Comment by anonfornoreason | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonfornoreason | Hacker News Reader

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anonfornoreason

I loaded trucks earlier in life for a few years and loved it. Shit pay, hard work, good camaraderie, very satisfying end result. Would I want to do it for a career? No way. Did I learn a ton about the pleasures of hard work and a good team? Absolutely. I’d actually directly attribute that job and a couple others as the foundation for what it took to build a business of my own.

So many of the comments in this thread are so absolutely horrifying to me. Bunch of spoiled people thinking there isn’t a space for entry level jobs, like they’ve never held one themselves.

That being said, would I have jumped on the unemployment train back then if it got bumped up due to a pandemic? Definitely. Do I think people should advocate for living wages? Absolutely. Twenty years ago when I had my last entry level job, cost of living was half what it is now, but pay has only gone up by 50%. There are real issues, but they aren’t due to jobs being “demeaning”, they are with wages not keeping up with inflation.

I've held one myself, and what I think is "absolutely horrifying" is your moralistic justifications for worker exploitation as being simply bestowing "the pleasures of hard work" and "the foundation for what it took to build a business of your own."

Your hustle-culture narrative is appallingly toxic and your entire argument amounts to learning to love being treated like garbage so that you don't feel bad when you do it to others once you're the one on top.

Definitely was not treated like garbage. Obviously not all entry level jobs treat people well (or even fancy jobs, ever read a comment thread on being a software dev for Amazon?), but just because jobs are low pay does not mean they are exploited.

Seriously, do you expect six weeks of paid vacation and 30 bucks an hour for running a till at an ice cream shop? I can see maybe 18 an hour at an ice cream shop, but even at that price I’d be shocked if you don’t lose business due to a cone costing 5 bucks instead of 4.

Maybe this conversation would be helped by understanding what you define “exploited” and “treated like garbage” to be, and some examples of how that is happening. I feel we must be talking past eachother, because it’s hard to understand how there’s a valid argument for non skilled labor to command a high salary.

Again for reference I believe that wages haven’t kept up with inflation and that a minimum wage of around 18 or so an hour would be appropriate given the cost of living increases we’ve seen in the last 12 months.

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