[nerdponx]

Is it common to buy your own tools in other skilled trades (when you aren't a freelancer)?

I don't mind buying good software, but it feels weird for me to pay in order to make my employer more money. It's not like the productivity boost I get from buying Datagrip is going to get me a raise or a better job.

That said, for software I use in my personal life I can and do pay, and I think we should all be more in the habit of either buying non-trial versions (Sublime, PyCharm) or making small monthly donations (Neovim, iTerm, regex101, QMK, et al).

[dahdum]

Mechanics are often required to buy their own tools. Higher end chefs are expected buy their own knives. Machinists are expected to buy many of their own instruments.

It’s not universal but definitely not uncommon.

[true_religion]

If the cost of the tool is within the budget of the tradesman or professional, it's more common to buy it out of personal preference for a type or brand of tool.

If no part of your toolset is within your budget, then you're in the working class, since you cannot ever own your own means of production.

[tormeh]

That's not what working class means. If you earn money by working, then you are working class. If you earn money investing capital, then you're a capitalist. The working class can be further divided up, but those are all subcategories. A professional or a manager (petit bourgeois) are still working class. If you're a one-man company, then you're still working class.

You only transition once your investment returns surpass your income. Which is why truly rich people don't give a shit about income tax - they don't have income!

[true_religion]

That's a fair statement to make, and one that I have heard before but the definition of what constitutes the working class is arguable thus most people predefine it per scope of conversation, and not in a global sense.

For example, in the UK, commonly doctors and lawyers have not been considered part of the working class, regardless of if their investments outside of their profession.

Because a doctor can work independently, and hire other workers like nurses, and attendants, and own all of their tools of trade outright, they are part of the petit bourgeois.

Now you say that petit bourgeois is part of the working class, but many would disagree as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels popularized a more fine grained definition of social classes as follows:

1. the working class - factory workers, peasants, and people who earn only by their labour

2. lumpenproletariat (commonly considered to include vagabonds, criminals or the 'unthinking poor')

3. professional middle-classes (engineers or tradesmen who do not typically hire employees)

3. petit-bourgeoisie - Professionals and small scale managers who hire workers but work alongside them

4. haute bourgeoisie - landed aristocracy & other capitalists who live from investment alone

Now if you are not marxists, you may drop some of the classes or simply call them something else. The lumpenproletariat are sometimes called the "underclass", and in advanced capitalist economies the line between professional middle-classes and petit-bourgeois blurs due to capital infusions from the top. For example, startup owners should rightly be professional middle class, but are upgraded due to VC infusion.

There are other ways to define the classes as well that don't depend on monetary wealth----for example the ladder from: working class to bourgeoisies to gentry to elite/aristocrats, so the terms themselves are fairly overloaded.

Analysing class warfare is a bit of my hobby. I blame my sassy liberal arts professors. :)

[freedomben]

> Is it common to buy your own tools in other skilled trades (when you aren't a freelancer)?

I can't speak broadly, but when I worked construction, most guys would bring a mix of personal tools and company tools.

[h1d]

If you don't want to make yourself more productive to make yourself worth more and try to stay at what you're being paid for, that's your option.

I don't understand why you don't to become a more productive person then you may get a better job offer or start your own company where you and your customers will be the one to evaluate your worth instead of a single boss of yours.

[hawski]

In many software jobs it's not possible to bring your own tools unless approved. Even if they are free and open source.