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Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? Whenever I see people wor

Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? Whenever I see people working really hard in other parts of the world, especially when the country is filled with other opportunities, I always wonder is it just everyone else that is raising the bar and now the standard is very time consuming work. For example, there's year long tourism on Madeira. Everyone there is working hard all year long, charging for tourist services very cheaply. Yet there are many examples of places with year long tourism, but you can still find mass closures during siesta. Everyone, through culture, decided not to overwork and there's no one "hard-working" enough to have their business open during siesta. No employee will agree to work during siesta, similarly employers do not expect their business to be open.

brianwawok 5y ago
Factories aren’t generally in cities. In a rural town, your job choices may be work at Walmart, one of two factories, or on a farm. The “hard” factory job may be the “best” bet among the choices. The bigger question is usually why don’t people move from a rural location? And the answer is usually “it’s complicated “. Old parents to take care of. It’s familiar. Friends. Maybe own your simple home. Maybe your church is there. Maybe quiet life is your thing.
- bena 5y ago
  Maybe those jobs don't pay enough to save up to move. That and the logistics of moving. Not to mention, having a job beats not having a job. And moving often means not having a job to start. Especially when your only work experience is retail, factory floor, and farmhand. You can't really afford to take a week off of getting paid. And if you're constantly working to make ends meet, you don't really have time or energy to work on developing marketable skills.
- 8note 5y ago
  Another answer to the bigger question: it costs money to move
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  The best thing about moving to remote work is that it will enable people to live in these smaller communities while having the increased income of the city. I hope this will bring more money back to local economies and revitalize rural areas.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    If remote work really takes off, it won't be long until most employers adjust salaries down to each employee's local cost of labor. Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana?
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      > Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana? Because you can't get anyone in rural Montana who is capable of getting a job paying Bay Area or NYC salaroies to accept that offer. Adjustment will result in meeting somewhere in the middle but whether that's 25% or 95% of Bay Area salaries is an open question.
    - nawitus 5y ago
      Remote salaries might end up being somewhere between rural Montana and Bay Area. There's no reason to assume there's a huge supply of software engineers in the US which would make all remote salaries to be in the low-end.
  - vitaflo 5y ago
    All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as remote workers compete for it, driving out the locals. Remote workers also don’t fully contribute to the economy of the rural area because their place of employment is not in that area. If the company the remote worker works for does well and grows, that won’t grow the rural community.
    - sigstoat 5y ago
- pauljurczak 5y ago
  Maybe you can't afford a house in suburbia...
petee 5y ago
Depending on your skill set or circumstances, you need a job quick; more hours means more money. What sucks is then you become reliant on that money, and changing careers is near impossible without risking your family's security. Personally Ive done the 12+ hr/7 day in the film industry, a notoriously abusive industry (tv shows shoot 14-18hr days) but the money is great. We call it blood money, and do it until we need a vacation. We also get health benefits
ac29 5y ago
According to the article, "Most people make between $16.50 and $20 an hour". So, at 84 hours a week (46 normal pay, 38 overtime at 1.5x), thats $1700/week on the low end, or $88k/year. I dont think that excuses the forced overtime and I would absolutely expect severe health and/or mental health issues to result from the overwork. But, these people can quit (and according to the article many do) - I expect the only reason folks do stay is because they cant make the same money anywhere else.
- robarr 5y ago
  People with poor formal qualifications or habilities not longer marketable have little choice except double shifts to raise a family. Just imagine being 40 years old, no college or technical education, having only retail work experience.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    You still have many options. It is probably true that for a person in that situation, they may not be apparent or seem feasible.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  They are not making that much as it’s unpaid overtime or “suicide” as they colloquially call it according to the article. Edit: sorry I’m wrong. I read “kills you over time” as “kills your overtime”
  - ac29 5y ago
    The article doesnt say anything about it being unpaid. The "suicide" is a forced double shift, not a forced unpaid shift.
  - sdfsadfjaslj 5y ago
    The article does not claim that it is unpaid. If they were working unpaid hours that would be a serious legal issue and state and federal regulators would be getting involved.
nine_zeros 5y ago
The real problem is cost of living without a job. It is just too fking expensive to live with little or no income. As a result, people in less than abundant job markets are forced into taking up jobs to merely survive. If someone is trying to imagine an alternative world, they should visit non-tier 1 cities of SE Asia or India or China. People routinely survive with less than full time income. Sure, it's a life with less material pleasure but it is a surprisingly adequate survival life.
AndyMcConachie 5y ago
People running factories have been exploiting and overworking the people working in their factories since there have been factories. There's nothing new here.
- kcplate 5y ago
  I think there is always going to be a bit of a disconnect and lack of empathy about excessive work hours when an hourly worker gripes about forced overtime (where in the US they are legally required to be paid at least 1.5x their hourly rate for the overtime) is complaining to salaried management (that are generally working a similar number of hours…but unpaid beyond the 40). Kind of makes you wonder which side is being exploited.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Management gets paid a lot more, and half their "work" time is goofing off.
  - parafactual 5y ago
    As far as I can tell - correct me if I'm wrong - management is just easier compared to (say) manual labor in a factory. They're also paid more per expected hour.
    - kcplate 5y ago
      I’ve been both and can tell you with assurance that in my experience in a 35+ year career that management is not easier, you don’t make as much per hour worked, and as an exempt employee…you generally have much less legal job protections as compared to hourly employees. I bet I haven’t worked less than a 55 hour week in the last 20 years except for weeks where I was on vacation. Those lovely weeks of vacation—-probably 20 on average.
Exmoor 5y ago
Besides some of the obvious reasons such as the previously mentioned location limitations and low education limiting possibilities, I'll throw out another one. Once you're in a job like this it kind of limits your ability to branch out into less physically demanding and better paying work. Your resume kind of pigeon holes you with respect to future employment and the fact that you're working long, exhausting days means its very hard to find the time and energy to build your skills outside of work.
