5 ms·
Ok this article actually gripes me quite a lot due to its wrongful interpretation of what a blue and white collar job is. TBH I read it whilst I was on the toil
by gtvwill 10y ago
Ok this article actually gripes me quite a lot due to its wrongful interpretation of what a blue and white collar job is. TBH I read it whilst I was on the toilet so I'm going to go as far as to say it gave me the shits.
Unless we are going to start referring to or reclassifying typing on a keyboard for 8 hours a day as strenuous physical activity (which it is not), coding will never be a blue collar job. Blue collar jobs by definition are classed so by the large amounts and types of physical exertion required to perform them along with the location in which that job is undertaken (mostly outside or in workshops). White collar jobs on the other hand refers to work that is generally of a cognitive nature and doesn't require much in the way of physical labor and are generally done in offices(don't get me wrong blue collar jobs require cognitive processes too but they also involve PHYSICAL LABOR as a KEY component).
The article would be better if it had said "blue collar work is going to be replaced by white collar work as the pillar of civil middle-class society". The title of the article currently is just plain wrong unless they are incorrectly referring to white and blue collar as some form of reference to a class system/exclusivity system based upon how many workers perform a certain type of task (e.g white collar jobs only employ a small high earning portion of the population whilst blue collar jobs employs the masses on average incomes).
- mathgeek 10y agoThis is a very excellent point. Blue collar means manual labor, while white color jobs are anything professional. Heck, most of the developers I know rarely even wear a collared shirt to begin with.
- mythrwy 10y agoSo there are three classes of work: white collar, blue collar and no collar.
- majewsky 10y agoPlease don't imply that labor that is predominantly manual cannot be professional. A better dichotomy would be: Blue-collar means manual labor, and white-collar means mental labor (with a spectrum between both poles).
- mathgeek 10y agoI'm not implying anything... I'm going by the dictionary definition. Wikipedia link has good references, if you care to look them up. I agree that you can be a "professional" who does a lot of manual labor, but the blue/white collar dichotomy is rather established in definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designation_of_workers_by_collar_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designation_of_workers_by_coll... > A "white-collar worker" is a salaried professional...
- brett40324 10y agoThank you for making this point clear! I'd like to also add that white collar often means management positions to most real blue collar workers in the factories Ive worked in. Additional note: I remember a 'blue collar' robotics technician at an aluminum casting foundry that knew the actual machine code instructions for programming a legacy robot. Not assembly, binary op codes. He performed this type of work daily, while also turning a wrench, driving forklifts, sweeping the floor, etc. Id say there are 100s of hardcore, real blue collar programmers out there, but few white collars realize it.
- mgc092 10y agoThank you for writing this. I was about to write it myself to stop this madness. It seems to me that most people don't even have a clue about what software development is about. That's the only possible explanation for this classification as a blue collar job.
- singularity2001 10y agowhat really pissed you off is the pejorative stigma of "blue-collar jobs". there is a difference between the art of coding and operating an elevator
- SturgeonsLaw 10y agoAt the risk of sounding Marxist, there's only really two classes. If you have to trade your time and labour for money, you're working class. If your money makes money and you can live off that, you're capitalist class. We stratify working class into different sub groups (blue collar, white collar, professional, middle class, working poor, etc) to develop a sense of hierarchy, and it really rubs people the wrong way to be told that they're no better (or worse!) than the guy sweeping the floors.
- drivingmenuts 10y agoPerhaps coders should fall under the gray-collar classification. We don't do heavy lifting (or laundry). Maybe wrinkled-collar? (I'm so going to get downvoted for this, I know.)
- antisthenes 10y agoHow about beard-collar?
- majkinetor 10y agoThey probably think that JavaScript/HTML/CSS programming require no brain usage, hence blue collar job ;)