The rant posted at the start of this topic shows a problem that has only gotten worse since its posting. I currently have 10 years of experience in my field and have been out of any work related to my field of study since quitting a decent job last year to move home and help care for a sick parent(I did snag a low paying restaurant job, but in this "booming" economy, even that was a major struggle to get).
I recently got an insulting offer that I had to reject from a firm. They only wanted to pay $16/hr, for the same kind of work I used to do before quitting last year that was underpaying me(relative to the normal going rate) at $30/hr. I pointed out that the position has a much higher typical going rate based on the info provided by the indeed.com job posting, to no avail. Any bets that they're looking to get an H1B Visa applicant to fill that position for even cheaper than the offer they insulted me with? Considering that I would have to move and given the cost of rent these days, I'm better off washing dishes at the restaurant I am at. I'm at more than 19 months of job searching and more than 1700 applications/resumes sent out, and in this "booming" economy, that restaurant job is about all I've been able to get(I did score an engineering job in August that also paid $30/hr, but the contract got pulled a few days in and for me and a bunch of new hires it was back to the job search again...).
Students are told that if they want to succeed, study the STEM fields. Looks like that is being hollowed out and thrown to the wolves of globalization as well, just like most everything else. If one wants to avoid being a wage slave with no spare money, their best choices more often than not involve working with the military or surveillance state in some capacity, becoming part of the problem.
A fellow STEM graduate I know who was homeless for a period is making a living doing Doordash deliveries with his electric bike, as no one else will hire him. He's a competent and qualified individual willing, wanting, and able to do the work, but can't get it. His student loan defaulted years ago and due to relentless compounding interest and fees the loan is now of such balance that it will never be repaid. He's lost more than one good opportunity because he can't pass the credit check. There are many more that just ignore his resume, as seems to be happening to me. Recall that Boeing fiasco with the 737 Max planes crashing due to faulty software. This tragedy resulting in many hundreds of deaths involved engineers from India being paid $9/hr to write the code, with Boeing claiming they couldn't find anyone else to do the work, for a job he applied for repeatedly and also was highly qualified for, but was outright ignored in favor of the cheaper labor.
Something is really screwed up with the moral compass of many large companies these days.
In hindsight, dropping out of high school and selling dope may not have been such a bad idea, but I and others chose the "high road" so that we wouldn't have to do that. Lot of good all of that studying, sacrifice, debt, and hard work did for us. I make that same $9/hr some H1B was paid to write code for Boeing(when said H1B should have been paid closer to $90/hr) washing dishes and cleaning shitters, and it was a long struggle just to get that job that I didn't even need a high school diploma for, with my BSEE and 10 years experience in electrical engineering. One of my co-workers at the restaurant also has a college degree in a technical field. He can't find work in his field either, with "record low" unemployment in this "booming" economy. Fancy that.
PeakOil is You
Crocodile Tears over Engineers
Re: Crocodile Tears over Engineers
by The_Toecutter » Tue 10 Dec 2019, 21:37:22
The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
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Re: Crocodile Tears over Engineers
by EnergyUnlimited » Wed 11 Dec 2019, 17:58:45
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The_Toecutter', '
')I recently got an insulting offer that I had to reject from a firm. They only wanted to pay $16/hr, for the same kind of work I used to do before quitting last year that was underpaying me(relative to the normal going rate) at $30/hr.
')I recently got an insulting offer that I had to reject from a firm. They only wanted to pay $16/hr, for the same kind of work I used to do before quitting last year that was underpaying me(relative to the normal going rate) at $30/hr.
To get $16 in Bangladesh they need to work for entire month, seven days a week and 12 hours shifts.
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Re: Crocodile Tears over Engineers
by The_Toecutter » Wed 11 Dec 2019, 18:11:58
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '
')To get $16 in Bangladesh they need to work for entire month, seven days a week and 12 hours shifts.
')To get $16 in Bangladesh they need to work for entire month, seven days a week and 12 hours shifts.
True, but does someone in Bangladesh need to pay $700/mo for even the most basic shelter that they can find in their area that the authorities won't deprive them of if it runs afoul of the law or if too many people are sharing the space according to the occupancy permit? Is someone in Bangladesh forced to spend hundreds of dollars a month on utilities to stay in said basic shelter, even if they don't even use said utilities? Does someone in Bangladesh need to spend $300/mo for a diet free of processed poisons for one person if they lack the land to produce their own food?
If I didn't save my mom's house last year or have other family members I'm on good terms with, even making $9/hr in the US, I would be homeless, and arguably have an even lower living standard than someone in Bangladesh who can at least keep a roof over their head and cook yams with a makeshift oven, even if that person in Bangladesh may not have running water, a toilet, electricity, internet, or may have to share the space with 10 other people, at least they'd have shelter and the ability to prepare meals, which I'm priced out of without the help of family or without running afoul of the law, even making close to 100x what someone makes in Bangladesh.
It's not a 1:1 comparison. There are people in the USA that are making $30k a year and are not living all that well, living in the ghetto, unable to save anything, eating junk food all the time because that is all they can afford, unable to afford healthcare, have no alternatives to get to work other than a clunker automobile that eats their money, ect. Someone very well off by Bangladeshi standards making $10k a year in Bangladesh may be able to have more "play" money for luxuries or savings due to the difference in the cost of basic necessities than an American making $30k a year in the USA. On a net basis, the average Chinaman can save far more money up than an American making minimum wage, even though the Chinaman makes 1/5th as much.