risedotmoe 5y ago
There is no job that won’t work you for as much as they can. They pay you low enough to where you’re dependent on them paycheck to paycheck. The turnover is high and if you don’t like the conditions they get rid of you. There are a ton of people in line for your job who will put up with worse working conditions so you either lick boots or you aren’t making ends meet this week. The culture at every job is that if you aren’t sweating from 6AM to 6PM you’re “lazy.” Don’t want to work overtime? You either won’t make ends meet or you will be fired. If you don’t make ends meet in America you will be homeless unless you are married with children or can live with your parents. The only way to remedy this is to go to college or trade school and hope your degree makes you valuable enough that you can bargain for a realistic work/life balance.
- XenophileJKO 5y ago
  College or trade school is not the only way out. The core way out is skill attainment. College and trade school are one way to do this.
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
Its a very good question. I think in general it is important to realize that a significant amount of "design" work goes in to creating economies. Local, state, and national decisions will lead to certain conditions. How were those decisions made, and under what conditions? For any given place the answer will be different. How does one place compare to another? It is my view that it is perfectly feasible to design economies (in a voluntary way) where people can work 20 hours a week and have two months off a year every year. Or closer to our current world, there is no question in my mind that we could keep things as good or better they are now materially, while making sure no person has to work more than 40 hours a week to survive. I do love to talk about specific strategies [1] but that quickly activates our tribal instincts and can cause violent arguments even when our underlying goals are in near complete agreement. So it can be useful to just ponder on the above. How did things get the way they became? Is it due to iron wrought natural laws, or historical decisions we could freely agree to change? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27860696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27860696
- clairity 5y ago
  as nice as that utopia would be, the fundamental flaw with trying to limit working days/hours is that some people will still pour their whole lives into work, which creates an iterated game that pushes the equilibrium for everyone toward working more. there's no practical way to mitigate this powerful, arguably inate, incentive. the other option is actively coercing a daily/weekly work limit, and that not only severely infringes personal liberties, but eventually makes whole economies less competitive as the hardest working & most ambitious workers migrate away. the better approach is to try to ensure everyone has dignity and fair pay for the amount of work that they do. that's a function of the distribution of pay and wealth, which is something we can legislate via sticks and carrots.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    >some people will still pour their whole lives into work, which creates an iterated game that pushes the equilibrium for everyone toward working more. there's no practical way to mitigate this powerful, arguably inate, incentive. The trick here is to make sure those who don't push for the incentives are taken care of. You need to make sure everyone participating at the sane rates are taken care of in their needs and some wants. After that, you allow for those obsessed with incentives and wants to work as much as they want to get extravagant things. It's easier said than done but I believe its attainable. If you can create an economy where that sort of effort at work is used to buy luxuries and not necessities, then you have a good model that still has a balance of incentives without dragging the rest of society into a work obsessed life. People who put for this amount of effort shouldn't be doing it because they have to, they should be doing it because they want to. Unfortunately many people are doing it because they really have to, that or their standard of living drops significantly, their overall longevity. Unfortunately that's the world we have. People are forced to work at these sorts of rates to survive and it's only getting worse. It's not that they're slaving away their lives because they want to get a new luxury car or exotic vacation, it's that the alternatives to not doing it means they may be homeless next month or looking for somewhere new to live.
anemoiac 5y ago
Why people “decide” to do this sort of work? Oh, I don’t know, probably the same reasons people “decide” to be poor.
mcculley 5y ago
In addition to the many insightful replies here add: Once you have a working class addicted to some combination of fast food, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, pot, opioids, and other drugs which cost money, they have a reduced capability to dig themselves out of a hole.
- samatman 5y ago
  Man it is super weird that you put caffeine on that list. I assume, because you did it, that you're one of those mutants who doesn't use it nor like it much. Good for you and all, but caffeine made the modern world, the majority of the population uses it every day, and industrial society wouldn't function without it. It's also super-cheap even on a modest salary, and most workplaces give it away for free because of how necessary it is to production.
  - mcculley 5y ago
    I am aware of Pollan's recently well-publicized assertion that caffeine made the modern world. I am unconvinced. I quit caffeine a few years ago. I'm not an unusual mutant. I have the genes on markers rs4410790 and rs2470893 that indicate a typical reaction to caffeine. (https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/ https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/) Most people experience a temporary increase in productivity until they build up a tolerance for caffeine. Thereafter, they are just paying and consuming to avoid headaches and reach the baseline.
    - diordiderot 5y ago
      What was your experience quitting like. I want to but am afraid
      - mcculley 5y ago
        It was not bad. I wrote about it in the linked blog piece. I also recommend /r/decaf where you can get support from others who have been and are going through decaffeinating.
jollybean 5y ago
"Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work?" About 50% of people have very little choice in the types of jobs and conditions they work in.
vasco 5y ago
There's no "siesta" (a spanish word and custom) anywhere in Portugal, including Madeira. Businesses may close for an hour or so for lunch, but "siesta" is not a thing. Not sure why you picked that as an example out of any other work expectation in any country.
- spiritplumber 5y ago
  Why not? Siesta makes sense in the climate of Spain and Southern Italy. Isn't Portugal just as hot?
  - rvieira 5y ago
    Some parts of Portugal are hot, others are temperate (just like Spain). Siesta is mostly a cultural thing and Portugal doesn't have it.
- knuthsat 5y ago
  I was comparing hard working Madeira to other places with year long tourism. There, for some reason, culturally, they decided to work really hard all year. I was talking to a hard working cab driver and told him about seasonal tourism in Croatia (tourist season lasts about 5 months) and he couldn't believe me that for the rest of the year a bunch of people do not work at all.
nabilhat 5y ago
