firstplacelast

You can afford better food, nicer place to live (living next to major highways/trains results in lower lifespan due to the pollution), can have more autonomy and respect in the workplace (lots of pesky things like hormone levels change when you are perceived by others as 'high-status' vs 'low-status' and status is more often than not determined by money), and MOST importantly, at least in America, you can afford healthcare. And getting treated for a disease/ailment has a very positive correlation with surviving it.

Citizen of the United States of America gets job offer revoked due to poor credit. We aren't any better.

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/awmvre/50k...

That’s fantastc! Seriously, it’s good that you feel great about the work you do and have a management team that allows you to breathe easy, is supportive, and helps you out put the best work possible.

BUT, and I truly believe this in the depths of my soul, everyone is as evil as their most sociopathic executive.

Everyone is contributing to the same bottom line, some people just sell out for less.

Whose more evil, the hitman that won’t kill for under 1 million or the hitman that will do it for minimum wage?

Do you think they have difficulty retaining senior talent because they are underpaying or that Tesla is a shit-show to work for?

Either way, it's extremely difficult for younger people to be in CxO positions unless they start a company. I'm extremely doubtful that most can't do the job, it's just that they can't get hired.

I'm sure this person will do just as good of a job as any 50+ yo with an extra decade or two of experience. Typically people that require 10+ years of experience to perform a job are worse off than someone that is capable after only 4-5years. Lots of dumb-fuck boomers out there that had to be spoon fed every iota of information before they could perform at a high level.

LOL. This is so incredibly offensive to Americans. I am the grandson of butchers, farmers, and miners.

In the middle of the US, there are lots of (white) Americans that work in these jobs. Many are very proud of their profession.

Next time you want to go on a trip to "expand your horizons", go to a podunk town in a fly-over state and get to know your fellow Americans.

Can't have been that bad then. General employment is a nightmare, I've only changed jobs once in the last 8 years because it's so many BS hoops to jump through.

Well their moonshot (project X or whatever) companies/ideas say this. However, it is true that their a massive company and thus are less about disruption than start-ups. However, Silicon Valley and the people that work their seem to love to talk about "being disruptors," it seems to be quite the badge-of-honor even if your only knowledge of it is via HN.

The same can be said for requiring candidates to have a github or using a college degree as a filter. Not everyone has the luxury to take out 10's of thousand in debt and spend 4+ years of their life learning instead of earning.

So unless you advocate for completely blind interviews that do not rely on a resume and only take up 3 hours of someone's day, your point is moot.

If those at Google are truly top-tier talent (which I think many are) and if they work in an industry and for a company that is all about disruption, why is this even a valid mentality?

"This thing sucks, so let's just do business as usual." If they are truly talented disruptors, their mentality would be "this thing sucks, we can make it better and bring it into the 21st century."

Isn't this literally indicative of the economy as a whole? The entire middle is being hollowed out. You've got to go high or go low, which is the same segregation we've seen in terms of wages.

Makes sense to me.

Based on the salaries at Facebook, I would hope it’s intentional.

If not, what the hell are they paying top-of-industry salaries for?

So then any software engineer working at facebook and google needs to be licensed? As we have seen facebook and search results can easily affect lives.

Additionally, software engineers that work on self-driving cars, rockets, any healthcare systems, etc, etc, etc?

The reality is the "bar" ensures most people in medical and dental schools come from upper middle and upper class families.

It works to deter not those who are more than capable, but those that cannot incur huge costs to get into medical school. That includes volunteer time, extracurriculars, going on "mission trips" in undergrad to volunteer to help in medical clinics abroad, very expensive application costs (if you aren't in the 0.1% academically you NEED to apply to a lot of schools), paying to travel for medical school interviews, etc. Not to mention the opportunity costs of doing these things instead of working a paying job.

It doesn't end there. I have twice this year hosted friends from out-of-state that came to my city to interview for fellowships. Even after completing a residency most (all?) hospitals and medical groups will not pay for your travel to interview with them. One of these friends told me he is paying ~10k in travel costs to interview across the country for a fellowship position...thankfully he has a trust fund. I believe he faced similar costs when applying for residency.

It is insane. And that's just one aspect of medical education that deters otherwise great people.

If Cuba can figure out how to output a huge number of successful physicians (to the point that they placed them in other countries) there's no reason America can't other than apathy.

This is one of the things that convinced me as a teenager that our entire healthcare system is fucked. My mom died of an aggressive form of cancer after ONLY 15 months of treatment.

My dad, making an upper middle class wage in a low cost of living area with good insurance, was almost bankrupt by the end of it. He had to borrow money from his siblings to bury my mother. On top of that, he is the kind of guy that makes /r/personalfinance proud. If someone like him that shuns most luxuries and makes a top 10% salary in the US can have his bank account decimated in under 2 years, I shudder to think about the 90% of people that make less than him and have less self-control.

As a society (US) we HAVE to solve this problem. Our healthcare system is a disaster from top to bottom.

It's pretty stupid to expect a corporation to pay people more "because they should."

This is what government/laws/unions should help with. I just don't get the idealism of the 21st century. "Jobs should pay more or we will shame you", say the people.

