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This sort of perspective is very important, especially here on HN where I see plenty of ignorance on this topic. When you work these jobs, often the local cost of living is pinned to these minimum wages, where you stagnate and are unable to save. How can you possible afford to move when your rent increases? You have no savings to rent a vehicle to move your things, nothing to put down up front for a new apartment, and at no guarantee of finding a job at the end because a manager for working class work is only going to bother hiring local candidates. Throw in an unforeseen cost, and you can see how easy it is for people to end up missing payments and living in their car or a tent while still working that minimum wage job.

People vastly underestimate how hard it is to do anything without capital/savings.

If you are one missed paycheque from going hungry, you can't afford any risks. No going back to school, no going freelance, no interviewing, no investing in anything. You can't afford the means to make money, whether it's a car, a computer or nice clothes. You can't afford them breaking down, but you also can't afford maintaining them.

The missed opportunities add up over time.

Grapes of Wrath is an excellent book that drives this point home really well. It hurts to read at times.

I try not to think too hard about how my recent progress toward not being completely hopeless depended on a few inflection points that could easily have gone another way or could have been inaccessible had a few earlier events gone a different way. Luck is a force multiplier that can go wrong as easily as it goes right. Circumstances determine how much you can prepare for either type.

Yeah same here. Just got a close to dream job, and if I had waited maybe another week to contact them maybe it wouldn't be available anymore.

Yeah I was definitely fortunate to have a friend/ability to buy time to learn by becoming "homeless"/living on a couch and as mentioned no kids.

you [...] can't afford maintaining them

Not sure I can entirely agree, when I was broke I had a fair amount of free time and I spent a lot of it learning to repair motor vehicles. Parts are not free, but labor & markup is most of the cost anyway.

> when I was broke I had a fair amount of free time

How did you manage this? I was working my ass off just to keep the bills paid and doing chores to avoid costly services like dining out and maintenance.

Broke and poor are different circumstances, usually amounting to coming from a family or social circle which ain't really poor.

A college student can be broke, but a poor person can not afford to be a college student.

Not who you asked, but without extra means you end up with free time any time you're not working. You can't afford to do anything.

If you don't have a job where you can simply take on more hours, but it's also not predictable enough that you can get a second job, you just end up with a lot of useless free time on short notice.

Can't afford hobbies, trips, no significant other (being poor doesn't help your dating life), what else is there to do?

It took money for me to actually run out of free time. I honestly really enjoy tinkering and fixing stuff, but it's usually no longer worth my time (to my own dismay).

Before money learning to fix something meant the difference between keeping the car going, or having your car break down without money for the shop bills. I've fixed lots of stuff by flashlight so I could get to work the next day.

Nowadays being put in that sort of back-against-the-wall scenario isn't likely to happen, unless I sign up for some sort of game show or reality TV where it's purposely planned.

> what else is there to do?

If things are tight enough, you spend all that useless "free time" hunting for more work. You feel you can't afford to just enjoy the time.

More gigs. More waiting for an Uber request. More time polishing your resume, or your profile on Fiverr. Or improving your "Github is the new resume" look.

Then it's not really free time. It's a job, but you're not paid every hour you're working on it.

It can even resemble socialising, because in some lines of work you have to keep socialising for people to think of you when they have a gig.

> More waiting for an Uber request.

Presuming there's an Uber and you have a driver's license(they're not free you know) and a car.

>More gigs.

You are aware that gig economy is just about 5 years old, right? And you have to be in a high demand area to do it.

There were coders for hire sites for a long time, but that paid complete crap.

> Presuming there's an Uber and you have a driver's license(they're not free you know) and a car.

Uber is just to illustrate. It's just an example. If you're in the wrong area, or the wrong time for that matter, then it's something else.

Either way you're (and were) spending that "free" time looking for jobs, quick jobs, whatever jobs. They used to call it pounding the streets or getting on your bike. Even going door to door.

When I was young I did it myself, literally going from door to door asking if they had any work.

> There were coders for hire sites for a long time, but that paid complete crap

That's why I mentioned Fiverr, as an example, which is a version of the coders-for-low-pay thing generalised to other kinds of work.

> When I was young I did it myself, literally going from door to door asking if they had any work.

This depends very much on the location and the community around you.

Looking for odd jobs around you yields no results in a poverty depressed area.

I imagine a lot of it depends on your lifestyle too. I have an old friend that only works enough to bankroll his skiing and biking. No kids or other "adult responsibilities", and he lives extremely frugally (favors and freebies are his bread and butter).

Yeah I didn't have a car for a while, I didn't get a job back in 2015 or so for PHP because of that ha. First in office web developer job after restaurant, I had to bike 30 miles a day lol [1] round trip, that was brutal. On the plus side, 3 hrs of podcasts. I listened to the book Eccentric Orbits then that was good.

Uber was like $60/day so yeah... although I only made it 4 days straight, never 5 days of bike riding so I would eat the Uber cost one day. I was lucky that friend loaned me $3K to get a car(opportunity). But I bought a bad car/sunk money into it(had to fix).

