Political Discussion

Following the discussion of Google cutting wages to workers who go remote online and through discussions at work certainly has been interesting.

It's not just Google. Many other companies are now doing this. Mine included.

People have mixed feelings about this, and their feelings are very generational.

For example, Boomers are most likely to be on the side that it doesn't make any sense for a company to pay a "San Francisco" salary if the employee works remotely and has moved to "Lake Tahoe".

There argument is that shareholders have been companies justify and defend why they are located in a high cost of living area. While it is good for companies as the talent pool is best for staffing levels, it is widely hated by shareholders who would like to see reductions in salaries and rent to turn higher profits. With more people working remotely these days it's harder for companies to justify.

For the last hundred years or so businesses priorities have been with the shareholders over their employees.

It doesn't make sense for a company to keep a "San Francisco" salary for a worker that chooses to work remotely when they could just higher a remote worker from Detroit and pay them two thirds as much or less. Especially with the pressure coming from shareholders and it high salaries being harder to justify. The perceived value of an employee to the company is diminished if they are working remotely.

The companies are doing the responsible thing for their shareholders, and that is looking at the metrics for what a salary should be for where a person is living if they are working remotely. That includes looking at prevailing wages and cost of living of the area and setting salary accordingly.

But people have mixed feelings about this. Is it right for a company to cut an established salary? Should existing employees salaries be cut when the company can recruit new full time employees as fully remote and give them salaries higher than a "San Francisco" salary if they are having trouble filling the position? Especially when the employee still lives within commuting distance. Not to mention the company has cost savings in terms of requiring less office space, lower utilities and what not with more employees working from home.

Others are like most employees would gladly take the pay cut to not have to commute 90+ minutes each way to work everyday.

One issue with prevailing wages is a lot of places where people are working remotely from do not have competition. The competition is in the cities. So if there is no competition to compare wages too, the prevailing wage is set at the lowest level. So people living in the suburbs and more rural areas are getting fucked. The numbers companies have for cost of living of areas are also outdated. Much of the data dates back to 2018 or a couple years older. So for the example, someone moving from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, the cost of living companies are basing salaries off of is way off. In 2020 Lake Tahoe saw 4 digit percentage increases in the cost of living as people left the cities when working remotely became an option. Surges like this in the cost of living have not been accounted for when setting salary.

In many cases, peoples cost of living is the same. They just have a house now instead of an apartment. Yet they are seeing as much as a third of their salary being taken away. So in many cases, after pay cuts, the cost of living is more expensive now compared to their salaries than it was previously.

When it comes to Millennials. They think that these pay cuts are complete bull shit. They are also more likely to jump ship and move between companies to get that higher salary than eat the pay cut.

Working remotely is more widely available in the tech industry than others. But the tech industry has been notorious for collusion for keeping wages down. This includes Google, Apple and several other large names where they were caught in collusion of keeping wages low and not poaching from each other. Two seperate class action lawsuits took place back in around 2008 for this collusion and anti poaching. The practice of keeping wages low is still a strong trend in the industry. So it's no surprise they are taking advantage of remote work to lower wages.


Another trend is companies are setting policies on the states you can work remotely in. They are finding that payroll is more expensive having to deal with tax code from multiple different states. So they are trying to limit what states they offer remote work from and crack down on "digital nomads". They have to pay taxes and follow tax codes of wherever you are working from. So they are making policies such as you can only work remotely from the state listed on your permanent address with HR.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Following the discussion of Google cutting wages to workers who go remote online and through discussions at work certainly has been interesting.

It's not just Google. Many other companies are now doing this. Mine included.

People have mixed feelings about this, and their feelings are very generational.

For example, Boomers are most likely to be on the side that it doesn't make any sense for a company to pay a "San Francisco" salary if the employee works remotely and has moved to "Lake Tahoe".

There argument is that shareholders have been companies justify and defend why they are located in a high cost of living area. While it is good for companies as the talent pool is best for staffing levels, it is widely hated by shareholders who would like to see reductions in salaries and rent to turn higher profits. With more people working remotely these days it's harder for companies to justify.

