An Open Letter to My CEO | Hacker News Reader

An Open Letter to My CEO

medium.com

138 pointsrandycupertino115 comments

I found this article very confusing. While the wage is very low ($19000) the overall issue is the cost of rent. I could understand if the letter was directed to her landlord. Cost of utilities, travel and food would all be liveable for a year if the rent was halved by a room mate or rent control. It doesn't make sense to get mad at the company providing you with most of what you need to survive.

Also surely you know before deciding on the Bay Area that you're going to have either a min acceptable salary or a max acceptable rent. Saying yes to two things that don't add up is a recipe for a cycle of self inflicted misery.

Companies factor in local cost of living into their salary packages and the author is pointing out the business problems (i.e. high turnover of entry level employees) caused caused when Yelp failed to do this.

Salaries in New York are higher than those in Des Moines, and if companies want the benefits associated with locating in the Bay Area they are going to have to pay employees more. Even entry-level and lower-skilled ones.

Companies like Yelp will only take notice when they aren't able to hire in the Bay Area for entry level roles. They can already see that it's heading that way, that's why they're moving support to AZ. It's cheaper to move their entire support operation to a different state than it is to provide a Bay Area wage.

Let's assume she was getting $12 an hour to do that work. That salary is ridiculously low for the Bay Area. Granted, they are paying for health, life, and dental insurance premiums. Still, most companies in lower COL areas pay at least $12 an hour for customer service work.

pardon but what does COL stand for?

Cost of living

Cost Of Living

Apparently her poverty is a bit of an exaggeration.

http://alotofrice.pixieset.com/thatsalotofrice/

To everyone criticizing the author for various "failings" such as lack of personal finance skills, getting an English degree, choosing to live in the Bay area: exactly whom do you think is going to fill this role under the parameters the employer is offering? Would it help you be happier if it was someone in the same situation who chose not to raise the issue publicly?

You seem to be under impression that the issue she raises is somehow not 'Talia is an entitled person unable to critically evaluate and plan her life'

The author has failed the open letter litmus test, where the positive result is reserved for thoughtful discourses of potential public interest or concern. This Medium post read more like something you tell your friends after a few drinks - and even then, they would be silently thinking, "We're all in the same boat but I haven't sunk yet so quit complaining!"

At the end of the day, the author - like anybody living in the free world - has the choice to pack and move to a more accommodating work/home situation.

It is of public interest. It may sound like someone just complaining about a bad job, but I'd say companies have responsibility to make sure that they pay a livable wage to their employees. And that should be of interest to the public.

I'll concede to the fact that this has stirred a debate the public cares for. Also, I am genuinely sympathetic to the plight of workers being exploited by their employers.

However, the post risks polarizing readers, most of whom could start to see or confirm that managers don't care about the plight of their lowest rung. At my work, our lowest level employees get paid ~$23/hour, but even at that level, a few still complain about their wages being too low to live on. Managers are perhaps myopic in thinking about living wages, but they don't have much choice.

Companies like Yelp are coming of age, and that means they need to turn profits, not just grow. Most such businesses have strict wage budgets, usually a % of revenue, to control operating costs. In this case, if Yelp's CEO capitulates and increases wages, his team will have to hire less people than before.

Perhaps once again, a lose-lose situation. The business loses servicing power and less people get the opportunity to work towards their dream of working in media.

Nobody, until the employer puts up wages to make the job pay enough? That's how a free market works - if people are willing to do the work at an absurdly low wage, that's what'll happen.

If you want a different outcome, you either need some form of housing change in SF, organised labour, or realistic minimum wage laws.

All of this anger is not about the wage the employee agreed to, it's a result of the perceived expectations that were set.

Maybe OP was stupid to believe the employer or maybe OP completely misread the expectations from the get-go. Regardless, it is BEST for the employer to ensure proper expectations from the start so they don't end up with a mess like this.

If there are not tons of opportunities and room for growth, employees will still agree to work for companies! I had similar expectations at my first company because I was told I could have them. I do not have similar expectations going into my next company, but my job search was filled witch a barrage of recruiters and hiring managers saying they want someone to be committed to the company for long-term and there's lots of room for growth.

I'm taking a job based on what is great in the here and now with expectations to move in at least two years. I think it's a better way, but was painful to learn.

> That's how a free market works - if people are willing to do the work at an absurdly low wage, that's what'll happen.

Or if companies only pay low wages then the workers are screwed and have to live poor. There is a reason unions were formed.

