Yelp Employee Posts Open Letter About Cost Of Living And Low Wages, Gets Fired (modernreaders.com)

whoever57 writes: Talia Jane was employed by Yelp in San Francisco but after posting in an open letter to Yelp's CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, that her after tax income of $8.15 was insufficient to provide basic necessities like heating, food, etc., she discovered that she had been fired. How did she discover? Her work email stopped working. Even her boss did not know what had happened. Stoppelman denies having a hand in her firing, making the claim "(There are) two sides to every HR story so Twitter army please put down the pitchforks," replying to the criticism. He didn't personally turn off her email, perhaps he did not even make the decision to fire her, but as the person who ultimately sets the culture and policies of the company, his claim to not be directly responsible is unconvincing.

Comments

And this is...news?

[grasshoppa]

I truly hope none of us here will express amazement that someone who criticized their employer, and blamed them for what are essentially her own poor life choices, got fired.

This is how the real world works, jr. You are not owed, or entitled, to shit.

Re:And this is...news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite to the contrary, she deserves a living wage because her parents and teachers told her that she was special. It absolutely can't have anything to do with the insane taxes or the brutal rents caused by the same people who voted themselves a raise on the taxpayer's dime. Don't like it? Leave!

Re:And this is...news?

[BarbaraHudson]

So everyone who pickets their employer because they want to move work out of the country should also be fired? Everyone who publicly criticizes their employer for unsafe practices that endanger the public should get fired? Or, in this case, anyone who publicly points out that wages paid are too low to survive in San Francisco should get fired?

Go move to Qatar - they're looking for slave-wage laborers who are ready to die in droves for a pittance, because if they complain they get thrown in jail and kicked out with no wages. Sounds like your kind of place.

Re:And this is...news?

[grasshoppa]

You can be forgiven in thinking that your examples match what we're talking about here, as the summary didn't actually link anything. For reference: https://medium.com/@taliajane/...

The "Open Letter" wasn't discussing offshoring, nor unsafe business practices. It was nothing more than entitled whining, and not even very inspired at that. It certainly wasn't what I'd expect from an english major, short of it's verbosity. But then, she never said she finished college, so I guess I might be expecting too much.

I especially like how she's now begging for someone to employ her. As if a whining entitled employee is right at the top of every employer's wish list.

Re:And this is...news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to THAT,

She deserves a living wage, because if greedy imbeciles don't stop violating the social contract, they're not going to like it much when the masses turn to anarchy.

Pay them now, or pay them later. Either way, nobody's going to get away with making the downtrodden a slave race for long.

Re:And this is...news?

[Daemonik]

The problem is she wants to live in THE most expensive place in the US.

No the problem is that her former EMPLOYER wants her to work in the most expensive city in the US, and gives no fucks about how she makes that happen on what they want to pay.

Re:And this is...news?

[ooloorie]

No the problem is that her former EMPLOYER wants her to work in the most expensive city in the US

Her employer doesn't want her to do anything, they are offering her a job and a salary. She has to decide whether she can make ends meet. If she got roommates and lived frugally, it would be easy for her to live on that salary even in the Bay Area. If she wants her own apartment and her own car, the salary isn't enough and the job isn't for her.

and gives no fucks about how she makes that happen

Correct. And they shouldn't give a fuck how she makes that happen because her bad financial decisions are not the employer's problem.

Re:And this is...news?

[alvinrod]

The job position likely doesn't provide enough value to justify paying the kind of wage necessary to live in San Francisco. The company should just move the customer service department to the mid-west or somewhere else where $8.15 per hour is a living wage.

Re:And this is...news?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're championing tyranny of the (lazy, selfish, thieving) majority?

No, I'm not championing it at all.

I'm just saying it's what WILL happen. It's the natural result when people do not have a way to obtain basic needs and human dignity. It has happened again and again in history, and it's ignorant to assume we live in some kind of exception.

Secure a basic level of living for all working people, or don't at your own peril.

Re:And this is...news?

[ShanghaiBill]

She deserves a living wage, because if greedy imbeciles don't stop violating the social contract ...

If she was making $8.15/hr in SF, she is an idiot. I live in the Bay Area, and we can't even hire no-skill warehouse clerks for less than $15/hr. The SF area is way past full employment, and nearly every company has vacancies that they are struggling to fill.

