5 ms·

Oil industry workers don’t seem to carry much clout, kind of a dirty job with a lot of physical labor, but pays quite well and has for a while. Truckers can st

Oil industry workers don’t seem to carry much clout, kind of a dirty job with a lot of physical labor, but pays quite well and has for a while. Truckers can still make an upper middle class salary, especially if they own their truck or focus on a niche (refrigerated, military deliveries, cross border, etc.)

pydry 5y ago
I was actually thinking of underwater welders when I wrote that. Not all oil industry jobs pay well but that one really can, and it carries the cachet to boot. It's definitely manual labor royalty - dangerous, highly skilled and pays up to $300k. Truckers are not doing so well these days, and where they do make a lot it's typically because of backbreaking labor and/or taking on financial risks. This still only gets you into lower/mid tier software dev wages.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "I was actually thinking of underwater welders when I wrote that. Not all oil industry jobs pay well but that one really can, and it carries the cachet to boot. It's definitely manual labor royalty - dangerous, highly skilled and pays up to $300k." A lot of the "well paying", low-status jobs mentioned in this thread are dangrous... long-haul truckers, construction workers, underwater welders, even electricians are jobs where you have to risk your life to do them, and many of them are statistically dangerous as well. So whether the people who have such jobs are "well compensated" for risking their lives like that is debatable. Certainly an IT manager job that paid the same as a trucker would be far more preferable in terms of safety, and would therefore be far better compensated when the danger of being a trucker is taken in to account. Of course, low-paid delivery jobs are even worse when you consider that those low-paid delivery drivers have to risk their lives on the road to deliver your packages.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    > “ and would therefore be far better compensated when the danger of being a trucker is taken in to account.” This strikes me as just making up reasons why examples that disprove the status/pay point aren’t really disproving it. If you can just make up reasons why your position is right anyway even in cases where it’s not, then it’s basically unfalsifiable.
- jdhn 5y ago
  >Truckers are not doing so well these days I thought there was a trucker shortage happening?
  - pydry 5y ago
    There's always a labor shortage of some kind if you're the one paying the wages. In truckers' cases it must be a shortage of experienced truckers willing to partake in backbreaking labor and take financial and health risks for $60k / year.

pydry 5y ago

I was actually thinking of underwater welders when I wrote that. Not all oil industry jobs pay well but that one really can, and it carries the cachet to boot. It's definitely manual labor royalty - dangerous, highly skilled and pays up to $300k. Truckers are not doing so well these days, and where they do make a lot it's typically because of backbreaking labor and/or taking on financial risks. This still only gets you into lower/mid tier software dev wages.

pmoriarty 5y ago
"I was actually thinking of underwater welders when I wrote that. Not all oil industry jobs pay well but that one really can, and it carries the cachet to boot. It's definitely manual labor royalty - dangerous, highly skilled and pays up to $300k." A lot of the "well paying", low-status jobs mentioned in this thread are dangrous... long-haul truckers, construction workers, underwater welders, even electricians are jobs where you have to risk your life to do them, and many of them are statistically dangerous as well. So whether the people who have such jobs are "well compensated" for risking their lives like that is debatable. Certainly an IT manager job that paid the same as a trucker would be far more preferable in terms of safety, and would therefore be far better compensated when the danger of being a trucker is taken in to account. Of course, low-paid delivery jobs are even worse when you consider that those low-paid delivery drivers have to risk their lives on the road to deliver your packages.
- fossuser 5y ago
  > “ and would therefore be far better compensated when the danger of being a trucker is taken in to account.” This strikes me as just making up reasons why examples that disprove the status/pay point aren’t really disproving it. If you can just make up reasons why your position is right anyway even in cases where it’s not, then it’s basically unfalsifiable.
jdhn 5y ago
>Truckers are not doing so well these days I thought there was a trucker shortage happening?
- pydry 5y ago
  There's always a labor shortage of some kind if you're the one paying the wages. In truckers' cases it must be a shortage of experienced truckers willing to partake in backbreaking labor and take financial and health risks for $60k / year.