For the last hundred years or so businesses priorities have been with the shareholders over their employees.

It doesn't make sense for a company to keep a "San Francisco" salary for a worker that chooses to work remotely when they could just higher a remote worker from Detroit and pay them two thirds as much or less. Especially with the pressure coming from shareholders and it high salaries being harder to justify. The perceived value of an employee to the company is diminished if they are working remotely.

The companies are doing the responsible thing for their shareholders, and that is looking at the metrics for what a salary should be for where a person is living if they are working remotely. That includes looking at prevailing wages and cost of living of the area and setting salary accordingly.

But people have mixed feelings about this. Is it right for a company to cut an established salary? Should existing employees salaries be cut when the company can recruit new full time employees as fully remote and give them salaries higher than a "San Francisco" salary if they are having trouble filling the position? Especially when the employee still lives within commuting distance. Not to mention the company has cost savings in terms of requiring less office space, lower utilities and what not with more employees working from home.

Others are like most employees would gladly take the pay cut to not have to commute 90+ minutes each way to work everyday.

One issue with prevailing wages is a lot of places where people are working remotely from do not have competition. The competition is in the cities. So if there is no competition to compare wages too, the prevailing wage is set at the lowest level. So people living in the suburbs and more rural areas are getting fucked. The numbers companies have for cost of living of areas are also outdated. Much of the data dates back to 2018 or a couple years older. So for the example, someone moving from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, the cost of living companies are basing salaries off of is way off. In 2020 Lake Tahoe saw 4 digit percentage increases in the cost of living as people left the cities when working remotely became an option. Surges like this in the cost of living have not been accounted for when setting salary.

In many cases, peoples cost of living is the same. They just have a house now instead of an apartment. Yet they are seeing as much as a third of their salary being taken away. So in many cases, after pay cuts, the cost of living is more expensive now compared to their salaries than it was previously.

When it comes to Millennials. They think that these pay cuts are complete bull shit. They are also more likely to jump ship and move between companies to get that higher salary than eat the pay cut.

Working remotely is more widely available in the tech industry than others. But the tech industry has been notorious for collusion for keeping wages down. This includes Google, Apple and several other large names where they were caught in collusion of keeping wages low and not poaching from each other. Two seperate class action lawsuits took place back in around 2008 for this collusion and anti poaching. The practice of keeping wages low is still a strong trend in the industry. So it's no surprise they are taking advantage of remote work to lower wages.


Another trend is companies are setting policies on the states you can work remotely in. They are finding that payroll is more expensive having to deal with tax code from multiple different states. So they are trying to limit what states they offer remote work from and crack down on "digital nomads". They have to pay taxes and follow tax codes of wherever you are working from. So they are making policies such as you can only work remotely from the state listed on your permanent address with HR.
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Isn't it funny how you see the divide between generations?
Wages for white collar workers didn't go stagnant until 2000. That means that boomers were able to take advantage of the professional world to the fullest, get compensation that exceeded inflation, and take advantage of a stock market that wasn't insanely overvalued and decoupled from the real economy. They had crazy interest rates in the 70's for sure, but housing costs only ate into about a third of their salary, even with the interest rates being high (in fact, part of the reason housing was so affordable was because of high interest and lower rates of lending). They didn't have to worry about student debt because they could swing college on a part time or summer job pay. They don't get why young people wouldn't do it like they did because it worked out well for them.

Millenials on the other hand (and as a person on the tail end of Gen X), have seen their housing prices jump, their medical benefits cut, and their wages have only ever really been stagnant--which is something that we were told wouldn't happen if we just went to college and got a degree. They are looking at not being able to afford rent in a high priced city like San Francisco because they also have to pay off their student loans. Often times, they have increasingly more issues with being able to afford a place to live near a place that has a lot of jobs available.