My impression from skimming TFA is that this was a telecommuting position, which means the pay rate is disconnected from geography, and she is basically competing for wages with people in Mumbai, while living in one of the world's most expensive cities. So what does she expect? If she wants to get paid more, she has to make herself worth more.

Re:And this is...news?

[ArmoredDragon]

No the problem is that her former EMPLOYER wants her to work in the most expensive city in the US, and gives no fucks about how she makes that happen on what they want to pay.

They offered her a job that's in that area, however they likely made no requirement that she live there. Likewise how she makes ends meet isn't their business, nor should it be. I'd personally be annoyed if my employer managed my finances.

Re:And this is...news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder when people will start to see that people that have a job, or those looking for a job, aren't lazy entitled people, because they aren't being paid enough to live with dignity.

I always see the same things:
Don't have a job? You are a lazy SOB taking the money I worked for! Get one of your own!
Not making enough? You're stupid, and look for another job!

Employment may be getting better, but under-employment is still a horrible problem.

Re:And this is...news?

[spire3661]

"Correct. And they shouldn't give a fuck how she makes that happen because her bad financial decisions are not the employer's problem."

I remember a time when businesses were considered SYMBIOTIC relationships between capital and labor. You are just an amoral person who doesn't understand this concept at all. Im not saying you are wrong, im saying you are an asshole, and the world would be better off if there were less people like you.

Re:And this is...news?

[mspohr]

The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (signed by US and most countries on earth) would beg to differ.

http://www.un.org/en/universal...

Re:And this is...news?

[msauve]

Choosing to live in a high cost metropolitan area is a life choice. It is an analogy, not a straw man.

Re:And this is...news?

[beelsebob]

Her employer doesn't want her to do anything, they are offering her a job and a salary. She has to decide whether she can make ends meet. If she got roommates and lived frugally, it would be easy for her to live on that salary even in the Bay Area. If she wants her own apartment and her own car, the salary isn't enough and the job isn't for her.

Right, and when that salary is not enough to live, she has two options
1. Encourage them to offer her a higher salary
2. Find a different job.

She was carrying out 1, she probably had started on 2. I don't see why she should have been expected to act differently.

Re:And this is...news?

[guruevi]

If you make $15/h in the SF area you are taking home ~$12.50 after Federal, FICA, State (no local taxes). It is possible a lot of it was taken out by creditors or the IRS for back taxes (which you could be penalized at a monthly rate up to the minimum income), but that's poor life choices, not your employers' fault. And once you have more than 2 creditors taking money out of your pay check, your employer may be able to terminate you (because it's a hell of a lot of paperwork).

Re:And this is...news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet corporations want the lowest wages, the lowest taxes, and all the subsidies they can lobby out of the government, but you're OK with *that* entitlement, right?

Re:And this is...news?

[dgatwood]

Not even close. The original article says that she made $12.25 before taxes. Remember that people at the bottom of the pay scale pay much less in taxes (proportionally) than people making in the six figures because of the progressive income tax system.

This sounds like a number of startups in the Bay Area that prey on out-of-state people who don't know how high the cost of living is out here, hoping that they'll manage to squeeze at least a few months' work out of them before they quit and go to work somewhere that pays better... like McDonald's. $12.25 is, in fact, minimum wage in San Francisco. You can literally make that flipping burgers with no skill at all. And this is what they're paying people with college degrees, doing customer support work (which is usually at least a couple of tiers above minimum wage).

Now to put that in perspective, the average salary for a customer service rep in the Bay Area is $22.05 per hour. That means that Yelp is paying barely over half the regional average. And when people complained, rather than fixing the sweatshop-level conditions, they are moving the jobs to Phoenix. The only problem is that the average salary for a customer service rep in Phoenix is still $16.10. So that $12.25 would still be massively underpaid, given the job category, even in Phoenix. And yet somehow they're paying that wage in San Francisco!

I would like to make three suggestions to the CEO of Yelp:

1. Compile a list of all the managers who approved those appallingly substandard wages.
2. Fire all of them with cause for creating an appallingly abusive work environment and damaging Yelp's corporate image.
3. Hire this girl to replace one of them.

You should reward people who have the courage to speak truth to authority, not punish them. If you don't, you'll end up with a company of "yes men" who will agree your entire company right down the toilet and into the ground.

Re:And this is...news?

