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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?

#61

Post by wpietri »

oaiey wrote: post #50
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…

.. the privilege of a teenager with unlimited time and no responsibility. I get your point but the personal development can only happen if the primal needs are covered.

For sure. There are so many people out there who use that "extra" time to take care of siblings or make extra money for the household budget or just deal with the trauma of their day-to-day living.

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

#62

Post by photochemsyn »

The rational thing to do with any job is to first figure out what revenue to profit ratio is for the business. If there's a large profit margin and you're getting low pay, demand a raise. If you're refused a raise, talk to the other employees about the situation and then, if they agree, walk in to see the boss and demand a raise together.

As companies get larger this gets more difficult and retaliation becomes more common and you get layers of middle managers between owners and workers. That's why there's this big push to unionize at Amazon, it's the only way they can get pay comparable to that of auto workers before neoliberal globalization and moving the factories from the Rust Belt to Mexico. (In today's economy, that would be $30 / hr entry or so).

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

#63

Post by TrackerFF »

sandworm101 wrote: post #2

>> A meatgrinder job is a job that pays more not because there are fewer people who can do it, but because there are fewer people that will. They have insanely high turnover, because some aspect of the job is so bad that the vast majority of people who try it don’t stay. Maybe it’s long hours that never stop or maybe it’s constant on-call work. Maybe it’s an insane, stress-intensive workload you can’t begin to keep u…

As far as low-skill, high-pay goes, dockworkers unloading ships is up there with meatgrinder jobs. Your team gets paid for each lb / kg unloaded off the ship, and that sum is divided equally over each team member.

So the faster and more ships your team can unload, the more you're paid. That's the incentive.

I once got paid almost $1000, in just one day - but that day was 20 hours long, and you're pretty much beat to a pulp afterwards.

We had people come in, and leave before lunch. No pay in the world would keep them there.

Edit, for the curious - I tried to look up some footage of what it looks like:

This clip shows a nice and modern trawler, the unloading requires little manpower. See those long brown blocks on the palets? Those would be around 40-50 kgs / 90 - 110 lbs. https://youtu.be/Qi7VNBOJetA?t=115

This is more on par with what you'd usually see - the rooms would be stack to the ceiling with frozen packet/blocks. Those blocks are around 20 kgs / 45 lbs each. https://youtu.be/e7u-X8XR1hs?t=543

Here's a larger trawler - again - sometimes the fish will be stacked to the ceiling https://youtu.be/fQEwECzZL_s?t=2739

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any footage of the more usual scenario, where the blocks are just piled up at random.

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

#64

Post by kazinator »

> Annualized, it was the difference between $28,000 and $36,000 a year. $8,000 might not seem like a huge absolute increase in pay, but for the subject of the story it was almost a 30% raise.

In Canada, if you're poor like this, you might take home just 40 cents home on every extra dollar earned. This is due to paying extra taxes, while losing tax benefits at the same time.

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/low-income-families-...

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

#65

Post by giantg2 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #2

>> A meatgrinder job is a job that pays more not because there are fewer people who can do it, but because there are fewer people that will. They have insanely high turnover, because some aspect of the job is so bad that the vast majority of people who try it don’t stay. Maybe it’s long hours that never stop or maybe it’s constant on-call work. Maybe it’s an insane, stress-intensive workload you can’t begin to keep u…

In the case of LEOs or prosecutors, I think many give up the search for truth and give in to the us-vs-them mentality. The cognitive dissonance and pressure of group dynamics make it almost a certainty.

There is huge power in law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion. Yes, some parts of the job have to be strict for safety purposes. There are many other parts that don't.

I've had prosecutors and police know that our rights were violated as part of a citation. They did not care. Cop lied multiple times in court and was caught. IAD merely gave them a warning. The LT of the troop made a bunch of BS excuses - either he's actually that stupid or he's lying too. Filed a complaint about an incompetent magistrate whow also violated due process rights - judicial board doesn't care. Prosecutor instructed the court not to talk to us which prevented us from securing remote accommodations for our witness - the Bar didn't care. Civil rights lawyer said our rights were violated, but unless there was substantial monetary damages, the system doesn't care and would likely see it as frivolous.

Nobody cares. Nobody protects your rights. If nobody can enforce your rights, do you even have them at all? All the trooper/prosecutor/magistrate/judge had to do, was drop/throw out the case. They had the discretion, and even the responsibility, to do that. Their mentality was the problem. We were guilty in their mind because if we were not, that would make them participants in a broken and unjust system.

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

#66

Post by unsupp0rted »

wpietri wrote: post #54
trillic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a young woman in my high school and University class, she was a bit strange. Extremely bright beyond her years, sociable, and got along well with both the teachers and most of the students. There was always something a bit off with her though. From early high-school, as soon as “career” talk got more serious, she had only one job that she claimed she wanted to do, “Pediactric Oncology”. Some of the teachers…

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,…

Hear hear! It’s really easy to paint someone as “a bit off” and imply without implying.

It’s important when noticing instances of this to request further clarification.

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

#67

Post by unapproved4lyfe »

woodruffw wrote: post #30

This was a great read. I think the true value of money is one of HN's biggest bubbles: the average person on here (but not all of us!) jumped right from their undergraduate career to making a six-figure salary in a city with lavish public amenities (by American standards). It's very easy to forget that the average American salary is less than half of that, and even that hides the number of people living well below th…

You stated it in terms of social privilege ("jumped right from their undergraduate career to making a six-figure salary in a city...") but it's just as well intellectual privilege. I have a blue collar background and high school criminal career that looks like any poor person buying $20 scratchers, but after four years working in software I was a 22 year-old making six figures also. It makes it harder to feel sympathy for those struggling: Indeed, repeatedly making wrong decisions has poor outcomes. At 18 it was pretty obvious that in the most basic sense, code = money.

It's not the poverty that makes it hard to relate, it's that they seem to almost live by instinct and emotion. I wish them well but don't know what's wrong in their heads or have the slightest idea of how to durably improve their lot, apart from setting an example of worldly rationality (aye, there's the rub).

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

#68

Post by vasco »

woodruffw wrote: post #30

This was a great read. I think the true value of money is one of HN's biggest bubbles: the average person on here (but not all of us!) jumped right from their undergraduate career to making a six-figure salary in a city with lavish public amenities (by American standards). It's very easy to forget that the average American salary is less than half of that, and even that hides the number of people living well below th…

This is a public website, there's no security check for "Is american, went to Stanford and lives in SF pulling 100k/yr".

I know plenty of software developers that frequent this site and make around 20-30k a year in Europe.

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

#69

Post by giantg2 »

Clubber wrote: post #52
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes true, I was more thinking when things went to trial. Pleas make up a large share of outcomes. I was just more surprised at how badly things can go wrong in the process which ends up with a dismissal or acquittal; whether that's police process, evidentiary, testimony, etc.

The troubling part is the prime tactic is to get people to plea. One of the methods employed is to massively overcharge where the defendant is looking at say 20 years if they lose at trial vs 5 years if they plea. Most people plea, even if they are innocent. Many prosecutors overcharge even when they have a weak case. It's not justice, it's the system protecting its existence.

It's estimated 2-10% of the incarcerated population is innocent or wrongly convicted.

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

#70

Post by weakfish »

frontman1988 wrote: post #59

These low paying shitty jobs in developed countries sound quite pleasant compared to what people in third world countries are forced to do. These jobs are what came to my mind as an Indian when I read the title: https://dw.com/en/india-manual-scavengers-continue-to-remove... https://thewire.in/labour/manual-scavenging-sanitation-worke...

“Things are worse somewhere else, therefore we shouldn’t improve anything here”
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