firstplacelast

If you’re in even a medium COL area, housing has sky rocketed. Even the old boomer middle managers worth their salt know this.

I quit a job in biotech earlier this year bc I would always be paid less for my skills and cannot afford it anymore. Great boss, great director, they know. They can’t just magically pay me more when tons of people (H1B’s included) will do my job for the same or cheaper…it would make them bad at their job.

Bottom up approaches are the only things that will solve these things, so yes you and me have to put our money and talents where our mouths are.

This board tends towards believing in democracy yet we spend half+ of our waking hours existing within non-democratic institutions…they’re not even representative republics, the thing we pass off as pro-democracy today.

If we want it, we have to build it, we have to build safe-guards, and we have to stand by and not loot as much money as possible when the time presents.

We have so far shown we are collectively not capable of doing these things.

Are there any multi-billion dollar organizations that work on the principles we so desire in our own government? Maybe democracy is just a joke and a sentiment for feel-good buy-in from the masses.

“Tech” has devolved into crony- capitalism on crack. But we’ve minted quite a few average-joe millionaires, so yay?

I watched the whole congressional forum today and those guys are probably the most well-spoken people I’ve ever heard discussing UAP/aliens/NHI. Also, one of the more bipartisan and civil congressional hearings I’ve witnessed in recent memory.

It’s definitely intriguing to say the least and I have a hard time doubting that these guys have not witnessed what they say they witnessed, both with their eyes and in terms of government programs/secrecy/misallocated funds. Now if those UAPs are NHI or government-created machines or something else, hopefully we will find out eventually.

I’ve done manual labor jobs in the past, so not hyperbole.

I’d probably figure something out in the middle if faced with it, but I’m willing to throw down the gauntlet for my own life.

Even getting STEM degrees, I found the actual education lacking and many courses I had to take pointless.

I did learn some stuff. Learned slightly more in grad school. But I did the degrees because I knew I needed to check boxes for my future.

Maybe there’s an economic system that would not do this, but currently most people’s lives are not improved with increased longevity across the board.

It’s one of the reasons I left my job in pharma. The constant circle jerk about making the world better + comparative low pay when so few could afford a condo on their own salary. Whose lives are we making better? Certainly not the lives of the people I see every day.

“You’re not ugly, just poor.” Is a saying for a reason. There’s plastic surgery, ozempic, having the time/drive to work out consistently, dressing well, eating well, etc etc.

People can improve their beauty score by 2-3 points if they have the drive and/or money.

On one hand, it might remove opportunities for networking/progression. On the other hand, I want to get out of my work-self when I’m off the clock and this is better.

I don’t want to talk about work when I’m not at work and although work topics still come up with non-tech folks, it’s easier to not end up in a deluge of techy stuff. And it’s often way more interesting to talk about work when someone is not doing anything closely related to my career (at least for me).

I can’t speak for everyone, but for whatever reason those things cause me (a very middle-class person) a lot of stress.

Maybe because of what I was taught or how I grew up or my experiences, which are not the same for everyone, but it’s still there. I’ve been food insecure, been temporarily homeless, had to bounce around from place to place without much money to my name when younger.

Not being able to put down roots stresses me out. Will rent go up? Will landlord sell my place (has happened before), will I need to move to the middle of nowhere in my late 40’s and start all over building a community?

I’m not looking for a nice SFH as a need, just a mediocre condo, but in a very expensive place. It’s where the jobs are, unfortunately. Relying on other people’s income (roommate/spouse) does not solve this issue for me.

While there are many different issues for many different people, not being able to carve out a space for yourself is very stressful for many people.

I’ve talked about this in therapy. Get married or look at all the poor people worse off is what I am told. Not helpful.

It is what it is, I guess.

You can eat great, you can buy a fancy car, but housing?

I personally peg all my shit to housing. It’s not only the fact that the crappy SFH that was 1M is now 4M, it’s that you have the property taxes it perpetuity of a 4M abode that’s honestly pretty mediocre.

People will jump through all sorts of hoops for a better life/better things. But when those better things are so absurdly out of reach for even most people making 1%-er salaries, it discourages everyone.

And “you can eventually move to the Midwest” isn’t really a sales point (I’ve been told this by multiple managers/directors).

99% of people do not allocate capital, do not write laws, and do not drive policy decisions (yes, we vote, but at least in the US your vote has little impact on these things).