[myowntrueself]

I'd like to eat regularly at Maxim's, shelter at the Ritz, bathe in Veen and use all the electricity I want. Since you think I'm entitled to that, are you going to pay for it?

OMG is that what this person was asking for?? No wonder they got fired then.

Oh wait? That isn't what they were asking for and you are egregiously making shit up in order to sound like you actually have a reasonable argument?

Re: And this is...news?

[KGIII]

I'm not sure that's entirely accurate.

I believe we're looking at a false dichotomy. Not all labor is equal. Should it be a living wage to work as a fry cook? Should it be a living wage to work in a convenience store? Or should they be in a position where they have to pool their resources and live more frugally than someone who makes more than that? Does everyone "deserve" to live in San Fransisco and expect to be paid a living wage there without having to pool resources and live frugally - even if they're a fry cook? Are there no consequences for poor choices? And no, not everyone has made poor choices - just not like everyone is in their situation through no fault of their own.

Some people have shitty jobs because they've done stupid things. They now have to pool their resources and live frugally. Should I be able to have a nice apartment and the various accessories that we use today - on a convenience store salary?

I can see a logical argument for both - but you didn't actually present that argument. You just insisted it was so.

Re:And this is...news?

[R3d M3rcury]

One thing I'd point out is that her apartment isn't in San Francisco, it's about 30 miles out.

There are things to be said for both sides. Yes, I have no problem with Yelp firing her. The, "Gosh, I was told I'd have to work for an entire year before I could consider being an internal candidate" is pretty silly. As someone else said, she should consider getting rid of her one bedroom and finding a roommate to live with. If a one bedroom apartment is $1245 where she lives, I'm sure she can find two bedroom apartments for $1800 or so that she could share and end up paying less rent and possibly less in utilities. She should also start figuring out what things cost--if she's close to a mass-transit line, it may be worthwhile to dump her car.

That said, Yelp might want to consider whether what they are paying people will aid them in getting the employees they want. I've seen plenty of companies who pay crap and treat employees like crap and then can't understand why they have such high employee turnover and low employee morale. "These kids today don't want to work! They're spoiled brats who think the world owes them!" It might also be smart to move a customer service call center somewhere else where you can pay people your current rates but it's cheaper for people to live and not have to worry about employees being unable to get into work because they have no money. While there's lots of technical talent in the Bay Area, you might be able to find better customer service people elsewhere.

Re: And this is...news?

[BronsCon]

Should it be a living wage to work as a fry cook? Should it be a living wage to work in a convenience store?

Would you like to live in a world where nobody did those jobs and you, therefore, did not benefit from having people to do those things for you?

And it's not about living frugally vs having a nice apartment with all the trimmings; it's about being able to live frugally in the first place. Not earning enough to pay basic rent and utilities and keep food on the table isn't something you fix by living frugally, it's something you fix by earning more money, and the people in these jobs can't do that without abandoning those jobs, which leads to the world described above.

Re:And this is...news?

[geoskd]

Stop working for shitty salaries in overpriced cities and the executives running these corporations will stop expecting people to ruin themselves in order to bloat the executive bonuses.

When you're staring at the want ads, on line job sites, the newspaper jobs section and anything else you can think of to find a job because you graduated 5 months ago and you're still looking for something that pays more than minimum wage, you notice something very disturbing. There are literally thousands of job postings for minimum wage jobs, and almost no postings for anything that would be considered middle class or up (maybe 1 listing in 20). Just because we have low unemployment doesn't mean that underemployment isn't rampant as hell. Sure there are plenty of other places to work, but they all pay the same crap starvation wages. Starbucks still pays the same crappy wage so that those fortunate enough to have found a solid job don't have to pay too $4 for a latte (ohhhhh, never mind, they charge that much anyways). So, all of these employees on the bottom decide to collectively have themselves a strike. What would it accomplish? The powers that be just ride it out and wait 3 weeks. Those employees will be back, and willing to do absolutely anything because, as this person so ineloquently stated, no money, no eat.

The basic trouble with the labor market, is that workers do not have the luxury of simply not engaging in the market if the terms are unfair. The employer can file chapter 11 and shut their doors, or can wait out a strike, or can simply fire the employee and get another one. In short, they have options. The employees however are stuck with the tyranny of having a stomach and an undeniable need to put food in it with shocking regularly. In short, they have no options.

