I don’t need to know exact companies, no need to unnecessarily expose yourself or anything, but as we are a workers rights instance of Lemmy, I safely assume we are all proletarians. I for example work at a unionized grocery and I work outside. I have many complaints but I try my best to work as little as possible while getting my paycheck. Customers are usually fine but occasionally just dumb af to the point where it’s annoying(I have millions of stories) managers are very kind, only ones who were dicks left(unfortunately they probably got promoted if I remember correctly) and my coworkers are eh. Some are great to confide in and joke with, while others are rude or annoying, some are very nice but have garbage politics (libertarians who don’t understand their benefits from being in a union/don’t care enough about the differences to advocate for it). I plan on becoming a firefighter, not only for the pay, job security and union benefits, but it’s also an essential job that doesn’t exist just to create capital (no judgement to those who work in corporate environments, I’ve never done it and can’t judge it). I like my job overall but Goddamn the weather. Edit: Kinda cool to see so many people who are in tech.
I do software development, mostly working with full stack web apps.
Your telling me your not a cosmonaut?
lol dress for the job you want :)
I’ve been around a lot of menial work. Trolley pusher, warehouse work, pizza delivery - right now I’m settled into a very cozy corporate gig doing health insurance. It’s remote work and incredibly easy so I’m sticking with it.
Just like you I do have aspirations of getting into a job that feels more meaningful and is actually essential for my community. The one constant through all of my jobs, no matter how hard or easy they are, is that they feel pointless. I’m just a cog in the machine and don’t get to see or enjoy the output of my labor. No matter how good a job is, I just can’t be happy in the long term like that.
The one constant through all of my jobs, no matter how hard or easy they are, is that they feel pointless. I’m just a cog in the machine and don’t get to see or enjoy the output of my labor.
I feel that. Boy do I feel that
I guide people with their debt. It is an unending, frustrating job and it gives you a real look into how poverty and debt changes you as a person. Many people I come in contact with only think about money and what they need to pay. So much potential wasted because some instance needs money with their added fines as well. Though it must be said I also get quite a lot of people who are really bad at budgeting as well. I see 10+ cases on the daily that make enough money to be able to live comfortably, but somehow can’t find a way to pay off 3k in debt. Also, multiple people who get in debt who recently bought a new Mercedes or BMW but can’t pay off 700 euro. The vast majority is in poverty, though.
I wanted to switch so I applied to a job at the Union. After two interviews I made it to the final round but it will take place somewhere in the next week or two.
Debt is such a crazy thing in capitalist society. The fact that debt isn’t inherently visible (you can actively see a person experiencing life without a home, struggling through life without food), you can’t see how much someone is struggling financially and scraping to survive, I feel that it warps our idea of how other people get by. The answer is that they kind of don’t in a lot of scenarios, plenty of people die in debt.
1 in 5 Belgian people is in active debt and 1 in 6 Belgian people says they would be in major trouble were they to miss one paycheck.
1 in every 5 people I see in the street is having some form of financial problems. No one openly talks about their debt, payment plans or how many agencies are after their ass. It’s like a silent epidemic in this country. I sometimes wonder what would happen if everyone just stopped acting as if they are fine and have everyone showing how problematic this situation is.
That’s extremely sad. Those numbers are already horrifying and it just gets worse and worse across the imperial core. That number sits at almost 77% of Americans being in active debt and 55-64% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and unable to afford a 500 dollar emergency expense.
Only made worse by there being no financial literacy, no teaching of budgeting, what credit is, how to navigate loans and credit, how to save, how to open/find good bank accounts. It’s a purposeful trap.
Medical debt in the US is very sad, I don’t know how the US still operates like this, it’s probably the most backward part of daily US culture if you ask me
You are designed to sink.
They want you to have your insurance tied to employment, so that if you try to strike, bargain, or otherwise need to be removed, you will suffer, get trapped in debt, or die if you try to fight back against your employer or the machine.
Combine that with “at will employment” and your boss is able to fire you for any reason whatsoever whenever they want, and you have no recourse to fight back.
That’s a good insight, I never thought about it that way, that it is inherently designed to suppress strikes
It would be a different world for sure, part of so many people’s confidence in the west stems from individuality, unfortunately debt is also individual-based so plenty of people will self-identify with their watch, their jordans, their car, house, etc. bc it’s so visible, it’s like wearing something that says “I don’t have to worry, I’m double well” and obv it’s not always that, I have like 4 pairs of Jordans I barely wear, I worked hard for them and liked them. But debt doesn’t work that same way, we don’t see someone with a nice car with a bumper sticker showing how many thousands they still have to pay for that car. Houses don’t have nice little decor showing how far you are in debt. If people knew, it would probably shake faith in the system, just a little bit
Not only that but in order to advance in capitalist society you are required to risk taking on debt. Need a new car thats reliable and wont break down on the way to work? Sorry your credit score is terrible. You should have taken some debt and paid it off to prove that you can pay for things before we can let you buy this car. Need a degree to do the work you want to do? Well you gotta take out all this debt first. Your wages aren’t paying enough to live and your career isn’t advancing the traditional way? The only legal way to advance is to collect some debt, invest it, and hope it doesn’t backfire.
Though it must be said I also get quite a lot of people who are really bad at budgeting as well.
