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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?

#391

Post by ceeplusplus »

Avshalom wrote: post #375
ceeplusplus wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get a degree in the arts then? What other industry needs a master's degree and a project portfolio to become unemployed or making $40k in an expensive city?

I mean my degrees are physics w/math-minor and geology

There should be a large number of jobs you could take on with a physics degree (although most are more math than actual physics). Any technical role in tech, actuary in insurance cos, quant trading roles, etc. How did you not find a job in 2 years?

Of course I say this assuming you're based in the US - the European job market for technical people is much, much worse than the US.

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

#392

Post by fennecfoxen »

rtlfe wrote: post #350
pc86 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In very few places in the US would "no heat and no toilet" be acceptable, regardless of price.

No heat seems bad, but I'd bet SROs with shared bathrooms would be extremely popular in NYC if they were legal. I'm not sure what happened to them, but there was a startup trying to do this: https://www.curbed.com/2021/03/brownstone-shared-housing.htm...

“In the city of New York there were laws passed to push the private sector out of the SRO business [and eliminate SROs] on the theory that SROs were inhumane. Consequently, people sleep on grates outside.” — George McDonald

SROs, residential hotels, boarding houses and the like were all banned in the 1950s (and the surviving ones dismantled through the 1980s), a loss of about 100,000 units of affordable housing.

Consider this lovely e-book for further reading: https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49...

Or this lovely Simon and Garfunkel song about the NYC homeless on the streets of SoHo, contemporary to that era. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCVnPIE3juc

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

#393

Post by matyasrichter »

hamiltonians wrote: post #89
TrackerFF wrote: post #16

Worked a wide variety of low-skill, low-pay temp jobs during college. Lots of the people I worked with there were juggling multiple gigs, and were sort of locked into that system of work. By the time I graduated, it was mostly temp firms that handled the recruitment - and FYI, they absolutely follow the "hire fast, fire fast" mantra. So while you could land work the next day, you could just as easily get fired from t…

I never had a summer, college, or teen job. Money was never a problem and still isn't.

What exactly is your point here?

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

#394

Post by [deleted] »

rnikander wrote: post #124
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.

So rent a room and/or don’t live in the best part of the city. That’s what I did near Boston a few years ago. My rent was well under $1000. Do people think they’re entitled to private apartments in the most expensive cities in the world?

[deleted]

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

#395

Post by bigthymer »

pempem wrote: post #213
iamdbtoo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's kind of how this country markets itself. Being able to afford a home and a family on a regular worker's pay is literally part of "The American Dream."

I've thought a lot about this, esp as someone who was born here and whose parents immigrated here for the American Dream. They've done great. We lived in a rural area. It was possible because one of them came highly skilled and solicited to immigrate. That being said I shudder when I hear "just move to rural blah blah blah ". My life was horrible there. I was considered black, egytian, non-english speaking, to come f…

Care to expound some more on the differences between living in rural places vs. the Californian life? I've spent most of my time in the suburbs of coastal cities.

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

#396

Post by Avshalom »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #391
Avshalom wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean my degrees are physics w/math-minor and geology

There should be a large number of jobs you could take on with a physics degree (although most are more math than actual physics). Any technical role in tech, actuary in insurance cos, quant trading roles, etc. How did you not find a job in 2 years? Of course I say this assuming you're based in the US - the European job market for technical people is much, much worse than the US.

Well it was August 2009 for one thing.

For another: physics/math isn't a stepping stone to technical roles. Physics from ivy league/new ivy is. A B.A. in English from brown is closer to a quant job than a physics degree from New Mexico Tech is. Hell at least NMT is, in the non austerity days, a path into a defense lab. There's half a dozen of state schools (in new mexico alone) offering STEM degrees that most people don't even know are schools.

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

#397

Post by Avshalom »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #390
Jcowell wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In December of 2019 it would be hard for everyone since COVID would ramp up, business shut down, and hiring freezes were in affect. It didn’t matter the degree you had.

By June 2020 the tech market was hot again, that's 3 months of hiring pause, not 2 years like OP said.

Geology isn't really "the tech market". Extraction continued at a record pace but exploration stopped almost completely, which is where the degree-expecting jobs are.

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

#398

Post by yuppie_scum »

abxytg wrote: post #102
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…

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.

Contrary to popular opinion on HN, not everywhere in the universe is the Bay Area

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

#399

Post by wpietri »

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.

Nope. I know that I was that person on the other end of hopelessly vague casting of suspicion. And I know that a lot of people nod and get suspicious themselves.

I'm not concerned about the woman in question. I'm concerned about everybody else who gets treated poorly because they're "a bit strange". And because of that, I'm concerned every time I hear that sort of "different equals scary" talk, as it normalized poor treatment of perfectly good people.

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

#400

Post by User23 »

throwawayHN378 wrote: post #256
User23 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pediatric oncology. That job must be nightmarish for anyone who isn’t a full-blown sociopath. I’m not a particularly empathetic person and I couldn’t start that job let alone stay in it for years. Edit: > One of the attractions of pediatrics is, surprisingly enough… This is the opposite of surprising. I imagine one of the appeals of pediatrics is significantly fewer of your patients die. That’s why pediatric oncolo…

Pretty bold statement to claim most pediatric oncologists are sociopaths. You took a big shit on some of the admirable people in our society

I didn’t claim that. I claimed it must be nightmarish, by which I obviously meant extremely emotionally taxing. Are you saying most pediatric oncologists aren’t emotionally taxed? The only ones who aren’t must, by definition, be sociopaths. Please try to not be offended by a tautology.
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