4 ms·

Mental tedium is a relative luxury: it's still clean indoor work with a predictable income, and thus far preferable compared to many other options like plantin

Mental tedium is a relative luxury: it's still clean indoor work with a predictable income, and thus far preferable compared to many other options like planting rice (literally backbreaking), working in a factory repeating exactly the same physical motion over and over, scavenging through garbage, etc. The broader point, though, is while people in the West bemoan outsourcing to poor countries as exploitative etc (and it can be!), even these "shit" jobs can be transformational. BPO has propelled literally millions of people into the middle class in both India and the Philippines.

king_magic 7y ago
RE: your first paragraph: Yeah, I mean I sort of get it. But if I really had to choose between the mental tedium of labeling data (which I end up doing quite a bit of myself) vs. backbreaking outdoor work, or something like repetitive food service prep... I’d pick the latter every single time. At least for me, data labeling is just brutally mind numbing and draining.
- tty2300 7y ago
  Have you ever spent a long time doing backbreaking work? I assume the real issue is after years when your body is trashed.
- Simple_Guy 7y ago
  have you done backbreaking outdoor work?
- gexla 7y ago
  > But if I really had to choose between the mental tedium of labeling data (which I end up doing quite a bit of myself) vs. backbreaking outdoor work, or something like repetitive food service prep... I’d pick the latter every single time. In developing countries, status is an important element which people in developed nations may not think about. For example, how many derogative terms can you rattle off for people who labor in the heat of the sun all day? In the U.S. we have "redneck." There are worse terms for people of other races and nationalities in the region. In the U.S. these terms are a bad joke, in the Philippines, this is life. In the Philippines, skin whitening products are a big seller because dark skin is associated with the poor and laborers (the "Mestizo" has light skin which traces back to relatively well off Spanish heritage.) You might choose outdoor work, but you have to understand the culture to understand why their choices might be different than yours.
  - infinite8s 7y ago
    Interestingly, in the US the skin color status has switched when most jobs went indoors (both white and blue color work). Tanning became a status for people with lots of leisure time.

king_magic 7y ago

RE: your first paragraph: Yeah, I mean I sort of get it. But if I really had to choose between the mental tedium of labeling data (which I end up doing quite a bit of myself) vs. backbreaking outdoor work, or something like repetitive food service prep... I’d pick the latter every single time. At least for me, data labeling is just brutally mind numbing and draining.

tty2300 7y ago
Have you ever spent a long time doing backbreaking work? I assume the real issue is after years when your body is trashed.
Simple_Guy 7y ago
have you done backbreaking outdoor work?
gexla 7y ago
> But if I really had to choose between the mental tedium of labeling data (which I end up doing quite a bit of myself) vs. backbreaking outdoor work, or something like repetitive food service prep... I’d pick the latter every single time. In developing countries, status is an important element which people in developed nations may not think about. For example, how many derogative terms can you rattle off for people who labor in the heat of the sun all day? In the U.S. we have "redneck." There are worse terms for people of other races and nationalities in the region. In the U.S. these terms are a bad joke, in the Philippines, this is life. In the Philippines, skin whitening products are a big seller because dark skin is associated with the poor and laborers (the "Mestizo" has light skin which traces back to relatively well off Spanish heritage.) You might choose outdoor work, but you have to understand the culture to understand why their choices might be different than yours.
- infinite8s 7y ago
  Interestingly, in the US the skin color status has switched when most jobs went indoors (both white and blue color work). Tanning became a status for people with lots of leisure time.