If you don't have an easy option close at hand it ends up being a choice between continuing, taking a massive hit to your income, or choosing unemployment. The pay is exactly high enough to maintain minimal staffing. That's normal, but in working conditions like this sometime it ends up a tiny bit higher than the local rate for similar jobs if there's competition for employees. Not everyone can maintain the working conditions. They leave, get kicked out, or they're useful (or connected) enough to keep around working humane hours. The rest have bills, or legal requirements to maintain employment, or burned a bridge at the other factory in town, or they're inexperienced enough to not know better. They establish a reputation as an employee who can be pushed into working inhumane hours. Managers are often rewarded for keeping up with production with a small team. A few years go by before you know it, and working hours like this is expensive. You don't have time to maintain your stuff and house, you pay someone else to. Kids need to be watched. Spouses leave. Drugs or alcohol offer to fill the holes in Maslow's Hierarchy you've sacrificed. Savings don't pile up like one might assume. Interviewing is treacherous. If you're lucky you work a night shift so you can do an interview instead of sleeping. They'll ask you how much you make per hour and offer you a lower "starting rate" hourly wage with fewer hours, which would cut your income drastically, and suggest there might be a review/small raise in 6 months. They'll call your employer before offering you a job at that rate, putting you at risk of retaliation whether you take the offer or not.
intricatedetail 5y ago
I think it is also interesting why people agree to work for the fraction of value they create for the company. Somehow this kind of suffering and exploitation is socially acceptable. Companies make billions and workers struggle to put food on the table. I think governments should focus on companies avoiding tax rather than taxing them though workers (as workers suffer and yield is fraction of what companies should be paying) and we should look at tying minimum wage to company revenue (with a nationwide minimum, so that worker always gets paid a wage they can live off).
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  I'm generally a libertarian but I think current corporate law is insane. This seems like a reasonable starting point, maybe along with a policy requiring giving each employee a stake in the company.
  - opinion-is-bad 5y ago
    Does the employee have to buy into that stake? Do they surrender it, or sell it, or keep it when they leave? Do they get more over time? Why should minimum wage field hands that will work for a month own part of my farm? We have had negative cash flow for the last decade, should our employees have made under minimum wage due to capital calls that were made by the business? How does a bank do proper due diligence on a loan for a business with 47,000 owners, but isn’t publicly traded? What about the administrative overhead around decision making needing a timely signature from every owner? It’s really simple to say employees should have equity, but get into the details and the idea falls apart.
xyzzy21 5y ago
No choices. This is in the Midwest in the middle of no-where. No you can't realistically move - every other location is far more expensive and would require significant relocation expense, and you'd have to leave your community, likely where you were born and raise(d) your family.
- nradov 5y ago
  And yet during the Great Depression poor people moved by the thousands to find work in other states. Sure it was hard but they did what they had to in order to survive.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    Mobility doesn’t work like that anymore. Moving states in 1929 meant, for the most part, a completely fresh start - your landlord wasn’t going to chase you for the rest of the rent on your lease, you didn’t have a car payment or health insurance to worry about (using social security nets like medical or housing assistance is even harder when you haven’t yet established residency in a new state), and if you had any debts or even reputation issues they were very unlikely to “follow” you. Now we have credit reporting, background checks, and a system that, by design, makes it all but impossible to “start over” when you have no other options.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Except the large numbers that didn't survive.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pryelluw 5y ago
Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? As someone who had to do similar work for years the answer is that there were no alternatives. No one takes a shitty job on purpose.
- phreack 5y ago
  I thought so as well, but then I started offering jobs to people I knew hated their jobs and also worked unpaid overtime constantly, with the smallest salaries. But for some reason, when offered a 6x salary freelancing, for less hours, with guidance, and the road paved as much as possible, everyone refuses. Turns out there are people who take shitty jobs on purpose, out of a sense of... I don't know, fear, embarrassment, impostor syndrome, or a combination of them. *This is not in the US.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    They want something stable. Freelancing is not.
    - diordiderot 5y ago
      Kids, car, rent, healthcare = Need something stable
  - mertd 5y ago
    Maybe they think the offer is too good to be true. In some countries it is default to assume everyone is out to scam you until proven otherwise.
  - pryelluw 5y ago
    Freelancing is how I broke out of the shit job loop. But freelancing is not widely available and I consider myself extremely lucky and blessed to have been able to do it.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    How many of these people had all of the necessary funds to fall back on should their foray into freelancing not go as planned?
walrus01 5y ago
> Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? A lot of people who work paycheck-to-paycheck in "flyover state" parts of the USA do not have sufficient savings to relocate to a place where they could work a normal 40-hour week schedule and support themselves on a reasonable income. That, combined with family ties and obligations force them to remain in their local community. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-struggle-to-save-in-pandemic-year-2-and-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-2021-03-25 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-struggle-to-save...
rufus_foreman 5y ago
Time consuming? I worked in a factory for years when I was younger, not too different than what he is describing. There are some jobs, like the one I have now writing code where you think about them even when you aren't doing them, they invade your dreams. I feel like I am writing code all the time, even when I'm not logged in to the work laptop actually doing it. There are other jobs where you don't think about them when you aren't doing them, you go home after work and then you stop thinking about work. The factory job I had was not like either of those, I did not think about work even while I was doing it. My mind was free while my body was getting paid to do work. I could be thinking about anything else other than the physical work I was doing. I'm getting old, won't be able to write code much longer. The factory job that I used to do doesn't exist now, it's been automated. Save your money, kids.
bko 5y ago
From the article: > After 37 years, I still get forced to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week... I make $20.50 [an hour] after 37 years here. Assuming they obey overtime laws, he's' making $112,996 a year ((40 * 20.5) + (44 * 1.5 * 20.5) * 52). I think that has something to do with it. There likely aren't any alternatives where someone with that skill set can make nearly double the median income for Topeka, Kansas. But there are probably alternatives where they can make maybe a half that at more reasonable hours.
