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Comment by elliotec | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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