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by skybrian 3066 days ago
When you realize you can retire early, it's quite easy to forgive them. Not realizing you're very fortunate would make you kind of a jerk, no?
1 comments

So if you can retire early, complaining about your employer makes you a jerk?
No, just complaining about being underpaid when anyone looking at things objectively would say you're well off and have been treated well.
Why do you feel like you can correctly discern what the objective view is?
Well, maybe "objective" was the wrong word. But you can try to see things from other people's point of view. This is something humans can do.
Well, perhaps you can see that saying people who are "fortunate" are "jerks" for complaining when something isn't fair is quite baffling, then? And perhaps you can see that using the phrase "this is something humans can do" can come across as quite condescending? And perhaps you could see that the same argument could be used against any company with cash reserves, whether they employ engineers or minimum-wage line cooks, then?
I'm an ex-Googler. I'm speaking primarily for myself. The idea that I couldn't possibly have been "paid fairly" (which the comment I was originally replying to) is nonsense.

Note that I'm not saying that every software engineer (let alone line cooks) at Google has been paid fairly. But some of us have been fortunate, and I don't think I'm all that atypical.

Your claim that people working at a company with enormous cash reserves cannot possibly have been paid fairly is wrong, and it's condescending to tell people that they are "weird" for understanding their own situation.