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?

#91

Post by nebula8804 » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

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…

>If the United States continues on the current political course, nothing will ever change.

Change is the only thing that is a guarantee. Maybe it will collapse when some other nation comes along and outruns some future instance of the US that is completely tired and broken. Or maybe they will turn the ship around.

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

#92

Post by angarg12 » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

I love the nuance and "see both sides of the story" tone of the article. We need more of that.

The first half of my career was in a 8 times the median US salary, and still feel underpaid.

What I try to convey to people is that I can be grateful and privileged, and feel fairly unpaid at the same time.

For the one side, you need to recognize your privilege. People who say they can't live on incomes >200k should know life could be so much worse.

For the other side, one can still feel underpaid and unfairly treated. If colleagues similar to me jumped companies doubling their income, that's a signal I'm probably underpaid. And the one benefiting from that disparity is not me, but the company taking advantage of it.

Bottom line great read for all of those tech worker making 6 figures and complaining about how crappy their life is.

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

#93

Post by pphysch » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 4:58 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…

US and more socialist EU countries may have similar CPIs, but when we get to talking about education, rent, healthcare, transportation, etc the differences can be stark.

Yes, people in US earn more and get taxed less. But they also spend a lot, lot more on necessities via shadowy cost structures like student loans and insurance and >$1,000 ambulance rides.

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

#94

Post by Biologist123 » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 4:58 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…

Your argument is all numerator, no denominator.

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

#95

Post by hamiltonians » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

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.

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

#96

Post by klyrs » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

silexia wrote: post #82

throw1234651234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the best post in this thread. This is all very much true. One more thing that most Americans don't admit is that people mostly work jobs they have started out in. When I was in shitty jobs, people started out and stayed there. As I move up, I notice that people also started out and stayed there. Anecdotally, the US has much less mobility than what is commonly believed. Anyway, I went off topic - don't want to…

The solution here is to open up the free markets again. This means: -Right to repair -Abolish the patent system and non competes -Drop the IRS and let the government simply print money it needs... This eliminates all tax loopholes and special treatment. Perfectly fair wealth tax.

> Drop the IRS and let the government simply print money it needs

When the government's "needs" are determined by the rich, what happens to the money that gets printed? That's how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Simplify the tax code, eliminate loopholes, raise tax rates on extreme wealth & income, and fund the IRS to investigate major tax fraud (instead of the nickle&dime shit they go after today). This isn't about funding the government; it's about retooling the government to work for everybody and not just its richest citizens.

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

#97

Post by ip26 » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #68

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.

Certainly true, but by a process of self-selection, the population of the site does seem heavily skewed.

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

#98

Post by wl » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

User23 wrote: post #7

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…

> 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…

Death is a virtually unavoidable part of working in medicine. One of the things I've heard over and over again from physicians is dealing with the first handful of deaths during medical school clinical rotations or internship after graduation. There's the second-guessing: what else could I have done to save the person's life? The healthy response seems to be becoming at peace with the fact medicine can't fix everything, accepting that nothing more could have been done given the current state of the field, and that those patients got the best chance they could have had at more meaningful life.

One of the attractions of pediatrics is, surprisingly enough, that there's less death as kids tend to bounce back from the kinds of things that would kill adults.

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

#99

Post by aaron_m04 » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 5:00 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…

I have heard reports online of people having to use a cane after a few years of working in these warehouses.

15 USD an hour is not so much when it costs you your health _and_ there is no proper system of universal healthcare.

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

#100

Post by rajin444 » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

silexia wrote: post #82

throw1234651234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the best post in this thread. This is all very much true. One more thing that most Americans don't admit is that people mostly work jobs they have started out in. When I was in shitty jobs, people started out and stayed there. As I move up, I notice that people also started out and stayed there. Anecdotally, the US has much less mobility than what is commonly believed. Anyway, I went off topic - don't want to…

The solution here is to open up the free markets again. This means: -Right to repair -Abolish the patent system and non competes -Drop the IRS and let the government simply print money it needs... This eliminates all tax loopholes and special treatment. Perfectly fair wealth tax.

No matter what system we propose it can’t handle human greed and abuses of power. Bad actors ruin everything.

We need to figure out how to build high trust societies with a shared culture. There’s a reason large corporations are pushing diversity so hard - it keeps abuses like those described above possible.