10 ms·

I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon

160 points by toufiqbarhamov 8y ago

CydeWeys 8y ago
I loved this line in particular: > I’m an Aries, so it stands to reason that I’m partial to Dodge Ram ProMasters. It's a shame that there isn't a way for him to continue making a living on his writing talent.
- danso 8y ago
  He likely got paid as a freelancer for producing this piece for The Atlantic.
  - Phlarp 8y ago
    Freelance journalism can hardly be considered "making a living"
    - stickfigure 8y ago
      Is that true? I'm genuinely curious. I really enjoyed this article. It's like "diaries of a call girl" for 50+ overqualified-but-underemployed men. Crossed with a Kevin Smith film. If there was a github-style subscribe button that would notify me of his next article I would definitely click it. No idea if my "impression" contributed to the atlantic's bottom line (and presumably his paycheck) but I guarantee you I've never helped the bottom line of SI.
      - vwcx 8y ago
        It wouldn’t be surprising if the author made $500 or less from this piece.
    - bitrrrate 8y ago
      Lucky his partner is an attorney.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    And also, it's not clear he got fired or laid off from Sports Illustrated. It sounds like he may have chosen to leave.
- sytelus 8y ago
  Writing is a huge business. It used to be the case the book authors often ended up with couple of hundreds of royalty. These days if you do it right, even niche authors make comfortable living. Authors with talent and in top of their games often rack up $1M-$10M in book sales. There are also plenty of writers who make their living through only blogs and many have celebrity level fame. Setting all these however require lot of tech savvyness and fine tuning over years. I hope someone can build platform that takes tech away from this problem. Overall, I think people are reading more than before and making money as an individual author is much more easier than before. The key is not being a worker for newpaper or magazine but look at yourself as tech startup founder whose product is writings.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Like music and acting, writing is one of those fields where it's very hard to strike it big, simply because there are so many others trying. You're over-estimating the chance of success here. And given how much lower the barrier to entry has become in the Internet era, I'd argue that making a living as an individual author is much harder than before, and that writing for someone else on salary is a much more sure way to make a living by writing. Do you have any source on your claim that it's much easier than ever before to make a living as an independent author?
mschuster91 8y ago
Jeez. This article really highlights the abuses on which Amazon (and other similar jobs, think Uber, Foodora or whatever) are built upon: > feigning nonchalance as I handed a cup of urine to the attendant and bid him good day. I consider mandatory drug tests a massive invasion of privacy that only persists because workers don't (really) have the ability to shop around employers who don't do them. Besides they're only screening for illegal drugs but don't care about the really dangerous things (a lack of decent sleep being the worst). > An honest recounting of this job must include my sometimes frantic searches for a place to answer nature’s call. This is dehumanizing. This could be easily solved by requiring employers to provide e.g. these tiny camping toilets in the van - they don't take up much space (one parcel, maybe), and a "seat" can easily be fitted by rearranging a couple of rack plates without losing storage space. But the biggest issue is this: > Before it was taken out of service for repairs, I was often stuck with a ProMaster that had issues: Side-view mirrors spiderwebbed; the left mirror held fast to the body of the van by several layers of shrink-wrap. The headlights didn’t work unless flicked into “bright” mode, which means that when delivering after dark, I was blinding and infuriating oncoming motorists. [...] That’s when I heard a thud-thud-thud from the area of my right front tire, which was so old and bald that it had begun to shed four- and five-inch strips of rubber, which were thumping against the wheel well. This is illegal and dangerous, both for the driver and for all people, animals and property around them. All the "cost cutting" of Amazon doing deliveries instead of UPS, Fedex etc. does have to come from somewhere, and here it is done on public safety. I'm fine with competition, but not if public safety and worker/human rights are sacrificed for short-term profits for Jeff Bezos. And what's the biggest issue: as a consumer, you do not have a choice when it comes to shipping - I'd gladly pay 1€ more a package if that would ensure that the delivery of my parcel is at least not outright exploitation, but Amazon (or any other web shop, food delivery service or whatever) do not offer this option, and are thus limiting the consumer power over where to shop based on moral ground.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  This is normal for a lot of the workforce. The poor maintenance, etc, is just evidence of an awful company that doesn’t give a shit. There are many like it. The driver is the only person effectively held responsible for those defects, so awful motor carriers tend to only attract awful or desperate drivers.
microcolonel 8y ago
