You are so out of touch. Most people I know who are having trouble either have no car or a $400 beater car. A $5000 car would be considered lavish.
You have a trust fund or something don't you?
A mobile phone is absolutely a requirement to get a job. Employers expect you to have it and expect you to answer when they call. Guess what happens if, after a job interview, you don't answer your call.
"Sorry boss, I was at the grocery store." is not an excuse.
"Sorry boss, I was on the toilet" is not even an excuse.
You either answer or you don't get the job.
Guess what happens if, at a $12/hour job, you don't answer your phone and come in for extra shifts when they are short workers? They take away your hours. They financially punish you.
You've never tried going without the internet if you think the library is a substitute. Employers require you to have email and web access from home, and they don't accept, "Sorry boss I didn't read your email yet. I haven't had a chance to get down to the library. It takes while on public transport you know" as an excuse.
My last job paid $9.10 an hour and I was expected to review my email daily as well as visit the company website occasionally to do these little quizzes and courses. The public library closes at 6pm. It wouldn't even be possible for me to get there.
Try going into a job interview and telling them you can't be reached instantly by email or phone at any time. See what happens.
You sound like Marie Antoinette. "The unemployed can just get a $5000 car! What the hell are they complaining about?"
Frankly, I think you're out of touch. I don't have a trust fund, and I acknowledge that there are people to whom my statements do not apply. I pretty explicitly said I was talking about the common case, which is not "unemployed and looking for a $10/hour job." You are talking about a very specific situation which is much poorer than average, statistically speaking.
Anyway, though, I suggested that $5000 car (which is a once-a-decade splurge) as a convenience. I explicitly said that. Many people, including me, have made do with public transportation or lousy cars (at a $10/hour job, yes — this is from experience). I still maintain that there are much cheaper options than the "plasma TV, high-speed Internet, cell service" lifestyle that was under discussion here. For example, you definitely don't need TV, and if you're looking fo a job and really need a phone, you can get a prepaid one for like $10 without committing to an expensive plan.
And it is simply not my experience, nor that of anyone I know (who range from unemployed to poorly employed to very gainfully employed) that hiring managers will not wait a few minutes for you to call back. Has that actually happened to you a lot? I believe it happens sometimes, but again, I don't believe that is the common case.
If you really work for somebody that horrible for $9.10 an hour, I would urge you to seek alternative employment at someplace like Subway, Albertsons or Starbucks, where they have similar compensation and in my experience they tend to treat people better than that.
Also — and I mean this sincerely, not to be snarky — I would suggest you look at how you approach people, because frankly you come across as rather hostile and negative. I understand you find your situation frustrating, but you need to try to stay positive. That will impact your chances of landing a job much more severely than your ability to answer an email within 30 seconds of it being sent.
Anyway, best of luck to you, whether you agree or not.
Do you realize that there is almost 20% real unemployment?
This means that employers who are actually hiring have so many applicants, if you don't answer the phone, they just go to the next applicant.
This isn't the Google hiring process. This is where there are 50 applications for a single opening at a crappy part time customer facing service job like the McDonald's drive-through.
You really have the wrong image of me. I'm not some highly paid Silicon Valley engineer, I'm a newspaper editor who happens to enjoy making software. Many of my friends work retail (e.g. cashiers) or just above (e.g. bartenders). Many people close to me have been homeless within the past several years. Believe me, I know how it is. I still think you're exaggerating the degree to which you are screwed if you don't have all the latest technology.
The point is that most devices that would have been a luxury some time ago are merely a way to keep up with certain demands of the society today. Just because you didn't have a cell phone 15 years ago and have one now doesn't automatically mean your life quality became higher in this respect. Because life is different. (BTW, landline phones are more expensive. They are the luxury now.) That was grandparent's point, and I do not believe you've presented a convincing argument against it.
I felt that the GP's point was a little stronger than the one you're making here. If you're just saying that society has adjusted to incorporate these new technologies, yes, that's true. I don't mean to argue against that. Not having a cell phone is a greater inconvenience nowadays than it was in the '50s, but I still think you're overstating things if you say you need one, and definitely if you say you need one that costs anywhere in the ballpark most people pay (one friend of mine makes about $700 a month and pays $80 of that for her phone). If you're paying more than like $5 a month, you're paying for convenience.
And thanks for the correction on landlines. It's been forever since I had one, so I didn't know how much they cost these days. My bad on that one.
I respect the particulars of your situation but it is not standard.
I own a manufacturing company with >100 employees, a mix of manufacturing and office/service jobs, and I don't expect answers from home from anyone except a couple top execs and the sales team, who are all based out of their home anyway and have company provided smartphones.
According to benchmarking data our company is not lavish, pays competitive wages but not way over the market, and has good productivity numbers.
Most jobs available right now are customer facing service jobs. They give a typical employee 32 hours per week to avoid being legally required to treat them as a full time employee, and they change the shifts on a week to week basis. Good employees are rewarded with more hours or better shifts, while bad employees are punished by reducing their hours or giving worse shifts. They expect you to answer the cellphone and come in to do extra shifts when they are short-staffed, and you must apply online through their website and then come in for an interview where you dress well.
They expect you to get there on your own which in many cities means a car is necessary. They ask if you have a car on their website application forms, and they mention that a car is not mandatory. You are statistically more likely to be hired if you display signals on the application form that indicate you are wealthy or higher class, which gives people who don't really need the job an advantage in the hiring process (such as high school students).
If you take sick days, they will reduce your hours to punish you, but of course will never tell you that that is why because it is illegal. But all employees understand that this is the situation.