What happens at the negotiating table when one party A needs party B, but party B doesn't need party A? Party A gets hosed. The free market theory requires that all parties have the option not to take part if the deal is not in their best interest. With the labor market, that is not the case. Workers must earn money or die. Whether the employers know that when they set wages is irrelevant, as they take advantage of it to offer minimum wage jobs nonetheless.

12.7% of American workers make less than $10 per hour. 51% of American workers make less than $14.50 per hour. That means that the average American employee will not earn more than $14.50 per hour until they are 40 years old.

Since 1980, median individual income has risen from $20,500 per year to $27,000 per year, an annual increase of about 0.8% per year. Over that same period, inflation has averaged 3.37%. after 35 years of that, buying power is only 28% of what it used to be, and wages are only up 31%. This means that the total buying power of the median wage today is only 36% of the median buying power in 1980. In effect, wages have fallen to 1/3 of what they were in 1980. This is partly offset by a massive increase in the number of women who are working (2 income households), as well as a marked increase in the number of hours that individual employees are working.

As if that wasn't enough, we are fast approaching a debt crisis, as our debt to GDP is quickly approaching the highest in American history. We have been giving out massive tax break to the wealthy for almost 40 years, and financing it by going into nati

Re:And this is...news?

[ranton]

Her complaint amounted to an admission that she couldn't find a job which would support her lifestyle choices.

Lifestyle choices like eating regularly, living inside shelter with running water and electricity... how dare she think she's entitled to such things from a days wage!

Get your head out of the clouds. This woman was living in one of the most expensive areas in the country with no roommate and a minimum wage job and expected to make ends meet. That is ludicrous. In 2005 I was making only a couple dollars over minimum wage and had 4 roommates in a five bedroom townhouse. And this was in the Midwest over an hour from the nearest major city.

I am a liberal supporter of Bernie Sanders, but even I don't think this woman's problems are caused by her employer. Moving to San Francisco with no savings and no social safety net from friends or family and no significant job lined up is objectively stupid. Not taking advantage of the likely dozens of apps that help you find roommates is almost just as bad.

There is no sob story here. This is a naive and entitled kid who hopefully has learned something from the experience.

Re: And this is...news?

[Firethorn]

Should it be a living wage to work as a fry cook? Should it be a living wage to work in a convenience store?

Good questions. My first question: How do you define a 'living wage'? I generally define one as sufficient for a single person to live on, with a suite-mate. I've had online discussions though, with people who seriously wanted the minimum wage to be sufficient for single full time income earner to support a family of 4. In addition, as a military member who's deployed a number of time, my 'standard of living' is a bit lower than some.

Personally, I'd prefer to not set a minimum wage at all. I'd prefer to avoid mandating benefits either - mandating healthcare for full time workers, for example, has resulted in whole segments of employers only hiring part time workers.

But you still have to counter the race to the bottom. As such, I support a support system - either a mandatory employment program (I tend to call it 'FedJobs'), or something like a basic guaranteed income(BIG), such that employers who offer too little simply don't find any employees. Whether because citizens find working for the feds more profitable or because they find the wages too pathetic to work for under a BIG. A hybrid system is possible.

Re: And this is...news?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Not all labor is equal. Should it be a living wage to work as a fry cook? Should it be a living wage to work in a convenience store?

Yes. If you're highly paid person in San Fransisco and you expect to have a fry cook make you food or a convenience store clerk serve you a Slushee, then you also have to expect that those places are manned because it's worth the while of those providing the service to you. They're not going to drive two-hours one way to get to their reasonably-priced living accommodations.

There is no reason, especially in the circumstances of rent inflation due to a concentration of highly paid people, why you should have to exploit people to get your low-priced burgers or Slim Jims.

Re:And this is...news?

[jcr]

"Slave wages" is an oxymoron. If you don't like what you're earning, then it's up to YOU to increase the value of your labor.

-jcr

Re: And this is...news?

[L. J. Beauregard]

Should it be a living wage to work as a fry cook? Should it be a living wage to work in a convenience store?

No one is saying that fry cooks should all live in McMansions. But if a fry cook is not worth enough to pay the minimum needed to maintain a single person in basic health and dignity, then it is not worth your while to have fry cooks.

If you use a mule to do a job, you provide it with enough to sustain its life and health. If you use a machine, you keep it powered and in good repair. But if you use a man, it seems, it's perfectly OK to pay him a pittance and expect him to live on it.

Re: And this is...news?