Good job! A lot of people wallow and believe that Real Work™ is beneath them, or lash out and make things up about their employer to gather pity. I have great respect for my brother, who (although he would obviously prefer to make a living some other way) gets up in the morning and does his job, and reserves his complaints for people who aren't holding up their end of the deal. People will say all sorts of things about this; yeah it sucks to not know where and when to pee on the job, but I've had this problem even in office work. It is crappy, but it's not sheer indignity. Yeah, it sucks that they don't want you using weed at home except for a diagnosed medical purpose, but at the same time, it is no great indignity. Rail engineers and conductors here can't drink within 12 hours of a shift, and if they tested for that I don't think it would be insane. You'd be upset if somebody sparked a fat L before going to work, and then injured you while mishandling a forklift; heck, you'd probably sue Amazon (and you'd be right to), so you can surely understand why they want to nip that in the bud, even if their approach seems heavy-handed. Of course, people here don't like talk like this. I'm not being hyperbolic enough about employment difficulties.
- hliyan 8y ago
  I have an incredible amount of respect for people in high level roles who are willing to roll up their sleeves when necessary. On the flip-side, whenever I hear things like "I'm an engineer, I don't do CSS / write tests / write documents", or "I'm an architect, I don't write code", it's a cue for me that that person is not a good fit for my team.
  - meesterdude 8y ago
    > alright you're a cook. can you farm? http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/JJWooten/clips/mitch-hedberg-can-you-farm/view http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/JJWooten/clips/mitch-...
dmourati 8y ago
You can tell from his writing that he has good things in his future. I applaud the tone and the honesty. Merry Christmas.
hirundo 8y ago
I'm afraid you've moved from one fading career path to another. In ten years that delivery van will be an autonomous drone carrier. A far smaller crew of humans will be just for exceptional stuff, like oversized packages and updating map details. Your wife's career in law seems much more robust.
- thebradbain 8y ago
  In my opinion, you’re missing the point: “Lurching west in stop-and-go traffic on I-80 that morning, bound for Berkeley and a day of delivering in the rain, I had a low moment, dwelling on how far I’d come down in the world. Then I snapped out of it. I haven’t come down in the world. What’s come down in the world is the business model that sustained Time Inc. for decades. I’m pretty much the same writer, the same guy. I haven’t gone anywhere. My feet are the same.” Maybe he doesn’t have the same stability or ‘prestige’ as his last job or his wife’s, but, hey, his last one turned out to not be so stable after all, and your ego can’t buy you a house or put food on the table.
- verisimilidude 8y ago
  This guy was previously among journalism's elite. He interviewed five U.S. presidents! Wouldn't you consider that robust? Between the lines, his whole point is that no career is robust these days.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure we're in the middle of the biggest revolution this world's ever seen. And being in the middle of it is blinding us to it. These jobs, these people slipping through the cracks are the transition to something I hope is better. But it's that in-between time, that many many people will suffer very badly.
    - pixl97 8y ago
      I have people keep arguing with me that automation hasn't replaced jobs,and that more people have jobs than ever, yet none of these new jobs have any security whatsoever, and the job lifespans are so short. The automation revolution is here, we are blind to it.
MrTonyD 8y ago
There are massive profits being made by industry all over the world...while the typical worker struggles to survive. It seems reasonable to me for governments to intentionally create jobs (protectionism works, the best time for the middle class in the USA was when there were protectionist policies). Taking away the massive profits from industries seems like the right thing to do. What? They'll move away? Great - another opportunity to create more jobs and start an industry while you block their newly imported products.
- nine_k 8y ago
  The industries move away and carry the customers away with them. Domestic market may be important, but not as huge, and you can't be best at everything. If you lock the domestic market to mostly / only allow local producers, you end up with lower efficiency than the world on average. Living in a socialist country is not as nice as someone living in the US might be imagining. If Soviet Union is not a good example for you, look at Sweden (it largely stopped its 3-decade socialist experiment in early 1990s).
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    Sweden is actually a good example of an economy that's market oriented but still delivers good results for most workers.
  - magduf 8y ago
    >The industries move away and carry the customers away with them. Um, this doesn't seem right at all. It really depends on the industry/product, and also on the country. The US is probably the largest single market in the world, so it's pretty hard to not do business there and do well as a company, especially if you already do most of your business there. (Obviously, this doesn't apply to local/regional businesses, such as a supermarket chain in Italy or wherever.) If Toyota was suddenly not allowed to sell in the US, that would be a gigantic blow to their revenues and business. If Ford was in this spot, it would probably be the end of the company. If Trader Joe's couldn't operate in the US any more, that would be the end of them; they can't just pack up and move to China. Amazon can't exactly pack up and move to China and "carry the customers away with them" either; that really makes no sense. No, protectionism generally doesn't work, but only generally. Lots of countries (all of them?) are protective of some portion of their local industry, usually for national strategic interests. You don't want to tie the very survival of your people to some potentially hostile foreign nation, by relying on them for your food supply, for instance.