- GravitasFailure 5y ago
  It looks like Kansas overtime law kicks in at 46 hours in a week[0], so closer to $110k. Maybe a touch less since they probably shut down periodically for machine maintenance. Thing is, this sort of schedule turns into a weird form of neo-slavery. You don't have enough time to yourself to job hunt, even if something is even available, and you can't schedule an interview around your work. Saving money can be nigh impossible even when making that much because you no don't really have the time to try doing anything the cheap way (making your own food, fixing things yourself, etc.). It turns into this vicious, endless cycle of nothing but work and sleep. If you try take a day off, you run the risk of getting fired. [0]https://www.overtime-flsa.com/kansas-labor-laws/ https://www.overtime-flsa.com/kansas-labor-laws/
  - PhantomGremlin 5y ago
    That link directly contradicts you. Federal overtime starts at 40 hours per week. Your link specifically says: Whichever law (state or federal) is more favorable to the worker will apply. In most instances, federal law will cover issues involving overtime pay and minimum wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime#Federal_overtime_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime#Federal_overtime_law
    - GravitasFailure 5y ago
      > Kansas state labor laws on overtime pay do not require overtime pay until an employee has worked 46 hours within a week. While this may apply in limited circumstances where an employer is not covered by the FLSA, generally the FLSA will apply and requires employers to pay time and a-half for all hours worked over 40 per workweek, unless an employee is properly classified as exempt. Yeah, the 46 hour rule probably doesn't apply in this case, though who knows what sorts of shenanigans Lays is trying.
justlern2code 5y ago
You are free to offer them $100k / yr for 40hr weeks at your company.
nitwit005 5y ago
Going on strike is deciding not to do it, and the article suggests they can't hire anyone: > Frito-Lay has been told they need to fix this but unfortunately, when they bring in new people, they force the same schedule on them and they quit. Frito-Lay has waited so long to replace workers, and now Frito Lay has a horrible reputation in town so a lot of people won't work here. It seems like the existing workers mostly put up with it for a while, and then it eventually fell apart like you'd expect.
bitexploder 5y ago
Most of these workers have no technical skills. Their jobs are very physical and laborious in many cases. My dad was a maintenance tech at Frito for a very long time and he never experienced anything like this. They still would not promote him to management because he had no degree, despite him being the most senior and experienced maintenance tech there. They often flew him to other plants to set them up, do PLC magic, etc. Anyway, the packers, cooks, and all the unskilled labor are treated like replaceable cogs. There is zero upward promotion in these roles. It takes almost no time to train someone up for most of these roles. They will use them up and hire the next person who will burn out in 6 months. (I think these kind of working conditions are terrible, but it’s pretty clear why Frito can do this).
dzonga 5y ago
don't know if you read or watched Catch-22. There's phrase - what's good for the enterprise, is good for the country, hence good for the citizen. But if you're educated enough, you soon realize it's a lie. Hence why the `ills` of socialism are played all over the news n media. Then of course, the propaganda that you're poor because you don't work hard. Which again forces people to work hard. Then you put in incentives such as tying employment to healthcare - hence no choice to be unemployed. n now you've the perfect recipe oh sorry I meant endless supply of labor / soldiers you can abuse at your whim.!!
andrepd 5y ago
> Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? I don't think anyone works 12/7 in a dingy factory doing repetitive work for fun. So the answer must be yes, there is no alternative for them.
- nimchimpsky 5y ago
  I can't believe this an actual question. Fuck me hackernews is a dumpster fire sometimes.
mmmBacon 5y ago
Not everyone has the opportunities that many of us on HN have enjoyed. The HN crowd is insanely privileged. Don’t assume they have had the same access to opportunity that you did or they have the same talents you do. In my own life, I was one decision away from driving trucks in West Virginia. The decision at the time was not obvious and the path I took was much harder. It took 10 years to see light at the end of the tunnel. However, I have since had incredible opportunities that I could never have imagined at that time. It was a costly personal decision as I lost a lot of important human connections along the way.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- MikeTheGreat 5y ago
  Clearly you're using vague language to protect your privacy by obscuring the details but if you ever do decide to publicly post about this please let me know! The journey sounds fascinating (and harrowing!), and I'd be curious to read your blog post / memoir / watch the feature length movie made based on it.
rsynnott 5y ago
> Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Weak labour laws and enforcement of same, weak unions. This and worse used to be completely standard in all industrialised countries. > Everyone, through culture, decided not to overwork I mean… Madeira’s subject to the EU working time directive. It’s not just culture; it’s law.
acover 5y ago
The man in the article is working there due to golden handcuffs: > I stay here because in two years, I'll be 62 and I have a union pension acquired over 37 years. I've spent so much time here that I might as well take that pension and social security and call it quits. New hires keep quitting once they experience the work and schedule, which is why those who are trapped are forced to do overtime.
swman 5y ago
In America a lot of these positions are not full time. Employers like McDonald’s and frito will try to do their best to give “hours” (part time) so that they don’t need to give benefits. So, imagine you’re making minimum wage and you have no benefits from your job and you have to remain in a certain income band in order to qualify for government aid. It’s very hard to take a vacation let alone to just take a Sabbatical and backpack around the world to “find themselves” because they can barely afford to survive. It’a a very hard life.
Spooky23 5y ago
Because they pay marginally above minimum wage for unskilled work and offer consistent hours. When I worked in the mall in college, our prep guy was an immigrant from Ireland who worked about 15-16 hours a day. He prepped vegetables and fruit at our place, did painting, did maintenance work and closed the day doing janitorial stuff. You do it to support your family and because you’re too busy to find a better option.
etempleton 5y ago
Factories like this are typically “unskilled labor” and there are few options in any given job market for unskilled laborers that pay this good. For Topeka Kansas w/ all of this forced over time the individual featured has moved himself into upper middle class income range. I have met a number of parents who give up their personal lives and well being workingto provide their children the best lives possible, so that their children never have to work night shift or over time in a factory to provide a decent life for their families. It is a sacrifice.
sneak 5y ago
There are zillions of unfilled jobs in the US at the moment. The author of TFA says he's been at this one for a long time. I think a lot of it is inertia and fear of the unknown.

