The Money Mustache Community
Around the Internet => Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy => Topic started by: ender on February 20, 2016, 04:05:54 PM
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https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a#.f2tgr5htv
Probably should not read this if you have a negative stereotype about millennials, because it pretty much walks down the stereotype list.
It's pretty much as anti-mustachian as it gets. Her grievance, while perhaps well intentioned and a "fair" complaint about minimum wage in SF, is utterly ruined by her inability to do math and as a result putting herself into a position where she pays all her takehome pay in rent.
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I had to stop reading when she went on about how shitty the company was for having a health plan that only required a $20 copay.
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She says it's the cheapest place she could find with access to work on the train.
Do you think she's lying?
She seems to do math just fine considering she was able to calculate what percentage of her income her rent was... her complaint is that there's no cheaper options available (not surprising considering the inflated real estate prices in SF... mostly the result of existing homeowners fighting against any new development for fear of property values dropping).
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She says it's the cheapest place she could find with access to work on the train.
Do you think she's lying?
She seems to do math just fine considering she was able to calculate what percentage of her income her rent was... her complaint is that there's no cheaper options available (not surprising considering the inflated real estate prices in SF... mostly the result of existing homeowners fighting against any new development for fear of property values dropping).
There was a comment a few posts down that someone found on craigslist in no time. At the very least get a roommate (like a coworker in a similar situation) like everyone else in SF. No way is living alone in the Bay Area "the cheapest place" unless it is on the street.
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Probably should not read this if you have a negative stereotype about millennials, because it pretty much walks down the stereotype list.
OMG, I feel like I have just been getting smacked in the head over and over again with a 2x4.
ETA: Is it wrong of me to hope that her potential future employers google her and find her grievance letter? She has set really high career goals for herself /s/:
Talia is a newly available aspiring comedy writer living in San Francisco who recently left Los Angeles to pursue a career in hangin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ all cool.
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She should probably change the tagline on her Twitter bio.
(http://i.imgur.com/FcUFkJW.png)
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Overall a lot of her complaints are valid, in that the costs are real, and her pay is low.
None of that is the CEO's fault, however.
She's right though, she's not making enough to live in the bay area.
Time for her to move to a place with a lower COL where a job that pays low is a living wage. She mentions early on in the letter that some of her coworkers had done exactly that.
She has the solution, and the power to implement it. Time to do so.
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Many of her complaints are valid and her style of writing had me laughing. However,she was hoping to get a position in media with them so she should have gotten a roommate and then stayed the year to see if she could move into a better position. It was dumb to write the letter now.
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I would have loved to take a job in SF after college. However, like many people, I realized it was not financially possible. Instead, I took a more realistic route and moved to Fort Myers, FL, even though I wasn't terribly excited about it.
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Talia sounded like she was ready to quit anyway?
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I got even more frustrated reading the comments. When people tried to point out that ranting against your CEO was probably a bad idea and people would tell them off and defend her.
Also her edit to ask for money at the end REALLY annoyed me
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She makes less than 1500 a month. I know a lot of people on this forum like to show off about living on less per month and don't count a mortgage because that is somehow not debt or an expense.
I live off of 2k with 1k of that as rent and basic utilities, could probably drop to 1,500 but I also put away 2.5k a month right now.
Try living on 1400 with no end in sight is pretty demoralizing. It's easy to live off of 1,500 a month when you are making 100k a year, not so easy when making less than 20k.
I actually thought the blog/article was hilarious and well written. Thanks for the link I've saved it to my favourites.
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I also thought this was hilarious and well written. Additionally, she's doing a lot of the things advocated by this thread: living near public transportation, eating a lot of rice. It's harder to live on 1,500 a month when you have no cushion then to live on 1,500 because you're banking 3 grand (and can use it as an emergency fund). As someone who's newly unemployed I found this heart wrenching and terrifying, but I don't think it deserves to be mocked.
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I also thought this was hilarious and well written. Additionally, she's doing a lot of the things advocated by this thread: living near public transportation, eating a lot of rice. It's harder to live on 1,500 a month when you have no cushion then to live on 1,500 because you're banking 3 grand (and can use it as an emergency fund). As someone who's newly unemployed I found this heart wrenching and terrifying, but I don't think it deserves to be mocked.
Good points she's eating bulk food and any food provided by the employer. She lived far from work to save on rent (of course she could have a roommate for her entire adult life I suppose, not sure how that proves that 8.15 an hour is a living wage for the area she lives in though).
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I feel like "breaking into media" is the new "moving to LA to become an actor". 99% end up working minimum wage while waiting to be discovered (by either a studio or the twitterverse).
I meet many fellow millennials who seem to think freelancing and making jokes on Twitter will somehow monetize itself without a coherent product / user base for that product.
I'm sympathetic to her plight but, arebelspy is right, time to get yourself out of this situation.
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I'm with the assessment that this is a bit whinypants. First, if you're going to make it in media, you can do Twitter/blogging from anywhere, working a job in customer service anywhere to figure out how to even get work/budget/skills. Some of us have lived with at least one other person our entire lives (parents, roommates, now spouse). That's called balancing other people's needs with one's own, because if you're a selfish asshole then you will find getting or keeping a reasonable roommate or partner difficult. Some of us have put off things we *want* such as having a pet or certain vehicle or fancy whatever, because that's called delayed gratification. I suppose it didn't even ever occur to me NOT to have a roommate after college, in a much lower COL area than SF. Once, I lived with 4 other people and their 5 dogs because it was a mile from work. I'm not saying everyone has to do this, but come on. Cutting her rent in half would have basically paid for all her other problems.
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Yes, she is struggling...and the numbers tell us why.
BUT, what they don't tell us are things like
a) why she must live in such a high cost area -- yes, close to her dad, but isn't there a town 30 minutes a way that would be cheaper and nearly as close?
b) why working 1 year in the entry level position is such a horrible requirement -- sounds pretty reasonable to me....
c) why she needs the car when she says she lives so close to public transport?
d) why she *must* work for this company -- she can likely find better pay elsewhere....better pay and a roommate and a sold car would mean worlds of difference. Actually, even without better pay, the sold car and a roommate (a coworker that would be willing to turn the living room into bedroom) would make a world of difference.
e) why she had to go into debt for the move....save up a couple months and move maybe?
My husband and I have worked for incomes like this -- with a roommate, a second job, or a low cost of living, its not easy, but its doable.
She moved to a place that she cannot afford to live with her lack of work experience. End of story. Go live somewhere cheaper, get some ACTUAL work experience (college education with only freelance work and tutoring experience? Unless the tutoring was very consistent...she didn't need to work much to get through college obviously), build of a resume, and try again in a couple years.
I have nothing against her, or even her situation. But she had deceived herself into thinking that some freelance work over the period of 4 years of college gives her an automatic bid to immediately enter a specific department of a specific (large) corporation. Sorry, unrealistic expectations....
p.s. I'm 27 years old....
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Wow. I do feel for her because it sounds miserable but sharing an apartment would have gone a LONG way to helping her make ends meet. I had a roommate until I was nearly 30 years old because I couldn't afford to live any other way. And I was making more than minimum wage.
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Some of us have lived with at least one other person our entire lives (parents, roommates, now spouse).
Wow, I never realized that. All this time, we've been failing at adulthood!
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I saw the headline on that and clicked on it expecting to be outraged by the company. Thankfully I actually read the article and yeah, as a company owner I likely would have fired someone that
a. Wrote me a letter bitching about her pay scale (something that was told up front before accepting the job)
b. Released it publicly
There are ways to ask for a raise or cost-of-living increase. My company is tiny, so I doubt that would ever happen to be, but for a company the same of Yelp, what did she honestly expect?
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Whelp, she's not the brightest bulb, but her open letter sure did make me laugh. Coconut water, lol.
She needed to figure out how to take some of that free food home with her, because then at least she would have had a full pantry when she got sacked. I have a coworker whom I'm pretty sure has not purchased food for himself for nearly a decade . . .
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The overwhelming sense of entitlement really annoys me. She needs to realize she's being paid to do a job - in this case a very easy job like answering phones. The boss isn't paying her because he needs to support her, he pays her because she's doing a job.
Also, she seems pissed off that she needs to work an entry level position for 1 year before she can move up. Well, buckle up you special little snowflake, because this is reality.
Some people already pointed out she needs to live with roommates and sell the car. Can I add: going into debt to move to SF? Why didn't she have any cash at 25...?
As far as I can tell, her skills consist of: answering phones and writing snarky remarks. Wouldn't pay her a dime over 1500 either.
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The only thing I object to in her current lifestyle is her idea that she should live alone. I live in the bay area and most people I know have roommates, especially in their 20s/30s. Even consultants making $200k/yr often have roommates. It just doesn't make financial sense to live on your own, and honestly, a decent roommate or set of roommates is more fun than living alone. The only people I know without roommates have either been living in rent controlled apartments for at least the past 5 years, or they're 40+ and earning a really good salary.
Aside from that though, a wage of $1500 is going to make it very hard to build up any savings here. My monthly spending does average about $1500, with a reasonable number of luxuries, but as someone noted upthread, there's a big difference between only spending $1500/month but having a big paycheck to back it up with in case of irregularities vs. really only having $1500 coming in each month.
But, she CHOSE to move here and it shouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to figure out that her salary was not going to sustain her and that she would need to resign herself to cutting a few more corners (like, for example, putting up with a roommate for another year or two). Frankly, I feel a lot more sorry for people who grew up in the bay area and can't afford to stay near where all their family/friends are because they are being priced out by software engineers, etc.
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She lives alone?!?!?!??!?!??!?!???!
This is a lifestyle choice out of reach of most of the world because it is just too expensive. It's one of those luxuries that even people who can afford it choose not to do it....because the benefits (beyond financial) of living with other people are so great. She set herself up for failure with the lease on her apartment.
Since we're judging from a distance, I'm going to put the blame squarely on her Dad. She does reference that she moved to that area so they could rekindle a relationship, one they never had previously. And there's no getting around this, but having NO relationship with one of your parents can leave you deficient in many of the things a parent is supposed to teach. Schools can only do so much. But the life skill to live within your means is taught by your parents gradually over a frugal childhood or suddenly and harshly when you try to wing-it and fail as an unprepared young adult.
Millennials are not the problem. It's the people who either raised them (or abandoned them) who are the problem.
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... It just doesn't make financial sense to live on your own ...
This is undoubtedly true, but there are countervailing factors.
By way of analogy, many members here like to prepay fixed-rate non-callable low-interest tax-deductible long-term debt, even though it doesn't typically make financial sense to do so and in fact exposes them to the very risks that they claim to want to avoid (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/what's-your-job-title-and-how-much-do-you-earn/msg968688/#msg968688), such as financial difficulties relative to job loss (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/presidents-budget-proposes-elimination-of-backdoor-roth/msg975277/#msg975277). But they do it because it gives them psychological pleasure (I previously glossed this as a "sexual fetish (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/reaching-fire-married-vs-single/msg913415/#msg913415)", which may or may not be accurate).
Similarly, even though it's a bad financial decision to live alone, for some people living alone has enormous psychological benefits and, for those people, living with roommates would involve immense distress. Even though it's a bad financial decision to live alone, it isn't necessarily a bad decision simpliciter. Unfortunately, the reality is that if you are one of the people who cannot live with others, expensive parts of the bay area are not the right place to live unless you are significantly better off financially than the writer of that letter. Her biggest mistake was the choice of locale. There are many places in the United States where it is inexpensive to live alone.
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But, she CHOSE to move here and it shouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to figure out that her salary was not going to sustain her and that she would need to resign herself to cutting a few more corners (like, for example, putting up with a roommate for another year or two). Frankly, I feel a lot more sorry for people who grew up in the bay area and can't afford to stay near where all their family/friends are because they are being priced out by software engineers, etc.
People are not entitled to live in the most exciting places in the world at artificially low rent prices just because they were here first. People being priced out in a few limited markets is better than the alternative.
Similarly, even though it's a bad financial decision to live alone, for some people living alone has enormous psychological benefits and, for those people, living with roommates would involve immense distress. Even though it's a bad financial decision to live alone, it isn't necessarily a bad decision simpliciter.
Eh. I get what you're saying, but I have a hard time imagining this is the case for someone who posts open letters on medium.com to the CEO of a large company.
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Years ago when young people wanted to move to New York to enter finance or the arts, they lived in shadier parts of town, stayed several people to one apartment and cut costs everywhere they could until they “made it” or went home. Today… actually most young people still do that, even in San Francisco.
Sure this lady is high in the self-entitled and naivete spectrums, but it seems her bigger problem is that she doesn’t understand the media in which she communicates. Years ago kids would write or call home and complain about many of the same types of things, and their parents would silently think “oh, she has a lot to learn about the real world”. Very few young people had an outlet for their writing larger than a campus publication, which was largely ignored off-campus. Now we live in a world where almost anything one writes publicly could suddenly reach millions of readers and thus convey to the writer all the benefits and consequences thereof.
Hopefully she’ll learn a lesson, pause for some self-reflection, and come back stronger and ready to work her way up.
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Look, if I had ever had to have a housemate I would have gone 110% stir crazy in days. Thankfully my husband and I married young... However, I would have lived in a van to have been able to live on my own. I would have lived in a fucking tent on the M1 for some alone time. More realistically, I would certainly have lived in a tiny scummy bedsit and cooked all my meals on a slow cooker and plug in hot plate just to get some peace and privacy.
The thing that I didn't understand about this article is Marcus from CVS. I'm not sure exactly where CVS fits into the American societal ecosystem but it's strongly implied that CVS also pays minimum wage. Marcus from CVS has a spare $6... So why doesn't she? He is obviously living in the general area on the same general pay... But he can afford to "throw away" $6 on some random stranger. She's obviously doing some stupid things and exaggerating others.
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A few of my favorite quotes:
Then, after I had moved and got firmly stuck in this apartment with this debt, I was told I’d have to work in support for an entire year before I would be able to move to a different department.
I also have to pay my gas and electric bill. Last month it was $120. According to the infograph on PG&E’s website, that cost was because I used my heater. I’ve since stopped using my heater.
Oh, the horror - working a job for a year and having to pay bills at an apartment YOU CHOSE, in a city YOU DECIDED YOU HAD TO LIVE IN. You can't figure out what jobs you might have a chance at before getting "firmly stuck" in an apartment?
I couldn't help but cringe the entire time I read it. Obviously, many facts aren't fully explored in her complaint-filled rant about being poor and working an entry-level job in San Francisco, but it seems clear this woman has chosen to live in (or near) the most expensive city in the country, seems to live alone (rent is $1245), and has a horrible entitlement streak and no hustle.
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But, she CHOSE to move here and it shouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to figure out that her salary was not going to sustain her and that she would need to resign herself to cutting a few more corners (like, for example, putting up with a roommate for another year or two). Frankly, I feel a lot more sorry for people who grew up in the bay area and can't afford to stay near where all their family/friends are because they are being priced out by software engineers, etc.
People are not entitled to live in the most exciting places in the world at artificially low rent prices just because they were here first. People being priced out in a few limited markets is better than the alternative.
Sure, I'm not saying you necessarily "deserve" to live somewhere by virtue of having lived there for your whole life, but I do feel more sympathy for someone in that situation as it's more they have been landed in a hard situation by virtue of something they couldn't control (being born in a particular part of the country) and have to figure out how to make it workable or get out of it, rather than someone like the author of this piece who has waltzed into a bad situation that she should have been able to see coming and now thinks her employer should be fixing it.
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CVS is a very large drugstore chain. Marcus could make anywhere from minimum wage as a cashier to $150K+ as a pharmacist. He's probably in between those numbers as a shift supervisor of something. But it's funny to me because she so clearly looks down on people working what she considers a lowly retail job . . . because she's launching her "career in media." It's like "this peon at CVS even had $6, but I don't and it's your fault you meanypants CEO!"
I'm sorry but I just find it incredibly hilarious because an ex-coworker of mine had a daughter who flailed her way through a series of very short term (less than one month each) jobs after she finished high school. She would either quit or get fired each time. Seriously at least 4 different jobs that first summer. The funniest was her saying she couldn't work at the grocery store anymore because "the people who work there are just such LOSERS!" She thought a lot of herself, but apparently didn't own a mirror. She must have forgotten about her nose ring and the tat on her neck . . . exactly what corporate America is looking for in an 18-year-old who barely got through HS.
She latched onto a young man just as he was enlisting in the military and they got married quick so she could relocate with him. They moved and then she was lonely because he was working all the time and she didn't know anyone, so she immediately got a puppy . . .
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The startup founder/engineer in me wondered why the company needed to have its minimum wage customer service call center in SF.
It must be costing them a fortune in office rent when they could be paid for opening a center in some rust belt town where $8.50 after tax is a living wage
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She makes less than 1500 a month. I know a lot of people on this forum like to show off about living on less per month and don't count a mortgage because that is somehow not debt or an expense.
I live off of 2k with 1k of that as rent and basic utilities, could probably drop to 1,500 but I also put away 2.5k a month right now.
Try living on 1400 with no end in sight is pretty demoralizing. It's easy to live off of 1,500 a month when you are making 100k a year, not so easy when making less than 20k.
I actually thought the blog/article was hilarious and well written. Thanks for the link I've saved it to my favourites.
I think the end in sight was quite clear -- work hard for 1 whole grueling year, and that transfer into your dream job MAY open up...if you don't you know, go full dumbass and pen a gripe letter to your CEO about how you don't like the free snacks you're provided, or the free vision/dental/medical. I'm sure the other benefits like 401k matching (3%), $60/month from Yelp towards whatever your gym membership costs you, free life insurance, 26 paid days off, and employee stock purchase at a discount were of little worth for her (though most adults would consider those valuable benefits).
Sucks she got laid off, but as she mentioned it was not unexpected given the letter she decided to post.
I think it's hilarious how the comments on the article backlashing against the guy that told the girl "don't bite the hand that feeds you" are railing on him saying "but they aren't feeding her...she's so broke she has to live on rice!"....except they actually are...literally feeding her...fresh sandwiches with deli meat, yogurt, fresh fruits, oatmeal, burritos, beverages...even beer! Every comment from employees there about the free snacks say how awesome it is, one guy even said "Never have to pay for breakfast lunch diner [sic] or drinks ever again".
I guess maybe she should reach out to Marcus @ CVS. I mean he's just a lowly CVS employee and not of the standards of her genius with her creative wit and media awesomeness, but maybe he'll be kind enough to let her live with him for free (I mean, he did give her $6...maybe he thought she was cute?)...oh wait, I forgot, roommates are so beneath her.
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I recently hired an entry level engineer who was hesitant about moving to the Bay Area because of the high cost of living. His salary is many many times what this woman's was. When he first moved here he was living with two roommates in a 2 bedroom apartment (one girl was sleeping in the living room). Last week he was excited to tell me that he is moving into an apartment nearer work with only one other roommate.
This is an ENGINEER whose salary is over 100k and is pretty much guaranteed to increase significantly as he gains in experience.
I'm sorry, but I have zero sympathy for this woman.
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I guess maybe she should reach out to Marcus @ CVS. I mean he's just a lowly CVS employee and not of the standards of her genius with her creative wit and media awesomeness, but maybe he'll be kind enough to let her live with him for free (I mean, he did give her $6...maybe he thought she was cute?)...oh wait, I forgot, roommates are so beneath her.
Maybe Marcus at CVS could get her a job there and then she would obviously earn enough money live on and then have extra to throw $6 around at random strangers, and she would have time after her shift (presume hourly pay only when the store is actually open, not 24/7 customer service) to work on that freelance job she mentioned that she doesn't have time for at Yelp.
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Nobody's fault but her own.
She also has the nerve to beg for money at the end, in her update.
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She also has the nerve to beg for money at the end, in her update.
Can't fault her for that, there are bound to be people that think of her as a hero, and they may be willing to send a few bucks her way. Seeing as how I can't imagine anyone will hire her for the foreseeable future, she might need such charity.
Her letter has popped up on my FB feed, man I hate the headline that people are using for it. She wasn't fired for asking for a higher wage, but rather the tone of her letter, along with the fact that it was posted publicly. I would fire someone for that.
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One thing about social media is that it becomes possible for every possible snippy remark or rant to go viral.
We all probably remember venting or expressing ourselves in an immature way when we shouldn't have. Sometimes, yes, a person can get fired for it or there can be negative long-term consequences. But one person's dissatisfaction with their work situation (whether it's justified or not) never used to become national news unless someone exploded or got set on fire.
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Isn't this just a digital resume?
1. Write snarky stuff about job in bay area
2. Go viral
3. Get desired job in "media"
I'm not sure why everyone think's the letter was a stupid thing to do. Sure, she lost her job. But it didn't pay enough for her to live where it was located (getting a roommate aside, which sure, would have alleviated the stress a bit but that low of wage in that area probably isn't doable in the long term) so why not throw a hail mary hoping to get her name out there? I think it was a good move.
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Isn't this just a digital resume?
1. Write snarky stuff about job in bay area
2. Go viral
3. Get desired job in "media"
I'm not sure why everyone think's the letter was a stupid thing to do. Sure, she lost her job. But it didn't pay enough for her to live where it was located (getting a roommate aside, which sure, would have alleviated the stress a bit but that low of wage in that area probably isn't doable in the long term) so why not throw a hail mary hoping to get her name out there? I think it was a good move.
I don't think that's going to help her. She might get a few thousands in donations today, but she has likely marked herself for the foreseeable as un-hirable. But then again it only takes one employer to say yes, so who knows.
Putting a reminder in my calendar to look where she is 6 months from now.
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Putting a reminder in my calendar to look where she is 6 months from now.
Would you please add to your calendar reminder to come post an update in this thread? ;-)
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I do feel bad for people who have to forgo heat all winter because they can't afford it rather than viewing it as increasing their badassity and savings rate (me). It probably sucks to view this as your future for what I'd imagine feels like the rest of your life.
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Lack of maturity makes her a likely liability for future employers. She does have some good points about the overall ridiculousness of the SF housing & rental market in an economy that combines the worst aspects of market-based pricing and government-induced artificial supply limitations. Hence a place that, though I would like to live in, would never do since being over-worked in paradise is worse than retiring early in a good enough place.
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Ack!! I read to this line and had to stop...
"I was told I’d have to work in support for an entire year before I would be able to move to a different department."
Boohoo... someone gives you, a person with no contacts and no experience EVER, a steady job then has the balls to set a business policy to reduce turnover which is otherwise way too high? BAH, many companies insist on 2 years... the beauty of it is that she proves it later by explaining the value of her 3+ months of experience to job performance.
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Read a bit more --- oooh, now there is waspish complaints that the FREE FOOD is not available on all shifts.... There are so many solutions to this, my dear.... this trainwreck is like crack, I can't stop reading.... yep, now treating bread like it is a personal right even though I, too, started to make my own the year it jumped in price...
--- copays ---- anyone NOT have copays? I know some plans have wellness checks for no copay, but mostly, they exist even in gold standard packages..
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Here is the kicker -- after that bitter article, she asked readers to help her get a job! Wow, no way do I want to work beside someone like that...
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I have a friend of a friend that just moved to SF to work for a startup (it's a well known company that I'll leave nameless). Apparently she was making good money here, and is hating the job because they treat everyone as an intern for the first year, and then you can do something more interesting.
It's a good example of how FB isn't the real world, because this person constantly posts glowing reviews of her workplace or the city.I don't think she's being dishonest, but it's just a good realization how what people post on FB is so different from what they really feel, it's a way for them to post only what they want to.
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Putting a reminder in my calendar to look where she is 6 months from now.
Would you please add to your calendar reminder to come post an update in this thread? ;-)
I suspect she would have sunken back into obscurity.
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My first thought upon reading her essay: If you genuinely want to die every minute of every day, it's probably not your environment. It's probably you. Evidence: Moving out of that environment didn't make her happy; rather, she finds herself crying in the bathtub; in short, she found herself unhappy in different circumstances. When I was poor, I was often stressed about bills and unhappy about being unable to buy things I wanted, and -- yes -- I can remember crying about specific financial details at times ... but I was never unhappy about my life in general.
She chose her new location, in part, so she could be closer to her dad ... then racked up credit card debt to make the move possible. Why not move in with dad at least for a time? Like maybe the one year she anticipated "paying her dues" by working in this low-salary job. Couldn't that one choice -- even if it isn't what she really wants -- have made all the difference in her eventual success?
She sees her coworkers grasping for frugal ways to live: Second jobs, living with parents. She recognizes these as attempts to "make it", but she doesn't make any similar attempts herself. A part-time job at CVS sounds like a great idea. A job waiting tables could've meant taking home real food instead of snacks. My first couple years out of school, I couldn't "make it" on just one job; most of the young teachers with whom I work have a part-time job (or at least a summer job). Fun? Nope, but also not unusual for a young person on an entry level salary.
They feed her at work? What a cool perk! I wish I could bypass making my lunch every day! She doesn't seem to appreciate that benefit, even though she hasn't purchased groceries since she moved. I suspect she doesn't understand -- perhaps because she's young -- that this isn't a typical thing, and she should appreciate it.
$20 for a medical co-pay is pretty good. Again, is this her youth and inexperience showing? Still, she's an adult now, and she really should realize that this is a sweet deal. Better than I have.
Do you think she's lying?
Honestly, yes. I don't see how anyone could qualify for a rental that eats up 85% of her take-home pay. I don't doubt that she's in a difficult situation, but I don't believe everything she says.
She's right though, she's not making enough to live in the bay area.
Time for her to move to a place with a lower COL where a job that pays low is a living wage. She mentions early on in the letter that some of her coworkers had done exactly that.
Yeah, this is the right answer.
Try living on 1400 with no end in sight is pretty demoralizing. It's easy to live off of 1,500 a month when you are making 100k a year, not so easy when making less than 20k.
That's a fair statement. It's not so hard to be frugal when you know that you can dip into savings if you need to go to the doctor or need new tires. And, yes, living in poverty is definitely demoralizing. What I find frustrating about the article is that she doesn't seem to be taking any steps towards altering her situation.
I feel like "breaking into media" is the new "moving to LA to become an actor". 99% end up working minimum wage while waiting to be discovered (by either a studio or the twitterverse).
I think it's also a form of "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life". Thing is, most of our hobbies just don't translate into paying jobs -- that line needs to die, and we need to be honest with young people: You're well-suited to do any number of jobs; choose one that you find acceptable, work hard at it, and look for emotional fulfillment from your friends and family. Don't confuse your career for your life.
The overwhelming sense of entitlement really annoys me. She needs to realize she's being paid to do a job - in this case a very easy job like answering phones. The boss isn't paying her because he needs to support her, he pays her because she's doing a job.
Honestly, while that sounds so obvious, a lot of young people have trouble grasping it. I'm thinking about a young lady I know who was VERY upset that she was written up in her job for failing to show up /not calling in. After all, she had her mother write her an excuse note! This person was a high school graduate working full time in a retail job.
Lack of maturity makes her a likely liability for future employers. She does have some good points about the overall ridiculousness of the SF housing & rental market in an economy that combines the worst aspects of market-based pricing and government-induced artificial supply limitations. Hence a place that, though I would like to live in, would never do since being over-worked in paradise is worse than retiring early in a good enough place.
Yes, lack of maturity is definitely a key problem here. However, on the other side of that coin, when I was her age I did some whining too about how hard it is to transition into the world of adult workers. I'm glad I didn't have access to the internet so I couldn't make a fool of myself /limit my future choices by saying something about my employer in a semi-public arena. For that reason, I have some sympathy for her.
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I guess maybe she should reach out to Marcus @ CVS. I mean he's just a lowly CVS employee and not of the standards of her genius with her creative wit and media awesomeness, but maybe he'll be kind enough to let her live with him for free (I mean, he did give her $6...maybe he thought she was cute?)...oh wait, I forgot, roommates are so beneath her.
Maybe Marcus at CVS could get her a job there and then she would obviously earn enough money live on and then have extra to throw $6 around at random strangers, and she would have time after her shift (presume hourly pay only when the store is actually open, not 24/7 customer service) to work on that freelance job she mentioned that she doesn't have time for at Yelp.
This is what really got me. She obviously thinks that the people at Safeway and CVS are doing better financially, but makes no effort to actually get a job at those places.
I have a friend of a friend that just moved to SF to work for a startup (it's a well known company that I'll leave nameless). Apparently she was making good money here, and is hating the job because they treat everyone as an intern for the first year, and then you can do something more interesting.
It's a good example of how FB isn't the real world, because this person constantly posts glowing reviews of her workplace or the city.I don't think she's being dishonest, but it's just a good realization how what people post on FB is so different from what they really feel, it's a way for them to post only what they want to.
SF startups are known to pay up to 90% of total compensation in hype.
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I have a friend of a friend that just moved to SF to work for a startup (it's a well known company that I'll leave nameless).
If it's well known, can it still be considered a startup? Isn't it just a tech company at that point?
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I admit I only skimmed most of the thread but it didn't look like anyone had posted the rebuttal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2 (http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2)
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I admit I only skimmed most of the thread but it didn't look like anyone had posted the rebuttal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2 (http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2)
That was phenomenal. Demolished the original piece, ripped the author to shreds, but also just had a good "work hard" message.
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I admit I only skimmed most of the thread but it didn't look like anyone had posted the rebuttal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2 (http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2)
That was phenomenal. Demolished the original piece, ripped the author to shreds, but also just had a good "work hard" message.
Boom!
You expected to get what you thought you deserved rather than expected to work for what you had to earn. And that’s the problem entirely. Work ethic is not something that develops from entitlement. Quite the opposite, in fact. It develops when you realize there are a million other people who could perform your job and you are lucky to have one. It comes from sucking up the bad aspects and focusing on the good and above all it comes from humility. It comes from modesty. And those are two things, based on your article, that you clearly do not possess.
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I admit I only skimmed most of the thread but it didn't look like anyone had posted the rebuttal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2 (http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2)
Sha-fucking-zam! I really hope the original girl writes a reply to this article...
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I'd kill for free food at work and full benefits!
