7 ms·

You will always have the nagging guilt of passing by the janitor, whose job exists because cleaning bathrooms is dirty and time-consuming, and wondering why you

by wonnage 12y ago

You will always have the nagging guilt of passing by the janitor, whose job exists because cleaning bathrooms is dirty and time-consuming, and wondering why your work has more value than theirs. But what if there is no logic to the system, that it's arbitrary, and random, and has simply found an equilibrium at the moment? You could drive yourself crazy thinking about it. Why are writers valued as they are? Because that's what people are willing to pay them. Why don't they just rise up and demand better pay? Who knows. Maybe people just don't value reading that much. Is it because they're uneducated? etc. ad infinitum. Why does a web developer making to-do apps lead a better a life than someone researching cancer cures? Beats me. But it would be a complete waste of their good fortune, to be at the right place at the right time, if they didn't use this advantage. Already the system is saturated with hacker school grads, and the buzz is moving towards mobile, I can easily imagine a day where knowing Rails is no longer a golden ticket. It's as silly as wondering why you got to cross the Atlantic on the luxurious Titanic, while everyone else is scrambling to the life boats. If you truly think that your present value is purely a matter of luck or a bubble, that it's illusory, then there is no why, you'd damned better make sure you find something concrete before everything goes to shit.

Dewie 12y ago
> Why don't they just rise up and demand better pay? Because unions are bad and the Free Market will magically fix everything with its magical, invisible hand. Haven't you heard? (though I don't know if a union would make sense for writers in general.)
- toyg 12y ago
  > I don't know if a union would make sense for writers Writers have unions, and quite a few of them (remember the Hollywood strike?). Some work, some don't; but generally speaking, they did improve compensation and arrangements for the profession. The problems of the writing world are well documented, and mostly common to other creative fields: oversupply, intrinsic difficulty in quality judgement, and output that can be hard to monetise. I honestly don't understand why they were dropped with janitors, which have a completely different set of problems (mostly related to social status).
- barry-cotter 12y ago
  That is indeed a small part of it. Much more is that anyone who can graduate primary school can probably do an acceptable job as a janitor while the capacity to do programming just isn't as common. Supply and Demand, baby.
  - Dewie 12y ago
    I was talking about writers.
im3w1l 12y ago
>Why janitors... Because of supply and demand. Both of which can shift. >Why are writers valued as they are? Because everyone wants to read what their friend reads. It's a network effect even if not of the same strength as for social networks. So some make it really really big. Most make very little.
- mixedbit 12y ago
  >> Why are writers valued as they are? It is also a supply problem. A lot of good things that were written in the past are still valuable today. New writers need to compete for people's reading time with more and more great writers from the past. Software tends to age much faster, and needs constant improvements, so demand for programmers does not decrease over time.
vinceguidry 12y ago
> You will always have the nagging guilt of passing by the janitor, whose job exists because cleaning bathrooms is dirty and time-consuming, and wondering why your work has more value than theirs. I wouldn't necessarily say that it does. Janitorial service contracts can be lucrative.
- NateDad 12y ago
  The contract may be valuable. The guy cleaning the toilet did not negotiate the contract. He cleans the toiled for minimum wage (or thereabouts).
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    Not all the time. Sometimes the guy cleaning the toilets actually did negotiate the contracts. Don't be surprised if he's taking home more than you are. Negotiating the contract, maintaining the business relationship, organizing and scheduling the labor, cleaning the toilets. These are all things involved in janitorial service. If you're only doing one of these things, say, cleaning the toilets, then sure, your labor isn't all that valuable. Contrast this with software development. There are thousands of people in this field who are just starting out, don't know much, and can only work on tasks, they cannot organize and manage. They do what you tell them to and not a lick more. They won't be making much more than the janitor. When I was a full-time tech guy doing support and building linux-based backend services, I made $10 an hour, wouldn't be surprised if the janitor made more. Now I make a lot more, but I have a lot more responsibility. Labor by itself isn't valuable, whether it's technical or not. You're looking at one tiny piece of one job market, and comparing it to one tiny piece of another job market.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      Average income or wages for janitors are available. The rates are considerably below those of software developers and other technical IT staff. There are exceptions to averages, but it's absolutely fair to say that the typical janitor is making far less than the typical software developer. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Building-and-Grounds-Cleaning/Janitors-and-building-cleaners.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Building-and-Grounds-Cleaning/Janitor... 2012 median pay: $22,320 per year / $10.73 per hour
noonespecial 12y ago
Your work has more value than the janitor's because you could do the janitor's job more easily than he could do yours. Some of it is arbitrary on some level, but much of it is not.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
kenrikm 12y ago
If the Janitor taught himself to code over a period of years as you did he could be working the same job you do. Guilt for making decisions that other people did not and maybe a bit of luck is not rational. Tomorrow that janitor might buy a lottery ticket, and win, should he feel guilty that you did not get yourself to the 7-11 and buy the ticket? - I think not.
- yuvadam 12y ago
  Are you seriously comparing the privileges given to a white young male working at a tech job in Silicon Valley to those (or lack thereof) of a janitor?
  - VexXtreme 12y ago
    Many developers in the world don't live in SV and they are not privileged young white males. Care to get out of your bubble once in a while?
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      Developers in SV are overwhelmingly male, and generally of European, East Asian, or South Asian heritage. There are very few who are of backgrounds more typically found engaged in janitorial services, typically Hispanic or black. Pointing out the skewed demographics, if not outright racism and sexism in the software world, is quite on point in the context of TFA.
      - kenrikm 12y ago
        I would contend that the reason there are not more Hispanic or Black people working as developers has more to do with social and cultural reasons in the home and community and less to do with the willingness to hire them, any decent developer can get a job in the valley. That's a deferent debate and completely unrelated to the point I was making about the guilt over seeing a janitor who's race was not mentioned, stereotype much?. You can try to twist my comment into something it is not but know that you do so with no basis as you do not know my actual views on the subject. Should we be trying to bring more STEM into courses? Absolutely! and I'm pretty sure that subject is well known as an issue we need to solve as a country. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-randall/increasing-diversity-in-t_b_5333264.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-randall/increasing-diver...
thaumasiotes 12y ago
> Why does a web developer making to-do apps lead a better a life than someone researching cancer cures? At the most basic level, because the web developer actually produces things. The person who develops anything that could be described as a "cancer cure" if you squinted at it the right way would lead a much more comfortable life. If you pay people based on what they promise to do, you'll quickly discover that promising to do something is easy. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2003-10-05/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2003-10-05/