I think this is further evidence that we shouldn’t live in an individualistic society.
I’m a code monkey who works in fintech.
I have friends who work in Fintech, at least one of whom considers themselves socialist. It’s been hard for me to reserve judgement of them considering a choice to work in a sector which I view to be on par with CIA etc in terms of producing bad social outcomes, with the presumption that they also understand the role of finance in capitalism.
Comrade, I come only with curiosity, no judgement, and honestly, I ask the following question only to better understand some people I know IRL; Would you be willing to describe your ideological relationship to your industry and your job? How do you reconcile the contradiction of directly developing the economic base of capitalism while presumably being a communist?
Thank you, and I understand if you choose not to respond.
Would you be willing to describe your ideological relationship to your industry and your job?
Completely mercenary. I started working there before I was class conscious, and pretty much the only thing keeping me from changing jobs sooner is because I’m also doing a masters degree on the side and I don’t want an unexpected change in workload to completely drown me.
How do you reconcile the contradiction of directly developing the economic base of capitalism while presumably being a communist?
By using up as much as my employer’s resources for as little work as possible. If I play my cards right, I can work six hours or even less when eight hours is expected without management knowing or caring. It’s not quite as absurd as those “day in the life of a tech worker” videos that were popular not long ago, but there is a kernel of truth in them. On a slow day, I might even sneak in work on something that isn’t for my employer.
I think its also easier for me to justify because most of the stuff I’ve worked on there never reached production because upper management shit canned it several months into development.
Finally, I think the software my employer sells is more useless societally than outright harmful. It’s wealth management software used by porkies and their financial advisors. Still not great, but at least it’s not making drones better at killing or doing spooky behavior manipulation shit for a big tech company.
Got it. Thanks!
My condolences
Its’s not so bad. The pay is good and I get good benefits and flexible working hours.
QA engineer. Used to work mainly for front-end of various trade-related websites, currently working with more hardware oriented things. Still essentially trying to break the nice, pretty code of my developers. All in all, not a bad job, pay is decent (something like twice the average for my city), don’t have to break my back in manual or deal with customers.
Funnily enough, it was this occupation that had kept me from embracing Marxism for a long time, as I didn’t consider myself “proper” proletariat. Proletariat, I thought, were people breaking their backs in factories, construction, etc. I was just a prissy white collar, and any socialist revolution would sweep me away alongside the oligarchs, except they have better chances of escaping justice. It took a good friend to sit down and explain to me the actual definitions of proletariat and bourgeoisie, as well as class interests.
I am lucky to work at public university in Poland as teacher an researcher, mostly work with automation, control and computer modeling. Money are not so well (I am afraid that liberal fucks want to sink the whole public sector to privatize it). I work also in side project (also publicly funded) to feed my family, since wife takes care about our small child, so I constantly feel overworked. But I think the job is interesting, and I think teaching is very valuable. Sadly, most students are not so interested in intellectual pursuits, they want to just get a job (they are forced by high life cost) and they finish their higher education earlier and earlier (few are taking effort to make MSc).
That’s extremely interesting! It is sad how academics and creative functions are forced to the side by threat of homelessness and poverty so “finding a job” as soon as humanely possible becomes the main priority. It’s difficult because I see myself slipping into that sometimes, but you can’t really do much or you’ll go insane from being trapped in the system and being unable to find a way out. Especially if you aren’t privileged enough to have financial support for your studies.
Thank you comrade. I hope your situation will only be stable and you will be able to do things which are fullfiling and interesting.
Med student.
It’s quite tiring.
What year?
Fourth year.
IT, currently desktop support but will likely make it to systems administrator soon. Interviewing with companies now for a nice diagonal move.
I can’t even really describe my current responsibilities succinctly. I’m basically trying to automate and integrate business processes. Some of that is centered around ERP, some web apps (off the shelf and custom), and a bit of the usual Microsoft
officespyware suite. It’s super interesting and I like solving these types of problems to help people work on what people should actually be using their brains for (ie not menial repetitive stuff). Yet it’s very frustrating since the everyone else (workers, management, owners) basically doesn’t “believe” in digitalization nor industry best practices.I really want to start a union drive, but due to some, let’s say familial connections within the company, I’ve been more or less convinced that it’s in my personal interests not to be the spark in this case.
I am a programmer. Started out as a machine learning scientist, but now I do more Git Ops stuff. But now I am trying to work as little as possible and focus more on FOSS projects that I can actually get passionate about.
Graphic designer. I’ve worked on marketing teams most of career but after I lost my last job I tried freelancing. That was shortly before the pandemic started so that plan ended up fizzling out. I’ve been living on whatever few contracts I can land and gig work ever since.
That’s a mood
CNC machining / setup / programming. Your canonical steel toe factory worker.
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Chemistry and physics teachers concern me somewhat, it always felt like you guys were all one bad admin meeting away from becoming Walter White or the Unabomber. Sometimes the “calculate the velocity of a car hitting a wall” problems seemed a bit more then just hypothetical problems…
Still some of my favorite subjects though, physics and chemistry teachers are amazing.
Lmao, true, society needs to keep the science teachers happy or else😈 lol jokes aside, most of my favorite and most respected teachers I’ve had were science teachers
Yo Mr. White?
Illustration, Concept Art, and Comics
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