Comment by swampthinker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by swampthinker | Hacker News Reader

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Edit: Sorry, I shouldn't have said "you". I don't know your situation or how much you make, this is a very broad rant that is based off of previous discussions I've had.

This has to be the most pretentious thing I read in a while. You get paid 6-figures with incredible benefits, while making 2-3x of what the median HOUSEHOLD in this country makes[1], with one of the highest average base salaries, and your individual income ceiling is approximately $180-$200k.

All of this, without having to risk your health like many other blue collar jobs.

All of this, attainable very quickly after graduating college (if you even get to graduating).

Feel free to demand the amount of money you think you deserve. I do think programmers are underpaid for the value they create. But don't make it seem like engineers are lowly serfs or something of that ilk. You have it so much better than most Americans.

[1] $59,039 http://www.businessinsider.com/us-census-median-income-2017-...

You're failing to look at the situation in terms of perspective relative to the company - not society in general. Sandworm's point is that why should someone 2 levels above you be receiving 100x your salary?

Imagine you were at Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone gets a full plate of food, but you only get a quarter of a plate. Is that fair? Should you keep quiet since you're fortunately to have any food at all, rather than homeless on the street? It's all about relativity. Compare apples to apples.

And you're failing to realize that what others make is irrelevant. If you're at Thanksgiving and you get food to feed you for 10 years, it doesn't matter if others got food to feed them for 100 years.

I think you're missing something fundamental about wanting and it's that we are wired to always want more. I think it's useful to accept this as something universal so we can understand why others and ourselves act the way we do.

One is that it accepts the imperfect was of others instead of deriding that others are not perfect from a moral high ground. The other is that it prevents ourselves from playing the victim.

It acknowledges the common strengths in each human by also acknowledging the common weaknesses.

At each level of the "game" , whichever game you playing, there always exists a master/slave winner/loser relationship. A pseudo happiness is achieved when comparing with other games and works both ways. "I'm glad I'm not a minimal wage monkey" and "I'm glad I'm not a souless sellout."

The games can be stratified into economic divisions but in terms of striving and human drama they are quite similar. The poor person who has never tasted really expensive food gets the same pleasure from something more simple than a rich person who has numbed his palate does from the most expensive things.

Acknowledging this constant suffering by everyone is the most humane thing you can do and is the only way out of the game of dehumanization others for the purpose of humanizing the self.

>The games can be stratified into economic divisions but in terms of striving and human drama they are quite similar. The poor person who has never tasted really expensive food gets the same pleasure from something more simple than a rich person who has numbed his palate does from the most expensive things.

My argument is that this is not true. there's a threshold below which not having enough causes significantly more suffering. having to wait two generations before buying the latest apple gadget is not the same level of suffering as having to delay a medical procedure because your job doesn't give you insurance until you've been there 6 months.

I don't know where the line is, but I am saying that going from $20K to $40K a year in total resources available to you makes more difference to your quality of life than going from $100K to $200K. - By a lot.

I mean, your description of being poor as eating plain foods sounds like you might have had a life like mine. Yes, there were times in my life where I had to eat inexpensive food, and yeah, it really wasn't so bad. But... I really think that's a fundamentally different kind of problem than having times in your life where there wasn't enough food at all.

Having times when you might have to get a smaller apartment or even roommates is also unpleasant... but I don't think it compares at all to having times where you might become homeless.

Lol. Money isnt everything. I stopped being an IT lawyer and joined the air force. Now im paid to do things that silicon valley hotshots only do in video games. Fancy meals? I just ate a burger while wearing a flightsuit. Tasted better than a thousand billable-hour lunches.

I was just talking to a guy who started out in the airforce; (enlisted, so probably no flight suit) he said the food was really pretty good, comparable to what we get here.

My friend who started out in the army, though, tells me that the food here in silicon valley is way better.

For myself, I don't think I'm really together enough (and I don't really have the tolerance for authority) to make it in the armed forces.

Some enlisted wear flightsuits. The SAR guys who jump out to save people are enlisted, so are loadmasters. There are lots of cool aircrew jobs outside the cockpit.

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