Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A day in the life of a Walmart manager

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 266 posts

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#171

Post by JumpCrisscross »

BLanen wrote: post #162
nexus2045 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making 500-700k at a FAANG right now. Money certainly makes me worry less, not complaining. I still feel like a cog in a machine. If anything, it further isolated all the problems in my life that money could never really solve. Meaningful friendships, dating, self-control and discipline, self-esteem. Before, I could go by telling myself the story that "if only I had X amount of income, I'd be happy". Now, I don't hav…

I don't care about your singular experience. I could send you paper and paper that wealth/income and stability increases happiness aggregated. I could send you papers that would show that sending people scientific proof doesn't convince people and that wouldn't convince you.

> I could send you paper and paper that wealth/income and stability increases happiness aggregated

Nobody disputed that. You made a statement about "something only someone with a high income would say." That's drawing the generality to a specific. It would be like concluding from the fact that most dogs are black, brown and white, that every dog is black, brown or white.

In this case, it could absolutely be the case that the factors that cause money to turn into happiness are not present among FAANG employees to a greater degree than population.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#172

Post by JumpCrisscross »

VS1999 wrote: post #147
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay isn’t really based on how “hard” a job is (and I don’t think we would want it to be!) It does factor in to the demand side but clearly it’s not the primary factor or else there wouldn’t be any high-paying “easy” jobs.

I consider pay more like a caste system in the US. It's a way to separate people who "deserve" to be highly paid and people who don't. Working in software, it always felt odd that I make 3x as much as the guy making my food and have 10x the expendable income, even though they work harder at much more miserable work. The first degree of separation is whether you can afford to do a 4-6 year take home test that's gettin…

> consider pay more like a caste system in the US

Caste != social hierarchy. It's divinely-attributed, multi-generational, immutable social hierarchy.

What you're describing is bog-standard social stratification. We aim to do it by economic utility. But even though we're not good at economic mobility [1], in a caste system that mobility is near zero.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#Worldwide

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#173

Post by zhivota »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #7

Unpopular opinion, more people are capable of doing well at higher level jobs than they are at low level grunt working jobs.

Spoken like someone who has never had to do it. I've been up and down the ladder and I can tell you that it's much harder up than down, even though from afar it doesn't look like it.

If it's easy for someone it's because they are special, and usually in my experience they're special in a sociopathic tendency kind of way, where the things that make being in leadership hard (having responsibility over so many careers, feeling social and professional pressure from all directions, fending off middle management politics) come much more naturally to them.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#174

Post by VS1999 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #172
VS1999 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider pay more like a caste system in the US. It's a way to separate people who "deserve" to be highly paid and people who don't. Working in software, it always felt odd that I make 3x as much as the guy making my food and have 10x the expendable income, even though they work harder at much more miserable work. The first degree of separation is whether you can afford to do a 4-6 year take home test that's gettin…

> consider pay more like a caste system in the US Caste != social hierarchy. It's divinely-attributed, multi-generational, immutable social hierarchy. What you're describing is bog-standard social stratification. We aim to do it by economic utility. But even though we're not good at economic mobility [1], in a caste system that mobility is near zero. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#Worldwide

Caste is absolutely about social hierarchy. At least half the definitions I've looked at mention both those words.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#175

Post by [deleted] »

BLanen wrote: post #164
_ah wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You don't seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help." -Jean Kerr

Complete anti-scientific hogwash only rich people would repeat, again.

[deleted]

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#176

Post by dclowd9901 »

geraldwhen wrote: post #152
Tostino wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly respect companies with that attitude way more than your standard American company culture.

I wish more operated this way. No matter how well you do, or what you accomplish, you will never be as successful ($$$$) as someone who joined a women’s leadership club right after their MBA and never worked a real job in their life. Promoting from within forces you to actual reward value and understand the business.

It has good and bad sides.

Imagine working at a company for 10 years and you end up under some total knob as a manager. They don’t help you at all, they’re crap at their job, and you have no chance at moving up because you’ve basically reached a dead end.

Hopefully you have some lateral move you can make but that’s going to cost you time as you endear yourself to another manager (who hopefully is not also a useless prick). And the only other options are bailing entirely and ending up starting over again somewhere else or just sucking it up and staying in that position for who knows how long.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#177

Post by JumpCrisscross »

VS1999 wrote: post #174
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consider pay more like a caste system in the US Caste != social hierarchy. It's divinely-attributed, multi-generational, immutable social hierarchy. What you're describing is bog-standard social stratification. We aim to do it by economic utility. But even though we're not good at economic mobility [1], in a caste system that mobility is near zero. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#Worldwide

Caste is absolutely about social hierarchy. At least half the definitions I've looked at mention both those words.

> Caste is absolutely about social hierarchy

Caste is a specific system of social hierarchy. What you're describing--some people having it better than others--is common to all systems of social hierarchy.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#178

Post by mvkel »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #158
mvkel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is from 2014. The average Walmart employee rate today is $17.06. And a non-zero amount of those employees can someday make a lot more. How many other companies of that size can say the same? I'm not saying it's not a problem, and not saying we shouldn't be trying so solve it. But are we talking about wage reform, or Walmart uniquely being a shithead? I read the article you linked and it feels like it's g…

> How many other companies of that size can say the same? This is a bit of a strawman argument. How many other companies exist on planet Earth of this size? Very few. And are you insinuating that Walmart is paying well because they want to? I doubt it. They are tried-and-tested mega corp that responds to labour market pressures. I don't attribute anything else to this level of pay. Finally, average isn't a good metri…

I was not insinuating that. The bigger you get as a corp, the harder it is to do have a mutually beneficial relationship with your employees, -because- market forces dictate so much of the strategy. So, that Walmart is the literal biggest corp and can still have legit upward mobility and satisfied mid-level employees is no small feat.

I was using average bc the article the commenter pointed to was also quoting average. Coincidentally, the median seems to be the same (https://www.zippia.com/walmart-careers-116506/salary/califor...)

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#179

Post by mvkel »

necheffa wrote: post #165
nexus2045 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making 500-700k at a FAANG right now. Money certainly makes me worry less, not complaining. I still feel like a cog in a machine. If anything, it further isolated all the problems in my life that money could never really solve. Meaningful friendships, dating, self-control and discipline, self-esteem. Before, I could go by telling myself the story that "if only I had X amount of income, I'd be happy". Now, I don't hav…

Is the plan then to retire fairly early and focus on people stuff and hobbies?

If they leave you fulfilled via purpose...

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#180

Post by [deleted] »

riahi wrote: post #168
throwaway2037 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are a lot of jobs that are 24/7/365 without proper coverage from coworkers so people are always available and can’t turn off. This comment is oddly specific. It reads like you are writing from personal experience. Besides emergency medicine, what else qualifies?

It describes almost every role in the field of medicine.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN