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>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in

>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while holding each other's calloused hands at the alter. Sure, but the money for that has to come from somewhere. Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money, and if "working-class, blue-collar" people identify with the economic system which designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, I'm not sure how much I can do about that.

PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
To clarify, the people working by staring at computers are also seen as a cost to be repressed and not a service to be rewarded. Supply and demand has made the cost resistant to repression up til now, but the economic system is hard at work finding out how to change that. One might even go so far as to postulate if the IT industries push to get more people into IT is so that labor supply goes up leading to labor costs going down.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pm90 9y ago
  > One might even go so far as to postulate if the IT industries push to get more people into IT is so that labor supply goes up leading to labor costs going down. This has been discussed in great detail, especially here on HN. The consensus seems to be that even if you increase the supply by a lot, the nature of Software Engineering, its inherent complexity will restrict the supply of the highly skilled workers. This theory seems to have held out in the Indian/Chinese labor markets; but its possible there are other systemic reason for that. Meanwhile the demand for Technology skills keeps increasing rapidly. Perhaps in the next economic bust there will be a much-delayed correction. The future does look pretty rosy for Software Engineers at the present time.
  - intended 9y ago
    A critical aspect of that is the distribution of engineering skill is bimodal, if not multi modal. People want a lot of top end coders. The lower and middle, far less so. Lumping all comp sci labor into one skill and ability bracket prevents nuanced understanding.
- kwoff 9y ago
  I also wonder if, in some ways, devops (I mean the "idea", not the engineers themselves) could be commoditizing IT people (not implying there's some conspiracy), blurring the distinction between devs and sysadmins in particular.
  - CodeCube 9y ago
    Well you could say the same about the entirety of "the cloud" ... no need to pay a team of sysadmins to manage, deploy, and maintain a data center, when you can easily provision a VM in seconds, or even better, use a SaaS offering so you don't even have to worry about applying patches and stuff ;)
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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cat199 9y ago
> with the economic system which designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, yes, because this totally is specific to working class / blue collar jobs. Everyone in the white collar bourgeoisie is clearly well represented and valued across all industries and in all locations in the USA. Further, desk work, and $5 lattes should always viewed as a reward with no variations in personal preference, those that do not agree are simply uneducated.
SquirrelOnFire 9y ago
>Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money, and if "working-class, blue-collar" people identify with the economic system which designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, I'm not sure how much I can do about that. Maybe by pointing to blue collar work that still pays well. A buddy of mine is an auto mechanic and is the sole income earner for his family. They do just fine in St Louis (another city like Detroit and Pitt). Another friend of mine is a pipe fitter for gas pipelines who works 3-6 months a year and earns ~150-200K depending on contracts. Spends the rest of the year surfing and diving. Trades do, in fact, make money. Pay attention to how much you spend next time you call a plumber.
- HankB99 9y ago
  Here's what the BLS has to say about that. https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm I think about this when people post about how you don;t really need a college degree, you just need a trade. I have no doubt that some tradesmen do very well but I doubt they represent the entire class of workers. I do wonder what the numbers would look like if trained tradesmen (and women) were compared based on time spent learning (e.g. years of apprenticeship vs. years of college.)
- biocomputation 9y ago
  I totally agree. My parents own a 'cabin' in a development in the mountains, and the biggest cabin in the development -by far- is owned by a a plumber. He has done very well, and I doubt he writes much, if any, code.
  - girvo 9y ago
    You’d be surprised! My dad is a builder, and programs his own utility software (in Access and other systems) to make his life easier (like work diaries, log books and so on)
    - biocomputation 9y ago
      Well put! I shouldn't assume.
daxorid 9y ago
I'm old enough to remember when a significant part of the "dream of the Internet" was that knowledge workers could work anywhere with an ISP. Obviously that dream was not widely realized, but there are some employers that will allow you to write code from the countryside.
- CodeCube 9y ago
  Remote working is becoming more and more accepted as time goes on, and collaboration technologies improve. Video chat is by far one of the most useful things about being on a remote team, in addition to things like git/pull request workflows making it simple and async-by-default to work with others.
stanfordkid 9y ago
I think the "everyone can be a millionaire via college" mentality has created a focus on higher education (engineering, medical school, law school etc.) ... and dissuaded people from professions which may be very worthwhile (welder, autoshop-owner) ... but will cap out at wages of $200k-$300k. We've made these jobs seem "dirty" and low class when they're not.
- goatherders 9y ago
  Agreed. Most people you know will never make 300k a year. The vast majority are unlikely to make 200k. And in most of the country anything over 100k is seen as doing well and rising. Building something based on a trade and "only" making 200k is laughing all the way to the bank in most cases.
- int_19h 9y ago
  The irony is that a lot (I would even say, most) of what's being done in the software engineering field is really more of a trade, and would likely benefit from being treated accordingly - including having trade schools rather than colleges teaching that stuff. I'm sure there are other industries like that. When enough people realize just how much of it is smoke and mirrors, I think the common snobbery towards those "dirty" jobs would dissipate. Right now, it's self-reinforcing, because being "better than those guys" is part of white collar identity, regardless of pay. It reminds me of the racial arrangement in Jim Crow South, where even the most poor whites would find solace in that they're not on the lowest rung of the social ladder.
  - CodeCube 9y ago
    The various bootcamps and accelerator programs may end up, in the end, morphing into a form of "trade school" for software engineers.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Why would it benefit software engineering or the workers? it would benefit employers as they could reduce salary costs and working conditions. Also this would require employers to commit to training in away they will not want to do and because of the one size fits all they would have to pay for a generic learn the needed skills and knowledge.
Eire_Banshee 9y ago
Trades pay very well with just a high school education. > "Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money`" is just flat out wrong. That line of thinking is a major contributing factor to the shortage of labor in blue collar fields, along with mass amounts of young adults with crippling college debt.
- AFNobody 9y ago
  Trades pay well with a customer base to support them. The core problem is, ultimately, the customer base is led by the white collar jobs who lack the skills to perform those tasks. The blue collar tradesmen, frankly, has the skills to avoid buying services from each other. I know a mechanic that does her own plumbing, electrical, etc. She'd never try to make money at it but to the best of my knowledge the only time she hired anyone was to get the HVAC installed. That was largely a size/experience issue with a crane to move it into her backyard over the fence.
  - Eire_Banshee 9y ago
    People will always own houses. People will always be too lazy to learn how to do things themselves. But thats besides the point, the real money in trades is commercial work, not residential.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
weirdkid 9y ago
I've got news for you. Unless you own the business, your work of any kind is a cost to be repressed.

PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago

To clarify, the people working by staring at computers are also seen as a cost to be repressed and not a service to be rewarded. Supply and demand has made the cost resistant to repression up til now, but the economic system is hard at work finding out how to change that. One might even go so far as to postulate if the IT industries push to get more people into IT is so that labor supply goes up leading to labor costs going down.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pm90 9y ago
> One might even go so far as to postulate if the IT industries push to get more people into IT is so that labor supply goes up leading to labor costs going down. This has been discussed in great detail, especially here on HN. The consensus seems to be that even if you increase the supply by a lot, the nature of Software Engineering, its inherent complexity will restrict the supply of the highly skilled workers. This theory seems to have held out in the Indian/Chinese labor markets; but its possible there are other systemic reason for that. Meanwhile the demand for Technology skills keeps increasing rapidly. Perhaps in the next economic bust there will be a much-delayed correction. The future does look pretty rosy for Software Engineers at the present time.
- intended 9y ago
  A critical aspect of that is the distribution of engineering skill is bimodal, if not multi modal. People want a lot of top end coders. The lower and middle, far less so. Lumping all comp sci labor into one skill and ability bracket prevents nuanced understanding.
kwoff 9y ago
I also wonder if, in some ways, devops (I mean the "idea", not the engineers themselves) could be commoditizing IT people (not implying there's some conspiracy), blurring the distinction between devs and sysadmins in particular.
- CodeCube 9y ago
  Well you could say the same about the entirety of "the cloud" ... no need to pay a team of sysadmins to manage, deploy, and maintain a data center, when you can easily provision a VM in seconds, or even better, use a SaaS offering so you don't even have to worry about applying patches and stuff ;)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cat199 9y ago

> with the economic system which designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, yes, because this totally is specific to working class / blue collar jobs. Everyone in the white collar bourgeoisie is clearly well represented and valued across all industries and in all locations in the USA. Further, desk work, and $5 lattes should always viewed as a reward with no variations in personal preference, those that do not agree are simply uneducated.

SquirrelOnFire 9y ago

>Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money, and if "working-class, blue-collar" people identify with the economic system which designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, I'm not sure how much I can do about that. Maybe by pointing to blue collar work that still pays well. A buddy of mine is an auto mechanic and is the sole income earner for his family. They do just fine in St Louis (another city like Detroit and Pitt). Another friend of mine is a pipe fitter for gas pipelines who works 3-6 months a year and earns ~150-200K depending on contracts. Spends the rest of the year surfing and diving. Trades do, in fact, make money. Pay attention to how much you spend next time you call a plumber.

HankB99 9y ago
Here's what the BLS has to say about that. https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm I think about this when people post about how you don;t really need a college degree, you just need a trade. I have no doubt that some tradesmen do very well but I doubt they represent the entire class of workers. I do wonder what the numbers would look like if trained tradesmen (and women) were compared based on time spent learning (e.g. years of apprenticeship vs. years of college.)
biocomputation 9y ago
I totally agree. My parents own a 'cabin' in a development in the mountains, and the biggest cabin in the development -by far- is owned by a a plumber. He has done very well, and I doubt he writes much, if any, code.
- girvo 9y ago
  You’d be surprised! My dad is a builder, and programs his own utility software (in Access and other systems) to make his life easier (like work diaries, log books and so on)
  - biocomputation 9y ago
    Well put! I shouldn't assume.

daxorid 9y ago

I'm old enough to remember when a significant part of the "dream of the Internet" was that knowledge workers could work anywhere with an ISP. Obviously that dream was not widely realized, but there are some employers that will allow you to write code from the countryside.

CodeCube 9y ago
Remote working is becoming more and more accepted as time goes on, and collaboration technologies improve. Video chat is by far one of the most useful things about being on a remote team, in addition to things like git/pull request workflows making it simple and async-by-default to work with others.

stanfordkid 9y ago

I think the "everyone can be a millionaire via college" mentality has created a focus on higher education (engineering, medical school, law school etc.) ... and dissuaded people from professions which may be very worthwhile (welder, autoshop-owner) ... but will cap out at wages of $200k-$300k. We've made these jobs seem "dirty" and low class when they're not.

goatherders 9y ago
Agreed. Most people you know will never make 300k a year. The vast majority are unlikely to make 200k. And in most of the country anything over 100k is seen as doing well and rising. Building something based on a trade and "only" making 200k is laughing all the way to the bank in most cases.
int_19h 9y ago
The irony is that a lot (I would even say, most) of what's being done in the software engineering field is really more of a trade, and would likely benefit from being treated accordingly - including having trade schools rather than colleges teaching that stuff. I'm sure there are other industries like that. When enough people realize just how much of it is smoke and mirrors, I think the common snobbery towards those "dirty" jobs would dissipate. Right now, it's self-reinforcing, because being "better than those guys" is part of white collar identity, regardless of pay. It reminds me of the racial arrangement in Jim Crow South, where even the most poor whites would find solace in that they're not on the lowest rung of the social ladder.
- CodeCube 9y ago
  The various bootcamps and accelerator programs may end up, in the end, morphing into a form of "trade school" for software engineers.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Why would it benefit software engineering or the workers? it would benefit employers as they could reduce salary costs and working conditions. Also this would require employers to commit to training in away they will not want to do and because of the one size fits all they would have to pay for a generic learn the needed skills and knowledge.

Eire_Banshee 9y ago

Trades pay very well with just a high school education. > "Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money`" is just flat out wrong. That line of thinking is a major contributing factor to the shortage of labor in blue collar fields, along with mass amounts of young adults with crippling college debt.

AFNobody 9y ago
Trades pay well with a customer base to support them. The core problem is, ultimately, the customer base is led by the white collar jobs who lack the skills to perform those tasks. The blue collar tradesmen, frankly, has the skills to avoid buying services from each other. I know a mechanic that does her own plumbing, electrical, etc. She'd never try to make money at it but to the best of my knowledge the only time she hired anyone was to get the HVAC installed. That was largely a size/experience issue with a crane to move it into her backyard over the fence.
- Eire_Banshee 9y ago
  People will always own houses. People will always be too lazy to learn how to do things themselves. But thats besides the point, the real money in trades is commercial work, not residential.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

weirdkid 9y ago

I've got news for you. Unless you own the business, your work of any kind is a cost to be repressed.