4 ms·

This captures a form of existential dread I am sure all of us have felt. On the one hand, you have an ostensibly "good" job with great pay, benefits, etc. On th

by hiatus 2y ago

This captures a form of existential dread I am sure all of us have felt. On the one hand, you have an ostensibly "good" job with great pay, benefits, etc. On the other hand, you have to _get punched in the stomach_ each day. All while knowing that there are people out there taking more abuse for likely far less pay. Who are you to feel bad about your situation?

everdrive 2y ago
Very well put. Most jobs are definitionally bad in some way. Well-paying (at least relative to the wider job market) tech jobs represent some of the better jobs available. They’re deeply frustrating, nearly any customer service job is a significantly worse experience for far less money, benefits, time off, healthcare, etc.
rexpop 2y ago
> Who are you to feel bad about your situation? Who am I? Who are any of us to complain and/or fix things? The answer is: we're the only people who can. Change has to start somewhere. The best thing for people who have it worse isn't to silently suffer, it's to help ourselves by dismantling the systems under which we both suffer. We have to take every opportunity to do that, and that means even the unglamorous ones. > If I'm not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? — Hillel
- miketery 2y ago
  I agree we need to be the change we want to see. However taking about dismantling a system is probably going to introduce more pain (in the short and long run). For example capitalism doesn’t need dismantling, it has brought us far more good than bad. However we do need to figure out how to deal with bad actors and net negative behavior (deforestation, over fishing, ocean trash etc).
  - Clubber 2y ago
    Globalization is a big one. There are no good jobs for average people anymore, they all got moved to Mexico or China or Vietnam, etc. Tariffs can help with that if applied correctly.
    - kibwen 2y ago
      > if applied correctly Import taxes aren't going to help without serious, long-term government subsidization of those jobs.
      - Clubber 2y ago
        Sure they will. US car manufacturers ship parts to Mexico where they are assembled and shipped into the US for sale. If that method now costs 25% more, they will probably move some manufacturing back home to avoid the tariff. Apply that to all companies who ship parts to Mexico for assembly/manufacture, and it will make a difference, assuming the tariffs are high enough to make a difference in the showroom. Here's the Gore/Perot debate pre-NAFTA. Perot seems pretty spot on in his assessment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fi8OOAKuGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fi8OOAKuGQ
        MadnessASAP 2y ago
        Deliberately making a process inefficient isn't going to fix anything. More expensive cars means cars are going to be less in demand. Means less cars manufactured, means less jobs for people who make cars. Also, reworking the auto manufacturing pipeline is going to take decades not days. Maybe ask yourself if the reason nobody else in the past 30 years has enacted the recent measures of the American government is because they were stupid/lazy/greedy or if it's because they clearly don't work.
        Clubber 2y ago
        >Deliberately making a process inefficient isn't going to fix anything. Shipping parts to Mexico to have them assembled then shipping it to the US is much less efficient than shipping the parts to the US, manufacturing in the US, then selling in the US. >More expensive cars means cars are going to be less in demand. Means less cars manufactured, means less jobs for people who make cars. Less jobs for Mexican labor making cars, more jobs for American labor making cars, that's the objective. It also strengthens unions by increasing headcount and making the threat of moving labor to another country much more expensive. Remember, the discussion is about the plight of the average American worker and how they've been systematically squeezed for 30+ years now due to globalization. >Also, reworking the auto manufacturing pipeline is going to take decades not days. Yes, more like years not decades, but ya, not sure why anyone would think it would take days. I suspect a lot of companies will try political maneuvers like waiting out Trump's term, hoping the next guy would be more sensible to their profit needs. >Maybe ask yourself if the reason nobody else in the past 30 years has enacted the recent measures of the American government is because they were stupid/lazy/greedy or if it's because they clearly don't work. Companies