Not to be pedantic but "Silicon Valley janitor" (at least if it's for a big enough tech co) _might_ be doing OK. Various tech companies have publicly committed to paying their own hourly staff and subcontracted workers like food service / janitorial at full standard pre-shutdown rates: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/big-tech-commits-to-paying...

(Though I have no insight into whether or not they've actually followed through on these public commitments).

This is true. I work for a unicorn and we've committed to paying all of our contract staff until the office reopens. This includes making special payments to the caterer, even though we've cancelled regular lunch and dinner meal service, just to pass through to their employees so that they can shelter in place and not have to be at risk of either getting sick or not being employed.

It also includes all reception and building security staff, even though they are employees of the building management, and not employed by us.

I hope more people know that SV startups, and especially unicorns, are really leading by example in their treatment of the low-wage service workers and contractors that work in their offices.

How much do you trust the contracting companies to forward the payments to their workers? Bet they've all been furlough a while ago.

I talk to the janitor that services our offices at a really high end space near the Moscone. No way dude, those poor people are contracted by a bigger firm, they lost all sources of income over a month ago.

  Various tech companies

I don't know of a single SV tech company that employs any janitorial staff directly.

Microsoft, Google, and Twitter at least (and I believe Facebook and others as well) committed to paying their vendor staff for their normally expected hours: https://www.axios.com/tech-giants-promise-to-pay-hourly-work...

As did non tech companies like Nike. Nike is affording it by not giving a cost-of-living increase this year to the full-time employees. I wonder if there is a list somewhere of all the companies that are continuing to pay their vendor staff.

"We're all in this together" is more of an aspirational phrase, meant to motivate the better-off to contribute. When it doesn't work, the people who aren't better off will of course be reminded every time they hear it that the system is failing them.

It's one more of those meaningless demonstrations of support that social media has generalized.

Communicating that "we're all in this together" is as effective as a giving "like" to the Facebook page of a person dying from cancer raising money for their treatment.

The person who hits that "like" surely feels better about themselves and sees social media as a facilitator of this effortless moral redemption.

PS: The individuals building these systems are aware of this.

Have to say the "We're all in this together" rings hollow for me, even irks me - especially when it's some wealthy celebrity saying it. That said, I feel blessed that (so far) I still have my paycheck working remotely and my wife has her's as a teacher. We decided to keep paying for a number of services (local small gym, house cleaner, gardener) we aren't using - I guess partly motivated by a sense of "we're all in this together" and "it's the right thing to do", etc. But there is a still a lot of risk that I could eventually lose my job depending where all this ends up and with two kids heading to college, a mortgage, retirement coming sooner than later - It's not stress free by any means.

I don’t see hairdressers as a trade no longer viable, after all they were considered medical experts until late 19th/early 20th century.