It's basically an attempt to turn regular employment into indentured servitude.
Getting training without any up front payment is great for least privileged and those without education.
It was clearly stated in the hiring contract. I was more than welcome to not take the job if I didn't feel like I could meet the obligations.
Not everyone has this privilege. For too many people, if they get a job offer and don't take it, that means they don't eat that week.
Remember, friends, market solutions only work in an idealized free market, which requires the buyer to be under no pressure, information to be perfect, and alternatives that are just as good without the negative aspect under question to be available without significant extra costs.
I most certainly judge the job by the offer - if I didn't like the manager, location, work conditions, I kept looking.
Unless you were foolish you would likely be okay. Your previously high wage would have allowed you to acquire the things that low-wage workers have little choice but to continually pay for. Housing being a prime example. When all you are paying is property taxes and some incidental maintenance costs your cost of living can be tremendously lower than someone who is paying rent.
Life is a lot cheaper when you are rich.
You conspicuously left out mortgage. Life insurance. Provisions for the family. Vehicle payment. etc.
Mortgage is rent – the rental of money. This was explicitly mentioned. However, having a high paying job for a reasonable amount of time means that being left with a mortgage is unnecessary. Being able to avoid rent allows for a tremendous reduction in cost of living.
If you blew it all on hookers and blow instead of setting yourself up while in your favourable position, I guess you are out of luck, but the foolish scenario was already addressed.
> Life insurance. Provisions for the family. Vehicle payment. etc.
None of those are related to the housing example, so they wouldn't be applicable. They are applicable more generally, of course, but not within context. But all those too are much cheaper when you are rich. If you have the capability to front load food purchases in bulk, for example, they can be purchased for much less (not only the immediate cost, but also against inflation), reducing your cost of living. It is amazing how cheaply one can actually live when they are rich. Very different to when one is poor.
It was, but only on the opposite side of the equation from the one slothtrop was pointing out. You explicitly compared "property taxes and some incidental maintenance costs" to "rent".
Mortgage is not property tax, and it's somewhat disingenuous to try to claim it should be considered an "incidental maintenance cost".
No, I explicitly contrasted them. Mortgage is rent. Rent is what you have to pay if you haven't been able to acquire the assets of your own. If you had a high salary for a reasonable number of years, you would have your own money to work with. There would be no need to rent it. Taxes/maintenance is what you have to pay when you have assets.
Even in the era of overpriced housing, a modest home is still only 1x-2x a typical tech salary. A small handful number of years working in tech and you don't need a mortgage. That's the point. Dropping down to minimum wage after that is very different to someone starting out life at minimum wage. The simple fact of the matter is that cost of living is dramatically lower when you are rich.
> Mortgage is not property tax, and it's somewhat disingenuous to try to claim it should be considered an "incidental maintenance cost".
I don't follow. Mortgage is on the rent side of the equation. It literally is rent. When you've had a high income for a reasonable amount of time, and didn't blow that high income on hookers and blow, you don't need to rent. You at that point have built up assets of your own. Thus, your only real housing costs are taxes and maintenance.
I mean, you could have invested that money instead, but the equivalent investment income more than pays the mortgage, else you would have just paid the mortgage to realize the gains on that side, so for all practical purposes that cancels out. This possibility is ultimately moot.
Squandering it all on hookers and blow is also a real possibility. This isn't a suggestion that every single person in tech is rich, because that is definitely not true, but we already addressed that in the original comment. The real takeaway here is that cost of living isn't a constant. Every person will experience cost of living differently, often very differently, and generally the richer you are the cheaper life gets. There are so many ways to save on or eliminate costs when you have assets to leverage. With that leverage, a low income can go quite far. Much, much further than it goes for someone without that leverage.
It's not a given that everyone working in software is rich. Notwithstanding, cost of living can be high and people stretch themselves to pay the mortgage. I don't think you've genuinely thought about the numbers.
I worked a few minimum wage jobs, got a few small raises, then jumped ship for more money a few times.
I was living paycheck to paycheck, but it was manageable.