I would bike home from the factory pitch black road at night(dumb) listening to Changelog haha good times.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/cOZWquX.png

OT Graeme Obree biked 60 miles round trip for work. Due to the fitness gained he was able to come out of nowhere to break the hour record in cycling on a bike he built himself out of miscellaneous parts from things like washing machines.

that's super badass, but my recollection of having a commute slightly over 30 miles roundtrip is that it was thoroughly exhausting. Or in other words, the same difficult circumstances that inspire one person to remarkable success will still grind many other people down. We can all aspire to be great, be by definition most of us will hew pretty close to average for our circumstances. I think this thread is pointing out how difficult some circumstances can be, which doesn't need to discount the possibility for someone to transcend them, but you're pointing out an outlier in a discussion about median results.

Would an electric bike close the gap? It's not as expensive as a car. It's also better for the environment and your body. A $3k car might sound like a better deal than a $3k bike but then you'd have to pay for fuel and maintenance.

If we're talking broke, we're talking $1k cars and $100-200 bicycles.

My first car was $800 and I bought a few motorcycles over the years for around $400 each.

Yeah. My first car in 1996 was a Buick Century that I got for $1,000. My brother had this shitty mid-80s 2-door Pontiac Sunbird that he got for like $600 in 91 when he graduated from high school. I kept that Buick in service until 2001 when I enlisted, I don't know what happened to it after that. I got a 94 Ford Ranger, around 2003, when I needed a car again and was making some better money for around $4,000. I sold that truck to an old colleague in 2009 (he still has it today) and got a used Scion xB for $6,000, which I till have today.

It blew me away when I got that Scion. It was a steal of a deal. I was looking at used, late 90s model Civics at the time, because I needed a commuter that could do 50 miles one way with decent MPG and with something I knew that I could keep on the road, and those cars held their value so well into the late 2000s that it blew me away. People were asking $3,000-$4,000 for them with 150k-200k miles.

Today, I make something crazy like about 15x what I made in 1996, but I still have that Scion. I plan to keep it on the road for another 11 years. After all, it's a Toyota and it's given me no trouble at 150k miles. It goes to the shop for tires, everything else I handle in my garage. It's a commuter for my wife that goes about 5 miles one way these days.

My neighbors comment on it all of the time. They think it's an unsightly beater sitting in front of our ludicrously expensive homes. I thought about selling it for a while but their shitty attitudes have convinced me to keep it around.

Those xB were really a great car and practical. I still remember those Scion meetups they would have where they encouraged an active aftermarket community. For their odd design it has aged well. I still see a lot on the road, I think you'll have no problem getting it to last that long.

Electric bikes are less safe. That might not fit the risk profile of many, justifiably.

It’s why I prepended off topic on the post. There is no way I could do that day in day out and I’m faster than average on a bike.

I did read this when it was first posted, I've been working on/off since then ha(wrecked sleep pattern). Was trying not to flood/chain responses.

There are many examples of people overcoming crazy challenges, makes for a nice story but also having a regular/"painless" life is also nice. I did not enjoy riding the Walmart bike that far/many hours. It was nice though the nature aspect.

I still think I am being lazy, not trying hard enough, about being an entrepreneur like did I really try... not drop shipping but building some service. I keep thinking is what I do worth it if it doesn't make money since that's my primary concern right now is getting out. (not be worried if I lose my job) I gotta stop responding haha, wish I could condense my previous posts.

edit: clarification, the car was a bad buy(not a car guy) it was just under $2K so I had a buffer but it was partially broken... so I had to drop money on it.

It was off topic and in no way was I suggesting you should try keep riding. I’ve done only 30km round trip on a good bike and it was exhausting having to do it even though I would happily do it in my free time.

Yeah mostly it took too long for me my crappy bike ha, 1.5hrs each way sucked. Although it could be nice/ideal with regard to being healthy.

Extremely well put. One of my favorite quotes from fiction comes from The Great Gatsby’s first page, “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had."”

How dare we assume we would be who we are (good or bad / rich or poor) without the life events that exist outside of our own domain (who our parents were, education, income levels etc) of control!

FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA - I mean, my values, in terms of what I think my obligation – my personal obligation – Michelle Obama – is that it is not enough that I succeed on my own. I have to care about the kid in the desk next to me at school because he’s just as smart but his mom works. And my father always kind of taught us to take in everybody’s full story. Not to judge people, the drunk uncle or the cousin out of work...

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA – Cause you didn’t know what was happening...

FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA – You didn’t know what happened to them. You know, we weren't special. And as a result, you know if something good happens to you, if you have an advantage, you don't hoard it. You share it. You reach out. You give back. And I can say that my family, my neighborhood, my notion of community growing up shaped that view and shaped the choices that I made in life as I felt your experiences shaped yours.

https://spoti.fi/TMOPtranscripts

While this is excellent advice for consideration of others, it changes _nothing_ for drunk uncle or out of work cousin that there are "reasons".

Maybe government can help, depending (likely the underlying motive of the quote. i.e. promotion of social programs over "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" rhetoric). Or maybe government can not help but will try anyway at great expense and possibly make things worse.

We have seen both scenarios. Thus I'm always personally suspicious of any ideology that regards government as a universal and infallible solution to all problems, and any ideology that regards government as perpetual failure at effectively and efficiently solving anything.