[mrchaotica]

We don't have enough gainful employment for everyone.

That's an interesting point. In that case, there are only a few solutions:

1. Overpaying for labor (i.e., the "living wage")
2. Welfare
3. Government make-work jobs (e.g. CCC)
4. Letting people descend into homelessness and die in the street

Given that most of the radical conservative types have been railing against #1 and #2 and (given their support for cuts in government spending) clearly reject #3 as an option... well, it's hard to believe anybody could be so heartless as to prefer option #4, but it's the only one left...

Re:And this is...news?

[Mephistophocles]

$12.50/hr works out to about $2K/month. A quick Zillow search of apartments in the SF area turns up nothing (not one) under $1K/month. The cheapest thing I could find (in 5 minutes, I grant you, but still) was $1300 - for a 140 square feet studio apartment (that's 14ft by 10ft - smaller than the single room I'm sitting in right now). Maybe she's an idiot for living in SF. But regardless, if that's what housing costs in SF, $2K/month ain't gonna cut it.

Re: And this is...news?

[Maxo-Texas]

Flipping burgers is only more intensive in the moment.

If you count the 4 to 8 years of training you have to prepare for writing code, the trade off is not so obvious.

You will have to stay up 24-40 straight hours multiple times to meet deadlines for a coding degree. You will have to work nights, weekends, and holidays. When your hands hurt from typing, you will continue to type to meet deadline.

On my last software project we had several divorces and five heart attacks out of a crew of 400. Not counting the "mystery contractor" who was hauled away unconcious from his desk and we never found out what happened to him. The young people from the contracting houses were walking around with double black eyes (not blue under the eyes-- literally purple black) from lack of sleep. Add in the constant pressure of being fired and losing everything if you fail to meet the unreasonable deadlines or.. if you just get unlucky.

Coding can be extremely stressful work. Once you learn to flip burgers, you are set.

Once you learn a software set, you are okay for maybe 6-10 years, then you must self-retrain and successfully get on another back breaking, hand killing project that leaves your arms in pain from tendenitus, screwed up shoulders and frozen muscles in order to jump to the new technology.

Coding *COULD* be easy work, but it frequently isn't. Development projects are always on an unrealistic deadline. Maintenance programming isn't so bad tho.

Re:And this is...news?

[Aighearach]

If they had dignity, they would still have it even if they were starving to death. They have shitty jobs because they have no dignity, and value money above self respect.

And other people have the exact same job, and do have dignity, and do have self respect, and they have that job because they wanted it, not because they couldn't find where to stand for a bag of money to land on their head.

I swear, man... I've been homeless, and if you go to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen very few of the people there have this sort of sense of entitlement. At least half the homeless are going to be fighting against this revolution if you nutters ever organize. ;)

Read the "open letter." It is just a kid who grows up and finds out the world isn't fair and there are no free ponies, and an English degree isn't actually useful unless you want to teach English, and then she blames her employer. Guess what? Writers don't prepare to be writers by getting an English degree. Now, maybe she has a legit gripe against her HS career counselor. Somebody should have pointed it out. If you want to work in "media," you need an art degree, a computer degree, a drama degree, maybe even meteorology. If you want to be a writer... there is no degree for that, you have to "go out in the world and live" and then "find your voice." English degrees are for teachers. It is really that simple. The don't even start teaching how to write until the 4th year. An English degree doesn't even prepare you to be an editor. So she finds a crap job, and she's shocked she would have to work a year in her starting position before having any chance to transfer. A whole year, omg that is like so long because I'm still a kid! Except, a year is a really short time in a job. If you don't even want the job you're taking, they're not going to promise to move you into a better job. You need to prove yourself in the first position, not act entitled and show disdain for the actual position that they hired you for.

And for the record, if you starve a pack of wolves and throw them a steak, the alpha pair will eat it, and everybody else will sit back crying. They teach that in a different department than English, though.

What kind of idiot takes a full time job that would only pay 80% of their rent, without having moved as soon as they knew they were taking the job? I thought even English majors had to pass algebra, and this is just arithmetic! I'm sure there is a word problem for this. There is no irony in not having enough money for food. There is only arithmetic in it. When it gets the BART part, we find out the truth; she's still too spoiled to move to a part of the bay area that she can afford. She probably doesn't want to give up her free time to spend it commuting on a bus. Welcome to the most expensive part of the country, why did you expect to live there at the start of your career... with an English degree?

