[HN Gopher] Sitters and Standers
___________________________________________________________________
Sitters and Standers
Author : feross
Score : 404 points
Date : 2024-12-01 23:47 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pudding.cool)
(TXT) w3m dump (pudding.cool)
| hatthew wrote:
| Interesting how drivers and healthcare workers are outliers in a
| lot of metrics. Did anyone else notice other common outliers?
| mylesp wrote:
| Software Developers were the most obvious outlier in Asian
| workers and non-citizen workers. It is surprising how much of
| an outlier it was, even compared to other similar white collar
| jobs.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| If you've spent time in San Francisco or Seattle, it ceases
| to surprise. I worked for a while on a 120-person project,
| and we couldn't scape together 10 US citizens to form an on
| call rotation for a government contract bid...
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This is because of John Hughes films and a US bullying
| culture. Our stem shortage is a choice and directly
| connected to bullying culture in US schools having ran
| rampant.
|
| Most other countries, the "nerds" are popular because folks
| know that they are going to earn big money shortly after.
| Here? They're treated like little versions of the United
| CEO.
| relaxing wrote:
| And nail techs!
| hatthew wrote:
| Yeah it's impressive how far it is on that graph. It seems
| like they tend to be on the left end of the main sequence for
| most plots.
| throwaway519 wrote:
| That escalated quickly.
| oceanparkway wrote:
| The presentation of data was nice (slides with a constant format)
| and the measured amount of labeling was great
| cxr wrote:
| This is a worthwhile read, but I think it would be better if it
| offered not just interactive exploration or a video, but a
| conventional document, too--ideally as the primary form of
| presentation. This is by the same creator who made the This Is A
| Teenager exploration.
|
| Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40053774>
|
| In that presentation, I was happy with how succinctly they were
| able to get down to what makes environments "high-risk", and I
| found the classification of "a quiet place to study" as a basic
| necessity (and its relationship to the prevalence/absence of
| "chaotic routines") as being particularly striking and memorable:
|
| > _Researchers determined risk by asking lots of questions. For
| example, they asked whether the kid has basic necessities, like
| electricity or a quiet place to study._
|
| > _They also asked about factors that could destabilize the home
| environment - chaotic routines, parents who have disabilities, or
| relatives struggling with substance abuse._
|
| (So many environments nowadays, even the ones that are ostensibly
| created to fulfill this sort of thing, are just total failures at
| actually providing them. I'm thinking of things like public
| libraries. I live in Austin and have a major axe to grind about
| the public libraries here, which are nothing like what you'd get
| if you were actually interested in the pro-social goals that
| you'd think a public library would have in its charter. A
| teenager looking to escape their high-risk environment or an
| adult who's had their feet knocked out from beneath them
| basically stands no chance at getting out of their predicament if
| their only option were to use the public libraries here, which
| would unfortunately act more like a vortex to ensure they stay in
| the suck. But this is all beside the point.)
|
| I suspect but cannot prove that there's a similar link to the
| presentation of information--that the best presentation is simple
| static media, ideally printed, that is _supplemented_ by these
| types of exploratory environments so that you can make the main
| resource come to life. Failing that, you 'd want the printed
| presentation, sans interactivity, and then finally as a last
| resort, just dumping the person into these kinds of
| presentations. cf: the widely felt phenomenon of handwritten
| notes being better than notes typed on a laptop + Postman,
| _Amusing Ourselves to Death_.
| kla-s wrote:
| Have you considered a tablet with pen to not cut down so many
| trees (transflective is the new cool kid on the block i hear,
| ipad works pretty well ime)? By now i actually prefer its
| better searchability with ocr and miss pinch to zoom on real
| paper ;) Or do you think that the paper being wobbly is
| important? I mean i get missing the indentability. My
| experience as a student is its more important to move your
| hands and have an intuitive sense for location on a sheet of
| paper (more intuitive/faster navigable than with a typed word
| processor) to easily form deep memories with what you are
| dealing with (+spaced repetition!!). So in total tablet works
| great (for me) once you get used to it. :)
|
| Please indulge me on your short tangent on Austins public
| library, how can they improve? Same budget?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| What specifically is lacking in public libraries in Austin,
| Texas? Ideally, you can also share a point of comparison, e.g.,
| the libraries in Boca Raton, Florida have much better young
| adult fiction.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| This is, very directly, a supply-and-demand problem. (That is not
| to say that it's a simple one, or that naive economics trivially
| applies here or will necessarily give correct answers, or
| _especially_ that either the supply or demand are straightforward
| to change, just that it 's a reasonable reasoning framework to
| start with.) The more people willing to do a job, the lower the
| standards of the lowest bidder. Solving this problem requires one
| or more of:
|
| 1) Raising the minimum standards of the lowest bidders on the
| worker side. This could be done through collective bargaining or
| regulation, making it so nobody is willing to "defect" (in the
| prisoner's dilemma sense) and work for conditions below a certain
| standard, which means there's little to no supply of such
| workers.
|
| 2) Raising the standards on the demand side. This could
| theoretically happen if consumers are willing to preferentially
| purchase from places that provide higher standards for workers;
| effectively, coordinate and collectively bargain on the
| purchasing side. This seems unlikely to happen as consumers are
| even more likely to "defect" and purchase from the least
| expensive company. This is one case where a simplistic model
| breaks down: consumers' ability to collectively demand higher
| standards for how companies treat their workers is limited by the
| fact that consumers are getting their income and ability to
| afford higher standards _from_ the work they 're doing.
|
| 3) Lowering the supply of labor across the board. This would
| happen if fewer people are willing to do the job, such as if
| people didn't have to work in order to survive (e.g. UBI). If
| there isn't an endless supply of workers who _have_ to tolerate
| whatever conditions get them paid enough to survive, satisfying
| demand for labor requires substantially higher standards for pay
| and working conditions. (Conversely, if everyone in a workplace
| _wants_ to be there, it 's easier to get quality _output_.)
|
| 4) Raising the demand for labor across the board. This isn't
| going to happen, as it'd run counter to some of the primary
| defining qualities of an improving society; even if it did, it
| would be likely to ultimately result in similar stratification
| between groups of workers.
|
| 5) Raise the mobility from one category of labor to another.
| Constantly being worked on in many different ways, but will
| inherently never be able to fully solve the problem because not
| enough people can take advantage of this option to avoid
| stratification.
|
| The feasible alternatives here feed back both positively and
| negatively into each other.
|
| Personally, I think implementing (3) via UBI is the one most
| likely in terms of feasibility. (Not _politically_ in terms of
| passing it, but _practically_ in terms of how monumentally
| effective it would be compared to the rest.) (3) is the option
| here most immune to the prisoners ' dilemma defection problem.
| turbojet1321 wrote:
| This seems like a great demonstration of basing arguments on a
| dependent variable. Every slide I've seen so far would be better
| explained by white collar vs blue collar rather than sitter vs
| stander.
| jp0d wrote:
| I don't think white collar vs blue collar comparison is
| necessarily better. There are heaps of ways to slice and dice
| data and this one of them. I'd argue that it's a rather
| interesting perspective.
| turbojet1321 wrote:
| My point is that it isn't really a different slice, though.
| The vast majority of the "sitting" occupations are white
| collar; the vast majority of the "standing" ones blue collar.
| Nevermark wrote:
| So think of it as a concise objective way to settle what is
| blue color from white color, for purposes of a study.
|
| No definition will be perfect, but this one does pretty
| well as you point out.
|
| It also naturally provides an objective gradation, which
| many definitions that stand in for blue collar" or sit in
| for "white collar" won't provide.
| esperent wrote:
| It seemed to me that it was using the dependant variable
| intentionally so that it could build up to the twist: actually
| it's all about race.
|
| To be fair, the twist did get me. I thought it was leading up
| to discussing injury rates, or health in old age. Since I'm not
| from the US, the pivot to discussing race wasn't very
| interesting/relevant to me.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I have the thought that racial divisions are even more stark
| elsewhere, although in cases across different lines. I would,
| for example expect a lot more Chinese in to positions in that
| country alongside far lower diversity.
|
| Is it not this way? How about where you are from, since
| you're "not from the US"?
| Filligree wrote:
| Divisions here are between the Irish, British, French,
| Italians and so on -- each with their own prejudices, to
| say nothing of people coming from eastern Europe.
|
| Each and every one of these groupings have faced
| discrimination in one context or another, and all of them
| would be described as 'white' in American terms. Actual
| Asian people are too far out of context to really be
| considered on more than an individual basis; there aren't a
| lot of them here.
| kstenerud wrote:
| Japanese vs Brazilians
|
| Germans vs Turks
|
| Han Chinese vs non-Han Chinese
|
| Canada vs first nations
|
| Many countries have their racial underclasses.
| esperent wrote:
| > I have the thought that racial divisions are even more
| stark elsewhere
|
| While race is of course an issue in all countries, few
| countries hold on to their racial divide as strongly as the
| US.
|
| Nonetheless, I didn't mean that discussion about race
| wasn't relevant or interesting to me. I simply meant that
| discussion about the racial divides _in the US_ aren 't
| relevant to me.
|
| Since I hear and read about US specific race issues a lot I
| usually avoid the topic and was a bit annoyed that this
| post baited me into investing so much time before it
| revealed what it was about.
| lmm wrote:
| Most countries have ethnic divisions, but they're not the
| US race categories and not based on skin colour. I am of my
| ethnicity and this affected how I was treated, whereas the
| US flattens that to "white" and treats me as such.
|
| (More baffling is how the US is in complete denial of its
| class system - so much so that anyone who tries to talk
| about class is immediately told they're talking about race)
| wruza wrote:
| Exactly. Looking from outside, US just paints _literal_
| colors over what is really a multitude of ethnicities and
| cultures and thinks it's progressive and inclusive. This
| black, this black, this white, this white, this asian.
| Awesome reduction.