by wonnage 12y ago

Dewie 12y ago

> Why don't they just rise up and demand better pay? Because unions are bad and the Free Market will magically fix everything with its magical, invisible hand. Haven't you heard? (though I don't know if a union would make sense for writers in general.)

toyg 12y ago
> I don't know if a union would make sense for writers Writers have unions, and quite a few of them (remember the Hollywood strike?). Some work, some don't; but generally speaking, they did improve compensation and arrangements for the profession. The problems of the writing world are well documented, and mostly common to other creative fields: oversupply, intrinsic difficulty in quality judgement, and output that can be hard to monetise. I honestly don't understand why they were dropped with janitors, which have a completely different set of problems (mostly related to social status).
barry-cotter 12y ago
That is indeed a small part of it. Much more is that anyone who can graduate primary school can probably do an acceptable job as a janitor while the capacity to do programming just isn't as common. Supply and Demand, baby.
- Dewie 12y ago
  I was talking about writers.

im3w1l 12y ago

>Why janitors... Because of supply and demand. Both of which can shift. >Why are writers valued as they are? Because everyone wants to read what their friend reads. It's a network effect even if not of the same strength as for social networks. So some make it really really big. Most make very little.

mixedbit 12y ago
>> Why are writers valued as they are? It is also a supply problem. A lot of good things that were written in the past are still valuable today. New writers need to compete for people's reading time with more and more great writers from the past. Software tends to age much faster, and needs constant improvements, so demand for programmers does not decrease over time.

vinceguidry 12y ago

> You will always have the nagging guilt of passing by the janitor, whose job exists because cleaning bathrooms is dirty and time-consuming, and wondering why your work has more value than theirs. I wouldn't necessarily say that it does. Janitorial service contracts can be lucrative.

