What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?
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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?
#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 up with.
Pediatric oncology. Extremely high skill/pay. Very prestigious. But most will leave within a few years. A working day surrounded by kids undergoing painful treatments, particularly when you are the person prescribing those treatments, grinds down one's soul. Or criminal defense attorneys/prosecutors. Or any law enforcement. To survive such jobs you mush develop a skin so think that to outsiders you appear inhumane.
Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?
#3For the interest of HN reader demographics:
The salary of experienced assembly line worker in South China has passed that of USA's central states few years ago, just before the CoVID.
For places like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Pakistan, working in a factory is quite a dream job, and a ticket to the middle class living. People who poo on "sweatshops" in Asia hardly realise that these sweatshops are better than 90% of all jobs there.
I worked for companies who did manufacturing setup for Yadea in Vietnam, FairElectronics, and Walton in Bangladesh. Their HRs have a meter thick pile of resumes they work with every month.
Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?
#4I always have to think about this when people say "buy more at small businesses!"
Most small businesse owners I met were just as shitty as the ones of big businesses, they just weren't as smart as them.
Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?
#5Any job that doesn’t holistically build your skill set (antithetical to a career). As in, the money is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. If you stock Shampoo on a shelf, and you can’t flip that into something useful, it’s a worthless job.
It’s better to get paid $0 being in the right field for a bit than actually being paid in the wrong path. It’s negative money unless you are using it to pivot into the right path via education.
Which brings me to an aside, College for many people is a good example of a dead-end job. Not only did you not get paid, but someone also took your money wasting your time down a trail that many people pivot out of (your Classics majors that switch to Dev, congrats on paying to be led astray for 4 years).
But software can also be a dead end job if you chased the money and went off the trail of the path you should have kept investing in.
All this shit takes vision honestly.
Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?
#6I always have to think about this when people say "buy more at small businesses!" Most small businesse owners I met were just as shitty as the ones of big businesses, they just weren't as smart as them.
There is also the issue that big companies are usually watched more and have regulatory teams making sure they follow rules. I believe in the UK that small businesses are far worse for minimum wage violations.
Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?
#7>> 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 oncology is particularly striking, it’s dealing with high numbers of deaths in a cohort where they are otherwise quite rare.
Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?
#8I always have to think about this when people say "buy more at small businesses!" Most small businesse owners I met were just as shitty as the ones of big businesses, they just weren't as smart as them.
There is also the issue that big companies are usually watched more and have regulatory teams making sure they follow rules. I believe in the UK that small businesses are far worse for minimum wage violations.
I have a few friends that work no-skill jobs and the stories they tell me...
Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?
#9I believe it means actually having to do work.
Re: What does “shitty job” mean in the low-skill, low-pay world?
#10Any job that doesn’t holistically build your skill set (antithetical to a career). As in, the money is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. If you stock Shampoo on a shelf, and you can’t flip that into something useful, it’s a worthless job. It’s better to get paid $0 being in the right field for a bit than actually being paid in the wrong path. It’s negative money unless you are using it to pivot into the right…
>It’s better to get paid $0 being in the right field for a bit than actually being paid in the wrong path.
I am going to make the guess that you either have a lot of money right now or have an amazing support system to help you because such options aren't available to everyone who is making sure their food budget is correct down to the penny.