| sojournerc wrote:
| You similarly reduced all Americans to a stereotype with
| this comment. If you get your idea of Americans from
| internet discourse, you may come away with this
| impression, but it's a shallow view of a diverse country.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Looking at it from the inside as a black American, I 100%
| agree with you. My experience as a black person in the US
| has been wildly different from someone who grew up in the
| 'hood or someone living with his nephew in Bel Air :-)
|
| But yet, we're all mushed into the same category and
| expected to think alike and have the same ambitions. It's
| frustrating, but there's not a whole lot that I can do
| about it other than engage with people using my own
| perspective.
| erikerikson wrote:
| FWIW: while you are absolutely correct that many
| activists will replace class discussions with racial
| assertions, it is not universal here. Many of us are
| quite aware of and discuss our extreme divides and the
| mechanisms that keep ratcheting them, perhaps including
| this redirection habit.
| turbojet1321 wrote:
| I agree, it was bit of a bait and switch and (also as a non-
| American) the racial twist took me by surprise.
|
| The actual data would still have made as much (or more) sense
| if it was white vs blue collar, but I suppose no one would be
| surprised by that, and wouldn't have clicked through long
| enough for the "switch" to hit.
| kdazzle wrote:
| Ha, I've heard a few Dutch say that American style racism
| didnt really apply to them, but then later they say that some
| person isn't Dutch because they aren't white. All in the
| workplace.
|
| I think it's just not as top of mind in other places, but its
| there.
| plufz wrote:
| I think it is a little of both. I'm not American, but as a
| bystander it seems quite obvious that race is important in
| the US because of how important slavery has been in your
| culture (founding fathers, civil war, the history of your
| political parties, income distribution today, etc).
|
| But I also have the impression that you have more knowledge
| of racism than some other countries. I mean the Dutch
| obviously have a horrific racist history.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Since I'm not from the US, the pivot to discussing race
| wasn't very interesting/relevant to me.
|
| Does your home country have any minorities that are
| economically lower class? And, importantly, are they visibly
| identifiable, like different skin colour? I assume yes --
| most countries have them if you look close enough. Would it
| be more interesting if the data were viewed through the lense
| of these different ethnic groups in your country?
| graemep wrote:
| In the UK different ethnic minorities do very differently
| economically (some better than the majority[1]) but this
| does not follow visible differences.
|
| Indians do a lot better economically than Bangladeshis,
| black Africans better than black Caribbeans, etc. People
| from some Eastern European countries do a lot worse than
| visible minorities. Of the white minorities the Irish were
| traditionally close to the bottom of the heap historically,
| but for the last few decades have done well, especially
| educationally, probably boosted by the quality of Catholic
| schools (religious schools can receive state funding here
| and many are therefore free to attend).
|
| Its clearly mostly to do with lack of intergenerational
| social mobility. Its worth noting that the group doing
| worst educationally in the UK are white working class boys.
|
| In Sri Lanka which is also my "home" country for a
| different definition of home the minorities are not
| "economically lower class" but have faced significant
| racism and religious discrimination (both sometimes
| violent) - but have also done the same themselves.
|
| [1] All numbers I know of that compare ethnic groups lump
| the three biggest native groups into one, "white British".
| nox101 wrote:
| It's similar in the USA. Black Americans do poorly. Black
| Nigerian immigrants to great. They're both black so it's
| evidence race has little to do with whatever the problems
| of class are but a certain segment of vocal people ignore
| this evidence.
| dahart wrote:
| If true, it's not necessarily evidence of race being
| independent of class, it would only be evidence of color
| being independent of class. If true, it might to some
| degree be the opposite of what you claim, it might be
| evidence of race mattering since Americans and Nigerians
| though they might share some physical traits, are now
| from different countries for many generations. Is it
| true? I'd love to see this evidence, can you link to
| some?
|
| There is a literal mountain of evidence that both color
| and race in the US correlate negatively with outcomes,
| perhaps in differing amounts, but if you ignore that,
| you're also ignoring some evidence. There a lot of
| possible confounding reasons why one black group might
| fare better than another on average in the US, and that
| means that if you care about being accurate about whether
| race and class are linked, then it's extremely difficult
| to separate them, and nearly impossible to declare
| they're not linked. The biggest problem with your claim
| is that race and class absolutely were linked in the past
| without question, when blacks were slaves, and we have
| never had a period in US history where the socioeconomic
| outcomes of blacks matched whites on average. The
| situation has improved, but we have plenty of evidence
| we're not there yet, and so it's impossible and almost
| certainly wrong to claim that either race or color has
| little to do with class.
| vundercind wrote:
| A important confounder is that immigrants--especially
| from somewhere across an ocean--are heavily selection-
| biased.
| graemep wrote:
| Its apparent very early on that it is about the US, and
| everything in the US is all about race.
|
| Race is far more important in the US: it seems to be
| fundamental to people's identity and how they are regarded in
| a way that is difficult to grasp from outside. It is strange
| to me that people who accept self-identity of gender regard
| race as an immutable inherited characteristic.
|
| The nearest parallel is caste in India. It is inherited,
| immutable and hierarchical.
| defrost wrote:
| The US is not homogeneous and the people within the US
| _most_ likely to regard race as an all important immutable
| inherited characteristic are also _largely_ those least
| likely to accept self-identity of gender.
|
| That at least is my coarse observation as an outsider and I
| _stressed_ qualifiers as there are no absolutes here, just
| fuzzy clouds of human attributes with some overlaps and no
| hard borders.
|
| The types of US media that routinely dog whistles race
| issues and stereotype low IQ gun happy criminal types are
| pretty much the same media streams that mock trans
| identity, wokeness, and alphabet classification.
| lmm wrote:
| > The types of US media that routinely dog whistles race
| issues and stereotype low IQ gun happy criminal types
|
| That's the other side from the one that most strongly
| regards "race as an all important immutable inherited
| characteristic" as far as I can see.
| graemep wrote:
| > the people within the US most likely to regard race as
| an all important immutable inherited characteristic are
| also largely those least likely to accept self-identity
| of gender.
|
| I am not convinced. Even Americans who accept gender
| self-identity AND claim to be anti-racist usually have a
| problem with regarding race as a superficial
| characteristic, and rarely seem to accept people self-
| identifying as a different race to their "real" one.
|
| > The types of US media that routinely dog whistles race
| issues and stereotype low IQ gun happy criminal types are
| pretty much the same media streams that mock trans
| identity, wokeness, and alphabet classification.
|
| My point is that BOTH sides in the US regard race as an
| immutable fundamental characteristic.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> The US is not homogeneous and the people within the US
| most likely to regard race as an all important immutable
| inherited characteristic are also largely those least
| likely to accept self-identity of gender._
|
| Personally I've seen two correlations in different
| directions.
|
| Race is important to the swastika-tattoo crowd on the far
| right, no doubt.
|
| Meanwhile on the left, a lot of people acknowledge a
| widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of well-
| paid manufacturing jobs that can support a family without
| a degree. That even though the median family's situation
| has been improving for decades, a lot of people haven't
| shared in the benefits. To me this is obviously a matter
| of class.
|
| But I look at American analysis and discussion, and 95%
| of the time they ignore class, and instead analyse it
| through a racial lens - reinterpreting the widening gap
| between rich and poor as a widening gap between white and
| black. The along comes Trump, and he gains a load of
| support from the white working class simply by
| acknowledging that yes, they are struggling.
|
| So I can certainly see what graemep is getting at.
| defrost wrote:
| Blame the likes of Murdoch and his predecessors, they've
| mastered the art of using rags and tabloids to eliminate
| nuance in the US public sphere.
|
| Significant US analysis, that with any meat, looks to
| race, class , and income to quintile the US demographic
| and examine the prospects of each rank and the mobility
| across groups.
|
| Recent years have seen books such as Paul Fussell, CLASS:
| A Guide Through the American Status System (1983), Isabel
| Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020),
| and a host between.
|
| The difficulty for the US has been the dumbing down of
| public discourse, that was the condition that permitted a
| Trump to sweep through on a popularists platform.
| graemep wrote:
| I love Isabel Wilkerson's book. It was that (through the
| comparison with caste) that gave me a clearer idea of the
| difference between what race is in American culture.
|
| I have posted this before so a bit reluctant to repeat,
| but its relevant. i wrote a blog post about my view and
| experience of race in different cultures :
| https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different
| rurp wrote:
| > the people within the US most likely to regard race as
| an all important immutable inherited characteristic are
| also largely those least likely to accept self-identity
| of gender.
|
| I'm pretty surprised to hear that. Nearly every program
| I've seen in my adult life that explicitly uses race as
| an important factor in who gets hired or promoted or
| funded has come from the left. The left is also the group
| that is in favor of gender self-identification. Maybe
| these aren't always the exact same people, but the
| overlap politically is strong.
|
| That's not to say that conservatives don't hold or
| express racist or bigoted beliefs, but I'm not sure I've
| ever seen an overt effort to only hire white people or
| exclude brown people.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Race is in the mix, but is oddly mutable. Back when I was a
| kid being of Polish ancestry was a kind of joke. Some of my
| Irish friends have memories of being excluded from social
| events. At some point we both became "white" and previous
| divisions faded. There is no comparable we used to be Dalit
| and then people stopped caring about that experience in
| India.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The problem is that until 1971, which is within the
| lifetime of many people currently alive, especially in
| government (remember, the only US President born after 1946
| is Barak Obama), race was a legal category in the US that
| seriously restricted lives.
|
| Desegregation has been slow, and you can't really
| desegregate inherited wealth.
| tarvaina wrote:
| Isn't white vs blue collar a latent variable? You have to
| operationalize it somehow. If you just ask "how blue collar are
| you?", people's answers will be influenced by all kinds of
| subjective biases.
|
| I'd argue sitter vs stander distinction also makes this
| presentation more visceral, memorable and understandable.
| Collar color would feel unnecessarily abstract and boring.
| gav wrote:
| When I had a blue collar job, my coworker used to divide jobs
| into "shower before work" and "shower after work".
