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The psychology of relative status garners a lot of attention to understand inequality. Of course there is backlash to front-of-house folks seeing their relative

The psychology of relative status garners a lot of attention to understand inequality. Of course there is backlash to front-of-house folks seeing their relative status decrease, despite the fact that nothing has changed for them. A difficult, but crucial adaptation needs to happen in a wide variety of industries: The people working the less glamorous, less visible, but equally crucial roles in operating these businesses should have been treated as peers / relative equals all along. The converse is also true in software engineering. Questions like whether programming is "more difficult" than graphic design are largely irrelevant. Humans will always be playing status games, but denigrating labor based on some perceived skill level is a habit we should actively be trying to get rid of. Meanwhile... > There is a knock-on effect although depending on the spread it might be small. Can you provide more specific detail where knock-on effects like this have been observed? It's nearly guaranteed that a decrease on low end rents will be vanishingly small. Margins can only go so low, which is why developers are attracted to luxury projects in the first place. (Likewise, a million dollar paycut from a CEO can only raise 480 person-hour-dollars in wages. But those margins matter a hell of a lot more for the line worker's lifestyle than upper management's.)

zeveb 9y ago
> Of course there is backlash to front-of-house folks seeing their relative status decrease, despite the fact that nothing has changed for them. Well, their purchasing power is about to go down because when they go out to eat they're going to be paying for $15/hr dishwashers instead of $12/hr dishwashers. > A difficult, but crucial adaptation needs to happen in a wide variety of industries: The people working the less glamorous, less visible, but equally crucial roles in operating these businesses should have been treated as peers / relative equals all along. But they're not really. A dishwasher needs to be able to scrub dishes, load & unload a mechanical dishwasher, show up more-or-less on time, not get into fights with the other employees — that's about it (incidentally, I know whereof I speak: my first job was washing dishes). The front-of-house staff need to speak the local language, be polite & friendly to customers, have good memories, have attention to detail, be able to manage relatively complex situations, be reliable &c. It's a very different — and rarer — skillset. You don't even really need to have a functional IQ to be a successful dishwasher; you need to be reasonably sociable & quick on your feet to be a successful waiter or maître d'hôtel. It's eminently reasonable and fair that a job anyone can do will pay less than a job fewer people can do.
- dvanduzer 9y ago
  > It's eminently reasonable and fair that a job anyone can do will pay less than a job fewer people can do. No, it isn't. You don't have to agree in any substantial way with anything else Marx says, to recognize that "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is eminently reasonable and fair. Everything you're saying to glorify front-of-house roles is also true of back-of-house roles. True, the best possible server in a restaurant can improve the bottom line X% more than the best possible dishwasher can. But comparing the worst possible dishwasher with the worst possible server is also important. Can you say with any confidence which "problem employee" will have a larger negative effect on the bottom line? Probably not. What if it's just a slightly below average dishwasher? What if the server is "only" sexually harassing coworkers a little bit? Gauging the range of human performance by the wages they use for sustenance is stupid, but apparently necessary. > Well, their purchasing power is about to go down because when they go out to eat they're going to be paying for $15/hr dishwashers instead of $12/hr dishwashers. Again, a claim missing some crucial substance. How much is their purchasing power going to go down? Will the price of a hamburger or an apron really go up more than a couple of pennies?
  - Clanan 9y ago
    That's a whole lot of stretching to justify the communist approach. Are you really arguing that a dishwasher is worth just as much as a server? I don't think any businessperson will agree with you. You might be more successful by just arguing that value shouldn't be tied to wages (which is what your quote is really pushing.)
    - dvanduzer 9y ago
      It is interesting that you are gauging my "success" on whether my comment is changing minds about economic theory. Please consider that I explicitly excluded anything else Marx wrote from assent, to reduce the likelihood that anyone would mistake my argument for Fully Automated Luxury Communism or whatever the kids are calling it these days. I am explicitly arguing that value and wages are not tied to each other, today, with examples. Generally speaking, we treat the value of labor in accord with the cost of developing a skill. Whether by correlation or accident, this seems to mean we dramatically undervalue softer skills involved in working with other people. (NB: This is related to, but very different than the customer service face front-of-house puts on.) There are kitchens where the entire morale of the restaurant staff rests on the good natured attitude of the dishwasher. That person leaves, and soon afterwards, everybody hates working there, and nobody can figure out why. I think any sane businessperson knows this, and does agree with me. Most businesspersons also know that everyone in a restaurant is completely replaceable. Right?

