You’ll see people on anti-work posting stories about their bosses taking advantage of them and the responses are almost always, ‘quit your, get a new one and double your wage/salary’.
‘Bro your job and your boss suck, just quit and get a new one with 2x pay’
Or ‘I hate my line of work, what should I do’
A:‘Just get a job at a fortune 500 and transition into a different role’
Or ‘just go back to school bro’
I’m studyied engineering and this theme hits even closer to home to people like me.
‘Oh you earn 50k as an engineer? Weird, the entry level pay of people in my company and everyone I know ever is 120 Million’
The general sentiment on reddit and places like antiwork is one of anger, frustration with our economic system, or general despair. But the frustrations always seem to be ‘I am living paycheck to pay check in a big city earning 200k’ and not ‘I have a PHD and I’m struggling to find a job that pays above minimum wage’, which is more of I’ve encountered. Why does everyone seem so fucking comfortable?
Probably too many factors to list. But the one I’d point out is that a lot of it is just lies. We live in an age where, no matter your views (and I include a lot of left spaces) etc, earning more money makes you seem more impressive to a lot of people. So people will frequently just lie about the money they can get because why not? It’s free social credit.
I mean people even lie to themselves. A lot of temporarily embarrassed millionaires out there. Lots of ‘middle class’ people struggling to afford food as well.
In regard to r/antiwork specifically a lot of it is also weird power fantasy stuff. You’ll routinely see posts about “I would tell them these are my contract rates at 3-5 times whatever your equivalent hourly was with a 4 hour billable minimum” failing to recongize the power dynamic that previously existed and the idea of reputation in industry or the like.
The example isn’t the best but when you browse you can tell that most of these psots come from people unfamiliar with professional environments assuming it works radically different than it does.
I really want to know what US software engineer salaries are actually like. Everyone on Reddit insists you get $200k straight out of college with no experience.