Overhead costs matter greatly, and vary greatly from nation to nation. Corporations are using this to their advantage and in conjunction with the state are turning the USA into a nation of paupers embedded in a culture of compulsory consumption(eg. forced utilities to be allowed to live in a space even if one "owns" the property, occupancy permits limiting the number of persons per dwelling, sprawl where often the only viable form of transport is automobile, inability for people to find/maintain jobs without overpriced internet access, ect). Poorer Americans may be the richest paupers ever, but they are still paupers, unable to afford to do anything extraneous away from survival, often constantly accumulating debt just for survival, constantly dependent on handouts of some form because their pay from working often isn't enough for the necessities.
A $16 an hour job where I'd have to move out of my mom's basement means that I have to pay rent somewhere else PLUS keep her from losing her house, PLUS eat. And it would mean a paycheck to paycheck existence. No healthcare. No savings. No fun. Just work. I made a spreadsheet looking at this as an option after the fact, and there is no way I'd have been able to make it work other than living a paycheck to paycheck existence. I already knew that when the offer was presented though. What would $16/hr get me in Bangladesh? I'd probably be one of the richest people around for miles.
You know what makes that $16/hr especially insulting? That company very likely was going to charge the utility close to $150/hr for my work, which deducting my pay and the overhead expenses associated with employing me, would mean they make well more than $100/hr off of my work, while I'd be living a paycheck to paycheck existence. I know this because I saw the spreadsheets tallying the expenses of my previous employer when I made $30/hr before moving back home. They could have doubled or even tripled my pay, and still made a decent profit off of my work. Yet, I do the work, and they get the vast majority of the money that my work generates? That is why I complain of exploitation. This is not right. I made previous employers so much damned money that I would have been able to retire by now if I got to keep the majority of the value I added, and they'd still have made money off of me.
Yet here these greedy assholes are, rigging the market to ratchet down wages, preying on people who just want to make an honest living, whether in the USA or Bangladesh. Those Indian engineers making $9/hr for Boeing were grossly underpaid relative to the value they would have added were they competent. I'm sure they were ecstatic to make that $9/hr compared to the wages in India, as their living expenses were covered by Boeing and they could send that money back home where it would do a lot more. But instead Boeing's greed backfired, and now they want the taxpayer to cover the loss. They could have hired that fellow STEM graduate I know, paid him the $90/hr he was easily worth, still made a profit off of his work, and he'd have probably got the software code right and not killed hundreds of people in multiple nosedive airplane crashes, but he was ignored in favor of cheap labor. As a result, hundreds of people are dead and he's been homeless with ruined finances as a result of needing to take on debt to even go to school at all thanks to the money printers and administrators deliberately driving up the cost of education and creating a generation of student/alumni debt serfs whose debt can't even be wiped away in bankruptcy court. Hell, I bet he'd even have taken that job at a more modest $30/hr and been glad to have it, but he wasn't even contacted, even though he repeatedly applied, even though Boeing justified their request for the H1Bs on the basis that they couldn't find anyone able to do the work. How fucked up is that?
There's a clear trendline here. TPTB are wanting us to live very much like those working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, all month in Bangladesh: nothing to show for a life of hard work, while taking ALL the profit. In fact, one of the reasons I can't find a decent job relative to my local economy I live in is because I can't compete with a third world slum dweller. My overhead costs will never be as low, no matter how little I consume(and I consume extremely little), and I'm unwilling to work 12 hours a day 7 days a week just to "justify" my right to exist. These companies would force us to work for free if they could get away with it.
The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
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Re: Crocodile Tears over Engineers
by EnergyUnlimited » Thu 12 Dec 2019, 19:11:01
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Toecutter', 'C')orporations are using this to their advantage and in conjunction with the state are turning the USA into a nation of paupers embedded in a culture of compulsory consumption(eg. forced utilities to be allowed to live in a space even if one "owns" the property, occupancy permits limiting the number of persons per dwelling, sprawl where often the only viable form of transport is automobile, inability for people to find/maintain jobs without overpriced internet access, ect).
Americans have a lot to learn from Mexicans and others alike.
For example they must learn that these days many laws are there only to be broken.
Continuation of law obedience in environment of societal collapse is a virtue of the stupid.
Have seen this during commie collapse in Poland.
Those obeying defunct laws regardless of circumstances were experimentally proven to be *stupid loosers*.
Also: the more threatening commie government was in regard of law enforcement, the more powerless it was and people have learned it fast. Then most of different rules and regulations were blatantly ignored.
There is time now for Americans to learn the same (or be replaced by cheeky brown people).
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou know what makes that $16/hr especially insulting? That company very likely was going to charge the utility close to $150/hr for my work, which deducting my pay and the overhead expenses associated with employing me, would mean they make well more than $100/hr off of my work, while I'd be living a paycheck to paycheck existence. I know this because I saw the spreadsheets tallying the expenses of my previous employer when I made $30/hr before moving back home.
They could have huge debts, which you are not aware about.
Regarding Boeing - it seems that they were paying for bananas and monkeys came to work.
2 aircrafts (and 200++ passangers) lost. I bet that now they regret not paying better.
I am STEM graduate - worked 10 years and saved enough to set my private business, jacked my job in pharma and enjoy my life from then onwards. I don't need boss or bank loan any more. Not even mortgage. Can be done.
Key to success: a bit of perseverance to achieve what planned and supportive, not wasteful wife who was never questioning my decisions.
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