NateDad 12y ago
The contract may be valuable. The guy cleaning the toilet did not negotiate the contract. He cleans the toiled for minimum wage (or thereabouts).
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  Not all the time. Sometimes the guy cleaning the toilets actually did negotiate the contracts. Don't be surprised if he's taking home more than you are. Negotiating the contract, maintaining the business relationship, organizing and scheduling the labor, cleaning the toilets. These are all things involved in janitorial service. If you're only doing one of these things, say, cleaning the toilets, then sure, your labor isn't all that valuable. Contrast this with software development. There are thousands of people in this field who are just starting out, don't know much, and can only work on tasks, they cannot organize and manage. They do what you tell them to and not a lick more. They won't be making much more than the janitor. When I was a full-time tech guy doing support and building linux-based backend services, I made $10 an hour, wouldn't be surprised if the janitor made more. Now I make a lot more, but I have a lot more responsibility. Labor by itself isn't valuable, whether it's technical or not. You're looking at one tiny piece of one job market, and comparing it to one tiny piece of another job market.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Average income or wages for janitors are available. The rates are considerably below those of software developers and other technical IT staff. There are exceptions to averages, but it's absolutely fair to say that the typical janitor is making far less than the typical software developer. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Building-and-Grounds-Cleaning/Janitors-and-building-cleaners.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Building-and-Grounds-Cleaning/Janitor... 2012 median pay: $22,320 per year / $10.73 per hour

noonespecial 12y ago

Your work has more value than the janitor's because you could do the janitor's job more easily than he could do yours. Some of it is arbitrary on some level, but much of it is not.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

kenrikm 12y ago

If the Janitor taught himself to code over a period of years as you did he could be working the same job you do. Guilt for making decisions that other people did not and maybe a bit of luck is not rational. Tomorrow that janitor might buy a lottery ticket, and win, should he feel guilty that you did not get yourself to the 7-11 and buy the ticket? - I think not.

yuvadam 12y ago
Are you seriously comparing the privileges given to a white young male working at a tech job in Silicon Valley to those (or lack thereof) of a janitor?
- VexXtreme 12y ago
  Many developers in the world don't live in SV and they are not privileged young white males. Care to get out of your bubble once in a while?
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Developers in SV are overwhelmingly male, and generally of European, East Asian, or South Asian heritage. There are very few who are of backgrounds more typically found engaged in janitorial services, typically Hispanic or black. Pointing out the skewed demographics, if not outright racism and sexism in the software world, is quite on point in the context of TFA.
    - kenrikm 12y ago
      I would contend that the reason there are not more Hispanic or Black people working as developers has more to do with social and cultural reasons in the home and community and less to do with the willingness to hire them, any decent developer can get a job in the valley. That's a deferent debate and completely unrelated to the point I was making about the guilt over seeing a janitor who's race was not mentioned, stereotype much?. You can try to twist my comment into something it is not but know that you do so with no basis as you do not know my actual views on the subject. Should we be trying to bring more STEM into courses? Absolutely! and I'm pretty sure that subject is well known as an issue we need to solve as a country. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-randall/increasing-diversity-in-t_b_5333264.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-randall/increasing-diver...

thaumasiotes 12y ago

> Why does a web developer making to-do apps lead a better a life than someone researching cancer cures? At the most basic level, because the web developer actually produces things. The person who develops anything that could be described as a "cancer cure" if you squinted at it the right way would lead a much more comfortable life. If you pay people based on what they promise to do, you'll quickly discover that promising to do something is easy. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2003-10-05/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2003-10-05/