skannamalai 8y ago
I was finished HS seventeen years ago, about an hour northeast of where the author was delivering packages. I distinctly remember an English teacher, trying to get us excited about the possibilities of longform print journalism, breathlessly telling the class how some of the best writers in the world work for Sports Illustrated, and that they make "good money." I feel a sense of loss when the "biodiversity" of what appear to be financially viable careers is declining.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  I love a good read as much as I love a good YouTube series. I'm not sure biodiversity is going down. I think it's just becoming (discipline + computers). The fact that a lot of people are making really good money doing artistic endeavors on the internet suggests that those endeavours are still valued. I wonder if maybe we don't need as many artists because they reach a global audience now with less friction than ever. Anecdotally: I never would have subscribed to a sports magazine. I'm not into sports. But SBNation's YouTube series on weird sports history has me hooked.
  - Meph504 8y ago
    The volume of people making money, and the amount of money made by people doing artistic endeavors on the internet, when compared to decades past is troublingly lower. I'm not sure what can be done, but I see an ever increasing number of people loosing benefits from, or loosing their careers entirely. This isn't all caused by tech, but also by a change in the social contract between companies and and their employees. The idea of you working hard for a company your whole life, and even if your didn't make great pay, you were secure in the idea that you would be taken care of and have a place to work until you got your send off party and a gold watch. When comparing what was to what is, from the perspective of security, safety, and prosperity of the worker, YouTube is barely on par with a freelance gig. And I fear that if our country doesn't address these sort of issue very soon, we are going to see suffering in the elderly not known in our country for the last century.
    - anilgulecha 8y ago
orangeeater 8y ago
> This proved problematic when my wife and I decided to refinance our home. Although Gina, an attorney, earns plenty, we needed a bit more income to persuade lenders to work with us. It quickly became clear that for us to qualify, I would need more than occasional gigs as a freelance writer; I would need a steady job with a W-2. He's working for amazon to get a loan so he can refinance his house. I think that's half-true, and I suspect the other half is that he got a job there so he could write this article. Either way I liked the article - it's a little misleading though.
- akeck 8y ago
  That quote is a little... off? If your wife's an attorney and you can't get a refi with getting a job delivering packages, is that house massive? Why would the relatively small contribution of a delivery job push a bank over the line for a refi? Isn't getting a delivery job during the Xmas season usually temporary?
  - ryanmetz 8y ago
    Most attorneys don't work at large firms and don't make nearly as much money as the popular imagination would hold it. There is a huge glut of law school graduates that is driving down wages outside of the white shoe firms, as well.
  - brudgers 8y ago
    Legal salaries are bimodal. https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib
    - ukoki 8y ago
      Any idea why there's such a narrow peak at 160k? Is it a tax efficiency thing or are law firms colluding on salary? (or something else?)
      - JauntTrooper 8y ago
        It’s the starting salary at biglaw firms. The law profession is very guild-like in it’s hiring practices.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Wow interviewed 5 US Presidents, now he's slinging packages for Amazon. That really is an interesting career progression.
- gist 8y ago
  > Wow interviewed 5 US Presidents I think that is something that you do that you fool yourself into thinking is important in some way, as if you yourself are important, when you are really not. You are a tool getting a job done for your company. Maybe the best tool (after all you got the gig) but still a tool just the same. The Presidents don't care about you and aren't your friend or you peer. Sure it's something that you can relate that you did to impress people you know and good for career or reputation (job wise). But the truth is to that those people you have interviewed would almost certainly not take your call or be your friend anymore than most of us would end up befriending the person who takes our luggage to our hotel room. (Not saying that couldn't or hasn't or doesn't happen but very unlikely except as an outlier). I will tell you something that I have learned about self important writers. Try getting them to even return your email unless you have something that they need. Meaning they are all on top of you when they need you for a story. But once that story is done (unless they plan another one) you will have a hard time getting any reply from them. They tend to be (by the nature of what they do) 'users' the same way many salesman are users (to get the sale). They make you feel as if they care about you personally when they do not really care at all. Contrast this with many people here on HN who I am sure would be pretty likely to reply to a personal question or issue if you wrote and asked for some type of help. Go try that with a writer for a major (and formerly important) magazine or newspaper.