How was this person screwed, in particular? Was it not simple jealousy stemming from the fact that she worked in the same building with high earning engineers?

It's fallacious to suppose you deserve more money, merely because others in your proximity make more money. This is pure entitlement, devoid of ambition to achieve through hard work.

What? Maybe she deserves more money because she works full time and can't afford to eat? Where are you getting this jealousy angle from?

If you read the article, you would discover that she's jealous of the engineers and others who get more freebies, better pay, etc.

> exactly whom do you think is going to fill this role under the parameters the employer is offering? Would it help you be happier if it was someone in the same situation who chose not to raise the issue publicly?

Thats something for employer to think about and solve, not internet mobs.

Often employers would choose to not think or solve it without fear of internet mob or of bad publicity.

"who", not "whom"

What a horrible idea. How could this person think that this would benefit them in any way? She got fired, and secured herself a spot in endless unemployment. In San Francisco, no less, where her mounting debt prevents her from buying groceries and paying her phone bill.

Seriously, I would never ever hire someone who wrote something like this. This is a one way ticket to being eternally jobless. Her best next course of action is to delete the hell out of that post.

And then she has the gall to ask for donations to her paypal and venmo? Lord. Give me a break.

Did she actually get fired for writing this? I agree it was in poor taste. I think a lot of it was trying to be funny, but failed.

Yep she did, mentions it in an edit at the end.

I'm saddened to read such dismissive comments on HN. I think it takes someone to have been in a similar position to understand the plight of the OP. The CEO had a chance to fix this and do the right thing, but firing her was the easy thing to do.

> Seriously, I would never ever hire someone who wrote something like this.

The fact that nobody writes about these issues is the reason why some companies take their non-tech employees for granted.

The OP wrote an incredibly entitled and egotistical article. The person you are responding to isn't being dismissive, they are likely - like myself - shocked that someone thinks this way.

To be fair, companies are able to treat people like this (is not just tech companies - ask many entry level employees in many non-tech industries in New York how they're doing) because they can.

It's simple supply and demand. There is an oversupply of people with her background who are willing to endure minimum wages. A lot of these people are willing to endure entry level jobs because they won't "settle" for something short of their dream (a white collar writing/media/comedy job, in her case). That's a perfectly fine goal, but understand that you're competing with thousands and thousands of other people with similar or superior educations.

Either accept the resulting low wages, or join a profession that is actually facing a shortage of labor (e.g. nurse, plumber, etc.)

Or vote for a high minimum wage and Bernie Sanders

Prices will only go up till the new minimum wage is equally painful.

Yes. We need our poorest to be less poor. Yes. We need all of our people to have access to health care and a decent place to live.

But it's not enough. Not really.

Minimum wage used to be adjusted for inflation. That hasn't happened in decades. Its past time.

And its a myth that prices go up according to minimum wage. In truth its a very weak influence on inflation. Prices will probably not change much at all. Our entire economy does not depend on what we pay the lowest earners.

It is not a myth that as the supply of money is increased, prices go up to reach equilibrium. Supply/demand works in both directions.

The supply of money is not related to the minimum wage. The supply of money is increased by issuing bonds.

>The fact that nobody writes about these issues is the reason why some companies take their non-tech employees for granted.

Ah thats why. Here I was thinking it had something to do with good ol supply and demand.

The author has an English degree and is interested in writing things that people read. The article is well written.

I didn't find it well written. It was grammatically and typographically correct, but that's not enough to call it a compelling piece of writing.

You could argue that the article stirred up a debate, so in that sense it achieved its probable purpose.

However, by and large, the reactions across the Net have been quite negative toward the writer. The typical reaction: "You shouldn't have posted that. You should have gotten a roommate. You shouldn't have taken the job in the first place."

This may be a new concept for you, but people don't always do things for their own benefit. She might have thought that it was worth writing this even though it wouldn't benefit her.

> people don't always do things for their own benefit

This may be a new concept for you, but "The theory of psychological egoism suggests that no act of sharing, helping or sacrificing can be described as truly altruistic, as the actor may receive an intrinsic reward in the form of personal gratification." - From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism

People always do things for their own benefit. Always.

And who else could it benefit? At least her digital begging seems to be working out, but certainly this wont convince the CEO to pay these entry level folks San Francisco living wages.

A quote from Wikipedia, which says that a theory suggests something, does not adequately provide support for your dogmatic statement that follows it.

