[plank_time]

I’m getting tired of these low-value workers complaining they should be paid as well as high-value workers.

They were hired with no skills, and were trained from the ground up. They are getting a livable wage but now they want more. If they want more, they need to elevate their worth and become high value employees or find a better job that values them better.

They are contractors. Because of their particular life experiences and life choices, they were unable to come as a more valuable employee. Google doesn’t owe them anything except the job they offered them. If they want better terms they can ask, but Google will refuse. So it’s on them to find a better job.

But please stop complaining about it and think you’re more valuable than you actually are. They can be replaced by someone who has no skills and can be trained from scratch, just like they were. The pay is fair, the conditions are good. That’s better than many jobs out there.

[thethethethe]

To me, it sounds as though these people want to be treated fairly and with humanity. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect that businesses in our society treat people as investments and give opportunities for upward mobility, not fire them every two years and pay them half as much as their counterparts who do the same job but wear a different color badge.

I work for Google, opinions are my own.

[username90]

You are right it is unfair. So now Google decides to hire everyone and pay everyone the same $12 an hour + full time benefits. That would make everyone happy, no?

[thethethethe]

If I am understanding you correctly, this seems like a strawman. You don't need to equalize everyone's pay to make the material lives of these data center workers better, nobody asked for that anyways. People are simply asking to be treated the same as the people who do the same work but have a different colored badge, and not to be fired every two years. It doesn't really seem like that much to ask for

[username90]

What makes you think the way Google paid and hired datacenter workers before wasn't way too much and they now are nice to keep them at that level instead of firing them all replacing them with cheaper people?

[plank_time]

How are they not being treated with humanity? They started with no skills or experience and were trained from scratch. How many jobs train on the job? Paid a good wage in an easy job and given a job for 2 years. Is that not humane and fair?

How much of your salary are you willing to give up so that these people get their job security?

[thethethethe]

Every job requires some amount of on the job training. FTEs of all levels at Google are practically useless for at least 6 months after they join, often requiring hours of training and 1-1s. It's pretty standard.

Yeah I agree that it sounds like a good deal until they fire you after two years and don't allow you to move up like they used to. These terminations are arbitrary, unnecessary, and legitimely harmful to people's lives, so no I don't think it's fair or humane.

I don't see why their initial skill level when they were first hired really matters here, people deserve to have job security based on current performance regardless of their initial conditions.

I don't see why I need to give up any of my salary for these people have job security. I'm sure a small portion of the funds allocated to stock buybacks should do. And, for the record, I already give 1% of my total comp to the union, which was created to protect people in situations like these

[908B64B197]

> and don't allow you to move up like they used to

Is there even a position to move up to?

> These terminations are arbitrary, unnecessary, and legitimely harmful to people's lives, so no I don't think it's fair or humane.

That's something they should bring to Modis, their employers. Also, do they operate any other data centers outside of Google ones?

[thethethethe]

> Is there even a position to move up to?

Yes, it is common for data center workers and tech support to move up to sysadmin or something similar sometimes even SRE.

They are given a 6 month trial period on a team to train and then go through the external interview process afterwards

> That's something they should bring to Modis, their employers

The whole point here is that they effectively work for Google, and Modis is a layer of indirection that enables Google to exploit them, so bringing this up to Modis is kind of besides the point

[908B64B197]

> Yes, it is common for data center workers and tech support to move up to sysadmin or something similar sometimes even SRE.

It sounds like they isolated tasks that are performed frequently enough and need no specialization and decided to outsource these. Maybe as a stopgap before they get completely automated.

I don't think these were ever intended as entry level to something else.

[advisedwang]

Read the article - they aren't complaining about pay, they are complaining about job security. They are doing work that is going to be needed for the foreseeable future but can only work 2 years before they have to leave (for a period).

[plank_time]

They are low value workers. They don’t get job security. That’s the reality of it. They are replaceable with people with no experience. They have to understand that. There’s no job security to waiters either or Uber drivers. Just because they work in a datacenter doesn’t mean they deserve more money for a low value job.

If they want a full time job, they need to elevate themselves. Educate yourself, get a degree, find a new job, become management etc. Lots of paths to job security. Just because people want job security doesn’t mean they deserve it.

[lhorie]

> If they want a full time job, they need to elevate themselves

This suggestion only makes sense until it doesn't. Suppose everyone actually took that advice. Then you'd have an entire population of overqualified people who cannot find jobs that are appropriate to their skill level and who still have to take crappy jobs. Paradoxically, maybe even you are one of them. Then what?

Now consider that this upleveling actually does happen for many people, and yet the issue of risk of financial ruin continues to exist for the bottom rungs in perpetuity.