  - JeremyReimer 8y ago
    I think this attitude might have something to do with the volume of emails that people receive. I'm a minor writer for Ars Technica and I always answer every email I get about my articles (or about anything) but then again I only get about five emails per month. It's easy and fun to do at that volume. If I got 500 or 5000, this would be a different story.
carbonatedmilk 8y ago
I used to fill in gaps between consulting work with delivering people's food on my bicycle. I loved it too - It had a gamified feeling to it, and was like getting paid to go to the gym. Uber gives you an estimate when you start the trip, and I enjoyed pushing myself a little bit on the hills to try and 'beat the average'. The pay was miserable, between $10-15/hr ($7-10 USD) depending on whether you got 2 or 3 deliveries in the hour, but in a bike friendly city it was quite a fun way to spend an hour or two getting some serious exercise.
ryanmercer 8y ago
Ok? The article should be titled "I was financially irresponsible and had to get a job at 57" instead it's some overly wordy fluff piece trying to make working for Amazon sound like some amazing adventure filled with lying to friends, calling women bitches, battling hellish throngs of traffic etc. I mean, journalism has been a dying career field for at least a decade, author is also 57 and had they been at least aware of the need to eventually retire they should be most of the way to retiring and with even slight motivation should have been able to retire a decade or more ago leanFIRE style. The author failed to see the writing on the wall that their industry was dying, they've failed to think outside the box with their degree as well, like... being a substitute teacher and/or tutor. "During my 33 years at Sports Illustrated, I wrote six books," Yeahhhhh 33 years at the same employer, 6 books sold and having to hump packages all day... Then look at how the article ends, approved for a loan. Borrowing more money to make more bad decisions so they can keep churning out articles about how life sucks needing to deliver packages. The author is wholly clueless and is going to work until the day he dies or he wanted to exercise his creative writing skills and is still holding out hope of salvaging his career as a journalist.
- magduf 8y ago
  I generally agree with your comment, however with the substitute teacher idea, I suspect that being an Amazon delivery driver pays a lot better than that in the US. Teachers in this country are compensated extremely poorly, and substitute teachers even worse. Seriously, I think trying to be a professional writer these days is a terrible career choice. Unless you get lucky with a few best-selling novels or something, you're probably better off driving for Lyft.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    >Teachers in this country are compensated extremely poorly, I disagree. Average teacher salary here in Indiana is $54,308 (after 'falling', even the really underfunded public grade schools in the inner city here in Indy look like they're paying around 41k) according to https://www.nwitimes.com/news/education/teacher-pay-in-indiana-continues-its-downward-slide/article_6adb505d-9e8c-5e9d-8100-6635c1ce4eec.html https://www.nwitimes.com/news/education/teacher-pay-in-india... That figure above doesn't include benefits like pensions either. State minimum wage is $7.25, the median household income is $45,943. Teachers are handsomely paid. A lot of people are quick to say "but teachers work evenings and weekends for free" yes they do, and they also have 2 months off in the summer which likely equals them out to 2080 hours a year (sans vacation time) if not under 2080 hours a year. As far as subbing, my lifting coach makes makes 30-40$ subbing for a few hours a day between times he has the training facility open. Someone subbing all day makes 60-100$ a day for essentially babysitting. Yeah, it's not full-time delivery driver money but it would have given him plenty of free time to continue to pursue writing freelance, or work on more books, I think the real reason for the working full-time though was so he could take out another home loan, as he needed enough documented income to justify the bank loaning it.
peteretep 8y ago
Ironically I bet Amazon sell exactly the kind of porta-potty device that would make his journeys more comfortable
WheelsAtLarge 8y ago
Magnificent writing, painful story, in a real way this article articulates, in a small way, what it's like for the foundation of your career to slip away. I'm sure there are plenty of other types of careers this same article can be written for. What I'm afraid of is that many of us reading this article now will have a similar story 20 or so years from now. Ouch!
- choicenotchance 8y ago
  What do you do? I'm a programmer.
AlexCoventry 8y ago
Is amazon having trouble hiring drivers? My submarine senses are tingling. > my wife and I decided to refinance our home. Hope it was fixed-interest.
jiveturkey 8y ago
... and write for the atlantic
ggm 8y ago
"new grub street" by George Gissing. It's about an author experiencing the same disregard for the value of writing in the 1890s (not about the money of Amazon or lack of whizz joints for mobile workers: I think victorians just pee'd wher they stood)