Soft sciences like psychology are usually based only on theories that suggest things, and don't really adequately (at least to hard scientific standards) provide support aside from studies which rarely, if ever, have proofs. I could have linked the studies that are referred by the wikipedia page, but ain't nobody got time for that. But I'd also be interested in seeing examples of true altruism, if anyone is capable of providing them.

Pretty much any example of someone sacrificing their own life to save someone else's, which happens all the time. (And not only with people who they are closely related to.)

Invoking psychological egoism here is really using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I don't think that she necessarily made the post for narrowly self-interested reasons. Even if you hold to it as a dogma that all acts are ultimately in some sense self-directed, I'm sure you're still capable of making the distinction between intentions that are entirely cynical and self-serving and those which are genuinely directed towards helping others or exposing the truth (even if these ends are ultimately "selfish" too).

>At least her digital begging seems to be working out, but certainly this wont convince the CEO to pay these entry level folks San Francisco living wages.

If enough people start complaining, things change. There's a whole lot of history of this happening with regard to working conditions.

I really think this author's post was very selfish, as evidenced by its, well, selfish content (and resorting to begging), and it's fine for us to agree to disagree on that matter.

But do you really think she was directing this to help others or 'expose the truth' as you say? Like was it a secret that the entry level customer support job was actually entry level, with wages to match? She knew before moving to SF that she'd be making SF's minimum wage, not SF's living wage.

I don't think anything is being exposed here, and I don't think she's going to start a movement to get enough people to complain enough to get things to change.

If we are talking about the fundamental issue of people not being able to make enough money to live a proper existence within the constructs of our society, I agree with her and you in that it sucks and needs to be fixed systematically.

But this didn't really seem to be a commentary on that. It seemed more like a pity party anecdote with undertones that she knew would stir up that narrative.

Do you see where I'm coming from? It's just hard to pity someone that thinks it makes sense to move to SF at a minimum wage job, in her own apartment, eating out at restaurants every day (see her instagram), while her dad lives there, and then asking for people to directly send her money because of her hardships.

I dunno. There are a lot more people much worse off and this person made clearly awful decisions for her well being. It baffles me that people are pitying her, and I'm being called heartless for this.

I'm curious what you mean by:

>There's a whole lot of history of this happening with regard to working conditions.

This person was working at a place that provided unlimited coconut water to everyone all the time, and she complained about it. I'd hardly call that harsh working conditions.

>She knew before moving to SF that she'd be making SF's minimum wage, not SF's living wage.

This is what confuses me. You seem to agree that she was not being paid enough money to live on, and yet you think there is something wrong with her writing a blog post saying so. No employer should be paying its employees less than the cost of living in the relevant location.

What I don't understand is all this judgmental bullshit about her instagram feed. We don't know who was paying for that food. We do know that she was not paid a high enough salary to pay for all of it herself.

>I don't think anything is being exposed here, and I don't think she's going to start a movement to get enough people to complain enough to get things to change.

Well, sure -- you are very cynical about this. In the past, things have changed because people complained.

>This person was working at a place that provided unlimited coconut water to everyone all the time, and she complained about it. I'd hardly call that harsh working conditions.

What an absurd thing to say. Coconut water is obviously no substitute for money.

If I worked at Yelp I might be questioning why we spend so much money on frivolous things like coconut flavored water vs. providing our customer support co-workers with a better wage.

This applies to tech companies more widely. Would you take less snacks, less free beer, less hiring gimmick benefits to increase the wages of those making the least at your company?

probably because the pool of candidates for positions that imply better wage is much smaller and it's harder to find and recruit a candidate, so such small things like free beer and snacks become more important?

ps also, most likely wage of those making the least in the company has no correlation to goods such as free food etc.

Taxes are high enough (especially on high income employees) that if the employer can count it as an expense, and it doesn't count as employee income, then it's worth providing as long as the employee would be willing pay ~60% of its cost from their post-tax income. Factor in bulk discounts and the figure is more like 50%.

Unfortunately, the debate on payroll/income taxation never really addresses such distortions, and gets stuck on "come on, an extra 10% isn't as big a deal for you".

Never write these kinds of letters unless you're sure the first response isn't going to be "You're only tech support. Good luck finding a new job."

In fact, it's never a good idea to write these kinds of things in the first place.

Heck, I work for a great company that provides free snacks (credit for the vending machines) and unlimited free sodas/sparking waters/coconut water/etc, and I'm not going to complain about any of it, even if I dislike some of the flavors or my favorite is out of stock for a day or two...