Take me for instance, I almost doubled my salary overnight when I took my remote position nine years ago. If I had to move to Hartford, CT to do my job, I wouldn't be able to move. I have a family and we require a certain amount of space. My $150K house here, would be over a half million there. We would have to squeeze into a much smaller place (and our house is only 1400 sqft) and then I would have to be able to afford the clothes, the wear and tear on the car/gas, etc. There is no way that my family and I could live in a higher COL on my current salary, which is commiserate with the national average. It's the housing that more and more younger families are having problems affording which is why they are all for remote work (and why I am too), because I can live in a lower COL and we can have a gym membership and my kids can have piano lessons and be on soccer teams. I can live near family which is helpful if I need something for the kids or if I need to park them somewhere. I'm not wasting over 2 hours a day commuting and I've started waking up early to paint. For the late Xers and Millenials, if they could conduct their lives in HCOL cities, they might move there, but if it's a choice between living life and scraping by, I choose to live.

The other thing that I find very different is the idea that you are not your job in younger people. I think this has a lot to do with the way employers treat employees. Back in the days of the boomers, they were much more valued as employees, and they felt they needed to show their appreciation to their employer. Now, every year, I wonder what medical benefits they cut from our health insurance this time around. We have a much more adversarial relationship with our employers than our parents ever had. When employees are constantly frustrated because they feel that their employer sees them as expendable, it's much easier to tell them to pound sand. We are not our jobs because our jobs don't care about us. This attitude never helps any organization.
 
When it comes to cracking down on digital nomads here is what really grinds my gears.

The company is saving money and turning higher profits when employees work remotely. They don't have to pay for office space or furniture for said employees as well as save on utilities. They also skimp on IT budgets, such as a second display for laptops. Since you are working from home they won't provide one for you, that expense is on you for setting up your home office.

So these companies can downsize their offices in high rent areas, save lots of money. Yet when something like digital nomads causing them to incur new expenses that is not okay and they look to control / reign in those expenses to turn higher profits even though they are still saving money over said employee being in the office.

Digital nomads created a new situation for companies payrolls. Many of them not versed in tax codes of all 50 states and territories or how to handle international taxes. They have had to seek counseling or pay for software updates to handle these tax codes or their payroll provider such as ADP is charging them more. Something they don't want to be spending money on as it's not in the best interest for shareholders when new expenses are created by working patterns.

It's okay if the business benefits, but if something is going to cost them just a little bit more they can't have that.
 
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On the remote wages conversation:

I work for the big G, we have offices all over the world and when we move from one area to another they adjust our wages but I've never heard of them adjusting them down. They basically stagnate until you're even with your peers. So your yearly raise percentage won't be as high as if you were still working in California. With remote work becoming a more common practice does it make sense for an employee in California with a Mountain View salary to move to Atlanta, where the cost of living is lower and maintain that salary, when we have people who work in Atlanta doing the same job making less? Should everyone get a raise, or should those who choose to live in lower CoL locations take a pay cut? It's not an easy question to answer from the companies point of view.

One thing that doesn't make sense to me is that people deciding to work from home have been told that they will get a pay cut simply for going that route. They're not moving, just choosing not to take up office space, eat office food (at my site they serve breakfast and lunch, even dinner pre-pandemic), enjoy office amenities, and they're being threatened with a pay cut. That makes zero sense to me, as they're technically saving the company money by staying home.

My job is physical, I won't be given the option to work from home unless I promote a couple levels to desk work. But I fully support the movement to a WFH model for those who can.
 
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Indymisanthrope said:
The employer response would be that part of a compensation package goes toward employees being able to afford transportation to and from work.

Unless Google starts offloading real estate in a big way (to who?) they still have to keep the lights on. The cafeterias will still function for people with jobs like yours. WFH saves the employee money, but that savings isn’t getting passed to the employer unless they reclaim some of it.

My company owns a not insignificant percentage of downtown Indianapolis. As of today there are no plans to sell any of it that I’m aware of: too much of it is too specialized for a specific purpose, with too many people still needed on prem, and again, with nobody who needs/wants to buy it anyway. I don’t know what they’ll do about permanent flexible work policies. I do know that the company reached its highest valuation in 140 years last year, but raises were held to pretty low numbers. Whether that’s a stab at slowing down wages to compensate for workers not commuting or just general dickery, I don’t know.