We need to agree on what we think the absolute minimum a person should get for working a full-time job. I personally think a person should be able to afford a home if they work full-time with their own salary. Yes, even someone working full-time at starbucks in the Bay Area should be able to pay the mortgage on 1 very small, crappy condo likely with a long-ish commute. Anything less is unacceptable. Working more hours, attaining more degrees/credentials/experience should allow you to afford slightly nicer standards of living.

Anyone that currently can't afford a mortgage on 1 crappy condo in their city should get a new job that pays at that end or move or quit working all together. Let the "smart/capable" people who "deserve" a decent standard of living do the work.

If and when they decide they want to provide others the same standard of living to others for 40hours/week of work, then everyone can go back to work. If everyone did this tomorrow, we would have new policies and laws in weeks-to-months to overhaul housing. Yes, some people would die in the meantime, but it would make the world a better place. We celebrate people going overseas to get blown up as heroes, maybe some poor and middle class people can die domestically as heroes instead to make this happen as well.

Since we can't even start the conversation about the minimum acceptable compensation for working a full-time job, there's probably no way the rest could happen. It is frustrating how a couple weeks-to-months of widespread action (or inaction) by the working-class and poor could change life for so, so many and generations to come, but knowing there is less than 1% chance it will ever happen.

Maybe the working class does deserve their exploitation.

The government could force and pay for construction of massive numbers of condos/townhouses in/around large cities (say 20-40million). Sell them to first time home-owners for extremely cheap (say 200k) with all types of restrictions on it being owner occupied and only allowing the owner to recoup a certain % of appreciation after X numbers of years if sold (say 3% each year lived in).

I’m sure that’s problematic and a team of people smarter than me could come up with a much better system, but there are very tenable solutions with the ability to change laws/policies and a massive pocket-book.

The US used to give away large parcels of land to people just to move out west. So it’s not like there’s not precedence for helping citizens with real estate.

Nothing significant will be done in our lifetimes though, oh well.

I think it’s a great idea for a company and can work very well, but I don’t think it has the capability for never-ending growth.

With women’s wear, I could definitely see a huge number of clients buying monthly-to-quarterly. For men’s wear, I can’t see many doing this on a consistent basis. Seems like most would be up for new clothes 1-2x/year, unless you’re looking to revamp your whole wardrobe. Even then after a year you’ve got a new wardrobe and wouldn’t need them again for a long while.

Looking at their website, the brands they tout are essentially mall staples too, nothing special. So the main value-add would be the stylist.

Most men would be better served hiring a stylist for a major sale weekend (post Christmas, Black Friday, Memorial Day) and having them take you to the mall to get all of those things at a steep discount.

I quit a month ago as the money wasn’t enough for me to move forward in life (VHCOL area), management was all older and I felt they do not want to adjust to 21st century processes, and I wasn’t getting any opportunities to really grow.

I have not applied anywhere yet, I’ve taken a couple trips, been spending time outside, and doing a lot of thinking and a little studying/research.

I have no debt, a decent savings, but not enough for a mortgage or to have kids. Employers don’t have a lot of leverage over me because I’ve never made enough to buy-into those adult things that keep your finances constrained.

I can not work for the next two years pretty easily, although I doubt it will last more than another month or four.

I’m not in FAANG and find most companies don’t have much to offer me compensation wise (in terms of letting me grow in my personal life). Not interested in wasting my life working for all these things in the middle.

If you can’t have what you want in life, that’s acceptable. But why get on that career treadmill for a bunch of stuff that won’t make you happy ?

Work is no more meaningful than anywhere else. It’s a big “selling point” for the industry, but it’s just a way to get people to get paid less (yay you’re making the world better than all those garbage people serving coffee or healing sick people or keeping your lights on or optimizing the routes of the goods you have delivered). If you want sustainable systems, trying to be a martyr and work for less only screws this up long term.

Code-base is not open-source. It’s biotech R&D, there is zero culture of sharing outside your organization within industry. You can present high-level things at conferences and such, but you’ll have to rip the raw data out of their dead hands…not happening.

I’ve been in too many conversations about building software to serve larger groups in this industry. It can happen, but it can’t currently and nobody wants it. Confident someone will find a solution, but everyone wants their own home-grown solutions in their own walled-gardens that no one has access to.