I loved this line in particular: > I’m an Aries, so it stands to reason that I’m partial to Dodge Ram ProMasters. It's a shame that there isn't a way for him to continue making a living on his writing talent.

danso 8y ago
He likely got paid as a freelancer for producing this piece for The Atlantic.
- Phlarp 8y ago
  Freelance journalism can hardly be considered "making a living"
  - stickfigure 8y ago
    Is that true? I'm genuinely curious. I really enjoyed this article. It's like "diaries of a call girl" for 50+ overqualified-but-underemployed men. Crossed with a Kevin Smith film. If there was a github-style subscribe button that would notify me of his next article I would definitely click it. No idea if my "impression" contributed to the atlantic's bottom line (and presumably his paycheck) but I guarantee you I've never helped the bottom line of SI.
    - vwcx 8y ago
      It wouldn’t be surprising if the author made $500 or less from this piece.
  - bitrrrate 8y ago
    Lucky his partner is an attorney.
- repolfx 8y ago
  And also, it's not clear he got fired or laid off from Sports Illustrated. It sounds like he may have chosen to leave.
sytelus 8y ago
Writing is a huge business. It used to be the case the book authors often ended up with couple of hundreds of royalty. These days if you do it right, even niche authors make comfortable living. Authors with talent and in top of their games often rack up $1M-$10M in book sales. There are also plenty of writers who make their living through only blogs and many have celebrity level fame. Setting all these however require lot of tech savvyness and fine tuning over years. I hope someone can build platform that takes tech away from this problem. Overall, I think people are reading more than before and making money as an individual author is much more easier than before. The key is not being a worker for newpaper or magazine but look at yourself as tech startup founder whose product is writings.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Like music and acting, writing is one of those fields where it's very hard to strike it big, simply because there are so many others trying. You're over-estimating the chance of success here. And given how much lower the barrier to entry has become in the Internet era, I'd argue that making a living as an individual author is much harder than before, and that writing for someone else on salary is a much more sure way to make a living by writing. Do you have any source on your claim that it's much easier than ever before to make a living as an independent author?

mschuster91 8y ago

Jeez. This article really highlights the abuses on which Amazon (and other similar jobs, think Uber, Foodora or whatever) are built upon: > feigning nonchalance as I handed a cup of urine to the attendant and bid him good day. I consider mandatory drug tests a massive invasion of privacy that only persists because workers don't (really) have the ability to shop around employers who don't do them. Besides they're only screening for illegal drugs but don't care about the really dangerous things (a lack of decent sleep being the worst). > An honest recounting of this job must include my sometimes frantic searches for a place to answer nature’s call. This is dehumanizing. This could be easily solved by requiring employers to provide e.g. these tiny camping toilets in the van - they don't take up much space (one parcel, maybe), and a "seat" can easily be fitted by rearranging a couple of rack plates without losing storage space. But the biggest issue is this: > Before it was taken out of service for repairs, I was often stuck with a ProMaster that had issues: Side-view mirrors spiderwebbed; the left mirror held fast to the body of the van by several layers of shrink-wrap. The headlights didn’t work unless flicked into “bright” mode, which means that when delivering after dark, I was blinding and infuriating oncoming motorists. [...] That’s when I heard a thud-thud-thud from the area of my right front tire, which was so old and bald that it had begun to shed four- and five-inch strips of rubber, which were thumping against the wheel well. This is illegal and dangerous, both for the driver and for all people, animals and property around them. All the "cost cutting" of Amazon doing deliveries instead of UPS, Fedex etc. does have to come from somewhere, and here it is done on public safety. I'm fine with competition, but not if public safety and worker/human rights are sacrificed for short-term profits for Jeff Bezos. And what's the biggest issue: as a consumer, you do not have a choice when it comes to shipping - I'd gladly pay 1€ more a package if that would ensure that the delivery of my parcel is at least not outright exploitation, but Amazon (or any other web shop, food delivery service or whatever) do not offer this option, and are thus limiting the consumer power over where to shop based on moral ground.

