I worked as a busser and at multiple fast food places before getting a job as a software engineer. I have also been reprimanded for going to urinate at unscheduled times. I don’t think that gatekeeping the experience of being exploited for your labor is useful. Creating divisions between people who are only exploited, vs those who are exploited even more doesn’t help anyone except for those who are exploiting.
This subthread starting off with a claim that high-wage workers were the most exploited. I don’t think there’s a vision of “solidarity” where everyone humors that delusion.
The top comment is this sub thread very clearly included the words “even” to imply that while most would not assume software engineers are not exploited because they’re relatively wealthy, they are still being exploited. This very clearly implies that SEs are less exploited—there was absolutely nothing in the original comment that supports your mischaracterization of their point.
That is, other than the second of its two sentences, which reads “In fact, I think that sometimes, companies consider high pay, a license to humiliate.” What do you suggest that means? It seems to me that if high pay is a “license to humiliate” that means that highly-paid workers are due for extra humiliation.
> What do you suggest that means? It seems to me that if high pay is a “license to humiliate” that means that highly-paid workers are due for extra humiliation.
Approximately everyone is aware that low-paid service and agricultural workers get -figuratively- shit on.
As someone who was not in the industry, I expected workers who were paid $120k, $250k, $500k, and more, per year to be treated as people who are highly knowledgeable in their field - to have their opinions carefully considered, and to be treated with respect. In short, to be treated as the Key Employees that their employment contracts often asserted (and their paychecks certainly suggested) that they are.
I was very surprised (and very disappointed) when I discovered that there are managers and businessmen who have opinions that can be roughly summed up as "I'm paying you a lot of money, so you work on whatever I say, do the work however I say to do it, and you take whatever shit I dish out without complaining. You are -after all- taking a _ton_ of my (or our company's) money, so you have no room to complain."
I completely agree with this, but fundamentally I think that there is more value from identifying with the similarities between workers of all wage range. I was mainly just arguing against the point that the top reply in this sub thread was implying that high wage workers are somehow more exploited.