Re: And this is...news?

[dgatwood]

There are, indeed, much deeper problems, and the problems are that the minimum wage is still less than half what it should be, given the cost of living. San Francisco's minimum wage isn't even close to being a living wage. The proposed $15/hr minimum wage is barely enough in the South Bay, much less in SF. To illustrate, let me use Tennessee for comparison purposes. I'll show both rural and urban versions of Tennessee for maximum impact.

TN minimum wage: $7.25/hr, $290.00/wk.
After taxes: $239.72/wk.
Minimal apartment (rural): $300/month, $75/wk
Average commute: 7.5 miles each way, 15 miles round trip @ 25 MPG average = 0.6 gallons * $1.49/gal = 89.4 cents per day, $4.47/week
Remaining money: $160.25/wk

If you go with a city location in Tennessee, the apartment jumps to about $800/month,or $200/week. Remaining money is down to $35.25/week, which is just barely enough to survive, but it is possible to survive on minimum wage in Tennessee cities without sharing an apartment.

Now contrast that with the Bay Area:

CA minimum wage: $12.25/hr, $490/week
After taxes: $381.41/week
Minimal apartment: $1600/month, $400/week (unless you get really lucky and manage to find one of the tiny number of rent-controlled apartments out there)
Average commute: 25 miles per day @ 25 MPG average = 1 gallon * $2.09/gal = $2.09 per day, $10.45/week
Remaining money: -$29.04/wk

So people making minimum wage in San Francisco, even with its $12.25 minimum wage have a substantially lower quality of life than people making $7.25 in Tennessee; it is actually plausible to have your own small apartment in rural Tennessee on minimum wage. It isn't even possible to pay for a basic studio apartment on minimum wage in San Francisco (again, unless you get lucky and find something under rent control with income restrictions, and these are few and far between).

Worse, even if you double up in that Bay Area apartment, you still have only $170.96/week after taxes, shared apartment, and commuting. In an area where everything from food to electricity costs at least 20% more than in TN (and for electricity, up to 5x as much as in TN), you're in serious trouble if you're making only 7% more than somebody in TN making minimum wage.

To calculate the minimum living wage, which I define as the level in which a Bay Area resident has the same standard of living as someone in Tennessee making the federal living wage, we can reverse that math. Assuming the average cost of goods is 20% more in California, you would need $192.30 ($160.25 * 1.2) per week after paying for a single apartment rent plus your typical commute cost to have a similar standard of living. $192.30 + $10.45 + $400 = $602.75 per week after taxes, which is a whopping $807.88 before taxes, or $20.20 per hour! So $12.25 per hour is nowhere close to a living wage. It is abject poverty.

Basically, we need to bite the bullet, acknowledge that rent control doesn't work, and simultaneously eliminate rent control and raise the minimum wage for the entire Bay Area to at least $25/hour, adjusted annually for inflation. Not the $15 that has been proposed. $25. This will fix a lot of problems.

Re:And this is...news?

[Dutch Gun]

You might enjoy reading this "open letter response".

https://medium.com/@StefWillia...

paging whiplash to yellow journalism aisle 3

[Bite The Pillow]

This has been covered elsewhere, and never with so much horseshit bias. No editorialization should be needed for news, which is why no one likes Bennet Hasslehoff either.

Didn't we reject this nonsense about the time Glenn Beck refused to deny raping and murdering that girl?

Might be other reasons...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I am sure it had nothing to do with her getting alcohol delivered to her while at work or bragging about making sexual jokes to the companies twitter account. It's either quite a coincidence or she knew she was in trouble and wrote the letter to try and make the company look worse.

Re:Might be other reasons...

[aralin]

Most companies can make up this type of bullshit reasons for most of their employees. If I search your work laptop and browsing history, I am guaranteed to find worse than that...

Re:Might be other reasons...

[Shoten]

And I am sure it had nothing to do with her getting alcohol delivered to her while at work or bragging about making sexual jokes to the companies twitter account. It's either quite a coincidence or she knew she was in trouble and wrote the letter to try and make the company look worse.

Wow...Bulleit bourbon, delivered to her at work. And she was supposedly poor?

Some perspective

[alvinrod]

Why is anyone making barely above minimum wage trying to live in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. without even getting a roommate to split the rent? Also, the low temperature doesn't get below freezing so there's no need to ever run a heater. Yes, that means you'll probably want an additional heavy blanket to sleep under, but you're not going to die.

