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Comment by yuppie_scum | Hacker News Reader

If it was easy, the salaries wouldn’t be so high

In my experience, the easier the work the higher the salary. No one gets paid for working hard, they get paid for demand of their skill and expetience relative to supply.

I think there can be truth to both. Consider the fact that it may seem easy to you because it's almost second nature in a sense where you're unaware consciously of how much it would take an average person to learn what you're doing from scratch.

>No one gets paid for working hard, they get paid for demand of their skill and expetience relative to supply.

I think that's generally true, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot of initial hard work to gain the skills and experience necessary to work "easily" ofcourse there's some people where those skills came easily first anyways but I think those are generally at the tail end of the curve.

Learning is not work though. Hard work to learn skills is not the same as the job itself being hard for skilled people. Compare that with unskilled work like manual labor where you still might need to work hard to develop skills but the work is also hard and they pay is very low. Too much supply due to low barrier of entry.

I think under that definition, wouldn't all work be easy? The hard part is learning, after that it's all easy because you already have the skill. The only hard work that would be left out is work that is literally hard I'm it's physical demands. Even then, the mental portion would be easy.

I may be missing a subtlety of what you mean. Can you give an example of a hard job?

Most jobs actuallu. You are confusing familiarity and adaptation with ease. Yes, physically demanding jobs like brick layer are a good example, emotionally demanding jobs like EMT/paramedic too or prison guard, bomb tech, lineman,etc... some jobs due to the difficulty, people who work those jobs have high mortality,suicide, disability and other rates that indicate the body and mind deteriorating as a direct result of the job. Office jobs pay more to the most part but they are not all cushy either. No amount of learning or adaptation can make a hard job easy, only more tolerable. You will sacrifice the same amount in exchange for wages. I did not imply any subtlety, I worked somewhat difficult blue collar jobs and now I have an amazing office job where i can even work from home! I assumed others would also understand the difference. To give you a more first hand example, I troubleshooted networking problems sitting in a nice office and I did the same (layer 1) crawing in attics, outdoors, climbing poles, jumping fences and more in 105+ humid weather and even that was considered easy compared to harder jobs, I was good at both jobs (according to others/management) and I worked more or less the same hours. The difference is night and day. I am more comfortable and much less stressed out when in an offic le job. Even in the office job world, the more I progressed in my career the more rewarding work I was exposed to. Less stress, hardship, more conmfort and pay. No hidden meaning, just an observation.

A very good explanation, thank you. I didn't think there was a hidden meaning, just wasn't sure what you meant. I will say that I think you left out a category though. You covered physically & emotionally difficult jobs, but not cognitively difficult jobs. Some jobs will always keep a person on the edge of their mental capabilities, despite being office-bound.

Only because what's "easy" to some is mind bogglingly impossible to others.

You're right, obtaining is skill is hard but the work itself is easy because you invested a lot into developing skills to make it easy or at least not very hard.

You kind of missed the point. The high paid work is easy for the people who have the skills and experience. But getting those skills and experience isn't easy.

Then what they really mean is: "If it was easy, there would already be a larger supply."

That seems like an odd interpretation of supply & demand, or you mean the word easier in some other way than the work is simple/easy to do.

Because if the work is easy, and there's high demand and high salaries as a result, tons of people will flock to that easy work and the increased supply of workers would drive down wages.

I am not sure we have good language for what the OP is talking about. You have hard dirty jobs that anyone can do, but there are some where there is sort of cut off that eliminates people.

Poor analogy: The other day this lady (she was short) wanted something from the top shelf at the grocery store. She asked me to get it for her. It was easy for me, impossible for her.

They will flock but the barrier to entry is what is making supply low. It is not lack if willing workers but lack if qualified workers that makes the supply low. Obtaining qualification maybe hard or just takes too long or some other reason. Others in this thread also confuse difficulty in the entry barrier with difficulty of the work that needs to be done, these are separate things.

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