brianwawok 5y ago

Factories aren’t generally in cities. In a rural town, your job choices may be work at Walmart, one of two factories, or on a farm. The “hard” factory job may be the “best” bet among the choices. The bigger question is usually why don’t people move from a rural location? And the answer is usually “it’s complicated “. Old parents to take care of. It’s familiar. Friends. Maybe own your simple home. Maybe your church is there. Maybe quiet life is your thing.

bena 5y ago
Maybe those jobs don't pay enough to save up to move. That and the logistics of moving. Not to mention, having a job beats not having a job. And moving often means not having a job to start. Especially when your only work experience is retail, factory floor, and farmhand. You can't really afford to take a week off of getting paid. And if you're constantly working to make ends meet, you don't really have time or energy to work on developing marketable skills.
8note 5y ago
Another answer to the bigger question: it costs money to move
hallway_monitor 5y ago
The best thing about moving to remote work is that it will enable people to live in these smaller communities while having the increased income of the city. I hope this will bring more money back to local economies and revitalize rural areas.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  If remote work really takes off, it won't be long until most employers adjust salaries down to each employee's local cost of labor. Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana?
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana? Because you can't get anyone in rural Montana who is capable of getting a job paying Bay Area or NYC salaroies to accept that offer. Adjustment will result in meeting somewhere in the middle but whether that's 25% or 95% of Bay Area salaries is an open question.
  - nawitus 5y ago
    Remote salaries might end up being somewhere between rural Montana and Bay Area. There's no reason to assume there's a huge supply of software engineers in the US which would make all remote salaries to be in the low-end.
- vitaflo 5y ago
  All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as remote workers compete for it, driving out the locals. Remote workers also don’t fully contribute to the economy of the rural area because their place of employment is not in that area. If the company the remote worker works for does well and grows, that won’t grow the rural community.
  - sigstoat 5y ago
pauljurczak 5y ago
Maybe you can't afford a house in suburbia...

petee 5y ago

Depending on your skill set or circumstances, you need a job quick; more hours means more money. What sucks is then you become reliant on that money, and changing careers is near impossible without risking your family's security. Personally Ive done the 12+ hr/7 day in the film industry, a notoriously abusive industry (tv shows shoot 14-18hr days) but the money is great. We call it blood money, and do it until we need a vacation. We also get health benefits

ac29 5y ago

According to the article, "Most people make between $16.50 and $20 an hour". So, at 84 hours a week (46 normal pay, 38 overtime at 1.5x), thats $1700/week on the low end, or $88k/year. I dont think that excuses the forced overtime and I would absolutely expect severe health and/or mental health issues to result from the overwork. But, these people can quit (and according to the article many do) - I expect the only reason folks do stay is because they cant make the same money anywhere else.

robarr 5y ago
People with poor formal qualifications or habilities not longer marketable have little choice except double shifts to raise a family. Just imagine being 40 years old, no college or technical education, having only retail work experience.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  You still have many options. It is probably true that for a person in that situation, they may not be apparent or seem feasible.
quickthrower2 5y ago
They are not making that much as it’s unpaid overtime or “suicide” as they colloquially call it according to the article. Edit: sorry I’m wrong. I read “kills you over time” as “kills your overtime”
- ac29 5y ago
  The article doesnt say anything about it being unpaid. The "suicide" is a forced double shift, not a forced unpaid shift.
- sdfsadfjaslj 5y ago
  The article does not claim that it is unpaid. If they were working unpaid hours that would be a serious legal issue and state and federal regulators would be getting involved.

nine_zeros 5y ago

The real problem is cost of living without a job. It is just too fking expensive to live with little or no income. As a result, people in less than abundant job markets are forced into taking up jobs to merely survive. If someone is trying to imagine an alternative world, they should visit non-tier 1 cities of SE Asia or India or China. People routinely survive with less than full time income. Sure, it's a life with less material pleasure but it is a surprisingly adequate survival life.

AndyMcConachie 5y ago

People running factories have been exploiting and overworking the people working in their factories since there have been factories. There's nothing new here.

kcplate 5y ago
I think there is always going to be a bit of a disconnect and lack of empathy about excessive work hours when an hourly worker gripes about forced overtime (where in the US they are legally required to be paid at least 1.5x their hourly rate for the overtime) is complaining to salaried management (that are generally working a similar number of hours…but unpaid beyond the 40). Kind of makes you wonder which side is being exploited.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Management gets paid a lot more, and half their "work" time is goofing off.
- parafactual 5y ago
  As far as I can tell - correct me if I'm wrong - management is just easier compared to (say) manual labor in a factory. They're also paid more per expected hour.
  - kcplate 5y ago
    I’ve been both and can tell you with assurance that in my experience in a 35+ year career that management is not easier, you don’t make as much per hour worked, and as an exempt employee…you generally have much less legal job protections as compared to hourly employees. I bet I haven’t worked less than a 55 hour week in the last 20 years except for weeks where I was on vacation. Those lovely weeks of vacation—-probably 20 on average.

Exmoor 5y ago

Besides some of the obvious reasons such as the previously mentioned location limitations and low education limiting possibilities, I'll throw out another one. Once you're in a job like this it kind of limits your ability to branch out into less physically demanding and better paying work. Your resume kind of pigeon holes you with respect to future employment and the fact that you're working long, exhausting days means its very hard to find the time and energy to build your skills outside of work.

risedotmoe 5y ago

There is no job that won’t work you for as much as they can. They pay you low enough to where you’re dependent on them paycheck to paycheck. The turnover is high and if you don’t like the conditions they get rid of you. There are a ton of people in line for your job who will put up with worse working conditions so you either lick boots or you aren’t making ends meet this week. The culture at every job is that if you aren’t sweating from 6AM to 6PM you’re “lazy.” Don’t want to work overtime? You either won’t make ends meet or you will be fired. If you don’t make ends meet in America you will be homeless unless you are married with children or can live with your parents. The only way to remedy this is to go to college or trade school and hope your degree makes you valuable enough that you can bargain for a realistic work/life balance.

