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> incredible privilege Bah. It's spoken from a place of valuing yourself. We can choose to be a victims of "the system" or we can choose to be powerful people

> incredible privilege Bah. It's spoken from a place of valuing yourself. We can choose to be a victims of "the system" or we can choose to be powerful people and place boundaries on how we want to be treated. It might take some time to locate a job that treats us well, but contrary to the Marxist view of business, not all businesses are exploitative. > Many people are in positions where they would struggle to find another job that doesn‘t pay less, if they can find one at all. That's convenient rhetoric, but who exactly are these people? It sounds like these are just abstract "people" based on an assumption that almost all businesses are exploitative, and that the few unexploitative ones actually pay less (my observation is that the exploitative ones pay less and the unexploitative ones both have a better work environment and pay more). Depending on the industry, it might take some hunting to find good management, but there's no reason you have to quit your current job while you're looking. And you might need to gain some skills if you are working in a low skill industry, but even there, you could apply to Trader Joe's instead of Walmart, for instance.

coldtea 3y ago
>Bah. It's spoken from a place of valuing yourself. You can value yourself all you want, if the market doesn't value your skills, your domain within your job sector, or your job sector in general, it's meaningless.
- hirako2000 3y ago
  If you value yourself you don't hesitate to train yourself up for another sector or pivot into a different kind of role that is in more demand. What's meaningless is to expect a company to help you transition, or not realise they conveniently benefit from your lack of fitness for a position. They say they care but it's too much to handle, easier to just hire someone who even just seem qualified. I have interviewed for a role beneath my experience and skillset, and was thrown at questions and comments on my last interview just to hit my confidence and in attempt to reverse who's got leverage at offer time. Worked there 2 days and quit. In the exact same sector, same skillset, I could be taking home 1/3 of my current income had I stayed. Not meaningless, and if more did the same, if everyone valued themselves, none of us would ever have to waste our time with exploiters.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    We were talking about people's ability to just change job, when they're not in a hot domain, or the market doesn't value their skills, etc - and that merely "believing in yourself more" wont change this. "Just spend a year or more to get new skills or go to another sector" doesn't refute what I said, it proves it. This advice isn't about "believing in yourself" alone changing anything, it's about taking hard, multi-year even action, and changing domains and roles. "Believing in your self" is not changing anything here, it's just table stakes.
- phkahler 3y ago
  >> You can value yourself all you want, if the market doesn't value your skills, your domain within your job sector, or your job sector in general, it's meaningless. People who actually value themselves don't sit rotting away in a position like that.
pessimizer 3y ago
If valuing yourself made you valuable, you could solve unemployment by giving everyone cocaine.
- Traubenfuchs 3y ago
  Did you come up with that yourself? I LOVE this very quoteable quote.
michaelmrose 3y ago
> who exactly are these people? I went from making 60k (annualized) for the last 9 months doing customer service with a side order of sales with a high school diploma and half an associates degree in computer programming working from home and recently got laid off along with all my colleagues. Now most of the similar jobs I'm looking at are paying closer to 40k and require me to move from $small-city to Seattle to do a job I'm not terribly excited about for less money than it costs to live very well in Seattle. I was looking forward to getting out of the apartment where I have twice had to fight lunatics one who attacked my wife in the course of breaking in and another the drug dealer who assaulted a neighbor who is probably the same fellow who tried to burn the apartment building down twice by setting fires at the top of the interior stairwell when we all lost our jobs. Now I'm going through a programming boot camp and looking forward to the fun of competing with a horde of people with actual degrees and trying to formulate a tenable fallback position. Meanwhile I'm fighting the unemployment folks for the privilege of actually getting unemployment during training as is allowed by law on the basis that since my position is considered "in demand" I ought to be required to look for work that probably wont pay enough to live and wait to be replaced by some combination of chatGPT and automation. If experience holds true they will hopefully withhold everything for months then pay out refilling my small savings partially. More generally by any measure every workplace has people with a range of effectiveness. Every workplace has a bottom 50% in terms of actual ability or in terms of being able to sell themselves. You might have someone in the top 20% who is in the bottom 20% in ability to sell themselves and negotiate. Nobody not in a moderate to high percentile of both is thinking of such a situation as an opportunity they are shitting themselves. Furthermore once you leave the rarefied of the well paid professional it becomes increasingly unlikely that people have a sufficient cushion to cover taking the time to find yourself an optimal environment. People are in fact going to scramble for options and the things at the forefront of their mind is going to be generalized anxiety and every bad job they've ever had and the worry about ending up stuck in a similar situation because they have to take something soon in order to keep paying rent.
- prewett 3y ago
  Thank you for your story. I'm sorry that your stuck in your current apartment due to the layoff, that would be really frustrating, to say the least. Kudos for continuing to persevere in your education while still needing to provide for your family. That's not easy, and the non-CS-degree route to software is a hard route. I hope you have a smooth transition! My previous post wasn't intended to deny that there are people in a position such as yours. Obviously there are. But it's easy to yell a Social Justice "privilege!" slur and give some general "think of the oppressed!" statement without needing to actually engage with the situation of either group/person. Your description is similar to what I was imagining about someone who values themself. You're actively taking steps to invest in yourself.
version_five 3y ago
Victimhood is powerful rhetoric, and ironically just a way for a different group to try and convince people to allow themselves to be exploited. Weak people are going to get taken advantage of, whether it's by employers, unions, politicians, whatever. The only thing that might change is the name of their masters. Anyone who thinks they're a victim and that someone else has come along to save them is going to end up getting double screwed.
orwin 3y ago
My sister was a chef her last 2 years, climbing from simple cook. And she has worked in great restaurants (two starred ones, a 5 star hostel) She hasn't worked at a non-exploitative restaurant once. Even the one where she was paid correctly, she worked overtime (so much overtime they couldn't pay her legally and had to go off the books). She destroyed her feets, her neck, and a knee over 7 years. Her doctor told her her body seems older than she is (lot of micro-fracture on her scan). One of her ex-coworkers (31) received state payment for incapacitation, because he destroyed his life working exclusively in starred restaurants for 6 years. One is now a methhead, because they drank and drug themselves to sleep every night. If you don't own the restaurant you're working at, chances are you're being exploited (or this is a small restaurant were you only heat already prepared food).
- chaostheory 3y ago
  > If you don't own the restaurant you're working at, chances are you're being exploited (or this is a small restaurant were you only heat already prepared food). It’s hard to make money as a restaurant owner. Margins tend to be around 3-5% You have inventory that rots, rent, and overworked staff you can barely pay or keep. It’s so brutal that even some Michelin rated restaurants have to rely on donations from rich patrons and other sources of revenue like cook books and cooking classes. Even if you love cooking and food, that’s one of the last industries you’d want to join either as an owner or employee unless you’re masochistic