> In fact, it's never a good idea to write these kinds of things in the first place.

She was trying for her own version of "The things we think but do not say!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TohbD69ugSA

The only thing I got out of this was that the author needs to learn personal finance skills.

If she just got a roommate and sold her car, she could easily afford to eat and more. I can't imagine how one person who claims to spend a lot of time at work manages to rack up a $120 PG&E bill.

They claim they make $8.15/hr after taxes. That's around $16k/yr. I don't know how well they are budgeting, but I wouldn't want to try to live in the bay area on that salary. This letter might not have been a good idea, but I don't see how she had a decent job.

On the other hand, she only had to lose an $8.15/hr job, or $16k/yr to speak her mind. It's different if you were going to lose a $150k/yr job.

Yeah, I know. I wouldn't think of living without roommates in the bay area at her age.

It sounds like she moved to the bay area with a fantasy about what her life would be like, and some optimistic ideas about work, and she never stopped to do the math.

Hopefully she'll learn from this experience. Everyone has to learn the value of planning and thinking strategically at some point in time - for some it's 14, for others it's 40.

$8.15 an hour after taxes.

I am astounded that someone with so little compassion exists.

when all else fails, pull out the appeal to emotion card.

Clearly, you haven't lived long enough.

She totally needs roommates. It appears she has $221/mo after paying rent to go to everything else. That's financially suicidal. If she got just one roommate to share that $1245 apartment, she'd almost have the $600 she said she wanted.

Could her point have been made about the state of bottom ranking tech workers without naming Yelp? This is not a rhetorical question.

Specifics of the author's personal situation aside, it's unclear why any well funded tech company in San Francisco is paying poverty wages for positions that seem to require more aptitude than similar paying jobs. It doesn't make sense from an economical standpoint if employee churn is as high as she claims, because hiring/interviewing/training costs a non-zero amount.

>it's unclear why any well funded tech company in San Francisco is paying poverty wages

Because they can? Isn't it how it works.

This is just not the way to deal with the problem, shaming the CEO and company publicly in full view of the Internet, more so when you're a current employee of the company.

This is juvenile, imho.

Did she first try reaching out to the CEO privately? She could've sent this same message to him in an email to get his attention. I'm absolutely empathetic to her situation (living on $16K a year is something I can't even begin to fathom) but this ain't the way to go about it. It's not slavery.

Yelp (and many, many other corporations) can and should do better, in providing a livable wage to their employees. The coconut waters, roasted almonds, and kombucha should go away. It's a waste of money appeasing to overly pampered engineers (I'm an engineer, btw) and saving costs paying brutal wages to the lower-rung employees.

Companies need to learn to shed fat, not muscle.

All that aside, this really shows poor judgement on the part of the person venting like this in public.

You didn't explain why this way was incorrect, juvenile, or poor judgement.

I did. Read what I said again. "This is just not the way to deal with the problem, shaming the CEO and company publicly in full view of the Internet, more so when you're a current employee of the company. ".

Downvote this, but it doesn't change the fact.

I can't downvote your post.

That doesn't explain why. Those are just statements of your opinion of the situation.

Why is it incorrect to shame a CEO and company publicly?

A lot of people seem to have an inbred, genetic, knee-jerk "respect" for hierarchy, ostensibly known as "authority".

But -nothing- was ever handed to the masses - protest is always necessary to redress imbalances due to those in power unfairly taking advantage whenever they can. "They" always have and probably will always do so, due to fundamental principles in human psychology.

Yes, the writer was petulant and could be doing some things to improve her situation, but the basic fact of Yelp being badly managed and wasteful is still valid. SF is as expensive as London, and not as nice to live in. $25k a year before taxes? In the Bay Area? Yikes.

But employee churn is sometimes more profitable than trying to retain good employees, especially for low level jobs like CSRs. The attitude of CEOs etc is essentially that employees are just another resource to be exploited, and "free food" etc is a smokescreen to cover up this fact. This is Capitalism 101 (run amok) and you can easily see it throughout history.

Americans seem to be slowly redeveloping a sense of 'class consciousness' of the type back in the late 1800s to early 1900s, due to the growing levels of inequality and the resulting 'bad behavior' of so many at the upper end of the income range. This is a good thing, really, and accounts in part for Bernie Sanders' surprising ... "competitiveness" in the presidential race. People are starting to get fed up and so I think the Internet will see more and more of these over time.