I personally liked how she thought suggesting the coconut water savings would make her CEO see her as ready for imminent advancement...
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Also, this is my favorite link ever to rebut these kinds of whiny articles...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/
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lollll....
"Jane said she made $12.25 an hour, or $8.15 after taxes, and spent 80% of her paycheck on rent in the Bay Area. She described not being able to afford groceries, instead subsisting largely off an economy-sized bag of rice, plus the free food provided by her workplace."
http://qz.com/622232/the-yelp-employee-who-was-fired-after-her-incendiary-open-letter-to-the-ceo-speaks-out/
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I loved the rebuttal. At age 61 I have had a few shitty jobs but it is what you do when you need $. When I first broke into Social Work with a degree I was only making 50 cents more an hour then my 16 yo who was doing p.t. telemarketing after school. I needed to get experience in the field because where I lived at the time it was competitive and we were not free to move due to my hubby's job. A close friend was making more $ as a secretary and told me I had wasted my $ going to college. Well 3 grad degrees later I got great jobs I loved but I did put in my dues. It's called life.
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After college I moved to do a job in D.C.
I made $1,400/mo. (take home)
Lived by myself in an apartment that cost $1100/mo.
Had a car, drove it rarely (to the airport and back, twice).
For 9 months I existed like this. Then the building got condemned and I had to move. Just to put in perspective what 1100/mo will get you in DC (actually a suburb of DC, more than an hour by train from work), a building on the verge of condemnation.
I was a little wiser by this point, so I got a new spot to live in a house with 4 other dudes, that was only $450.00 a month. The remainder of my time there was the richest I've ever felt. It was closer to the train too!
After a total of 14 months in D.C. I left.
Reading the article posted by the O.P. my heart went out to the chick a little bit. She's just horribly ignorant and doesn't know what she doesn't know.
But at that stage of your life, having an adventure like that, just own the adventure.
And don't spend so much on some of that crap. I didn't get any food at work and I still had plenty to eat. Shit I ate out plenty during that time. There was a place that had $3.00 large pizzas on Tuesdays. I'd get two and have a couple slices a day every day. It wasn't good food, but not like I'm "crying myself to sleep, waking up with stomach pains."
Working full time at minimum wage isn't a pleasant experience. And if you lack financial skills it is hard. The difficulty is engaging folks like that in a dialogue where they won't confront that some of their situation is their fault.
"If only we could get paid more..."
Just saddens me really. I really want to figure out how to teach financial literacy in a way that high school kids would pay attention.
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Also, this is my favorite link ever to rebut these kinds of whiny articles...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/
That was awesome!
The original article projects such a sense of entitlement that it's difficult to empathize. She's right that she can't afford her situation, but absolutely has the wrong attitude about how to fix it. Some creative problem solving and a willingness to grind and get dirty would serve her well in a future media career, too, if she would apply herself to really fixing her situation. She'd come out ahead either way, having learned to be resourceful in the process.
Writing a public woe-is-me post addressed to the CEO, what else did she expect? I'd have told her to hit the bricks, too.
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Also, this is my favorite link ever to rebut these kinds of whiny articles...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/
Wow, that was a punch to the face
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Haha, interesting:
http://wgntv.com/2016/02/22/yelp-ceo-responds-to-employees-open-letter-about-low-wages/
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Seems this is a pretty watershed issue:
http://whatwouldjackdo.net/2016/02/talia-jane-an-example-of-what-income-inequality-is-doing-to-america.html
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Even if her points were valid and I think some of them were that was very unprofessional and stupid of her to post that as if no one from the company including the CEO wouldn't read it and move to terminate her. That seems to be a thing now people posting silly things about their jobs or soon to be jobs then being surprised they get fired. I don't get it....
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Even if her points were valid and I think some of them were that was very unprofessional and stupid of her to post that as if no one from the company including the CEO wouldn't read it and move to terminate her. That seems to be a thing now people posting silly things about their jobs or soon to be jobs then being surprised they get fired. I don't get it....
Agreed, I mean yea the company could have probably paid her more but she should have understood when signing up that A) this was a "foot in the door" kind of position and likely temporary if she exceeded at it and B) she should have run some numbers and determined if she needed to work a second job.
Unfortunately, lack of B is a reality for a lot of people - they act before they think and get themselves into these kinds of situations. Yes, in an ideal world all corporations would pay employees enough for a "livable" wage but that's just not the reality. If you want to bury your head in the sand on this or complain about it, go ahead, but don't expect things to magically get better for you. Just because you work for a popular company doesn't mean you're going to get paid "fairly" - it's ultimately up to you to do the research (and negotiating) and see if it's worth your time and effort to work there. If she knew that she was going to get paid that "little" and implies that CVS pays more, then why didn't she just go work at CVS? Or why didn't she take a second job at CVS for that matter?
So go ahead and complain about the greedy corporation and how they should change (but likely never will or won't enough to satisfy you)... but at the end of the day, it's still up to you to figure out how much you need to live off of and what's sustainable. Don't play the victim because you "can't do the math"
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I read the Stefanie Williams response that someone posted earlier, and I really enjoyed it. I took it as, "I did everything I had to do in order to survive and make my life better, and doing things that others thought were demeaning were worth it." And yet almost every single comment was about how something she did was not possible for everyone, so therefore those things were worthless. She lived with her parents, and not everyone can live with their parents. She got a job through a family connection, and not everyone has family connections. She could take public transportation, and not everyone has access to that. It honestly made me think of a lot of the posts here on MMM - someone asks for advice on saving money, people start posting ideas, and other people start saying how some of those ideas won't work in their situation so there is no sense in trying anything. If only people would use that sort of article to instead analyze their own situations and find things that will work for them. If this Talia girl couldn't live with her dad for whatever reason, and rent is too high, then you get a roommate or figure out a way to not be paying 85% of your salary in rent.
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I read the Stefanie Williams response that someone posted earlier, and I really enjoyed it. I took it as, "I did everything I had to do in order to survive and make my life better, and doing things that others thought were demeaning were worth it." And yet almost every single comment was about how something she did was not possible for everyone, so therefore those things were worthless. She lived with her parents, and not everyone can live with their parents. She got a job through a family connection, and not everyone has family connections. She could take public transportation, and not everyone has access to that. It honestly made me think of a lot of the posts here on MMM - someone asks for advice on saving money, people start posting ideas, and other people start saying how some of those ideas won't work in their situation so there is no sense in trying anything. If only people would use that sort of article to instead analyze their own situations and find things that will work for them. If this Talia girl couldn't live with her dad for whatever reason, and rent is too high, then you get a roommate or figure out a way to not be paying 85% of your salary in rent.
Exactly, all just excuses to justify whatever standard of living you *think* you belong in. "Ohh but I can't live with other people. I've tried it before and it just doesn't work." Get over it!
Plus, the company isn't going to change their tune and give you a raise (especially if you're dumb enough to publicly complain about it), so take a different angle and figure something out to make it work. A lot of people seem to think this isn't a soft skill or something but it just comes down to using your brain, thinking, asking for help from friends, and coming up with solutions.
Her ranting was emotional and irrational... what she posted is something that most people would privately journal or share with their friends or coworkers who aren't in management or HR. But then the response to that would be "I made those emotional and irrational rants publicly because I'm hungry all the time and only have 3 bowls of rice a day"
I'm also thinking her publicly ranting and complaining won't help her much in her future job endeavors and interviews either. Most companies are not going to want to hire someone who is known to complain about pay. I guess it only takes one company to hire you though, so maybe she'll luck out... I mean, look at Erica Baker (the ex-Google employee who complained about pay inequality ala the gender gap - http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/07/21/former-google-employee-alleges-unequal-pay/30481175/ - she's working for another company now, though she has a ton of great experience which might be a huge differentiating factor)
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My first thought upon reading her essay: If you genuinely want to die every minute of every day, it's probably not your environment. It's probably you.
Maybe it takes one to know one, but this whole rant is from a person who is very obviously suffering from depression. One thing that many people never realize is how selfish depressed people can be. You just get consumed by your own self pity and suffering and can't think outside of that. People who are depressed make really bad decisions and don't have the energy to make the necessary changes. So they wallow, and it looks like laziness and selfishness to outsiders.
This girl needs to treat her depression before doing anything else.
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My first thought upon reading her essay: If you genuinely want to die every minute of every day, it's probably not your environment. It's probably you.
Maybe it takes one to know one, but this whole rant is from a person who is very obviously suffering from depression. One thing that many people never realize is how selfish depressed people can be. You just get consumed by your own self pity and suffering and can't think outside of that. People who are depressed make really bad decisions and don't have the energy to make the necessary changes. So they wallow, and it looks like laziness and selfishness to outsiders.
This girl needs to treat her depression before doing anything else.
This would certainly be a game changer then. And hopefully others recognize this, call it out, and offer their help in that case.
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Also, this is my favorite link ever to rebut these kinds of whiny articles...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/
Damn, I love David Wong, but somehow I had missed this gem. That was great!
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I have a friend of a friend that just moved to SF to work for a startup (it's a well known company that I'll leave nameless).
If it's well known, can it still be considered a startup? Isn't it just a tech company at that point?
I'm not sure there's a real definition, but there are a lot of startups like Uber who are well known, pre-iPo and burning cash. So even though they are on their way to success they are not yet profitable and need venture capital to keep going.
Personally I think an iPo, profits (or lack thereof), and growth rate are the deciding factors
My first thought upon reading her essay: If you genuinely want to die every minute of every day, it's probably not your environment. It's probably you.
Maybe it takes one to know one, but this whole rant is from a person who is very obviously suffering from depression. One thing that many people never realize is how selfish depressed people can be. You just get consumed by your own self pity and suffering and can't think outside of that. People who are depressed make really bad decisions and don't have the energy to make the necessary changes. So they wallow, and it looks like laziness and selfishness to outsiders.
This girl needs to treat her depression before doing anything else.
This would certainly be a game changer then. And hopefully others recognize this, call it out, and offer their help in that case.
Seemed pretty obvious when she said before moving to SF she wanted to kill herself everyday. Maybe some people wrote it off as melodrama
She has issues, but it is not yelps job to fix that for her. Imo they gave her a decent opportunity
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Also, this is my favorite link ever to rebut these kinds of whiny articles...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/
Damn, I love David Wong, but somehow I had missed this gem. That was great!
I just saw that the other day and loved it!
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I have a friend of a friend that just moved to SF to work for a startup (it's a well known company that I'll leave nameless).
If it's well known, can it still be considered a startup? Isn't it just a tech company at that point?
I'm not sure there's a real definition, but there are a lot of startups like Uber who are well known, pre-iPo and burning cash. So even though they are on their way to success they are not yet profitable and need venture capital to keep going.
Personally I think an iPo, profits (or lack thereof), and growth rate are the deciding factors
What he said. I think of a startup to be a company that is
a. Paying people less than market value, but giving them options
or
b. Still trying to effectively monetize what they do.
I could be wrong, but that's just my general impression.
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I read the Stefanie Williams response that someone posted earlier, and I really enjoyed it. I took it as, "I did everything I had to do in order to survive and make my life better, and doing things that others thought were demeaning were worth it." And yet almost every single comment was about how something she did was not possible for everyone, so therefore those things were worthless. She lived with her parents, and not everyone can live with their parents. She got a job through a family connection, and not everyone has family connections. She could take public transportation, and not everyone has access to that. It honestly made me think of a lot of the posts here on MMM - someone asks for advice on saving money, people start posting ideas, and other people start saying how some of those ideas won't work in their situation so there is no sense in trying anything. If only people would use that sort of article to instead analyze their own situations and find things that will work for them. If this Talia girl couldn't live with her dad for whatever reason, and rent is too high, then you get a roommate or figure out a way to not be paying 85% of your salary in rent.
I decided to check out the situation on Zillow after reading both articles, and while a room of one's own seems to mostly run $800+ in the bay area, with many in the $1200-1500 range (crazy!), there were postings to share a 2BR with 5 others (~$550/bed) or share a 1BR, live on a couch, etc. Is it the ideal, the dream, as far as "life after college"? No, but it's the reality of life in SF (or NYC). And, heck, even an $800-900 room would have *doubled* her discretionary income and gotten her off the bleeding edge she was on. That one choice just killed her budget, and $1200+ rent isn't inevitable!
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I admit I only skimmed most of the thread but it didn't look like anyone had posted the rebuttal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2 (http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2)
... I was offered a hostessing shift two days a week that paid fifteen an hour ... Reality had to take over and I accepted that. So I worked in a restaurant ... eating my pride when they detailed (and usually lied about) their “amazing” job ... I had to miss Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Years Eve with my family and friends, but I jumped at the opportunity. And all of a sudden, after about a year, I was making enough money to live. And after several years, I was making enough money to live well ... I worked four days a week making anywhere between $50,000 and $60,000 a year ... All of this was afforded to me not in the first month I was working at a restaurant, but after I put in the hours, made the sacrifices and sucked up my pride ... dealt with the pitying looks of my former classmates or their parents ... Being an English major isn’t the problem. Minimum wage isn’t the problem (in this case) ... This is about this girl’s personal responsibility to be an adult and find a job, or two ... Work ethic is not something that develops from entitlement ...
You go, Girl!
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Also, this is my favorite link ever to rebut these kinds of whiny articles...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/
Damn, I love David Wong, but somehow I had missed this gem. That was great!
Is anyone one Twitter willing to tweet this link and the MMM website at her? I don't have an account.
https://twitter.com/itsa_talia
ETA: We could also tweet helpful budgeting advice. Like alternative apartments in SF and rice recipes.
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After college I moved to do a job in D.C.
I made $1,400/mo. (take home)
Lived by myself in an apartment that cost $1100/mo.
Had a car, drove it rarely (to the airport and back, twice).
For 9 months I existed like this. Then the building got condemned and I had to move. Just to put in perspective what 1100/mo will get you in DC (actually a suburb of DC, more than an hour by train from work), a building on the verge of condemnation.
I was a little wiser by this point, so I got a new spot to live in a house with 4 other dudes, that was only $450.00 a month. The remainder of my time there was the richest I've ever felt. It was closer to the train too!
After a total of 14 months in D.C. I left.
Reading the article posted by the O.P. my heart went out to the chick a little bit. She's just horribly ignorant and doesn't know what she doesn't know.
But at that stage of your life, having an adventure like that, just own the adventure.
And don't spend so much on some of that crap. I didn't get any food at work and I still had plenty to eat. Shit I ate out plenty during that time. There was a place that had $3.00 large pizzas on Tuesdays. I'd get two and have a couple slices a day every day. It wasn't good food, but not like I'm "crying myself to sleep, waking up with stomach pains."
Working full time at minimum wage isn't a pleasant experience. And if you lack financial skills it is hard. The difficulty is engaging folks like that in a dialogue where they won't confront that some of their situation is their fault.
"If only we could get paid more..."
Just saddens me really. I really want to figure out how to teach financial literacy in a way that high school kids would pay attention.
I also moved to DC after college. But based on my own rent while living there, probably a long time before you did.
I lived in NoVa, about a mile or so from the metro, and I rented a room in the basement of a house. The room was never warmer than about 56 degrees. But it was only $308.33.
The typical rent on a studio apartment was more like $700 at the time. Most of my friends/ coworkers had these types of apartments. It was rare for me to find others with roommates. By the time I left DC in the later part of the 1990s, I had my own studio apartment at $850 a month.
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It seems like she's actually getting a ton of publicity out of this. Maybe she'll be OK riding the wave....
https://twitter.com/useless_weirdo/status/702172000660246528
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I have a friend of a friend that just moved to SF to work for a startup (it's a well known company that I'll leave nameless).
If it's well known, can it still be considered a startup? Isn't it just a tech company at that point?
I'm not sure there's a real definition, but there are a lot of startups like Uber who are well known, pre-iPo and burning cash. So even though they are on their way to success they are not yet profitable and need venture capital to keep going.
Personally I think an iPo, profits (or lack thereof), and growth rate are the deciding factors
My first thought upon reading her essay: If you genuinely want to die every minute of every day, it's probably not your environment. It's probably you.
Maybe it takes one to know one, but this whole rant is from a person who is very obviously suffering from depression. One thing that many people never realize is how selfish depressed people can be. You just get consumed by your own self pity and suffering and can't think outside of that. People who are depressed make really bad decisions and don't have the energy to make the necessary changes. So they wallow, and it looks like laziness and selfishness to outsiders.
This girl needs to treat her depression before doing anything else.
This would certainly be a game changer then. And hopefully others recognize this, call it out, and offer their help in that case.
Seemed pretty obvious when she said before moving to SF she wanted to kill herself everyday. Maybe some people wrote it off as melodrama
She has issues, but it is not yelps job to fix that for her. Imo they gave her a decent opportunity
Aren't there a lot of depressed people living in denial about the fact that they are depressed? From the looks of things on her Twitter, she seems to be one of these types....
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So she has responded to Stefanie Williams if you've been following her Twitter feed. She also just posted a follow-up piece on Medium regarding updates since the initial open letter she wrote. Here's a gem from that piece:
"Call me entitled, but I don’t think you should be barred from growing and exploring and taking risks because your income isn’t in proportion with the cost of living in your area."
So I'm thinking about taking a year of vacation even though that's not my company's policy... will keep you guys updated on what happens! BTW: why does everyone here keep talking about "FU Money"!?!?!?
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Unmastachian Qualities:
- Moves to a high COL for a minimum wage job
-$1245 Rent. Does she have roommates?
-T-Mobile Bill. Sorry but this is a luxury
-Her instagram account shows the typical mass consumptionism contrary what she wrote in her blog.
-Blaming the CEO who created his own company...sorry but he has the right to pay himself whatever he is worth.
At the same time I do feel we millennial have been dealt a shitty hand compared to that of the previous generations. The previous generation faced lower COL, had higher wages, lower student debt and so forth. In the past people learned a trade and were able to afford a middle class life that consisted of eating out a few times a week, yearly vacations, a single family home, a car and etc. Today our generation has to go in debt to "afford" these things.
In short, I feel conflicted on the story. I think we millenials are screwed compared to the older generation but at the same time I am against blaming others for your own issues. Personally I am able to afford my own place, went to school debt free, have amassed a decent net wealth by working hard and not falling prey to the mass consumerism that is rampant and so forth.
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At the same time I do feel we millennial have been dealt a shitty hand compared to that of the previous generations. The previous generation faced lower COL, had higher wages, lower student debt and so forth. In the past people learned a trade and were able to afford a middle class life that consisted of eating out a few times a week, yearly vacations, a single family home, a car and etc. Today our generation has to go in debt to "afford" these things.
I think you may be comparing the people of an older generation today to where you are today. I'm of a previous generation (gen X) and yes, I can afford all of those things. But I couldn't when I was fresh out of college. I faced the same struggles you do. But after working for 25+ years, I am now at my max earning potential and have saved enough to where I can afford more. I promise you, I didn't have a gravy train when I was in my twenties. In fact I was in debt and living in a shitty apartment with a crappy car.
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At the same time I do feel we millennial have been dealt a shitty hand compared to that of the previous generations. The previous generation faced lower COL, had higher wages, lower student debt and so forth. In the past people learned a trade and were able to afford a middle class life that consisted of eating out a few times a week, yearly vacations, a single family home, a car and etc. Today our generation has to go in debt to "afford" these things.
I think you may be comparing the people of an older generation today to where you are today. I'm of a previous generation (gen X) and yes, I can afford all of those things. But I couldn't when I was fresh out of college. I faced the same struggles you do. But after working for 25+ years, I am now at my max earning potential and have saved enough to where I can afford more. I promise you, I didn't have a gravy train when I was in my twenties. In fact I was in debt and living in a shitty apartment with a crappy car.
Maybe this happened to you too, but I think the difference is that we are bombarded with constant messages about needing to get a degree to go anywhere in life and how if you're not instantly successful after graduating you're a loser. I don't read much mainstream media but I still get those messages. We never hear anything about it being acceptable to start small and work your way up. I never ever had anyone at school suggest to me that I could be a successful adult without getting a degree. So guess what, I got the degree and now I never need it (work freelance in a creative field). We are constantly exposed to other people's successes and never see their failures. No one ever said to me at university that it was OK to live in a crappy apartment with no heating and no phone to save money. Consumer debt is regarded as trivial or even worse as a status symbol. You feel like everyone expects you to have to be instantly successful so you try to look it. You never ever hear the message that everyone has to start somewhere. The pressure is to seem successful immediately and it never stops and is never contradicted. People want to fit in so they do as their peers seem to do bwith cause no one ever tells them it can be different.
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At the same time I do feel we millennial have been dealt a shitty hand compared to that of the previous generations. The previous generation faced lower COL, had higher wages, lower student debt and so forth. In the past people learned a trade and were able to afford a middle class life that consisted of eating out a few times a week, yearly vacations, a single family home, a car and etc. Today our generation has to go in debt to "afford" these things.
I think you may be comparing the people of an older generation today to where you are today. I'm of a previous generation (gen X) and yes, I can afford all of those things. But I couldn't when I was fresh out of college. I faced the same struggles you do. But after working for 25+ years, I am now at my max earning potential and have saved enough to where I can afford more. I promise you, I didn't have a gravy train when I was in my twenties. In fact I was in debt and living in a shitty apartment with a crappy car.
Attending a private university including room and board today will cost somewhere around $150-$200k. That is an insane amount compared to the previous generations that could work in between semesters and pay off the majority of their tuition. There is no amount of part time work that could make a dent into this amount today.
College tuition has increased dramatically from the late 80s to the early 90s and we millennials are coming out of college with massive amount of debt and are facing stagnant wages compared to other generations. We have been dealt a shitty hand but at the end of the day you can either accept the hand or do something about it.
I chose not to enslave myself to these ridiculous costs and attended a public university and lived at home while commuted 3 hours a day to my school. Looking back it's the best decision I made because I came out of college with a positive net worth unlike the majority of my peers.
But even the price of public universities has increased dramatically. California public universities were free or extremely cheap in the 60s and 70s for example. Even when accounted for inflation for California public unis the tuition has tripled from the early 90s. So while the older generation enjoyed subsidized education today schools don't have the proper funding and some of that can be accounted for due to the massive amount of retirement benefits paid to the older generations
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The average college grad has about 27k in student loans. That's less than one year's average starting salary.
It's really not as bad as people make it out to be, because it's the extreme examples of the hundred thousand plus in debt that are touted. But the average can knock their loans out in a year or two with some disciplined effort.
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The average college grad has about 27k in student loans. That's less than one year's average starting salary.
It's really not as bad as people make it out to be, because it's the extreme examples of the hundred thousand plus in debt that are touted. But the average can knock their loans out in a year or two with some disciplined effort.
And the median is half of that.
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The average college grad has about 27k in student loans. That's less than one year's average starting salary.
It's really not as bad as people make it out to be, because it's the extreme examples of the hundred thousand plus in debt that are touted. But the average can knock their loans out in a year or two with some disciplined effort.
Yes but that number is increasing more than the cost of inflation and does not take into account post graduate degrees.
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At the same time I do feel we millennial have been dealt a shitty hand compared to that of the previous generations. The previous generation faced lower COL, had higher wages, lower student debt and so forth. In the past people learned a trade and were able to afford a middle class life that consisted of eating out a few times a week, yearly vacations, a single family home, a car and etc. Today our generation has to go in debt to "afford" these things.
Today your generation chooses to go into debt to afford things.
As BlueHouse mentions, a lot of the comparisons being made are not equal. Recent grads who are 25 years old are comparing what they remember others having who were 30 or 35 years old at the time. An extra 5 years of professional development can mean a lot to what you afford.
Comparisons shouldn't be limited to restaurants and yearly vacations, but should be made for all spending. I had a land line and a dial-up internet connection for around $60 / month (including the cost of just a few long distance calls), whereas someone might can have a mobile phone with data plan and over 100x the speed internet at home, but complain they spend $200 / month. Look at what $100 / month can buy you today in phone and internet capability; it is far greater that what I got for my inflation equivalent $60. That is a much higher cost of living that we had back then, but I guess that doesn't enter young people's comparison equations.
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At the same time I do feel we millennial have been dealt a shitty hand compared to that of the previous generations. The previous generation faced lower COL, had higher wages, lower student debt and so forth. In the past people learned a trade and were able to afford a middle class life that consisted of eating out a few times a week, yearly vacations, a single family home, a car and etc. Today our generation has to go in debt to "afford" these things.
Today your generation chooses to go into debt to afford things.
As BlueHouse mentions, a lot of the comparisons being made are not equal. Recent grads who are 25 years old are comparing what they remember others having who were 30 or 35 years old at the time. An extra 5 years of professional development can mean a lot to what you afford.
Comparisons shouldn't be limited to restaurants and yearly vacations, but should be made for all spending. I had a land line and a dial-up internet connection for around $60 / month (including the cost of just a few long distance calls), whereas someone might can have a mobile phone with data plan and over 100x the speed internet at home, but complain they spend $200 / month. Look at what $100 / month can buy you today in phone and internet capability; it is far greater that what I got for my inflation equivalent $60. That is a much higher cost of living that we had back then, but I guess that doesn't enter young people's comparison equations.
Im not here to defend the mass consumptionism of the millennials but let us not act like the stuff I mention is new to this generation. One today cannot attend college without going into debt unless they have a substantial amount of support from home or from the government and/or from the university in the form of scholarships. In the past one could of worked a part time job in the summer and pay a substantial amount of their tuition while today that is not possible unless you attend a cheap public universitiy like I did.
As for the stuff I mentioned i.e. going out for dinner a few times a month, yearly vacations, car, home etc these were the standard for your average middle class family in the United States. Today to afford such luxuries one needs to make much more than the median household income of around $55...in most areas.
In addition, technological improvements will only get cheaper but the COL has increased dramatically for most items. Take real estate prices around the country where 30 year olds cannot afford to buy a place where they grew up in and still live with their parents.
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The average college grad has about 27k in student loans. That's less than one year's average starting salary.
It's really not as bad as people make it out to be, because it's the extreme examples of the hundred thousand plus in debt that are touted. But the average can knock their loans out in a year or two with some disciplined effort.
Yes but that number is increasing more than the cost of inflation and does not take into account post graduate degrees.
It is increasing. It is more than it has been. And post-grad may add more (or it may not--the wife and I both paid for our Master's Degrees in cash).
None of those facts is relevant to what I, and Paul, posted--the average is completely affordable, and the median even more so. It gets blown out of proportion when we look at the top 0.1% of student debt loads, but the average and median are maybe 3 months to a year's salary. When you pay the minimums, yes, it takes a decade to pay off. When you aggressively attack it, the average person can be done with it in a year or two.
The wife and I both had tens of thousands of student loans. I get it, debt isn't fun. It's something to address going forward, but it's not a reason to whinge or complain that one can't get ahead.
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The average college grad has about 27k in student loans. That's less than one year's average starting salary.
It's really not as bad as people make it out to be, because it's the extreme examples of the hundred thousand plus in debt that are touted. But the average can knock their loans out in a year or two with some disciplined effort.
Yes but that number is increasing more than the cost of inflation and does not take into account post graduate degrees.
It is increasing. It is more than it has been. And post-grad may add more (or it may not--the wife and I both paid for our Master's Degrees in cash).
None of those facts is relevant to what I, and Paul, posted--the average is completely affordable, and the median even more so. It gets blown out of proportion when we look at the top 0.1% of student debt loads, but the average and median are maybe 3 months to a year's salary. When you pay the minimums, yes, it takes a decade to pay off. When you aggressively attack it, the average person can be done with it in a year or two.
The wife and I both had tens of thousands of student loans. I get it, debt isn't fun. It's something to address going forward, but it's not a reason to whinge or complain that one can't get ahead.
I'm in a similar position and I paid for my masters in cash and currently paying for my wife's graduate degree in cash as well. My point is our generation on average will have a lower standard of living compared to our parents , and I can empathize with the women in the OP to some degree. It is not impossible to get ahead but it is much more difficult on average than it was years ago.
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My point is our generation on average will have a lower standard of living compared to our parents
I strongly disagree.
There's no way I would go back to the past, and that standard of living. Our standard today is so much higher than anyone's, ever.
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Unmastachian Qualities:
- Moves to a high COL for a minimum wage job
-$1245 Rent. Does she have roommates?
-T-Mobile Bill. Sorry but this is a luxury
-Her instagram account shows the typical mass consumptionism contrary what she wrote in her blog.
-Blaming the CEO who created his own company...sorry but he has the right to pay himself whatever he is worth.
At the same time I do feel we millennial have been dealt a shitty hand compared to that of the previous generations. The previous generation faced lower COL, had higher wages, lower student debt and so forth. In the past people learned a trade and were able to afford a middle class life that consisted of eating out a few times a week, yearly vacations, a single family home, a car and etc. Today our generation has to go in debt to "afford" these things.
In short, I feel conflicted on the story. I think we millenials are screwed compared to the older generation but at the same time I am against blaming others for your own issues. Personally I am able to afford my own place, went to school debt free, have amassed a decent net wealth by working hard and not falling prey to the mass consumerism that is rampant and so forth.
The equivalent, for Generation X, was watching their parents go through the 1980's "me" generation. We didn't get in on all the fancy jobs or nice cars, because many of us graduated into regional depressions or recessions. Back then, the big bubble wasn't education but real estate. Also, X was the generation that got to experience divorce without child support, which is one difficult way to live.
Every generation has been screwed by the one that went before it, in some respect.
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My point is our generation on average will have a lower standard of living compared to our parents
I strongly disagree as well. My generation has the internet. My father's generation did not. Instantaneous access to 90% of the world's knowledge means that I have a much higher standard of living than my dad did in 1970, even if my house is smaller in sq. feet.
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...and there are schools and jobs and lives to be lived in places not along the coasts....
Lives in those places a much cheaper in some cases.
I would like to think many of us can make a good life wherever we land. We aren't dependent on shopping excisions at malls and big box retailers for happiness. We aren't dependent on entertainment on a massive scale to have a good time.
