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

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

#301

Post by TeaDrunk » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #181

wpietri wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, was a person "a bit strange"? Were they "a bit off"? Think of the children!!! It seems especially ugly to see that here on HN. I grew up as the "a bit strange" person in a small midwestern town. It sucked. it wasn't until I got the fuck out and got into tech that I got to be around other nerdy, non-neurotypical people like myself that I finally felt like I could breathe. If you have a complaint about somebody,…

well sure, but on the other hand you don't know anything about the person under discussion. They are essentially a small very vague figure from fiction given the level of specificity you have for her. They are not having their reputation besmirched or anything, because nobody knows who they are, and thus probably don't require a rousing defense.

I would like to push against the notion that expressing ableist beliefs, as long as they don't affect the actual person who is a target of the ableism, doesn't deserve calling out. These sorts of expressions of opinions interact broadly with the community as a signal of acceptable and unacceptable ways to view people. Expressing this sort of callous willingness to imply someone one doesn't know all that well is dangerous simply because they have behaved some way differently also has the secondary effect of exampling that members of the community here are willing to describe strangers as dangerous if they don't conform to expected behaviors. This signals to nondangerous, different people that they are in danger of being labeled as dangerous, which is stressful for folks who just want to talk popcorn intellectual subject matters on an orange site.

It's similar to eg. why lgbtqia+ people have distinct memories about feeling unsafe in communities where "smear the queer" is a recess schoolyard game.

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

#302

Post by imtringued » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #225

Auracle wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely try and make things better, but most people have very little perspective. Countless times I’ve seen people say things about how they’d never bring a child into the world because of how bad things are now. They mean global warming, Donald Trump, or whatever happens to be in the current news cycle. We’re living in the very best time to be human so far. It wasn’t long ago that the world was living und…

My favorite part about people who use that as justification for not having kids is that they will not have kids. Let them exit the gene pool and the rational people can continue to have children.

You got that backwards. Not having kids requires a lot of rational thinking. Having kids merely requires drunk sex without anyone being aware of the consequences.

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

#303

Post by rtlfe » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #247

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.

If a city has 1 million jobs but only homes for 800k workers, then you will always have 200k workers who are priced out of homes. Or if you do it the communist way and assign homes with arbitrary price ceilings, you still have 200k people without homes although now it is the 200k most recent immigrants and not the 200k poorest, but the problem is still there. So what do you suggest we do about that except build more…

> So what do you suggest we do about that except build more homes?

Why are you trying to make this complicated? Just get rid of density caps so that developers build more apartments. Problem solved with zero cost to taxpayers.

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

#304

Post by Beltalowda » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

hamiltonians wrote: post #95

thenerdhead wrote: post #40

I had a "shitty job" as a high schooler. I was a janitor at a public elementary school where I'd have to clean the unspeakable things that kids do in the bathrooms and classrooms. While it was a literal "shitty" job, anyone could do it for the $10/hr. I saw that it was a dead-end though. I would be looking at my twenty-something year old boss and wanting much more for myself than the fun job he had. I saw that I coul…

this is why i think teen summer jobs squander potential. young adults should be learning skills instead of doing shitty jobs, although someone has to do that work.

> although someone has to do that work

I think this is the real crux of the matter: not everyone has the aptitude or interest to be a programmer or whatnot, and that's perfectly fine!

The whole "lift yourself out of poverty by learning X" is not necessarily bad advice – it's good advice actually, and I did it myself – but when you're talking about society as a whole it's missing the point that: ... even if everyone learns all the skills in the world, we're still going to need people at grocery stores, and support agents, and warehouse workers, and that kind of thing.

So no matter which way, we still need to have a conversation about how to organize things so that everyone has a reasonably fair living wage (as well as what "fair" and "living wage" are, exactly).

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

#305

Post by paulryanrogers » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #287

paulryanrogers wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely rational to think twice about the circumstances before having kids, or more kids. For one thing, micro-plastics weren't in the brains and bloodstream of past populations. That said, doubtful anyone hesitant to have kids is under the delusion everything was always better in the past. I certainly wasn't when the time came to make those decisions.

