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Comment by bigtex88 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not sure where you read that in the quote above. Surely the person who knows the codebase inside out, the person who "jumps on every incident," the person who is willing to put in the long hours IS the person doing the daily grunt work?

Even that person is likely being underpaid for the work they are doing. And unless they're the ONLY PERSON AT THE JOB then they're not doing all the work. Everyone is important to make things work. And I guarantee those other people aren't seeing the fruits of their labor either.

Productivity gains going to the top 0.1% since the 1970's has caused the rest of us to not want to work hard, because we don't capture our own productivity gains. I'm not sure how this is hard to understand.

So people are getting mad at a grunt doing work because they believe that grunt isn't getting paid enough? Seems like a stretch.

The belief that grunts (like the hard working grunt) aren't paid enough might not be sufficient on its own to make the end result (people getting mad at that grunt) believable.

But what if one considers it as one of several beliefs frequently held together? What if a grunt believes the following?

A) grunts (in general, but also including the hard worker) don't get paid enough for how much they work

B) grunts have more control over how hard they work than over how much they are paid

C) if one grunt works extra hard, management will start expecting all grunts to work that hard (exacerbating what they already think is a poor work/pay ratio; see A)

Now is it a stretch?

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