My suspicion is that a lot of companies are thinking/hoping that in a couple of years the pendulum will swing back the other way and there will be all kinds of hot take thinkpieces in Slate and WSJ like “Remote Looked Like the Future of Work, But That’s All in the Past” that only quotes think tanks and recruiters who have been hired to lure people back into physical offices.
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The alternative that’s been put forward has
been to attempt to transform unused urban office space as homes for the younger generation. With the transformation of our retail economy away from brick and mortar and the accompanying need to transform our towns and cities away from retail towards being lifestyle areas much more focus needs to move towards inner city living as a trend for the single. Also add into that the fact that most office jobs don’t need to be in an office anymore we have a sizeable amount of urban real estate ripe for repurposing.

Of course this is an ideal and probably won’t happen in our current political environment, I can’t see many large companies agreeing and their stooge governments will toe the line, but it’d do us all the world of good.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
The employer response would be that part of a compensation package goes toward employees being able to afford transportation to and from work.

Unless Google starts offloading real estate in a big way (to who?) they still have to keep the lights on. The cafeterias will still function for people with jobs like yours. WFH saves the employee money, but that savings isn’t getting passed to the employer unless they reclaim some of it.

My company owns a not insignificant percentage of downtown Indianapolis. As of today there are no plans to sell any of it that I’m aware of: too much of it is too specialized for a specific purpose, with too many people still needed on prem, and again, with nobody who needs/wants to buy it anyway. I don’t know what they’ll do about permanent flexible work policies. I do know that the company reached its highest valuation in 140 years last year, but raises were held to pretty low numbers. Whether that’s a stab at slowing down wages to compensate for workers not commuting or just general dickery, I don’t know.

My suspicion is that a lot of companies are thinking/hoping that in a couple of years the pendulum will swing back the other way and there will be all kinds of hot take thinkpieces in Slate and WSJ like “Remote Looked Like the Future of Work, But That’s All in the Past” that only quotes think tanks and recruiters who have been hired to lure people back into physical offices.
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Excellent point I didn't think about. It certainly applies to a lot of our properties, New York, multiple other metros, Mountain View, no one is going to take those properties from us. I know in my specific office, a Data Center, they were at a shortage for desks. They were beginning the move for a lot of the PM's and other non physical roles to move to the Metro Atlanta office spaces when the Pandemic happened. Many of the hold outs simply didn't want to drive into the city and our building being in an outer suburb was a much more convenient commute. So WFH was a windfall for them.

I think a lot about the expats in this situation though. For instance, we don't have a lot of offices in Canada. So when the pandemic hit, and people who were living in Major US cities to keep their jobs at Google were able to move home to their families and friends back North, they jumped at the chance. Not only is half (or more) of their salary no longer going towards exorbitant rents, but they don't have to be so far from home. So now, knowing they can effectively perform their jobs remotely, threatened with the idea of a pay cut or in some cases a hybrid program expecting them in office once or twice a week a lot of people are looking outside the company for something that will allow them that same freedom. If I were a company looking to scalp new talent, I'd be all over that "WFH" package. Luring in those with a taste of that lifestyle. I kind of hope the next big tech company grows from this pool of office averse workers, without a headquarters and spread around the globe. Certainly keeps costs low for a startup.
 
The lease is up this year for my companies office space. The current lease is 5 floors in a highrise in downtown Boston. Very expensive real estate.

Before covid hit they were still deciding as to whether or not they would renew the lease for the current office space for another 10 years or relocate into new office space downtown which as they said was crazily over priced.

But then covid hit and everything changed. Working remotely suddenly became acceptable and we proved it could work.

We have chosen to move out of downtown to a much smaller office space. The new office will focus more on a layout for communal shared office space. With the exception of a few people have permanent desks working out of the office full time, most people will be hybrid. There is computer software for booking a seat when you come into the office.