It means “I would prefer the human race dies off rather than reproduce”. Sure, you can make decisions for your own health and personal reasons. But if you truly decide not to have children because of “global warming” as if the planet gives a fuck (it’s only an issue for humans - the planet will live on for billions of years) then you are saying humans as a species are a cancer that must die off. And I find that total…

> It means “I would prefer the human race dies off rather than reproduce”.

Who is saying this?!

Regardless, there are 8 billion humans from a population pool that may have at times dropped to as few as a few hundred. So risk of human extinction is far less than the (very real) risk of making lives of future generations much shittier.

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

#306

Post by Rapzid » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

t-3 wrote: post #138

mrjangles wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how modern work for a lot of jobs has become de facto indentured servitude...The average worker can't afford anything without taking on debt. For people from other countries wondering about the veracity of these claims, let's take an example: The typical shitty job everyone on here complains about is working at an amazon warehouse. This is a job people with no skills take on. They pay 15 USD an hour. In other curren…

Amazon is good job though. A shitty job would pay $10 an hour, lack the benefits, and still just get rid of you on a whim. Also, multiply by .8 to get the takehome pay - $15/hr isn't netting 40k without overtime.

I think Amazon warehouse is a good job for some, and others with no choice. Personally all other things being equal(which they prob aren't but depending on age and situation the other benefits may not matter much) I'd rather work fast food than run around that warehouse like a mad man all day. Lot a fast-food and other places offering 15/hr around me and I live in a relatively low COL city..

I wonder how many people here saying Amazon warehouse is a good job just because it pays 15/hr have actually worked there along with other jobs paying similar or better?

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

#307

Post by basisword » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #232

permalac wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I forget that those 6 figure jobs require one living in US, then I remember and I'm a bit happier with my not 6 figures job.

If you’re smart it’s a much better deal to live in the USA. It’s why you see so many Europeans move here and not the other way around. Europe is better if you’re dumb as there are better social systems. You can just exist more easily there.

I presume you're trolling but I much prefer my life to my higher paid US colleagues lives. I don't work a second more than I'm required. I get more holidays. Better parental leave. Can't be fired at will.

Also requiring help from the welfare state has nothing to do with a persons intelligence. Sometimes there are massive recessions + unemployment...or global pandemics. Shit happens and when it does knowing that I'll be taken care of is worth a lot.

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

#308

Post by BobbyJo » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

mrjangles wrote: post #83

alexfromapex wrote: post #31

I think this article starts to touch on a topic area I don't hear much about but am extremely frustrated by: how modern work for a lot of jobs has become de facto indentured servitude. In the "When They Know They've Got You" section, they mention the real challenges of not being able to obtain a lawyer if things truly aren't fair. The average worker can't afford anything without taking on debt. Insurance is a scam in…

>how modern work for a lot of jobs has become de facto indentured servitude...The average worker can't afford anything without taking on debt. For people from other countries wondering about the veracity of these claims, let's take an example: The typical shitty job everyone on here complains about is working at an amazon warehouse. This is a job people with no skills take on. They pay 15 USD an hour. In other curren…

The part that gets me is the 'modern'. There have been periods where things were somewhat easier in certain regards, but those aren't the norm and were for unsustainable reasons. The US had a nice honeymoon period after WW2 where our position as the world's factory and plentiful natural resources afforded food and housing to be cheap.

Young people look around and think things are harder now than they've ever been and it's simply not true. My mom didn't have it easy, hell, my grandpa who was born in the great depression and got to be an adult through the 50's didn't have it easy.

Houses and food may have been cheaper relative to other things, but people put in way more hours of way shittier work, at least my family certainly did.

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

#309

Post by lisper » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #291

lisper wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You said you had photographic evidence...were you not allowed to introduce it? Why does it matter if you can't remember if you have video proof?

I had proof that the cop could not have seen what he claimed to have seen, and that therefore he must be lying about having seen it. I did not have proof that the thing he claimed to have seen did not actually happen.

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

#310

Post by rtlfe » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #248

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.

Not that I disagree with you, but when these discussions come up I always see "major city" as the baseline, as if they're the only places in the world that are worth living in.

Major cities are where the problem is most obvious. The cities need low skill workers to keep running, and those workers can't afford to live anywhere near those jobs.