have a much higher profit margin by using Mexican labor, at the expense of US labor. Those companies also donate a lot of money to campaigns. It's pretty off brand for the Democrats under Clinton/Gore to champion moving thousands of jobs to Mexico under NAFTA. I wonder what motivated them to do that. It may or may not work, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Despair of the average American has a lot of negative, long term social consequences we're currently dealing with, and it's just going to get worse. Did you know foreign car manufacturers make cars in the US for the US market to avoid tariffs and improve efficiency? They might be on to something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobiles_manufactured_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobiles_manufactur...
  - stronglikedan 2y ago
    If we (US) could take the crony out of our capitalism, then we'd be in a much better place.
  - dsr_ 2y ago
    Among the problems: people refuse to consider reasonable limits. Let's suppose that we institute an income cap and a wealth cap. For the sake of argument, we'll call that 10 million dollars a year, and 100 million dollars. All the existing taxes apply. Nothing gets treated specially: your income for the year will always be capped at 10MM, and your total wealth will be capped at 100MM. It's a 100% tax and knowingly evading it is a crime. If you hit the income limit in two different years, the mayor of your city will award you a plaque, with an optional ceremony, and if you hit the wealth limit, the governor of your state will award you a plaque. How much pain does that inflict? None at all. But nearly everyone harbors some secret hope of becoming a billionaire right now, and the thought of not winning that lottery is enough to make it politically impossible to enact this tiny reform. And if you can't make reforms, the whole thing may need to be dismantled.
  - rexpop 2y ago
    > capitalism doesn’t need dismantling I'm not repudiating (in this thread) capitalism, per se. Only whatever system it is that's abusing OP's protagonist. If you think capitalism inevitably punches someone in the stomach, well, then yeah; you've got your work cut out for you.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    > For example capitalism doesn’t need dismantling, it has brought us far more good than bad. The question you should be asking first is, is it sustainable? If you give someone a bank account with a million in it, they can bring a lot of good to themselves by spending it profligately... but then one day it runs out.
xyst 2y ago
Normalization of this existential dread is a direct result of the fundamental shift of power from labor to capital. Our safety nets have been ripped away from us. Leaving us with this awful choice of working with shitty employers. In some cases, they might even hold a monopsony on labor and thus have _no choice_. The time I have wasted at shit tier employers is lost forever. All so the rapacious capitalists could pump the stock and deliver share holder value
- ta1243 2y ago
  TIL: monopsony is not a typo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
  - Animats 2y ago
    Farmers know about it all too well. The number of bulk buyers of agricultural products tends towards one.
JohnFen 2y ago
Any job where you have to get regularly punched in the stomach is a terrible job regardless of the compensation involved. That others may have even worse jobs doesn't change that.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Sometimes people take such jobs to get out of a bad financial situation. That can be a legitimate use, but one should remember that it's but a temporary thing to solve a particular problem, there should be an end date, and a way out. In particular, you should not start depending on the thicker stream of money such a job pays. It's rare that such a job leaves the physical damage described in the story. More often it can damage you mentally: burned out, depressed, crushed by internally felt shame and guilt. This should not be discounted too easily; it can cost you a lot of plain money to get treated, to say nothing of the suffering, both yours and that of those who care about you.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  The challenge is differentiating between absolute and relative judgements, and when to use each in your thought process. It may be a terrible job in the absolute sense, but also a good job in the relative sense because it pays well and most involve gut punches.
- winstonewert 2y ago
  Really? Is there no level of compensation that would make you think that getting punched was worthwhile?