Spooky23 8y ago
This is normal for a lot of the workforce. The poor maintenance, etc, is just evidence of an awful company that doesn’t give a shit. There are many like it. The driver is the only person effectively held responsible for those defects, so awful motor carriers tend to only attract awful or desperate drivers.

microcolonel 8y ago

Good job! A lot of people wallow and believe that Real Work™ is beneath them, or lash out and make things up about their employer to gather pity. I have great respect for my brother, who (although he would obviously prefer to make a living some other way) gets up in the morning and does his job, and reserves his complaints for people who aren't holding up their end of the deal. People will say all sorts of things about this; yeah it sucks to not know where and when to pee on the job, but I've had this problem even in office work. It is crappy, but it's not sheer indignity. Yeah, it sucks that they don't want you using weed at home except for a diagnosed medical purpose, but at the same time, it is no great indignity. Rail engineers and conductors here can't drink within 12 hours of a shift, and if they tested for that I don't think it would be insane. You'd be upset if somebody sparked a fat L before going to work, and then injured you while mishandling a forklift; heck, you'd probably sue Amazon (and you'd be right to), so you can surely understand why they want to nip that in the bud, even if their approach seems heavy-handed. Of course, people here don't like talk like this. I'm not being hyperbolic enough about employment difficulties.

hliyan 8y ago
I have an incredible amount of respect for people in high level roles who are willing to roll up their sleeves when necessary. On the flip-side, whenever I hear things like "I'm an engineer, I don't do CSS / write tests / write documents", or "I'm an architect, I don't write code", it's a cue for me that that person is not a good fit for my team.
- meesterdude 8y ago
  > alright you're a cook. can you farm? http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/JJWooten/clips/mitch-hedberg-can-you-farm/view http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/JJWooten/clips/mitch-...

dmourati 8y ago

You can tell from his writing that he has good things in his future. I applaud the tone and the honesty. Merry Christmas.

hirundo 8y ago

I'm afraid you've moved from one fading career path to another. In ten years that delivery van will be an autonomous drone carrier. A far smaller crew of humans will be just for exceptional stuff, like oversized packages and updating map details. Your wife's career in law seems much more robust.

thebradbain 8y ago
In my opinion, you’re missing the point: “Lurching west in stop-and-go traffic on I-80 that morning, bound for Berkeley and a day of delivering in the rain, I had a low moment, dwelling on how far I’d come down in the world. Then I snapped out of it. I haven’t come down in the world. What’s come down in the world is the business model that sustained Time Inc. for decades. I’m pretty much the same writer, the same guy. I haven’t gone anywhere. My feet are the same.” Maybe he doesn’t have the same stability or ‘prestige’ as his last job or his wife’s, but, hey, his last one turned out to not be so stable after all, and your ego can’t buy you a house or put food on the table.
verisimilidude 8y ago
This guy was previously among journalism's elite. He interviewed five U.S. presidents! Wouldn't you consider that robust? Between the lines, his whole point is that no career is robust these days.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure we're in the middle of the biggest revolution this world's ever seen. And being in the middle of it is blinding us to it. These jobs, these people slipping through the cracks are the transition to something I hope is better. But it's that in-between time, that many many people will suffer very badly.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    I have people keep arguing with me that automation hasn't replaced jobs,and that more people have jobs than ever, yet none of these new jobs have any security whatsoever, and the job lifespans are so short. The automation revolution is here, we are blind to it.

MrTonyD 8y ago

There are massive profits being made by industry all over the world...while the typical worker struggles to survive. It seems reasonable to me for governments to intentionally create jobs (protectionism works, the best time for the middle class in the USA was when there were protectionist policies). Taking away the massive profits from industries seems like the right thing to do. What? They'll move away? Great - another opportunity to create more jobs and start an industry while you block their newly imported products.

nine_k 8y ago
The industries move away and carry the customers away with them. Domestic market may be important, but not as huge, and you can't be best at everything. If you lock the domestic market to mostly / only allow local producers, you end up with lower efficiency than the world on average. Living in a socialist country is not as nice as someone living in the US might be imagining. If Soviet Union is not a good example for you, look at Sweden (it largely stopped its 3-decade socialist experiment in early 1990s).
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Sweden is actually a good example of an economy that's market oriented but still delivers good results for most workers.
- magduf 8y ago
  >The industries move away and carry the customers away with them. Um, this doesn't seem right at all. It really depends on the industry/product, and also on the country. The US is probably the largest single market in the world, so it's pretty hard to not do business there and do well as a company, especially if you already do most of your business there. (Obviously, this doesn't apply to local/regional businesses, such as a supermarket chain in Italy or wherever.) If Toyota was suddenly not allowed to sell in the US, that would be a gigantic blow to their revenues and business. If Ford was in this spot, it would probably be the end of the company. If Trader Joe's couldn't operate in the US any more, that would be the end of them; they can't just pack up and move to China. Amazon can't exactly pack up and move to China and "carry the customers away with them" either; that really makes no sense. No, protectionism generally doesn't work, but only generally. Lots of countries (all of them?) are protective of some portion of their local industry, usually for national strategic interests. You don't want to tie the very survival of your people to some potentially hostile foreign nation, by relying on them for your food supply, for instance.