My company is getting a huge savings on real estate not only by changing from a "prime location" but downsizing the office space.

Yet if you decide to work fully remotely, you will still get a pay cut. For example, if I choose to be a full time remote worker. They will pull up the prevailing wages for the couple small advertising companies in Salem. They are like 10 or less employees family shops that have only a couple employees who are non owners / family. And set my salary based off of that.

As for keeping the lights on and not having any cost savings. I can assure you there are cost savings. Pre covid the electric bill for my company was $25,000+ a month. It's dropped to $3000 a month with no one in the office. I would expect Google, as well as most other offices are green like mine. For example, the lights in my office are not "always on". There are motion sensors. If they don't detect motion for 15 minutes or so the lights turn off. So with one in the office pretty much all but the emergency lights that never turn off are off most all the time these days. You also don't have everyone's computer plugged in as people are working. They scaled back the HVAC hours. For example heat and AC don't run steadily from 8 to 5 every weekday. Just basic air circulation does and heat / ac are set to maintain a temperature range like you were on vacation at home. Like when you turn down your heat to 60 or 55 when you are away for a week. I can assure you, companies are seeing some savings from people working from home.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
The lease is up this year for my companies office space. The current lease is 5 floors in a highrise in downtown Boston. Very expensive real estate.

Before covid hit they were still deciding as to whether or not they would renew the lease for the current office space for another 10 years or relocate into new office space downtown which as they said was crazily over priced.

But then covid hit and everything changed. Working remotely suddenly became acceptable and we proved it could work.

We have chosen to move out of downtown to a much smaller office space. The new office will focus more on a layout for communal shared office space. With the exception of a few people have permanent desks working out of the office full time, most people will be hybrid. There is computer software for booking a seat when you come into the office.

My company is getting a huge savings on real estate not only by changing from a "prime location" but downsizing the office space.

Yet if you decide to work fully remotely, you will still get a pay cut. For example, if I choose to be a full time remote worker. They will pull up the prevailing wages for the couple small advertising companies in Salem. They are like 10 or less employees family shops that have only a couple employees who are non owners / family. And set my salary based off of that.

As for keeping the lights on and not having any cost savings. I can assure you there are cost savings. Pre covid the electric bill for my company was $25,000+ a month. It's dropped to $3000 a month with no one in the office. I would expect Google, as well as most other offices are green like mine. For example, the lights in my office are not "always on". There are motion sensors. If they don't detect motion for 15 minutes or so the lights turn off. So with one in the office pretty much all but the emergency lights that never turn off are off most all the time these days. You also don't have everyone's computer plugged in as people are working. They scaled back the HVAC hours. For example heat and AC don't run steadily from 8 to 5 every weekday. Just basic air circulation does and heat / ac are set to maintain a temperature range like you were on vacation at home. Like when you turn down your heat to 60 or 55 when you are away for a week. I can assure you, companies are seeing some savings from people working from home.
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The only power you have in such a situation is to either act communally as a workforce or to vote with your feet. In thst situation if unions weren’t recognise I’d be applying for other jobs. It’s not justification for a pay cut.
 
Joe Mac said:
The only power you have in such a situation is to either act communally as a workforce or to vote with your feet. In thst situation if unions weren’t recognise I’d be applying for other jobs. It’s not justification for a pay cut.
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Sadly, there is no union. And the entire global holding company that holds my company is very anti union.

Shareholders are what are driving the pay cuts. For the last 100 years or so businesses loyalties and decision lay with them first.

Several key lawsuits over the years have sided with shareholders over employees and businesses have adapted a culture of shareholders first on pretty much everything.

With that said, even if we do manage to unionize. Our holding company sets our salary. And for the greater good of the holding company they sometimes say to our company you need to make a 15% reduction in payroll. AKA layoffs. That happened 3 times last year.

Most all of our business is with pharmaceutical companies, and we lost no business or revenue last year. But we still had to make cuts, be slimmer and do more with less.

Sadly, a lot of the cuts were non-management employees who make 6 figures. Anyone on my team who was in that range unfortunately got laid off.