|
| It's perhaps less relevant now that a lot of people can roll
| out of bed and start their remote job in sweatpants, but it's
| stuck with me.
| turbojet1321 wrote:
| Ha - my dad, a plumber, couldn't fathom that people would
| shower in the morning and not of a night. Which, when you
| spend your day covered in dirt and excrement, makes a ton
| of sense.
|
| (Despite being solidly white collar, I still shower of a
| night)
| nox101 wrote:
| Some cultures, it's normal to shower at night, others in
| the morning.
|
| The majority of Americans I know shower in the morning.
| Japanese bath/shower at night as a general rule. A
| western person I know married to a Japanese person said
| their partner thought they were gross to climb into bed
| all dirty (not bathing at night). My friend thought
| "waking up sticky from sleep and staying sticky all day
| is gross". My friend's solution was to bath both in the
| morning and at night. Their partner still only baths at
| night.
| vundercind wrote:
| I do both. If I don't shower in the morning, my pits and
| other parts smell in ways that will make my clothes
| smellier faster even with deodorant. And going to bed
| with a whole day of sweat and body oils on you makes your
| bedding gross faster (it's there, even if you weren't
| active). I can't really imagine skipping either aside
| from occasionally, all my stuff would smell and I'd have
| to run like 50% more loads of laundry.
| fenomas wrote:
| You have this backwards - sitting/standing (and autonomy etc.)
| are the data, and blue-collar/white-collar are names for
| clusters in that data, and the latter depend on the former.
| After all, workers choose a shirt according to their job role,
| not the other way around!
|
| Also more importantly, I think the main point of the article is
| that it's not just two clusters; there are several interesting
| axes to look at. E.g. electricians are "standers" but have
| autonomy; bookkeepers are "white collar" but do little problem-
| solving, etc.
| turbojet1321 wrote:
| Perhaps you're right. I suppose my annoyance is that by
| choosing sitting/standing as their variable, they gave the
| impression that they were telling a new and/or interesting
| narrative, when really they were presenting something well
| established and entirely common-sense (physical laborers get
| paid less and have poorer working conditions than office
| workers).
| fenomas wrote:
| I follow you, but I read TFA as saying the complete
| opposite of that. To me TFA is illustrating that "white-vs-
| blue-collar" is something of a thought-terminating cliche,
| and that looking at the actual data shows that various jobs
| cluster in ways you wouldn't expect if you assumed there
| were two big white/blue categories.
|
| (Also I interpreted "standing/sitting" as basically being a
| catchy title - I think the author's premise is that all the
| axes he examined are relevant, not just the
| standing/sitting one.)
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > bookkeepers are "white collar" but do little problem-
| solving
|
| It is interesting that you think bookkeepers (accountants?)
| do little problem solving. I am sure they spend most of their
| day trying to track down missing expenses, or duplicates, or
| hard to categorise, or some weird tax law. That sounds like
| more than "little" to me.
| fenomas wrote:
| It's not an opinion I hold, it's a data point from the data
| TFA examined (which was presumably self-reported, so take
| it up with bookkeepers I guess).
|
| If you want to see it, skip to the "explore" part and then
| enter "I solve problems daily" and "Bookkeeping" in the UI.
| devjab wrote:
| > bookkeepers are "white collar" but do little problem-
| solving, etc.
|
| If you think that then I'd wager you'd never had to digitise
| any form of economic based system. I need an accountant to
| even begin to tell me how to do their weird nonsensical math,
| because it's not actually math but law. Law which is open to
| interpretation. Law which still has to be boiled down to
| financial calculations and budget planning.
|
| In Germany you get a green tariff when you produce solar
| energy. You do this in most of Europe, but in Germany the
| tariff goes away if you exceed a certain amount of energy
| production, as in, you're either paid X or you're paid 0.
| fenomas wrote:
| Please see my sibling reply - I don't think it, bookkeepers
| do (according to TFA's dataset).
| devjab wrote:
| I'm not English but is bookkeeper not another word for
| accountant?
| fenomas wrote:
| Basically, yes - it's a loose term for those kinds of
| roles. The specific field in TSA's data is labeled
| "Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks".
| btilly wrote:
| The classic from which all this comes is the UK bus system. You
| had the driver and the conductor. Equivalent jobs, from an
| equivalent background, with equivalent lifestyles away from
| work. But drivers sat and the conductors stood. Very, very
| different outcomes.
|
| This is literally the example from which we learned that
| standing and walking around helps prevent heart attacks.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Those jobs seem about as equivalent as driver and passenger.
| You have to focus and avoid risks all day long as a driver.
| I'm suprised conductor pays more. I imagine they attract
| different types of people as well -- customer service people
| vs video game people. Must have been tough epidemiology to
| tease a signal out of that.
| HPsquared wrote:
| They probably just ignore all the confounding variables and
| focus on what can be measured.
| btilly wrote:
| What makes you think that conductor paid more? Certainly
| nothing that I said!
|
| Likewise what makes you think that the epidemiology was
| hard? The statistics were absolutely brutally obvious. The
| main problem was getting people to look at the data, not
| interpreting it.
|
| See https://bcmj.org/articles/exercise-and-heart-review-
| early-st... for some of the early history that is involved
| here.
| graemep wrote:
| On the other hand IIRC postmen who walk rather than stand are
| healthy?
| Fokamul wrote:
| If I compare our work in EU to US, every job is basically slave
| labor. Even sitters.
|
| Eg.: I have 30 days of paid vacation, now I'm taking month off.
| Don't need to worry about my job, they cannot fire me. As I
| understand in US, if you take vacation longer than week, you're
| in the fear you will be fired. Is it true?
|
| Job, IT, of course.
| pram wrote:
| A week? Nah. I've routinely taken two weeks to burn off PTO.
|
| A month straight is probably a hard sell though, yes.
| gotaran wrote:
| Yeah this is why I always take more than a month off between
| jobs.
|
| Besides parental leave and the very rare even for FAANG
| companies who offer month long sabbaticals once every five
| years, a month is a hard sell.
| rhmw2b wrote:
| It depends on the job. I've had jobs where you couldn't get
| approval to take a week off and a week off at my current job is
| no big deal. Generally PTO is more generous as you become
| harder to replace.
| slibhb wrote:
| > As I understand in US, if you take vacation longer than week,
| you're in the fear you will be fired. Is it true?
|
| I have a coworker who takes off 3 weeks in a row every year.
| Never been an issue.
|
| In general in the US, tech companies have excellent benefits --
| including plenty of vacation. Not as much as Europe but it's
| not bad.
| kaashif wrote:
| I believe slaves are usually not compensated for their work and
| cannot leave their jobs.
| Archelaos wrote:
| I think the OP meant it metaphorically. "Basically" seems to
| signal this. Since metaphors are not the thing itself, there
| are necessarily aspects that do not fit. However, metaphors
| may be bad metaphors. So you may or may not have a point
| here. But this point should be made explicit to move the
| discussion forward.
|
| Also, I suspect that the OP is not a native English speaker,
| because there seems to be a subtle difference between a
| narrow standard metaphorical use of "slave labo(u)r" in
| English along the lines of "work that is done by enslaved
| people or by people who are treated as though they are
| enslaved"[1] and a wider use for example in German were
| "Sklavenarbeit" means something like hard work under
| degrading conditions.[2]
|
| [1] As Merrriam-Webster defines it at https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/slave%20labor
|
| [2] Cf. for example the lemma "sklavenarbeit" in Grimms'
| dictionary: "sklavenarbeit, f. arbeit, die ein sklave thun
| musz, die einem sklaven ziemt, harte arbeit. Campe,
| schlavenarbeit, lavoro, fatica da schiavo. Kramer deutsch-it.
| dict. 2 (1702), 562a: schlavenarbeit thun mussen, dover
| faticare da schiavo. ebenda; was ists fur muhe und
| sklavenarbeit der ackerbau. Herder bei Campe."
| https://woerterbuchnetz.de/?sigle=DWB&lemid=S30002
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I think you will find that at least in UK English, "slave
| labour" is used almost exclusively in the second sense [1].
| The UK not having reckoned as much with its history of
| actual enslavement, this term is significantly less loaded
| than it is in the US.
|
| [1] Oxford dictionary: " (informal) work that is very hard
| and very badly paid", https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionarie
| s.com/definition/englis...
| kmonsen wrote:
| I work for a FAANG and a month, well planned, vacation is
| totally OK. If I want to take a week of I more or less need no
| notice, but for a month it would be expected I plan ahead what
| the people I work with should do.
|
| I have 5 weeks vacation and unlimited sick days every year.
| a_e_k wrote:
| Yep, I've taken several three-week vacations and it's never
| been a problem. The main thing is just giving plenty of
| advance notice (and reminding people as it gets close) so my
| manager can schedule around it, and making sure projects are
| in a good state with arrangements made for anything that
| needs covering while I'm out.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| My experience of working for a couple of FAANGs does not
| mirror this - while I was never laid off during a vacation, I
| think every vacation over 3 weeks I ever took, I returned to
| discover that my team had either suffered a major reorg, or
| the entire project was cancelled, and I had to find another
| team to work on.
| piafraus wrote:
| > As I understand in US, if you take vacation longer than week,
| you're in the fear you will be fired. Is it true?
|
| This is a common misconception which comes from the fact that
| there are no federal required vacations. That does not mean
| companies don't offer vacations as a benefit. I have yet see
| any positions without offering any.
|
| In IT it's pretty much universally quite good. I had 5 weeks
| before, but now we switched to unlimited (as long as you do
| your job ok). I now take around 6 weeks per year, and I don't
| really need more.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > This is a common misconception which comes from the fact
| that there are no federal required vacations.
|
| You must never have been pressured not to take your vacation
| days or sick days. I think most people have been. I've seen
| people constructively fired for taking vacation, or even for
| taking their entire entitled maternity leave rather than
| cutting it short.
