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This might be a learned defence mechanism against a general feeling of wearines with the state of the world. You might work a (relatively) well-paying job at a

by kubb 5y ago

This might be a learned defence mechanism against a general feeling of wearines with the state of the world. You might work a (relatively) well-paying job at a megacorp, but often you're confronted with colleagues that get promotions through what seems like bullshit projects, you see how useless your directors or even execs seem to be and how much cash they pocket, and you're forced to do some sham work yourself, maybe because whoever is leading your team wants to advance their career. So your everyday work experience is crap, and you have no agency over anything, and you feel miserable. Then you see the cleaning staff, and you're confronted with their reality, the fact that they have to do work that is both harder and potentially more useful than what you're doing but they don't get any of the benefits, and they get paid a fraction of what you do, and that just makes you feel even worse, like this entire system is somehow fundamentally broken, which makes you want to trow your ergonomic chair out of the unopenable glass window of your open space. So it's easier to just look away.

krysp 5y ago
This is probably a large part of it. The higher up the chain you go the more obvious it is - the system, the game, whatever you want to call it. Finally understanding what it means to sell your soul, and seeing that at least the janitor kept most of theirs.
namelessoracle 5y ago
I am shocked that more people dont acknowledge that the more you get paid the less "hard" the work you do is. Like there's an entire well known meme about rest and vest at Google. (Amazon and Netflix will bounce you though if rumors are true) It's been true my entire life that every bracket of pay raise increase i've gotten has had a commensurate decrease in the amount of physical labor and mental exhaustion i would suffer. Going from minimum wage to 30k+ was a breath of fresh air. Going pass 100k was realizing you were living in a coal mine where everyone smoked and the 30k just meant you got to take clean air breaks every now and then. Of course then you have the attendant desperation in the US of "falling down" back to the level you were before and knowing the life style you live now can not possibly be sustained in those positions. A simple mental exercise. When was the last time you had to ask permission to use the restroom at your place of employment? One serious issue i've seen with alot of tech workers is that they have NO IDEA whats it's like to ever work minimum wage. They went from middle class existence to college to a tech job making more money than most people ever will. The minimum wage worker and even middle wage worker existence is invisible and nonsensical to them.

by kubb 5y ago

krysp 5y ago

This is probably a large part of it. The higher up the chain you go the more obvious it is - the system, the game, whatever you want to call it. Finally understanding what it means to sell your soul, and seeing that at least the janitor kept most of theirs.

namelessoracle 5y ago

I am shocked that more people dont acknowledge that the more you get paid the less "hard" the work you do is. Like there's an entire well known meme about rest and vest at Google. (Amazon and Netflix will bounce you though if rumors are true) It's been true my entire life that every bracket of pay raise increase i've gotten has had a commensurate decrease in the amount of physical labor and mental exhaustion i would suffer. Going from minimum wage to 30k+ was a breath of fresh air. Going pass 100k was realizing you were living in a coal mine where everyone smoked and the 30k just meant you got to take clean air breaks every now and then. Of course then you have the attendant desperation in the US of "falling down" back to the level you were before and knowing the life style you live now can not possibly be sustained in those positions. A simple mental exercise. When was the last time you had to ask permission to use the restroom at your place of employment? One serious issue i've seen with alot of tech workers is that they have NO IDEA whats it's like to ever work minimum wage. They went from middle class existence to college to a tech job making more money than most people ever will. The minimum wage worker and even middle wage worker existence is invisible and nonsensical to them.