I’m a software developer. My old roomie is a truck driver. I’m devastated he makes almost as much as I do.
He has to drive a truck 5 days a week the entire year, no matter the weather. He deals with accidents, annoying customers, breakdowns, tight spaces, heavy goods. Workdays often drag out, and sometimes he didn’t manage to get home and had to sleep in the truck or at a motel. People are dependant on his work, if his truck doesn’t arrive, a store might not get food, and the attached community will suffer. He takes half an hour to commute to work.
I work from home. I have a few set meetings daily, but I schedule my time on my own. Three times a week I take some extra time to go for a run through the forest with my dog. I’m safe, my bed is always nearby. My commute is the thirty seconds it takes to crawl into clothes and to my office. If I miss my work we at worst have to delay a product launch by a little.
I’m happy with my pay, no doubt, and I wouldn’t want a pay cut. My friend deserves much more though. It’s bananas to me that he doesn’t catch up with me despite all the overtime and such. It’s incredibly unfair.
Driving is the easy part. Finding a bathroom at 4 am on Sunday. Taking a break without someone asking you a question. Just seeing your family with energy after a 12 hour day. That’s where trucking sucks.
I was not CDL driving but I hauled New York Times from the print site on one side of Ohio to a distribution hub on the other side. I spent a lot of hours on the road 6 days a week. You aren’t kidding about trying to find a restroom at night and all the hassles from construction, other drivers, detours, ect. If it weren’t for highway rest areas and truck stops, there would be basically nothing for drivers at night.
I always had an overnight bag with me, but thankfully never had to use it. Nothing but respect for drivers, the nation runs on their backs, we really should be taking better care of them.
I’ve heard jr really takes a toll on your body over time. That’s true with so many jobs that are low-paid. It’s crazy to me watching people swing pick axes in the sun for shit wages.
The truck driver’s job is much harder to do day in and day out. It’s also much more necessary. However, it’s also significantly easier to train a truck driver than it is to train developers and there’s no infinite upside potential for delivery like there is with software projects in some cases (unicorn startups) and there are so many other expenses to run a delivery company that a software company might not have that they need to run on pretty thin margins, otherwise we’re all paying more for all of our food.
First job where I worked as a dev, they took on 3 of us on the same time, all entry-level. One of us was a physicist who was laid off by the university since the government reduced spending on academia. Absolutely an intelligent person. Didn’t last past the probationary period, he just didn’t get things naturally on his own, he needed a lot of guidance. Over the years I’ve seen that nearly half the people hired into entry-level roles don’t learn to become independent enough by the end of their probationary period to be retained after it. Sometimes it’s seniors too, they’ve worked at a place that just cranks out very similar solutions day in and day out (e.g only done frontend and only with one framework, or only a bunch of CRUD applications in one single tech stack) for like 7 or 8 years, that place has a downturn and then they apply for a job elsewhere and they just don’t adapt.
Not everyone’s cut out to be a truck driver either, but once someone has learned to drive trucks, they can drive trucks for another company too. Whether your new employee starts pulling in profit on the first week or you need 4 months to determine if there’s a decent chance of them being a net benefit by the end of the first year has a lot of bearing on how badly you want to retain your existing talent.
Anyway, in my country only the top talent at a couple of companies gets paid significantly more than truck drivers. A junior developer might make less than someone who just started driving a truck. Places like the US just have highly inflated salaries for devs because they’re expected to work in high cost of living cities and compete like crazy for their jobs.
Exactly my feelings. Software dev, get paid more than many people who actually keep others alive, healthy, educated and comfortable. This is not how things should be
I’m in software also and it very seriously bothers me that I earn about what any 10 of my kids’ teachers do.
And the union would have more justification for negotiating a new even higher wage then they currently have.
If a bunch of burger flippers started making what I make I would demand a raise. If my raise was denied I’d go get a job as a burger flipper and probably be a lot less stressed out than I am currently.