skannamalai 8y ago

I was finished HS seventeen years ago, about an hour northeast of where the author was delivering packages. I distinctly remember an English teacher, trying to get us excited about the possibilities of longform print journalism, breathlessly telling the class how some of the best writers in the world work for Sports Illustrated, and that they make "good money." I feel a sense of loss when the "biodiversity" of what appear to be financially viable careers is declining.

Waterluvian 8y ago
I love a good read as much as I love a good YouTube series. I'm not sure biodiversity is going down. I think it's just becoming (discipline + computers). The fact that a lot of people are making really good money doing artistic endeavors on the internet suggests that those endeavours are still valued. I wonder if maybe we don't need as many artists because they reach a global audience now with less friction than ever. Anecdotally: I never would have subscribed to a sports magazine. I'm not into sports. But SBNation's YouTube series on weird sports history has me hooked.
- Meph504 8y ago
  The volume of people making money, and the amount of money made by people doing artistic endeavors on the internet, when compared to decades past is troublingly lower. I'm not sure what can be done, but I see an ever increasing number of people loosing benefits from, or loosing their careers entirely. This isn't all caused by tech, but also by a change in the social contract between companies and and their employees. The idea of you working hard for a company your whole life, and even if your didn't make great pay, you were secure in the idea that you would be taken care of and have a place to work until you got your send off party and a gold watch. When comparing what was to what is, from the perspective of security, safety, and prosperity of the worker, YouTube is barely on par with a freelance gig. And I fear that if our country doesn't address these sort of issue very soon, we are going to see suffering in the elderly not known in our country for the last century.
  - anilgulecha 8y ago

orangeeater 8y ago

> This proved problematic when my wife and I decided to refinance our home. Although Gina, an attorney, earns plenty, we needed a bit more income to persuade lenders to work with us. It quickly became clear that for us to qualify, I would need more than occasional gigs as a freelance writer; I would need a steady job with a W-2. He's working for amazon to get a loan so he can refinance his house. I think that's half-true, and I suspect the other half is that he got a job there so he could write this article. Either way I liked the article - it's a little misleading though.

akeck 8y ago
That quote is a little... off? If your wife's an attorney and you can't get a refi with getting a job delivering packages, is that house massive? Why would the relatively small contribution of a delivery job push a bank over the line for a refi? Isn't getting a delivery job during the Xmas season usually temporary?
- ryanmetz 8y ago
  Most attorneys don't work at large firms and don't make nearly as much money as the popular imagination would hold it. There is a huge glut of law school graduates that is driving down wages outside of the white shoe firms, as well.
- brudgers 8y ago
  Legal salaries are bimodal. https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib
  - ukoki 8y ago
    Any idea why there's such a narrow peak at 160k? Is it a tax efficiency thing or are law firms colluding on salary? (or something else?)
    - JauntTrooper 8y ago
      It’s the starting salary at biglaw firms. The law profession is very guild-like in it’s hiring practices.

RickJWagner 8y ago

Wow interviewed 5 US Presidents, now he's slinging packages for Amazon. That really is an interesting career progression.

gist 8y ago
> Wow interviewed 5 US Presidents I think that is something that you do that you fool yourself into thinking is important in some way, as if you yourself are important, when you are really not. You are a tool getting a job done for your company. Maybe the best tool (after all you got the gig) but still a tool just the same. The Presidents don't care about you and aren't your friend or you peer. Sure it's something that you can relate that you did to impress people you know and good for career or reputation (job wise). But the truth is to that those people you have interviewed would almost certainly not take your call or be your friend anymore than most of us would end up befriending the person who takes our luggage to our hotel room. (Not saying that couldn't or hasn't or doesn't happen but very unlikely except as an outlier). I will tell you something that I have learned about self important writers. Try getting them to even return your email unless you have something that they need. Meaning they are all on top of you when they need you for a story. But once that story is done (unless they plan another one) you will have a hard time getting any reply from them. They tend to be (by the nature of what they do) 'users' the same way many salesman are users (to get the sale). They make you feel as if they care about you personally when they do not really care at all. Contrast this with many people here on HN who I am sure would be pretty likely to reply to a personal question or issue if you wrote and asked for some type of help. Go try that with a writer for a major (and formerly important) magazine or newspaper.
- JeremyReimer 8y ago
  I think this attitude might have something to do with the volume of emails that people receive. I'm a minor writer for Ars Technica and I always answer every email I get about my articles (or about anything) but then again I only get about five emails per month. It's easy and fun to do at that volume. If I got 500 or 5000, this would be a different story.