| gotaran wrote:
| For certain knowledge work, the job market is much stronger and
| orders of magnitude better paying in the US.
|
| And nah, most if not all of my coworkers have taken two
| consecutive weeks off, and have taken roughly a total 25 days
| off the year excluding holidays.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| The distinction is that IME most Europeans (I am British for
| what it's worth) - not all - but most - simply cannot fathom
| the concept of having any financial independence at all.
|
| They need paid time off and paid maternity leave and all of
| that stuff because they can't conceptualise putting away the
| money to do this themselves. Significant savings or investment
| are rare outside of a property.
|
| It's just money on the other side of the equation, government
| and socialised vs independent and free to use or not.
|
| At the very bottom it's not like it matters in either case, you
| might have time off but no money to do anything with it.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple, for at least two reasons I
| can immediately think of:
|
| 1) Several Americans live paycheck to paycheck with no
| significant savings outside of property either. One
| unexpected emergency is enough to empty the savings of most
| Americans [1](https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-emergency-away-
| study-shows-22...). The idea that Americans make more money
| and that makes up for the difference just doesn't play out in
| reality for all but the richest and luckiest.
|
| 2) Taking a 30 day vacation and coming back to the same job
| without any threat of repercussion is much more valuable than
| simply 30 days worth of saved wages. The average American
| worker can't just take 30 days off, even as leave without
| pay, and expect to come back to the same job. If they want a
| 30 day period with no work, the vast majority of American
| workers will have to quit their current job and then hope to
| be able to find a new one later - which certainly isn't a
| given if you're working unskilled jobs to begin with.
| umeshunni wrote:
| > As I understand in US, if you take vacation longer than week,
| you're in the fear you will be fired. Is it true?
|
| lol, do you get most of your information from retards on
| reddit?
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| What an awful comparison
|
| > As I understand in US, if you take vacation longer than week,
| you're in the fear you will be fired. Is it true?
|
| No this is complete nonsense for 95%+ of jobs
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| My european wife (watching some US show) just asked me "what is
| it with Americans and their boxes*?" After determining the
| context of the question (being escorted out of the building
| with your personal items in a box) I _attempted_ to explain At
| Will Employment...
|
| * last time it was the red plastic cups, before that it was
| "being proud", etc. etc.
| jp0d wrote:
| This is really well done and was eye opening for me as I'm
| predominantly a sitter.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Interestingly, I have not noticed lower rates of obesity among
| the standers compared to sitters. I'm sure we've all seen
| obese/overweight people in retail, doing road work, or
| construction , but then also plenty of thin guys who do office
| work.
|
| When I was having work done on my home, the 4 people who were
| working on it were all overweight/obese. Bill Gates was wire thin
| in his '20s despite his job entailing sitting at a computer all
| day.
|
| I suspect this has to do with metabolic differences (with people
| with higher IQs having faster metabolisms relative to body mass
| due to more NEAT or other factors) than just diet and exercise.
| flocciput wrote:
| Good observation; but I think metabolic differences leading to
| higher/lower IQs is a stretch (and smells weirdly eugenicist!
| but that's just my personal opinion).
|
| It seems obvious to me that being poor makes it harder to be
| healthy. Stand all day and you're too tired to cook or exercise
| after work. You end up eating calorically dense, ultra
| processed foods because they're quick to prepare and easy to
| come by. The stress takes a toll on you physically, but there's
| no time to see a doctor, and your health insurance sucks. Even
| if you wanted to exercise, and found a cheap gym, you're more
| likely to develop something like a repetitive use injury that
| makes movement painful. And you're probably not getting good
| sleep, which affects your metabolism as well.
|
| I'd be interested in whether the poverty/obesity correlation
| holds outside the US or if it's unusually high here. My guess
| is that it's mostly an American thing.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| I think it comes down to junk food is cheap.
|
| It costs a lot to eat healthy short of growing your own stuff.
| paxys wrote:
| > I suspect this has to do with metabolic differences
|
| No it has to do with differences in dietary habits.
| beeflet wrote:
| Programmers sit more than Software developers. Programmers, stand
| up!
| tejohnso wrote:
| Nursing assistants are some of the most likely to be injured or
| ill. Similar to corrections officers and much more so than meat
| cutters ore tire changers. I found that surprising.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Not really surprising. Nursing is a physical job, people are
| heavy!
|
| Also: exposure to disease, violent patients (especially in
| psychiatry), slippery floors, sharp instruments, used
| needles...
| lazide wrote:
| They move heavy, often non-compliant patients. Many with
| dementia or other diseases that make them dangerous and
| unpredictable. Deal with bio hazards all day, every day. Work
| long shifts, often with insane overtime.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Meat cutting might be dealing with sharp objects, but it is
| also highly repeatable work and designed to be generally
| acceptable safety. Same goes for tire changing, you are very
| often using lifts and then you can use proper lifting
| techniques.
|
| In both jobs the work environment can be designed to be
| ergonomic enough. Which does not apply to more variable work.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Ill because women have families and are the ones who take a day
| off when their kids are sick
|
| Additionally, jobs, where the workers have more rights can take
| more sick days. There's a culture of not taking a sick day when
| you're a construction worker.
| gerdesj wrote:
| "This story is about two kinds of workers in America"
|
| Very pretty and very dark and totally impenetrable.
| jcalabro wrote:
| "A man who sits for something stands for nothing"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqjUlmkYr2g
| jaimex2 wrote:
| Interesting little site.
|
| Born in a latin american country I was taught by my parents to
| always aim for the least amount of work for the most amount of
| pay. Basically avoid any standing job like the plague even though
| thats what they both did.
|
| My mother yelled at me when I got my first job as a waiter and
| pressured me to find something else every month.
|
| Eventually I got a IT desk job that paid minimum wage and worked
| my way up from there to software development.
|
| A lot of standing job people do tell me they could never do what
| I do, sitting on a desk daily.
| cxr wrote:
| > A lot of standing job people do tell me they could never do
| what I do, sitting on a desk daily.
|
| They're trying to insult you, not provide you with anecdotal
| information so that you can have a broader view of the world.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| After this election, I'm more than happy to ratchet up
| resentment towards the top from the bottom. Oh you want to
| elect a "populist" who hates the "elites"? I'm going to give
| you something to resent then!
| jonathanQ wrote:
| I will always remember that, for my parents' generation, the idea
| of a "good job" was synonymous with "sitting in an office."
| paxys wrote:
| Has that changed?
| umeshunni wrote:
| Nowadays it might be 'standing at your home office desk'
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It's true right now in China. A job in an office is a good job.
| A job not in an office is a bad job. Doesn't matter what you're
| doing in the office.
| paxys wrote:
| Cool visualization, but it is ultimately 20 slides that are
| saying the exact same thing (white collar workers are more
| privileged than blue collar workers). And not adding anything new
| to something everyone already knows.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| I spent ten years in a plastics factory before switching to
| programming. I used to grab a roll of paper to sit on even
| though it made me look lazy compared to everyone else there,
| because standing is hard. So I feel that finding any new way to
| remind people every few years that we are sitting because
| others are standing is virtuous.
|
| We also spend too much time on sympathy for people at the very
| bottom of the income tables, often there out of laziness or
| crime, compared to people who have twice the stress by being
| both low income and working hard for a living. They deserve
| more visibility.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Correct. The left tries to reach out to the proletariat but
| often only actually seems to speak to the lumpenproletariet.
| Marx thought the absolute bottom of society was scum,
| naturally fascist, and might as well not exist. Having been
| around your average bum on the west coast, it's hard not to
| agree.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| I have known since before the election that Trump is planning
| to deport all of the immigrants. I've been angry about it. I've
| talked to the people about it. I have argued with people about
| it, but I haven't truly cognitively processed it.
|
| When I got to the slide about immigrant workers, I broke down,
| crying, sobbing tears--no no no no that can't happen here
| tears. I already knew. It was something I already knew.
|
| The reality of such a thing is so horrible to contemplate that
| even if you can attach the faces of people you know to the
| coming horror, you're more likely to think of it in abstract
| terms. 20 million people is a number we can't fathom. But data
| allows us to process it in an abstract way, and can connect the
| abstract to something cognitively meaningful.
|
| When I saw the data arranged that way I was forced to confront
| the abstract representation of this category of people that
| drove home cognitively what could be coming.
| tristor wrote:
| > I have known since before the election that Trump is
| planning to deport all of the immigrants.
|
| Agree or disagree with the policy proposal, that is not what
| Trump has been saying at all. I don't know if this is an
| unforced error with some people in the discussion of American
| politics or a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters. There
| is a legal process for immigrating to the United States, it
| is a significantly easier process than that which exists in
| the majority of Western countries.
|
| Those who follow the legal process are not being targeted by
| any policy proposal that's been espoused by any mainstream
| political candidate from any party in the United States, the
| issue has been and continues to be discussed only in the
| terms of people who immigrated to the United States illegally
| either via violating the terms of their visa, fraudulently
| receiving a visa, or crossing the border without a visa.
|
| Please tone down your hyperbole.
| dzink wrote:
| Brain work for me is like muscles for others - if I don't squeeze
| out every ounce of energy from my brain with problems all day, I
| feel like I haven't lived a full day. Many people prefer good
| workouts instead, if they don't their body is punitive with
| restlessness and sleeplessness. Code is my infinite playground
| but others won't touch it - despite me trying to convince them
| for years. They would rather work in the sun, or with other
| people, or in a busy environment.
|
| People filter themselves into jobs they would rather do, when
| they have awareness of the possibilities. With social media that
| awareness is increasing.
|
| I've had friends who had the definition of blue collar standing
| job and chose to transition to nursing, which is another standing
| job.
|
| Immigration status and lack of language skills may tie you to
| standing jobs, but if people want to learn and grow out of them,
| in the US there are pathways. If someone curates a course on
| career pathways via youtube and spreads them through immigration
| centers and schools and social programs that will help even more
| people find their way.