Visit HCOL areas for fun but live in LCOL places with easy commutes, cheaper real estate, lower crime, etc.
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At the same time I do feel we millennial have been dealt a shitty hand compared to that of the previous generations. The previous generation faced lower COL, had higher wages, lower student debt and so forth. In the past people learned a trade and were able to afford a middle class life that consisted of eating out a few times a week, yearly vacations, a single family home, a car and etc. Today our generation has to go in debt to "afford" these things.
I think you may be comparing the people of an older generation today to where you are today. I'm of a previous generation (gen X) and yes, I can afford all of those things. But I couldn't when I was fresh out of college. I faced the same struggles you do. But after working for 25+ years, I am now at my max earning potential and have saved enough to where I can afford more. I promise you, I didn't have a gravy train when I was in my twenties. In fact I was in debt and living in a shitty apartment with a crappy car.
Attending a private university including room and board today will cost somewhere around $150-$200k. That is an insane amount compared to the previous generations that could work in between semesters and pay off the majority of their tuition. There is no amount of part time work that could make a dent into this amount today.
College tuition has increased dramatically from the late 80s to the early 90s and we millennials are coming out of college with massive amount of debt and are facing stagnant wages compared to other generations. We have been dealt a shitty hand but at the end of the day you can either accept the hand or do something about it.
I chose not to enslave myself to these ridiculous costs and attended a public university and lived at home while commuted 3 hours a day to my school. Looking back it's the best decision I made because I came out of college with a positive net worth unlike the majority of my peers.
But even the price of public universities has increased dramatically. California public universities were free or extremely cheap in the 60s and 70s for example. Even when accounted for inflation for California public unis the tuition has tripled from the early 90s. So while the older generation enjoyed subsidized education today schools don't have the proper funding and some of that can be accounted for due to the massive amount of retirement benefits paid to the older generations
Emphasis mine.
I'm an X-er. Attending a private university when I went to college in the 80's/90's was about $80k, give or take, for 4 years.
I don't know about you, but I could not pay that off by working summers and during the semester. I worked most semesters and every summer. The most I made was $4 an hour. Mostly I made $3.35 an hour.
One summer I worked 60 hours a week (40 at $4, and 20 at $3.35). I also worked 15 hours a week during the school year. That's about $4500 for the year ($2500 for the summer, about $2k for the rest of the year).
Sorry, but $4500 x 4 years is $18k, that ain't even close to $80,000.
I'd say that maybe in the 60's it was do-able, but if millenials are thinking that the X-ers had it so easy. Um. Sorry. I only was able to get that awesome $4 an hour job because I knew someone.
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My point is our generation on average will have a lower standard of living compared to our parents
I strongly disagree.
There's no way I would go back to the past, and that standard of living. Our standard today is so much higher than anyone's, ever.
I can't speak for how old everyone's parents are. I'm 45. My parents "standard of living" when I was, say, 10 years old.
One TV. For awhile, black and white at 13 inch.
No cable.
Two small cars.
No cell phones.
Hand me down clothing.
A garden.
One bathroom.
No college.
No internet.
One vacation, driving, to NC from PA when I was 7.
Two camping weekends (not a year, total) to Lake Erie.
Now granted, we were on the poor side. But even my middle class friends didn't go on fancy vacations or have fancy houses. A vacation was a camping trip, or driving to FL once in 10 years.
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Exactly. The world is so much more amazing and better in every way, even for people who are struggling. They have some tough scenarios, yes, but they also have so much opportunity, and amazing things at their fingertips.
I'd rather have 20k/yr today than be transported back 40 years to 1976 and have 100k/yr.
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I think that's exactly why people like Talia Jane feel entitled to stuff like fancy restaurant meals, nice alcohol, and other luxuries that are now seen as "normal". I don't know about other people, but they certainly weren't the norm in my parents day, or even in my childhood. They were stuff that rich people did. But it seems like there's been a standard of living inflation across all classes and income levels. One of my best childhood friends, whose husband works a solid blue-collar job, just went on vacation in Hawaii. When we were kids, nobody we knew had ever been to Hawaii.
So now people who don't do these things feel like they're "poor", when twenty years ago it was the norm.
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The problem I have with this young lady is that she had only worked at Yelp a very short time. Yes, she has to put in one year before moving on to a different job. Most companies have this rule. Suck it up for one year and then start applying for better jobs that pay more money.
She is not special and she needs to pay her dues.
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I'd rather have 20k/yr today than be transported back 40 years to 1976 and have 100k/yr.
Yeah, but this is largely due to knowing how things are.
If I could be in 1976 with my memories having been altered as if I was born in 1948 (so I'm the same age as I am right now), and no knowledge of today or future events, I would rather have $100k/yr in 1976.
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The problem I have with this young lady is that she had only worked at Yelp a very short time. Yes, she has to put in one year before moving on to a different job. Most companies have this rule. Suck it up for one year and then start applying for better jobs that pay more money.
She is not special and she needs to pay her dues.
Exactly... she knew what she was getting into (in addition to what she was going to get paid). So why complain about it?! Likely the naivety of people who don't consider cost of living in relation to their job.... but it's hard to believe that would be something she wouldn't have known moving to the Bay Area...
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I think that's exactly why people like Talia Jane feel entitled to stuff like fancy restaurant meals, nice alcohol, and other luxuries that are now seen as "normal". I don't know about other people, but they certainly weren't the norm in my parents day, or even in my childhood. They were stuff that rich people did. But it seems like there's been a standard of living inflation across all classes and income levels. One of my best childhood friends, whose husband works a solid blue-collar job, just went on vacation in Hawaii. When we were kids, nobody we knew had ever been to Hawaii.
So now people who don't do these things feel like they're "poor", when twenty years ago it was the norm.
I don't agree with her mentality but do you really think these things were not normal in older generations? 20 year olds in the 80s didn't go out to bar and restaurants with their friends ?
Look at the median rent prices for San Fransisco adjusted for inflation:
(https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*MdPAr5dt5AH73H1mO_NahQ.jpeg)
Granted much of the rise is due to simple supply and demand and the tech/Silicon Valley boom has increased prices rapidly but I would bet across the United States wages have not kept up with housing costs, education and healthcare costs.
She deserves blame for her own life choices but there was a time when an English degree would land you a solid job. Today with dying printed media and the oversupply of college graduates it will land you a minimum wage job.
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The problem I have with this young lady is that she had only worked at Yelp a very short time. Yes, she has to put in one year before moving on to a different job. Most companies have this rule. Suck it up for one year and then start applying for better jobs that pay more money.
She is not special and she needs to pay her dues.
Exactly... she knew what she was getting into (in addition to what she was going to get paid). So why complain about it?! Likely the naivety of people who don't consider cost of living in relation to their job.... but it's hard to believe that would be something she wouldn't have known moving to the Bay Area...
I agree that this is what is missing. Where is the narrative of "work your way up from the mail room." Tweeting and making memes doesn't even seem like a job to me, but then, I'm an old fuddy duddy. With lots of people being pushed towards college, well, a plain old college degree doesn't make you such a special snowflake, so surprise, you've got to work your way up from the mail room just like everyone else.
I really don't get why she wouldn't take a second job. Apparently her freelancing is really special but not paying the bills? It seems like with the great benefits package but low pay at Yelp, a second job, especially one with some good cash tips, would be absolutely perfect.
As far as college costs go, icky old state schools do exist. Let's not pretend that everyone deserves or needs to go to Harvard. I just checked in-state tuition for my alma mater (Oregon State) and it's around $10K right now. It was around $4K when I attended 1996-2001. So it is more, inflation-adjusted, but not insanely out of reach.
And to her comment about maybe seeming entitled if she basically wants to make a living wage while living where she wants and doing what she wants... yep, that's pretty much the definition of entitlement.
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I'm 30. I'm a millennial, by the standard definitions, but I'm also old enough to have gotten past a lot of the challenges that face recent grads.
People graduating today got different messages about college and debt than their parents did. They are being told "You have to go to college or you're never going to make anything of yourself" and "Just get a degree, it doesn't matter what" and "Student loan debt is good debt." That is bad advice.
People graduating today also face a different job market for college grads than their parents did. Having a degree no longer necessarily leads to a job that justifies the investment.
People graduating today paid higher tuition, in real terms, and have higher debt on average, in real terms, than their parents did.
These things matter, and they make a difference. It's not enough to say "Work your way through college!" and "Entry-level jobs were never too good for me!" when the former isn't a practical solution in most cases, and the latter ignores the changes in what "entry-level with a college degree" means.
Those are the real challenges millennials face. The following are not real challenges, they are challenges created by millennials (and not just Talia Jane, these are common things I see among my peers) for themselves:
- I can't live in the highest COL city in the country AND live alone AND work at a job that pays lower than average because I think it's a good opportunity.
- I can't afford to have a pre-paid cell phone bill with a major carrier.
- I can't afford to drive my car to work in a HCOL area that attempts to restrict driving in the city center via tolls.
- I can't write anything I want on the internet and expect to keep my job.
- I can't figure out that a $20 copay for health coverage is an amazing deal.
- I can't maintain my feelings of superiority over people who work in retail.
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I'm 30. I'm a millennial, by the standard definitions, but I'm also old enough to have gotten past a lot of the challenges that face recent grads.
People graduating today got different messages about college and debt than their parents did. They are being told "You have to go to college or you're never going to make anything of yourself" and "Just get a degree, it doesn't matter what" and "Student loan debt is good debt." That is bad advice.
People graduating today also face a different job market for college grads than their parents did. Having a degree no longer necessarily leads to a job that justifies the investment.
People graduating today paid higher tuition, in real terms, and have higher debt on average, in real terms, than their parents did.
These things matter, and they make a difference. It's not enough to say "Work your way through college!" and "Entry-level jobs were never too good for me!" when the former isn't a practical solution in most cases, and the latter ignores the changes in what "entry-level with a college degree" means.
Those are the real challenges millennials face. The following are not real challenges, they are challenges created by millennials (and not just Talia Jane, these are common things I see among my peers) for themselves:
- I can't live in the highest COL city in the country AND live alone AND work at a job that pays lower than average because I think it's a good opportunity.
- I can't afford to have a pre-paid cell phone bill with a major carrier.
- I can't afford to drive my car to work in a HCOL area that attempts to restrict driving in the city center via tolls.
- I can't write anything I want on the internet and expect to keep my job.
- I can't figure out that a $20 copay for health coverage is an amazing deal.
- I can't maintain my feelings of superiority over people who work in retail.
Well said. This is what I was trying to get at.
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I think you may be comparing the people of an older generation today to where you are today. I'm of a previous generation (gen X) and yes, I can afford all of those things. But I couldn't when I was fresh out of college. I faced the same struggles you do. But after working for 25+ years, I am now at my max earning potential and have saved enough to where I can afford more. I promise you, I didn't have a gravy train when I was in my twenties. In fact I was in debt and living in a shitty apartment with a crappy car.
Absolutely true. My first apartment was a two-bedroom, and five people lived in it. At one point I was moving a light bulb from the lamp in the bedroom to the lamp in the living room. I've walked around with holes in my shoes. Yeah, college was cheaper for us, but minimum wage was 3.35/hour, and everyone worked at some awful jobs during college to avoid loans. That list could go on. Yes, jobs were easier to get when I finished college, but we bought houses at 10% interest. And today's just-out-of-college crew has some benefits that they don't stop to acknowledge -- probably because we don't really appreciate what we've always had; for example, do you really stop to appreciate indoor plumbing and electricity -- a few generations ago, people really did because they'd lived without those things: Similarly, today's young people don't really stop to appreciate the internet, more casual dress codes (that cost less!), greater personal freedom for minorities and people other than heterosexuals. Details vary, but the Mils aren't all that different from previous generations.
Maybe this happened to you too, but I think the difference is that we are bombarded with constant messages about needing to get a degree ... Consumer debt is regarded as trivial or even worse as a status symbol.
That go-to-college pressure was around in the 80s too, though the pressure to attend private colleges or to have "the college experience" wasn't so strong. I do agree that society in general has "decided" that debt is okay. That was not the general feeling when I was in college -- I was genuinely afraid of debt, never being sure that tomorrow would be better than today.
I strongly disagree.
There's no way I would go back to the past, and that standard of living. Our standard today is so much higher than anyone's, ever.
I also disagree.
I was raised in a house without air conditioning. I learned to type on a manual typewriter (anyone remember numbering a paper 1-33, then 33-1 to include footnotes on your research paper?). Soda was served only at birthdays and other special occasions. I never really got into drinking alcohol (or even coffee) because I couldn't afford it when I was younger, and I never developed the habit. When I went away to college, I didn't have a phone; I don't mean I had no cell phone -- I mean I had to go downstairs to the dorm lobby with a handful of change to make a call. When I was a kid, we had two pair of jeans every fall, and in the spring they were cut off into shorts. We had one TV in our house: a 13" black and white model; of course, we only had four channels. When we got together with our cousins, bags of hand-me-downs were passed around; being the smallest girl, I often had the most clothes. No one I knew took cruises or vacations that required a plane ticket. No stores were open past 9:00 pm. Teens all had part time jobs, and they were actually expected to save that money for college. Fast food was a rarity; restaurant meals were rarer still -- when I was a kid, we ate out maybe twice year. Christmas presents tended towards the practical; for example, a new set of sheets.
Yes, like a previous poster, my family was poor, but most of my friends weren't, and although they had more than two pair of jeans, most of the above was true for them too. My best friend was solidly middle class and shared a tiny bedroom with her brother AND sister.
Do you really want to argue that today's young people have a lower standard of living?
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The problem I have with this young lady is that she had only worked at Yelp a very short time. Yes, she has to put in one year before moving on to a different job. Most companies have this rule. Suck it up for one year and then start applying for better jobs that pay more money.
She is not special and she needs to pay her dues.
Exactly... she knew what she was getting into (in addition to what she was going to get paid). So why complain about it?! Likely the naivety of people who don't consider cost of living in relation to their job.... but it's hard to believe that would be something she wouldn't have known moving to the Bay Area...
I agree that this is what is missing. Where is the narrative of "work your way up from the mail room." Tweeting and making memes doesn't even seem like a job to me, but then, I'm an old fuddy duddy. With lots of people being pushed towards college, well, a plain old college degree doesn't make you such a special snowflake, so surprise, you've got to work your way up from the mail room just like everyone else.
I really don't get why she wouldn't take a second job. Apparently her freelancing is really special but not paying the bills? It seems like with the great benefits package but low pay at Yelp, a second job, especially one with some good cash tips, would be absolutely perfect.
As far as college costs go, icky old state schools do exist. Let's not pretend that everyone deserves or needs to go to Harvard. I just checked in-state tuition for my alma mater (Oregon State) and it's around $10K right now. It was around $4K when I attended 1996-2001. So it is more, inflation-adjusted, but not insanely out of reach.
And to her comment about maybe seeming entitled if she basically wants to make a living wage while living where she wants and doing what she wants... yep, that's pretty much the definition of entitlement.
Yea, she must have been in denial about needing to get a second job to supplement a $12/hr job in order to live in the Bay Area. Maybe she thought simply working at Yelp, outside of the minuscule pay, would somehow allow for her needs to be met? The math isn't quite adding up here. She may be depressed but this seems more like a "1+1=2" type of problem. Complaining that "1+1=2" isn't going to change the fact that 1+1=2.
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The part I haven't seen answered (someone correct me if it was posted somewhere) is... how long had she been at Yelp?
Was she close to her one year, and getting to move up? In which case, it's silly that she posted this now, being so close to the job she wanted.
Had she just started, so she had a year to go? In which case, it's silly that she posted this now, having just started this job!
;)
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I'm 30. I'm a millennial, by the standard definitions, but I'm also old enough to have gotten past a lot of the challenges that face recent grads.
People graduating today got different messages about college and debt than their parents did. They are being told "You have to go to college or you're never going to make anything of yourself" and "Just get a degree, it doesn't matter what" and "Student loan debt is good debt." That is bad advice.
People graduating today also face a different job market for college grads than their parents did. Having a degree no longer necessarily leads to a job that justifies the investment.
People graduating today paid higher tuition, in real terms, and have higher debt on average, in real terms, than their parents did.
These things matter, and they make a difference. It's not enough to say "Work your way through college!" and "Entry-level jobs were never too good for me!" when the former isn't a practical solution in most cases, and the latter ignores the changes in what "entry-level with a college degree" means.
Those are the real challenges millennials face. The following are not real challenges, they are challenges created by millennials (and not just Talia Jane, these are common things I see among my peers) for themselves:
- I can't live in the highest COL city in the country AND live alone AND work at a job that pays lower than average because I think it's a good opportunity.
- I can't afford to have a pre-paid cell phone bill with a major carrier.
- I can't afford to drive my car to work in a HCOL area that attempts to restrict driving in the city center via tolls.
- I can't write anything I want on the internet and expect to keep my job.
- I can't figure out that a $20 copay for health coverage is an amazing deal.
- I can't maintain my feelings of superiority over people who work in retail.
I'm thinking some of these "millenials" yearn for the "I got a job as a software engineer at Google straight out of college" thing. And "if they can do it so can I" without realizing that most companies *aren't* Google (or are going to pay you like they do at Google). It's an infectious disease of sorts, this whole concept of entitlement.
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To add to a previous data point, my Boomer parents:
-An engineer and a teacher
-Still live in the modest 3 bedroom, 1.5 that I was born in. Before that is was apartments with many roommates.
-Took us camping/hiking and on yearly trips to the rustic family cottage owned by my grandparents (where my parents honeymooned incidentally) when I was a kid
-Drove beaters and hand-me-down cars from my grandparents
-Had one old TV, no cable, finally got an answering machine when cellphones were coming out.
-lived on one income and saved the other (except during a prolonged period of unemployment)
Yes they did not have any student loans to speak of, but they had no family help. It's only when they reached their 50's that they started eating out regularly and taking expensive vacations, buying new instead of used cars. In fact, the overspending they do now is nothing like the childhood I remember.
For us, a teacher and lawyer, who live in a modest 3-br, 1.5 bath house, who go camping/hiking and go to the family cottage. Aside from inflated COL/income, the only real difference is our student loans and traveling a bit more often on credit card points. My parents were probably more frugal, but they also chose to shell out for private school.
Many of my friends in their early 30s are onto their second homes, remodeling their kitchens, buy/leasing luxury vehicles. I have no idea where they are getting this sense of entitlement. Most of our parents never lived like that in their early 30s, even the objectively wealthy ones still drove cars into the ground and took modest once yearly vacations.
I got a job offer in NYC when I graduated at a non profit - while offering me the position, the director said "you'll have to get a second job." I turned it down, moved back to my small hometown, worked two jobs (journal production and waitressing), and lived with 3 roommates to pay off my undergrad loans.
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The part I haven't seen answered (someone correct me if it was posted somewhere) is... how long had she been at Yelp?
Was she close to her one year, and getting to move up? In which case, it's silly that she posted this now, being so close to the job she wanted.
Had she just started, so she had a year to go? In which case, it's silly that she posted this now, having just started this job!
;)
I'd like to know as well... she does allude to it here though:
""[Do] you know what the average retention rate of your lowest employees (like myself) are? Because I haven’t been here very long, but it seems like every week the faces change."
So it doesn't sound like it was for that long in the context of the year's worth of grunt work she needed to do to transfer over. It seems things were worse than she was expecting and she A) wasn't prepared for it and B) probably didn't ask many questions to reveal that this wasn't going to be as rosy as she thought. Now, part of that could be to the fault of Yelp in the case that they perhaps didn't explain to her the situation. But it seems like they did, which makes me wonder about her situation.
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On a side note: I guess she was smart not to reveal her real name. Assuming nobody ever finds out, including future potential employers, she might have an even better chance at getting hired elsewhere. Thing is, if she carries around the burden of complaining with her, it won't bode well for her either way.
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I'm a millennial who lived in/worked with people Real Poverty. Both the american type of Real Poverty and the global Real Real Poverty in rural India. This girl is not living in Real Poverty. She's living in a version of it that's the toughest type of poverty she's ever known, and the pain of that situation hurts. Without skills or experience in living in poverty, this is a real experience for her.
This girl has great points about needing to pay a living wage for a tech company- but she also has a strong sense of entitlement. 1 year of a full-time benefited job with free food before you can try to transfer to a better paying job? How is that nose-to-grindstone agonizing? She has HEALTH INSURANCE. I worked 10 years of my adult life before I got health insurance, and that's the case for many people I know that graduated in the past decade.
Yeah, college was cheaper for us, but minimum wage was 3.35/hour, and everyone worked at some awful jobs during college to avoid loans.
I agree with most of the things you are saying, but I want to point out that $3.35/hr, indexed for inflation, is higher than the current minimum wage. Remember real wage.
(http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.jpg)
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Without skills or experience in living in poverty, this is a real experience for her.
This is a legit argument. Many of these entitled millenials may not really be poor in the real sense, but they are feeling real deprivation compared to a) how they were brought up, and b) how they expected to live. That is as much their parents fault as their own. They were essentially thrown into life without the skill to navigate it effectively. Now they get to learn the hard way. This could have been prevented.
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This girl has great points about needing to pay a living wage for a tech company- but she also has a strong sense of entitlement. 1 year of a full-time benefited job with free food before you can try to transfer to a better paying job? How is that nose-to-grindstone agonizing? She has HEALTH INSURANCE. I worked 10 years of my adult life before I got health insurance, and that's the case for many people I know that graduated in the past decade.
Apparently, Yelp's solution to pay a living wage to its entry-level employees is to open up offices in LCOL areas (e.g. Arizona). But if they're intending to keep entry-level employees in the Bay Area, they should probably pay them a little bit more. On the other hand, they probably feel like there are enough desperate people (who won't publicly complain) in the Bay Area who will work 2-3 jobs and gladly take this as one of them.
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I'm thinking some of these "millenials" yearn for the "I got a job as a software engineer at Google straight out of college" thing. And "if they can do it so can I" without realizing that most companies *aren't* Google (or are going to pay you like they do at Google). It's an infectious disease of sorts, this whole concept of entitlement.
I've gotta tell you, the concept of millennial entitlement is a MAJOR pet peeve of mine. Entitlement is not limited to those born between 1980 and 2004. If you doubt this, please read the Overheard At Work and Overheard On Facebook threads in their entirety.
Millennials were told that they needed to get a college degree so they can get a job that isn't flipping burgers*. And then, once they graduated, the only jobs they could get were flipping burgers, and they were called "entitled" because they don't want these jobs that their parents and teachers told them they wouldn't have to do if they got a college degree.
That's not "entitlement", that's anger at being lied to. At getting really bad advice.
(*By flipping burgers I mean any job with low advancement potential that does not require a degree.)
I think there's also a confirmation bias at work here. You see the 22 year olds who are complaining on the internet that they can't pay rent because their lattes and iPhones are too expensive, and you think "another entitled millennial". But you don't look at me (30 year old, mother, working for the company for 10 years, with a healthy savings rate) and think "another responsible millennial."
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I'm thinking some of these "millenials" yearn for the "I got a job as a software engineer at Google straight out of college" thing. And "if they can do it so can I" without realizing that most companies *aren't* Google (or are going to pay you like they do at Google). It's an infectious disease of sorts, this whole concept of entitlement.
I've gotta tell you, the concept of millennial entitlement is a MAJOR pet peeve of mine. Entitlement is not limited to those born between 1980 and 2004. If you doubt this, please read the Overheard At Work and Overheard On Facebook threads in their entirety.
Millennials were told that they needed to get a college degree so they can get a job that isn't flipping burgers*. And then, once they graduated, the only jobs they could get were flipping burgers, and they were called "entitled" because they don't want these jobs that their parents and teachers told them they wouldn't have to do if they got a college degree.
That's not "entitlement", that's anger at being lied to. At getting really bad advice.
(*By flipping burgers I mean any job with low advancement potential that does not require a degree.)
I think there's also a confirmation bias at work here. You see the 22 year olds who are complaining on the internet that they can't pay rent because their lattes and iPhones are too expensive, and you think "another entitled millennial". But you don't look at me (30 year old, mother, working for the company for 10 years, with a healthy savings rate) and think "another responsible millennial."
Exactly, you're considered to be one of the "lucky few" and "rarities" and most people also wouldn't call you a "millenial" either (there's so much debate and denial around the topic of who are considered to be "millenials" anyway - if you call a 20-something year old who is really well-off but spends a boatload of money because they can afford it a "millenial" they might get pretty upset at you. LOL)
I agree with you about getting bad advice from parents (who tell their kids college is a must). College can certainly help but you still need to get your crap together when it comes down to getting into the workforce! And that might mean paying your dues whether or not you like it. My wife's cousin, who graduated from USC, had much of this sense of entitlement upon finishing school and trying to get into the workforce. He thought he should have easily been able to land a full-time job at one of the big 4 with his econ degree and make $60k right out of the gates. Sure, USC is prestigious and is a great school to go to for the education and connections but not everyone who went there is going to have it easy. The only way you're gonna "easily" get a job like that straight out of school is A) if you're ridiculously smart or can BS your way through interviews or B) you worked an internship the better half of your time while in school and did exceedingly well (or a combination of both). This guy was more of a party-animal... he took an internship [low-paying] at KPMG post-graduation and then worked a few other places but he seemed bitter and entitled about it the whole time. I guess he ended up paying his dues cause now he's with a good-sized chain retailer but others suffered along the way at his expense (namely, when he stayed with my in-laws rent-free AND they gave him money that he said he'd pay back and hasn't fully to this day - it tarnished the relationship with my wife and brother-in-law. and his mother only enables him - she paid my in-laws back on his behalf but without him knowing, then told my in-laws that if he actually pays them back just give her the money)
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I think that's exactly why people like Talia Jane feel entitled to stuff like fancy restaurant meals, nice alcohol, and other luxuries that are now seen as "normal". I don't know about other people, but they certainly weren't the norm in my parents day, or even in my childhood. They were stuff that rich people did. But it seems like there's been a standard of living inflation across all classes and income levels. One of my best childhood friends, whose husband works a solid blue-collar job, just went on vacation in Hawaii. When we were kids, nobody we knew had ever been to Hawaii.
So now people who don't do these things feel like they're "poor", when twenty years ago it was the norm.
I don't agree with her mentality but do you really think these things were not normal in older generations? 20 year olds in the 80s didn't go out to bar and restaurants with their friends ?
Look at the median rent prices for San Fransisco adjusted for inflation:
(https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*MdPAr5dt5AH73H1mO_NahQ.jpeg)
Granted much of the rise is due to simple supply and demand and the tech/Silicon Valley boom has increased prices rapidly but I would bet across the United States wages have not kept up with housing costs, education and healthcare costs.
She deserves blame for her own life choices but there was a time when an English degree would land you a solid job. Today with dying printed media and the oversupply of college graduates it will land you a minimum wage job.
1. Well, yes, 20 year olds went out with their friends. But not often. As in, when I was in college, I did not eat out. I maybe went out with my friends to restaurants a few times a year. And bars? Well I wasn't 21 until senior year. I maybe went out a couple of times a month (of course, frat parties were an option), at 2 beers a pop, so $6. When I graduated and got a "real job", that didn't change either. I ate at home, and went out very occasionally. It was much more common for people to have parties at their rented houses or apartments, and BYOB. I think I went out with a friend 3 weekends in a row once. My older sister (who graduated in the early 80s) went out with her friends sometimes too, but more often than not, they got a six pack of beer and went to someone's house, or to the woods, partying in the back of someone's pickup.
"These days", hey I can't speak for all the young ones - I'm an engineer, and I've found that most of the 20-somethings that I've worked with graduated into a dismal job market, so they actually brought their lunches and didn't go out often either. As opposed to the 30-somethings. I'd say though that some of the 20-somethings that I know eat out a lot more often. They buy lunch 2-5 times a week and go out to bars more than once a week, and they aren't drinking $3 beers (now let's call it $6 beers), they are drinking $10-15 mixed drinks. As a comparison, I started going out more for lunch and for beers AFTER I started making more money. So, let's just say that 2-4 years in to my career, after college, I started going out more. At my entry level job? No. No I didn't go out much at all.
2. Nobody's arguing this. At least I'm not. Heck the "Hard to feel sorry for these people" thread is literally FULL of me saying this. That over the years we went from "a degree is a ticket to a good job, and any degree" to "you need a degree to do a job that didn't require it, but you get to go into debt first, yay!"
However, I cannot recall any time in my life when you didn't have to "pay your dues", degree or not. I have an engineering degree, and had to "pay my dues" (granted, in the US military). The other engineers I know had to pay their dues. The English majors I know have decent jobs in education, or business, but they also had to "pay their dues" as low income employees for a year or two, just to get experience. It's kind of a "thing".
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But you don't look at me (30 year old, mother, working for the company for 10 years, with a healthy savings rate) and think "another responsible millennial."
Seriously! I see this all the time. I'm 28-years-old, didn't go to college until I was 22 because I was working grocery jobs + farm laboring + 2 years of Americorps in order to go to college debt-free. You don't hear about those of us that got fancy private school liberal arts degrees and stayed out of debt by commuting 2 hours each day and working 30+ hours a week while taking a full load. You don't hear about those of us working for median wage who are SO HAPPY we make $19/hr and have health insurance and save half our income and don't take out debt and cook all our meals at home and don't upgrade everytime the newest iThingamagig comes out. Because that's a boring narrative. Millennials are all entitled, obviously. Except those we kick out of the millennial category because they're not.
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I'm a millennial who lived in/worked with people Real Poverty. Both the american type of Real Poverty and the global Real Real Poverty in rural India. This girl is not living in Real Poverty. She's living in a version of it that's the toughest type of poverty she's ever known, and the pain of that situation hurts. Without skills or experience in living in poverty, this is a real experience for her.
This girl has great points about needing to pay a living wage for a tech company- but she also has a strong sense of entitlement. 1 year of a full-time benefited job with free food before you can try to transfer to a better paying job? How is that nose-to-grindstone agonizing? She has HEALTH INSURANCE. I worked 10 years of my adult life before I got health insurance, and that's the case for many people I know that graduated in the past decade.
