This sums up my mid career crisis. I miss the jobs of my youth where I was just scheduled, showed up, did tasks, and left when scheduled. Of course, a flaw of memories like this is I mainly remember the good parts. When I really try, I remember things like lack of flexibility (working from home, leaving early to meet the plumber/doctor, etc) and honestly how difficult living on a low wage actually was and that was before all the responsibilities I’ve accumulated (family, homes, etc).
Also, I always found these jobs truly fun. The carefreeness of other employees and they types of characters you came across was eclectic and interesting. Corporate America does not allow of much of that and is fairly homogeneous even when diversified.
Both because Amazon pay is decent, but more so because it’s more about class expectations than it is about pay.
Lots of jobs make a lot of money, but are still not considered high status.
The only ones I can think of are ones which suddenly started paying a lot due to some market quirk (e.g. miners in Australia in the 2010s).
Class expectations just take a while to catch up (or never do if the market quirk doesn't persist).
Plumbers, electricians are educated specialists making very very good hourly wage but won't get same status as say IT manager.
Bonded cleaner with great references can easily be 50 bucks an hour.
Truck drivers, forklift operators have steadily been well compensated and need certified skillset but again don't get same perceived class status.
Note I'm not saying I don't / these jobs shouldn't have respect :). Question was which well paid jobs are seen as different conferring class status despite good pay and this is the general perception I've observed.
Average is 66k CAD / year, apparently.
That's not amazing. Construction is also notorious for ruining your body (health problems / early retirement a necessity) so it's not even as good as a 66k CAD office wage.
Truckers can still make an upper middle class salary, especially if they own their truck or focus on a niche (refrigerated, military deliveries, cross border, etc.)
Truckers are not doing so well these days, and where they do make a lot it's typically because of backbreaking labor and/or taking on financial risks. This still only gets you into lower/mid tier software dev wages.
I thought there was a trucker shortage happening?
In truckers' cases it must be a shortage of experienced truckers willing to partake in backbreaking labor and take financial and health risks for $60k / year.
A lot of the "well paying", low-status jobs mentioned in this thread are dangrous... long-haul truckers, construction workers, underwater welders, even electricians are jobs where you have to risk your life to do them, and many of them are statistically dangerous as well.
So whether the people who have such jobs are "well compensated" for risking their lives like that is debatable.
Certainly an IT manager job that paid the same as a trucker would be far more preferable in terms of safety, and would therefore be far better compensated when the danger of being a trucker is taken in to account.
Of course, low-paid delivery jobs are even worse when you consider that those low-paid delivery drivers have to risk their lives on the road to deliver your packages.
This strikes me as just making up reasons why examples that disprove the status/pay point aren’t really disproving it.
If you can just make up reasons why your position is right anyway even in cases where it’s not, then it’s basically unfalsifiable.
Construction would probably be another.
Basically “blue collar” jobs that require a lot of expertise.
I’d guess some variation and small business risk, but I think many do well.
We live in a bubble and respect good hackers but normies don't like nerds.
Hollywood portrays us between weirdo and pervert, while glorifying lawyers and doctors.
Sounds like lawyers and doctors (or plenty of people really).
> weirdo
That is a bit of a stereotype. I suspect a large percentage of software jobs are filled by standard people. The weirdos do stand out, but I don’t know anyone who actually fits the Hollywood stereotype.
And weirdo be replaced by equally socially unacceptable traits (arrogant or closed-minded etcetera) that apply to doctors and lawyers.
If you work in software people think it’s cool.
It maybe was low status 20 years ago, but since 2010 or so it’s changed.
Even in NYC the finance people prefer to talk about their app ideas rather than admit they work at a bank.
Compare that to someone who drives for Amazon - the cultural status is not the same.
There’s something satisfying in this kind of work with clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday.
I think a lot of society issues seem to stem from how he briefly felt, that this kind of thing was a sign of failure or that he was embarrassed to tell friends at the holiday party.
The irony to me is that this kind of work is probably more valuable to society than sports illustrated and day to day almost certainly so.
If there was more cultural respect for these kinds of jobs, people would feel better about themselves while doing them. I think there should be. I was glad he felt good about it at the end.