> picking fruit as a seasonal immigrant

And those seasonal immigrant fruit pickers don't know how easy the have it. They should try being kidnapping victims chained in a basement, waiting to be tortured to death by an axe-wielding maniac.

That's the problem with "you can't complain, somebody else has it worse" - I can always think of somebody who has it worse.

I'd argue being kidnapped and chained to the wall is software engineering. Our handcuffs are just gold

> Any white collar job looks better than McDonalds. It’s a ridiculous comparison.

I've had a colleague who was paid worse as a software engineer than his previous job as a McDonald's burger flipper. I also have software engineer friends who were paid minimum wage as software engineers.

I learned from that that having a high-value skill means nothing if you're not willing to take action to extract that value.