If fast-food workers began earning wages comparable to electricians, I wouldn’t necessarily expect electricians to become poorer. I’d expect employers who depend on skilled labor to increase compensation to remain competitive. The question then becomes whether those higher labor costs come from reduced profits, increased prices, greater productivity, or some combination of all three.
Anyway, it is better for all workers.
what you’d actually see is increased unemployment, because that’s the most effective regulator of salaries. the system requires a mass of people without jobs in order to balance itself.
the system requires a mass of people without jobs in order to balance itself.
I don’t know where you got this idea, it seems more like the system requires desperate people and lack of jobs does help in causing that. However, fuck the system
it’s pretty simple; given offers of two identical jobs with different benefits, you’d pick the better one. if there isn’t enough people to fill all open positions, employers need to compete by raising benefits. in short, price follows demand. the more people that are looking for jobs, the lower employers can push salaries and still hire someone.
when neolibs campaign on how “everyone should have a job” and use that as an excuse to cut unemployment benefits, that’s them trying to distract from the fact that unemployment is necessary for the system they built to function. as unemployment approaches zero, salaries approach infinity.
so yeah, fuck that system.
A few percent of job seekers as structural unemployment supports a healthy economy where people change jobs and careers to match changes in labor needs.
That doesn’t mean an increase in minimum wage increases unemployment. There are hundreds of academic studies investigating that question, and it seems the increased economic activity of low-income people having more money generates enough new jobs to at least balance whatever job cuts happen due to the higher labor costs (low-income people tend to spend all their money, so they are more effective agents of short term economic stimulus than higher-income households that tend to save some of it).
i was more thinking the other way round, that an increase in unemployment decreases wages.
Increased unemployment can lead to decreased wages, depending on other factors. I had read your post above as claiming a multipart chain of higher minimum wage -> increased unemployment -> decreased wages, and my post was intended to address the first link (higher minimum wage -> increased unemployment), not the second.
i don’t think i even made the first claim, at least i didn’t intend to.
Fast food work is pretty stressful, IMO.
It can be but it’s a different kind than what I’m dealing with though. It’s repetitive busy work and stupid scheduling bullshit vs. big projects that go on for months with deadlines and coordination between vendors and half a dozen internal teams where nobody wants to take ownership of anything. Fast food work never kept me up at night.
This. Having homework is stressful. Being responsible for the uptime of systems and the inevitability of getting calls in the middle of the night is stressful. Having stuff follow you home is a different kind of added stress.
Get a union job, and you won’t have to take your work home either
We take our work home because we’re thinking about the problems and how to solve them all the time, some of my best solutions came to me in the shower.
I have a home lab and I often carry what I learn from my lab to work, I’m not working my job when I’m working on my lab, but there mental overlap is there.
I can’t imagine I’ll be solving many burger flipping problems in the shower.
Fair enough, if that works for you.
I enjoy the work/life balance too much, and love being able to leave my work at work. And being in a union makes that a reality for me.
I don’t know how being in a union would stop my brain from thinking about a problem I haven’t solved in my work day… It’s not my employer dictating it, it’s my brain.
No unions in my field as far as I’m aware.
Be the change you want to see in the world
If the floor were higher for everyone, I wouldn’t see a problem with some jobs earning more necessarily. What you’re describing will probably always be with us: some work is just harder or less pleasant.
Yes, to be clear I’m saying the floor being raised would be a benefit to me and others like me as well. Either I make more money or I can go to a less stressful job without losing income. Regardless of if it benefits me or not everyone should make a living wage for a full days work.
It’s kind of sad that people are so motivated by jealousy. Like why would I care if other people have it better?
kids are indoctrinated from school to seek out “high skill” jobs and look down on anyone making less
I teach my kids to seek out high skill, high paying jobs and not look down on anyone. But even that is not a solution.
I think jealousy gets a bad rap. It tells you what you want, and what you personally or society could work toward.
Jealousy and envy are not the same thing, although the nuance is subtle. What you’re talking about is closer to envy. You can be envious of something or someone without the hostility that turns it into jealousy.
I disagree. I believe that you choose for it to be envy or jealousy by your definition.