zeveb 9y ago

> Of course there is backlash to front-of-house folks seeing their relative status decrease, despite the fact that nothing has changed for them. Well, their purchasing power is about to go down because when they go out to eat they're going to be paying for $15/hr dishwashers instead of $12/hr dishwashers. > A difficult, but crucial adaptation needs to happen in a wide variety of industries: The people working the less glamorous, less visible, but equally crucial roles in operating these businesses should have been treated as peers / relative equals all along. But they're not really. A dishwasher needs to be able to scrub dishes, load & unload a mechanical dishwasher, show up more-or-less on time, not get into fights with the other employees — that's about it (incidentally, I know whereof I speak: my first job was washing dishes). The front-of-house staff need to speak the local language, be polite & friendly to customers, have good memories, have attention to detail, be able to manage relatively complex situations, be reliable &c. It's a very different — and rarer — skillset. You don't even really need to have a functional IQ to be a successful dishwasher; you need to be reasonably sociable & quick on your feet to be a successful waiter or maître d'hôtel. It's eminently reasonable and fair that a job anyone can do will pay less than a job fewer people can do.

dvanduzer 9y ago
> It's eminently reasonable and fair that a job anyone can do will pay less than a job fewer people can do. No, it isn't. You don't have to agree in any substantial way with anything else Marx says, to recognize that "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is eminently reasonable and fair. Everything you're saying to glorify front-of-house roles is also true of back-of-house roles. True, the best possible server in a restaurant can improve the bottom line X% more than the best possible dishwasher can. But comparing the worst possible dishwasher with the worst possible server is also important. Can you say with any confidence which "problem employee" will have a larger negative effect on the bottom line? Probably not. What if it's just a slightly below average dishwasher? What if the server is "only" sexually harassing coworkers a little bit? Gauging the range of human performance by the wages they use for sustenance is stupid, but apparently necessary. > Well, their purchasing power is about to go down because when they go out to eat they're going to be paying for $15/hr dishwashers instead of $12/hr dishwashers. Again, a claim missing some crucial substance. How much is their purchasing power going to go down? Will the price of a hamburger or an apron really go up more than a couple of pennies?
- Clanan 9y ago
  That's a whole lot of stretching to justify the communist approach. Are you really arguing that a dishwasher is worth just as much as a server? I don't think any businessperson will agree with you. You might be more successful by just arguing that value shouldn't be tied to wages (which is what your quote is really pushing.)
  - dvanduzer 9y ago
    It is interesting that you are gauging my "success" on whether my comment is changing minds about economic theory. Please consider that I explicitly excluded anything else Marx wrote from assent, to reduce the likelihood that anyone would mistake my argument for Fully Automated Luxury Communism or whatever the kids are calling it these days. I am explicitly arguing that value and wages are not tied to each other, today, with examples. Generally speaking, we treat the value of labor in accord with the cost of developing a skill. Whether by correlation or accident, this seems to mean we dramatically undervalue softer skills involved in working with other people. (NB: This is related to, but very different than the customer service face front-of-house puts on.) There are kitchens where the entire morale of the restaurant staff rests on the good natured attitude of the dishwasher. That person leaves, and soon afterwards, everybody hates working there, and nobody can figure out why. I think any sane businessperson knows this, and does agree with me. Most businesspersons also know that everyone in a restaurant is completely replaceable. Right?