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mememememememo 3 hours ago

Absolutely. I am thinking what my blue collar alter ego will be.

DrewADesign 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but as a recent white->blue collar convert, (union metalworker,) tech workers are usually far less qualified than your average vocational high school graduate, way less physically capable, and waaaaay less tolerant of the sort of workplace unpleasantries in these types of jobs at the entry level. Your tech experience gets you pretty much zero advantage, and there are lots of very smart people outside of the software world that have put a whole lot more thought into that industry than you have. Consistently high labor demand meant companies had to comparatively treat tech workers with kid gloves, and as a result, most don’t realize how much smoke has been blown up our assess for decades. They start as soft, arrogant, maladroit noobs who will cosplay as working class for a couple weeks and either eat crow and stick with it long enough for their boss to not want to throw them off a bridge, or give up/get fired and try to pay the bills doing zero-entry-barrier gig work. I was fortunate enough to have been a blue-> white collar covert a couple of decades ago so I knew what I was getting into. The fantasy that a tech worker landing in a blue collar field will naturally rise above the rabble and shoot to the top is a workplace version of the fantasy where a white person finds themselves in some jungle full of “savages” and is so inherently impressive and sophisticated that they’re immediately made king.

juddlyon 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This made me laugh. “We’ll computerize it and get filthy rich! They’re stuck in 2015!”

I’m guilty of this type of thinking and occasionally get reminded when I’m way out of my lane.

mememememememo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree. I am not naive! I would not be doing it as a lifestyle choice though. I'd do it because I need to. I have worked in a factory before so culture shock wont be there at least. I get my pay would half (luckily I am not on the US West Coast monster TC so merely it would half).

DrewADesign 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s far worse in the restaurant industry. We’re going to see a lot of really awkward concept restaurants and bars open and close in quick succession.

mememememememo 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yes. Although if we can get more robot sushi restaurants for a while I will not complain.

gnarcoregrizz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

yeah. there absolutely are lots of very smart and capable people outside of tech. as someone who has seen the blue collar world "up close" (family businesses), its a different breed... the culture and attitude gap is enormous. shockingly so. most tech workers I know couldn't hang (don't hustle as hard, risk averse, liberal), but some skills may transfer, like problem solving and diagnosis, i.e. debugging.

mememememememo an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Why is risk averse a thing. Blue collar jobs are just jobs unless you are going self employed and buying all the gear etc.

DrewADesign 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, brains transfer to any job, and it’s tough to be a developer if you’re genuinely stupid. So in that respect, sure. But I’m definitely not saying that developers aren’t smart enough to do blue collar work.

qwertyuiop_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agree having made the switch from construction -> Tech job. Having sat around at least 25,000 tech related meetings until now worked with thousands of people in various roles in tech, i could count on my one hand the number of people from each tech company I worked that could qualify to survive the real blue collar world.

DrewADesign an hour ago | parent [-]

I just imagine random scenarios that would definitely happen— like some pallid, heavily moisturized former lead developer in $500 work clothes deciding to jockey for smartypants cred by ‘debating’ a shop supervisor/foreman/whatever about their approach to something as it’s being executed, or in a meeting in front of everyone, like they might interject about an architectural decision at a dev meeting… saying something like “well it’s basically a traveling salesman problem” and spewing some seriously flawed approach without realizing that the super is using a technique unequivocally proven superior in like the 1940s. Or arguing with an actual engineer about an engineering decision because they “read this substack article written by a software developer that puts a ton of research into this stuff.”

I then nearly die of internal cringe.

refulgentis 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hate to see you in gray, I went from dropout waiter to Google via my own startup in between. And you nailed e v e r y t h i n g, I am screenshotting this and reading it over and over again for years to come. Great writing too. Cheers.

DrewADesign 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Haha, thanks. It’s bobbed up and down around that zero a few times. People that know it’s true vs. people that may soon find out that it’s true.