Yeah, college was cheaper for us, but minimum wage was 3.35/hour, and everyone worked at some awful jobs during college to avoid loans.
I agree with most of the things you are saying, but I want to point out that $3.35/hr, indexed for inflation, is higher than the current minimum wage. Remember real wage.
(http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.jpg)
Am I reading this wrong then? $3.35 an hour in 1988, looks like it's not higher than the current minimum wage?
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But you don't look at me (30 year old, mother, working for the company for 10 years, with a healthy savings rate) and think "another responsible millennial."
Seriously! I see this all the time. I'm 28-years-old, didn't go to college until I was 22 because I was working grocery jobs + farm laboring + 2 years of Americorps in order to go to college debt-free. You don't hear about those of us that got fancy private school liberal arts degrees and stayed out of debt by commuting 2 hours each day and working 30+ hours a week while taking a full load. You don't hear about those of us working for median wage who are SO HAPPY we make $19/hr and have health insurance and save half our income and don't take out debt and cook all our meals at home and don't upgrade everytime the newest iThingamagig comes out. Because that's a boring narrative. Millennials are all entitled, obviously. Except those we kick out of the millennial category because they're not.
Hm...well maybe you don't "hear about it" in the mainstream media, but most "millenials" I know personally are more like you guys.
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(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2344024/original.jpg)
http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/downsample150to92/public/atoms/files/5-12-15sfp-f8.png?itok=uYX7OG-A
The numbers all seem to indicate that education costs have skyrocketed and wages have not kept with education and most other costs. Millennials today are taking jobs that pay less while coming out of school with more debt and higher costs.
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But you don't look at me (30 year old, mother, working for the company for 10 years, with a healthy savings rate) and think "another responsible millennial."
Seriously! I see this all the time. I'm 28-years-old, didn't go to college until I was 22 because I was working grocery jobs + farm laboring + 2 years of Americorps in order to go to college debt-free. You don't hear about those of us that got fancy private school liberal arts degrees and stayed out of debt by commuting 2 hours each day and working 30+ hours a week while taking a full load. You don't hear about those of us working for median wage who are SO HAPPY we make $19/hr and have health insurance and save half our income and don't take out debt and cook all our meals at home and don't upgrade everytime the newest iThingamagig comes out. Because that's a boring narrative. Millennials are all entitled, obviously. Except those we kick out of the millennial category because they're not.
Hm...well maybe you don't "hear about it" in the mainstream media, but most "millenials" I know personally are more like you guys.
Mainstream media, sure, but also here. The thing I was specifically responding to was:
I'm thinking some of these "millenials" yearn for the "I got a job as a software engineer at Google straight out of college" thing. And "if they can do it so can I" without realizing that most companies *aren't* Google (or are going to pay you like they do at Google). It's an infectious disease of sorts, this whole concept of entitlement.
It happens here. It happens in the media. It happens elsewhere on the internet.
It happens in real life when I do something "millennial-ish" and get judged. (Buying $4 cupcakes from the fancypants cupcake store got a comment... they didn't even shut up when I told them it was for my CHILD'S BIRTHDAY.)
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1. Well, yes, 20 year olds went out with their friends. But not often. As in, when I was in college, I did not eat out. I maybe went out with my friends to restaurants a few times a year.
Hmm, I thought everyone your age spent all of their time at restaurants after school....
(http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2012/9/12/19/enhanced-buzz-26296-1347492967-16.jpg)
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I think that's exactly why people like Talia Jane feel entitled to stuff like fancy restaurant meals, nice alcohol, and other luxuries that are now seen as "normal". I don't know about other people, but they certainly weren't the norm in my parents day, or even in my childhood. They were stuff that rich people did. But it seems like there's been a standard of living inflation across all classes and income levels. One of my best childhood friends, whose husband works a solid blue-collar job, just went on vacation in Hawaii. When we were kids, nobody we knew had ever been to Hawaii.
So now people who don't do these things feel like they're "poor", when twenty years ago it was the norm.
I don't agree with her mentality but do you really think these things were not normal in older generations? 20 year olds in the 80s didn't go out to bar and restaurants with their friends ?
Look at the median rent prices for San Fransisco adjusted for inflation:
(https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*MdPAr5dt5AH73H1mO_NahQ.jpeg)
Granted much of the rise is due to simple supply and demand and the tech/Silicon Valley boom has increased prices rapidly but I would bet across the United States wages have not kept up with housing costs, education and healthcare costs.
She deserves blame for her own life choices but there was a time when an English degree would land you a solid job. Today with dying printed media and the oversupply of college graduates it will land you a minimum wage job.
1. Well, yes, 20 year olds went out with their friends. But not often. As in, when I was in college, I did not eat out. I maybe went out with my friends to restaurants a few times a year. And bars? Well I wasn't 21 until senior year. I maybe went out a couple of times a month (of course, frat parties were an option), at 2 beers a pop, so $6. When I graduated and got a "real job", that didn't change either. I ate at home, and went out very occasionally. It was much more common for people to have parties at their rented houses or apartments, and BYOB. I think I went out with a friend 3 weekends in a row once. My older sister (who graduated in the early 80s) went out with her friends sometimes too, but more often than not, they got a six pack of beer and went to someone's house, or to the woods, partying in the back of someone's pickup.
"These days", hey I can't speak for all the young ones - I'm an engineer, and I've found that most of the 20-somethings that I've worked with graduated into a dismal job market, so they actually brought their lunches and didn't go out often either. As opposed to the 30-somethings. I'd say though that some of the 20-somethings that I know eat out a lot more often. They buy lunch 2-5 times a week and go out to bars more than once a week, and they aren't drinking $3 beers (now let's call it $6 beers), they are drinking $10-15 mixed drinks. As a comparison, I started going out more for lunch and for beers AFTER I started making more money. So, let's just say that 2-4 years in to my career, after college, I started going out more. At my entry level job? No. No I didn't go out much at all.
2. Nobody's arguing this. At least I'm not. Heck the "Hard to feel sorry for these people" thread is literally FULL of me saying this. That over the years we went from "a degree is a ticket to a good job, and any degree" to "you need a degree to do a job that didn't require it, but you get to go into debt first, yay!"
However, I cannot recall any time in my life when you didn't have to "pay your dues", degree or not. I have an engineering degree, and had to "pay my dues" (granted, in the US military). The other engineers I know had to pay their dues. The English majors I know have decent jobs in education, or business, but they also had to "pay their dues" as low income employees for a year or two, just to get experience. It's kind of a "thing".
My goal was not to turn this into a Millenial vs "insert" generation fight. It is of my opinion that millennials are really not that different from the other generations in terms of consumption. IMO our whole nation has an issue of mass consumption led by our government that has indebted us with 18 trillion dollars (just a FYI the government doesn't consists of millennials :D)
My general point is that millennials today face harsher economic dynamics compared to most other generations on average. I graduated from college 6 years ago during the financial crisis and I believ I am in a better position than the millennials that will be graduating this spring.
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Am I reading this wrong then? $3.35 an hour in 1988, looks like it's not higher than the current minimum wage?
You're reading it right - in 1986 it started switching and is almost equivalent to today's minimum wage. $3.35 in the years before, however, was higher. I don't know the precise year being referred to, but I just want to make sure that people recognize saying "$3.35/hr" needs to account for inflation!
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I'm 30. I'm a millennial, by the standard definitions, but I'm also old enough to have gotten past a lot of the challenges that face recent grads.
People graduating today got different messages about college and debt than their parents did. They are being told "You have to go to college or you're never going to make anything of yourself" and "Just get a degree, it doesn't matter what" and "Student loan debt is good debt." That is bad advice.
People graduating today also face a different job market for college grads than their parents did. Having a degree no longer necessarily leads to a job that justifies the investment.
People graduating today paid higher tuition, in real terms, and have higher debt on average, in real terms, than their parents did.
These things matter, and they make a difference. It's not enough to say "Work your way through college!" and "Entry-level jobs were never too good for me!" when the former isn't a practical solution in most cases, and the latter ignores the changes in what "entry-level with a college degree" means.
Those are the real challenges millennials face. The following are not real challenges, they are challenges created by millennials (and not just Talia Jane, these are common things I see among my peers) for themselves:
- I can't live in the highest COL city in the country AND live alone AND work at a job that pays lower than average because I think it's a good opportunity.
- I can't afford to have a pre-paid cell phone bill with a major carrier.
- I can't afford to drive my car to work in a HCOL area that attempts to restrict driving in the city center via tolls.
- I can't write anything I want on the internet and expect to keep my job.
- I can't figure out that a $20 copay for health coverage is an amazing deal.
- I can't maintain my feelings of superiority over people who work in retail.
Everything you said.
There's a false dichotomy that's often set up between individual agency(/bootstraps) and structural issues in society/government, etc. It's either "oh, but you're making bad choices and if you didn't you'd be doing fine there are no structural issues" or "we have all these structural issues, it's impossible to get ahead." But it's really not a dichotomy; we can talk about both!
There *is* a housing-supply problem in the SFBA, cost of higher education *is* going up (significantly) faster than inflation, wages aren't keeping up with costs/rent in HCOLAs generally (let's leave the "entitled millennials" out of this and realize every community needs teachers and EMTs and bus drivers; and they need places to live less than 3 hours from work, too), the tax structure has changed *massively* since the 40s-70s when so many boomers "worked their way through college" and "never got anything handed to them," income inequality, campaign financing, climate change, and so forth. There are Real Issues out there, and it's disingenuous to ignore that by just looking at individual choices.
However, most of us still have many choices in how to structure our lives, and the presence of these issues doesn't relieve us from the responsibility of making good ones in the situation(s) we find ourselves in, even if that entails enduring some form of hardship. Particularly, for someone young, educated, and child-free!
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1. Well, yes, 20 year olds went out with their friends. But not often. As in, when I was in college, I did not eat out. I maybe went out with my friends to restaurants a few times a year.
Hmm, I thought everyone your age spent all of their time at restaurants after school....
(http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2012/9/12/19/enhanced-buzz-26296-1347492967-16.jpg)
Hm...sadly, I'm a *tad* too old for this show. I googled it, see that it was on from 1989 to 1993, and about high school students. I started college in 1988, and probably would not have been caught dead watching a TV show about high school.
Of course, I didn't have a TV in college anyway - if you wanted to watch TV, you went to the dorm "lounge" and everyone had to agree.
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1. Well, yes, 20 year olds went out with their friends. But not often. As in, when I was in college, I did not eat out. I maybe went out with my friends to restaurants a few times a year.
Hmm, I thought everyone your age spent all of their time at restaurants after school....
(http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2012/9/12/19/enhanced-buzz-26296-1347492967-16.jpg)
Hm...sadly, I'm a *tad* too old for this show. I googled it, see that it was on from 1989 to 1993, and about high school students. I started college in 1988, and probably would not have been caught dead watching a TV show about high school.
Of course, I didn't have a TV in college anyway - if you wanted to watch TV, you went to the dorm "lounge" and everyone had to agree.
How about this one:
(http://i.imgur.com/QzZ77dW.jpg)
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Ha ha closer! But at least I was only watching reruns. :)
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1. Well, yes, 20 year olds went out with their friends. But not often. As in, when I was in college, I did not eat out. I maybe went out with my friends to restaurants a few times a year.
Hmm, I thought everyone your age spent all of their time at restaurants after school....
(http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2012/9/12/19/enhanced-buzz-26296-1347492967-16.jpg)
Hm...sadly, I'm a *tad* too old for this show. I googled it, see that it was on from 1989 to 1993, and about high school students. I started college in 1988, and probably would not have been caught dead watching a TV show about high school.
Of course, I didn't have a TV in college anyway - if you wanted to watch TV, you went to the dorm "lounge" and everyone had to agree.
How about this one:
(http://i.imgur.com/QzZ77dW.jpg)
It looks like they just did some light remodeling on the same set for those.
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Millennials were told that they needed to get a college degree so they can get a job that isn't flipping burgers*. And then, once they graduated, the only jobs they could get were flipping burgers, and they were called "entitled" because they don't want these jobs that their parents and teachers told them they wouldn't have to do if they got a college degree.
That's not "entitlement", that's anger at being lied to. At getting really bad advice.
That's not "being lied to". That's an good example at conventional wisdom not being able to predict the future. Their parents and teachers looked to what had happened in the past 20 years, and applied it to the future without considering other effects. Then people were surprised with effects of globalization, a larger percentage of people getting college degrees, a priority in STEM hiring, etc.
So you enjoyed yourself at a University that you couldn't afford for 5 years. Shit happens. Pick yourself up and move on. If you haven't started university yet, take a look at what's going on and adapt your plan.
We've all said "life is not fair". My generation was also told it was entitled for wanting a good job without going to college, "My grandfather retired from the line at Ford, my father will have a Ford full pension when he retires, but all I could get was this lousy unguaranteed job that only has a 401K". Shit happens. Pick yourself up and move on.
The biggest difference is to whom the Millenials are complaining. Before people generally complained to a smaller circle of people with the exception of writing to the editor. Now people complain to thousands in FB or millions in blogs. The previous generations aren't used to the form of this generation's complaining or such widespread attention paid to the complaints, so they respond that the Millennials are whiny and self-entitled. That or maybe they're thinking "you're an adult now, so I don't have to give you any more participation trophies".
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My point is our generation on average will have a lower standard of living compared to our parents
I strongly disagree.
There's no way I would go back to the past, and that standard of living. Our standard today is so much higher than anyone's, ever.
I agree with you - our standard of living is much higher. If one was to plan on living like their parents did in their 20s, with the exact luxuries they had, it would be considerably "worse" standard of living.
I would say that "our generation" has much higher expectations for standard of living than our parents did, though.
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My point is our generation on average will have a lower standard of living compared to our parents
I strongly disagree.
There's no way I would go back to the past, and that standard of living. Our standard today is so much higher than anyone's, ever.
I agree with you - our standard of living is much higher. If one was to plan on living like their parents did in their 20s, with the exact luxuries they had, it would be considerably "worse" standard of living.
I would say that "our generation" has much higher expectations for standard of living than our parents did, though.
Perhaps we are going to have a higher objective standard of living than ever before but in fact have a lower standard of happiness. We all have iPhones and use them to make ourselves miserable.
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Perhaps we are going to have a higher objective standard of living than ever before but in fact have a lower standard of happiness. We all have iPhones and use them to make ourselves miserable.
I don't know that we do that either.
I think that's the popular media narrative, but most of the people I know are, generally, happy. I don't think they're any unhappier than people in the past.
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It looks like they just did some light remodeling on the same set for those.
lol, yeah it does.
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Wow. I read this post a few days ago and thought it really reminded me of an entitled young woman in my office. She is maybe 26 or 27 and spends most of the day blogging or texting instead of doing her job.
Yesterday, we found out what our raises and bonuses would be for the coming year. Today, she made a public FB post about how little her job pays and how working people are screwed over in this country. Even though she's Facebook friends with the head of our department.
Starting salaries at my job are only around $30K, but our vacation and sick time are, honestly, so generous it's unheard of. And our health insurance is excellent and extremely cheap. This girl was already on very thin ice here and I'm thinking she may have just signed her death warrant.
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In the many publications supporting and criticizing the young lady, this person's response stands out to me:
https://medium.com/@Izhou/to-talia-how-to-live-in-sf-on-17-597-76-a-year-1c6a39a630f6
The way I see it, those who are angry feel you haven’t truly exhausted the options within your own control before looking externally to criticize others (Yelp, Yelp’s CEO Jeremy, etc.)
He then goes on to present reasonable, mustachian advice on a budget to afford to live on her [former] salary, while allocating resources for personal development and growth.
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Millennials were told that they needed to get a college degree so they can get a job that isn't flipping burgers*. And then, once they graduated, the only jobs they could get were flipping burgers, and they were called "entitled" because they don't want these jobs that their parents and teachers told them they wouldn't have to do if they got a college degree.
That's not "entitlement", that's anger at being lied to. At getting really bad advice.
That's not "being lied to". That's an good example at conventional wisdom not being able to predict the future. Their parents and teachers looked to what had happened in the past 20 years, and applied it to the future without considering other effects. Then people were surprised with effects of globalization, a larger percentage of people getting college degrees, a priority in STEM hiring, etc.
So you enjoyed yourself at a University that you couldn't afford for 5 years. Shit happens. Pick yourself up and move on. If you haven't started university yet, take a look at what's going on and adapt your plan.
We've all said "life is not fair". My generation was also told it was entitled for wanting a good job without going to college, "My grandfather retired from the line at Ford, my father will have a Ford full pension when he retires, but all I could get was this lousy unguaranteed job that only has a 401K". Shit happens. Pick yourself up and move on.
The biggest difference is to whom the Millenials are complaining. Before people generally complained to a smaller circle of people with the exception of writing to the editor. Now people complain to thousands in FB or millions in blogs. The previous generations aren't used to the form of this generation's complaining or such widespread attention paid to the complaints, so they respond that the Millennials are whiny and self-entitled. That or maybe they're thinking "you're an adult now, so I don't have to give you any more participation trophies".
It was never true, though. Philosophy grads have always made less than STEM and business majors. And debt is debt, it doesn't become "good" because you spent it on a worthless piece of paper instead of hookers and blow.
And, it's also not limited to advice given to millennials 10-15 years ago. I was in a high school classroom a few weeks ago, and heard the exact same message. I was there to talk about my job and my college experience to a group of students who are on track to be the first in their families to go to college. Their teacher (around 28, by my guess) dismissed their concerns about student loan debt, saying that while he still has student loans, his income minus the loan payments is still higher than it would be if he had never gone to college. And he was not happy about my advice that you have to have a plan that extends past college graduation to make it worthwhile.
Finally, the point a lot of people are making is that it is nearly impossible to graduate with a worthless degree and the accompanying student loan debt and "pick yourself up and move on". The student loan repayments are crushing if you can't find a job that justifies the investment you made.
I'm not saying that millennials don't make mistakes and aren't responsible for their actions. Quite the contrary, if you read my original post here. I'm saying that the invectives hurled at an entire generation are unfounded and particularly insulting to those of us who have avoided those traps and done well for ourselves.
(The silver lining is that as long as I'm part of the generation that's destroying America, I can still consider myself young. When was the last time you heard that the country was going to heck because of the hippies, draft dodgers or disaffected Xers?)
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CHS says all that needs saying to this twit.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb16/teachable-moment2-16.html
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I'm saying that the invectives hurled at an entire generation are unfounded and particularly insulting to those of us who have avoided those traps and done well for ourselves.
... When was the last time you heard that the country was going to heck because of the hippies, draft dodgers or disaffected Xers?)
You didn't hear that the country was going to heck because of the hippies, draft dodges and Xers, probably only because you were too young to be around when it was said. But it was said. It was said plenty enough and then people moved on, nobody is concerned with draft dodgers at the moment.
I think you’re being a bit sensitive to the use of the generational descriptions. Of course for every stereotypical example, one can equally find an exception. We all know plenty of hardworking, debt-free Millienals that didn’t make such obviously stupid mistakes. These forums here have many. As I said before, people are adjusting into the new widespread format in which Millennials* are complaining. (*People use the term in generality and it’s much easier to not include a paragraph disclaimer every time to exclude various sub-segments).
It’s not only negative commentary that Millennials receive; there are plenty of publications that speak praise of the generation. Take a look at articles on innovation, entrepreneurial ventures and environmentalism to see the positive portrayed.
The complaints and generalizations are just an expression of the natural friction between generations, and trust me that it won’t be long before your generation will be saying similar things about the next.
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With all this college-bashing, I'm curious how many of you don't actually have a college degree? And if so, are you a straight, white, able-bodied male without a college degree?
I simply ask because even though plenty of people say a college degree is "worthless", I was actually a high school drop out (got a GED) who had many years in the workforce before it became apparent that no matter I would do, I was stonewalled in getting any higher without going to college. There was a ceiling where I couldn't really get any higher without just the "bachelor's in something". You need a bachelor's to become a manager at Walgreens even, which pays $26K/year after 3 months of training. The only alternative of a good paying job I could find without a college degree was a union electrician, but my size/gender/disability ended up making that a barrier. I would've died waiting to become a postal worker, because even though I got 99th percentile on the postal exam, they hire vets first, so non-vets took forever to get hired. I considered military as an option, but back then they weren't taking gays like me.
I agree that the current student loan debt is unreasonable, but there is all the statistical evidence in the world that a college degree DOES improve your lifetime earnings, even when accounting for both opportunity cost and cost of attendance. I agree with the idea that college with a plan on the other side is ideal, but college is a hurdle to NEARLY ANY good paying job these days, especially if you can't do physical work, and especially if you don't come from a position of privilege. At least attending, if not completing.
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Attending a private university including room and board today will cost somewhere around $150-$200k. That is an insane amount compared to the previous generations that could work in between semesters and pay off the majority of their tuition. There is no amount of part time work that could make a dent into this amount today.
[/quote]
Um, what? 6000 x 8 semesters = 48,000. (that includes room and board -- grad year 2013)
You are talking about some EXTREMELY expensive private colleges.
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With all this college-bashing, I'm curious how many of you don't actually have a college degree? And if so, are you a straight, white, able-bodied male without a college degree?
I'm a straight, white, able-bodied woman without a college degree. I make more money than my straight, non-white, able-bodied boyfriend who pursued the useless degree route. So you've got a couple data points working against your privilege narrative, in any case.
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An article/post she tweeted:
http://www.moneyaftergraduation.com/2016/02/25/the-bootstrapping-millennial-martyrdom-complex/
And then apparently something she posted probably from being pestered about it:
https://twitter.com/itsa_talia/status/702757498894192642
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I have no college degree and I make six figures as a Project Manager.
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My college was $39,000 attendance cost of tuition/fees per year which sounds batshit crazy, but my annual out-of-pocket cost was $2,000, which was less than if I had started at community college and gone to state school locally. The sticker price at those private schools mean nothing if you come from meager or limited means - they have substantial need-based aid and there's often less competition than there is at schools with higher need populations (like CC) for limited aid packages. My annual aid package was:
$30,000 School Grant (including Americorp award match)
$5,500 Pell Grant
$1,500 Oregon Opportunity Grant
$2,500 in Work-Study
----------------------------------
$39,500 Aid
$2,000 Expected Family Contribution (from me)
My local state school's aid package was $5,500 (the oregon opportunity grant is too competitive to get there), making my cost of attendance $4,500 annually. They also didn't match my Americorps award, meaning that $10,000 scholarship went half as far as far as aid. Plus I got all sorts of benefits from going to a small school, including getting to do paid summer fellowship with the International Monetary Fund and get a fully-covered semester abroad. Every job I've gotten since I finished 3 years ago has been through the tight-knit alumni network. At community college, all the financial aid $$ (including work-study) were gone if you filed your FAFSA after Jan 5th. At my small school, that was not true.
The first two years of out-of-pocket costs were covered by my Americorps Award, meaning I just had to work to pay my living expenses. Yes, $160K is crazy, but the sticker price means very little to real cost of attendance at those private colleges. I wish this information was better disseminated to those from limited means - state school ISN'T always the cheapest option.
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Here's her explanation of why she didn't (or "couldn't") find a roommate:
"Before moving to San Francisco, did you consider that it's one of the most expensive cities in America to settle in?"
"Yep! And I planned in every which way possible to make the most of that. The employee who recommended the job to me—we actually looked at apartments together before I had to move up. He backed out, so I had to find something else. Being brand new to an area with no safety net of close friends or family on top of being a young woman, I didn't feel safe just blindly rooming with someone off Craigslist. So my new plan was to take the cheapest place I could find that would accept my application, befriend someone at work, and have a roommate/move somewhere affordable within three months. But none of my coworkers were going anywhere, so I had to find a new plan."
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/talia-jane-any-voice-is-better-than-silence-fired-yelp-employee-reacts-to-media-backlash
So the "new plan" was to write a public scathing letter to your CEO!? I get it, she wanted to bring out the "big picture" of income inequality or whatever. But apparently, she's playing the sacrificial lamb here. And she also doesn't seem to be very good at planning and researching things...
Oh and this caught my attention too:
"What do you think Yelp should do to improve things? A wage increase? Anything else?"
"They should definitely look into a wage increase, but as I understand it, it's possible that they like the revolving door. They should, at the very least, create channels for people to share how much they're struggling. It's not en vogue with the start-up vibe, but your lowest-rung employees deserve the opportunity to be heard."
The cold harsh reality is: the company is doing what's in *their* best interest; not yours.
And then, what's up with this?:
"I've had a lot of engineers who earn upwards of $100k call me entitled, which has tickled me"
To me, she seems to be, in a passive-aggressive tone, implying that those engineers "don't deserve" their salaries, etc....
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The story certainly has legs. It made the front page of Yahoo today, too. This is the NY Post story they linked to, which is very critical and written by someone living in NYC, which is another notoriously HCOL area and he has no sympathy for her. (http://nypost.com/2016/02/24/yelp-was-right-to-fire-the-entitled-millennial-who-whined-about-her-salary-online/) I do feel a little badly for her as it seems that she's a product of her environment and upbringing. The university she went to and the place she lives are all full of people who are convinced that class warfare is something everybody needs to be fighting for on the front lines. She just didn't realize that by being white and college educated she is the one who's privileged.
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The story certainly has legs. It made the front page of Yahoo today, too. This is the NY Post story they linked to, which is very critical and written by someone living in NYC, which is another notoriously HCOL area and he has no sympathy for her. (http://nypost.com/2016/02/24/yelp-was-right-to-fire-the-entitled-millennial-who-whined-about-her-salary-online/) I do feel a little badly for her as it seems that she's a product of her environment and upbringing. The university she went to and the place she lives are all full of people who are convinced that class warfare is something everybody needs to be fighting for on the front lines. She just didn't realize that by being white and college educated she is the one who's privileged.
It's a domino effect. I think now we're on the reaction to the reaction to the reaction to the original.
In the many publications supporting and criticizing the young lady, this person's response stands out to me:
https://medium.com/@Izhou/to-talia-how-to-live-in-sf-on-17-597-76-a-year-1c6a39a630f6
The way I see it, those who are angry feel you haven’t truly exhausted the options within your own control before looking externally to criticize others (Yelp, Yelp’s CEO Jeremy, etc.)
He then goes on to present reasonable, mustachian advice on a budget to afford to live on her [former] salary, while allocating resources for personal development and growth.
Yeah, that dude is awesome.
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With all this college-bashing, I'm curious how many of you don't actually have a college degree? And if so, are you a straight, white, able-bodied male without a college degree?
My husband and I work for the same company—he's been there for fifteen years and I've been there for thirteen. We both came in on entry level jobs. I was promoted four times in four years in my original department. I was getting burned out so I switched to a high level sales department for a couple of years, where I made good money but got sick of being on the phone all day long. I then applied for my current department, and while I have the same job title my responsibilities and salary have increased every year.
My husband, meanwhile, stayed in the same department until it was recently axed. He is the type that works hard, but not smart. He routinely put in eleven hour days just to keep up with the paperwork because he has next to no computer skills (I love him dearly but seriously, watching him type something is PAINFUL for me). He claims that he is now "too old" to learn. When his department was axed he went to a different department that is much more tech-oriented. A younger guy took pity on him and is helping him out, but he's floundering big time. His base salary—he gets commission as well—is roughly the same as mine.
One of us has two college degrees. One of us got taken out of college after sophomore year for partying too much.
I am not the one with the degrees.
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And then, what's up with this?:
"I've had a lot of engineers who earn upwards of $100k call me entitled, which has tickled me"
To me, she seems to be, in a passive-aggressive tone, implying that those engineers "don't deserve" their salaries, etc....
« Last Edit: Today at 12:28:25 PM by jplee3 »
Clear signs of a person who doesn't understand the correlation between value creation and compensation. If she'd probably get it with about 15 minutes on Quora.
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My point is our generation on average will have a lower standard of living compared to our parents
I strongly disagree.
There's no way I would go back to the past, and that standard of living. Our standard today is so much higher than anyone's, ever.
I can't speak for how old everyone's parents are. I'm 45. My parents "standard of living" when I was, say, 10 years old.
One TV. For awhile, black and white at 13 inch.
No cable.
Two small cars.
No cell phones.
Hand me down clothing.
A garden.
One bathroom.
No college.
No internet.
One vacation, driving, to NC from PA when I was 7.
Two camping weekends (not a year, total) to Lake Erie.
Now granted, we were on the poor side. But even my middle class friends didn't go on fancy vacations or have fancy houses. A vacation was a camping trip, or driving to FL once in 10 years.
Well said! That's my recollection from back in the early 70's. To your list I would add that a meal in a restaurant was a special occasion and air conditioning was not common.
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And then, what's up with this?:
"I've had a lot of engineers who earn upwards of $100k call me entitled, which has tickled me"
To me, she seems to be, in a passive-aggressive tone, implying that those engineers "don't deserve" their salaries, etc....
« Last Edit: Today at 12:28:25 PM by jplee3 »
Clear signs of a person who doesn't understand the correlation between value creation and compensation. If she'd probably get it with about 15 minutes on Quora.
There's a reason engineers are paid more than customer service representatives, in general. And that has absolutely nothing to do with "entitlement" other than engineers *should* be paid more than customer service reps... she strikes me as the type of person who shoots blindly and speaks before she thinks. And the worst part is that there's this underlying sense of denial she carries around, which seems to often portray itself as her making light of things.
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Whelp, she's not the brightest bulb, but her open letter sure did make me laugh. Coconut water, lol.
I'm still not sure if this was a bad attempt at a comedy routine, or if this girl is as dumb as a box of rocks.
Sadly, I suspect the latter.
This was entirely unplanned (but I guess not completely unexpected?) but any help until I find new employment would be extremely appreciated.
LOL. Shouldn't take long. I'm guessing employers are just lining up to hire this entitled little snot.
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There's a reason engineers are paid more than customer service representatives, in general. And that has absolutely nothing to do with "entitlement"
It has everything to do with entitlement - the people that make the things that make the company money are entitled to more money.