Also, the point about deserving feels a bit myopic. Does someone deserve to be so poor that their family ends up resorting to tax funded programs like unemployment benefits, or worse, they turn to stealing, landing in jail and imposing a $40k tax burden per head on the rest of the population?

If the money flows from big corps to privileged highly paid workers pockets to the IRS to govt-run programs, why not just route the money directly to the less privileged so govt programs are less needed in the first place? The status quo is really not that different from Omelas[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...

[Chris2048]

> Then you'd have an entire population of overqualified people who cannot find jobs

Why would you? In the time it takes to train, those jobs could be created; if some of those workers become business owners, for example.

[lhorie]

You still need someone to pick your potatoes in the farm for you. If everyone has white collar skills, then that means one of two things:

1) white collar jobs don't pay as much comparatively to blue collar (meaning your supermarket potatoes now cost $50 due to high labor costs because there's no supply of workers)

2) people with white collar skills cannot find white collar jobs and are forced to take low pay blue collar jobs so that they can put food on the table, while you can continue to enjoy $1 potatoes.

The latter is actually how the world works now: there are people w/ master degrees doing Uber, actors working on starbucks, etc. One can argue that most adults are in fact overqualified for physical labor: they can read and write and do math, which are arguably "higher level" skills than what is required for those jobs (cf. farming in the feudal ages).

[Chris2048]

If there is a dire need for potato-picking manual labour, pay will increase, as will the price of potatoes, short-term at least, assuming the change is sudden and of immediate effect, which makes the scenario even more unrealistic. Realistically, rather than labourers becoming indefinitely well-paid, and potatoes indefinitely expensive, alternatives to manual labour will rapidly be developed, incentivised by high demand for potatoes and low supply of labour e.g. potato picking machines (which already exist btw). The sudden increased supply of automation and robotics engineers won't hurt either.

> your supermarket potatoes now cost $50 due to high labor costs

which is as meaningful as $1 potatoes since we don't know the value of a dollar in this hypothetical "everyone is a white collar worker" world. More likely the value applied to all jobs shift, and previously lucrative jobs are not so lucrative anymore; that said, this may not be zero sum, the average standard of living may also increase - but many humans derive their satisfaction relative to the average, a metric that can never satisfy everyone, a poor man in the west today may have better nutrition, health, welfare and SoL than a kind hundreds of years ago.

> people with white collar skills cannot find white collar jobs

This is what I asked - why do you think this is? I'm not convinced.

> there are people w/ master degrees doing Uber

master degrees, in what? If if need to be said: get an education in something useful, and paid well by the market. STEM is usually a good bet.

> they can read and write and do math

But how do those skill translate into something useful for someone else? And how does demand compare to supply?

[thethethethe]

Why do you have so little compassion for people? Just because a person has "low value" skills doesn't mean we _have_ to treat them like they are disposable. These "low skill" jobs are critical to the function of society and the people that do them deserve respect, security, and acknowledgment.

[plank_time]

I’ve worked a ton of low value jobs. I’ve worked in factories, as a receptionist, as a secretary, in a bank, etc. I never felt that I deserved to make more money just because it was compassionate to give me more. I understood exactly where I stood and why I was being paid.

That’s what motivated me to study my ass off and work hard at my job and elevate myself. Some people are okay with not working harder and making what they do. Half my close friends are like that. That’s great and I don’t look down on them. But I don’t think they need to make more money “just because.” It’s whatever the market bears.

[thethethethe]

I think you are letting your personal experience with "low value" jobs cloud your vision in this situation. Its great that you worked your way out and I am sure you deserve whatever position you are in now. However, I think there is some survivorship bias at play here.

> I understood exactly where I stood and why I was being paid.

I am sure that the people in the article know this as well, but that doesn't mean they are treated fairly. The way society is structured and businesses treat people is not just by default. If this was the case, there should be no worker protections and we should simply pay people "what they are worth", which, in the past, resulted in factory towns and child labor.

Nobody in the article is demanding more money by arguing it is the compassionate thing to do, they want pay _parity_ with their coworkers who do the same job, which is pretty different in my opinion. They also want to keep their jobs after 2 years instead of getting fired for basically no reason other than it saves Google money through a regulation loophole.

> I don’t think they need to make more money “just because.” It’s whatever the market bears.

We do not live in a free market economy by any means. The reason why these people are being treated so badly is because of a poorly thought out regulation. Acting as though the system is a "free market" is just an indirect way of justify oppression of workers under the current mixed market system

[TrackerFF]

Please, do tell, of all the fresh college grads that get hired for dev/SWE jobs at Big N companies, how many have specialized skills that will bring value from day 1?

In fact, how many weeks / months / years does it take for someone to become a consistent value-add contributor to ANY company?