
Angry letter from minimum-wage Yelp employee (now fired) - exolymph
https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a#.zhg8q53sh
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gus_massa
Current discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11138086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11138086)
(74 points, 8 hours ago, 20 comments)

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exolymph
I feel really conflicted about this story. On the one hand, she's shooting at
the wrong target: CEOs don't make minimum wage and healthcare laws. On the
other hand, Yelp is a Bay Area tech company and something feels really wrong
about their low-prestige support employees struggling to make ends meet. Then
again, that's how supply and demand works on the labor market...

~~~
stray
No. Paying someone the minimum wage sends the message "If I could pay you
less, I would". Legal minimum wage establishes a limit on how evil people are
allowed to be to each other.

And working for minimum wage sends the message "I still believe I can work my
way out of this".

In _my_ opinion -- if you don't have enough money for a tip, you don't have
enough money to eat at a restaurant -- and if you don't have enough to pay a
living wage for every job at your company -- you don't have enough money to
hire anybody.

Minimum wage laws are meant to prevent employers from exploiting the
vulnerable.

She had the perfect target in her gunsights.