It’s not my definition. That is the subtle difference between the two words. But, most people use both words for the same thing, and most people only use the word jealousy for both things.
Merriam Webster has an interesting paragraph on the page for jealousy about it: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jealousy
You can also check the definitions of jealous and envious yourself, you’ll see that one is defined through hostility of some sort.
The nuance is usually clear through context no matter which word you use, though. But I think that when you use it in a generic manner like you did, using the right word is best.
Again, both words are responses to the emotion and a choice.
No, they stem from different emotions.
Don’t blow their mind by pointing out how emotions take objects and how that scuttles their position.
What my friend was conveying is that envy is the want for something–usually that another has–and jealousy is the fear of losing something that one already has.
The interchangeable usage, e.g. by teenagers, based on a vague understanding is just that (for adults it crystalizes into something normative though they’re probably unaware of it, ego defense mechanisms lol).
And what I’m saying is, that’s a choice.
Seeing what someone else has and taking that as information to then decide what you want is not jealousy. Jealousy is seeing what someone else has and hating them for it. It deserves a bad rap.
You’re talking about ambition, or something else.
Everyone loves Nietche but no one is actually living Nietche. Sure it’s a useful tool if you stop, analyze this emotion and built from it but how many people are actually capable of this in practice? Instead people just get captured by the emotion and never progress.
I don’t think pop culture will ever view jealousy as a positive emotion until we collectively learn emotions.
You gotta start somewhere.
Crabs in a bucket
The crab will legit only escape and live if it gets enough other crabs under it to reach the rim of the bucket. I guess you’re saying people act like that even when they don’t need to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
The metaphor is derived from anecdotal claims about the behavior of crabs contained in an open bucket: if a crab starts to climb out,[3] it will be pulled back in by the others, ensuring the group’s collective demise.[4][5][6]
Ohhhhhh
👍
Capitalism pretends to be positive sum, but it trains us all to act as if society is a zero sum game.
Recently a big game developer announced the end of development on a long running game. They announced they’re doing one more major release and that’s it. When people saw what’s coming in the last release there was a lot of excitement because they were delivering a lot of things people had asked for.
Some said “awesome!”
Some said “you mean they could have done all this at any time and didn’t?!!”
It’s like when you share some information with someone and they immediately say “why disnt you tell me!!”
Some people’s glass will always be half empty no matter what.
I don’t think it is fair for a person dedicating years of life towards higher education and becoming a professional to earn the same as someone who doesn’t. Its not jealousy, its just unfair. If earnings are flat, what motivates someone from getting educated and growing as a person?
Lots of people get degrees in lower-earning fields because they value working on things that are interesting or meaningful to them more than they value the income tradeoff. Growing as a person is its own reward.
The US was build on the “fuck you I got mine” mentality.
If you consider the monarchies it came from, this was a big improvement. To even open up the possibility of someone “getting theirs” without any birthright to it was a revelation in its time. But now we’re ready for the next thing.
Anybody that’s offended by burger flippers making as much as them should be pointing that anger in the right direction. Towards their employer.
When the minimum wage was instituted, the intention was one full-time worker would be able to support the family of four suburban lifestyle. They’ve been gaslighting us for a long time.
No work is less valuable than others.
all work is equal
I show the same respect to any workers, but, some work is much less specialized.
I wouldn’t say a vibe coder is as valuable as a software developer as an example
Also, influencers… Generally not useful at all, and are just trying to score freebies…
Entertainers are valuable and skilled workers. They don’t want to have to advertise to make ends meet, that’s just how our economy is right now.
I consider influencers to be part of the advertisement industry.
Well, vibe coding isn’t working. That’s just letting the machine think for you.
However, even non specialized work is essential. Burger flippers, street cleaners, bus drivers, librarians… They may not have a career as long and specialized as a doctor’s, but they’re still essential people, and their work should be valued.
Librarian is a job requiring a masters degree. Library clerks don’t need formal training however. Bus drivers also require a CDL which I would argue also makes it skilled labor. I wouldn’t be surprised if street cleaners also need one.