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With all this college-bashing, I'm curious how many of you don't actually have a college degree? And if so, are you a straight, white, able-bodied male without a college degree?
My husband and I work for the same company—he's been there for fifteen years and I've been there for thirteen. We both came in on entry level jobs. I was promoted four times in four years in my original department. I was getting burned out so I switched to a high level sales department for a couple of years, where I made good money but got sick of being on the phone all day long. I then applied for my current department, and while I have the same job title my responsibilities and salary have increased every year.
My husband, meanwhile, stayed in the same department until it was recently axed. He is the type that works hard, but not smart. He routinely put in eleven hour days just to keep up with the paperwork because he has next to no computer skills (I love him dearly but seriously, watching him type something is PAINFUL for me). He claims that he is now "too old" to learn. When his department was axed he went to a different department that is much more tech-oriented. A younger guy took pity on him and is helping him out, but he's floundering big time. His base salary—he gets commission as well—is roughly the same as mine.
One of us has two college degrees. One of us got taken out of college after sophomore year for partying too much.
I am not the one with the degrees.
That was well-written enough that I laughed out loud at work :-)
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There's a reason engineers are paid more than customer service representatives, in general. And that has absolutely nothing to do with "entitlement"
It has everything to do with entitlement - the people that make the things that make the company money are entitled to more money.
That is true now that you put it that way. I guess the difference then is *feeling* or *thinking* that you're entitled vs actually *being* entitled.
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OK, so maybe I'm taking this a little more seriously than I should, and maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but it really chaps my hide to hear someone play the I'm-a-helpless-young-woman card as a justification for making a dumbass decision. I therefore polished up my scythe and cranked out the following semi-rant, replete with my usual level of violence and coarse language:
Here's her explanation of why she didn't (or "couldn't") find a roommate:
<snip>
"Being brand new to an area with no safety net of close friends or family on top of being a young woman, I didn't feel safe just blindly rooming with someone off Craigslist. So my new plan was to take the cheapest place I could find that would accept my application, befriend someone at work, and have a roommate/move somewhere affordable within three months. But none of my coworkers were going anywhere, so I had to find a new plan."
Translation, with all the begged questions and fallacious reasoning expanded for further mockery:
"I'm female, therefore I'm entitled to a higher standard of living, because it's Too Scary to actually find a reputable roommate. I choose to believe that in an urban area with over one million people, not one law abiding person with a vagina is in the same situation as me, so I'm not going to bother typing and clicking enough to confirm my bias. Therefore, you should choose to believe this too.
"Furthermore, despite the fact that I'm trying to present myself as a tech-savvy person, I'm going to present the fact that I was too fucking lazy to type some words into a search engine as evidence that there's no such thing as a legitimate house-sharing and roommate-finder Web site serving the Bay Area.
"Finally, I'm also going to pretend that the only possible alternative to what I want (an expensive apartment all to myself) is the most dangerous, extreme possibility out there (browsing Craigslist for random people I've never met). Gee, Toto: this straw man is almost convincing enough to put in the passenger seat and drive with in the HOV lane all the way back to Kansas.
"You should believe all of this horseshit logical fallacy because I'M A YOUNG WOMAN! Look at me, all helpless and princess-like and shit! Someone rescue me from my self imposed dungeon tower! What's wrong with you assholes: A PERSON WITH A UTERUS HAS GOTTEN HERSELF INTO AN UNPLEASANT SITUATION AND IS HAVING A VERY BAD DAY!"
It's like a reverse ad hominem attack: not toward but from, not an attack but a defense, and not male but female. I know: I'll call it an "ex feminem defense". As in, "you have to accept whatever logical fallacy is coming out of my mouth as being factual and accurate, because I. Am. Someone. Who. Reads. Far. Too. Much. Chick. Lit. In. Which. A. Mediocre. Female. Achieves. Something. Fantastic. Without. First. Eradicating. Her. Mediocrity."
"I've had a lot of engineers who earn upwards of $100k call me entitled, which has tickled me"
To me, she seems to be, in a passive-aggressive tone, implying that those engineers "don't deserve" their salaries, etc....
Unless, of course, they already paid their dues instead of trying to whine and helpless-female-card their way into a better position. Either that, or they went out of their way to get skills that were so marketable they didn't have to flip burgers for a year.
On behalf of all the other people with vaginas, and in as aggressive-aggressive a manner as possible, I hereby revoke this person's adult certificate for making the rest of us look like idiots.
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As in, "you have to accept whatever logical fallacy is coming out of my mouth as being factual and accurate, because I. Am. Someone. Who. Reads. Far. Too. Much. Chick. Lit. In. Which. A. Mediocre. Female. Achieves. Something. Fantastic. Without. First. Eradicating. Her. Mediocrity."
On behalf of all the other people with vaginas, and in as aggressive-aggressive a manner as possible, I hereby revoke this person's adult certificate for making the rest of us look like idiots.
I think this is WAY unnecessarily mean-spirited and reductive.
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I think this is WAY unnecessarily mean-spirited and reductive.
What's funny is that I saw one post on here get deleted by a moderator because somebody said they should slap someone (who happened to be a woman) to get some sense into her. Meanwhile, the actual owner of this website encourages punching people in the face to make them understand things. Considering how many times "face punch" is used by the actual owner of this website, it shouldn't be surprising that there is a tacit acceptance of faux violence as a means of making people make smarter decisions.
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Ignore the haters Grim Squeaker! You're one of my favorite posters on the forums.
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I think this is WAY unnecessarily mean-spirited and reductive.
What's funny is that I saw one post on here get deleted by a moderator because somebody said they should slap someone (who happened to be a woman) to get some sense into her. Meanwhile, the actual owner of this website encourages punching people in the face to make them understand things. Considering how many times "face punch" is used by the actual owner of this website, it shouldn't be surprising that there is a tacit acceptance of faux violence as a means of making people make smarter decisions.
Someone had to speak up and say something.... "any voice is better than silence" :P
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As in, "you have to accept whatever logical fallacy is coming out of my mouth as being factual and accurate, because I. Am. Someone. Who. Reads. Far. Too. Much. Chick. Lit. In. Which. A. Mediocre. Female. Achieves. Something. Fantastic. Without. First. Eradicating. Her. Mediocrity."
On behalf of all the other people with vaginas, and in as aggressive-aggressive a manner as possible, I hereby revoke this person's adult certificate for making the rest of us look like idiots.
I think this is WAY unnecessarily mean-spirited and reductive.
Eh, it seems pretty accurate to me. The only bit it leaves out is that she did have a "plan" to move in with a co-worker after three months. However, it seems pretty much like gambling to rely on finding a coworker that she got on with, was at the end of their lease, and wanted to move somewhere else. So... not the best plan ever, although the sentiment is admirable.
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What's funny is that I saw one post on here get deleted by a moderator because somebody said they should slap someone (who happened to be a woman) to get some sense into her.
I highly doubt you did. The moderators, as a rule almost never delete posts, just edit them using the strikeout feature, leaving the contents intact.
Meanwhile, the actual owner of this website encourages punching people in the face to make them understand things. Considering how many times "face punch" is used by the actual owner of this website
Humorous rhetorical "face punches" (which I guarantee you MMM has never actually done) is different than suggesting and talking about actual violence against women (IIRC the context was like "that woman should be slapped around" or something similar--not appropriate, even if it was intended for humor). That is not amusing.
it shouldn't be surprising that there is a tacit acceptance of faux violence as a means of making people make smarter decisions.
That's why the moderation was done, to show there isn't a tacit acceptance of violence, and there's a clear line between virtual "face punches" and actual physical harm. That's how we draw the line, and show what's appropriate.
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Yelp IS in the wrong for paying people $12/hr gross for a job located in SF proper. And Jeremy Stoppleman IS ultimately responsible for that set-up. He may not have realized that was the exact per hour amount but he knows now and could fix it. I saw his solution is move those lower jobs to AZ. Perfect. I'm sure Yelp will pay relocation costs for all the current workers in SF in this lower level role. Oh they'll likely end up laid-off and scrambling for another $12/hr job? Well that's just their fault for not working hard enough to get promoted/being entitled millenials/not doing what I did at their age X number of years ago.
Yelp's net income for 2014 was something like $35M. They have 3,250 employees. Let's say of that number ...25 are CSR reps in SF. I know the answer is 'free markets!' but why they couldn't pay reps something like $42k/year (Yes yes you didn't make that much in your first job but not relevant. I'm talking about the reality of a SF-based company hiring entry level employees right now), calibrate the rest of their employees' salaries to account for that and post a lower net income? The only reason Yelp can get away with that ridiculous wage because so many other full-time jobs in the Bay Area pay that or less. And instead of questioning the tax breaks these tech companies receive, the high salaries their executives take home, the high amounts of cash they hold in lieu of offering cost of living wages, we're tsk tsking someone for pointing it out? Because she didn't do it perfectly? Therefore we need to poke holes in everything she says? Fine she was wrong to take the job, live alone, write the post, etc - doesn't change the fact Yelp pays people $12/hr for a job in SF!
Also people make dumb decisions because...they're people not robots! That does not automatically mean someone is dumb, ignorant, entitled. Of course she might be but some people think they have this girl totally pegged without having ever met her.
She states that a lot of the instagram postings were gifts or prizes or (gasp!) the occasional splurge. Again I concede not mustachian but some of the commentary just comes across as a coded way of saying "poor people don't deserve anything nice ever because they're poor"
Finally that response from the 29 y/o who "owned" her was some major bullshit. This post summarizes why way more eloquently.
https://medium.com/listen-to-my-story/36-year-old-destroys-29-year-old-millennial-who-ripped-25-year-old-yelp-employee-who-got-fired-aa91972dedff
Signed,
My personal situation/choices now and/or when I was her age are not relevant
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Yelp IS in the wrong for paying people $12/hr gross for a job located in SF proper. And Jeremy Stoppleman IS ultimately responsible for that set-up. He may not have realized that was the exact per hour amount but he knows now and could fix it. I saw his solution is move those lower jobs to AZ. Perfect. I'm sure Yelp will pay relocation costs for all the current workers in SF in this lower level role. Oh they'll likely end up laid-off and scrambling for another $12/hr job? Well that's just their fault for not working hard enough to get promoted/being entitled millenials/not doing what I did at their age X number of years ago.
I disagree Yelp is in the wrong, and I think moving the work to a place where the pay is more commiserate makes sense.
Zappos moved their HQ from SF to Vegas around a decade ago (and yes, I believe they did offer to help pay relocation costs for everyone, on down to the call center employees) for that exact reason (cost of living).
Why should it be Yelp's problem how much it costs to live there? If it costs too much compared to the wage they're paying, people should not take that wage. Then Yelp will either have to relocate the jobs or will have to pay more.
Yelp's net income for 2014 was something like $35M. They have 3,250 employees. Let's say of that number ...25 are CSR reps in SF. I know the answer is 'free markets!' but why they couldn't pay reps something like $42k/year (Yes yes you didn't make that much in your first job but not relevant. I'm talking about the reality of a SF-based company hiring entry level employees right now), calibrate the rest of their employees' salaries to account for that and post a lower net income?
Huh? Why should Yelp take a minimum wage job and pay someone a professional salary to do it? A job that takes very little skills or training, or education. What would make you think anyone is owed that wage?
Sure, Yelp could pay that, but... why would they?
I think it's society's job to take care of that stuff. If minimum wage is too low to be a living wage, that's a failure on society's part. I personally believe we should have universal basic income--a flat living amount paid to everyone, regardless of working or not. So I fall on the way more radical side of liberal when it comes to wages and work.
But what I DON'T do is think it's the responsibility of a single company, acting solely out of the goodness of their altruistic corporate hearts to do that. That seems ludicrous, to me. And it just causes a tragedy of the commons, because the companies that DO do that will quickly be at a disadvantage to the companies that don't. We should legislate changes we want to see, not demand them of private companies for no real reason, or logic.
Finally that response from the 29 y/o who "owned" her was some major bullshit.
Eh, I thought it was a pretty great attitude to have. This post summarizes why way more eloquently. Work hard, get ahead. Whatever that entails. For that person, it was waitressing for years. Sacrificing vacations, holidays with families, etc.
Stephanie's post/response wasn't perfect, some of it was a little snarky, but the post you linked to was way ruder (insulting her reading level? Come on.), with flat out name-calling.
I basically disagree with your whole post. Frankly, I'm quite surprised someone can hold the opinions you do. It seems much to victim mentality, and wanting to blame others, to me. That may be a misinterpretation, and if so, I apologize, but it's how I read it. It's not an attitude we see a lot around this forum, since most of us are more take-charge (and, admittedly, are more privileged as well). But I appreciate you sharing. :)
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I don't disagree with the "people shouldn't take the Yelp job if it's too low" thought but often it's a dammed if you dammed if you don't situation.
1) Take job in front of you, low pay but bird in the hand OR
2) Turn down low paying job, keep looking for a job while digging a deeper hole
Should you put yourself in that situation? No. Does it happen? Yes and when it happens all the "should have done X, Y, Z differently's" don't matter.
I'm not demanding anything of Yelp nor do i expect them to pay more just for altrustic reasons (although according to glass door they're paying below market). I just think they're in the wrong - l am allowed to have an opinion right? Not sure how that makes me a victim since I'm just a spectator/commentator here. I'm not blaming anyone for my situation - which would be crazy since its nothing like hers. I've been responsible for myself my entire adult life and faced very little in terms of true struggles but should note my circumstances growing up could be described as privileged.
I don't see a problem examining their compensation model (and the model of other SF tech companies) compared to their resources. Do you think it's wrong to even raise the question?
As far as $42k/year being a professional salary for an unskilled job? Customer service experience in industry is listed as required and not preferred in the job sescription. Computer skills and "Excellent spelling and grammar" are also listed as required. So I do challenge the assumption that it's a job that requires "very little skills, training or education". The $42k comes from 2014 BLS data that customer service jobs in software average $18-21/hour. That's why I think "anyone" is owed that wage even CSR reps for Eat24.
Thanks for calling my opinions unique. I will take that as a compliment but want to point out I can hold these opinions and still be "take charge" in terms of how I run my life.
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As far as $42k/year being a professional salary for an unskilled job? Customer service experience in industry is listed as required and not preferred in the job sescription. Computer skills and "Excellent spelling and grammar" are also listed as required. So I do challenge the assumption that it's a job that requires "very little skills, training or education".
Most CSR jobs are as unskilled as they come. Knowing how to operate a computer, write without mistakes, and escalate when a situation doesn't fit the flowchart of troubleshooting, is something you can train any high-school educated person in 3 days flat. Seriously, who the bleep considers good grammar as a skill worth marketing yourself for? It's the kind of things you put a resume at 16 when you have nothing better, along with "very punctual" and "Microsoft Word".
Now the labor market is far from perfect. Some have cornered themselves into jobs where they are grossly underpaid, and others who are dumb as bricks have somehow found their way into high paying jobs. But come on, bringing up software pay as an example of entitlement?
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I don't disagree with the "people shouldn't take the Yelp job if it's too low" thought but often it's a dammed if you dammed if you don't situation.
1) Take job in front of you, low pay but bird in the hand OR
2) Turn down low paying job, keep looking for a job while digging a deeper hole
The problem is that she took option 3:
3) take the job, then act entitled to something better simply by existing, wrote a long "you suck!" public letter to your CEO for a job that even though it sucks has ridiculously better benefits/perks than likely most people in the Bay area get at their minimum wage jobs (people who are doing option 1), and got herself fired for reasons other than that - which given her attitude, it wouldn't surprise me to find she was difficult to work with and got fired for unrelated reasons
Doing (1) is admirable. Doing (3) is not.
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I admit I only skimmed most of the thread but it didn't look like anyone had posted the rebuttal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2 (http://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2)
That was phenomenal. Demolished the original piece, ripped the author to shreds, but also just had a good "work hard" message.
She must be a Mustachian, because she delivered a pretty good FACEPUNCH!
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I think this is WAY unnecessarily mean-spirited and reductive.
What's funny is that I saw one post on here get deleted by a moderator because somebody said they should slap someone (who happened to be a woman) to get some sense into her. Meanwhile, the actual owner of this website encourages punching people in the face to make them understand things. Considering how many times "face punch" is used by the actual owner of this website, it shouldn't be surprising that there is a tacit acceptance of faux violence as a means of making people make smarter decisions.
The moderators are people and have to use their judgement. I've had a post moderated that I didn't think was especially out of line, but I see why somebody might not have liked it. I've seen worse posts get ignored. I'm not going to get all upset about it. I think it's nice that the mods leave posts simply struck out in all but the worst circumstances.
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The 36-year-old didn't "destroy" anyone. That's typical millennial overkill where everything is the best ever or the worst ever--and a 36-year-old these days is at the far end of millennialism. Saying that someone the 29-year-old knew giving her a job was "privilege?" In the past I've gotten jobs courtesy of people I knew and so have a lot of others.
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An article/post she tweeted:
http://www.moneyaftergraduation.com/2016/02/25/the-bootstrapping-millennial-martyrdom-complex/
I agree with this article 100% actually. The bootstrap mentality hurts everyone and doesn't add anything of value. It's just self-congratulatory bullshit.
You know, she may be entitled, but she is also right about the fact that things could be a whole lot better. She personally didn't make wise choices, but when I read her article and I read the other responses, my thoughts are summed up as "Why does this have to be so goddamned hard?" and "Why are we all in this vicious race to the bottom where we are tearing down people instead of working to make everyone's lives better?" Saying that she didn't do everything perfectly doesn't invalidate her observations about her and her co-workers.
Remember when we actually cared about making things better for the generations that came after us? Now it seems like we just can't sleep at night unless people suffered like they did. They feel this deep need to share their pain by passing it on to others. Hell yeah, it's way easier to rip people to shreds than it is to actually fix something.
Guess what, shaming and berating people almost never changes behavior - ask most overweight people. So the only conclusion I can come to is that you don't really care about changing this behavior. You care about validating your life experience.
And going back to my older post that most people ignored, it is likely this girl is probably depressed. That in itself is going to lead to poor decision making and the extreme difficulty to make changes in your life.
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I agree with this article 100% actually. The bootstrap mentality hurts everyone and doesn't add anything of value. It's just self-congratulatory bullshit.
You know, she may be entitled, but she is also right about the fact that things could be a whole lot better. She personally didn't make wise choices, but when I read her article and I read the other responses, my thoughts are summed up as "Why does this have to be so goddamned hard?" and "Why are we all in this vicious race to the bottom where we are tearing down people instead of working to make everyone's lives better?" Saying that she didn't do everything perfectly doesn't invalidate her observations about her and her co-workers.
Remember when we actually cared about making things better for the generations that came after us? Now it seems like we just can't sleep at night unless people suffered like they did.
I think it's important to keep in mind that this girl has been working at Yelp for less than a year. She is outraged by the idea of having to do customer service for a year before she's considered for other roles. This is not someone who has been toiling away for decades and never seen a raise or promotion.
And as some posters upthread pointed out, she pretty clearly considers herself superior to retail workers. That seems like entitlement to me, if her skills aren't any more marketable than theirs. Sounds like she believes she deserves a paycheck for being clever and witty and awesome.
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What should a "living wage" buy? Having an apartment to one's self and a car in a a high COL city, or a room in a house, public transit and adequate food and heat? It seems like her wage
is was enough to buy one, but not the other. So we can argue endless circles about how unfair it is that she's not earning a living wage, but that hasn't been defined anywhere in this thread. Once living wage = apartment and car, does it then become a house and an SUV? The benefits package she was getting can't be ignored in this equation either.
And why is it OK to get whatever degree without worry about it's marketability, and then aim to get into a more competitive field with that degree, and then choose one of the most expensive places in the country to do so, and then whine that it's hard? Not everyone can live on the coast writing memes for a living, and the market is going to bear that out (people are going to be willing to live on beans and rent someone's closet, and that's who you'll have to compete with, vs. if you decide to take your degree and go teach in say, Nebraska [just an example, I know nothing of the Nebraska job market for teachers]). I just don't get why it should be easy street when people decide to go for such a niche career, where they're aware going in is going to be generally low paid and difficult to break into?
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As far as $42k/year being a professional salary for an unskilled job? Customer service experience in industry is listed as required and not preferred in the job sescription. Computer skills and "Excellent spelling and grammar" are also listed as required. So I do challenge the assumption that it's a job that requires "very little skills, training or education".
Most CSR jobs are as unskilled as they come. Knowing how to operate a computer, write without mistakes, and escalate when a situation doesn't fit the flowchart of troubleshooting, is something you can train any high-school educated person in 3 days flat. Seriously, who the bleep considers good grammar as a skill worth marketing yourself for? It's the kind of things you put a resume at 16 when you have nothing better, along with "very punctual" and "Microsoft Word".
As someone who does hiring for entry-level office jobs both 1) computer skills and 2) grammar are things I have trouble recruiting for. Entry-level jobs (paying our minimum here, $9.75/hr) actually have trouble getting a pool of applicants that have English as their first language or near-native fluency and have a good grasp on grammar. I spend a TON of my day correcting grammar in what should be a simple mail merge for letters with a few (in my view) common sense edits- including the fact that apparently we don't teach basic letter writing/formatting in school anymore. Computer skills is mostly a challenge when it comes to recently incarcerated and older folks that come into this job.
If we raise the wage to $15/hr, suddenly I am overwhelmed by qualified applicants. Almost too qualified (master's degrees, etc).
Just my experience as a hiring manager.
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What should a "living wage" buy? Having an apartment to one's self and a car in a a high COL city, or a room in a house, public transit and adequate food and heat? It seems like her wage is was enough to buy one, but not the other. So we can argue endless circles about how unfair it is that she's not earning a living wage, but that hasn't been defined anywhere in this thread. Once living wage = apartment and car, does it then become a house and an SUV? The benefits package she was getting can't be ignored in this equation either.
This is the definition (and calculator) of a living wage as done when accounting for regional differences done MIT.
(http://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/about)
The living wage is defined as the wage needed to cover basic family expenses (basic needs budget) plus all relevant taxes. The living wage calculation does not include publicly provided income or housing assistance. Values are reported in 2014 dollars. To convert values from annual to hourly, a work-year of 2,080 hours (52, 40 hour work weeks) is assumed. The basic needs budget is calculated as follows:
Basic needs budget = Food cost + child care cost + (insurance premiums + health care costs) + housing cost + transportation cost + other necessities cost
From their methodology: The food component of the basic needs budget was compiled using the USDA’s low-cost food plan. The housing component captures the likely cost of rental housing in a given area in 2014 using HUD Fair Market Rents (FMR) estimates. The health component of the basic needs budget includes: (1) health insurance costs for employer sponsored plans, (3) medical services, (3) drugs, and (4) medical supplies.
Their San Francisco Living wage for one adult came out at $14.37- that is based on $14,292 of annual housing expenses, which is roughly equivalent to her rent.
Edit: The idea that living wage proponents are going to suffer from some sort of hedonic adaptation because they're trying to make it possible to support yourself without relying on government services and assistance is fucking ridiculous. You know what people are trying to do? Feed themselves. Have a roof over their heads. Argh. The hubris of assuming that because you got a degree in STEM you should be able to feed yourself without government assistance on the same number of hours as work as someone else who can't afford a place to live just gets my goat. You should NOT have to rely on foodstamps or get on the 10 year waiting list for Section 8 when you're working 40 hours a week. You shouldn't.
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Edit: The idea that living wage proponents are going to suffer from some sort of hedonic adaptation because they're trying to make it possible to support yourself without relying on government services and assistance is fucking ridiculous. You know what people are trying to do? Feed themselves. Have a roof over their heads. Argh. The hubris of assuming that because you got a degree in STEM you should be able to feed yourself without government assistance on the same number of hours as work as someone else who can't afford a place to live just gets my goat. You should NOT have to rely on foodstamps or get on the 10 year waiting list for Section 8 when you're working 40 hours a week. You shouldn't.
I never said that. Taking a room in a house to cut ridiculous housing expenses for a couple years while in an entry level position and gaining experience is not the same as saying someone should make concessions and live on foodstamps forever. I also never said anything about government services. It's very clear from the COL page you linked to (very interesting BTW, so thank you) that housing is the elephant in the room for someone in SF. Move to Fresno County, for instance, and the listed wage for sales stays the same $28K, but housing costs are half, making that wage $6K above the living wage for the locale, whereas it's about $1,500 under living wage for a single person in SF. So is it also ridiculous that someone should have to live in Fresno instead of the Bay Area?
So you're saying that there shouldn't be variance in wages based on marketability of skills? We should all be able to make a living wage as underwater basket weavers?
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I think the young woman needed a wake-up call and finally got one. When I graduated with a master's degree in engineering from Stanford, I made the choice to leave the Bay Area primarily because of the cost of living. Recent grads in my program were living with three women in a one-bedroom apartment in SF, while working in engineering in the city. So no, it's not just the English majors that have to make sacrifices there. It's a fact of life that your cost of living is higher there, and the pay of a new hire non-technical employee at a tech company will be lower than the pay of a computer engineer with experience. If the writer is as amazing as she believes, finding a job in a less expensive city should not be a problem.
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I think the young woman needed a wake-up call and finally got one. When I graduated with a master's degree in engineering from Stanford, I made the choice to leave the Bay Area primarily because of the cost of living.
One of my high school friends was an engineer in SF. About 3 years ago he took like a hefty pay cut (I think it was like 30%) to transfer to Minnesota. His COL is way higher here, there he was paying up the wazoo for rent, here he can easily pay his mortgage and has more disposable income.
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I think the young woman needed a wake-up call and finally got one. When I graduated with a master's degree in engineering from Stanford, I made the choice to leave the Bay Area primarily because of the cost of living.
One of my high school friends was an engineer in SF. About 3 years ago he took like a hefty pay cut (I think it was like 30%) to transfer to Minnesota. His COL is way higher here, there he was paying up the wazoo for rent, here he can easily pay his mortgage and has more disposable income.
Do you mean QOL?
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So you're saying that there shouldn't be variance in wages based on marketability of skills? We should all be able to make a living wage as underwater basket weavers?
In fact, people don't even get paid MINIMUM wage (let alone a living wage) to be underwater basket weavers - or clothes sorters at goodwill. Why? Because they're exempted from the minimum wage because they have disabilities. If they have developmental disabilities, organizations can pay them $.30 or $.60/hr to do "menial tasks". Because we don't value the human right to have work that is demanded by the marketplace be compensated at a value that is enough to live on.
This is legal under US law. They're called sheltered workshops. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheltered_workshop)
I'm trained as an economist -I do believe there should be a supply and demand differential based on marketability of skills. BUT I also believe that the free market fails to keep people out of poverty and is rather bad at predicting and serving human needs. If you need a human to do a task, and the market demands it, I believe there should be a bottom level compensation based on a social contract that says you should be able to support yourself without relying on government assistance. If a company demands the labor, the workers should be able to demand a wage floor that supports them in the market where that labor is demanded. If the free market ruled, we certainly wouldn't have 8 hour workdays or a 40 hour work week. It took a social contract to get that norm - and a lot of work on the part of the International Workers of the World union to get that social contract to be enforced.
Sure, living in Fresno would be great for these workers, if there weren't a such thing as a bid-rent function. There's a relationship between the cost of housing and the cost of transportation - including opportunity cost - not to mention the cost to the environment to have people commuting 200 miles each way. There is an incentive to legislate a minimum floor that allows workers to support themselves and their families without that commute - if only for reducing congestion and greenhouse gases.
If San Francisco gains no benefits from having low-skill workers, such as servers, customer service agents, retail workers, housekeepers, and busboys, then great. They can have fail to have a wage floor and then they can't have those workers located in the city center. But if they don't want to create (even more than they already have) a city that is a monoculture of rich, elite tech workers -not to mention no families or children - then there needs to be action in either the government or private sector to make sure that workers can support themselves in the city. And there needs to be housing policies that bring down the cost of housing.
I am a firm believer that you are not superiorly qualified to have access to basic human necessities or the ability to raise a family because you earn $200,000 a year working 45 hours a week pushing Regular Expressions around instead of brooms.
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On the bright side, somebody took screen shots of all the things she managed to make out of that bag of rice she said she lived on:
http://thatsalotofrice.com/
She must be the best cook in the universe to have made all those things out of that one bag of rice she said she's starving on.
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A few points here.
Firstly, a company that attempts to underpay people in an extremely high cost of living area is going to suffer high staff turnover and discontentment because people cannot be expected to work where they cannot live. It's not anyone's "fault", she didn't set the wage and they didn't make her accept the job, but it is a shitty situation. Unless you adjust for regional variations you will have discrepancies in which a living wage in one area is not a living wage in another and people will get mad. It's just shitty planning on the part of the company.
Secondly, y'all got played. She was in a dead end job barely making enough to eat, let alone attempt to make her actual career goals come true. It's not enough to aspire to be a writer, she needed exposure, a lot of people to read a sample of her writing and a hook. Her public letter to her CEO was always a resignation letter and it was intended to have exactly the response it had. She didn't want the job she lost, she wanted to lose it as a stepping stone to the job she wanted.
Honestly you should be applauding how she gamed the system. Whether or not you agree with her points she managed to tap into a popular sentiment with an articulate argument which was massively shared and popularized. This is how you make yourself stand out as an aspiring writer in SF, not by keeping your head down and eating rice until life gives you the shit you want.
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So you're saying that there shouldn't be variance in wages based on marketability of skills? We should all be able to make a living wage as underwater basket weavers?
In fact, people don't even get paid MINIMUM wage (let alone a living wage) to be underwater basket weavers - or clothes sorters at goodwill. Why? Because they're exempted from the minimum wage because they have disabilities. If they have developmental disabilities, organizations can pay them $.30 or $.60/hr to do "menial tasks". Because we don't value the human right to have work that is demanded by the marketplace be compensated at a value that is enough to live on.
