Work Reform

I, too, wish I could be society's bottom...

Same dude same. I wanna be a maillady who pets kitties and does fart walks daily to deliver mail. And afford the basics.

Why is it too much to ask?!

Driving is the easy part. Finding a bathroom at 4 am on Sunday. Taking a break without someone asking you a question. Just seeing your family with energy after a 12 hour day. That's where trucking sucks.

The truck driver's job is much harder to do day in and day out. It's also much more necessary. However, it's also significantly easier to train a truck driver than it is to train developers and there's no infinite upside potential for delivery like there is with software projects in some cases (unicorn startups) and there are so many other expenses to run a delivery company that a software company might not have that they need to run on pretty thin margins, otherwise we're all paying more for all of our food.

First job where I worked as a dev, they took on 3 of us on the same time, all entry-level. One of us was a physicist who was laid off by the university since the government reduced spending on academia. Absolutely an intelligent person. Didn't last past the probationary period, he just didn't get things naturally on his own, he needed a lot of guidance. Over the years I've seen that nearly half the people hired into entry-level roles don't learn to become independent enough by the end of their probationary period to be retained after it. Sometimes it's seniors too, they've worked at a place that just cranks out very similar solutions day in and day out (e.g only done frontend and only with one framework, or only a bunch of CRUD applications in one single tech stack) for like 7 or 8 years, that place has a downturn and then they apply for a job elsewhere and they just don't adapt.

Not everyone's cut out to be a truck driver either, but once someone has learned to drive trucks, they can drive trucks for another company too. Whether your new employee starts pulling in profit on the first week or you need 4 months to determine if there's a decent chance of them being a net benefit by the end of the first year has a lot of bearing on how badly you want to retain your existing talent.

Anyway, in my country only the top talent at a couple of companies gets paid significantly more than truck drivers. A junior developer might make less than someone who just started driving a truck. Places like the US just have highly inflated salaries for devs because they're expected to work in high cost of living cities and compete like crazy for their jobs.

Exactly my feelings. Software dev, get paid more than many people who actually keep others alive, healthy, educated and comfortable. This is not how things should be

kids are indoctrinated from school to seek out "high skill" jobs and look down on anyone making less

If fast-food workers began earning wages comparable to electricians, I wouldn't necessarily expect electricians to become poorer. I'd expect employers who depend on skilled labor to increase compensation to remain competitive. The question then becomes whether those higher labor costs come from reduced profits, increased prices, greater productivity, or some combination of all three.

Anyway, it is better for all workers.

Fast food work is pretty stressful, IMO.

Also, Tax Wealth, Not Work.

Honestly dude. If food service paid well and had good working conditions I'd love to be a cook over an office worker.

Or probably my favorite political quote ever for its combination of both ideology, practicality, AND brevity:

We all do well when we ALL do well

(Paul Wellstone, emphasis mine)

I show the same respect to any workers, but, some work is much less specialized.

I wouldn't say a vibe coder is as valuable as a software developer as an example

Also, influencers... Generally not useful at all, and are just trying to score freebies...

I think work that requires you to study and learn and experience for ages should be paid higher than work you can do without prior experience or know-how.

But you know, reasonably higher. Like 3x at most.

Even Marx knew that's just not true at all. And I'm not even talking about the usual 'garbage collector vs doctor' bullshit.

I'm talking fastfood worker vs cafeteria worker, where one is reheating some chemical wastes to poison people for corporate gains; whereas the other is serving cheap and nutritious food for his local community.

i mean i really believe that in general, but some people really do provide unique services. it's hard to reconcile the two concepts especially because people are allowed their contradictions so whatever