For the record, I'm not in this situation. I'm one of the wealthy people who decided to work a $9.10/hour job by choice, for fun. I don't work there anymore -- early retirement. But I have lots of friends who are in this position. Usually they are there because their parents are poor and had major issues. Many of the people in these situations suffer from mental health disorders but cannot afford treatment.
If I'm angry at the silver spoon people on hacker news it's because I was raised to believe that technology would liberate humanity and create a world with no poverty and limited human suffering. But instead I have discovered that technology has been used by an elite to enslave the vulnerable.
They live tiny compartmentalized lives dominated by oppressive faceless systems that exploit them at every turn. Every injustice is accepted with resignation to the fact that the dejected human cannot even beg the system for mercy, because robots have no feelings. The bank algorithms charge $40 non-sufficient fund fees when the rent check on Monday is withdrawn, even though the paycheck was deposited Friday, because some bank algorithm re-arranges the order of the deposits to ensure there will be a fee. The worker is told not to complain about this -- when they opened the account they accepted the agreement which indicated that this could be a possibility.
Instead of the whips of slave-masters, faceless corporate "policy" and computer algorithms are the overlords that teach them their worthlessness. They are told to cheer up by the self-absorbed on HN, and they learn that it is essential that they lift up the corners of their mouth and pretend to love their slavery in order to pay the ever expanding grocery bill.
This is your high tech society. It's a society of faceless high tech oppression, a society where the hungry have jobs and internet but cannot afford food, a society where there is abundance but corporate policy says that only rich people are allowed to eat.
A society where when the dejected and pitiful complain for help, they are told to cheer up, at least they have cell phones and internet. But they can't eat their cell phone, and they also can't trade it for food.
For the record, most of the poor people I know do not have plasma TVs or cable. They would gladly trade their cell phones and internet for more food and shelter IF they could function in society without a cell phone or internet. But you can't. They are not luxuries, they are mandatories.
Wait. I thought we lived in a world where a staggering majority of the 7 billion people now alive (an absolutely unprecedented population level) manage to have more than enough food to eat from day to day. A world that largely has forgotten what true food insecurity is like. A world that pushes the limits of the world's carrying capacity. A world that is the product of the most efficient, integrated systems mankind has ever built to extract the world's resources.
So how can this be true while we also apparently have been enslaved by computers and corporate overlords who refuse to let us eat?
My conclusion:
1) You use the word 'slavery' very loosely.
2) You ignore the ability of population increases to nullify productivity gains.
3) You have let your emotions overpower your thoughts and so instead of analysing issues you rant.
There is still food scarcity today, and there doesn't need to be. There is still environmental destruction today, and there doesn't need to be. Freedom, democracy and prosperity came about with enlightenment philosophy, but computer technology has actually caused a reduction in freedom and prosperity for Americans. This is a problem.
My rant would not have been made 40 years ago in this country. Things have gotten worse in this country.
Most people on HN are 1-3 sigmas on the right side of the IQ bell curve. They have a hard time understanding what life is like on the other side (although rampant off-shoring and H1B wage gouging might, one day, engender some horizon broadening).
It's just a question of degree. Is height solely determined by genetics? No - we know that nutrition plays a large part. But potential height is still dominated by genetics. It doesn't matter whether or not he eats his Wheaties, the average kid is not going to grow up to be Shaq, period.
Ditto for intelligence. Things like iodine and breast feeding seem to be capable of boosting IQ by a few points each. Doubtless there are other factors. And yet, there is little reason to doubt that there is a genetic ceiling to any given person's potential IQ, at least if you accept that IQ stems from physical properties - in which case, how could it be exempt from genetic determination?
This is reality, and there is little hope of improving the lot of those who did not win the genetic lottery without first accepting that there is, in fact, such a lottery.
Just a precision. I see two questions of interest when talking about whether height and IQ come from genetic or environmental factors.
The first question is, how much of the currently observed variability in height (and IQ) is explained by genetic factors and environmental factors respectively? Meaning, how much of a lottery genes actually are?
The second question is, how could we take control of the variability? Meaning, how much could we deliberately influence height (and IQ) through genes and environment respectively?
By itself, the first question is of high academic interest, and low practical interest. The second question is just the opposite. But more important, those two questions should be treated separately, so everyone knows what we are talking about.
>My last job paid $9.10 an hour and I was expected to review my email daily as well as visit the company website occasionally to do these little quizzes and courses.
You had to do your company training on your own time? This is ridiculously exploitive. Surely there is a class action lawsuit here? Walmart got in trouble for making people work off the clock.
You are so out of touch. Most people I know who are having trouble either have no car or a $400 beater car. A $5000 car would be considered lavish.
You have a trust fund or something don't you?
A mobile phone is absolutely a requirement to get a job. Employers expect you to have it and expect you to answer when they call. Guess what happens if, after a job interview, you don't answer your call.
"Sorry boss, I was at the grocery store." is not an excuse.
"Sorry boss, I was on the toilet" is not even an excuse.
You either answer or you don't get the job.
Guess what happens if, at a $12/hour job, you don't answer your phone and come in for extra shifts when they are short workers? They take away your hours. They financially punish you.
You've never tried going without the internet if you think the library is a substitute. Employers require you to have email and web access from home, and they don't accept, "Sorry boss I didn't read your email yet. I haven't had a chance to get down to the library. It takes while on public transport you know" as an excuse.
My last job paid $9.10 an hour and I was expected to review my email daily as well as visit the company website occasionally to do these little quizzes and courses. The public library closes at 6pm. It wouldn't even be possible for me to get there.
Try going into a job interview and telling them you can't be reached instantly by email or phone at any time. See what happens.
You sound like Marie Antoinette. "The unemployed can just get a $5000 car! What the hell are they complaining about?"