This is legal under US law. They're called sheltered workshops. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheltered_workshop)
I'm trained as an economist -I do believe there should be a supply and demand differential based on marketability of skills. BUT I also believe that the free market fails to keep people out of poverty and is rather bad at predicting and serving human needs. If you need a human to do a task, and the market demands it, I believe there should be a bottom level compensation based on a social contract that says you should be able to support yourself without relying on government assistance. If a company demands the labor, the workers should be able to demand a wage floor that supports them in the market where that labor is demanded. If the free market ruled, we certainly wouldn't have 8 hour workdays or a 40 hour work week. It took a social contract to get that norm - and a lot of work on the part of the International Workers of the World union to get that social contract to be enforced.
Sure, living in Fresno would be great for these workers, if there weren't a such thing as a bid-rent function. There's a relationship between the cost of housing and the cost of transportation - including opportunity cost - not to mention the cost to the environment to have people commuting 200 miles each way. There is an incentive to legislate a minimum floor that allows workers to support themselves and their families without that commute - if only for reducing congestion and greenhouse gases.
If San Francisco gains no benefits from having low-skill workers, such as servers, customer service agents, retail workers, housekeepers, and busboys, then great. They can have fail to have a wage floor and then they can't have those workers located in the city center. But if they don't want to create (even more than they already have) a city that is a monoculture of rich, elite tech workers -not to mention no families or children - then there needs to be action in either the government or private sector to make sure that workers can support themselves in the city. And there needs to be housing policies that bring down the cost of housing.
I am a firm believer that you are not superiorly qualified to have access to basic human necessities or the ability to raise a family because you earn $200,000 a year working 45 hours a week pushing Regular Expressions around instead of brooms.
Not necessarily true. The Goodwill employees in my area make above minimum wage whether they are disabled or not. I know because I work with them on a daily basis. Some non-profits that work with the profoundly disable do pay less than minimum wage, but most of the clients have job coaches because they cannot work independently. In this situation, it is less about the work itself and more about allowing the client to have some independence and a feeling of self-reliance.
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Not necessarily true. The Goodwill employees in my area make above minimum wage whether they are disabled or not. I know because I work with them on a daily basis. Some non-profits that work with the profoundly disable do pay less than minimum wage, but most of the clients have job coaches because they cannot work independently. In this situation, it is less about the work itself and more about allowing the client to have some independence and a feeling of self-reliance.
Yes, you are correct, it's not all goodwill employees, only ones in qualified sheltered workshops (who are located off-site from retail Goodwill locations) - and Goodwill does use sheltered workshops. And sheltered workshops are banned in different states (and we just got it banned in Oregon - well, phased out in most circumstances where they will actually end up in integrated jobs, yay!).
It's still abhorent as an employment practice. In addition to the sub-par wages, they're also socially isolated and only working with other people with developmental disabilities. In the lawsuit we worked to put together, many many workers qualified for integrated employment but were forced to remain at sheltered workshops. From the press release "Angela Kehler, 48, who has been forced to remain in sheltered workshops since she was laid off from a successful job placement at a drugstore; Elizabeth Harrah, 32, who previously worked at McDonald’s and Safeway, and now is at a sheltered workshop while waiting for assistance to return to competitive employment; and Zavier Kinville, 27, who is stuck at a sheltered workshop, awaiting an opportunity for integrated community employment. Kinville has volunteered in the community, where his favorite job was reading to children. "
For more than a decade, lead plaintiff Paula Lane, 48, has had the same request: “Find me an outside job.” Instead, she and 137 other people with disabilities package gloves or put parts into boxes on assembly lines in a noisy and crowded sheltered workshop. Over a 12-month period in 2010-11, she made a high of 66 cents an hour.
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What should a "living wage" buy? Having an apartment to one's self and a car in a a high COL city, or a room in a house, public transit and adequate food and heat? It seems like her wage is was enough to buy one, but not the other. So we can argue endless circles about how unfair it is that she's not earning a living wage, but that hasn't been defined anywhere in this thread. Once living wage = apartment and car, does it then become a house and an SUV? The benefits package she was getting can't be ignored in this equation either.
This is the definition (and calculator) of a living wage as done when accounting for regional differences done MIT.
(http://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/about)
The living wage is defined as the wage needed to cover basic family expenses (basic needs budget) plus all relevant taxes. The living wage calculation does not include publicly provided income or housing assistance. Values are reported in 2014 dollars. To convert values from annual to hourly, a work-year of 2,080 hours (52, 40 hour work weeks) is assumed. The basic needs budget is calculated as follows:
Basic needs budget = Food cost + child care cost + (insurance premiums + health care costs) + housing cost + transportation cost + other necessities cost
From their methodology: The food component of the basic needs budget was compiled using the USDA’s low-cost food plan. The housing component captures the likely cost of rental housing in a given area in 2014 using HUD Fair Market Rents (FMR) estimates. The health component of the basic needs budget includes: (1) health insurance costs for employer sponsored plans, (3) medical services, (3) drugs, and (4) medical supplies.
Their San Francisco Living wage for one adult came out at $14.37- that is based on $14,292 of annual housing expenses, which is roughly equivalent to her rent.
Edit: The idea that living wage proponents are going to suffer from some sort of hedonic adaptation because they're trying to make it possible to support yourself without relying on government services and assistance is fucking ridiculous. You know what people are trying to do? Feed themselves. Have a roof over their heads. Argh. The hubris of assuming that because you got a degree in STEM you should be able to feed yourself without government assistance on the same number of hours as work as someone else who can't afford a place to live just gets my goat. You should NOT have to rely on foodstamps or get on the 10 year waiting list for Section 8 when you're working 40 hours a week. You shouldn't.
It is highly likely that Yelp calculated the single person living wage, using this calc and deducted the health care expense portion of it, that the employer pays. $14.37 - Employer paid medical = $12 per hour perhaps? Then they compared it to the going market wage, and were able to retain qualified persons at this rate.
Should we now rage against an employer in San Francisco paying the "approved" living wage?
My thought is that Yelp should consider reimbursing for transit passes; and / or setting up a part time employee classification that pays no benefits, but does provide $14.50 per hour for 25 hours per week. If SF area you cannot afford to live on your own, then they are trying to attract young persons starting out, willing to share, and people who are working for extra spending money, not "need for basic living" money, and part timers may fit this profile.
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What should a "living wage" buy? Having an apartment to one's self and a car in a a high COL city, or a room in a house, public transit and adequate food and heat? It seems like her wage is was enough to buy one, but not the other. So we can argue endless circles about how unfair it is that she's not earning a living wage, but that hasn't been defined anywhere in this thread. Once living wage = apartment and car, does it then become a house and an SUV? The benefits package she was getting can't be ignored in this equation either.
This is the definition (and calculator) of a living wage as done when accounting for regional differences done MIT.
(http://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/about)
The living wage is defined as the wage needed to cover basic family expenses (basic needs budget) plus all relevant taxes. The living wage calculation does not include publicly provided income or housing assistance. Values are reported in 2014 dollars. To convert values from annual to hourly, a work-year of 2,080 hours (52, 40 hour work weeks) is assumed. The basic needs budget is calculated as follows:
Basic needs budget = Food cost + child care cost + (insurance premiums + health care costs) + housing cost + transportation cost + other necessities cost
From their methodology: The food component of the basic needs budget was compiled using the USDA’s low-cost food plan. The housing component captures the likely cost of rental housing in a given area in 2014 using HUD Fair Market Rents (FMR) estimates. The health component of the basic needs budget includes: (1) health insurance costs for employer sponsored plans, (3) medical services, (3) drugs, and (4) medical supplies.
Their San Francisco Living wage for one adult came out at $14.37- that is based on $14,292 of annual housing expenses, which is roughly equivalent to her rent.
Edit: The idea that living wage proponents are going to suffer from some sort of hedonic adaptation because they're trying to make it possible to support yourself without relying on government services and assistance is fucking ridiculous. You know what people are trying to do? Feed themselves. Have a roof over their heads. Argh. The hubris of assuming that because you got a degree in STEM you should be able to feed yourself without government assistance on the same number of hours as work as someone else who can't afford a place to live just gets my goat. You should NOT have to rely on foodstamps or get on the 10 year waiting list for Section 8 when you're working 40 hours a week. You shouldn't.
It is highly likely that Yelp calculated the single person living wage, using this calc and deducted the health care expense portion of it, that the employer pays. $14.37 - Employer paid medical = $12 per hour perhaps? Then they compared it to the going market wage, and were able to retain qualified persons at this rate.
That was part of her argument though - there's a revolving door at the organization which lowers productivity - and they aren't retaining workers.
Maybe I'm reading the methodology wrong, but it appears that this living wage model is assuming the cost of the employee's health insurance costs for employer sponsored plans. At any rate, the cost for a single adult in the calculation was $2,099, which divided by 2080 hours of work per year, would be $1/hr, making the wage $13.37 - which is $2800/yr more, or enough for more than 2 months of rent at her current wage.
I doubt they DID consult a living wage model, given that they're paying the minimum wage for SF.
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If paying employees even a penny more than the market demands is a sign of poor business acumen, why aren't more people ripping Costco for doing just that? Stupid Costco with their above min wage pay and benefits for entry level jobs - they're the ones doing it wrong, not Yelp.
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If paying employees even a penny more than the market demands is a sign of poor business acumen, why aren't more people ripping Costco for doing just that? Stupid Costco with their above min wage pay and benefits for entry level jobs - they're the ones doing it wrong, not Yelp.
Why is either company doing wrong?
Companies are free to act as they want, within the law.
We, as consumers, are free to vote with our dollars and shop at certain places, or use certain services, or not, as we see fit.
We, as citizens, are free to vote with our votes to get politicians who pass laws that we agree with.
Those are two very clear ways we can influence companies. Neither company is doing wrong, in my opinion.
If you like Costco's model better, support them by shopping there. If you think Yelp should pay more, support higher minimum wage where they have offices.
Those are direct things you can do to help things.
Whinging and moaning doesn't help (not that you are, but the author of the article in question, and many others).
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If San Francisco gains no benefits from having low-skill workers, such as servers, customer service agents, retail workers, housekeepers, and busboys, then great. They can have fail to have a wage floor and then they can't have those workers located in the city center. But if they don't want to create (even more than they already have) a city that is a monoculture of rich, elite tech workers -not to mention no families or children - then there needs to be action in either the government or private sector to make sure that workers can support themselves in the city. And there needs to be housing policies that bring down the cost of housing.
I am a firm believer that you are not superiorly qualified to have access to basic human necessities or the ability to raise a family because you earn $200,000 a year working 45 hours a week pushing Regular Expressions around instead of brooms.
Indeed. However, people born and raised in those HCOL cities often don't have to pay as much to get those necessities, if they have family support or if they've owned their modest homes a long time.
One thing that sometimes happens in higher COL areas is that jobs start going to the second generation and you get a city that's economically closed to outsiders but that favors people who already live there. For example, adult children of high income earners who already have a home typically have a place to stay and don't need to worry about living independently if they can't jump right into a high-paying job immediately after graduating (or if they graduate at all). They can get by on a short-term job with low pay, or even an unpaid internship, to get their foot in the door. Or, they can slog along at a below-poverty-level job but still save money because their living expenses are low. It's because they're being subsidized by the Bank Of Mom And Dad.
For a person who fits that description and who is trying to build job experience, a HCOL area actually works in their favor because it deters other people with competitive levels of skill and experience from moving in and out-competing them for available work. If someone suddenly starts enforcing a wage floor where it's possible to live independently even at HCOL rates, some of the lower-income workers will be able to afford to move out on their own, decreasing the available housing supply and driving prices up. But the higher wage floor will also attract competition from out of town, and suddenly the child of middle-aged lawyers isn't able to find work in retail anymore.
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Not necessarily true. The Goodwill employees in my area make above minimum wage whether they are disabled or not. I know because I work with them on a daily basis. Some non-profits that work with the profoundly disable do pay less than minimum wage, but most of the clients have job coaches because they cannot work independently. In this situation, it is less about the work itself and more about allowing the client to have some independence and a feeling of self-reliance.
Yes, you are correct, it's not all goodwill employees, only ones in qualified sheltered workshops (who are located off-site from retail Goodwill locations) - and Goodwill does use sheltered workshops. And sheltered workshops are banned in different states (and we just got it banned in Oregon - well, phased out in most circumstances where they will actually end up in integrated jobs, yay!).
It's still abhorent as an employment practice. In addition to the sub-par wages, they're also socially isolated and only working with other people with developmental disabilities. In the lawsuit we worked to put together, many many workers qualified for integrated employment but were forced to remain at sheltered workshops. From the press release "Angela Kehler, 48, who has been forced to remain in sheltered workshops since she was laid off from a successful job placement at a drugstore; Elizabeth Harrah, 32, who previously worked at McDonald’s and Safeway, and now is at a sheltered workshop while waiting for assistance to return to competitive employment; and Zavier Kinville, 27, who is stuck at a sheltered workshop, awaiting an opportunity for integrated community employment. Kinville has volunteered in the community, where his favorite job was reading to children. "
For more than a decade, lead plaintiff Paula Lane, 48, has had the same request: “Find me an outside job.” Instead, she and 137 other people with disabilities package gloves or put parts into boxes on assembly lines in a noisy and crowded sheltered workshop. Over a 12-month period in 2010-11, she made a high of 66 cents an hour.
Some, not all, which was my point. Goodwill is made up of many regional organizations and not all have the same labor practices, pay, etc. My area absolutely does not use shedltered workshops. We do have another local organization that does have sheltered workshops for adults with severe mental and congnitive disabilities, and they have a point waiting list for participants. They whole point is not to take advantage of people who are impaired, but to teach life skills and helped them feel empowered and productive. It is not a comparable situation.
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An article/post she tweeted:
http://www.moneyaftergraduation.com/2016/02/25/the-bootstrapping-millennial-martyrdom-complex/
I agree with this article 100% actually. The bootstrap mentality hurts everyone and doesn't add anything of value. It's just self-congratulatory bullshit.
You know, she may be entitled, but she is also right about the fact that things could be a whole lot better. She personally didn't make wise choices, but when I read her article and I read the other responses, my thoughts are summed up as "Why does this have to be so goddamned hard?" and "Why are we all in this vicious race to the bottom where we are tearing down people instead of working to make everyone's lives better?" Saying that she didn't do everything perfectly doesn't invalidate her observations about her and her co-workers.
Remember when we actually cared about making things better for the generations that came after us? Now it seems like we just can't sleep at night unless people suffered like they did. They feel this deep need to share their pain by passing it on to others. Hell yeah, it's way easier to rip people to shreds than it is to actually fix something.
Guess what, shaming and berating people almost never changes behavior - ask most overweight people. So the only conclusion I can come to is that you don't really care about changing this behavior. You care about validating your life experience.
And going back to my older post that most people ignored, it is likely this girl is probably depressed. That in itself is going to lead to poor decision making and the extreme difficulty to make changes in your life.
Pretty much everything you said. I get that this is the shaming forum, which I think is an icky concept in itself. But this is that giant anti-humanistic streak in Mustachianism, and in much of American society at large, that factors into why we're so dreadfully behind in so many social areas compared to our fellow wealthy countries. Yes, she's young. Yes, she's inexperienced. Yes, some / many / most in San Francisco / the US / the world have it worse than her.
In the end, she's still right about a lot of things.
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A few points here.
Firstly, a company that attempts to underpay people in an extremely high cost of living area is going to suffer high staff turnover and discontentment because people cannot be expected to work where they cannot live. It's not anyone's "fault", she didn't set the wage and they didn't make her accept the job, but it is a shitty situation. Unless you adjust for regional variations you will have discrepancies in which a living wage in one area is not a living wage in another and people will get mad. It's just shitty planning on the part of the company.
Secondly, y'all got played. She was in a dead end job barely making enough to eat, let alone attempt to make her actual career goals come true. It's not enough to aspire to be a writer, she needed exposure, a lot of people to read a sample of her writing and a hook. Her public letter to her CEO was always a resignation letter and it was intended to have exactly the response it had. She didn't want the job she lost, she wanted to lose it as a stepping stone to the job she wanted.
Honestly you should be applauding how she gamed the system. Whether or not you agree with her points she managed to tap into a popular sentiment with an articulate argument which was massively shared and popularized. This is how you make yourself stand out as an aspiring writer in SF, not by keeping your head down and eating rice until life gives you the shit you want.
So you think she premeditated the whole thing? Whether or not she did, it seems like she's definitely riding the publicity wave that has come of it. Well, considering the questionable credibility, I think most places won't be inclined to hire her. On the other hand, all you need is one sucker. And beyond that, I guess since she seems to imply that she's an immortal in the writing world, perhaps she'll make a ton of money publishing and selling a book about her life.
From http://thatsalotofrice.com/:
Cindy Dahmer · Works at Retired
"I bet she'll get some high paying job being a writer for some bullshit though. Internet makes you famous and wealthy, that's the real reason she did this. It's a scam and it might work in her favour unfortunately. Either that or she'll just get thousands of dollars in donations from misguided people she'll exploit."
Some people are even speculating in the comments section here, http://www.liberalamerica.org/2016/02/23/entitlement-is-a-lie-an-open-letter-to-stephanie-williams/, that she got that CBS traffic reporter position before she wrote the open letter.
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This girl had a very good reason for being afraid to live with other people btw.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1374-7-things-i-learned-as-accomplice-to-mass-murder.html
There is always more to the story than meets the eye. No wonder she couldn't count on her family to help her. Jesus.
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This girl had a very good reason for being afraid to live with other people btw.
She wasn't afraid to live alone, she did that.
She didn't want a roommate.
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This girl had a very good reason for being afraid to live with other people btw.
She wasn't afraid to live alone, she did that.
She didn't want a roommate.
^ This right here.
Whatever excuse she has, she decided she wanted to live her life a certain way and expected the world to adjust accordingly. Bad luck, buttercup, it's the other way around.
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This girl had a very good reason for being afraid to live with other people btw.
She wasn't afraid to live alone, she did that.
She didn't want a roommate.
^ This right here.
Whatever excuse she has, she decided she wanted to live her life a certain way and expected the world to adjust accordingly. Bad luck, buttercup, it's the other way around.
That story is fucking terrifying. Poor woman.
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But if they don't want to create (even more than they already have) a city that is a monoculture of rich, elite tech workers -not to mention no families or children - then there needs to be action in either the government or private sector to make sure that workers can support themselves in the city. And there needs to be housing policies that bring down the cost of housing.
But if the local municipalities approve new development projects and stop artificially constraining the available housing in the Bay Area, all the local property owners will only be able to realize x4 appreciation on the value of their holdings instead of x8! That would be just tragic (/sarcasm).
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This girl had a very good reason for being afraid to live with other people btw.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1374-7-things-i-learned-as-accomplice-to-mass-murder.html
There is always more to the story than meets the eye. No wonder she couldn't count on her family to help her. Jesus.
OK, wow, that is one hell of an intense backstory. However... I get now that her family really could not help her out, but you can't run around crying "My mother aided and abetted a murder gang when I was ten" for EVERYTHING that ever happens to you. Is she going to be complaining about that stuff when she's 60 and gets a parking ticket? I know sod all about SF but found three studio apartments from $700 on Craigslist in about ten seconds flat, and several 1BRs for $800.
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This girl had a very good reason for being afraid to live with other people btw.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1374-7-things-i-learned-as-accomplice-to-mass-murder.html
There is always more to the story than meets the eye. No wonder she couldn't count on her family to help her. Jesus.
OK, wow, that is one hell of an intense backstory. However... I get now that her family really could not help her out, but you can't run around crying "My mother aided and abetted a murder gang when I was ten" for EVERYTHING that ever happens to you. Is she going to be complaining about that stuff when she's 60 and gets a parking ticket? I know sod all about SF but found three studio apartments from $700 on Craigslist in about ten seconds flat, and several 1BRs for $800.
Lol. Those are likely either scam ads (they just walk away with the housing application fees, a common scam in SF) or are not actually located in SF (located in Fresno but listed on SF CL - which is 200 miles away). The median 1-bedroom rent in SF right now is $2500. $800 isn't really a thing and hasn't been for a long time.
Since you don't know about SF, here's some context for why those apartments are likely to be impossible to get or aren't real, from SF's local paper. (http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Rental-competition-fierce-in-S-F-s-market-3543722.php)
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All this talk about living costs in SF is only valid if that's where this Talia person is from. But it's not. She actually went into debt to move to the most expensive metropolitan area in the country for a customer service job. That fact, in and of itself, should make her completely unqualified to talk about anything to do with COL because clearly she is totally clueless about money.
What, she wants to be close to her dad? My MIL is dying of cancer. Is my husband moving to Vancouver BC to be close to her? No, because it's an incredibly expensive city without high paying jobs. Rational people think before making big life decisions.
Yes, there is a housing problem in SF. But if more affordable housing gets created, I really hope it doesn't get taken advantage of by people like Talia who should never have moved to SF in the first place.
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This girl had a very good reason for being afraid to live with other people btw.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1374-7-things-i-learned-as-accomplice-to-mass-murder.html
There is always more to the story than meets the eye. No wonder she couldn't count on her family to help her. Jesus.
OK, wow, that is one hell of an intense backstory. However... I get now that her family really could not help her out, but you can't run around crying "My mother aided and abetted a murder gang when I was ten" for EVERYTHING that ever happens to you. Is she going to be complaining about that stuff when she's 60 and gets a parking ticket? I know sod all about SF but found three studio apartments from $700 on Craigslist in about ten seconds flat, and several 1BRs for $800.
Lol. Those are likely either scam ads (they just walk away with the housing application fees, a common scam in SF) or are not actually located in SF (located in Fresno but listed on SF CL - which is 200 miles away). The median 1-bedroom rent in SF right now is $2500. $800 isn't really a thing and hasn't been for a long time.
Since you don't know about SF, here's some context for why those apartments are likely to be impossible to get or aren't real, from SF's local paper. (http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Rental-competition-fierce-in-S-F-s-market-3543722.php)
Fair enough, maybe I chose a bad example. But my point still stands: you cannot blame everything that goes badly for you ever on one childhood incident, even if it was a really awful one.
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This girl had a very good reason for being afraid to live with other people btw.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1374-7-things-i-learned-as-accomplice-to-mass-murder.html
There is always more to the story than meets the eye. No wonder she couldn't count on her family to help her. Jesus.
OK, wow, that is one hell of an intense backstory. However... I get now that her family really could not help her out, but you can't run around crying "My mother aided and abetted a murder gang when I was ten" for EVERYTHING that ever happens to you. Is she going to be complaining about that stuff when she's 60 and gets a parking ticket? I know sod all about SF but found three studio apartments from $700 on Craigslist in about ten seconds flat, and several 1BRs for $800.
Lol. Those are likely either scam ads (they just walk away with the housing application fees, a common scam in SF) or are not actually located in SF (located in Fresno but listed on SF CL - which is 200 miles away). The median 1-bedroom rent in SF right now is $2500. $800 isn't really a thing and hasn't been for a long time.
Since you don't know about SF, here's some context for why those apartments are likely to be impossible to get or aren't real, from SF's local paper. (http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Rental-competition-fierce-in-S-F-s-market-3543722.php)
Fair enough, maybe I chose a bad example. But my point still stands: you cannot blame everything that goes badly for you ever on one childhood incident, even if it was a really awful one.
I agree. The beauty of maths is that it's completely neutral - no matter your personal story, if the math doesn't add up, you need to go back to the drawing board. You can't make 1 and 1 equal 3 because you'd really like that and geez, you're such a nice person with a terrible past. Sorry, it still equals 2. If you want 3, who am I to argue with your wishes, but you need to come up with the extra 1 yourself!
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If you can read that story and still think the girl is a worthless entitled piece of shit then you have the problem, not her.
Imagine realizing at age 10 that you cannot trust anyone, not even your parents. Imagine what that does to your world view and your decision making process. Does the world owe her a living? No, of course not. But does it make her decisions more understandable. Absolutely.
But of course, you can't sleep at night unless you defend your petty behavior so enjoy yourselves. Enjoy the world that you have created where you have to drag everyone down to preserve your own self esteem - it's a pretty shitty one.
[MOD EDIT: Please stop the personal attacks. Your middle paragraph was a valid point. The rest was unnecessary, detracted from your message, and broke the forum rules.]
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If you can read that story and still think the girl is a worthless entitled piece of shit then you have the problem, not her.
+1,000,000
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OK, wow, that is one hell of an intense backstory. However... I get now that her family really could not help her out, but you can't run around crying "My mother aided and abetted a murder gang when I was ten" for EVERYTHING that ever happens to you. Is she going to be complaining about that stuff when she's 60 and gets a parking ticket?
I re-read the original story. She complained about a lot of things, but never once did she bring up her mother or the murder gang, not as an excuse, nor crying about it, nor in any form.
Reading her infamous blog post now while understanding her back story gives it a lot less flavor of entitlement and a lot more of disillusionment. I can imagine a kid working through high school and college with the overly simplified thought that “if I can just graduate from university, everything will be perfect”.
In the Cracked article Talia comes across as self-aware and presents a clear reflection of the history. That didn’t come across in her Yelp post. The writing does make a difference with how her blog post is perceived.
It can take many years for someone to get over traumatic events in their childhood, so we shouldn’t expect her to have it all worked out by the time she’s 25. Everyone is responsible for their own life, and this is not an attempt to make excuses for her. Her post was still the wrong format to express her disillusionment, frustration, or entitlement. When she does get her shit together, however, in my opinion she will be more admirable than those of us who didn’t have such difficulties to overcome.
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All this talk about living costs in SF is only valid if that's where this Talia person is from. But it's not. She actually went into debt to move to the most expensive metropolitan area in the country for a customer service job. That fact, in and of itself, should make her completely unqualified to talk about anything to do with COL because clearly she is totally clueless about money.
What, she wants to be close to her dad? My MIL is dying of cancer. Is my husband moving to Vancouver BC to be close to her? No, because it's an incredibly expensive city without high paying jobs. Rational people think before making big life decisions.
Yes, there is a housing problem in SF. But if more affordable housing gets created, I really hope it doesn't get taken advantage of by people like Talia who should never have moved to SF in the first place.
It's hard for people to understand, but to the degree that everyone has a fundamental right to housing (which I personally believe in, in a general sense) you don't have the right to live wherever you choose. This is why I oppose putting below market rate housing in San Francisco-- it really just drives up the price of market rate pricing and creates a lottery system for the service workers.
Plenty of people are doing fine in the Bay Area, despite the ridiculous prices. I wasn't entirely joking earlier when i said some companies pay in hype. Certain companies look so good on your resume, and expect such unwavering dedication from employees, that they pay less than competitors (eg Apple). And there is certainly a kind of job satisfaction to be had by drinking the company kool aid. You may be a bit delusional, but you have a sense of purpose and fulfillment.
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But my point still stands: you cannot blame everything that goes badly for you ever on one childhood incident, even if it was a really awful one.
I agree. The beauty of maths is that it's completely neutral - no matter your personal story, if the math doesn't add up, you need to go back to the drawing board. You can't make 1 and 1 equal 3 because you'd really like that and geez, you're such a nice person with a terrible past. Sorry, it still equals 2. If you want 3, who am I to argue with your wishes, but you need to come up with the extra 1 yourself!
Yes! Very good way of putting it, Nederstash.
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Yes, there is a housing problem in SF. But if more affordable housing gets created, I really hope it doesn't get taken advantage of by people like Talia who should never have moved to SF in the first place.
Either way, it's a San Francisco problem, so it's up to the mayor, city counsel, and voters of San Francisco to fix it. If the city needs to enforce rent controls, then that's what they need to do. If they need to pass a redevelopment ordinance to provide higher density, taller apartment building to increase the total number of units in the city, then that's up to the city to decide. If they need to raise their minimum wage again to something even higher, then again, only the city of SF has the authority to do that. Any way you slice it, if there's a problem, it's up to the government officials and voters of San Francisco to fix it. There's nothing that any one of us not living there can do to change their situation.
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OK, wow, that is one hell of an intense backstory. However... I get now that her family really could not help her out, but you can't run around crying "My mother aided and abetted a murder gang when I was ten" for EVERYTHING that ever happens to you. Is she going to be complaining about that stuff when she's 60 and gets a parking ticket?
I re-read the original story. She complained about a lot of things, but never once did she bring up her mother or the murder gang, not as an excuse, nor crying about it, nor in any form.
Reading her infamous blog post now while understanding her back story gives it a lot less flavor of entitlement and a lot more of disillusionment. I can imagine a kid working through high school and college with the overly simplified thought that “if I can just graduate from university, everything will be perfect”.
In the Cracked article Talia comes across as self-aware and presents a clear reflection of the history. That didn’t come across in her Yelp post. The writing does make a difference with how her blog post is perceived.
It can take many years for someone to get over traumatic events in their childhood, so we shouldn’t expect her to have it all worked out by the time she’s 25. Everyone is responsible for their own life, and this is not an attempt to make excuses for her. Her post was still the wrong format to express her disillusionment, frustration, or entitlement. When she does get her shit together, however, in my opinion she will be more admirable than those of us who didn’t have such difficulties to overcome.
I read the Cracked article thoroughly. Assuming it was written by the same person and also verified and fact checked by Cracked (which, let's face it, doesn't happen all the time even in other forms of media), I see why the author might have trust issues. What I don't see is any automatic connection between those trust issues and sharing an apartment with someone else. Her mother's bad decision making wasn't caused by sharing accommodations.
Let's suppose for the sake of argument that the author had trust issues that caused her to reject possible lodging compromises that required selecting a roommate before committing to the move. Would those same trust issues not also have caused trouble during that 3-month period after starting to work, when she was supposedly looking for a roommate? I'd personally think that trust issues like that would be permanent, and possibly grounds for declaring all roommates a no-go, forever, which would require a person to make compromises such as not accepting work in a high COL area. Yet none of this is consistent with her description of having moved to SF expecting to find a roommate.
Also, nowhere in her open letter does the original author refer to anything in her past that rules out having a roommate. What she actually wrote attempts to justify living alone simply because she's "a young woman", as though her age and gender entitled her to a higher standard of living than, say, people of a different age or gender but with the same income.
