[pkaler]

Brutal? Sounds like a regular blue collar job.

I worked as a sparkwatch at a plywood plant in high school. Basically, a welder’s assistant. This is what regular blue collar jobs look like. You work 12 hour shifts. The machinery is hot. There is constant dust in the air. You are on your feet the entire time. It’s 30ºC in the summer. It’s -20ºC in the winter.

People in Sillicon Valley and especially the press are just completely out of touch with how the rest of the world works and live.

[noam87]

> Brutal? Sounds like a regular blue collar job.

Which is to say: brutality is regular.

While of course the current move towards exposing harassment in the office is important, I don't hear much recognition that the people getting the most benefit are those whose prospects are already cushy to begin with... how much of this is actually "tricking down" to people working in often dehumanizing conditions?

I worked minimum wage until my mid-20's, and most of my high school friends didn't do college (or even graduate high school, in some cases); my parents (who both hold degrees) also worked in warehouses and stuff like that for a while when we first immigrated. In many jobs, being treated like trash, bullied, etc. is the norm. Being constantly talked down to and treated like a child is certainly the norm. And the sexual harassment stories are also much more frequent, and much worse. But people at the lower rungs don't have the social capital to take to Twitter safely, jump ship to a different company, etc. Doing so risks losing next month's bills, losing a good reference, etc. So it's just the way it is.

And I'm talking here in Canada where we have much better worker protection laws, so I can only assume it's even worse in the US.

Same with workplace safety. Sure, on paper you have the right to refuse unsafe work. But don't be surprised if all of a sudden you start getting less hours or get reprimanded for "not being a team player" or some crap.

[JBlue42]

Things like this are why I love seeing articles / comments on HN telling kids not to go to college, to do trades, etc. Or when you overhear someone at a dinner party saying how they wish they could quit they're good-paying desk job to go work i a restaurant kitchen full-time. The grass looks greener but it's certainly not easier and your body can take a beating.

[wgj]

I worked at a UPS sort facility in the 1980s. Everyone there was definitely a human robot. Up to 130F temperatures were legal in the feeder trucks. All sorters and loaders were monitored by supervisors with stopwatches and clipboards. I can't imagine what it might have been like if not unionized and OSHA compliant. I also don't imagine conditions are much better now.

[tnzn]

It's brutal with respect to the "new spirit of capitalism" image that the tech industry represents

[Fricken]

In that case The "new spirit of capitalism" sounds about the same as the "old spirit of capitalism". I'm not sure what the designation "new" is supposed to represent.

[zemo]

> This is what regular blue collar jobs look like. You work 12 hour shifts.

That's what exploitive labor jobs look like. Not all labor jobs exploit their labor. People literally died fighting for 40 hour weeks. The idea that laborers should be happy to work 60 hour weeks, that they're being thrown a bone is insane and cruel.

It's absurd that in 2017 one would have to argue in defense of a 40 hour week for the labor class. This argument has been going on for literally hundreds of years.

And yes, I too worked a string of labor jobs before getting into software. Landscaping, packing boxes, stocking shelves, cleaning streets, pumping cesspools, etc. The entire tenor of this thread reads "let them eat cake".

[xg15]

I'm sure the warehouse workers spend a bit more time on jobs like this than a stint in highschool once.