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    When I was younger one of my favorite punchlines was "What kind of (wo)man do you think I am?! ... Oh, we've already established that, we're just negotiating price"
    - Clubber 2y ago
      One not as funny that I made up was, "if we have to be whores, I'd rather be an expensive whore."
thinkingtoilet 2y ago
I had a job at S&P Global. Great pay. Great benefits. I was fucking miserable. I left, took a 50k pay cut, and have been much happier. I understand it's a privilege to be able to take a 50k pay cut, but I also lived well within my means and didn't adjust my lifestyle when I got raises. Let that be an important lesson to anyone reading this. >Who are you to feel bad about your situation? I am a human being with one life that is far to brief to spend it being miserable.
- a2dam 2y ago
  Hah I used to work there as well. I pictured this whole story taking place in 55 Water St.
- theonething 2y ago
  If you don't mind sharing, what was it that made the second job better compared to the first?
Aurornis 2y ago
> All while knowing that there are people out there taking more abuse for likely far less pay. My anecdotal experience: The best jobs in my career were the medium-pay, medium-expectations jobs. Most (but not all) of the very high paying jobs I've had also came with very high expectations. They were paying a lot of money and they knew that people didn't have many other options to get paychecks that large. Managers were compensated on performance of their teams, so they had to extract as much work as possible to get the maximum pay. They knew that they could post a job ad tomorrow with the high salary listed and it would attract hordes of qualified applicants who wanted that paycheck. I never got to experience the golden era of certain FAANG companies where many people were making bank and few people were ever fired. Likewise, the lowest paying jobs I've had were also terrible. They had no concept of anything other than extracting work from people for minimum pay. They kept everyone tired, demoralized, and afraid of being fired. People don't search for other jobs as much when they're constantly burned out and overwhelmed. The sweet spot, for me, has been right in the middle. Good pay (great, relative to all professions), but not top of market pay, and reasonable expectations. Surrounded by a mix of people from different ages but with a lot of parents who have families at home. If I interview somewhere and it's nothing but mid 20s people who don't have families, I stay away because they have much worse concept of work-life balance in my experience.
- petsormeat 2y ago
  I‘ve found that the „high expectations“ were acutely stressful because they were concealed: there was no way to match them. This story wonderfully expresses the dread of trying to guess what’s expected of you by an employer. Yes, a middling wage might be more sustainable when it’s compensating obvious work tasks that demographically average people can perform.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    > I‘ve found that the „high expectations“ were acutely stressful because they were concealed: there was no way to match them. That's a very good point. I remember the first time I was in a cycle of trying to meet impossible expectations. We kept putting in a lot of effort and doing some very impressive things, but every time we got close to delivering something the goalposts would move. After far longer than I'd like to admit, I realized that those lofty expectations weren't designed to be met. They were designed to keep us perpetually insecure. Always feeling like we needed to try a little harder. And it was working on us, at least for a couple years. The illusion was briefly shattered when a manager gave us a goal that numerically meant that one of our vendors would have to serve us at a loss. He wanted us to negotiate a contract where they paid us to be their customer, when you added up all the factors. When we showed him, he did a pretend-angry routine and lectured us on how we should be thinking bigger all the time. We "failed" to meet that impossible expectation, to the surprise of absolutely nobody on the team. After that, it was like the team had been freed from the shackles of impossible expectations. We did our best and shrugged off the disappointed manager routine when it didn't meet the arbitrary expectations. It was interesting to watch as the manager realized his power over us had been broken, which quickly gave way to a slow-motion process of sidelining us for younger replacements who were more receptive to the disappointed manager routine. I miss many of those coworkers, but I do not miss that job.