coldtea 3y ago

>Bah. It's spoken from a place of valuing yourself. You can value yourself all you want, if the market doesn't value your skills, your domain within your job sector, or your job sector in general, it's meaningless.

hirako2000 3y ago
If you value yourself you don't hesitate to train yourself up for another sector or pivot into a different kind of role that is in more demand. What's meaningless is to expect a company to help you transition, or not realise they conveniently benefit from your lack of fitness for a position. They say they care but it's too much to handle, easier to just hire someone who even just seem qualified. I have interviewed for a role beneath my experience and skillset, and was thrown at questions and comments on my last interview just to hit my confidence and in attempt to reverse who's got leverage at offer time. Worked there 2 days and quit. In the exact same sector, same skillset, I could be taking home 1/3 of my current income had I stayed. Not meaningless, and if more did the same, if everyone valued themselves, none of us would ever have to waste our time with exploiters.
- coldtea 3y ago
  We were talking about people's ability to just change job, when they're not in a hot domain, or the market doesn't value their skills, etc - and that merely "believing in yourself more" wont change this. "Just spend a year or more to get new skills or go to another sector" doesn't refute what I said, it proves it. This advice isn't about "believing in yourself" alone changing anything, it's about taking hard, multi-year even action, and changing domains and roles. "Believing in your self" is not changing anything here, it's just table stakes.
phkahler 3y ago
>> You can value yourself all you want, if the market doesn't value your skills, your domain within your job sector, or your job sector in general, it's meaningless. People who actually value themselves don't sit rotting away in a position like that.

pessimizer 3y ago

If valuing yourself made you valuable, you could solve unemployment by giving everyone cocaine.

