7 ms·
> It somehow just baffles the crap out of me to see people want to, and be proud of, overworking / sitting in a car 2-3 hours a day / breathing polluted air / e
by arjie 10y ago
> It somehow just baffles the crap out of me to see people want to, and be proud of, overworking / sitting in a car 2-3 hours a day / breathing polluted air / eating prefab sandwiches or other junkfood. Meanwhile labelling any alternative as 'communism' Had a bit of that for the first few years of my working life. Never again
Wtf lol. America isn't necessarily like this. You just had a shit job.
- techsupporter 10y agoIt's much easier to say "portions of America aren't necessarily like this" while also saying "portions of America very much are like this." I know because I used to live in one of the latter parts and now I live in one of the former. Just because your experience doesn't match the experience of the person to whom you are replying doesn't mean that person's perception is wrong.
- sidlls 10y agoAmerica in aggregate most certainly is like that. There are cases where some or all of these things don't apply, but these aren't representative of a typical American worker's experience.
- estrabd 10y agoLOL Yeah. Sounds like bullshit to me.
- sctb 10y agoPlease comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tdb7893 10y agoI don't know. I've met tons of software engineers in the US that never work less than 45 hours a week in spite of having only 3 or 4 weeks of vacation a year. It seems kinda ridiculous to me
- spost 10y agoJunior dev here, but 3-4 weeks of vacation would be an improvement over my current 15 days...
- jrs235 10y ago15 days is 3 weeks.
- webo 10y ago15 days is 3 weeks.
- drjesusphd 10y ago15 days is 3 weeks of vacation...
- biznamespammer 10y agoFYI, 15 days is 3 weeks. You must not be a very good developer.
- dasil003 10y agoIsn't 15 days 3 weeks?
- ozgkrc 10y agoNot necessarily. In my current industry if you don't work for maximum weekly work hours, saturday will be count as a work day if you literally work or not. So a week vacation is counted 6 days. Ps. Non-US
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 10y agoDescribes the upper middle class DC suburb where I grew up to a T.
- cylinder 10y agothat's the culture of most of the country once you get out of Cali and northeast. also, why should good living standards only apply to those with "elite jobs?" it's a rich country.
- acchow 10y agoYeah, "America" is really a loose union of 50 states with diverse cultures and standards of living. San Francisco is not like Indianapolis, which is not like Fargo.
- typaux 10y agoyou're really stretching the definition of the word diverse, there.
- FabHK 10y agoYou're right that the USA are more diverse than often acknowledged. However, they are still sufficiently clustered and distinct from, say, northern Europe (also comprising multiple states with diverse cultures etc.) that the discussion here is meaningful.
- wil421 10y agoSeriously not all jobs are like these. Even part time jobs, it's up to you to find the right place to work.
- yequalsx 10y agoYour comment reinforces the point mvdwoord made. It ought not be up to a person to find the right job. It is up to society to enforce basic worker protections. Failure to do so leads to exploitation. The U.S. is not as nice a place to live as other rich nations.
- MichaelScarn 10y agoOut of curiosity, what are these other "rich nations" you are referring to? Always open to new places to look at besides the U.S.
- yequalsx 10y agoJapan, Canada, Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Lichtenstein, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Iceland, Findland.
- jblow 10y agoI know several people who have emigrated from some of the above countries to the USA, because running a small business is extremely painful (see for example France). If you think about companies as "us versus them", where "us" is workers and "them" is giant faceless monolithic corporations, then your idea that enforcing worker protections is a high priority might make sense. But most companies are small. I run a software company ... I am just a guy trying to get by, who now in addition to the normal-person's burden of making my life go, has to also make a company go, and that company provides jobs for 10-12 people. If you make my situation much harder than it is, the company would cease to exist or would downscale to 2-4 people, shedding the majority of the jobs. I am not a faceless corporation, I am just a guy who wants to get interesting things built. My little company is certainly not set up to "exploit workers", especially not on an industrial scale. Now, paraxoically, if you add a lot more friction to what needs to happen to run a business (regulation around hiring, firing, invoicing, etc), then people like me drop out, and then what you mostly have left is the larger companies who do want to exploit workers because that is just kind of how larger companies work. Plus then you lose all the innovation / energy / economic activity that comes from smaller companies. It maybe seems like not the best idea. (If it is, how come Silicon Valley is not in France?) As an investor, I fund a small French company and I have seen some of the crap they have to deal with just because they have a handful of employees. It makes me very glad I don't live in France.
- c0nducktr 10y agoA lot of people have shit jobs in America. That's their point.