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Comment by ctvo | Hacker News Reader

> Many people were working these jobs without realising what a bad deal it was.

Can you share some details on where you're getting this data? I'd like to dig into it more.

Imperfect information certainly is a thing, but many public jobs have public wage information. Large corporate jobs also have public wage information (say a delivery driver or warehouse worker -- everyone knows what Amazon is paying for these positions). Claiming people stay in these jobs due to ignorance goes against my experience growing up poor, where my parents and their peers constantly hunted for better paying jobs.

I don't know anything about Ireland, but a quick Google for "ireland jobs" leads me to https://ie.indeed.com/jobs-in-Ireland where I can clearly see wages and salaries for many positions.

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I've known lots of tech workers who went as much as years without realizing how badly they were being underpaid, even by the standards of their weak local market. It can take a surprising amount of pushing to get someone who thinks their current pay is OK to realize that it's very much not—I think there's a certain amount of disbelief people tend to default to. "Well, those others must be more skilled, or got lucky". Nope, you're just getting fucked.

And that's a segment of people who ought to be very good at using technology to find out that kind of stuff. I would be very surprised if this didn't hold for most other fields. I'd expect the only markets in which this kind of thing isn't common is ones that are extremely comp-focused (finance, say, and maybe sales).

> I've known lots of tech workers who went as much as years without realizing how badly they were being underpaid, even by the standards of their weak local market

I agree that white collar jobs obfuscate salaries and that power dynamic overwhelmingly favors employers.

That isn't the situation with lower paying jobs, especially ones that aren't salaried, which was what the OP was about. Those low skill jobs (I'd argue baggage handler making minimum wage at the airport to be in that category) openly list wages on the advertisement. Thinking those folks stay in their jobs due to the same information asymmetry is what I'm questioning.

Some friends I know returned to Poland and other countries. It does not make a sense to stay in ultra expensive Dublin, if there is no work during covid.

When you were younger, it was worth it to work. Today basic wage often does not even cover rent and other living expenses. You loose money by working.

To get some perspective go to www.daft.ie and try to find studion near airport...

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