There is no such thing as "Shaming a CEO." It's part of the job to get shit on, and to handle it.

She dismisses it as irrelevant, but this part (in italics) really stood out as the important insight:

>Coming out of college without much more than freelancing and tutoring under my belt, I felt it was fair that I start out working in the customer support section of Yelp/Eat24 before I’d be qualified to transfer to media. Then, after I had moved and got firmly stuck in this apartment with this debt, I was told I’d have to work in support for an entire year before I would be able to move to a different department. A whole year answering calls and talking to customers just for the hope that someday I’d be able to make memes and twitter jokes about food. If you follow me on twitter, which you don’t, you’d know that these are things I already do.

It seems she would have done better to get mentorship in building up awareness of her tweets so she could have a kind of "portfolio" to show off to media companies.

This is not to put the blame on her, but highlight a more general problem with the labor market, and how bad it is at connecting candidates with positions they're qualified for, and how employers end up putting unnecessary barriers as a filter. If the labor market were more transparent, we would have less problem with discrimination as well, since employers could see more of the good aspects of candidates rather than judge merely by the bad.

One of the reason why I want to limit or remove anti-discrimination laws is that I want to focus on more effective and less costly methods instead. I suggested a compromise to limit the laws to manual labor and the like.

Personally, I am more interested in the general practice of doing things like this than the exact nature of the complaints. Particularly, I want to fix the problems and the CEO should be able to respond too.

Depending on how much reach this gets, it may have been a brilliant career move for her, though I don't think it was intentional really. (Edit: That is, I think she was being genuine when writing this and I don't think this was a "PR Stunt" or whatever the individual level of that would be)

She has a degree in English and wants to be a writer. She writes a real person's perspective on income inequality during the presidential election debates where it's a major campaign issue. On top of that she even gets fired for it, making the whole thing even more authentic.

I wouldn't be surprised if she manages to get a job offer from a left leaning publication relatively soon.

According to a Business Insider article, money has been pouring into her paypal account since the publication.

After receiving a job offer, she loaded up on credit card debt and signed a lease she couldn't afford. This was an obvious mistake, which led to a situation she should have seen coming. And that's OK. We've all made decisions that look obviously wrong in hindsight.

The problem, for me, is that her post doesn't acknowledge any personal responsibility in the situation. It seems more intended to extort her employer by shaming them and placing the blame squarely on their shoulders. I can't imagine this looks good to many employers.

I read this almost as a form of 'suicide by cop' in the workplace.

To me it reads as though the author is unhappy with the job they signed up for, but instead of exerting the mental fortitude to resign, is instead throwing a public tantrum lashing out at the CEO in public.

What was the imagined outcome? All that will come of tarnishing the employers brand and degrading yourself like this will be an immediate dismissal and a social 'blacklisting' preventing future job opportunities.

Is that the desired outcome? I feel like this discussion thread is going to outlive the authors career.

The biggest issue here is the rent. You can definitely find places in the East Bay, near BART stations, for less than $1000 for a bedroom/studio. Add a roommate, and you're looking at less than $500 per month for rent.

And if you're willing to live in a somewhat crappier area, you can might be able to go as low as $300-400/month with a roommate.

$1245 per month for rent = 80% of her salary. $1245 / 0.8 = $1556 after taxes. $1556 * 12 months / year = $18675. Assume tax rate of 25%. Gross pay before taxes = $25,000 $25,000 / 8 hours per day / 5 days / week / 50 weeks / year = $12.50 / hour.

Why are Yelp's CSRs based in SFBA to begin with?

Stoppelman tweeted a couple hours ago that they're going to expand support into AZ.

s/expand/transfer/

Many tech companies have CSRs in SFBA. Eventually, they add positions in low COL areas.

follows her twitter link.

>> 30 yr old white dudes are evil mansplainers ...something something, paypal me money.

Closes browser tab.

Is there some sort of secret template out there for e-begging, I don't understand why I am to give her my money. Why particularly her, what about the rest of customer reps at Yelp.

If you read the comments on the article you will understand those tweets.

> "I don't understand why I am to give her my money."

Maybe because you are a good human being who wants to help another human being in need?

> "Why particularly her, what about the rest of customer reps at Yelp"

She's asking for help because she needs it, as much as the rest. She isn't telling you that you shouldn't help the others. She is even proposing things that would benefit all of them.

If you can help them all, great! If you can help just one, help one, either she, or any of the others. Nobody here is telling you "you should help her instead". Not even her.