Re:Some perspective

[__aaclcg7560]

Also, the low temperature doesn't get below freezing so there's no need to ever run a heater.

I live in San Jose and work in Palo Alto. I have to be at the bus stop at 6AM to take the express bus and be at work at 7AM. We had a few mornings where the temperature was 30 degrees. Most of the time the early morning temperature is 40 to 50 degrees. On those nights, I'm running the heater in addition to the extra blankets.

Medical Issue

[ronaldbeal]

This is a known medical condition :SMACSS Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome. Researchers are still searching for a cure!

Re:I would have fired her.

[SvnLyrBrto]

Even if it's not in the employment agreement, California is an at-will state. You can be fired for not sounding cheerful enough when you greet your CEO in the elevator, if he so desires and is that petty.

News Flash: Employee Gets Paid Wages as Agreed

[Press2ToContinue]

Thanks for that scoop /. !!

Re:She deserved it

[BarbaraHudson]

What a crock. Sure you don't work for Yelp's HR department?

Here's the post in question.

The Bobs Just Fixed The Glitch

[Irate Engineer]

Talia Jane was actually fired 4 years ago, but they forgot to stop her paychecks and email. They just "fixed the glitch".

Her red Swingline was also confiscated.

Re:I would have fired her.

[__aaclcg7560]

You can be fired for not sounding cheerful enough when you greet your CEO in the elevator, if he so desires and is that petty.

*cough* Steve Jobs *cough*

I already posted this on another site....

[tlambert]

I wish we were responding to her actual letter, rather than your portrayal of her letter, and your spin on the situation.

I'm going to respond to her letter, rather than to you.

===

Starting wages for her position at Yelp are nearly $10/hour over minimum wage. Assuming she worked a full 40 hour week, she was making a minimum of $35,360/year.

That yields, given California and federal tax rates:

$680.00 = Weekly Gross Pay
$086.59 = Federal Withholding
$042.16 = Social Security
$009.86 = Medicare
$017.79 = California
$006.12 = SDI

$517.48 = Net Pay

$26,908.96/year gross income

Accept her "80% goes for rent" number as fact. That yields:

$21527.168 / year
= $1793.93 / month

This is a quite high rent, and implies she's living alone, with no roommates. We'll get back to that.

$5,381.79 = non-rent disposable income/year
$448.48 / month
$103.49/week

This is low, but it's livable. She does not qualify for SNAP (food stamps), even after income deductions: she is not below 200% of the federal poverty level. In other words: 30% of people live on less than that.

Let's revisit the rent.

A ForRent.com search (not the best site, but representative) shows 6 apartments in Emeryville -- a nice area, near Berkeley, but across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, for less than $800/month. All of them near public transportation; 2 of them have pools.

That's without taking a roommate. So she could have halved her monthly rent, if she was willing to live somewhere *not actually in San Francisco*.

That's another $993.93/month in her pocket...
= $229.36/week
+ $103.49/week
= $332.85/week ...which covers everything she complains about in her letter, plus adds some spending money. She'd have more if she split the rent on a more expensive apartment with a roommate.

I'm not feeling very sympathetic right now.”

Re: I already posted this on another site....

[Anonymous Coward]

She states in her original post that she lives far enough out in the East bay that her daily commute via public transit is $5+ each way. $10/day * 5 days a week * 4 weeks comes to at least $200 a month for transportation alone. Your rental search may have turned up a few $800/month apartments but generally those are either reserved for low income, or get you a small walk-in-closet sized bedroom in a house with 5+ roommates. Most listings on those sites are outdated and no longer available the day after they're posted and have 20-30 people fighting over them. Typical rent in Emeryville is about $1400 for a small studio, increasing by at least $100 annually. I just moved from there, precisely because it's that insane. It's pretty much impossible to find anything unless you're an exec or engineer making six figures. Another option is Oakland, but anywhere in Oakland you're looking at drug dealers and homeless heckling you as soon as you get near public transportation, and weekly shootings near your apartment. Bay area is hell on earth unless you're among the privileged six-figure crowd. #formerengineer

Re:I already posted this on another site....

[dgatwood]

Starting wages for her position at Yelp are nearly $10/hour over minimum wage. Assuming she worked a full 40 hour week, she was making a minimum of $35,360/year.