Data and the things it can/can’t tell you are held tightly in these companies. I was at a pharma a couple years ago where researchers were explicitly told they COULD NOT test certain compounds in a certain way because they did not want a trace of this data to exist while they were trying to push compounds through the FDA.

^Most recent discussion I’ve seen.

I worked in genomics, left this year because you’re underpaid and often disregarded “IT-help” that assists wildly over-educated and underpaid people driving the actual research in 95% of cases.

They have a hard time having someone with a BS or MS making 50-75k more than a freshly-minted PhD.

I just left a job in pharma because I cannot do it anymore (salary being a big one, but my experiences reflect many in this thread).

They spent 500k on a consulting company to build a few NGS processing pipelines. This was built using a framework I was unfamiliar with. I re-factored one of them and was able to increase runtime by 60% in a couple weeks. I was paid in the low 100’s.

They would rather contract out the high-paid work and pay orders of magnitude more for it.

This could be fun ! I mean when it happens it will be awful for those that have homes, good careers, etc. But still will be an interesting part of history to observe.

In interviews for full-time employment, this has rarely been the case.

I quit my job a couple months ago (have a side consulting gig that pays 80% of my expenses for minimal hours) and I have been loving it. I’m so busy! In the past week I have been working on perfecting a French omelette, started sprouting some heirloom seeds for a patio garden, hosted a dinner party, going on hikes/back in the gym. Previous two weeks I went to a few different cities to see old friends (one I grew up with and we had not even spoken for almost 8 years).

I do fine financially, but will never be rich by my own hard work. Maybe I’ll get lucky, but I can’t control that. I don’t know if it is age or the pandemic, but I am very committed to living better now. I am doubling down on healthy measures, working out and being outside more, eating better, and getting away from drinking (took 3 months sober last year and about to go into another 1-2 months sober before summer).

I am making an effort to connect and see old friends and especially family. Lots of phone calls and trips when it works out. I was just on the phone with a sibling for 3.5 hours last night, which was wonderful.

I am splurging on gifts and experiences for family/friends to spread some joy around. I have thrown out a huge chunk of my wardrobe and have been updating that, I’m sick of wearing jeans and a T-shirt and want to feel/look great everyday (I’ve spent about 20k in the last 6 months on awesome clothes/shoes).

The one thing for me right now is people. I’ve missed them. I want to feel great about myself and I want to be with people. Talk to them, enjoy them, help them. “Work” outside of being around people I love will only be for money right now. Don’t want to innovate or care or solve problems for anyone else’s bottom line.

I’m still young enough that I can see this approach to life changing in 2-5 years, but right now I just want to be with and appreciate the many people in my life I have or had great relationships with.

Companies are purchasing labor (a product). Trying to undermine the costs because they have inside knowledge on how the meat is made (or where the meat is made) is just them using their leverage to extract a better deal. Totally normal tactic, they do this in every facet of their business. Employees should also grab as much leverage as possible from shopping their product (labor) to competitors or banding together with others (union/guild/etc) to get the best deal.

tl;dr It makes rational sense for companies to want to pay different per location. It makes rational sense for employees to say "cool, but no." There are many examples of price not being location-dependent in our capitalist system, at least many I have experienced at a consumer level. But maybe you are onto something and online consumer stores should all start changing the base prices once they see your zip code/state/type of credit card (I'm positive there are already some out there that do things along these lines).

I’ve worked in biotech/healthcare and have never had anything close to a FAANG salary even in a HCOL area. I burned out and am just now taking a month off to just exist. I have had the same thoughts about going blue-collar as the OP, but taking a month to figure out if it’s just general burn out or if I need a career change.

I’ve been working since I was very young and have had all sorts of jobs: door-to-door sales, lifeguard, retail, waiting tables, property maintenance, cleaning homes from flood/fire damage, and on and on. I loved a lot of those jobs, though I didn’t do any for more than 2.5 years (or even just a summer).

I don’t know if it was the pandemic or what, but never been so miserable at a job in my life and can’t imagine staring at a computer 40+ hours/week right now. I was literally staring into the Taco Bell drive-through window 6 weeks ago thinking I’d rather be working there and learn how to make a quesadilla in 1min than sit at a desk, which was the last straw for me.

Plus with software it’s all about the skills. So if I drop out for awhile and decide to get back in a few years later, I should be fine after a couple months of self-study.