XenophileJKO 5y ago
College or trade school is not the only way out. The core way out is skill attainment. College and trade school are one way to do this.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

Its a very good question. I think in general it is important to realize that a significant amount of "design" work goes in to creating economies. Local, state, and national decisions will lead to certain conditions. How were those decisions made, and under what conditions? For any given place the answer will be different. How does one place compare to another? It is my view that it is perfectly feasible to design economies (in a voluntary way) where people can work 20 hours a week and have two months off a year every year. Or closer to our current world, there is no question in my mind that we could keep things as good or better they are now materially, while making sure no person has to work more than 40 hours a week to survive. I do love to talk about specific strategies [1] but that quickly activates our tribal instincts and can cause violent arguments even when our underlying goals are in near complete agreement. So it can be useful to just ponder on the above. How did things get the way they became? Is it due to iron wrought natural laws, or historical decisions we could freely agree to change? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27860696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27860696

clairity 5y ago
as nice as that utopia would be, the fundamental flaw with trying to limit working days/hours is that some people will still pour their whole lives into work, which creates an iterated game that pushes the equilibrium for everyone toward working more. there's no practical way to mitigate this powerful, arguably inate, incentive. the other option is actively coercing a daily/weekly work limit, and that not only severely infringes personal liberties, but eventually makes whole economies less competitive as the hardest working & most ambitious workers migrate away. the better approach is to try to ensure everyone has dignity and fair pay for the amount of work that they do. that's a function of the distribution of pay and wealth, which is something we can legislate via sticks and carrots.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  >some people will still pour their whole lives into work, which creates an iterated game that pushes the equilibrium for everyone toward working more. there's no practical way to mitigate this powerful, arguably inate, incentive. The trick here is to make sure those who don't push for the incentives are taken care of. You need to make sure everyone participating at the sane rates are taken care of in their needs and some wants. After that, you allow for those obsessed with incentives and wants to work as much as they want to get extravagant things. It's easier said than done but I believe its attainable. If you can create an economy where that sort of effort at work is used to buy luxuries and not necessities, then you have a good model that still has a balance of incentives without dragging the rest of society into a work obsessed life. People who put for this amount of effort shouldn't be doing it because they have to, they should be doing it because they want to. Unfortunately many people are doing it because they really have to, that or their standard of living drops significantly, their overall longevity. Unfortunately that's the world we have. People are forced to work at these sorts of rates to survive and it's only getting worse. It's not that they're slaving away their lives because they want to get a new luxury car or exotic vacation, it's that the alternatives to not doing it means they may be homeless next month or looking for somewhere new to live.

anemoiac 5y ago

Why people “decide” to do this sort of work? Oh, I don’t know, probably the same reasons people “decide” to be poor.

mcculley 5y ago

In addition to the many insightful replies here add: Once you have a working class addicted to some combination of fast food, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, pot, opioids, and other drugs which cost money, they have a reduced capability to dig themselves out of a hole.

samatman 5y ago
Man it is super weird that you put caffeine on that list. I assume, because you did it, that you're one of those mutants who doesn't use it nor like it much. Good for you and all, but caffeine made the modern world, the majority of the population uses it every day, and industrial society wouldn't function without it. It's also super-cheap even on a modest salary, and most workplaces give it away for free because of how necessary it is to production.
- mcculley 5y ago
  I am aware of Pollan's recently well-publicized assertion that caffeine made the modern world. I am unconvinced. I quit caffeine a few years ago. I'm not an unusual mutant. I have the genes on markers rs4410790 and rs2470893 that indicate a typical reaction to caffeine. (https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/ https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/) Most people experience a temporary increase in productivity until they build up a tolerance for caffeine. Thereafter, they are just paying and consuming to avoid headaches and reach the baseline.
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    What was your experience quitting like. I want to but am afraid
    - mcculley 5y ago
      It was not bad. I wrote about it in the linked blog piece. I also recommend /r/decaf where you can get support from others who have been and are going through decaffeinating.

jollybean 5y ago

"Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work?" About 50% of people have very little choice in the types of jobs and conditions they work in.

vasco 5y ago

There's no "siesta" (a spanish word and custom) anywhere in Portugal, including Madeira. Businesses may close for an hour or so for lunch, but "siesta" is not a thing. Not sure why you picked that as an example out of any other work expectation in any country.

spiritplumber 5y ago
Why not? Siesta makes sense in the climate of Spain and Southern Italy. Isn't Portugal just as hot?
- rvieira 5y ago
  Some parts of Portugal are hot, others are temperate (just like Spain). Siesta is mostly a cultural thing and Portugal doesn't have it.
knuthsat 5y ago
I was comparing hard working Madeira to other places with year long tourism. There, for some reason, culturally, they decided to work really hard all year. I was talking to a hard working cab driver and told him about seasonal tourism in Croatia (tourist season lasts about 5 months) and he couldn't believe me that for the rest of the year a bunch of people do not work at all.