And "if I help one I'm not helping the others" is no excuse to not to help anyone. Not being able to help them all is no excuse to not to help at least somebody.

"her", not "she"

If we dehumanize others we dehumanize ourselves. We are not objects, we are not economic systems, we are living social beings with all the flaws and all the potential, each and every one of us.

The individual clearly has to wisen up, and this reads like a welcome to the real world but that should not detract in any way from the real suffering caused by exploitative wages.

If a full time Yelp 'job' does not allow an individual to afford basics like shelter and food, let alone education, healthcare or family on what basis does it qualify to call itself a 'job'? This is exploitation.

The individual is not demanding luxuries from life, it can't be 'entitled' to expect basics like food and shelter after a day's work. So is it the individual or Yelp that is behaving in an entitled manner? And to fire someone for pointing this feels fundamentally wrong and boneheaded.

There is zero point for Zuckerberg or any other SFO millionaire to have billions in their accounts they can't use while real human beings who work for them have to suffer like this for months on end with rice bowls. How does that make any sense, in any way?

The cold and impoverished view on this thread justifies dismissing out of hand any 'concerns' from engineers on threads about outsourcing, work visas or any social thread that requires empathy as simply the market speaking. If you can't empathize with others don't expect empathy when it comes to your own personal situation?

You can't complain about outsourcing and also justify the market and unrealistic wages as one logically leads to another.

> If a full time Yelp 'job' does not allow an individual to afford basics like shelter and food, let alone education, healthcare or family on what basis does it qualify to call itself a 'job'?

It's an entry level position that typically pays about $20k-$30k/year. While this salary may provide every 20-something with no prior work experience the lifestyle they desire, it's definitely a livable wage. Regarding healthcare, she writes: "I’ve got vision, dental, the normal health insurance stuff — and as far as I can tell, I don’t have to pay for any of it!" Did you even read the article?

> This is exploitation.

Oh, please. She accepted the job offer and salary, and then leased an apartment she couldn't afford. Now she is blaming her employer for her financial predicament, without taking any personal responsibility in the situation. It's hard to muster much empathy.

> The individual is not demanding luxuries from life

Make no mistake, if you're in an entry level position and have no prior work experience, living without roommates in one of the most expensive housing markets in the world is a luxury.

Her claim that she's starving should be taken with a grain of salt, in light of the photos she shared online:

http://alotofrice.pixieset.com/thatsalotofrice/

Traditionally, when somebody wants to live in an apartment/city they can't afford, they find roommates, a second job, or a better job. Publicly shaming your employer online for your own bad financial decisions is a new one to me.

It seems like part of the disconnect is the idea of an "entry level job" that is not a permanent, lifelong career. This is (or at least used to be) a fixture of the US workforce: you start out in a non-ideal position to gain experience and prove yourself. You're not making enough to own a new car, buy a house, start a family, put kids through college, etc., but you don't expect that right out of the gate: you live frugally, with roommates, and invest in your career until you later attain a better-paying job.

But two ways that seems to be breaking down lately: 1. More and more people are getting stuck in entry-level jobs permanently, unable to find any opening to move up to a better-paying career that's sustainable for life. 2. Younger generations may have a growing sense of entitlement - increasingly appalled at the notion of scrounging for your first N years our of college, rather than immediately living a glamorous, 'Sex in the City'-style urban lifestyle.

I think part of the backlash against this post is that the author's words seem to place her firmly in the 2nd category - she's eating out and living in her own place (in the most expensive metro area in North America) while complaining that she 'feels' poor... and complains about having to work "a whole year" in an entry-level position before the prospect of a promotion.

It's a real shitty situation. The Bay Area has a very clear rent control issue. But in the real world, when these opportunity costs stop being, companies relocate and allocate resources to regions where living wages and happy workers make sense.

But i'm struggling to be sympathetic here. Maybe not being in SF contributes to that perspective.

Isn't employment-at-will wonderful? /sarcasm

It would be way more difficult to fire someone in any other developed country.

Long winding story for the final line to be the real sell;

"...but any help until I find new employment would be extremely appreciated. My paypal is tjbenora@gmail.com."

TL;DR I don't like my job, give me money.

That was updated later, after she got let go for writing that piece.

Lets see, english major up to her ears in debt, moves to San Francisco for a CSR job?

I think we need to up the math requirements for english degrees.

Alas you can't teach common sense.

