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You could say the same thing about any non-glamorous/lucrative position. "Garbagemen make the world go round. Without them, we would drown in our own filth" "
by whack 10y ago
You could say the same thing about any non-glamorous/lucrative position.
"Garbagemen make the world go round. Without them, we would drown in our own filth"
"Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home"
"Auto mechanics make the world go round. Without them, we would have no way of getting places"
Ultimately, all such arguments are inane and pointless because every single job that exists in society
A) is important to the people paying for it
B) has wages that are based on both the importance of the job and how easy it is to find someone capable of doing it
C) The idea of glamorizing any job, and allowing yourself to be influenced by a job's glamor-rating, is just superficial drivel. Don't judge yourself or others by the job listed on their business card. If you feel the need to judge someone at all, judge them by the impact that they, as an individual, are making in the world.
- draw_down 10y agoThe glamor is fake, the dollars are real. (OK, fine the dollars aren't real either, but what they can buy is.)
- Radim 10y agoI subscribe to the sentiment! As a semi-philosophical aside: in what capacity are dollars not real, but the things you can buy with them are? Since everything seems to be a means to an end, from glamour (gets you money), to money (gets you food) to food (provides energy to your cells) to species (reproduction, evolution) to more efficient use of resources, all accelerating the universal march toward the heat death of the universe. At which point do things in this optimization chain become "real"? What makes a specific segment "not real"?
- vacri 10y agoI think you overestimate both the market saturation and lucrativeness of nannies.
- Trundle 10y agoThey didn't say anything about how much nannies make.
- dismantlethesun 10y ago> "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" For my entry to Improbable Ideas day.... why don't we bring children to work? After they're no longer infants, its' plausible for children to simply run around the office, sitting quietly in the same rooms as their parents, and perhaps doing odd-jobs. It'd require a more holistic attitude to education than is presently allowed, but it is certainly possible to implement.
- stonogo 10y ago> sitting quietly ...what does this mean? Is this something that children can do?
- somethingsimple 10y agoOf course. Both my wife and I have taken our kid to our respective offices and it was fine. She just sat there drawing and playing on her tablet. This was when she was 6-7 years old. Not all kids are brats.
- prawn 10y agoNot all kids are 6-7 years old. And I assume you're talking about occasional visits rather than a daily replacement for childcare or a nanny.
- bigtunacan 10y agoAnd not all kids are content with sitting inactive, quietly, in a chair for 8+ hours. The fact that they are energetic, inquisitive, and have a need for attention from their parents does not make them "brats".
- hueving 10y agoAre you drugging your children? What are you doing to suck the energy out of them that they can sit in an office for hours without recess to run?
- bryanrasmussen 10y ago
- justicezyx 10y agoI think there is a major flaw in the analogy. Basically, maintenance of complex systems or assets, are intellectually demanding tasks. All your examples, however, are completely the opposite. I am not saying that the jobs do not require skills, it's just that these skills are not that valuable. Also maintainer adds value in the positive way. Where all your example is to prevent value loss. The 2 are fundamentally different. Contrary to common knowledge, maintainer is not needed to make the system running, if nothing changes. Maintainer is necessary to make the system running in changing environment. Real-world software or any valuable assets require change to keep up with the world surrounding it. A great mental bias is to implicitly think maintenance is about "keep it running", where at the same time conveniently omit the part about changing environment.
- varjag 10y ago> Basically, maintenance of complex systems or assets, are intellectually demanding tasks. Not as hard as making those systems in the first place. > I am not saying that the jobs do not require skills, it's just that these skills are not that valuable. I'm not convinced that an average network engineer does a more challenging (or valuable) job than an average car mechanic.
- pjc50 10y agoIt's often easier to build a system than it is to maintain it, because you have a free choice across the solution space and you don't have to maintain any existing commitments. Maintenance (physical or virtual) can often be made extremely difficult or expensive because of the need to avoid disrupting working systems, and the need to integrate with what's already there.
- somecallitblues 10y agoYou've never had to add a new small feature to a highly customized Wordpress site someone else built I think.
- varjag 10y ago
- jansho 10y agoYes all roles are important. If elephants get wiped out, there will be some consequences. If insects or algae gets wiped out, the world is apocalyptically screwed.
- kk_cz 10y agoyet you are comparing the impact of wiping out two species of mammals with possible impact of all insects or algae being gone...
- jansho 10y agoWell no the point is that while all roles are important, some are so foundational that if they break down, the whole system breaks down. Innovation doesn't happen all the time, and it needn't to, as long as the system is stable and works for everyone (in theory.) We still need it when it's required, otherwise maintainers are indeed honourable roles. (Here's one source for my counter-analogy: http://www.livescience.com/52752-what-if-all-insects-died.html http://www.livescience.com/52752-what-if-all-insects-died.ht... )