Government is a substitute for people whose social network cannot help them in hard times. It’s not perfect and it won’t solve everything, but it’s necessary because otherwise nobody will help these people.

The only way to be sure not to make any mistake is to do nothing, which itself makes things worse.

Whilst drunk uncle won’t be saved by the bare minimum a state can provide, he certainly will be worse off if he ends up on the streets. And sometimes all out of work cousin needs is a bit of money to pay rent and food for a couple of months until he finds some work. So yeah, a welfare program is not a panacea but it is useful, and also cheaper overall.

> You have no savings to rent a vehicle

Come on, U-Haul is like $50, including some mileage.

> cost of living is pinned to these minimum wages

That is true. That's also reason #3245 why UBI is a stupid idea.

>> cost of living is pinned to these minimum wages

>That is true. That's also reason #3245 why UBI is a stupid idea.

I actually don't think that is entirely true. For certain things, those most affected by modern supply chains, we generally aren't seeing a corresponding increase in costs to wages.

For other things driven more by scarcity such as housing, healthcare and education we are seeing a dramatic rise in costs.

Our economy is in a strange place and I don't think the obvious one-to-one rules of thumb hold currently.

I spent about 10 years of studying before I landed my first quality job. I went through literal poverty at that time - having $10 per week for myself and my schizophrenic mother to live off.

I was also lucky, because my sister left to work in Italy. That would make all of the difference...

If I didn't have: - free education secondary and higher - low cost local transport - a suit given by my sister - 4 tickets to another city to interview(paid by my sister) - low cost internet - rent paid by my sister

I would have been just another bum, because that 10y period included being kicked out onto the street... because some nice "rich people" used my schizophrenic mother in a tax avoidance scheme... and got away with it.

There's a lot of luck that is involved in getting out of poverty, that most arrogant middle class individuals completely ignore.

Wow, quite an experience. I'm curious: how did those rich people use your schizophrenic mother in tax avoidance scheme?

> having $10 per week

Wow... how is that possible, I guess depends where/maybe what year.

Glad to hear you got to a better situation

It's barely possible... but it is poverty of depressive proportions.

Think of never having new clothes, only donated clothes.

Ever read the Zine from the 90's called Dishwasher? That is my favorite Zine of all time. I absolutely loved it.

I have not read that. There is something nice about dishwasher jobs because they're high turnover rate/low barrier to entry/can get hired pretty quickly. Granted in some cases I had to go through some application process eg. take a quiz on running over 2 people or 1 on train tracks, etc... but yeah. I'm hoping at least by now, I have enough "value" as a developer to be able to worst case freelance hourly or something. At least now I'm paid well enough/working on saving. I almost welcome failure in a way because it's exciting/scrambling like needing to manifest a miracle. I have contingency plans you know sell everything I own, etc... but yeah. Worst outcome is prison/death I think. So I have no excuse but to try.

Have you heard of Dishwasher Pete? Many people, myself included, seemed to have learned about his zine after listening to one of his memorable public radio appearances:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/102/road-trip/act-one-0

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/115/first-day/act-one-0

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=109915...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_Pete

NOTE: This American Life audio didn't seem to work in Chrome, even after disabling uBlock Origin.

Thanks for the links I will read/take a listen as I have time. Ooh this will be good/will listen to it for my cooking/cleaning podcasts heh.

What language/s did you teach yourself during that several year learning time? What did you choose to focus on?

(I noticed this: ReactJS/Node-Express/MySQL/Python in your profile, but I'm not sure if that's what you started with)

Short answer: at the time learned LAMP stack, able to build interfaces, auth, ssl, setup servers, make db schemas/make APIs, etc... I remember I had to learn how DNS worked haha.

I wasn't learning specifically to get hired. My first stuff was trying to build high traffic websites/make money through ads but my ideas were dumb. But I still learned in the process how to build websites.

Full answer https://i.imgur.com/uAGMHkQ.png

First full time in-office job 2018

I appreciate the story. Congrats on the excellent progress!

Thanks, yeah I am still not secure, always fear of incompetence. Not having a degree is a fear. But I just have to keep learning/save/make more money ha. Get that burn rate, entrepreneur, FiRe, etc... I'm fortunate to have gotten into this field though and enjoy it personally.

Really cool story. One of the best engineers I ever worked for started as a psychiatric nurse. He got to know the guys in the computer department at his hospital and got a job doing desktop support. When he hired me, he was running application support at a fin tech startup. He wrote their distributed application monitoring system from scratch in Perl (this was a while ago when that actually made sense).

> distributed application monitoring system

Dang that sounds nuts, I haven't made anything nearly that complex haha. There is something about architecting something and seeing it work "on its own". It's a cool feeling.

His stack indicates web dev, which is the typical path for self taught programmers. Plenty of work available that pays more than minimum wage.

Yeah I have not really gone down into the C/C++ that level and I haven't touched the Microsoft side eg. .NET

Closest thing for "native" is using the wrappers for JS which for my needs works. I did have to force myself to figure out how to get a basic Android widget (Java) to work that was tough.