|
| I find healthcare workers to be an interesting mix in this
| discussion. Their work is extremely physical and mental, and
| emotionally draining. Demand for it will only go up. Compensation
| for it will likely go up. Who picks up the jobs will be
| enlightening. Yes you have the bottleneck for doctor and nurse
| training, but CNA and PA are not as limited. Doctor liability is
| an extreme source of stress, but that somehow doesn't apply to
| nurses as much, so even doctors recommend their kids become
| nurses.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Brain work for me is like muscles for others - if I don't
| squeeze out every ounce of energy from my brain with problems
| all day, I feel like I haven't lived a full day. Many people
| prefer good workouts instead, if they don't their body is
| punitive with restlessness and sleeplessness.
|
| I need both.
|
| Too little brain work and my thoughts are racing
| (unproductively) and my sleep needs fall down to ~4h (happens
| on vacation) which isn't actually enough to make me feel
| rested.
|
| Too little physical activity and I'm restless and can't focus,
| can't sleep, and generally stuff falls apart.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I, too, was surprised by this part: > Many
| people prefer good workouts instead
|
| _instead_ -- as if this was a binary case: either /or.
|
| The secret to understanding exercise is knowing that there
| are both physical and mental benefits.
| emptiestplace wrote:
| > I need both.
|
| Definitely. We all do.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, to varying amounts. And with varying limitations.
|
| But yeah, it's not a dichotomy.
| emptiestplace wrote:
| Physical activity is integral to optimal cognitive function and
| mental performance. Sedentary lifestyles impair our
| intellectual capabilities regardless of natural talent or
| education. Research shows regular exercise enhances memory,
| focus, creativity, and stress management - all crucial for
| professional success. Healthcare workers actually demonstrate
| this mind-body connection well: their physically demanding jobs
| support rather than detract from the complex mental work they
| perform.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| (obv. I don't know you or your routine, whether you move often
| by default or are not neurotypical, YMMV)
|
| In case you haven't done that before: I suggest an experiment
| where you try to have a moderate amount of exercise (w few min
| in zone 2 cardio) before or during a break at work. Do it for
| 2-3 weeks and see if there's a difference in your cognitive
| performance.
|
| I'm saying that not only because:
|
| - there's scientific consensus that lack of exercise negatively
| impacts our cognitive abilities. Your thought sponge is a part
| of your body; our minds and bodies are not separate systems. *
|
| - At some point I realised I was used to my default mental
| state (or performance, so to speak), and never noticed how much
| _better_ I could feel /think after including more exercise in
| my life.
|
| * many people would agree that Descartes and mind-body dualism
| is to blame here, at least partially.
| TomasBM wrote:
| Although I can appreciate your point about having some 'innate'
| desire for an activity like coding, I think this desire is just
| one of many factors in choice of work.
|
| My own anecdotal experience is that because of several factors,
| I had to explore many things before I could figure out that I
| can actually learn to code, enjoy it, create useful things and
| be (relatively) good at it. All of this was necessary to
| actually be able to produce some code for a living.
|
| Here's a list of some of the factors that may affect your
| desire, aside from some innate interest and intelligence:
|
| - Having access to a computer at an early age and in the
| formative period
|
| - Parental interest in computing and/or STEM
|
| - Parental understanding of computing and/or STEM (informal
| tutoring)
|
| - Parental pressure/expectations to pursue computing and/or
| STEM
|
| - Learning disabilities (ADHD, dyslexia, numeracy)
|
| - Introversion/extraversion
|
| - Visible role models in STEM
|
| - Addictions (gaming, social media, TV)
|
| - Effective teaching of math and computing concepts as a
| jumping board
|
| - Knowledge of English (given that most programming concepts
| were defined in English first)
|
| - Early successes and/or rewards in coding/STEM as opposed to
| non-STEM
|
| - Social valuation of programmers and STEM (i.e., "nerds")
|
| - Parental socioeconomic status
|
| - Number of siblings (e.g., with respect to competition or
| pressure to leave home early)
|
| - False beliefs ("I'll never be good at math/coding")
|
| - Learning consistency and discipline (i.e., spaced repetition)
|
| - Knowledge of how to learn difficult subjects effectively
|
| - Recognition of fun or social usefulness of coding (with
| respect to any other pursuit)
|
| - Understanding of implications of choosing particular options
| (e.g., college prep, career progression) instead of others, at
| particular stages in life (12-18 years old, with family)
|
| - Familial duties (caring for a parent/sibling, having kids
| early)
|
| - Sunk cost fallacy (i.e., 3rd year medical school, working vs
| going back to school)
|
| Again, intelligence and innate desire will play a role, but I
| think there is nothing genetic about loving to look at some
| text on a computer. Personally, I met enough intelligent
| people, STEM and non-STEM, who think they should've just
| developed a desire for programming because they're burned out,
| exploited, fatigued and/or underpaid. These aren't implications
| most could predict when they made significant career choices.
| fblp wrote:
| This is an outstanding comprehensive list, how did you come
| up with it?
| _thisdot wrote:
| There is just one problem. It'd have been good if they asked for
| your country before the questionnaire. $30,000 salary for a
| Software Developer seems less in America, but that is huge in
| some other countries
| j7ake wrote:
| I think the questions assumed USA
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Quote: "America got rich selling cotton picked by enslaved Black
| people"
|
| I stopped there. I am here to read news about tech, not
| propaganda lies. Also flagged this.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| The south literally tried to secede over exactly that state of
| affairs, starting the USA civil war. Not particularly
| controversial...
| Danieru wrote:
| The issue is that only the south got rich. Not "America".
|
| The north got rich off factories and wage earning labour. To
| equate the wealth of America to the south is a falsehood. And
| not a helpful one. It misleads you into missing the travesty
| of slavery: it did not build a nation. It gave leisure to a
| couple lucky families at the expense of hundreds per
| plantation.
|
| The industry and wage earning of the north is what built
| America.
| relaxing wrote:
| So the South produced cheap goods... where did they go? Who
| benefitted from being able to buy underpriced agricultural
| products?
| greenie_beans wrote:
| > The industry and wage earning of the north is what built
| America.
|
| uhhh... who is gonna tell him? that those industries in the
| north imported goods from the south.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The white liberal has been attacked way too hard throughout
| history despite literally being the good guy of history for
| hundreds of years. I'm so glad to see us finally defending
| our heritage. John Brown was a white liberal and a lot of
| black people cite him as "the realist white man who ever
| lived".
|
| Americas racism was primarily southerners being racist. It
| took white liberals to liberate everyone else, and we have
| to thank and celebrate the white liberal, not shit on them
| yet again.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| You missed my point. US was not rich due to slavery, quite
| the contrary, after abolishing slavery, after (sic!) civil
| war, it became no. 1 economy in 1871.
|
| Here is the list of GPD countries in 1861, before the start
| of civil war:
|
| 1 - China - $199.6 billion
|
| 2 - India - $125.7 billion
|
| 3 - United Kingdom - $85.8 billion
|
| 4 - France - $72.3 billion
|
| 5 - Germany (Prussia and other states) - $52.4 billion
|
| 6 - Russian Empire - $49.6 billion
|
| 7 - United States - $44.2 billion
|
| 8 - Japan - $33.0 billion
|
| 9 - Austria-Hungary - $30.1 billion
|
| 10 - Ottoman Empire - $17.5 billion
|
| Source: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/the-world-
| economy_...
| greenie_beans wrote:
| have you ever heard of jim crow? and also hockey stick
| growth? hockey stick growth is the common hacker news
| ideology, i know you know what i'm talking about.
| asynchronous wrote:
| What caught me out was the random argument that undocumented
| (see: illegal) immigrants should receive social security
| benefits. By the very definition of how documentation works
| this would be impossible, so I'm assuming the author is
| advocating for extending citizenship en-masse.
| Micanthus wrote:
| Yet until 1996, any worker who payed into social security
| (which includes many undocumented immigrants) was entitled to
| its benefits. The source the author linked makes this clear.
|
| > When the Social Security program began paying benefits in
| 1940, there were no restrictions on benefit payments to
| noncitizens.
|
| > In 1996, Congress approved tighter restrictions on the
| payment of Social Security benefits to aliens residing in the
| United States. The Personal Responsibility and Work
| Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA)23 prohibited
| the payment of Social Security benefits to aliens in the
| United States who are not lawfully present, unless nonpayment
| would be contrary to a totalization agreement or Section
| 202(t) of the Social Security Act (the alien nonpayment
| provision).24 This provision became effective for
| applications filed on or after September 1, 1996.
| Subsequently, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant
| Responsibility Act of 199625 added Section 202(y) to the
| Social Security Act. Section 202(y) of the act, which became
| effective for applications filed on or after December 1,
| 1996, states, "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no
| monthly benefit under [Title II of the Social Security Act]
| shall be payable to any alien in the United States for any
| month during which such alien is not lawfully present in the
| United States as determined by the Attorney General."
|
| https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20161117_RL32004_1ac9e9.
| ..
|
| Also, many (maybe all?) documented non-citizen immigrants are
| eligible for social security if they meet the other criteria,
| so there's no reason to assume the author is arguing "for
| extending citizenship en-masse". Nor even that they are
| arguing for more visas being granted at all
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Keep in mind that "undocumented" is a term-of-art. They may
| in practice be extremely well documented, in every regard
| except for an active visa.
|
| A significant portion of "illegal" immigration is folks who
| have overstayed a legitimate work visa (and hence obtained a
| social security number during the visa application process),
| and there's also the whole bucket of folks who applied for a
| social security card under the DACA (which protections have
| since been mostly rescinded).
| internet_points wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration#Terminolog.
| .. "undocumented" is a euphemism since "illegal immigrant"
| sounds like the person is illegal (vs having done an illegal
| action), but it has the unfortunate effect of leading to
| exactly this kind of confusion.
