Is...being decent to everyone regardless of job status in life a new thing? Has tech come so far that we have to re-teach ourselves the basics and then brag about how we smile at "service staff"?
Up next in a techbro blog post: "I have discovered that money doesn't buy happiness, and that being an asshole isn't a good thing."
I think there is just a high correlation between people for whom this "tip" isn't painfully obvious and people who think their thoughts are so valuable that they belong in a substack.
You have to be nice to the little people that read substacks; they after-all are people too, not as smart, sucessful, attractive and knowledgeable as ones self, but still deserving of a lesson or two in life to help them.
as a tech guy who comes from a family of blue collar and service industry workers I always have to laugh a little bit about pieces like this. It always reads like someone just went on a safari and found an exotic animal or found themselves in Good Will Hunting. Like, more than half of the population doesn't have a college degree. Store clerk, janitor, delivery driver etc are the most common jobs around, I always wonder how people manage to dodge all of them.
That said I don't think the piece is that bad because the author at least genuinely seems to try and to be kind, there are quite a few people in the industry who are genuinely callous.
It’s not exactly limited to tech but is more general to knowledge workers. Especially ones who employ support staff even at their homes. Over time they get so far removed from doing household chores that they begin to treat it as beneath them and hence the staff as unworthy of their respect.
I’m saying this being from a nation where employing household cooks, maids etc is norm once a certain income threshold is crossed, and where owing to really high inequities human labor is extremely low cost.
It’s hard to talk to people who make 10x less than you and live in a HCOL city without making somebody feel like shit. Janitors have terrible lives and I’m sure both of us would rather not discuss it.
"Janitors have terrible lives and I’m sure both of us would rather not discuss it."
There are so many articles shared here on developer depression, burn out and so on. Maybe you should try speaking with some actual janitors, some of them do quite ok. Maybe some are actually happy, because now they have a job to support their family and are not on the run anymore.
Or they did not bind their happines to their bank account and find meaning elsewhere. Or maybe they rather do cleaning, than feeling proud to know how to game SEO and flood the world with shitty adds or alike.
They can’t afford families because they can barely afford to rent a room in a basement an hour from the office. Sometimes they share a bedroom so they can send some money back to a developing country I guess?
If they were born early enough to be home owners then they probably increase their net worth by more than me every year and it makes me feel like shit for losing the real estate lottery
Up next in a techbro blog post: "I have discovered that money doesn't buy happiness, and that being an asshole isn't a good thing."