for decades I have been saying: the less you’re paid, the harder you have to work.
I call bullshit.
First, define “software engineer”. I’ve never known anyone with any actual responsibility for shipping code who can incompetently fuck around for two weeks and not get their asses ripped. Jesus H. Christ, every programmer, modeler, writer, composer, and fucking gopher at any major game developer can tell you about sleeping under a fucking desk in a cubicle ‘cause it’s Crunch Time, and Big Daddy Balance Sheet wants a blockbuster out the door for the holidays.
And unlike that miserable grind at Taco Bell that you can’t wait to quit, the software engineer has to wake up every day —after being awakened twice in the night ‘cause she was on call— and realize She’s Living the Dream. She’s never quitting, ‘cause she already has it as good as she’s gonna get it. She’s 28 and… that’s it. She’ll be 38 before anything changes at work, and that will only mean she’s been promoted into a position orthogonal to her skillset, that she never actually wanted, but screw it, anything is better than rotting away in stasis.
And you think that entitled prick who wants to know why he can’t order a McRib when they’re out of season is a soul-crushing misery? Try pushing an iffy update to a mission-critical app to a site employing a few dozen people who FREAK THE FUCK OUT when their shit stops working in the midst of *their* workday. If the cranky fast food manager made you cry, wait until you’re on the phone with the secretary of the guy who signs your check, who is just as unhappy with her life as you are, and will eagerly use her proximity to power to make your life miserable until you bend the knee and ask forgiveness. (And fix the bug. And make it so she doesn’t need to remember passwords. Also, is there a way to hide how much I watch Netflix during the day?)
To be clear, I’ve worked menial labor and customer service for $4.25/hour. It sucks. I was once called to the public restroom at a discount store to clean up after an old woman’s colostomy bag exploded in a stall… I was scrubbing giant biohazard splatters of shit off the walls with a mop and a dubious bucket of water. It looked like Kevin Sorbo detonated a suicide vest in there. It was nightmarish.
So I’m not arguing that working for minimum wage is great, ‘cause it ain’t. It’s hell. But I’m gonna need everyone to stop acting like people working in tech fields are rolling in cash and lazily sipping from the labor fountain, ‘cause they’re actually just trying to survive every damned day while the entire weight of the economy and the future of civilization settles on them and grinds them to powder.