|
| So-called "undocumented immigrants" can be quite well
| documented and even pay social security taxes:
| https://www.marketplace.org/2019/01/28/undocumented-
| immigran...
| bpt3 wrote:
| It's not random when you consider the clear motives behind
| this visualization.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| this is the history of labor in america, therefore relevant in
| an infographic that deals with the race and class dynamics of
| labor. sorry that you got offended by the truth.
| bpt3 wrote:
| Yeah, I knew where this was going but did stick around long
| enough to confirm it.
|
| I guess there's a certain type of audience this works with, but
| I'm not part of it.
| l0t0b0r0s wrote:
| What, you don't believe white people were rolling around in
| chairs in the 1600s? lol.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Do they include burnout and depression as injuries?
| Terr_ wrote:
| Reminds me of:
|
| > Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up
| something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week
| eventually finds a way to slip something like this into
| conversation: "Bro, you don't work hard. I just worked a
| 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a
| screwdriver."
|
| > They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it's certainly more
| physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard
| unless you're an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we
| agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome
| to programming.
|
| https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
| ericmcer wrote:
| I did a year of landscaping and did 6ish years at grocery
| stores. Those jobs are 100% less stress and much more
| enjoyable imo. If they paid the same I would switch in a
| heartbeat.
|
| When you get to the Senior+ level in software, the buck often
| stops with you, and if you can't figure something out it can
| be a big ego hit. I never woke up or went to sleep wondering
| if I would be able to do landscaping or stock shelves the
| next day, but I often fall asleep stressed about how to
| architect something at work.
|
| Ownership of problems is worth a lot of money, thats why CEOs
| get paid so much. In most other jobs you can blame a chain of
| managers and processes, but with engineering if you fail the
| blame falls straight on you.
| trabant00 wrote:
| The reason they don't is they have a narrative they want to
| push. The entire thing is deeply flawed, from sitting vs
| standing when in fact it's white vs blue collar. There's plenty
| of sitting blue collar jobs that are brutal. Then not
| differentiating qualified vs unqualified blue collar work.
| These days qualified blue collar has similar pay to white
| collar and arguably more job security. But in the end there's
| no point digging to deep, it's just another race bait.
| ramon156 wrote:
| When you do office work you get the "you're not really working"
|
| When you do blue collar you get "you should've studied harder"
|
| We never win, and sometimes accepting that is the right decision.
|
| To not be loved is a simple mistake, to not love one another is a
| fatal mistake.
| ozim wrote:
| Issue is "you should have learned harder" is always from office
| workers.
|
| Conversely "you're not really working" comes from blue collar
| workers.
|
| Both sentences are the same and they are usually used by
| assholes from one or the other side that either feel attacked
| or feel superior.
|
| There is no intrinsic value in any of those statements besides
| what it is saying about person using it - that person is an
| asshole.
| amaurose wrote:
| I dont think it is as simple as that. Throwing everyone into
| the a-hole pool is a rather simplistic approach, and a very
| dismissive one at that. In particular, the first sentence is
| often a reply to someone lamenting their situation, while the
| second sentence is often a statement ment to insult upwards.
| Context is important.
| bumby wrote:
| Maybe not assholes, but it is a pretty blatant status play.
| By denigrating someone else's work you raise yourself up by
| comparison. And while a lot of our psychological health is
| tied to our relative status in society, that doesn't make
| it healthy behavior.
|
| Edit: it's also telling from a status standpoint that you
| characterized the blue collar comment as "insulting
| upwards." It would probably go a long way to avoiding those
| types of comments in the first place if people didn't
| implicitly think blue collar work is "below" white collar
| work.
| pc86 wrote:
| Why is one of those better than the other?
| ozim wrote:
| Seems like amaurose would feel OK with dropping it on
| someone who is nagging about his current life
| circumstances while they could learn more.
|
| Even if it is technically true - why would anyone
| actually say that to someone?
| jumping_frog wrote:
| What do finance guys think about the other two? They are just
| moving numbers up and down. Have finance guys ever built
| anything brick by brick (digital bricks or physical bricks)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9_oWUI7Vo_M
| 0xEF wrote:
| Wisdom, right here. My position has one foot in the engineering
| department and one on the factory floor. The engineers think
| the factory workers are all troglodytes that just have to push
| buttons, and the factory workers think the engineers don't do
| anything but sit in front of the computer. Oddly, both believe
| the other does not have to think because the machine/computer
| does all the thinking for them, which is so far from the truth.
|
| It all seems to grow from a Seed of Ignorance:; a complete lack
| of understanding of what someone else's job actually entails,
| coupled with the subjective measure of how difficult a thing is
| which is largely based on our own narrow limitations and
| experiences. It's a weed that grows easily and is difficult to
| kill in the manufacturing sector.
| diggan wrote:
| > It's a weed that grows easily and is difficult to kill in
| the manufacturing sector.
|
| In my experience, it seems to apply to every sector out
| there. I got started in a different industry than what I'm
| active in now, and what you describe I have seen across any
| type of job I've held.
| jumping_frog wrote:
| Then there are Excel collar workers who decide what gets
| build in the first place or what needs to be downsized.
| People in private equity decide which resource is worthy of
| keeping or which needs to be let go.
| kxrm wrote:
| I wonder if there would be any benefit to allowing each to
| take a peek into the other's world? I am not sure how it
| could be done, but some way to allow them to try on the
| other's role for a day so they can see a full picture of what
| their co-workers do.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| If most factory workers saw how little some office workers
| worked, well, that UnitedHealth CEO shows what sometimes
| happens in these situations...
| TuringTourist wrote:
| Somewhat ironically you are underestimating the amount of
| effort it takes to be as universally reviled as that
| person. Presumably because you, like most people, have
| never been in that field.
| 0xEF wrote:
| This is a pretty ignorant attempt at a spicy take.
|
| Before you can even have this conversation, you need to
| define what "work" is and take into account the stressors
| of that work, the abilities of the workers, etc. This
| mentality of "us vs them" when someone wants to ask "who
| works harder" accomplishes nothing aside from pointing
| out disgruntled laborers who got suckered into punishing
| jobs for laughable compensation.
|
| It stems from this a twisted pride, typically from the
| laborer side of things, that I have seen so many times
| I've come to just expect it from them. The problem with
| that stance is that it falls apart with any scrutiny,
| after the laborer who wants to call someone else out for
| "not working as hard as they do" realizes that they are
| being exploited, which is nothing to be prideful about.
|
| It's silly, as was your contribution to this
| conversation. I recommend reframing it as each position
| being important to the team, but requiring different
| demands and skill sets to which different people can
| contribute. It's not a competition and nobody wins by
| trying to diminish the contribution of others.
| gopalv wrote:
| > If most factory workers saw how little some office
| workers worked
|
| The only morally acceptable form of bigotry in society is
| against the lazy & stupid.
|
| So if you want to hate, you need to turn everything into
| one of those two things.
| mianosm wrote:
| This is a hard business decision to make as it doesn't
| directly increase revenues and directly reduces
| productivity.
|
| Might be smart in many instances to do cross training, and
| on the job perspective expanding, but at the end of the
| day: it's usually better to let the animous live...and the
| spice flow.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I've worked at companies on both ends of this spectrum, so
| I can speak to this with some authority.
|
| Company A(CA) had tons of open channels between sales,
| engineering and machining. Sakes reps had to spend time
| with the service dept every few months, helping with
| repairs and what not. One sales guy opted to do it more
| often because it helped him understand the products better,
| which helped him sell. Engineering and machining were
| constantly showing each other different things that could
| improve production. We barely needed management, leavjng
| them to focus on administrative crap nobody else wanted to
| do. It was quite wonderful and remarkably effective. I miss
| that job, actually.
|
| Company B(CB) did the opposite. All departments, and I mean
| _all_ had walls between them, both metaphorical and
| physical. Department heads were the only conduits and they
| were unreliable at moving info between depts, not to
| mention reluctant to work with each other. Things
| constantly had to be reworked, tons of money wasted on
| parts nobody could use, quality assurance was always an
| after-thought, etc. The company suffered and the customers
| suffered more, but under all that was embitterment between
| the engineers and the production team. Everyone felt
| miserable and micromanaged to death. It was nonsense, and
| even resulted in a short alternation just before I left the
| company.
|
| So, guess who is still in business? CA or CB? Both shops
| are the same size and offered very similar products and
| services. Those are just two of my examples, too. I've been
| with a handful of shops for a long time, and the latter is
| always a hellscape to work in.
| relwin wrote:
| In many Japanese companies entry level engineers were
| required to work on a factory line for a few months before
| being assigned their engineering job. This gave them
| perspective on how their company makes money by
| manufacturing, and what that activity entails. (this concept,
| and my knowledge of Japanese companies may be outdated
| now...)
| graemep wrote:
| There are people who find jobs that require very little work,
| and its probably easier to find these jobs in offices. It
| works very well with technical work that management do not
| understand, and where output is difficult measure. its
| possible that people on HN might know of some jobs that fit
| this...
|
| There are extreme cases, such as people dying and no one
| realising that their work is not being done, and that is
| rare, but a certain amount of slacking off, spending time of
| social media, etc. is not at all uncommon.
| munificent wrote:
| You're exactly right about the seed of ignorance.
|
| I wish there was a good term for it like we have "fundamental
| attribution error" for that other pernicious cognitive
| fallacy.
|
| The core mistake is that believing that all _we_ know about
| something is equivalent to _all there is to know_ about
| something. So if you don 't know anything about welding, you
| assume it must be brain-dead simple because _your knowledge_
| of it is so tiny. If you don 't know anything about
| engineering, you assume it's just pushing buttons.
|
| It's not just about people's jobs, either. It shows up
| _everywhere_ once you start looking for it.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| This explains managers perfectly.
| atoav wrote:
| You can't please everyone -- and even more important: Some
| people just _love_ to complain for the sake of it. I suspect
| they put themselves above others that way. "Shit I could sit
| in that warm office" becomes "You are lazy" or else they have
| to question their life choices. Vice versa "Shit I could do
| something less boring" becomes "But I have learned more" for
| similar reasons. Grass is always greener..