carbonatedmilk 8y ago

I used to fill in gaps between consulting work with delivering people's food on my bicycle. I loved it too - It had a gamified feeling to it, and was like getting paid to go to the gym. Uber gives you an estimate when you start the trip, and I enjoyed pushing myself a little bit on the hills to try and 'beat the average'. The pay was miserable, between $10-15/hr ($7-10 USD) depending on whether you got 2 or 3 deliveries in the hour, but in a bike friendly city it was quite a fun way to spend an hour or two getting some serious exercise.

ryanmercer 8y ago

Ok? The article should be titled "I was financially irresponsible and had to get a job at 57" instead it's some overly wordy fluff piece trying to make working for Amazon sound like some amazing adventure filled with lying to friends, calling women bitches, battling hellish throngs of traffic etc. I mean, journalism has been a dying career field for at least a decade, author is also 57 and had they been at least aware of the need to eventually retire they should be most of the way to retiring and with even slight motivation should have been able to retire a decade or more ago leanFIRE style. The author failed to see the writing on the wall that their industry was dying, they've failed to think outside the box with their degree as well, like... being a substitute teacher and/or tutor. "During my 33 years at Sports Illustrated, I wrote six books," Yeahhhhh 33 years at the same employer, 6 books sold and having to hump packages all day... Then look at how the article ends, approved for a loan. Borrowing more money to make more bad decisions so they can keep churning out articles about how life sucks needing to deliver packages. The author is wholly clueless and is going to work until the day he dies or he wanted to exercise his creative writing skills and is still holding out hope of salvaging his career as a journalist.

magduf 8y ago
I generally agree with your comment, however with the substitute teacher idea, I suspect that being an Amazon delivery driver pays a lot better than that in the US. Teachers in this country are compensated extremely poorly, and substitute teachers even worse. Seriously, I think trying to be a professional writer these days is a terrible career choice. Unless you get lucky with a few best-selling novels or something, you're probably better off driving for Lyft.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >Teachers in this country are compensated extremely poorly, I disagree. Average teacher salary here in Indiana is $54,308 (after 'falling', even the really underfunded public grade schools in the inner city here in Indy look like they're paying around 41k) according to https://www.nwitimes.com/news/education/teacher-pay-in-indiana-continues-its-downward-slide/article_6adb505d-9e8c-5e9d-8100-6635c1ce4eec.html https://www.nwitimes.com/news/education/teacher-pay-in-india... That figure above doesn't include benefits like pensions either. State minimum wage is $7.25, the median household income is $45,943. Teachers are handsomely paid. A lot of people are quick to say "but teachers work evenings and weekends for free" yes they do, and they also have 2 months off in the summer which likely equals them out to 2080 hours a year (sans vacation time) if not under 2080 hours a year. As far as subbing, my lifting coach makes makes 30-40$ subbing for a few hours a day between times he has the training facility open. Someone subbing all day makes 60-100$ a day for essentially babysitting. Yeah, it's not full-time delivery driver money but it would have given him plenty of free time to continue to pursue writing freelance, or work on more books, I think the real reason for the working full-time though was so he could take out another home loan, as he needed enough documented income to justify the bank loaning it.

peteretep 8y ago

Ironically I bet Amazon sell exactly the kind of porta-potty device that would make his journeys more comfortable

WheelsAtLarge 8y ago

Magnificent writing, painful story, in a real way this article articulates, in a small way, what it's like for the foundation of your career to slip away. I'm sure there are plenty of other types of careers this same article can be written for. What I'm afraid of is that many of us reading this article now will have a similar story 20 or so years from now. Ouch!

choicenotchance 8y ago
What do you do? I'm a programmer.

AlexCoventry 8y ago

Is amazon having trouble hiring drivers? My submarine senses are tingling. > my wife and I decided to refinance our home. Hope it was fixed-interest.

jiveturkey 8y ago

... and write for the atlantic

ggm 8y ago

"new grub street" by George Gissing. It's about an author experiencing the same disregard for the value of writing in the 1890s (not about the money of Amazon or lack of whizz joints for mobile workers: I think victorians just pee'd wher they stood)