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Comment by kumarvvr | Hacker News Reader

I think the issue is more about greed.

A qualified technician, to handle the rig, would cost X.

A stage help would cost 0.1 X

Indians are cheap and many in job roles are not qualified or care about their job.

I am 100% sure that this sort of accident happens all the time, and some temporary workaround is used to repair the issue.

Also, no one has any idea about anything close to a "safety margin".

If I were on the job, as an engineer, I would make sure that the ropes and slings are atleast 100% more than calculated values.

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Income differences in India are staggering.

A trained bus driver carrying school kids in Jaipur, a state capital city of over 6M, gets paid $200/month.

A security guard in the same school would get paid $125/month.

The income for a mid career middle management professional in a good job would be 30-60x higher.

Imagine getting paid 50x higher than your maid or bus driver or grocery store worker. Now imagine how that would rot your social structure

caste system comes to mind.

now let's imagine what might happen when genetic engineering comes into play. how can you argue about equality when there would be none, not biologically.

i find insects fascinating but I don't want humans to mimic the caste thing. we are though. and we will.

Confused by the downvotes. Are you in favour of caste systems?

(You're aware that the 60x higher is $144k/year? That's common for a "mid career middle management professional in a good job" in Jaipur?)

No mid career middle management professional is earning a quarter of that anywhere in India. The most charitable take would be to assume a typo.

IIM-A batch of 25 year olds graduate with median packages of 30L+ (audited reports), and you confidently declare that mid career management professionals aren’t earning even a quarter of that?

Do you people even live in India?

Because I do, and every single person in my cohort of 35 year olds is making excess of $60k/year, most doing close to $100k/year even when working at second tier companies.

The FAANG folks are easily making $120k+/year.

Try hiring a skilled developer with 7-10 years of experience and you’ll know what current salaries actually are.

Not Jaipur, but people earning 1cr per year are increasingly common in Delhi/Bangalore. Every single person I know - all working professionals in their mid 30s - are earning higher than $60,000+. None of them even went to top tier institutes.

The ones who did go to top institutes and have top companies on their resumes are doing $100k in their 20s.

You have no idea how much salaries have inflated in India, especially in Gurgaon and Bangalore.

Just look at rents to get an idea. Rents in Bangalore have gone up 100% or more in most placed.

That doesn’t happen without massive salary increases.

This comment is confidently stupid.

To earn a $200/month salary is to earn 16 600 INR/month. As somebody who has lived in Rajasthan (Udaipur for those who are interested), that is an actually reasonable estimate, albeit on the higher side.

But no security guard in Jaipur is earning 10 000 INR/month. Even in Mumbai, one of the most expensive to-live-in cities in India, the security guard would earn less than 25 000 INR/month (unless they happen to work in an especially posh neighbourhood).

And where did you get that 60x number? That would work out to be roughly 1.2 CR INR/month, which would put you in the top 0.08% of all Indians [1]. I can assure you that no "mid career middle management professional" is earning that.

Even if I take your lowest guess, 30x, that is still more money than what almost all mid career professionals would earn in 10 years. I am convinced that you've never set foot in India.

[1]: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/calculator.cms

I think it’s such a weird thing that a security guard is paid less than a tenth of my salary. I’d never be able to trust them.

I live in India my guy. Lived here all my wife. I’m 35 years old. Every single person in mu cohort has a package in excess of 50L ($60,000). The top earner among my friends group paid 27L in just income tax last year.

And my cohort didn’t even go to top institutes. My cousins who did go to IITs and IIMs are making that much and more in their 20s.

I’m convinced you haven’t stepped foot in India in years because you don’t know how much salaries for skilled white collar workers have increased in the last 3-4 years.

Anybody who has lived in India will know exactly how wrong your numbers are. Saying that "every single person in my cohort has a package in excess of 50L" does not make you sound any more credible.

The numbers don't lie.

You’re talking about pan India averages.

I’m talking about metro-specific numbers, especially in Gurgaon/Noida and Bengaluru. The income inequality across a specific narrow band of tech-literate white collar workers and the blue collar workers who serve them.

The numbers don’t lie here either

Btw, 60x of 10,000 INR isn't 1.2cr/month lol. It's 6L/month, or 72L/year, or $85k/year.

You can't be that confidently stupid about math

I currently live in South India, and the lowest number I can fathom from this estimate of yours ($1253012 = $45000) is an pretty high salary that people in the level of Director get. If you're in places flush with VC funding, you _might_ get that at a slightly lower level of management, or you need to be in a FAANG company.

Just because its not happening around you, doesn't mean its not happening. $4.5k/m is less than 45L/year.

To give you some context, the median in-hand salary of IIM-A last batch was 33L. These are mostly freshers with at most 2-3 years of work experience, i.e. 25-27 year olds.

You think in 10 years these people wouldn’t have increased their salaries by 35%?

I don’t think people here realize how much salaries have gone up in India, especially in tech, after the pandemic.

I used to do professional rigging - if there's a human on the equipment, we'd commonly use a safety factor of 8 when choosing ropes/span sets. So... 800% more than calculated values.

Thank you for your comment. I love learning this kind of thing. When did you decide to replace supplies like that? For example, was it when you saw visible wear and tear or was it after a certain number of uses?

I feel like a safety factor of 8 is fairly easy to achieve with humans? We’re not all that heavy when compared with the tensile strength of a rope.

> Indians are cheap and many in job roles are not qualified or care about their job.

Do you think the business generates enough surplus to be able to afford the safety margins & additional expenses you’re talking about?

> If I were on the job, as an engineer, I would make sure that the ropes and slings are atleast 100% more than calculated values.

Let’s pause and reflect for a minute — why is it that you (or someone similarly qualified) are not employed designing stage rigs, and instead doing whatever it is that you do? Chances are the answer comes down to economic productivity (and lack thereof).

Ex-chairman of TATA group died in a traffic accident. Look at Steve Jobs. Sometimes shit happens. Life goes on. First rule of risk management is to be able to accept that or you are not fit to manage Risk.

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