|
| My experience as someone who needs to do both is that often
| "game recognizes game", so great office workers will appreciate
| great blue collar workers and vice versa -- _if_ given the
| chance.
|
| Every blue collar worker had situations where they had to wait
| because some lazy office bum that had to give them paperwork
| would rather chat with their collegues than do their job.
|
| And every white collar worker had situation where a
| craftsperson communicated in single word fragments, went off
| and was seen to smoke cigarettes for half the time only to
| write them down as work hours while leaving things broken
| afterwards.
|
| The only thing capable blue/white collar workers hate more than
| that is uncapable people on their own side.
| devjab wrote:
| I don't think people saying these things are inherently wrong.
| "Not working" is obviously wrong because using brain is work,
| and it's exhausting work in many cases. The flip-side, and this
| is probably what is meant, is that you don't break your body
| doing it. Similarly it's obviously silly to think a higher
| education is necessary for a good working life. A lot of
| independent contractors and trades people have some really cool
| jobs that most office workers would be jealous of. Again what
| is meant is the perception that not having a higher education
| leads to a poorer life, which it can, but doesn't have to.
|
| I think that especially calling white collars out as not doing
| real work is often lovingly. It can be said by assholes, but
| the language around physical labour is often "tough love". I'm
| not sure calling blue collar workers unfulfilled is very often
| lovingly though, so I think most people who do that are
| assholes.
|
| What is interesting in the debate to me, is that I see a lot of
| IT work as blue collar work. Not all of it, but a lot of what
| we do is basically trade-skill related similar to how plumbing
| is. It's just no physical. Over all though, I think it's best
| to spend very little time on people who actually mean it
| hatefully when they call you X. Who cares what assholes think?
| michaelt wrote:
| _> What is interesting in the debate to me, is that I see a
| lot of IT work as blue collar work._
|
| Society has loads of edge cases like this.
|
| I broke my arm a few years back, went to hospital, and a
| surgeon put some titanium plates and screws in. The
| orthopaedic surgeon spends a lot of the day standing, they
| repeat similar work every day with minor variations, they
| can't work remotely, they're exposed to hazardous chemicals,
| they have face-to-face interactions with customers, they earn
| money by working rather than from investments or inheritance,
| they're union members, they get paid overtime, they wear blue
| employer-issued workwear, many do shift work, and they
| literally put in screws for a living.
|
| And yet nobody would say surgeons are blue collar workers.
|
| Maybe because of the $500k salaries, or the air-conditioned
| hospitals they work in, or because their status is equivalent
| to doctors who are pretty much the definition of upper-
| middle-class tie-wearing knowledge workers.
| sarchertech wrote:
| > they're union members, they get paid overtime
|
| Very few surgeons are union members. They frequently work
| for outside groups and are paid per procedure. The ones
| that do work for the hospital on salary don't get overtime.
|
| >status is equivalent to doctors
|
| They are doctors. Both in title and in function. Most
| surgeons only operate a couple days a week. The rest of
| their time they see patients in clinic, and an outside
| observer couldn't tell the difference between their work
| environment and a primary care physician's.
|
| You are onto something though. My wife is an ER doctor and
| her job is very similar to blue collar service jobs (if you
| consider service jobs blue collar).
|
| She doesn't make her own schedule. She works insane shifts
| (one day she could work 7a-4p, the next 10p-7a). She
| interacts with patients directly all day.
|
| The pay is a lot better, but the hours are worse than any
| retail job I've ever heard of, and you can't call in sick.
| Her coworker was sick and could barely get out of bed, but
| she came in early to have a nurse give her an IV so she
| could power through her shift--that kind of thing is very
| common.
|
| Plus you have the ultimate responsibility for every patient
| that comes through the door. You have to make sure you
| don't miss anything serious every time--while at the same
| time, making sure that you don't spend too much time with
| each patient. And the ER you're working in is full because
| the floor is too full to admit new patients but the ER
| can't just shut the door, so patients are boarding in the
| halls.
|
| Oh and if you mess up, you can literally lose your house
| when a jury awards someone more than your malpractice
| insurance will cover.
| pc86 wrote:
| They're going to be members of the American Medical
| Association and likely at least one of the American
| Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, the American Board of
| Orthopedic Surgeons, and/or the American Council for
| Graduate Medical Education. The difference between these
| organizations and unions pretty much starts and ends with
| "negotiate collectively with your employer directly"
| because they all (especially the AMA and ACGME) act to
| keep salaries and prestige high.
|
| They're not a union member the same way a teacher, police
| officer, or steam fitter is but they're not as far
| removed as your typical programmer, for example.
| worik wrote:
| The American Medical Association, American Academy of
| Orthopedic Surgeons, the American Board of Orthopedic
| Surgeons, and the American Council for Graduate Medical
| Education are all unions
|
| Powerful unions
| sarchertech wrote:
| None of those are unions. They are lobbying organizations
| and certification bodies.
|
| The vast majority of doctors aren't even members of the
| AMA.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Less than 20% of practicing physicians are members of the
| AMA.
|
| As for medical specialty boards, getting board certified
| is much more like an engineer passing the PE exam than
| joining a union.
|
| Also collective bargaining with your employer is the
| primary benefit of joining a union, and the primary
| purpose of joining a union. Without that function a union
| would be unrecognizable to the average union member.
| greentxt wrote:
| All doctors,like all lawyers, are in a union in the sense
| that they cannot operate without approval from their
| peers. It's collusion by labor, but with patient outcomes
| being the supposed concern rather than pay (though
| obviously it is also precisely why doctors and lawyers
| get paid so much).
| HPsquared wrote:
| Using the brain can be especially hard work because you can't
| let your mind wander. You're giving over more of yourself to
| the employer.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I've done a lot of blue collar work too and construction
| and line cooking are not in my experience more conducive to
| daydreaming than programming is. I assume nearly all
| workers are fully engaged.
| astura wrote:
| >"Not working" is obviously wrong because using brain is
| work, and it's exhausting work in many cases.
|
| "Exhausting work," lol.
|
| The only people who say nonsense like this are the people
| who've never done manual labor for a living. I've done both
| and there's just no comparison of exhaustion levels.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Dude.
|
| I live on a horse farm. My day starts and ends with heavy
| manual labor working around animals that can kill me in an
| instant if they're in a bad mood or I have the misfortune
| to get in the middle of a beef between two of them. Most of
| yesterday, the temperature was in the single digits
| Fahrenheit with wind gusts to 50mph.
|
| I'm also a programmer. There are some days I couldn't tell
| you which of the two jobs is the more exhausting.
| 1832 wrote:
| Its the first one
| munificent wrote:
| Is it so hard for you to respond with empathy instead of
| scorn?
|
| I've also done both and each can leave me profoundly
| exhausted in very different ways. Neither flavor of
| exhaustion is worse than the other, just different.
| analog31 wrote:
| Do people really think like that? I don't. I'd be ill-suited to
| most office jobs and most blue-collar jobs. I tend to think
| "you should have better labor laws, workplace safety, safety
| net, health care, education..."
| Roark66 wrote:
| Yeah, add to that the famous Elon Musk's troll quote, "working
| from home is unethical, because other people can't all work
| from home - think about all the people growing your food etc".
| Yeah, Am I also supposed to feel bad because I work normal
| working hours and others work at night? What about the people
| that have to lift heavy objects all day and do back breaking
| labour, and I "sit or stand at my desk all day". How about
| those that have a 3h commute while I walked to work from my
| city center apartment (back when I did work on site).
|
| People will always find something to beat you over the head
| with. The most important thing is not to let them infect you
| with their negativity.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> think about all the people growing your food etc_
|
| Did he really say that? Farmers are the original WFH-ers.
| amaurose wrote:
| Humility doesn't hurt anyone.
| HPsquared wrote:
| When you are self-employed it's "you couldn't handle a real
| job"
| Aunche wrote:
| "Lot's of people have tough lives, and things like minimum wage
| can help these people," is something I can potentially get
| behind. "You're a privileged sitter. Your kind control society
| yet refuse minimum wage increases, demonstrating a lack of
| empathy" just alienates me. I struggle to understand this the
| benefit of this framing outside of in-group virtue signalling.
| diggan wrote:
| Frustrated people use frustrated language, sometimes we have
| to be able to see past that. As someone who used to live
| below minimum wage, but haven't in a long time, I guess it's
| easier for me to understand why people get frustrated enough
| to use emotional language, as it's (seemingly or actually)
| affecting their daily life at every turn, and they see others
| around them get richer and richer.
|
| Ironically enough, that you cannot see past the emotional
| language and describe the quote as "alienating me" also
| demonstrate an lack of empathy for me, but I guess that's
| beyond the topic.
| wang_li wrote:
| The use of "frustrated" language demonstrates no self
| reflection and recognition of the fact that why someone
| earns a low wage is because they have chosen not to improve
| themselves and they have a large amount of envy about other
| people's lives. The takers love to ignore the past and only
| look at this instant moment and complain about how unfair
| it is.
|
| Ironically, the people who say "you're selfish and greedy
| if you don't give me the money you earned" and "you have no
| empathy" have no empathy or consideration for the people
| they want to take from.
| diggan wrote:
| > The use of "frustrated" language demonstrates no self
| reflection and recognition
|
| I feel like that extrapolating a lot from someone who
| just emotionally doesn't feel well.
|
| > the fact that someone earns a low wage is because they
| have chosen not to improve themselves
|
| I don't think you understand how poverty works (in most
| countries at least). Have you ever lived close to the
| poverty line and/or earned below minimum wage?
|
| > you're selfish and greedy if you don't give me the
| money you earned [...] the people they want to take from
|
| No one says this, but at least that you wrote this makes
| it clear that you don't want to engage in a discussion in
| good faith.
