I knew someone who was mad at their partner because their partner was a software engineer and "didn't work as hard as they do" at a lower skill job, and yet made a lot more money.
I'm not sure where this idea comes from that hard work is as valuable/more valuable than skilled work. But it seems to be a pervasive idea.
Skilled work is not the antonym of hard work. You can work hard doing skilled work.
Knowledge work does look different from physical work, but you can work hard at both; you need to work hard at either to be successful.
As for why hard physical work is so valued - only a century or two past, it was the only practical method to prevent the starvation for yourself and your family. Knowledge work being a viable means of survival (for non-nobles) is pretty new, all things considered.
Even my own parents never really understood how knowledge work could be as valuable as getting out and working with your hands; and they were born in the early/mid 1900's.
> Knowledge work does look different from physical work, but you can work hard at both; you need to work hard at either to be successful.
Classist wage disparity is a real problem in America today. Often knowledge workers who don't work hard earn more than physical workers who do work hard.
> knowledge workers who don't work hard earn more than physical workers who do work hard.
earnings are measured with productivity, and knowledge work has more scaling to their productivity output. You can dig holes really hard, but a hole dug is a hole dug. A line of code written is not just a line of code, as power of compounding output stacks on top of each other.
True, hard work and skilled work are not opposites, but you can work less hard doing skilled work (it's almost the definition of skilled work), and still have a bigger impact than someone working very hard at unskilled work.
I probably should have used the phrase "unskilled work" in my original post, but I was trying to convey the person's frustrations about "hard work." From an outsiders perspective, a skilled knowledge worker doesn't look like they're working very hard, but we know that's not true.
Some "skilled work" intersects with "hard work". There's a ton of work in the construction industry that requires a very high level of specialized knowledge that sometimes takes years of college and practice in their industry to learn, just for example. Even more reason that it's strange that some people find one type of work somehow inherently superior to the other in generalized terms. I tend to think that the skill and care that one puts behind their craft is maybe what should be more important.
I'm not sure I even agree with that "impact" rhetoric. What do most of us do, deliver ads? Host funny pictures? Move electronic money around? Running shops so people on minimum wage can buy products they don't need, packed and delivered by other people on minimum wage?
Those people are only serving us the food we need to live.
There are different hards. I've worked construction: you come home at night tired, but your brain is awake and ready to think (which is why so many veg on the couch - it keeps the brain busy and body resting). In software the hard jobs leave your brain tired, but your body is ready to go - this is a hard place to be in as your brain can't figure out how to get the needed exercise your body wants.
Programming can be copy/paste, but the hard days when you have to figure out how to eliminate some mutex across some threads so the whole performs without a race condition - that will always be hard.
You're equivocating on the meaning of the word "difficulty." It's impossibly difficult for anybody but me to be exactly me, but that doesn't mean it's hard work for me to be me.
I've worked in a factory as a machine operator, and in a company as a programmer, and they're not comparable in either difficulty or compensation.
Anyone can work in a kitchen. It's physically demanding, but the tasks are not that hard and easily picked up without any real education. Sorry that's just the truth. And why we don't have as many programmers as service workers.
I suspect it comes from the “truism” that hard work pays off. It’s understandably frustrating for people when they inevitably realize it’s not as true as we were led to believe. A person can work like a dog their entire life and still be poor.
Skilled work means you're less replaceable.
I've met a lot of assholes in IT who would have been fired if it wasn't for their contribution to the company.
Except the measurement of "skill" that accounts for the income disparity is not so much "lower skill" vs "higher skill" but more "expensive skill" vs "cheap skill". I could spend the same amount of time and effort training in culinary arts and not approach the income I make writing software. That difference isn't "amount of work" or "amount of skill" but just the market price of said skills.
> I knew someone who was mad at their partner because their partner was a software engineer and "didn't work as hard as they do" at a lower skill job, and yet made a lot more money.
Wait until they learn about passive income and proper usage of leverage!
I don't think "hard work" and "skilled work" are useful buckets, there's a lot of overlap.
It really boils down to how much money a business can make from your outputs. A line cook makes the business less money than someone building an AWS service. This is not a law of nature, just the status quo.
I think the difference in leverage between a software eng and a line cook does have a law-of-nature quality to it. Line cook serves dozens a day, software serves minimum 0 and maximum the whole planet a day, and that service could stick around for years without degradation
Skilled, in late antiquity/mediaval times, meant the engineer doing trebuchet, or building ships, or building high quality steel, etc.. et.c.. it was actually hard work.
None of them were things that the ruling class/aristocracy did. They just paid for it (with the levies/taxes they took from their land).
Eventually another higher skilled level arised, as thinkers/scientists became hired by the court of a monarch, or baron.... and being a patron (paying for someone to do poetry, science, etc) was a sign of status.
The skilled workers have always been the middle class. It took the industrial revolution, where they could become rich themselves, and monarchy started becoming irrelevant.
You aren't refuting the class distinction the parent commenter was actually pointing out (serf/peasant class vs merchant/"middle" class). That there exists another distinction between the ruling class and "middle class" in feudal society does not negate the hierarchical relationship between said middle class and the laborer class.
I have spent thousands of hours honing my software craft outside of work/school hours. I guarantee you most folks working those minimum wage jobs are not doing the same in their field. If they were passionate about it (whether front of house or in the kitchen) they would also hone their craft and work their way out of minimum wage.
The problem is that the turnover rate in restaurants is ALREADY very high. Most employees see it as a “stepping stone” while they get their careers on track.
Hi there. I went to a 2 year college, spent hours outside of work reading and working on my craft and was still the highest paid line cook at a multi-million dollar restaurant at a WHOPPING 15 dollars an hour in 2016 in New Jersey.
The industry is terrible. If you didn't work in it, your solutions sound a whole hell of a lot like "bootstraps". I think "there should not be such thing as poverty wages" or "if you can't afford to pay people you can't afford to run your business" are better
> Low wages are the most common reason people cite for leaving food service work. But in one recent survey, more than half of hospitality workers who've quit said no amount of pay would get them to return.
> That's because for many, leaving food service had a lot to do also with its high-stress culture: exhausting work, unreliable hours, no benefits and so many rude customers.
I'm not sure where this idea comes from that hard work is as valuable/more valuable than skilled work. But it seems to be a pervasive idea.