Traubenfuchs 3y ago
Did you come up with that yourself? I LOVE this very quoteable quote.

michaelmrose 3y ago

> who exactly are these people? I went from making 60k (annualized) for the last 9 months doing customer service with a side order of sales with a high school diploma and half an associates degree in computer programming working from home and recently got laid off along with all my colleagues. Now most of the similar jobs I'm looking at are paying closer to 40k and require me to move from $small-city to Seattle to do a job I'm not terribly excited about for less money than it costs to live very well in Seattle. I was looking forward to getting out of the apartment where I have twice had to fight lunatics one who attacked my wife in the course of breaking in and another the drug dealer who assaulted a neighbor who is probably the same fellow who tried to burn the apartment building down twice by setting fires at the top of the interior stairwell when we all lost our jobs. Now I'm going through a programming boot camp and looking forward to the fun of competing with a horde of people with actual degrees and trying to formulate a tenable fallback position. Meanwhile I'm fighting the unemployment folks for the privilege of actually getting unemployment during training as is allowed by law on the basis that since my position is considered "in demand" I ought to be required to look for work that probably wont pay enough to live and wait to be replaced by some combination of chatGPT and automation. If experience holds true they will hopefully withhold everything for months then pay out refilling my small savings partially. More generally by any measure every workplace has people with a range of effectiveness. Every workplace has a bottom 50% in terms of actual ability or in terms of being able to sell themselves. You might have someone in the top 20% who is in the bottom 20% in ability to sell themselves and negotiate. Nobody not in a moderate to high percentile of both is thinking of such a situation as an opportunity they are shitting themselves. Furthermore once you leave the rarefied of the well paid professional it becomes increasingly unlikely that people have a sufficient cushion to cover taking the time to find yourself an optimal environment. People are in fact going to scramble for options and the things at the forefront of their mind is going to be generalized anxiety and every bad job they've ever had and the worry about ending up stuck in a similar situation because they have to take something soon in order to keep paying rent.

prewett 3y ago
Thank you for your story. I'm sorry that your stuck in your current apartment due to the layoff, that would be really frustrating, to say the least. Kudos for continuing to persevere in your education while still needing to provide for your family. That's not easy, and the non-CS-degree route to software is a hard route. I hope you have a smooth transition! My previous post wasn't intended to deny that there are people in a position such as yours. Obviously there are. But it's easy to yell a Social Justice "privilege!" slur and give some general "think of the oppressed!" statement without needing to actually engage with the situation of either group/person. Your description is similar to what I was imagining about someone who values themself. You're actively taking steps to invest in yourself.

version_five 3y ago

Victimhood is powerful rhetoric, and ironically just a way for a different group to try and convince people to allow themselves to be exploited. Weak people are going to get taken advantage of, whether it's by employers, unions, politicians, whatever. The only thing that might change is the name of their masters. Anyone who thinks they're a victim and that someone else has come along to save them is going to end up getting double screwed.

orwin 3y ago

My sister was a chef her last 2 years, climbing from simple cook. And she has worked in great restaurants (two starred ones, a 5 star hostel) She hasn't worked at a non-exploitative restaurant once. Even the one where she was paid correctly, she worked overtime (so much overtime they couldn't pay her legally and had to go off the books). She destroyed her feets, her neck, and a knee over 7 years. Her doctor told her her body seems older than she is (lot of micro-fracture on her scan). One of her ex-coworkers (31) received state payment for incapacitation, because he destroyed his life working exclusively in starred restaurants for 6 years. One is now a methhead, because they drank and drug themselves to sleep every night. If you don't own the restaurant you're working at, chances are you're being exploited (or this is a small restaurant were you only heat already prepared food).

chaostheory 3y ago
> If you don't own the restaurant you're working at, chances are you're being exploited (or this is a small restaurant were you only heat already prepared food). It’s hard to make money as a restaurant owner. Margins tend to be around 3-5% You have inventory that rots, rent, and overworked staff you can barely pay or keep. It’s so brutal that even some Michelin rated restaurants have to rely on donations from rich patrons and other sources of revenue like cook books and cooking classes. Even if you love cooking and food, that’s one of the last industries you’d want to join either as an owner or employee unless you’re masochistic