| wang_li wrote:
| >Have you ever lived close to the poverty line and/or
| earned below minimum wage?
|
| Yes. I grew up in poverty in an area far from any big
| cities in the '70s and '80s. We only had eggs and meat
| because we raised chickens and rabbits. Half my calories
| during the summer months came from the garden.
|
| >No one says this, but at least that you wrote this makes
| it clear that you don't want to engage in a discussion in
| good faith.
|
| I paraphrased. What was actually said was "I hate living
| in a country where everyone is greedy and don't want to
| support the poor and homeless."
|
| > you don't want to engage in a discussion in good faith.
|
| Your comment ended in a way that demonstrated no interest
| in a good faith discussion. Preemptively telling the
| people who disagree with you that they have no empathy is
| a sure-fire way to guarantee that tone of response.
|
| E: Both your comments so far in this subthread are
| predicated on invalidating the opinions of other because
| you assert they don't have the right life experiences to
| know how it is.
| Aunche wrote:
| Ironically, I don't think it's usually the frustrated
| minimum wage earners using this holier than thou language.
| It's generally journalists and academics, and indeed the
| author is a former journalism professor. When someone
| struggling to get by does say something that I think is
| ridiculous like "eat the rich", I keep my judgement at a
| minimum.
|
| > Ironically enough, that you cannot see past the emotional
| language and describe the quote as "alienating me" also
| demonstrate an lack of empathy for me
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if I actually have below-average
| empathy, but unfortunately for you, people like us still
| get to vote, and shame isn't a great way to get support on
| controversial issues. Anyways, your choice in language has
| real utility, so it's not really a matter of whether or not
| I'm empathetic. I support welfare as a social safety net,
| but not welfare solely for the sake of redistribution of
| wealth. If the political camp that is advocating for
| welfare is using language that suggests the second purpose
| of welfare, then I'm less inclined to support them.
| mzmzmzm wrote:
| Both of kinds of language describe the same reality? The
| first sounds aspirational, and the second acknowledges where
| power lies. Maybe you would feel less alienated if you put
| effort into organizing to raise the minimum wage, for
| example.
| jerf wrote:
| If you define "win" as "everyone likes and agrees with me", it
| is true you will never "win".
|
| I would suggest putting in the time to find a different
| definition of "win" for your life, rather than accepting it.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > When you do office work you get the "you're not really
| working"
|
| > When you do blue collar you get "you should've studied
| harder"
|
| Do you really though? I know there's a lingering sentiment from
| somewhere, but at the same time... I don't recognise this
| sentiment at all, neither from personal experience nor
| anecdotal from diverse / random people on the internet in 2024.
| shortstuffsushi wrote:
| In my own experience, I'm the oldest of five and was very
| much pushed to go to college in a family where my dad, his
| brothers, and one of my brothers are carpenters. Another of
| my brothers is a manual machinist. On this side of things,
| there is a continuous stream of "I can't imagine sitting at a
| desk all day and dealing with those sorts of people."
| (because office people are wimps and having less than a
| yelling, swearing disagreement is unthinkable)
|
| On the other side of things, because I still do a lot of that
| sort of "trade work" to help out friends since it's my
| background, I get a lot of "how do you know how to do all
| this, aren't you glad you went to school and don't have to do
| this every day, have you tried to convince your family to go
| back to school?" (and of course, the republicans are bad /
| dumb undertones, even present in the linked article)
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| You could be an engineer doing something physical like
| construction or mechanical engineering? Advanced degree and
| high pay but you spend plenty of time doing real tangible
| stuff. Also, there's obvious stuff like surgeons: highly
| respected and you're doing physical work.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > We never win
|
| You never win everything simultaneously, yes.
| eru wrote:
| I solve this dilemma with a standing desk.
|
| (But I've yet to upgrade to a treadmill desk.)
| mavamaarten wrote:
| I have a standing desk. I seriously need to force myself to use
| it, though. The last time it's been moved up is about a month
| ago.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| my trick: start the day standing and try to stand for as long
| as i can. i usually stay standing til my lunchtime walk and
| when i get back from my walk i still have energy to stand. if
| i sit then my focus wanes.
| amaurose wrote:
| From about:
|
| > Visual storytelling makes ideas more accessible
|
| From an a11y standpoint, that statement is very ironic. Because
| for visually impaired people, the effect is the opposite of what
| the sentence claims.
| lexlambda wrote:
| Accessible as in "better to understand", helping with bringing
| the idea to a more general audience.
|
| A lot of people are uninterested in long texts or in this case
| parts of the expected audience might also have literacy issues.
| shark1 wrote:
| They forgot to mention that the number one cause of death is a
| disease associated with by a lack of physical activity or
| prolonged periods of sitting or inactivity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...
| internet_points wrote:
| > Standers are more likely to be _exposed to the outdoors_ --
| something that will become more and more dangerous as our planet
| warms.
|
| Feels almost absurd to see that framed as (just) a bad thing. (I
| would think Sitters are more likely to be exposed to the indoors,
| which includes a lack of sunlight and fresh air, possible
| exposure to mold and bad ventilation, and heated arguments over
| hot-desking.)
| AlfredBarnes wrote:
| I was getting consistent headaches at work, and attributed it
| to my coworkers being obnoxious. Then I brought in an air
| quality monitor, turns out my building had some serious
| ventilation issues, and there was not clean air at my desk.
| lexlambda wrote:
| Thought the same. It is clear that this presentation is
| definetely biased towards showing the problems of standing
| workers, as there haven't been any negative options about
| sitting presented.
|
| Unfortunately, while medically known and even legislated
| (forced breaks), problems of sitting workers are still widely
| ignored (often by themselves too) until too late or
| trivialized.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| I felt like I was being preached to by an ideologue, with some
| meh animated charts thrown in to sweeten the pill.
| putzdown wrote:
| There is one other analysis that would, I suspect, adjust the
| OP's conclusions: age. Hypothesis: sitters vs standers, and other
| measures of the quality of the job (danger, flexibility...)
| correlate substantially with the age of the worker. As you go
| from your teens to 20s to 30s and beyond you tend on average to
| get better jobs. It's not absolute, but I bet it's a very strong
| trend, perhaps stronger than racial factors. That's a hypothesis
| I wish this analysis examined.
| pc86 wrote:
| They were too busy making weird barely coherent points like
| "someday it will be too hot to venture outside" and "America is
| rich because of black people and the Chinese."
| gruez wrote:
| Source? The two claims you listed have some elements of truth
| behind them, so without seeing the exact claim made, it's
| impossible to tell whether you're giving an uncharitable
| summary, or they're actually making absurd claims.
| madebylaw wrote:
| The source is the actual FA dude.
| gruez wrote:
| Are you talking about
|
| >Standers are more likely to be exposed to the outdoors--
| something that will become more and more dangerous as our
| planet warms.
|
| and
|
| >America got rich selling cotton picked by enslaved Black
| people. America built the Transcontinental Railroad with
| Chinese immigrant labor, only to ban Chinese immigration
| a few decades later. And America feeds itself with
| animals killed and processed by Black and Hispanic
| meatpackers.
|
| ? If so, I'm not sure how either of those points are
| "barely coherent", and the characterization made by the
| gp is a gross misrepresentation of site's claims.
| tetnis wrote:
| America was built by X. Why doesn't the X's country look like
| America? >.<
| golol wrote:
| All I see is trivialities.
| layer8 wrote:
| So this is not about male toilet use.
| mouse_ wrote:
| I hate how everything on this site is constantly and slowly
| moving.
| spongebobism wrote:
| Why are speech pathologists more often injured or ill than
| ambulance drivers, police officers and freight agents? That does
| not at all match my idea of that line of work.
| tristor wrote:
| Because speech pathologists are generally working with patients
| that have mental issues, speech issues are generally
| neurological, and those patients may not have the same
| emotional self-regulation and self-control as the average
| person and may act violently.
|
| That said, I wouldn't consider it a particularly "dangerous"
| job. It's just that, despite the popular discourse, jobs like
| being a police officer are also really not that dangerous
| either. When the effect size is small it doesn't take much
| difference to be amplified in the data. Being a roofer is far
| more dangerous than being a police officer, even though that's
| not the typical mainstream narrative, as an example.
| claytongulick wrote:
| I think a more objective analysis would have been for skilled vs
| unskilled labor, supply/demand and age stratified.
|
| It seems like a pretty series of infographics that are oriented
| towards some sort of narrative the creator is trying to impress
| on folks, something about guilt and unfairness?
|
| It seems like the author put in a lot of work in order to
| demonstrate a thing that most people intuitively understand:
|
| There's a large supply of unskilled or low skilled labor, so
| wages are less and the jobs are crappier and more physically
| demanding.
|
| If you age stratify it, I feel pretty confident that you'd also
| see a trend that shows that most physical labor is performed by
| younger folks, and the percentage of their day spent doing
| physical labor mostly decreases as they progress in their lives
| and become more skilled.
|
| I'm not talking just about desk jobs, I'm thinking (for example)
| of an apprentice electrician vs master electrician. One of those
| is going to get stuck doing the more physically demanding work
| while the other is in more of a supervisory role.
| l0t0b0r0s wrote:
| cool website, but I dont appreciate the false notion that "
| America got rich off of selling cotton picked by enslaved Black
| people"
|
| Also the people who created the philosophical concepts that made
| the United States possible were all sitters.
| m_herrlich wrote:
| Great visualization but lost me at the end when it got a bit too
| preachy. Turning socioeconomic issues into race issues doesn't
| help anyone.
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| Interesting that the reader is ranked in 2D space on dimensions
| for which the reader provided a single bit of data ("Able to
| pause work"). I wonder how those dimensions are inferred.
| tetnis wrote:
| thanks for injecting race into this!
| m3047 wrote:
| Very nice. My favorite definition of "blue collar vs white
| collar" is whether you wash your hands before or after you use
| the toilet. Not entirely true, but that's the gist of it.
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