I also hate how management refers to these people as having "bloated salaries" and how it's a negative thing for our team and prevents us from hiring the help we need. For example, 3 jr devs instead of 1 senior.

The salaries are absolutely not "bloated" for the people who made 6 figures. Based on what they did, and their experience they were actually underpaid. But shareholders ask for the "bloat" to be cut. They don't have any issues with paying management 6 figures. But regular employees, that's another story.
 
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RenegadeMonster said:
Sadly, there is no union. And the entire global holding company that holds my company is very anti union.

Shareholders are what are driving the pay cuts. For the last 100 years or so businesses loyalties and decision lay with them first.

Several key lawsuits over the years have sided with shareholders over employees and businesses have adapted a culture of shareholders first on pretty much everything.

With that said, even if we do manage to unionize. Our holding company sets our salary. And for the greater good of the holding company they sometimes say to our company you need to make a 15% reduction in payroll. AKA layoffs. That happened 3 times last year.

Most all of our business is with pharmaceutical companies, and we lost no business or revenue last year. But we still had to make cuts, be slimmer and do more with less.

Sadly, a lot of the cuts were non-management employees who make 6 figures. Anyone on my team who was in that range unfortunately got laid off.

I also hate how management refers to these people as having "bloated salaries" and how it's a negative thing for our team and prevents us from hiring the help we need. For example, 3 jr devs instead of 1 senior.

The salaries are absolutely not "bloated" for the people who made 6 figures. Based on what they did, and their experience they were actually underpaid. But shareholders ask for the "bloat" to be cut. They don't have any issues with paying management 6 figures. But regular employees, that's another story.
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Yes. I understand that, but the only way to prevent that is to take power into your own hands. Look for other jobs. Hunt the market. A potential exodus of talent is literally the only power you have as workers in that situation. Otherwise you’re just hopelessly screaming into the endless void.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
The employer response would be that part of a compensation package goes toward employees being able to afford transportation to and from work.

Unless Google starts offloading real estate in a big way (to who?) they still have to keep the lights on. The cafeterias will still function for people with jobs like yours. WFH saves the employee money, but that savings isn’t getting passed to the employer unless they reclaim some of it.

My company owns a not insignificant percentage of downtown Indianapolis. As of today there are no plans to sell any of it that I’m aware of: too much of it is too specialized for a specific purpose, with too many people still needed on prem, and again, with nobody who needs/wants to buy it anyway.
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File under: things I am unsympathetic about towards companies and corporations. That's one of those 'is your business model not as profitable as it once was? oh no anyway' kind of things. My slightly less blithe response is that my compensation is based on money so that I can spend it how I like, and if they meant to compensate based on transportation, they should do that. Google does that, with jitneys and actual transportation services to/from their campuses. If the employer doesn't turn off the lights and change the cafeteria/eating arrangements in order to save money and 'reclaim those savings', that's on them. I don't see why individual employees that are non-board members or non-management are suddenly responsible for the financial wellbeing of a company they don't manage.

Indymisanthrope said:
My suspicion is that a lot of companies are thinking/hoping that in a couple of years the pendulum will swing back the other way and there will be all kinds of hot take thinkpieces in Slate and WSJ like “Remote Looked Like the Future of Work, But That’s All in the Past” that only quotes think tanks and recruiters who have been hired to lure people back into physical offices.
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I think you are correct. Just as everyone wants life to 'go back to normal', so too do they want work to 'go back the way it used to be'. Even the few that have tried to adjust to remote work have tried to make things manageable in the same ways -- monitoring software, cameras etc.
 
I had a good chat with one of my neighbors yesterday. She is 84 years old and a retired real estate broker.

She asked me what I went to college for and and then asked me if I didn't mind, how much do you make. When I told her her mind was blown.

She was like you have a bachelor's degree and you are in your mid 30's. I was expecting at least 100k a year. That's not right. When she said I should look into large companies in Boston as they likely pay more. And when I told her that I do actually work for the largest advertising agency in Boston her mind was again blown. She was like a trade worker makes more money.