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I've had roommates continuously since graduating high school and that has made me far less entitled overall because I've had to work with and live with people (some whom I got along great with and others whom I didn't).
It's a small thing but still helpful in the process of realizing you aren't the center of the universe.
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Also, nowhere in her open letter does the original author refer to anything in her past that rules out having a roommate. What she actually wrote attempts to justify living alone simply because she's "a young woman", as though her age and gender entitled her to a higher standard of living than, say, people of a different age or gender but with the same income.
Ms. Jane's letter did not contain persuasive or rigorous arguments, but I don't think that justifies the level of personal attacks that she has received in this thread. As I said in my earlier post (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/antimustachian-wall-of-shame-and-comedy/i-can't-do-math-so-i-wrote-a-public-letter-to-my-ceo-and-get-myself-fired!/msg986152/#msg986152), she made a mistake in moving to an expensive area to work a minimum-wage job. In my view, it's not necessary to criticise her character or dissect her life further beyond that.
It's really not surprising that she didn't describe her past in the letter. It was very brave of her to even write about it at all in that cracked.com article. It makes sense to me that she might be comfortable complaining about what she perceives as an unduly low level of pay without being comfortable incorporating references to her childhood. Speaking for myself only, I rarely include any personal information in my posts on the forum, even when it would be relevant to the topic, because I prefer to focus on the merits of the arguments at hand, rather than making things about me. And sure, to some extent Ms. Jane's letter was about her, but she was really just using herself as a stand-in for all people that she considers to be getting an unfair shake in life at the hands of successful capitalists; she intentionally omitted references to what makes her unique.
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I read the Cracked article thoroughly. Assuming it was written by the same person and also verified and fact checked by Cracked (which, let's face it, doesn't happen all the time even in other forms of media), I see why the author might have trust issues.
The Cracked article lists Talia Jane as a co-author. The first-listed author is Robert Evans ("My name is Robert Evans. I'm an editorial manager at Cracked and I run the personal experience article team. I can be reached at revanswriter@gmail.com.")
It's really not surprising that she didn't describe her past in the letter. It was very brave of her to even write about it at all in that cracked.com article.
I wonder, was it very brave of her to write the Cracked article, or was it an attempt to capitalize on her experience with hopes of jump-starting her writing career? Perhaps both. Can't fault her for that. It seems that Talia now has at least two pretty sensational articles under her belt.
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what gets my goat is now, this young, single, educated white woman gets to be the face of the living wage(poverty)(housing crisis) debate.
this is not a new issue and this is not the end of it.
the level of attention and traction being garnered by, literally, one of the most able-bodied, and fortunate groups of people in the literal world is sickening.
people in all sorts of industries have ALWAYS worked for low wages and in poor financial situations.
its infuriating that hearing this tale of 'woe' is making people actually talk about the situation.
she has options, and choices which she refuses to avail herself of. many choices that other people cant make.
imagine if she was:
supporting a family as the sole bread winner while having to pay childcare
elderly and thus waay less likely to make more money than this till death
didnt have a college degree, or even a HS diploma.
formerly incarcerated
caring for someone who is ill
have the shitty insurance that typically comes with low paying jobs. ( i have a well paying job and my copay still isnt $20)
not have access to public transit.
had to deal with not being a native english speaker
deal with some sort of racial prejudice.
i wonder if that CVS worker who gave her gas money knew she moved her to meme about delivery food and lived in a 2.5k/month apartment. sounds like she should have been given a job application
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Im not here to defend the mass consumptionism of the millennials but let us not act like the stuff I mention is new to this generation. One today cannot attend college without going into debt unless they have a substantial amount of support from home or from the government and/or from the university in the form of scholarships. In the past one could of worked a part time job in the summer and pay a substantial amount of their tuition while today that is not possible unless you attend a cheap public universitiy like I did.
As for the stuff I mentioned i.e. going out for dinner a few times a month, yearly vacations, car, home etc these were the standard for your average middle class family in the United States. Today to afford such luxuries one needs to make much more than the median household income of around $55...in most areas.
My husband graduated in 1985, it took him 7 years to graduate from a public, low-cost university. He worked his way through community college and worked to make money to pay his way through Western Illinois. He never failed anything, never even changed his major. It just was not that easy to work to pay your way back then as it is being portrayed. He worked hard and the opportunity cost for all those years was high.
I got accepted to the University of Chicago, but didn't get much aid, and I looked at $25K a year and multiplied by 4 to get $100. I knew that there was no way that we could do that. So I went to state school. I got a lot of merit aid, so it didn't take me 7 years, but I'll always remember that sticker shock.
When I was growing up in the 80s, we never took a vacation that didn't involve staying with relatives. We did own our house and have 2 cars. We had two parents working, we rarely went out to eat. I only remember going out when my grandparents came to town and they would treat. Yes, we had a house, and cars.
This is all anecdotal, I realize. But when you're painting with such a broad brush, you miss some detail.
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On the bright side, somebody took screen shots of all the things she managed to make out of that bag of rice she said she lived on:
http://thatsalotofrice.com/
She must be the best cook in the universe to have made all those things out of that one bag of rice she said she's starving on.
Ermahgerd, I laughed so hard.
I'm a big fan of whiskey and make about 6x her pay, with massively lower COL, and would still be hard pressed to buy top shelf, let alone pay extra for someone to bring it to me. And that retort! Hahaha... I agree that the big picture includes very real and legitimate concerns about wages and COL in some locations, but she is a terrible case study. She seems to delight in not wanting to work too hard for success.
(http://thatsalotofrice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/13.jpg) (http://thatsalotofrice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Screen-Shot-2016-02-24-at-11.48.38-PM.png)
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Putting a reminder in my calendar to look where she is 6 months from now.
Would you please add to your calendar reminder to come post an update in this thread? ;-)
Update time!
So Talia has moved no New York, to be a comedian. She posts around 1337 tweets per day. Is this how normal people use twitter? I don't know, but I can't look away.
There are regular tweets about not having a job, but it's really hard to follow.
https://twitter.com/itsa_talia
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Interesting.
Might as well edit that calendar entry to be next Feb and check in at the 1 yr mark. :D
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Putting a reminder in my calendar to look where she is 6 months from now.
Would you please add to your calendar reminder to come post an update in this thread? ;-)
Update time!
So Talia has moved no New York, to be a comedian. She posts around 1337 tweets per day. Is this how normal people use twitter? I don't know, but I can't look away.
There are regular tweets about not having a job, but it's really hard to follow.
https://twitter.com/itsa_talia
Amazing. I don't care that it's Monday, I'm having popcorn while reading her twitter. "I like how the old trains vibrate on my hemorrhoids". Her writing skills have certainly... developed.
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Wow, that girl is BITTER! Thanks for getting us the update, Paul.
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She's speaking at a conference I'm going to in a few weeks!
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She's speaking at a conference I'm going to in a few weeks!
In that case, you are our assigned reporter. Please let us know if she says anything particularly laugh-worthy or something that's surprisingly wise!
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She's speaking at a conference I'm going to in a few weeks!
Which topic is the conference on?
1) How women are oppressed by men
2) How millennials are oppressed by older generations
3) How income inequality oppresses artists
4) How the nation's "pay for work" economic system oppresses unemployed people
Because those are conferences I would expect this woman to speak at.
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1) How women are oppressed by men
3) How income inequality oppresses artists
It's a conference for independent artists who make their living using the internet. In the past, they ended up having a lot of speakers who are women who are prominent on the internet talking about getting rape threats/doxxed/otherwise violently threatened. So I wonder if she's going to talk about that, since that happened to her.
I'm intrigued to hear what she has to say - at the very least, it might help me given that I teach personal finance to
millennial college students. :-P
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She's speaking at a conference I'm going to in a few weeks!
Which topic is the conference on?
4) How the nation's "pay for work" economic system oppresses unemployed people
Clever! My vote is for #4.
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It's a conference for independent artists who make their living using the internet.
Huh. I'm really curious how she merited a speaking slot.
Can't wait for your report. :)
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It's a conference for independent artists who make their living using the internet.
Huh. I'm really curious how she merited a speaking slot.
True for very small values of "living" ?
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It's a conference for independent artists who make their living using the internet.
Huh. I'm really curious how she merited a speaking slot.
True for very small values of "living" ?
Maybe she's an example of the opposite--How to lose your living via the Internet. ;)
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So I started following her (motivated by this thread), and there really is little value added.
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I like her sense of humor, just not the underlying message. But I did update my calendar entry to satisfy my voyeuristic tendencies. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion except every other frame is some crazy person shouting at the birds.
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I don't like the begging for money, but I also think it's pretty cold to pile on this girl or anyone else in a similar situation.
My angle on this is that her employer has been leading her on from the start that the pay and conditions are not so good now, but if she keeps working hard and saving them money there are better positions just around the corner. Which there probably aren't.
It's also kind of amazing to me that someone in a white collar job in one of the most expensive cities in the world is being paid about the same as my company's entry level staff in an east Asian city with very low cost of living. I don't know enough about the US to explain that one, but it sucks.
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It's also kind of amazing to me that someone in a white collar job in one of the most expensive cities in the world is being paid about the same as my company's entry level staff in an east Asian city with very low cost of living. I don't know enough about the US to explain that one, but it sucks.
Capitalism - she has no skills which make her better than anyone else at the job, she can be replaced by a million other people.
In the same city interns (students getting work experience during the vacation) are being paid more than doctors earn in many parts of europe.
Because they have valuable skills and are scarce and companies will have to compete for them when they graduate
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Lately I have been researching rents and COL in various large US cities, and I think this mentality really boils down to a misguided belief that everyone is entitled to a certain standard of living regardless of where they choose to live.
So in that person's mind, choosing to live in one of the most desirable cities on earth is no luxury, it's just part of living. It gets worse when an area suddenly gets more expensive quickly, because people who used to be able to afford it suddenly can't, and that strikes them as very unfair.
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Lately I have been researching rents and COL in various large US cities, and I think this mentality really boils down to a misguided belief that everyone is entitled to a certain standard of living regardless of where they choose to live.
So in that person's mind, choosing to live in one of the most desirable cities on earth is no luxury, it's just part of living. It gets worse when an area suddenly gets more expensive quickly, because people who used to be able to afford it suddenly can't, and that strikes them as very unfair.
+1
Pretty much sums up this woman's attitude.
It's not her responsibility to pick a city she can afford to live in, it's the cities responsibility to make it affordable for her, apparently.
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Lately I have been researching rents and COL in various large US cities, and I think this mentality really boils down to a misguided belief that everyone is entitled to a certain standard of living regardless of where they choose to live.
So in that person's mind, choosing to live in one of the most desirable cities on earth is no luxury, it's just part of living. It gets worse when an area suddenly gets more expensive quickly, because people who used to be able to afford it suddenly can't, and that strikes them as very unfair.
+1
Pretty much sums up this woman's attitude.
It's not her responsibility to pick a city she can afford to live in, it's the cities responsibility to make it affordable for her, apparently.
Agree. Very well explained.
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Lately I have been researching rents and COL in various large US cities, and I think this mentality really boils down to a misguided belief that everyone is entitled to a certain standard of living regardless of where they choose to live.
So in that person's mind, choosing to live in one of the most desirable cities on earth is no luxury, it's just part of living. It gets worse when an area suddenly gets more expensive quickly, because people who used to be able to afford it suddenly can't, and that strikes them as very unfair.
+1
Pretty much sums up this woman's attitude.
It's not her responsibility to pick a city she can afford to live in, it's the cities responsibility to make it affordable for her, apparently.
This pretty much sums up everyone's* attitude in SF.
*not literally, but so many- the people who constantly keep pushing rent control and subsidized (below market rate) housing. Also the people who complain that $200k is just getting by because housing is so expensive, not realizing that consuming $80k of housing per year in SF is a luxury no matter how the size or finish compares to what equivalent rent would get you in Texas.
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Lately I have been researching rents and COL in various large US cities, and I think this mentality really boils down to a misguided belief that everyone is entitled to a certain standard of living regardless of where they choose to live.
So in that person's mind, choosing to live in one of the most desirable cities on earth is no luxury, it's just part of living. It gets worse when an area suddenly gets more expensive quickly, because people who used to be able to afford it suddenly can't, and that strikes them as very unfair.
+1
Pretty much sums up this woman's attitude.
It's not her responsibility to pick a city she can afford to live in, it's the cities responsibility to make it affordable for her, apparently.
Agree. Very well explained.
Until you witness the creative heart drop out of a city. RIP Sydney. It will take a decade to get back the culture you had and lost due to your steep ascent towards the $1mn median house price.
Melbourne really didnt need more creatives. And now we have only one big cultured city in our whole country (Melbourne). That feels limiting, and its what happens when en mass people "takes responsibility".
Sent from my SM-G900K using Tapatalk
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I haven't checked the location of every poster, but I get the vibe that this is a very US-centred approach to someone experiencing a financial crisis. It's pretty shocking that anyone could be expected to live on $8.15 per hour. I don't feel that she's anti-Mustacian or whiney, she's simply financially stressed. Employees being paid such a low wage does seem to be something that the CEO should be aware of and is ultimately resposible for - the buck stops with the CEO, that's why they get paid the big bucks. I feel really grateful to live in Australia, where I don't have to worry about paying to access healthcare and we have active trade unions who push for a living wage (it's not perfect, but at least companies found to be paying low wages like these ultimately tend to get outed and audited). People working full time not able to earn a living wage is a social problem, not an individual problem. Why are people piling on and criticising someone earning such a low wage? Whatever your generation, $8.15 per hour is a really hard wage to have to live on in an industrialised / developed country.
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Agree, $8.15 is crap. Don't give me this capitalism bullshit that "this is what the market is willing to pay". Society should be able to do better than that, rather than all the wealth accruing to a handful of people who do not, for all practical purposes, need it.
If someone working full-time can't afford to live a semi decent existence, something is definitely wrong.
Until you witness the creative heart drop out of a city. RIP Sydney. It will take a decade to get back the culture you had and lost due to your steep ascent towards the $1mn median house price.
Melbourne really didnt need more creatives. And now we have only one big cultured city in our whole country (Melbourne). That feels limiting, and its what happens when en mass people "takes responsibility".
The creative types seem to all live in inner city Surry Hills, Newtown, Marrickville and Balmain where the median is well north of $1.2 million. They seem to be doing just fine and dandy actually?
That has always surprised me actually... I understand their plight of low income, yet they still manage to afford to live in the inner city. Is it a case of rich relatives giving them a gigantic helping hand, so they can choose to do what they love rather than take a career like the rest of us?
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I haven't checked the location of every poster, but I get the vibe that this is a very US-centred approach to someone experiencing a financial crisis. It's pretty shocking that anyone could be expected to live on $8.15 per hour. I don't feel that she's anti-Mustacian or whiney, she's simply financially stressed. Employees being paid such a low wage does seem to be something that the CEO should be aware of and is ultimately resposible for - the buck stops with the CEO, that's why they get paid the big bucks. I feel really grateful to live in Australia, where I don't have to worry about paying to access healthcare and we have active trade unions who push for a living wage (it's not perfect, but at least companies found to be paying low wages like these ultimately tend to get outed and audited). People working full time not able to earn a living wage is a social problem, not an individual problem. Why are people piling on and criticising someone earning such a low wage? Whatever your generation, $8.15 per hour is a really hard wage to have to live on in an industrialised / developed country.
$8.15/hour after all taxes plus benefits (such as healthcare) and tons of food for a blatantly entry level job is not horribly bad for an entry level job.
It works out to be $20k/year, after tax, and that's assuming her tax forms are set correctly (which they probably aren't so she probably will receive a good sized tax refund). So basically $25k or so salary for an entry level job with benefits.
Her problem is the city, not the wage.
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It's also kind of amazing to me that someone in a white collar job in one of the most expensive cities in the world is being paid about the same as my company's entry level...
The key is that she wasn't doing a white collar job, she was very much in an entry level office help "answer phones and schedule meetings" position and was compensated accordingly. I guarantee the core of the business (aka sales, development, and technical ops) are all on large salaries or commission. Unfortunately there are plenty of semi-predatory start ups out there who lure in unemployed journalism majors to do their grunt work with promises of "join a startup! Young fun co-workers, snacks and you'll change the world from the comfort of SF! Unlimited growth as we grow!" and well, articles like this one are often the result.
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It's also kind of amazing to me that someone in a white collar job in one of the most expensive cities in the world is being paid about the same as my company's entry level...
The key is that she wasn't doing a white collar job, she was very much in an entry level office help "answer phones and schedule meetings" position and was compensated accordingly. I guarantee the core of the business (aka sales, development, and technical ops) are all on large salaries or commission. Unfortunately there are plenty of semi-predatory start ups out there who lure in unemployed journalism majors to do their grunt work with promises of "join a startup! Young fun co-workers, snacks and you'll change the world from the comfort of SF! Unlimited growth as we grow!" and well, articles like this one are often the result.
I would normally agree with you, but I feel like someone that's been a journalistic major should be aware enough to research the company to avoid predatory situations, and also check on other sources to see what living conditions are like and if they are able to afford it.
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The girl received education that is not popular in the job market. Got in debt by buying "shiny car" right before even starting her job. Moved to the most expensive area possible.
Yes, prices in San Fran are ridiculous. Same in NY that I declined 10 years ago when deciding to move to Seattle instead. And with Ukrainian education I was able to find higher salary at entry level position than this girl, thus was able to rent one bedroom apartment because I also preferred to live alone. I used public transportation instead of buying "shiny car" right away.
I would fire this girl as well.
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I would normally agree with you...
Oh, I completely agree with you, she gets no credit for falling into the trap. I was just explicating the quoted passage's question as to how a "white collar" job could pay so little.
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The problem I have with this young lady is the bad judgement she used to call out her CEO PUBLICALLY. If she didn't like the wage offered, she shouldn't have accepted the position.
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People working full time not able to earn a living wage is a social problem, not an individual problem.
She was in San Francisco, which means if you want to call it a social problem, then it's a San Francisco problem. They already have their own (higher) minimum wage, and if that's not enough then it is the responsibility of the City of San Francisco to raise their minimum wage, maybe to $25-30/hour based on living costs I see there.
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Whatever your generation, $8.15 per hour is a really hard wage to have to live on in an industrialised / developed country.
Commenting from the developed parts of Europe, I am not entirely convinced. This is, as already pointed out, after tax money and adds up to a lot more than you can earn in a similar position in pretty much any developed European country (pretty sure the only obvious exception is Switzerland, even in Luxembourg, the richest non-Switzerland around, the legal minimum wage would hover somewhere around this in after-tax money for a single person).
But it is also in (even the most socialist parts of) Europe generally unthinkable that a person in this situation (25 year old, fuzzy educational background, doing a completely unqualified job for less than a year) could live in a high cost of living city renting a one bedroom apartment for themselves + own a car.
If that is really possible in Australia I am mildly jealous (as I have like many others spent my 20s living with horrible roommates and not being able to afford all that much bang) but I felt the need to defend the Americans on this as it seems the kind, welfare focused Europe is even worse in this regard.
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People working full time not able to earn a living wage is a social problem, not an individual problem.
She was in San Francisco, which means if you want to call it a social problem, then it's a San Francisco problem. They already have their own (higher) minimum wage, and if that's not enough then it is the responsibility of the City of San Francisco to raise their minimum wage, maybe to $25-30/hour based on living costs I see there.
Like every other country, the USA is interconnected so what happens in one major city does seem to be something that would affect people in other parts of the country. There are BOTH federal and state factors in play setting wages. This isn't a single person't issue, or even a single region issue, this is a social problem.
The girl received education that is not popular in the job market. Got in debt by buying "shiny car" right before even starting her job. Moved to the most expensive area possible.
I used public transportation instead of buying "shiny car" right away.
Did you read what she wrote before posting this little bit of judgement? She didn't buy a car, the car she has belongs to someone else and she is using it. She also explained why SF was the choice she made, and given the context provided on this thread it kind of makes sense from an emotional point of view.
This person wrote this post on her personal blog, not the MMM forum. So she didn't write it with the financial perspective that the rest of us on here have, and yet we feel free to write judgy and ill-informed remarks about her showing that we don't feel it it necessary to actually read what she has said. I think my inner nurse makes me feel very compassionate towards this young woman who has had an horrific experience that only a very unfortunate few have had to experience. Having been similarly exposed to murder in my family myself, it does change the metrics of financial calculations in my life compared to others. She may make decisions that don't seem frugal, but she is young and probably needs a lot more time to grow and learn than other people given her history. She didn't ask for other people to judge her choices, she sounded frustrated, unheard, ignored, very vulnerable, and like she worked in an environment full of people who weren't emotionally together. She's moved on with her life since being sacked.
How about we stop kicking someone earning such a low wage over their history, and instead find a blog post by a lawyer earning $100K pa who is about to go bankrupt to fund an astrology course? I can jump on that bandwagon.
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Whatever your generation, $8.15 per hour is a really hard wage to have to live on in an industrialised / developed country.
Commenting from the developed parts of Europe, I am not entirely convinced. This is, as already pointed out, after tax money and adds up to a lot more than you can earn in a similar position in pretty much any developed European country (pretty sure the only obvious exception is Switzerland, even in Luxembourg, the richest non-Switzerland around, the legal minimum wage would hover somewhere around this in after-tax money for a single person).
But it is also in (even the most socialist parts of) Europe generally unthinkable that a person in this situation (25 year old, fuzzy educational background, doing a completely unqualified job for less than a year) could live in a high cost of living city renting a one bedroom apartment for themselves + own a car.
If that is really possible in Australia I am mildly jealous (as I have like many others spent my 20s living with horrible roommates and not being able to afford all that much bang) but I felt the need to defend the Americans on this as it seems the kind, welfare focused Europe is even worse in this regard.
To clarify, the $8.15/hour after taxes is specific to California, which has a gross state minimum wage of $10. The US federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour. There are federally required FICA Social Security and Medicare taxes which the employee is required to pay 7.65% via payroll taxes.
So, a person earning the California minimum wage would earn 10*40*52=$20,800 annually. If they were single (as this woman is), they would owe $1,114 in federal income taxes and $1,154 in FICA taxes for an effective tax rate of 11%. (Before any tax credits that they might be eligible for, like student loan interest, but also before any state taxes and sales taxes. This poster in particular is not eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit because she is childless and under 25.)
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following
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Isn't this just a digital resume?
1. Write snarky stuff about job in bay area
2. Go viral
3. Get desired job in "media"
I'm not sure why everyone think's the letter was a stupid thing to do. Sure, she lost her job. But it didn't pay enough for her to live where it was located (getting a roommate aside, which sure, would have alleviated the stress a bit but that low of wage in that area probably isn't doable in the long term) so why not throw a hail mary hoping to get her name out there? I think it was a good move.
I agree. I also saw the letter this way: a good way for her to get media attention, and that will probably land her the kind of job she's looking for. I feel this was actually a smart move: dump the low-wage job while using it as a ramp for landing a much high-paying job.
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I do feel sorry for low-wage workers because I have been there before. I know how hard it is to escape from that kind of employment and how the job wears you down to the point where you make irrational, self-defeating decisions. Not everyone lives the very easy lives of the middle class so they often make decisions that seem really irrational to people who have never known desperation before.
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Saw her talk - it was actually pretty good. It was the first time she's ever done any public speaking. The main points of the talk were:
- She was attempting to make points about it's ridiculous for a $2billion company to be losing money in the amount of turnover caused by paying their Eat24 workers so little they all leave in less than 6 months. The lack of sick time/paid leave meant that she saw coworkers qualify for Section 8 housing but unable to take a day off work to move in. Other Yelp employees got free food during their shifts and were making double what the Eat24 support staff were, which was contributing to her frustration. She was attempting to be a whistleblower.
- Part of what triggered her letter was that the CEO of Yelp constantly sends "vlogs" around to all staff saying how Awesome the Company is Doing and he'd just send another one (which she was required to watch) that included him talking about how great the company is doing and things like him playing pokemon go while talking about how Yelp is the Best. She had just watched another one when she composed the letter.
- It really really sucks to be trolled by the internet in mass and go "viral". Death/rape threats and constant reporters and people sending her her apartment address they figured out from a barcode visible in a photo sucks.
- The story about her "whining" blew up but only two news outlets covered the fact that a couple months after she was fired, Yelp raised the amount (http://qz.com/672681/yelp-increases-wages-after-firing-an-employee-who-was-critical-about-her-low-pay/) they were paying their lowest-paid staff to $14/hr and implemented sick leave/paid leave. The story was only interesting when they were blaming her for being terrible, not once actual change was made.
Here's a screenshot from the talk:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CsAyZgyVMAEafwq.jpg)
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She was attempting to be a whistleblower.
lol.
Nice spin.
The story about her "whining" blew up but only two news outlets covered the fact that a couple months after she was fired, Yelp raised the amount (http://qz.com/672681/yelp-increases-wages-after-firing-an-employee-who-was-critical-about-her-low-pay/) they were paying their lowest-paid staff to $14/hr and implemented sick leave/paid leave.
That's pretty awesome!
The screenshot you posted still makes her seem like an egotistical blowhard along with dat spin. Whistleblower. I'm still laughing. :)
Thanks for the followup!
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egotistical blowhard along with dat spin. Whistleblower. I'm still laughing. :)
She definitely seemed to be a bit egotistical, but generally just a well-meaning young woman without much money skills. She was a pretty good speaker and really funny. I hope she lands on her feet in NYC (good job picking the next most expensive city *eyeroll*)
(To be fair, she did reference her coworker's struggles AND the fact that the company was less efficient because of turnover in her original letter. But yes, spin.)
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She's seriously moving to NY now? Hope she's earning more than minimum wage....
I'm pretty sure she doesn't have a job at ALL because she just sent out an emoji filled tweet asking people to hire her.
(http://i.imgur.com/oARMdpU.png)
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She's seriously moving to NY now? Hope she's earning more than minimum wage....
I'm pretty sure she doesn't have a job at ALL because she just sent out an emoji filled tweet asking people to hire her.
(http://i.imgur.com/oARMdpU.png)
Sheesh. You couldn't make this up if you tried.
Young woman gets fired from low paid job job in most expensive city in the country, decides to move to second most expensive city in the country. Job to be acquired through Twitter between cat pictures and fart jokes. Featuring Jennifer Aniston, tonight after football.
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The lack of self-awareness is what gets me. :)
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Agree, $8.15 is crap. Don't give me this capitalism bullshit that "this is what the market is willing to pay". Society should be able to do better than that, rather than all the wealth accruing to a handful of people who do not, for all practical purposes, need it.
If someone working full-time can't afford to live a semi decent existence, something is definitely wrong.
Until you witness the creative heart drop out of a city. RIP Sydney. It will take a decade to get back the culture you had and lost due to your steep ascent towards the $1mn median house price.
Melbourne really didnt need more creatives. And now we have only one big cultured city in our whole country (Melbourne). That feels limiting, and its what happens when en mass people "takes responsibility".
The creative types seem to all live in inner city Surry Hills, Newtown, Marrickville and Balmain where the median is well north of $1.2 million. They seem to be doing just fine and dandy actually?
That has always surprised me actually... I understand their plight of low income, yet they still manage to afford to live in the inner city. Is it a case of rich relatives giving them a gigantic helping hand, so they can choose to do what they love rather than take a career like the rest of us?
Anedotal evidence but huge numbers of my creative Sydney friends have gone south (to Melbourne). The interstate migration stats seem to back this up, but of course they don't tell us who is moving, just the numbers between the states.
Sent from my SM-G900K using Tapatalk
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Agree, $8.15 is crap. Don't give me this capitalism bullshit that "this is what the market is willing to pay". Society should be able to do better than that, rather than all the wealth accruing to a handful of people who do not, for all practical purposes, need it.
If someone working full-time can't afford to live a semi decent existence, something is definitely wrong.
So who should decide what a "living wage" is? And seriously, anyone working full-time no matter the job should have a "semi decent" existence? So if I spend all day making mud-cakes I should be able to live a "semi decent" life regardless if anyone else values my work? Again who decides what "semi decent" is? Does that come with a choice of cities to live in and latest iPhone?
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The "projects" in US cities were supposed to be a good thing that helped the poor. How did that work out?
Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
Anyway, this is discussion is probably better in a different thread.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
No. The real minimum wage is always $0.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If only it were that easy. I predict that in 10 years 1/4 (if not more) of all current minimum wage jobs will be replaced by some sort of automation. Things will only accelerate from there.
I do not understand why this lesson is never learned: just giving people more money never solves the underlying problems long term. You really want to help low level workers then there are much better methods that have been proven over time to have a much bigger impact that simply artificially raising minimum wage: better public transportation, subsidized day care, better access to education and retraining, etc.
People always only think of the short term effects of their favorite "solution". Sure, short term raising minimum wage would pump extra money into the hands of minimum wage workers, but shortly after those gains would be erased by a combination of raised prices of goods due to higher labor costs, increased pressure to eliminate low level unskilled jobs due to higher labor costs, reduced employment etc.
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Agree, $8.15 is crap. Don't give me this capitalism bullshit that "this is what the market is willing to pay". Society should be able to do better than that, rather than all the wealth accruing to a handful of people who do not, for all practical purposes, need it.
If someone working full-time can't afford to live a semi decent existence, something is definitely wrong.
So who should decide what a "living wage" is? And seriously, anyone working full-time no matter the job should have a "semi decent" existence? So if I spend all day making mud-cakes I should be able to live a "semi decent" life regardless if anyone else values my work? Again who decides what "semi decent" is? Does that come with a choice of cities to live in and latest iPhone?
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The "projects" in US cities were supposed to be a good thing that helped the poor. How did that work out?
Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
Anyway, this is discussion is probably better in a different thread.
Bah! Over $20 per hour now. Has me thinking- why is living wage ( advocated as starting wage for city employees and contractors) supposed to be for two adults with kids? Would not one person make more before you choose kids? The kids part ends up with too high a wage for singles and childless couples. I think it is better to base it on a single person, and rely on social programs to help single parents top up the difference.