by hiatus 2y ago

everdrive 2y ago

Very well put. Most jobs are definitionally bad in some way. Well-paying (at least relative to the wider job market) tech jobs represent some of the better jobs available. They’re deeply frustrating, nearly any customer service job is a significantly worse experience for far less money, benefits, time off, healthcare, etc.

rexpop 2y ago

> Who are you to feel bad about your situation? Who am I? Who are any of us to complain and/or fix things? The answer is: we're the only people who can. Change has to start somewhere. The best thing for people who have it worse isn't to silently suffer, it's to help ourselves by dismantling the systems under which we both suffer. We have to take every opportunity to do that, and that means even the unglamorous ones. > If I'm not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? — Hillel

miketery 2y ago
I agree we need to be the change we want to see. However taking about dismantling a system is probably going to introduce more pain (in the short and long run). For example capitalism doesn’t need dismantling, it has brought us far more good than bad. However we do need to figure out how to deal with bad actors and net negative behavior (deforestation, over fishing, ocean trash etc).
- Clubber 2y ago
  Globalization is a big one. There are no good jobs for average people anymore, they all got moved to Mexico or China or Vietnam, etc. Tariffs can help with that if applied correctly.
  - kibwen 2y ago
    > if applied correctly Import taxes aren't going to help without serious, long-term government subsidization of those jobs.
    - Clubber 2y ago
      Sure they will. US car manufacturers ship parts to Mexico where they are assembled and shipped into the US for sale. If that method now costs 25% more, they will probably move some manufacturing back home to avoid the tariff. Apply that to all companies who ship parts to Mexico for assembly/manufacture, and it will make a difference, assuming the tariffs are high enough to make a difference in the showroom. Here's the Gore/Perot debate pre-NAFTA. Perot seems pretty spot on in his assessment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fi8OOAKuGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fi8OOAKuGQ
      - MadnessASAP 2y ago
        Deliberately making a process inefficient isn't going to fix anything. More expensive cars means cars are going to be less in demand. Means less cars manufactured, means less jobs for people who make cars. Also, reworking the auto manufacturing pipeline is going to take decades not days. Maybe ask yourself if the reason nobody else in the past 30 years has enacted the recent measures of the American government is because they were stupid/lazy/greedy or if it's because they clearly don't work.
        Clubber 2y ago
        >Deliberately making a process inefficient isn't going to fix anything. Shipping parts to Mexico to have them assembled then shipping it to the US is much less efficient than shipping the parts to the US, manufacturing in the US, then selling in the US. >More expensive cars means cars are going to be less in demand. Means less cars manufactured, means less jobs for people who make cars. Less jobs for Mexican labor making cars, more jobs for American labor making cars, that's the objective. It also strengthens unions by increasing headcount and making the threat of moving labor to another country much more expensive. Remember, the discussion is about the plight of the average American worker and how they've been systematically squeezed for 30+ years now due to globalization. >Also, reworking the auto manufacturing pipeline is going to take decades not days. Yes, more like years not decades, but ya, not sure why anyone would think it would take days. I suspect a lot of companies will try political maneuvers like waiting out Trump's term, hoping the next guy would be more sensible to their profit needs. >Maybe ask yourself if the reason nobody else in the past 30 years has enacted the recent measures of the American government is because they were stupid/lazy/greedy or if it's because they clearly don't work. Companies have a much higher profit margin by using Mexican labor, at the expense of US labor. Those companies also donate a lot of money to campaigns. It's pretty off brand for the Democrats under Clinton/Gore to champion moving thousands of jobs to Mexico under NAFTA. I wonder what motivated them to do that. It may or may not work, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Despair of the average American has a lot of negative, long term social consequences we're currently dealing with, and it's just going to get worse. Did you know foreign car manufacturers make cars in the US for the US market to avoid tariffs and improve efficiency? They might be on to something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobiles_manufactured_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobiles_manufactur...
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  If we (US) could take the crony out of our capitalism, then we'd be in a much better place.
- dsr_ 2y ago
  Among the problems: people refuse to consider reasonable limits. Let's suppose that we institute an income cap and a wealth cap. For the sake of argument, we'll call that 10 million dollars a year, and 100 million dollars. All the existing taxes apply. Nothing gets treated specially: your income for the year will always be capped at 10MM, and your total wealth will be capped at 100MM. It's a 100% tax and knowingly evading it is a crime. If you hit the income limit in two different years, the mayor of your city will award you a plaque, with an optional ceremony, and if you hit the wealth limit, the governor of your state will award you a plaque. How much pain does that inflict? None at all. But nearly everyone harbors some secret hope of becoming a billionaire right now, and the thought of not winning that lottery is enough to make it politically impossible to enact this tiny reform. And if you can't make reforms, the whole thing may need to be dismantled.
- rexpop 2y ago
  > capitalism doesn’t need dismantling I'm not repudiating (in this thread) capitalism, per se. Only whatever system it is that's abusing OP's protagonist. If you think capitalism inevitably punches someone in the stomach, well, then yeah; you've got your work cut out for you.
- int_19h 2y ago
  > For example capitalism doesn’t need dismantling, it has brought us far more good than bad. The question you should be asking first is, is it sustainable? If you give someone a bank account with a million in it, they can bring a lot of good to themselves by spending it profligately... but then one day it runs out.

xyst 2y ago

Normalization of this existential dread is a direct result of the fundamental shift of power from labor to capital. Our safety nets have been ripped away from us. Leaving us with this awful choice of working with shitty employers. In some cases, they might even hold a monopsony on labor and thus have _no choice_. The time I have wasted at shit tier employers is lost forever. All so the rapacious capitalists could pump the stock and deliver share holder value

ta1243 2y ago
TIL: monopsony is not a typo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
- Animats 2y ago
  Farmers know about it all too well. The number of bulk buyers of agricultural products tends towards one.