She couldn't comprehend that companies would pay so little for people with college degrees and that I should be looking to change my field to something that would make more money. I explained how white collar wages have been stagnant for 20 years now and how that some fields like mine have seen salaries shrink do to globalization. How our clients always say we are to expensive and we lose work to it being contracted out to India and what not for cheaper labor.

We also talked about how much going to college costs these days and again this blew her mind. She was like how can you making ends meet with that kind of debt. I explained to her that college is really only worth it these days if you have the money to go and don't need to take out loans.

We also talked about benefits. And I told her they suck these days. That every year it's what else are they going to cut from my healthcare and how much more out of pocket is healthcare going to cost me now.

Being a former real estate broker, of course she gave me the advice that I should be investing in property. I explained that with my student loans and current salary, I can't afford to buy a home. She said, well, you could if you were really smart about it. But you probably would only be able to afford it in areas someone like you would really not want to live. But I could rent it to turn more profit.

Then she went into her history about owning rental properties and how you have to be "heartless". She said she was raised believing that if you can't afford to pay rent or put food on the table it's your own doing. You are lazy and not motivated to get out there and work.

She has given up all her rental properties prior to covid. She said the majority of her renters could not afford rent. She would show up to demand rent from a single mother of 2 who had to choose between putting food on the table or paying rent. When this situation became the norm for her regularly each month for most renters she had enough. She couldn't be "heartless" anymore and sold her properties. She still believes their issues are of their own making. But she couldn't be the one to say you can't put food on the table for your two kids because you need to pay rent any longer.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
I had a good chat with one of my neighbors yesterday. She is 84 years old and a retired real estate broker.

She asked me what I went to college for and and then asked me if I didn't mind, how much do you make. When I told her her mind was blown.

She was like you have a bachelor's degree and you are in your mid 30's. I was expecting at least 100k a year. That's not right. When she said I should look into large companies in Boston as they likely pay more. And when I told her that I do actually work for the largest advertising agency in Boston her mind was again blown. She was like a trade worker makes more money.

She couldn't comprehend that companies would pay so little for people with college degrees and that I should be looking to change my field to something that would make more money. I explained how white collar wages have been stagnant for 20 years now and how that some fields like mine have seen salaries shrink do to globalization. How our clients always say we are to expensive and we lose work to it being contracted out to India and what not for cheaper labor.

We also talked about how much going to college costs these days and again this blew her mind. She was like how can you making ends meet with that kind of debt. I explained to her that college is really only worth it these days if you have the money to go and don't need to take out loans.

We also talked about benefits. And I told her they suck these days. That every year it's what else are they going to cut from my healthcare and how much more out of pocket is healthcare going to cost me now.

Being a former real estate broker, of course she gave me the advice that I should be investing in property. I explained that with my student loans and current salary, I can't afford to buy a home. She said, well, you could if you were really smart about it. But you probably would only be able to afford it in areas someone like you would really not want to live. But I could rent it to turn more profit.

Then she went into her history about owning rental properties and how you have to be "heartless". She said she was raised believing that if you can't afford to pay rent or put food on the table it's your own doing. You are lazy and not motivated to get out there and work.

She has given up all her rental properties prior to covid. She said the majority of her renters could not afford rent. She would show up to demand rent from a single mother of 2 who had to choose between putting food on the table or paying rent. When this situation became the norm for her regularly each month for most renters she had enough. She couldn't be "heartless" anymore and sold her properties. She still believes their issues are of their own making. But she couldn't be the one to say you can't put food on the table for your two kids because you need to pay rent any longer.
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My mother was very much a liberal who believed Healthcare was a right and people need help etc etc when she was in her 30s and 40s. Once she hit 50 and made decent money as a professional, immediately started echoing Fox News talking points.

Once she went on a rant about immigrants coming to take our jobs etc and I pointed out she's an immigrants that had a job. Which turned into a no true Scotsman, "yes but I'm legal", as if some illegal immigrants were coming for her white collar professional gig.
 
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