I would be a lot more sympathetic if I weren't constantly being bombarded by BernieBros insisting we need "Free" college educations and all kinds of other handouts.

Sorry, I grew up poor, I didn't get lucky, I worked hard. I made my own luck.

She made her own bed, and then set it on fire.

I agree, the post was a terrible idea. And yes it comes off as a bit whiny and yes there are certainly improvements that can be made to her personal finance skill. All that said, your comment is not fair.

Have we reached a point where only those with STEM degrees and $100k+ salaries deserve to live in SF? You didn't just work hard, you were lucky enough to have the aptitude and interest in a field with stable job opportunities. Others may not have the same interests or abilities. And how boring would it be if we were all engineers anyway?

The author is frustrated with student debt, stagnant wages, and an inflated SV housing market. All valid concerns that millions of other Americans are echoing today. To top it off she is treated as expendable and fired as soon as she starts speaking out. Given that, maybe you could have some compassion? Or at least not resort to making an ad hominem attack?

Here you go, using the same word that got "the author" in her situation. 'Deserve'. I don't know whether she - or anyone else 'deserves' to live in SF. But I know that she was not able to - or, at least she was not able to find the standards of living she wanted.

Being able to is a math question. Take your salary A after taxes, subtract B = rent, subtract C = payments on the loan you are planning to take to cover the move, subtract D = other monthly costs of living, subtract E = food costs. A-B-C-D-E = X . If X is less than acceptable (or even less than zero) don't move.

'Deserve', the word you (and "the author", although she does not spell it directly) use, is a proxy for 'wanna wanna wanna'. Guess what, even if you 'wanna wanna wanna' ('deserve', 'have a dream to') to live in SF, that won't help you a bit. An adult is supposed to be able to understand this. That's why there some of us don't have much compassion for the author.

P.S. 'Deserve' is also a political tool, most often used lately to justify wealth redistribution. That's why user MCRed immediately connects the author to the Berniebros. I do too.

These are people who are being employed by companies in SF and yet who are not paid enough to live in SF. It's a disgrace. You can get people to fill these jobs because a lot of people are desperate right now, but that doesn't make it ok. If the author hadn't taken this job, someone else would have, and that person would be in exactly the same dire financial straights.

Maybe at some point we should stop doing jobs that don't pay us enough to survive...?

How do you expect people to survive if all they get are bad job offers? Sure she should move to a different city, but it's really screwed up if a city is unable to provide decent jobs to an entire group of people.

How is that screwed up? Nothing wrong with that. People are just bitter because they want in at a special price to something that has already been built and already shown to be great.

Why not move somewhere else and help make it great?

Anyway, if it continues like this, SF will collapse on its own and all those people who fought for special benefits to get in will be fighting for equally special benefits to leave.

I'm not saying that taking the job was a good decision. But it isn't just because of her personal situation, I just don't know who this job would be good for. It wasn't a good opportunity for advancement, she found out she had to wait a year before she could transfer. It didn't pay enough so people could afford to live without getting money elsewhere. And I don't think going into debt for this job would provide any benefit for a career. Sure, that specific job might be great for a few people in very specific circumstances, but it didn't look like Yelp was concerned about job fit. And her coworkers were having problems too. So what is screwed up is a company expecting people to make major financial sacrifices to work there. It look like yelp is taking advantage of their workforce.

I agree with you, if this is a really accurate picture of what it is like in SF, it might collapse. But I think companies will have some responsibility, not just workers who took bad job offers.

A year in a paying position is an excellent opportunity for advancement. The author's entitlement shines incredibly brightly when she makes her point. What's so special about her that she should be offered advancement faster? Her English lit major? Pshaw, I can get one in every Starbucks.

Fun fact: one word not in this article: roommate. 'The author's greatest expense is rent yet living with others does not enter her world. By the way, you asked "who this job is for"? People willing to share rent for starters.

People willing to make dumb decisions will face the consequences. The author tries to make it about Yelp, but it's not about Yelp, or any other company paying people "$8.15 an hour after taxes". If you want someone to take responsibility, it should be Talia Jane.

A year in a paying position is good, but I see no extra value that Yelp is having that would make the idea of losing money working there a good position. Sure, maybe they liked to promote within, and maybe she could have changed departments in a year, but I would want to believe that the company would commit helping me change departments at the end of the year. I don't see that commitment from Yelp. Without that I would assume any decent media job would be better than staying at Yelp as a CSR. Getting a job as a CSR doesn't seem to be that intrinsically interesting if you wanted to get a job in media.