"Get fucked", says the company. And now we are here...

Diagnostics and therapeutics are largely (completely?) bio-based. It generally requires a great deal of cellular and/or genomic research. Medical devices also involve some heavy biology related research.

However, healthcare IT generally has nothing to do with biology.

I'm a bioinformatics scientist. Salaries are notoriously horrible in this field and I get paid better than most wet lab scientists who have more education and experience than me.

I think biotech may be exacerbating inequality more than most industries, as the profits are most definitely not going to the employees like they do in other STEM fields.

I fundamentally disagree. Ethical consumption is a cop-out, especially for those who have means (most people on this site).

Real integrity comes from ethical production. Place your time and skills towards companies and projects that at the very least do not make the world worse. And if you can't do that, I do not think you get to get on a soap box and talk about how great you are because you shop for local produce, eat vegan, and drive an electric car.

Everyone is as evil as their most sociopathic executive, you both contribute to the same bottom line but the employee sells out for less.

This is absolutely correct. NIMBYism has adversely affected more Americans than Russia.

Since it follows that NIMBYs are more anti-American than Russia, we MUST put sanctions on their ability to affect their fellow Americans.

NIMBYism has adversely affected more Americans than Russia. So I think it's fair to say that NIMBYs are more Anti-American than Russia.

Time for NIMBY concentration camps??

Actually, it shows you plebeians the power of unions.

I have a handful of friends that work in Hollywood as actors and producers. They get paid amazingly well and get insane amounts of time off.

...all because they have organized labor. Most people would be amazed how much an extra gets paid once they have their SAG card.

Many take advantage of unemployment as well since they typically work on contracts. Have several friends that will work for 6 months on a show and then take 3-4 months off while collecting unemployment and figuring out what contract they want to take next.

If you're giving the majority of your time (that you are awake) to someone else and can't afford housing you're not "working", you're being enslaved.

Like c'mon. Working for less than a livable wage is just called making America worse. It would be much more productive to kill yourself and reduce the leverage employers have over the proletariat.

"Could be" is the key word. I made a dermatologist appointment a couple months ago to get some moles checked out. Couldn't get the doc I wanted as they were booked, so the receptionist asked me if a physician's assistant would be okay or if I would like to see a different MD.

"Will my copay be cheaper if I see a PA?", I asked.

"Absolutely not" was the response.

So why would I pay the same to see someone less qualified?

Incentives in the American healthcare system are extremely screwed up.

Unfortunately, those that need those jobs and need help with their addiction cannot advocate for this. No one will listen. Until the rich and successful advocate for it, it will never happen.

So don’t hold your breath.

While true, then most jobs need to pay enough to afford to own the crappiest home within a reasonable commute of your office. The majority of jobs in 2018 do not meet this threshold.

Most people don’t want to spend their lives “hustling” and selling things. They do, however, want healthcare, a home, and the ability to retire.

So?

I've noticed most of my friends that would be deemed "successful" by most of society only have 1 thing in common...parents with exceptionally large bank accounts.

I can only point to a couple people that came from middle class and lower families that are now successful (though I'm not terribly old yet), with them they had above average intelligence and above average charisma.

However, being exceptional seems to be a minority factor in being successful when compared to being born with more resources at your disposal.

I mean, you can't really be a billionaire in today's world if your parents weren't millionaires. And it's like this all the way down.

This is how you know your skills are no longer in high-demand. When employers want to select for ridiculous crap like that or use vague reasons for denying an applicant like “cultural fit” it’s because they have way too many qualified applicants.

If your skills were truly in high-demand, they would verify that you could do the work and are easy to work with then they’d give you the job (see: Nurses).

I'm a bit of an audiophile and for that reason I do not use ANY music streaming services. None of them have all of the music I want. I have a wide range of high-quality audio and for some artists I have very particular versions/performances of certain tracks that are my favorite.

I've tried streaming services, but it ends up over complicating my experience because I still have to rely on my own hard copies to complete my collection. Further, I am extremely wary of my library up and disappearing. I like to have full control over all of my tracks, meta-data, playlist organization, etc. I won't even buy from iTunes anymore because it's too restricted. Only online music broker I use is Bandcamp because they give me full control of the music I purchased.

Even among my hard-core audiophile friends, admittedly a very small sample, none of them use Tidal.

Engineer/technical/science-type people tend to have this belief that wanting to reap the value they create makes them "bad people" or at the very least not a "good engineer/scientist/etc."

Apparently, only business and finance people are allowed to want money because they provide a useful service or just because they want money.

I personally believe that in a capitalistic society, it is imperative that everyone tries their best to extract as much of the value that they create. Otherwise we end up with massive inequality.

>Universal health care is a euphemism for the poor and sick getting their medical care subsidized by the wealthy and healthy.

Have you ever worked in the US healthcare system? I worked for a medical diagnostics lab and spent a couple weeks in our billing department shadowing them at one point, we were writing off a minimum of 100k/day (and that is a very conservative estimate based on the 1 billing person I shadowed) in services for indigent patients.

So the US healthcare model as it stands is a euphemism for the wealthy and healthy subsidizing the poor and sick in an insanely inefficient way.