But yes, many jobs are essential for our society that don’t require certifications, education, or formal training. Though I will say that some jobs are more necessary than others. There are both bullshit jobs and jobs where while the labor is real, the benefits of it to society are less than the value produced by it.
What about people who manufacture cigarettes?
Or gambling companies?
I can think of many jobs society can safely get rid of
The guy flipping burgers is essential and people need to eat.
“News reporters” at sky news… not essential
I think work that requires you to study and learn and experience for ages should be paid higher than work you can do without prior experience or know-how.
But you know, reasonably higher. Like 3x at most.
I don’t care much about pay differences, as long as everybody can afford to live comfortably and nobody can afford to buy politicians.
Fair enough
This is my stance. If you’re working full time you should get a living wage. If you’ve got more experience or have learned more specialized skills then you should get more on top of that baseline living wage. I think 3x is less than what I would set the cap as but when I say that I’m thinking of people with highly specific technical skills or medical professionals, not CEOs. 3x is a fine cap for them.
i mean i really believe that in general, but some people really do provide unique services. it’s hard to reconcile the two concepts especially because people are allowed their contradictions so whatever
…
Hell yeah! Guard labor is real labor! FOP unions are real unions! Solidarity with the guys who tear gas you!
What about ICE?
It was a comment of what society should be rather than what it is. Ofcourse there are toxic jobs in todays capitalist system. Work that cause over production, that helps oil companies, washes brands, makes us more dependent on cars or cause mass dehumanization.
In an ideal society we dont have ICE officers. We dont have toxic work. We just have work depending on whats meeded.
The ONLY risk of a minimum wage or Living Wage is that companies that highly skilled workers earning the same might move to less skilled jobs. For this, the only rational action is to pay your skilled workers accordingly. FAIR PAY is not difficult when an executive team earn millions or billions.
Also, Tax Wealth, Not Work.
FAIR PAY is difficult when the exec team funnels the money to themselves. Funding of their raises/bonuses shouldn’t be at the expense of ours
Solidarity!
rAmen, comrade! ✊🏼
Intentional or not, packed ramen is great whatever your wealth level
All us unemployed IT folks should infiltrate all the local jobs that are considered minimum wage and unionize them all.
I’m retired from a union IT job with a college. And now that I’ve got mine, I will go to the wall to help Gen Z and Alpha get theirs too.
THIS is why the right is so afraid of union culture
Well I come from a long line of bucket crabs
If the rising floor makes things cramped, it is time to raise the roof not break the floor.
Or probably my favorite political quote ever for its combination of both ideology, practicality, AND brevity:
We all do well when we ALL do well
(Paul Wellstone, emphasis mine)
A rising tide lifts all boats.
I’m an EE with utility clients. If a lineman/wireman started making the same as me, I would feel the same way.
All the money is sucked out by equity holders.
This economy makes me think of Hamilton’s “Dragon”, where everyone sank most of their paycheck back into the company to get a high enough “stake”, to even get a chance at a meaningful job, at said company.
I’m not even sure when this good little Republican became radicalized. I’ve done pretty well for myself and yet I would happily watch it all burn down to the fucking ground if it meant everyone actually got a meaningful standard of living and healthcare.
The fact that they managed to convince the US that people working a fast food job don’t deserve a living wage while CEOS are making millions to billions is utterly insane.
I remember all the conversations I’ve had that started with the other person saying, “Can you believe so-and-so gets paid $x million dollars for playing [sport]?!?” and ended quickly with me asking, “Can you believe the owner makes $X million dollars for doing NOTHING”?
While inflated CEO pay is certainly outrageous, it’s the people who own the businesses that we should reserve our most vitriolic hate for. After all, at least CEOs do work that marginally contributes to the running of enterprises. Shareholders do nothing except siphon profit away from the people who create it. Not saying CEOs are good, but let’s not get shortsighted here: the entire system of private ownership of the means of production is what needs to change for things to get better.