JohnFen 2y ago

Any job where you have to get regularly punched in the stomach is a terrible job regardless of the compensation involved. That others may have even worse jobs doesn't change that.

nine_k 2y ago
Sometimes people take such jobs to get out of a bad financial situation. That can be a legitimate use, but one should remember that it's but a temporary thing to solve a particular problem, there should be an end date, and a way out. In particular, you should not start depending on the thicker stream of money such a job pays. It's rare that such a job leaves the physical damage described in the story. More often it can damage you mentally: burned out, depressed, crushed by internally felt shame and guilt. This should not be discounted too easily; it can cost you a lot of plain money to get treated, to say nothing of the suffering, both yours and that of those who care about you.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
The challenge is differentiating between absolute and relative judgements, and when to use each in your thought process. It may be a terrible job in the absolute sense, but also a good job in the relative sense because it pays well and most involve gut punches.
winstonewert 2y ago
Really? Is there no level of compensation that would make you think that getting punched was worthwhile?
- mdaniel 2y ago
  When I was younger one of my favorite punchlines was "What kind of (wo)man do you think I am?! ... Oh, we've already established that, we're just negotiating price"
  - Clubber 2y ago
    One not as funny that I made up was, "if we have to be whores, I'd rather be an expensive whore."

thinkingtoilet 2y ago

I had a job at S&P Global. Great pay. Great benefits. I was fucking miserable. I left, took a 50k pay cut, and have been much happier. I understand it's a privilege to be able to take a 50k pay cut, but I also lived well within my means and didn't adjust my lifestyle when I got raises. Let that be an important lesson to anyone reading this. >Who are you to feel bad about your situation? I am a human being with one life that is far to brief to spend it being miserable.

a2dam 2y ago
Hah I used to work there as well. I pictured this whole story taking place in 55 Water St.
theonething 2y ago
If you don't mind sharing, what was it that made the second job better compared to the first?

Aurornis 2y ago

> All while knowing that there are people out there taking more abuse for likely far less pay. My anecdotal experience: The best jobs in my career were the medium-pay, medium-expectations jobs. Most (but not all) of the very high paying jobs I've had also came with very high expectations. They were paying a lot of money and they knew that people didn't have many other options to get paychecks that large. Managers were compensated on performance of their teams, so they had to extract as much work as possible to get the maximum pay. They knew that they could post a job ad tomorrow with the high salary listed and it would attract hordes of qualified applicants who wanted that paycheck. I never got to experience the golden era of certain FAANG companies where many people were making bank and few people were ever fired. Likewise, the lowest paying jobs I've had were also terrible. They had no concept of anything other than extracting work from people for minimum pay. They kept everyone tired, demoralized, and afraid of being fired. People don't search for other jobs as much when they're constantly burned out and overwhelmed. The sweet spot, for me, has been right in the middle. Good pay (great, relative to all professions), but not top of market pay, and reasonable expectations. Surrounded by a mix of people from different ages but with a lot of parents who have families at home. If I interview somewhere and it's nothing but mid 20s people who don't have families, I stay away because they have much worse concept of work-life balance in my experience.

petsormeat 2y ago
I‘ve found that the „high expectations“ were acutely stressful because they were concealed: there was no way to match them. This story wonderfully expresses the dread of trying to guess what’s expected of you by an employer. Yes, a middling wage might be more sustainable when it’s compensating obvious work tasks that demographically average people can perform.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > I‘ve found that the „high expectations“ were acutely stressful because they were concealed: there was no way to match them. That's a very good point. I remember the first time I was in a cycle of trying to meet impossible expectations. We kept putting in a lot of effort and doing some very impressive things, but every time we got close to delivering something the goalposts would move. After far longer than I'd like to admit, I realized that those lofty expectations weren't designed to be met. They were designed to keep us perpetually insecure. Always feeling like we needed to try a little harder. And it was working on us, at least for a couple years. The illusion was briefly shattered when a manager gave us a goal that numerically meant that one of our vendors would have to serve us at a loss. He wanted us to negotiate a contract where they paid us to be their customer, when you added up all the factors. When we showed him, he did a pretend-angry routine and lectured us on how we should be thinking bigger all the time. We "failed" to meet that impossible expectation, to the surprise of absolutely nobody on the team. After that, it was like the team had been freed from the shackles of impossible expectations. We did our best and shrugged off the disappointed manager routine when it didn't meet the arbitrary expectations. It was interesting to watch as the manager realized his power over us had been broken, which quickly gave way to a slow-motion process of sidelining us for younger replacements who were more receptive to the disappointed manager routine. I miss many of those coworkers, but I do not miss that job.