After all, less than 50 percent of households have kids.
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No doubt this young woman received an offer letter stating her wage and start date. She signed and accepted the offer. If she wasn't happy with the rate offered, she shouldn't have accepted the job.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
Hah. Yes. You win hard.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
No. The real minimum wage is always $0.
Don't forget negative wages. For example, you pay to do construction projects in developing countries.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
No. The real minimum wage is always $0.
Don't forget negative wages. For example, you pay to do construction projects in developing countries.
Or like how Pete charges me per post I make!
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
No. The real minimum wage is always $0.
Don't forget negative wages. For example, you pay to do construction projects in developing countries.
I always enjoyed reading about the exploits of Tom Sawyer....
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I know I am a little late to this party, and I do agree she seems a bit entitled, however I do not understand the assumptions that she has no roommate. She lives in the east bay and pays $1245 in rent. I'm guessing she does have a roommate. Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro, etc., while cheaper than SF are not cheap.
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- The story about her "whining" blew up but only two news outlets covered the fact that a couple months after she was fired, Yelp raised the amount (http://qz.com/672681/yelp-increases-wages-after-firing-an-employee-who-was-critical-about-her-low-pay/) they were paying their lowest-paid staff to $14/hr and implemented sick leave/paid leave. The story was only interesting when they were blaming her for being terrible, not once actual change was made.
The State of California passed a law requiring paid sick leave (3 days per year) for ALL employees effective 7/1/15. Unless Yelp is providing more than that, they are not doing anything but complying with the law.
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I know I am a little late to this party, and I do agree she seems a bit entitled, however I do not understand the assumptions that she has no roommate. She lives in the east bay and pays $1245 in rent. I'm guessing she does have a roommate. Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro, etc., while cheaper than SF are not cheap.
She doesn't. She's said so.
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Young woman gets fired from low paid job job in most expensive city in the country, decides to move to second most expensive city in the country. Job to be acquired through Twitter between cat pictures and fart jokes. Featuring Jennifer Aniston, tonight after football.
And YOU too could be the subject of her next writing foray. Its kind of like dating Taylor Swift (although if I was 25 again and single and all that I might chance it).
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
And shortly after that rent on a basic one bedroom will be $9500 a month. The markets will always adjust and keep the wage/COL proportions similar to what they are already. If a person doesn't like their income level, do something about it - education, move, etc.
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I think I am just always surprised at how differently people can view the same situation.
If I had moved to San Francisco,taken a low paying job and found myself not being able to make ends meet, my natural reaction would be to try and change the situation, either though a higher paying job or a lower cost of living area. If I felt it was unjust that every job doesn't pay enough to live anywhere I want, I hope I would complain and take action about that after trying to figure out how to remedy my particular situation first.
It just surprises me that her reaction is to try and implement social change without fixing her own situation. Social change takes a long time and isn't a practical solution for an immediate problem.
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If I had moved to San Francisco,taken a low paying job and found myself not being able to make ends meet, my natural reaction would be to try and change the situation, either though a higher paying job or a lower cost of living area.
So less successful than to become an internet sensation, get on the Ted talk circuit and end up as VP of internet media evangalism at some organisation with your own staff of unpaid interns, a ghost written self-help book and your own line of workout clothing
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
Not really because the people making $100/hr would be outbid by the people now making $200/hr.
Plus the people now making $100/hr who live a life like they make $105/hr would still not have any money.
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Bah! Over $20 per hour now. Has me thinking- why is living wage ( advocated as starting wage for city employees and contractors) supposed to be for two adults with kids? Would not one person make more before you choose kids? The kids part ends up with too high a wage for singles and childless couples. I think it is better to base it on a single person, and rely on social programs to help single parents top up the difference.
After all, less than 50 percent of households have kids.
In order to have kids one must perform in an ancient ritual we will call "happy time"
During happy time, the participants take a drug called oxytocin and endorphins. During this ritual, they often feel heightened life experiences. The end of the ritual is a marked by a build up of stress which in turn heightens one's experience as it is shortly released.
The problem is that the drugs taken during this ritual are highly, highly advised to not use with people who are unable to delay instant gratification.
Now how does this relate to your comment? People often want instant gratification and may not plan for the future. Therefore, they learn the reality of consequence in an 18 year sentence 9 months after their happy time ritual.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
Not really because the people making $100/hr would be outbid by the people now making $200/hr.
Then we'll up the first group to $201 per hour!
Your move.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
Not really because the people making $100/hr would be outbid by the people now making $200/hr.
Then we'll up the first group to $201 per hour!
Your move.
So now with their extra income they can buy rental properties and drive housing market up thereby making the $100/hr people feel even more poor.
They will also use their extra income to purchase totally unnecessary items, post them on social media, and then get the people making $100/hr to feel that they need to purchase said item to fit in. Being that they want to fit in, a large majority of said 100/hr people will purchase said item thereby increasing the wealth gap.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
Not really because the people making $100/hr would be outbid by the people now making $200/hr.
Plus the people now making $100/hr who live a life like they make $105/hr would still not have any money.
Plus you would pay the maid $100 per hour, plus markup... so make that pay the maid $140 per hour...
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
Not really because the people making $100/hr would be outbid by the people now making $200/hr.
Then we'll up the first group to $201 per hour!
Your move.
Well obviously we just need rent control and our problems will be solved
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
Not really because the people making $100/hr would be outbid by the people now making $200/hr.
Then we'll up the first group to $201 per hour!
Your move.
So now with their extra income they can buy rental properties and drive housing market up thereby making the $100/hr people feel even more poor.
Then we just raise the minimum wage again until they can afford the new prices.
1 million per hour should solve it.
Your move.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
Not really because the people making $100/hr would be outbid by the people now making $200/hr.
Then we'll up the first group to $201 per hour!
Your move.
So now with their extra income they can buy rental properties and drive housing market up thereby making the $100/hr people feel even more poor.
Then we just raise the minimum wage again until they can afford the new prices.
1 million per hour should solve it.
Your move.
And then we will have solved the problem of affordable housing in SF - they can all just moor their super yachts in the harbor
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And then we will have solved the problem of affordable housing in SF - they can all just moor their super yachts in the harbor
Good point.
And when we run out of space in the harbor for all the yachts, we'll just raise rent on the harbor spaces until they can't afford it anymore.
Of course, that will necessitate another round of raising the minimum wage, so that they can afford it again, thus solving the problem once and for all!
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And then we will have solved the problem of affordable housing in SF - they can all just moor their super yachts in the harbor
Good point.
And when we run out of space in the harbor for all the yachts, we'll just raise rent on the harbor spaces until they can't afford it anymore.
Of course, that will necessitate another round of raising the minimum wage, so that they can afford it again, thus solving the problem once and for all!
If the neighborhood becomes too crowded they can just live in Aspen and Lear-jet in for work
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Y’all are way over-thinking this issue. The only thing that we need to implement to solve the problem is a modification of our currency. At the day of the conversion, 1 “new” U.S. dollar is worth the same as one “old” U.S. cent. Suddenly everyone is making 100x more dollars than they use to make. Everyone will be so thrilled with their 10,000% pay raise that they’ll hardly mind the inflation. Everyone will be rich and happy.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
Not really because the people making $100/hr would be outbid by the people now making $200/hr.
Then we'll up the first group to $201 per hour!
Your move.
So now with their extra income they can buy rental properties and drive housing market up thereby making the $100/hr people feel even more poor.
Then we just raise the minimum wage again until they can afford the new prices.
1 million per hour should solve it.
Your move.
I lose.
That would create more jobs because everyone will just work one hour a lifetime and then FIRE.
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Have you even thought at all at what will happen when the "minimum wage" is artificially raised too high?
I'm guessing here, but my feeling is that the people that are most in need of money will make more money.
Do I win?
If you raised it to $100/hr everyone could own a nice place in downtown SF.
If you made if $115/hour they could all afford a maid
Not really because the people making $100/hr would be outbid by the people now making $200/hr.
Then we'll up the first group to $201 per hour!
Your move.
So now with their extra income they can buy rental properties and drive housing market up thereby making the $100/hr people feel even more poor.
Then we just raise the minimum wage again until they can afford the new prices.
1 million per hour should solve it.
Your move.
I lose.
That would create more jobs because everyone will just work one hour a lifetime and then FIRE.
No one could retire on 1 Million dollars! They would never be able to afford to pay their maid to clean their mega yacht.
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Still at it:
https://twitter.com/itsa_talia
https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a27376196/student-loan-debt-forgiveness-millennials/
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I know it's a two year old thread, but a couple things stuck out to me in the original essay.
Every single one of my coworkers is struggling. They’re taking side jobs, they’re living at home.
Where else would you live other than home?
Because I did include, half-facetiously, in that email he and Patty so politely rejected that Yelp could save about $24,000 in two months if the company stopped restocking flavored coconut waters since no one drinks them
How is it possible to restock a consumable no one uses?
Do you know how many cash coupons I used to give out before I was properly trained? In one month, I gave out over $600 to customers for a variety of issues. Now, since getting more training, I’ve given out about $15 in the past three months because I’ve been able to de-escalate messed up situations using just my customer service skills.
This is actually a good point. I think companies tend to undervalue tenure in entry level jobs.
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I personally hate the idiom “living at home” to mean “living with parents” but that’s how it’s used by many
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Two years later and she's still making minimum wage??
I have multiple friends and relatives with worthless degrees who started out in minimum wage basic retail, but it didn't take them very long to make it to store manager or assistant manager. After leaving tech, I've come to realize that the average employer or small business owner is just desperate for smart, responsible, hard working employees.
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I personally hate the idiom “living at home” to mean “living with parents” but that’s how it’s used by many
Which leads to my next question - why is cohabitating considered such an indignity?
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I personally hate the idiom “living at home” to mean “living with parents” but that’s how it’s used by many
Which leads to my next question - why is cohabitating considered such an indignity?
By choice it’s no indignity. The problem is when you do it because you are forced to by economic circumstances. Lack of freedom.
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I see on her twitter she wants to go to a 4-day "experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online" to be held in Oregon and is looking for someone to share a room with. The festival features internet people talking about their internet activities. Also includes playing video games and board games, and watching movies, It costs $500 and I'm struggling to see what the value is for a poor person.
Should I take this to mean she considers her social media activities to be her real career an an "independent artist"?
One of her 40 tweets today said "I will never be successful because the secret to success is logging the fuck off."
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Which leads to my next question - why is cohabitating considered such an indignity?
By choice it’s no indignity. The problem is when you do it because you are forced to by economic circumstances. Lack of freedom.
I feel that statement could be said about anything. “Why is not having a Rolex an indignity?” “It’s only an indignity if you can’t afford one, not if you can’t have one.”
Not having to share a bathroom is a luxury. Most of the homes built in the fifties were two or three beds, one baths (at least where I live). They weren’t exactly built for the fringe economic poor.
I would guess that over half the world’s population don’t have the economic freedom to live in a solitary home or apartment. I would guess most of them are pretty dignified people.
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Just about anybody with a pulse and half a brain could get a live-in nanny job in NYC and have no living expenses + time to develop the freelance writing career for a couple of years. Probably even in Brooklyn! But then she wouldn't be able to try to make a living by being snarky about how she is so deeply in debt and it is all society's fault.
I got temp jobs in NYC ten years ago that paid $20/hr. I didn't even have a degree, but I could communicate well and use Excel. She could 100% get an office job that pays more than minimum wage.
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I personally hate the idiom “living at home” to mean “living with parents” but that’s how it’s used by many
Which leads to my next question - why is cohabitating considered such an indignity?
By choice it’s no indignity. The problem is when you do it because you are forced to by economic circumstances. Lack of freedom.
It's what the living situation communicates about the type of job. Higher quality jobs (or maybe higher savings rates?) generate enough resources and momentum to progress through the life stages of living independently and forming a household apart from the parents.
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I personally hate the idiom “living at home” to mean “living with parents” but that’s how it’s used by many
Which leads to my next question - why is cohabitating considered such an indignity?
By choice it’s no indignity. The problem is when you do it because you are forced to by economic circumstances. Lack of freedom.
It's what the living situation communicates about the type of job. Higher quality jobs (or maybe higher savings rates?) generate enough resources and momentum to progress through the life stages of living independently and forming a household apart from the parents.
Higher quality jobs (that is to say, jobs requiring skills or credentials that in turn require substantial advance investment of time and/or money) are one factor. It seems to me that the author is trying-- but unable-- to articulate something about the serious barriers to entry into the kind of job that will provide that level of resources and momentum.
Barriers to entry include credentials, experience, connections, logistics, and external support. These barriers are real and not all of them are self inflicted. The writer's error is blaming all of these barriers on the employer.
With regard to credentials, I've seen serious credential inflation in most jobs, including caregiving, construction, and maintenance. Most call centers, schools, and transportation companies-- for example-- require a high school diploma or GED as a minimum condition for hiring people to do janitor, driver, or customer service work. But the jobs don't come close to requiring that level of education. In these cases, the credential is an artificial barrier to entry. I've heard it said that the bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma, and judging by the amount of remedial work required in the first year to compensate for the lack of preparation for college or university level work, I think it's an accurate statement. Companies require high credential levels because they can. But the time and money required to get a university degree is exploding.
The experience barrier is the not-well-articulated problem the article writer is trying to describe. To get a high quality job in today's economy, especially without a STEM degree, you generally need several years of experience. People start out in an entry-level job like the one the article writer had, and then rack up enough time and experience to qualify for a transfer to something that pays better. But the only way to get experience is if someone will hire you, or if someone will support you financially during the entry-level years, or if you pick the kind of job where the sort of work experience you can get as a student is relevant or valuable to the employer. People like the article writer, who focus on school instead of racking up work experience or who are financially unable to work for free at an "internship" for months at a time, often find themselves shut out of the desirable jobs because they graduate with little to no relevant work experience. They have to settle for entry-level jobs, which means they must either subsist at a very low standard of living that is well below what their upbringing and class expectations have taught them to expect... or they must be financially supported by somebody else such as a parent. A person who follows the conventional advice to move to a new geographical area has no such support system, which leads me to the next barriers.
Connections are how people tend to get jobs coming directly out of school. The school might have an established relationship with the employer, or the new employee might have been in a position to work an unpaid or low-paid internship. Logistics also favor the in-crowd. If you have multiple family members and friends to team up with, it's relatively easy to find a single room to rent in a safe household. If your family has lived in the Bay Area for generations, there are multiple potential safe places to sleep during the low-paid entry-level years or if the job you've trained for just doesn't pay much. At least some of them will be close to public transit so that the new employee can avoid expenses such as vehicle expenses. Being able to live with a parent or relative is a great way to avoid debt. But it's not the employer's fault if the new employee is from out of state and if he or she does not have a support system. It's also not the employer's fault if the new employee is not willing to accept a much lower standard of living than he or she enjoyed as a student or as a dependent of a more established person.
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Which leads to my next question - why is cohabitating considered such an indignity?
By choice it’s no indignity. The problem is when you do it because you are forced to by economic circumstances. Lack of freedom.
I feel that statement could be said about anything. “Why is not having a Rolex an indignity?” “It’s only an indignity if you can’t afford one, not if you can’t have one.”
Not having to share a bathroom is a luxury. Most of the homes built in the fifties were two or three beds, one baths (at least where I live). They weren’t exactly built for the fringe economic poor.
I would guess that over half the world’s population don’t have the economic freedom to live in a solitary home or apartment. I would guess most of them are pretty dignified people.
I think there’s a big difference between choosing your watch and choosing who shares your home. What if you have a bad relationship with your parents?
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It's what the living situation communicates about the type of job. Higher quality jobs (or maybe higher savings rates?) generate enough resources and momentum to progress through the life stages of living independently and forming a household apart from the parents.
So in the scenario where everyone gets paid a wage high enough to live on their own, it won’t be a discriminator at all. People will find other ways to tell that you don’t make as much money as others.
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I think there’s a big difference between choosing your watch and choosing who shares your home. What if you have a bad relationship with your parents?
Of course there is, but you don’t see that the indignity line can be arbitrarily moved? And it WILL move as more things are made available universally.
A living wage means people can cohabitate in a shelter. Or else they will die from exposure.
A living wage means people can afford groceries. Or else they will die from hunger.
A living wage means people can afford utilities. Or else they may die in a heat wave.
A living wage means people can work fewer than 80 hours a week. Or else they may have stress related illnesses.
A living wage means people can live on their own. Or else they may get stuck with an abusive boyfriend.
A living wage means people can afford cars with the latest safety technology. Or else they may die in an auto accident.
A living wage means people can commute from a country home. Or else their health will suffer from air, noise, and light pollution.
A living wage means people can send their children to the best universities. Or else their children will be at a disadvantage.
...
A living wage means people can afford rolexes. Or else their neighbors will know their yacht is made out of driftwood.
Where this line is and what is an acceptable indignity is pretty darn arbitrary. I don’t know where it is for me. Somewhere above utilities and somewhere below living on your own.
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Ah yes the line drawing fallacy. That’s a good one. Wherever the line is, rolexes are on the Luxury side and financial dependence on parents in adulthood is on the other
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You know there actually is a magic bullet for this young woman's problems. I know a way she can get free housing, a decent entry level salary, a signing bonus, and even get $50Kish of her student loans repaid.
It's called joining the military.
It requires a little hard work, but it would quite literally solve all of her problems.
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Ah yes the line drawing fallacy. That’s a good one. Wherever the line is, rolexes are on the Luxury side and financial dependence on parents in adulthood is on the other
I’m confused at your position on the matter. You stated drawing lines is a fallacy. And then you drew one.
But since I drew you into my line-drawing fallacy trap, I will counter your line location with two reasons I think it’s inappropriately drawn.
1) The majority of people can live safe, productive, healthy lives cohabitating.
2a) Jobs exist that require a very low skill set that do not command a market wage high enough to not cohabitate.
2b) Those jobs are perfect for teenagers and other people who need real world job experience but do not have real world responsibilities
Even if I conceded that not having to cohabitate is a necessary condition for a healthy, fruitful life (I do not), two arguments why requiring employers to pay a necessary wage is an inappropriate solution.
1) It makes it expensive to hire people. That expense spurs job killing automation faster than the natural pace and leaves unemployed workers looking for new skills.
2) It limits the jobs available to teenagers. Consequently they do not gain valuable skills early on.
A better solution would be to raise a profits or revenue tax on corporations, and use that to replace payroll taxes, mandated healthcare, minimum wage, etc. Corporations pay, but without the incentive to eliminate jobs. Would suck for companies who don’t have a lot a labor expense, because they would end up losers. Companies with a lot of labor expense end up winners.
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She's entitled.
She lives alone, in a HCOL area, and does a shitty job that doesn't require any skill. Guess what mate, the world doesn't owe you a fancy living in a nice unit.
I lived with a housemate even when I first made 6 figures (and my housemate did too, by the way) - it was how we both saved up. Why can't this idiot do so? Is she allergic to humans?
Does she expect a year 1, entry level job to have out of this world pay?
She has no skills or qualifications - she should understand that that is a path to mediocrity.
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She's entitled.
She lives alone, in a HCOL area, and does a shitty job that doesn't require any skill. Guess what mate, the world doesn't owe you a fancy living in a nice unit.
I lived with a housemate even when I first made 6 figures (and my housemate did too, by the way) - it was how we both saved up. Why can't this idiot do so? Is she allergic to humans?
Does she expect a year 1, entry level job to have out of this world pay?
She has no skills or qualifications - she should understand that that is a path to mediocrity.
Why the name calling?
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She's entitled.
She lives alone, in a HCOL area, and does a shitty job that doesn't require any skill. Guess what mate, the world doesn't owe you a fancy living in a nice unit.
I lived with a housemate even when I first made 6 figures (and my housemate did too, by the way) - it was how we both saved up. Why can't this idiot do so? Is she allergic to humans?
Does she expect a year 1, entry level job to have out of this world pay?
She has no skills or qualifications - she should understand that that is a path to mediocrity.
Why the name calling?
Name calling? Are you referring to idiot ?
idiot noun
id·i·ot | \ ˈi-dē-ət
Definition of idiot
1 a foolish or stupid person
2 dated, now offensive : a person affected with extreme mental retardation
@Bloop Bloop stated some facts.
I don't understand the stigma associated with one not living alone.
I have never lived alone, I do not understand the joy in living alone. Even work trips, I don' t like being alone in my hotel room or suite. I lived with my parents during and after engineering school, in lieu of rent, I paid for groceries and utilities and house upgrades such as re-flooring all rooms and outdoor patio (my labor, I paid for materials and tools).
Perhaps no one told that young lady that the first 2-3 years of an entry level job are supposed to be hard, where you learn the ways of the workplace and get Real World Experience and On the Job Training (OJT), gain skills, get some qualifications such as industry certifications.
Darwinism in play. Adapt to the environment or become extinct.
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You know there actually is a magic bullet for this young woman's problems. I know a way she can get free housing, a decent entry level salary, a signing bonus, and even get $50Kish of her student loans repaid.
It's called joining the military.
It requires a little hard work, but it would quite literally solve all of her problems.
Yep!
Living alone: maybe you've had better experiences living alone. I've had roommate that decide to arrive at home around 2AM and decide to bring their girlfriend for a couple of hours of giggling and noisy bed spring testing. I had to get up at 4:30AM.
I've had a roommate that turned into some sort of stranger suddenly b/c of some message he received from his church mates. Dude went stone cold and so did they. Wouldn't speak to me at all. Moved out suddenly and left a couple of dogs behind.
I had a roommate that had some sort of emotional problem (or liked to argue) so any little thing that went wrong in a day's time led to screaming and yelling. I refused to participate. Note the recipient of said verbal thrashing did not necessarily need to be the cause of the lamented problem.
On top of all that I am really an introvert. I can be outgoing but at the end of the day, I just want to rest. Maybe read, watch some TV or my latest activity - watch the fireflies blink for a while. I'm happy to be home with my DW and kids.
ALL that said - I had roommates when I could not afford to live alone (HCOL areas). When I could finally live alone it was a day to celebrate. Benefits of LCOL area. Then all my roommate equipped buddies wanted to hang out at my place. ;)
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You know there actually is a magic bullet for this young woman's problems. I know a way she can get free housing, a decent entry level salary, a signing bonus, and even get $50Kish of her student loans repaid.
It's called joining the military.
It requires a little hard work, but it would quite literally solve all of her problems.
I can't recommend this strategy enough to young people, especially as college gets more and more expensive. If possible, joining directly after high school results in college being paid for, along with all kinds of other benefits in excess of what you added.
-free terrible healthcare
-free or additional money for food
-ability to meet people from all over the country and even world
-discounts for life at many businesses
Of course, it requires living with a roommate (or several), which this writer appears to be above.
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She's entitled.
She lives alone, in a HCOL area, and does a shitty job that doesn't require any skill. Guess what mate, the world doesn't owe you a fancy living in a nice unit.
I lived with a housemate even when I first made 6 figures (and my housemate did too, by the way) - it was how we both saved up. Why can't this idiot do so? Is she allergic to humans?
Does she expect a year 1, entry level job to have out of this world pay?
She has no skills or qualifications - she should understand that that is a path to mediocrity.
Why the name calling?
Name calling? Are you referring to idiot ?
idiot noun
id·i·ot | \ ˈi-dē-ət
Definition of idiot
1 a foolish or stupid person
2 dated, now offensive : a person affected with extreme mental retardation
@Bloop Bloop stated some facts.
Maybe. I don't know the author well enough to make that determination. Still name calling, which was unnecessary to make their point.
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No more name-calling than using the terms clown car, face punch, etc.
And this author asked for it, by whinging about things well within her control.
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You know there actually is a magic bullet for this young woman's problems. I know a way she can get free housing, a decent entry level salary, a signing bonus, and even get $50Kish of her student loans repaid.
It's called joining the military.
It requires a little hard work, but it would quite literally solve all of her problems.
I can't recommend this strategy enough to young people, especially as college gets more and more expensive. If possible, joining directly after high school results in college being paid for, along with all kinds of other benefits in excess of what you added.
-free terrible healthcare
-free or additional money for food
-ability to meet people from all over the country and even world
-discounts for life at many businesses
Of course, it requires living with a roommate (or several), which this writer appears to be above.
I freely admit that as an 18 year old, I was an entitled snot myself with limited ambition and career prospects. I'd like to think I wasn't as bad as this young woman, but that might be wishful thinking on my part.
I did end up joining the Army. This ended up in me getting through college and even an MBA with a positive net-worth.
However, the biggest benefit actually wasn't financial. The Army knocked some sense into me. They taught me things like personal responsibility, leadership, and basic life skills. Looking at how my life turned out, this had a much bigger impact on my current well being than the financial benefits.
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I personally hate the idiom “living at home” to mean “living with parents” but that’s how it’s used by many
I hate that too. Wherever you live is by definition your home.
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You know there actually is a magic bullet for this young woman's problems. I know a way she can get free housing, a decent entry level salary, a signing bonus, and even get $50Kish of her student loans repaid.
It's called joining the military.
It requires a little hard work, but it would quite literally solve all of her problems.
She could be a prostitute too. But both of those career paths only appeal to very, very few people. I certainly would hate to live in a world in which joining the military was the only path to adulthood.
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The only way out is through those in power regulating rental costs, increasing the minimum wage – which could once keep a family of three out of poverty – to actually match inflation, and, yes, eliminating student loan debt.
A person who thinks like this has already lost. Not because she is wrong to think that others ought to do X or Y, but because all of her hopes for the future rest outside her control. She's not thinking of, or even seeing, all the ways she could better her life by taking small, achievable steps, because she's too busy ruminating on how capitalism screwed her whole generation.
I don't know how much of this she's doing for show, because Millennial helplessness and poverty-that's-totally-capitalism's fault is her brand now. But if she really believes it--how sad. So young and already giving up. There is a better way.
I promise I'll stop commenting after this...
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I personally hate the idiom “living at home” to mean “living with parents” but that’s how it’s used by many
I hate that too. Wherever you live is by definition your home.
BTW I also hate “cord cutting” to mean canceling cable TV. Since most people still have a power cord, internet cord, etc. Unless you are going totally wireless, just say you canceled cable tv.
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Although multiple forms of hiring discrimination are illegal, there is such a thing as a category of person a job is designed "for". Consider newspaper delivery. Fifty years ago, people wanted to read the paper in the evening, so someone had to go door to door delivering them. This was considered an ideal after-school job for a child (generally a boy), who could make use of a wagon or a bicycle. Later on, more local newspapers started to run the presses at night and deliver in the morning, often at an extremely early hour so that people could read the paper over breakfast before going to work. To ensure a 6 AM delivery, the carrier generally had to start no later than 5 AM, and the routes were much larger, to the point where a car was required. Result: paper delivery is now an adult job, and one less after-school job is available to children or teens. Similar things happened with babysitting, lawn cutting, and burger flipping.
In the case of the letter writer, she made the mistake of going after a job that was designed for a person with a radically different lifestyle than what she had, but was unwilling to make the lifestyle adjustments necessary to get by on what the job paid. Interns aren't expected to live independently. In some states, it's legal to make interns work for free or on a volunteer basis even in a for-profit company. This means the only people who can afford such an internship are the ones who are either independently wealthy in their own right, or who are supported by something else. Google was clearly paying its interns, however the ideal intern would be someone who already lived locally (and was being partially supported by parents) or who was willing to team up with other people to share living expenses. A person who wants to maintain a car and an unshared apartment has a lifestyle that's incompatible with minimum wage. Something's got to break. Either the employee has to adjust her expectations, or she needs to move to a place with a lower cost of living where the skills she's got can support her, or she needs to find the kind of work that pays more.
Similar things are happening in boutique retail. The present trend is for a store to avoid having to pay benefits by keeping full-time workers to a minimum. Generally only the manager and assistant manager are full-time; everyone else gets about fifteen hours per week. This is great for a high school student or a stay-at-home parent whose kids are in school, but it's not enough to support a person living independently.
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BTW I also hate “cord cutting” to mean canceling cable TV. Since most people still have a power cord, internet cord, etc. Unless you are going totally wireless, just say you canceled cable tv.
I agree it's a weird one, especially because satellite TV can be expensive but mostly cordless already. "Cord cutting" has lost its literal meaning, like when we still say we are dialing a phone number we aren't actually turning anything!
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However, the biggest benefit actually wasn't financial. The Army knocked some sense into me. They taught me things like personal responsibility, leadership, and basic life skills. Looking at how my life turned out, this had a much bigger impact on my current well being than the financial benefits.
I wholeheartedly agree. I chose a different branch. Same outcome.
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My stepdaughter is roughly the same age as this woman and also lives in the SF Bay Area. Upon graduating, a job in her preferred/high demand field was not immediately available. So she: continued her 6 hour a week position in the registrar's office at her school for just around minimum wage. Got a job at her favorite consignment clothing store. She worked her way into a buyers' position and made a decent hourly and quarterly bonuses, working aboutt 30 hours a week. In addition, she worked nights and weekends in her passion occupation in theater work: moving sets, filling in for lighting and sound, taking tickets if needed. The pay for this was sub-optimal at best, and sometimes completely unpaid. But it did give valuable experience and led the way into the current, full time position she's recently landed in a San Francisco theater company.
Along the way she lived in, and continues to reside in a funky not-well-maintained house with usually 3 room mates. For the Bay Area, it's a reasonable rent. The housemates sometimes cook frugal meals together and the rest of the time DD eats healthily and well. She lives car free, relying on public transit and has still her old bike for local trips. She's kept the college job, which works around her new work schedule. That salary goes toward 'food and fun'.
I'm enormously proud of her. Smart and aware people know how to make things work.
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That's a great "path less taken" story!
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It costs $500 and I'm struggling to see what the value is for a poor person.
I go to the conference every year. They have full subsidy low-income tickets and I usually volunteer, but I will say my entire current career was launched off the connections I made at that conference. It's a really valuable conference.
She spoke at it 2 years ago.