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ReadingInBed

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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