Author Topic: I can't do math, so I wrote a public letter to my CEO and get myself fired!  (Read 91919 times)

MonkeyJenga

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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.

talltexan

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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.

TheGrimSqueaker

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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.

dragoncar

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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?

Montecarlo

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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.

Montecarlo

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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.

dragoncar

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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

NorCal

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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.

Montecarlo

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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.

Bloop Bloop

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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.

Psychstache

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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?

jinga nation

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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.

Just Joe

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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. ;)
« Last Edit: May 23, 2019, 07:25:01 AM by Just Joe »

DadJokes

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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.

Psychstache

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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.

Bloop Bloop

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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.

NorCal

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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.


remizidae

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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.

remizidae

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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.

remizidae

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Quote
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...

dragoncar

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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.

TheGrimSqueaker

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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.

slugline

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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!

Just Joe

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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.

calimom

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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.

Just Joe

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That's a great "path less taken" story!

monstermonster

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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.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!