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Pyramids? Versailles? That is an absurd comparison — working conditions here are orders of magnitude better on every possible scale, he is getting paid good mon

by zaroth 9y ago

Pyramids? Versailles? That is an absurd comparison — working conditions here are orders of magnitude better on every possible scale, he is getting paid good money which he is taking to the bank, and we’re talking what 50 hours a week of work? Plenty of leisure time to keep learning and striving and bettering oneself. Healthy 24 year old male with a functioning brain complaining that life is hard work? Give me a break. The market provides a pretty damn diverse set of job opportunities. It turns out that shuffling boxes doesn’t require any intelligence and therefore doesn’t pay well. The problem is not that there are entry level jobs to shuffle boxes. Take those away and then this guy doesn’t just have a loser job, he has no job at all. Make Amazon pay humans more to shuffle boxes and they’ll just have more incentive to buy better robots. Pay humans what it’s worth to shuffle boxes and the smart and motivated ones won’t be shuffling boxes for very long at all. Because it turns out if you have a brain you decide it’s better to learn a marketable skill in your off time instead of playing video games. This guy has no need for current income. He says his expenses are about 100/mo. He should be working his 50 hours a week and then putting another 50 hours into coursework if he doesn’t like the job he’s got. His government benefits which he doesn’t want to lose would (or should) not lapse if he has 40 hours of work AND/OR accredited coursework. If he loses benefits for choosing schooling over labor then that is a policy that should be fixed. There are a lot of societal pressure which is putting 24 year old males in their parents basement working dead-end jobs and playing video games. But very very little of the blame sits on Amazon’s shoulders if you ask me. There are a lot of controversial social theories on the way we’ve been talking to and about adolescent men are driving them into these low self esteem self-defeating positions, and it’s certainly a growing demographic and a big problem. Look at labor participation rates for 20-30 yr old men, for example. Again, Amazon is providing a service here, not the villain of the story.

linkmotif 9y ago
I agree with this. You couldn't find a person who more strongly laments the toll that Netflix/video games have taken on my generation. I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by Netflix and video games. It's horrifying. I was just responding to the GP, who was wondering why Bezos doesn't just pay him more.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Trouble in previous generation it was television or comics let alone DnD turning kids into demon worshipers.
  - linkmotif 9y ago
    It's been a steady decline since after WWII. You joke by introducing comics, DnD. But all these things are symptomatic of a society in which young people are the products of leisure, of not knowing or caring where things come from or their value. Television in particular. A world of watchers, wasting their lives.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers" Socrates :-)
      - linkmotif 9y ago
        Good stuff :)
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- UncleEntity 9y ago
  I know, right? Makes the WWI peeps (who literally lost a generation) problems pale in comparison.
  - linkmotif 9y ago
    I wasn’t kidding. Not sure what’s worse, WWI or the leisure industrial complex. All these gamers might as well be dead. They don’t do anything, they have no skills, they won’t reproduce.
fogzen 9y ago
Sure, he could have it worse in that he could be like many others in his position but without parental support. How would he be able to work 50 hours a week and physically go to school 50 hours a week? Amazon controls his hours not him. School controls course hours not him. School also doesn't necessarily lead to a better job. It also costs money. If he wasn't living at home it would cost at least the same amount he's making from Amazon. What do you do for a living, may I ask? Do you have a college education in your field of work? Who paid for it? Who paid your rent, food, and other expenses while you attended school?
- zaroth 9y ago
  I worked full time, while living in an apartment (which I shared with 2 other people) since I was 18. From 19-25 I took classes, about half of them online and the other half on campus — since at the time it wasn’t possible to earn a true Bachelors degree fully online. My company paid for a portion of my tuition, the rest I paid myself as I went. A semester of courses cost, by my recollection, about $10k. But that would be regardless of if you took 3, 4, or 5 classes. So naturally I went to the Dean and got special permission to take 6 classes per semester. Combined with transferring half my credits from dirt cheap online classes I graduated after only paying for 4 semesters, about $50k total, $20k of which was expensed on the corporate card, all spread over 5-6 years. My job at the time was technically an “internship” at Cisco Systems, paid $14/hour. I would typically log about 80 a week though, and it was all time-and-a-half after 40 and double-time after 60 hours a week, so effective pay was higher. My GPA was shit, but it didn’t matter. No one has ever asked, and I got the degree. The amount of learning from being in the labs at Cisco working with core routers and coding IOS dwarfed anything I learned at college anyway. Everyone told me I needed the diploma. But since then I’ve never had to so much as write a resume, after that first fluff piece I wrote to get into Cisco. In my case the degree was a massive waste of time and money, but so it goes. Obviously I was massively lucky and privlidged to get into Cisco at 18, but staying there full time for several years and having them pay part of my tuition was because I worked my ass off for that $14/hr and was one of the most productive members of my team. By the time I left they had all but shut down the internship program and HR was afraid I was going to sue them for misclassifying me, but I was very happy to have had the opportunity.
- 9y ago