I'm not saying taking the job was not a bad idea. I'm saying I can't really think of any group of people for whom that job would be a good fit, besides maybe students who weren't worried about rent. And I think Yelp is exploiting their entry-level workers.

I've had a full-time job or two from large corporations that were very low pay and did not have room for advancement. And I think I was very lucky to get those positions. I ended up getting some really great opportunities that I'm really grateful for. But I don't feel I was being exploited at all. Even though I might have been able to get more money outside of that industry, I was getting really valuable experience in a field I wanted to work in. It wasn't customer service work. And even though living in the same city as my work might have been a bad idea, I could have afforded rent outside of the city. And I basically only took the jobs for the work experience from those position. It would have been naive of me if I had been expecting the opportunities that I got.

I would have had to have been really entitled to write a public complaint about my pay and work. I don't think it would have been honest, and practically it would have cost me a lot. I might not have actually discovered how expensive that mistake would be. But I don't think I was treated unfairly. And the difference with Yelp is that I have the impression Yelp would not be able to meet their hiring needs for that position with their current offers if they weren't hiring people who were either desperate or making bad decisions.

She almost certainly had better financial options; she wasn't suffering severe disabilities. It's just that these options weren't the kind of thing that would lead her to her dream job/life.

In a sense, this is no different from the tradeoff everyone has to make between "stuff you enjoy doing" vs "stuff that will pay". Someone who knowingly makes a sacrifice to get close to the job they want is different from someone who simply can't find work at all; the author was far more like the former than the latter.

Did you even read the OP? "The author" moved from somewhere to SF, found a job and took it. She was not desperate, not without stretching the meaning of the word too far.

You clearly didn't read my post, because I didn't say that the author of the article was desperate. My point was that even if a job radically underpays, it's still possible to fill it right now. Yelp are exploiting people who for whatever reason are willing to accept offers for jobs that don't pay a living wage. Judging by her description of her hourly wage she's not making more than $30,000 a year, even if you assume that she's working 7 days per week every week. More realistically, she's probably making more like $25,000. I lived in DC from 2007-2010 on $23,000 with roommates, in a city that was much cheaper than SF is now, and it was basically impossible. I certainly ended up getting into debt. I would not judge someone who is having a hard time paying their living expenses in SF on that sort of wage.

Also, why are you putting "the author" in scare quotes? She is the author of the article we're discussing.

Sure, taking the job wasn't a good decision. But I don't have any compassion for companies who pay full-time employees poorly enough that they are required to choose between getting outside funding (like family or a second job) and going into debt.

The choice is actually "don't move to SF (unless you can afford it".

That is definitely her responsibility. But the company is choosing to offer salaries that do not cover living expenses. And I think that is really unethical.

Hm, that just make me realize something: we prohibit people from taking (or offering) jobs with wages below a minimum ... but we allow them to also live in places (and be offered such rentals) so expensive that that they're in poverty, under a more reasonable "discretionary income" metric.

Doesn't seem consistent.

Are you implying the government should tell you where you have to live? It's been tried before.

Perhaps a better idea would be to simply educate people in household economics with available books, podcasts, TV shows, libraries, etc.

Oh wait, we already do that.

I also grew up poor, and I also worked hard, and I've made my own luck. But the system is rigged, my friend. Only some of us will be able to "make our own luck." Are we not supposed to look after those of us who have failed?

I'm glad the OP wrote this article. Sure, I disagree with their choices, but that doesn't matter. I'm hearing about these kinds of stories more and more in SF. When are we going to do something about it?

Doing 'something' about it is doing 'something' about the choices you disagree with (= limiting people's ability to make those choices). Until you understand this all you proposing is to shield people even more from the consequences of their bad choices. This does not help.

Wow, when I posted this she hadn't been fired yet. That didn't take long.

test

Yelp CEO and his HR can bla-blah-blah all they want but reality is this: the company and its executives are making millions while some of their lowest paid coworkers are literally starving. This is f..d up.

I think the issue that Talia Jane is raising here is that the company (Yelp) can easily fix this problem for their own low pay employees by raising wages or subsidizing housing but instead the company decides to turn a blind eye on this issue.

What will it cost Yelp to raise standard of living for their lowest paid co-workers? a few million a year perhaps? Will it really make a huge difference in profits for the company in the long run?

Is it all about making money for the corporations in America today? Is this the world we want our kids to live in?

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