisions between people who are only exploited, vs those who are exploited even more doesn’t help anyone except for those who are exploiting.
This subthread starting off with a claim that high-wage workers were the most exploited. I don’t think there’s a vision of “solidarity” where everyone humors that delusion.
From my experience, the hardest part of being a waiter was dealing with customers. I worked hard physically as a dishwasher or warehouse worker, but had little mental stress. I only lasted a few weeks as a waiter. Despite the much higher tips, dealing with bad customers was so stressful I couldn't handle it and it significantly affected my studying. Whereas I never felt that tired when doing physical labor.
Is it not common in America to share tips with the entire staff? In Europe there is much less of a tipping culture, but at the end of the night all tips go in one big pot and then get divided amongst the staff.
Both methods are common. It's discussed before you start.
I worked as a busser and at multiple fast food places before getting a job as a software engineer. I have also been reprimanded for going to urinate at unscheduled times. I don’t think that gatekeeping the experience of being exploited for your labor is useful. Creating divisions between people who are only exploited, vs those who are exploited even more doesn’t help anyone except for those who are exploiting.
This subthread starting off with a claim that high-wage workers were the most exploited. I don’t think there’s a vision of “solidarity” where everyone humors that delusion.
The top comment is this sub thread very clearly included the words “even” to imply that while most would not assume software engineers are not exploited because they’re relatively wealthy, they are still being exploited. This very clearly implies that SEs are less exploited—there was absolutely nothing in the original comment that supports your mischaracterization of their point.
I worked as a busser and at multiple fast food places before getting a job as a software engineer. I have also been reprimanded for going to urinate at unscheduled times. I don’t think that gatekeeping the experience of being exploited for your labor is useful. Creating divisions between people who are only exploited, vs those who are exploited even more doesn’t help anyone except for those who are exploiting.
We're all exploited in different ways. People who are self-employed and wealthy are just exploited much less
I completely agree with this, but fundamentally I think that there is more value from identifying with the similarities between workers of all wage range. I was mainly just arguing against the point that the top reply in this sub thread was implying that high wage workers are somehow more exploited.
I gave up on this article about 1/3 of the way through. I could fill dozens of pages with my aimless years after I quit college, but I wouldn’t think to bore people with it.
It's writing; the point is to entertain with artfully written anecdotes and insights.
It's ok to like or dislike a piece, but common courtesy if you don't care for something but it does not offend, is to simply offer no comment.
> Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." Yeah, I don't buy that either. I know that the best software engineering work I've done in my entire life happened when I was working as a hotel housekeeper, before I was programming professionally. It was because cleaning hotel rooms is a purely physical, and highly repetitive job. Every day at work,…
From my experience, the hardest part of being a waiter was dealing with customers. I worked hard physically as a dishwasher or warehouse worker, but had little mental stress. I only lasted a few weeks as a waiter. Despite the much higher tips, dealing with bad customers was so stressful I couldn't handle it and it significantly affected my studying. Whereas I never felt that tired when doing physical labor.
> From my experience, the hardest part of being a waiter was dealing with customers.
I was a fine dining server for a couple years while in college before finding my first programming job. It taught me how to deal with pretty much any kind of person.