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We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

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Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#301

Post by walshemj »

eLobato wrote: post #294
walshemj wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to compare it to other professions lawyers/medical doctors and other types of engineers - and I woudl bet that the median for those working in the tech industry's is lower than MD's and lawyers

So is the average level of education of people working in the tech industry and the barriers of entry.

A Ceng/PE has the same requirements as a MD or lawyer arguably more so in the case of lawyers - but a Ceng or PE will earn less than a MD or lawyer for the same level of experience

And dont you need a First from a good university to stand a good chance of high paying job in SV?

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#302

Post by acuozzo »

null_ptr wrote: post #88

So how are we supposed to get to "the future", where people aren't wage slaves any more but instead are free to pursue their real dreams and ambitions, if those of us fortunate enough to make some headway should feel ashamed for having done so? Give me a break.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Thanks for posting this.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#303

Post by acuozzo »

rbonvall wrote: post #230
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to a one time girlfriend who is an obstetrician while she was at work one day she said "better go, I need to deliver this woman's baby". "Hope it goes well", I replied. "It won't" she said, "the baby is already dead". That put every shitty day I've ever had at work in context. Not saying we don't have bad days, we do, just there are some things that thankfully we'll never come face to face with.

My girlfriend is a social worker and works at a primary school. These are some responses I have had to "how was your day": "Today a girl was raped by his grandfather. We suspect he's also his father." "A 10-year-old boy commited suicide. I went to his family's home and they still had the body lying down on the living room." "A boy has told us that her mother every night gets money from men to 'spend time' with her si…

> "Today a girl was raped by his grandfather."

You either meant s/girl/boy or s/his/her.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#304

Post by [deleted] »

rbonvall wrote: post #230
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to a one time girlfriend who is an obstetrician while she was at work one day she said "better go, I need to deliver this woman's baby". "Hope it goes well", I replied. "It won't" she said, "the baby is already dead". That put every shitty day I've ever had at work in context. Not saying we don't have bad days, we do, just there are some things that thankfully we'll never come face to face with.

My girlfriend is a social worker and works at a primary school. These are some responses I have had to "how was your day": "Today a girl was raped by his grandfather. We suspect he's also his father." "A 10-year-old boy commited suicide. I went to his family's home and they still had the body lying down on the living room." "A boy has told us that her mother every night gets money from men to 'spend time' with her si…

[deleted]

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#305

Post by nzp »

I absolutely get what you're trying to say, but---so what? How is programmers being aware of their luxurious jobs going to help people with less luxurious jobs? Will the situation for other people improve if people here merely stop complaining about recruiters and procrastination? If they merely do a mental version of catholic style self flagellation? Is this another variant of "eat your dinner, there are children in Africa starving" routine? What good does me eating my dinner do to a starving kid in Africa? Etc.

There's nothing wrong about complaining about relevant problems in one's profession, even if those problems seem nice to have to other people, and not complaining won't magically make other people's lives more comfortable. And having a "luxurious" job that pays well is nothing to be compulsively ashamed of if it's an honest job not involving exploitation of others (which programming in almost all (?) cases is).

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#306

Post by logfromblammo »

aasarava wrote: post #49
spindritf wrote: post #5

Yes, working from home is great. It is a luxury. Working at your own pace is also nice. But working "on the Internet" means you're also comparing yourself to the best, brightest, and driven. Then it seems like you're achieving maybe 10% of what you seemingly could be, because you're setting your own goals based on what you see out there. It's like getting stuck in traffic. You can point out that I'm sitting in climat…

So what is the hack that keeps us from constantly taking our luxuries for granted? Just as with the traffic situation, how often do we find ourselves complaining about having to do the laundry or the dishes or vacuuming or even heating up something for dinner -- all fairly small and easy tasks thanks to the help of technology, which took much more time and labor in a previous generation? Yes, it's true that the compl…

Yesterday, I wrote a sentence that encapsulates very well how we adjust to technological luxuries: "I searched the web for 'singing hemorrhoid' and the first video result is lame."

When I re-read it, I realized that being alive in 2014 is unbelievably awesome.

Then the conversation went straight into "Four Yorkshiremen".

A: In my day, we were grateful for just one singing hemorrhoid video. B: And we had to download it from Usenet binaries. C: In RealMedia format. Me: And part 51 of 117 was missing. A: And we had to use bauds. Me: I had a demibaud modem. C: Luxury! We had to make our own punchcards and send'm through the mail. B: At least you had mail. We stapled our punchcards to passing hobos and hoped they made it somewhere with a router.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#307

Post by PhasmaFelis »

ctdonath wrote: post #296
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing "start-up programming" with "programming," I probably that seems to be endemic on Hacker News.

He's pointing out the risk factor, a severely (and deliberately?) overlooked aspect of the "income inequality" rhetoric. Consistency of income has it's own significant non-monetary value. There's more to benefits of a job than just the paycheck, such as not worrying month-to-month whether you're going to make your mortgage/rent payment vs getting evicted. Many lower-paying jobs remain consistent regardless of whether…

Sure, but he implies that the "start-up guy" reflects "programmers" in general, and it really doesn't. There are a lot of programming careers that are as reliable as anything is in this day and age. The kind of programmer who moves to San Francisco to work 90-hour weeks for peanuts in hopes of becoming a billionaire at 25 is wildly overrepresented on Hacker News. He really doesn't represent the average code monkey just trying to put in his 40 hours and get home to his family.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#308

Post by rbonvall »

acuozzo wrote: post #303
rbonvall wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My girlfriend is a social worker and works at a primary school. These are some responses I have had to "how was your day": "Today a girl was raped by his grandfather. We suspect he's also his father." "A 10-year-old boy commited suicide. I went to his family's home and they still had the body lying down on the living room." "A boy has told us that her mother every night gets money from men to 'spend time' with her si…

> "Today a girl was raped by his grandfather." You either meant s/girl/boy or s/his/her.

s/his/her, and s/her/his in the third story.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#309

Post by TrevorJ »

dylandrop wrote: post #206
pmichaud wrote: post #179

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever. Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood st…

> Yes, it's luxury in many ways. But it's also a coal mine of its own sort. Except you won't die from sitting home in your pajamas. You will, however, be very to die for a multitude of reasons in a coal mine. I'm a programmer. Yes, my brain is engaged constantly. But that's fun to me. It's not like I rue the day I became a programmer and I had to perform the terrible labor of sitting around with friends/acquaintances…

>Except you won't die from sitting home in your pajamas.

I won't argue that it's not far safer than a lot of other jobs, but there are definitely health risks to having a sedentary job if you don't work on mitigating them on your off hours. Also, stress.

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