nabilhat 5y ago

If you don't have an easy option close at hand it ends up being a choice between continuing, taking a massive hit to your income, or choosing unemployment. The pay is exactly high enough to maintain minimal staffing. That's normal, but in working conditions like this sometime it ends up a tiny bit higher than the local rate for similar jobs if there's competition for employees. Not everyone can maintain the working conditions. They leave, get kicked out, or they're useful (or connected) enough to keep around working humane hours. The rest have bills, or legal requirements to maintain employment, or burned a bridge at the other factory in town, or they're inexperienced enough to not know better. They establish a reputation as an employee who can be pushed into working inhumane hours. Managers are often rewarded for keeping up with production with a small team. A few years go by before you know it, and working hours like this is expensive. You don't have time to maintain your stuff and house, you pay someone else to. Kids need to be watched. Spouses leave. Drugs or alcohol offer to fill the holes in Maslow's Hierarchy you've sacrificed. Savings don't pile up like one might assume. Interviewing is treacherous. If you're lucky you work a night shift so you can do an interview instead of sleeping. They'll ask you how much you make per hour and offer you a lower "starting rate" hourly wage with fewer hours, which would cut your income drastically, and suggest there might be a review/small raise in 6 months. They'll call your employer before offering you a job at that rate, putting you at risk of retaliation whether you take the offer or not.

intricatedetail 5y ago

I think it is also interesting why people agree to work for the fraction of value they create for the company. Somehow this kind of suffering and exploitation is socially acceptable. Companies make billions and workers struggle to put food on the table. I think governments should focus on companies avoiding tax rather than taxing them though workers (as workers suffer and yield is fraction of what companies should be paying) and we should look at tying minimum wage to company revenue (with a nationwide minimum, so that worker always gets paid a wage they can live off).

hallway_monitor 5y ago
I'm generally a libertarian but I think current corporate law is insane. This seems like a reasonable starting point, maybe along with a policy requiring giving each employee a stake in the company.
- opinion-is-bad 5y ago
  Does the employee have to buy into that stake? Do they surrender it, or sell it, or keep it when they leave? Do they get more over time? Why should minimum wage field hands that will work for a month own part of my farm? We have had negative cash flow for the last decade, should our employees have made under minimum wage due to capital calls that were made by the business? How does a bank do proper due diligence on a loan for a business with 47,000 owners, but isn’t publicly traded? What about the administrative overhead around decision making needing a timely signature from every owner? It’s really simple to say employees should have equity, but get into the details and the idea falls apart.

xyzzy21 5y ago

No choices. This is in the Midwest in the middle of no-where. No you can't realistically move - every other location is far more expensive and would require significant relocation expense, and you'd have to leave your community, likely where you were born and raise(d) your family.

nradov 5y ago
And yet during the Great Depression poor people moved by the thousands to find work in other states. Sure it was hard but they did what they had to in order to survive.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Mobility doesn’t work like that anymore. Moving states in 1929 meant, for the most part, a completely fresh start - your landlord wasn’t going to chase you for the rest of the rent on your lease, you didn’t have a car payment or health insurance to worry about (using social security nets like medical or housing assistance is even harder when you haven’t yet established residency in a new state), and if you had any debts or even reputation issues they were very unlikely to “follow” you. Now we have credit reporting, background checks, and a system that, by design, makes it all but impossible to “start over” when you have no other options.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Except the large numbers that didn't survive.

deleted 5y ago

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pryelluw 5y ago

Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? As someone who had to do similar work for years the answer is that there were no alternatives. No one takes a shitty job on purpose.

phreack 5y ago
I thought so as well, but then I started offering jobs to people I knew hated their jobs and also worked unpaid overtime constantly, with the smallest salaries. But for some reason, when offered a 6x salary freelancing, for less hours, with guidance, and the road paved as much as possible, everyone refuses. Turns out there are people who take shitty jobs on purpose, out of a sense of... I don't know, fear, embarrassment, impostor syndrome, or a combination of them. *This is not in the US.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  They want something stable. Freelancing is not.
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    Kids, car, rent, healthcare = Need something stable
- mertd 5y ago
  Maybe they think the offer is too good to be true. In some countries it is default to assume everyone is out to scam you until proven otherwise.
- pryelluw 5y ago
  Freelancing is how I broke out of the shit job loop. But freelancing is not widely available and I consider myself extremely lucky and blessed to have been able to do it.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  How many of these people had all of the necessary funds to fall back on should their foray into freelancing not go as planned?

walrus01 5y ago

> Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? A lot of people who work paycheck-to-paycheck in "flyover state" parts of the USA do not have sufficient savings to relocate to a place where they could work a normal 40-hour week schedule and support themselves on a reasonable income. That, combined with family ties and obligations force them to remain in their local community. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-struggle-to-save-in-pandemic-year-2-and-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-2021-03-25 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-struggle-to-save...

rufus_foreman 5y ago

Time consuming? I worked in a factory for years when I was younger, not too different than what he is describing. There are some jobs, like the one I have now writing code where you think about them even when you aren't doing them, they invade your dreams. I feel like I am writing code all the time, even when I'm not logged in to the work laptop actually doing it. There are other jobs where you don't think about them when you aren't doing them, you go home after work and then you stop thinking about work. The factory job I had was not like either of those, I did not think about work even while I was doing it. My mind was free while my body was getting paid to do work. I could be thinking about anything else other than the physical work I was doing. I'm getting old, won't be able to write code much longer. The factory job that I used to do doesn't exist now, it's been automated. Save your money, kids.

bko 5y ago

From the article: > After 37 years, I still get forced to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week... I make $20.50 [an hour] after 37 years here. Assuming they obey overtime laws, he's' making $112,996 a year ((40 * 20.5) + (44 * 1.5 * 20.5) * 52). I think that has something to do with it. There likely aren't any alternatives where someone with that skill set can make nearly double the median income for Topeka, Kansas. But there are probably alternatives where they can make maybe a half that at more reasonable hours.

