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> Anyway, I think it's an attractive fantasy among American engineers that low-waged workers are happy and uncomplicated and untormented by the same demons that
by southerntofu 5y ago
> Anyway, I think it's an attractive fantasy among American engineers that low-waged workers are happy and uncomplicated and untormented by the same demons that torture the more sophisticated souls that sling code for a living.
Overall, i agree with you. However, having worked both IT and non-IT jobs, and residing in a very low income neighborhood in western Europe, i have the feeling (nothing objective/scientific) that non-IT folks have a class consciousness that they're being screwed and they should worry as little as possible about work-related problems as long as they have a roof over their heads. Workers are usually conscious that the boss/manager is an exploitative asshole and that customers can be abusive entitled brats (however if the situation in the USA is 1/10th as bad as US TV shows suggest, then i can say for sure the situation here in Europe is really different and outside of luxury shops, workers eg. cashiers/waiters are expected to be treated with respect and the customer is not royalty).
While in the IT world, there's a devotion to the entire capitalist apparatus and a denial of exploitative/abusive relationships, which appears to lead to greater mental anxiety and cognitive dissonance. I've seen plenty of people suffer from work-related injuries and handicaps, but in other fields than IT, i've never seen people willingly and consciously overwork themselves to that point.
That's a very subjective, limited view of the topic, and i don't mean in any way that IT jobs aren't more comfortable than manual labor. But not every IT job is comfortable and the startup/company culture makes it very hard to say no to your boss, ensuring a culture of self-exploitation leading to burnout. In other fields, we have strong unions and habits to make the boss' life miserable by stealing supplies or sabotaging work... i don't hear of so many equivalents in the IT industries.