by zaroth 9y ago

linkmotif 9y ago

I agree with this. You couldn't find a person who more strongly laments the toll that Netflix/video games have taken on my generation. I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by Netflix and video games. It's horrifying. I was just responding to the GP, who was wondering why Bezos doesn't just pay him more.

walshemj 9y ago
Trouble in previous generation it was television or comics let alone DnD turning kids into demon worshipers.
- linkmotif 9y ago
  It's been a steady decline since after WWII. You joke by introducing comics, DnD. But all these things are symptomatic of a society in which young people are the products of leisure, of not knowing or caring where things come from or their value. Television in particular. A world of watchers, wasting their lives.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers" Socrates :-)
    - linkmotif 9y ago
      Good stuff :)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
UncleEntity 9y ago
I know, right? Makes the WWI peeps (who literally lost a generation) problems pale in comparison.
- linkmotif 9y ago
  I wasn’t kidding. Not sure what’s worse, WWI or the leisure industrial complex. All these gamers might as well be dead. They don’t do anything, they have no skills, they won’t reproduce.

fogzen 9y ago

Sure, he could have it worse in that he could be like many others in his position but without parental support. How would he be able to work 50 hours a week and physically go to school 50 hours a week? Amazon controls his hours not him. School controls course hours not him. School also doesn't necessarily lead to a better job. It also costs money. If he wasn't living at home it would cost at least the same amount he's making from Amazon. What do you do for a living, may I ask? Do you have a college education in your field of work? Who paid for it? Who paid your rent, food, and other expenses while you attended school?

zaroth 9y ago
I worked full time, while living in an apartment (which I shared with 2 other people) since I was 18. From 19-25 I took classes, about half of them online and the other half on campus — since at the time it wasn’t possible to earn a true Bachelors degree fully online. My company paid for a portion of my tuition, the rest I paid myself as I went. A semester of courses cost, by my recollection, about $10k. But that would be regardless of if you took 3, 4, or 5 classes. So naturally I went to the Dean and got special permission to take 6 classes per semester. Combined with transferring half my credits from dirt cheap online classes I graduated after only paying for 4 semesters, about $50k total, $20k of which was expensed on the corporate card, all spread over 5-6 years. My job at the time was technically an “internship” at Cisco Systems, paid $14/hour. I would typically log about 80 a week though, and it was all time-and-a-half after 40 and double-time after 60 hours a week, so effective pay was higher. My GPA was shit, but it didn’t matter. No one has ever asked, and I got the degree. The amount of learning from being in the labs at Cisco working with core routers and coding IOS dwarfed anything I learned at college anyway. Everyone told me I needed the diploma. But since then I’ve never had to so much as write a resume, after that first fluff piece I wrote to get into Cisco. In my case the degree was a massive waste of time and money, but so it goes. Obviously I was massively lucky and privlidged to get into Cisco at 18, but staying there full time for several years and having them pay part of my tuition was because I worked my ass off for that $14/hr and was one of the most productive members of my team. By the time I left they had all but shut down the internship program and HR was afraid I was going to sue them for misclassifying me, but I was very happy to have had the opportunity.
9y ago