4 ms·

I’m a millennial and I feel the same way, but I think a lot of this is due to a privileged position we have in the labor force. It’s the whitest of white color

by ixtli 4y ago

I’m a millennial and I feel the same way, but I think a lot of this is due to a privileged position we have in the labor force. It’s the whitest of white color jobs. We’re still exploited as any trade, but it’s easier to be an architect or a lawyer than it is to be a construction worker. Especially over time and with contradictions sharpening as they are.

finnh 4y ago
High-skill tradespeople often make more than architects. Not at the star level, of course, but architecture is generally a poorly-paying field for the amount of schooling and intellect it requires.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  unless we start seeing trillion-dollar building contracts, this will not change. Tech jobs pay so much because the stakes are so high when we're talking trillion dollar companies, first-mover advantage, and network effects. Architecture is the opposite of tech in this regard.
- ixtli 4y ago
  True yeah. I was just thinking of other sorts of “high qualification” high paid trades which require lots of investment to create.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
Software development is very much an exception. It’s one of the precious few fields with compensation that’s somewhat tracked with inflation and has a somewhat reasonable barrier to entry. As a millennial in my 30s I was fortunate to be able to break in and start earning a nice paycheck without a college degree, but even that possibility is deteriorating now due to a sudden flood of entry level applicants. Companies are now seeking mid-level-to-senior candidates almost exclusively because they don’t want to bother with training and mentoring a newbie, they want someone who can hit the ground running. There are still some possibilities for one to get one’s foot in the door with barely paid or unpaid college internships but from my perspective the gates are slowly closing.
- ixtli 4y ago
  It’s interesting to read people like Marx when he was writing about the class society he lived in because you can see how much the bottom has fallen out of the middle. He describes the specialist artisans who are capable, sometimes, of upward mobility into “petite bourgeois”. Not much directly translates in the “middle” class any more but this resonated for me. We are kept happy but slowly we are becoming less and less capable of owning.

by ixtli 4y ago

finnh 4y ago

High-skill tradespeople often make more than architects. Not at the star level, of course, but architecture is generally a poorly-paying field for the amount of schooling and intellect it requires.

paulpauper 4y ago
unless we start seeing trillion-dollar building contracts, this will not change. Tech jobs pay so much because the stakes are so high when we're talking trillion dollar companies, first-mover advantage, and network effects. Architecture is the opposite of tech in this regard.
ixtli 4y ago
True yeah. I was just thinking of other sorts of “high qualification” high paid trades which require lots of investment to create.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

Software development is very much an exception. It’s one of the precious few fields with compensation that’s somewhat tracked with inflation and has a somewhat reasonable barrier to entry. As a millennial in my 30s I was fortunate to be able to break in and start earning a nice paycheck without a college degree, but even that possibility is deteriorating now due to a sudden flood of entry level applicants. Companies are now seeking mid-level-to-senior candidates almost exclusively because they don’t want to bother with training and mentoring a newbie, they want someone who can hit the ground running. There are still some possibilities for one to get one’s foot in the door with barely paid or unpaid college internships but from my perspective the gates are slowly closing.

ixtli 4y ago
It’s interesting to read people like Marx when he was writing about the class society he lived in because you can see how much the bottom has fallen out of the middle. He describes the specialist artisans who are capable, sometimes, of upward mobility into “petite bourgeois”. Not much directly translates in the “middle” class any more but this resonated for me. We are kept happy but slowly we are becoming less and less capable of owning.