GravitasFailure 5y ago
It looks like Kansas overtime law kicks in at 46 hours in a week[0], so closer to $110k. Maybe a touch less since they probably shut down periodically for machine maintenance. Thing is, this sort of schedule turns into a weird form of neo-slavery. You don't have enough time to yourself to job hunt, even if something is even available, and you can't schedule an interview around your work. Saving money can be nigh impossible even when making that much because you no don't really have the time to try doing anything the cheap way (making your own food, fixing things yourself, etc.). It turns into this vicious, endless cycle of nothing but work and sleep. If you try take a day off, you run the risk of getting fired. [0]https://www.overtime-flsa.com/kansas-labor-laws/ https://www.overtime-flsa.com/kansas-labor-laws/
- PhantomGremlin 5y ago
  That link directly contradicts you. Federal overtime starts at 40 hours per week. Your link specifically says: Whichever law (state or federal) is more favorable to the worker will apply. In most instances, federal law will cover issues involving overtime pay and minimum wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime#Federal_overtime_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime#Federal_overtime_law
  - GravitasFailure 5y ago
    > Kansas state labor laws on overtime pay do not require overtime pay until an employee has worked 46 hours within a week. While this may apply in limited circumstances where an employer is not covered by the FLSA, generally the FLSA will apply and requires employers to pay time and a-half for all hours worked over 40 per workweek, unless an employee is properly classified as exempt. Yeah, the 46 hour rule probably doesn't apply in this case, though who knows what sorts of shenanigans Lays is trying.

justlern2code 5y ago

You are free to offer them $100k / yr for 40hr weeks at your company.

nitwit005 5y ago

Going on strike is deciding not to do it, and the article suggests they can't hire anyone: > Frito-Lay has been told they need to fix this but unfortunately, when they bring in new people, they force the same schedule on them and they quit. Frito-Lay has waited so long to replace workers, and now Frito Lay has a horrible reputation in town so a lot of people won't work here. It seems like the existing workers mostly put up with it for a while, and then it eventually fell apart like you'd expect.

bitexploder 5y ago

Most of these workers have no technical skills. Their jobs are very physical and laborious in many cases. My dad was a maintenance tech at Frito for a very long time and he never experienced anything like this. They still would not promote him to management because he had no degree, despite him being the most senior and experienced maintenance tech there. They often flew him to other plants to set them up, do PLC magic, etc. Anyway, the packers, cooks, and all the unskilled labor are treated like replaceable cogs. There is zero upward promotion in these roles. It takes almost no time to train someone up for most of these roles. They will use them up and hire the next person who will burn out in 6 months. (I think these kind of working conditions are terrible, but it’s pretty clear why Frito can do this).

dzonga 5y ago

don't know if you read or watched Catch-22. There's phrase - what's good for the enterprise, is good for the country, hence good for the citizen. But if you're educated enough, you soon realize it's a lie. Hence why the `ills` of socialism are played all over the news n media. Then of course, the propaganda that you're poor because you don't work hard. Which again forces people to work hard. Then you put in incentives such as tying employment to healthcare - hence no choice to be unemployed. n now you've the perfect recipe oh sorry I meant endless supply of labor / soldiers you can abuse at your whim.!!

andrepd 5y ago

> Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? I don't think anyone works 12/7 in a dingy factory doing repetitive work for fun. So the answer must be yes, there is no alternative for them.

nimchimpsky 5y ago
I can't believe this an actual question. Fuck me hackernews is a dumpster fire sometimes.

mmmBacon 5y ago

Not everyone has the opportunities that many of us on HN have enjoyed. The HN crowd is insanely privileged. Don’t assume they have had the same access to opportunity that you did or they have the same talents you do. In my own life, I was one decision away from driving trucks in West Virginia. The decision at the time was not obvious and the path I took was much harder. It took 10 years to see light at the end of the tunnel. However, I have since had incredible opportunities that I could never have imagined at that time. It was a costly personal decision as I lost a lot of important human connections along the way.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MikeTheGreat 5y ago
Clearly you're using vague language to protect your privacy by obscuring the details but if you ever do decide to publicly post about this please let me know! The journey sounds fascinating (and harrowing!), and I'd be curious to read your blog post / memoir / watch the feature length movie made based on it.

rsynnott 5y ago

> Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Weak labour laws and enforcement of same, weak unions. This and worse used to be completely standard in all industrialised countries. > Everyone, through culture, decided not to overwork I mean… Madeira’s subject to the EU working time directive. It’s not just culture; it’s law.

acover 5y ago

The man in the article is working there due to golden handcuffs: > I stay here because in two years, I'll be 62 and I have a union pension acquired over 37 years. I've spent so much time here that I might as well take that pension and social security and call it quits. New hires keep quitting once they experience the work and schedule, which is why those who are trapped are forced to do overtime.

swman 5y ago

In America a lot of these positions are not full time. Employers like McDonald’s and frito will try to do their best to give “hours” (part time) so that they don’t need to give benefits. So, imagine you’re making minimum wage and you have no benefits from your job and you have to remain in a certain income band in order to qualify for government aid. It’s very hard to take a vacation let alone to just take a Sabbatical and backpack around the world to “find themselves” because they can barely afford to survive. It’a a very hard life.

Spooky23 5y ago

Because they pay marginally above minimum wage for unskilled work and offer consistent hours. When I worked in the mall in college, our prep guy was an immigrant from Ireland who worked about 15-16 hours a day. He prepped vegetables and fruit at our place, did painting, did maintenance work and closed the day doing janitorial stuff. You do it to support your family and because you’re too busy to find a better option.

etempleton 5y ago

Factories like this are typically “unskilled labor” and there are few options in any given job market for unskilled laborers that pay this good. For Topeka Kansas w/ all of this forced over time the individual featured has moved himself into upper middle class income range. I have met a number of parents who give up their personal lives and well being workingto provide their children the best lives possible, so that their children never have to work night shift or over time in a factory to provide a decent life for their families. It is a sacrifice.

sneak 5y ago

There are zillions of unfilled jobs in the US at the moment. The author of TFA says he's been at this one for a long time. I think a lot of it is inertia and fear of the unknown.