According to her letter, she was making $8.15 per hour after taxes, which comes to about ten bucks before taxes. Another article said that it was actually $12.25 per hour, which is the SF minimum wage, not $10 above it. Either way, unless those numbers are just outright fabrications, she was not making $10 per hour over minimum wage.

Accept her "80% goes for rent" number as fact. That yields:

$21527.168 / year
= $1793.93 / month

This is a quite high rent, and implies she's living alone, with no roommates. We'll get back to that.

Her letter also gives her actual rent at $1245 per month. You started from a wrong assumption, and all your math from there on down is wrong proportionally.

A ForRent.com search (not the best site, but representative) shows 6 apartments in Emeryville -- a nice area, near Berkeley, but across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, for less than $800/month. All of them near public transportation; 2 of them have pools.

I see nothing under $1600/month in Emeryville. I do see two in Oakland in that price range. Either way, I'm assuming she got a two-bedroom apartment with the intent to find a roommate, but then was unable to find one because everybody else on her team was living with a parent. That's certainly what the letter implied. And the problem is, once you've signed a lease, you're kind of stuck with it. And at $12.25 per hour, you can't exactly stay in a hotel until you can find a place, because even the worst rathole of a hotel in the Bay Area is likely to cost more than $330 per week.

Disclosing your salary

[drolli]

In my contract it is forbidden that i discuss my salary with anybody, especially in public in connection with my employer.

Re:Disclosing your salary

[rekoil]

Enforcing such a clause is illegal if your company is subject to the NRLA (hint: most US companies are): http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/...

Re:Disclosing your salary

[Sir Holo]

In my contract it is forbidden that i discuss my salary with anybody, especially in public in connection with my employer.

Anyone can put an unenforceable clause in a Contract.

The clause you mention sounds quite illegal. If in the US, it certainly is (see NRLA). IANAL

My many European friends frequently express dismay at Americans' weird urge to hide their salary. In much of Europe, everybody knows. If an American works for the State of California, everybody knows, by law; just visit the website. I myself have experienced a very similar Retaliation, which is why I am nominally familiar with the law in the area.

So, I once noted to my managers at The Aerospace Corporation (in El Segundo, CA) that my salary was incommensurate with my experience level. The response? "That's unethical [to know someone else's salary]." My reply, "I did two hours' work on a project for a junior staff member. He reverse-calculated my salary from his monthly budget report, and then threw it in my face (rather than saying 'Thank you for charging only two hours to solve my otherwise-intractable problem'). I did not pry."

And yet, my managers at The Aerospace Corporation (in El Segundo, CA) Retaliated against me for the complaint, rather 'having a talk' with the jerk who I had helped.

Well, of course, within a day or two, I used my data-analysis skills to reverse-calculate everyone's salary who had worked on my own projects – which were many – because customers loved me for always delivering—I had to farm stuff out to spend my budgets out by fiscal EOY. It's called good Project Management. Or, to the managers at The Aerospace Corporation (in El Segundo, CA), it is called punishing an over-performer due to envy of that staff-members early and dramatic success in bringing in money.

/RantOff

A better written response, with link to the letter

[tlambert]

A better written response, with link to the letter

Here: https://medium.com/@StefWillia...

I refuse to link the letter in question directly. It's crap.

Re:you have nobody but yourself to blame

[pepsikid]

A lot of people (sock puppets?) seem to be making this the story of a brat who can't make good choices, but I see it as the story of how a young American worker's enthusiasm and determination got her ground into hamburger. It's a warning to other young would-be Yelp workers to steer clear lest they suffer too. That's the only way these soulless corporations will ever feel the sting and be forced to raise wages.

Re:Whiplash et. al. Interesting moderation article

[Cow Jones]

Please be very careful when trying to "fix" moderation on Slashdot. This is one of the features that work reasonably well, compared to other sites. There's always room for improvement, but there are dozens of more rewarding fixes and changes than the moderation system.

This site is already a technological anachronism; we stay for the comments and the discussion. If that breaks down because of half-assed fixes to the moderation system, it's good night.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:you have nobody but yourself to blame

[ooloorie]

It's a warning to other young would-be Yelp workers to steer clear lest they suffer too. That's the only way these soulless corporations will ever feel the sting and be forced to raise wages.

I agree completely: people should think clearly about cost of living and desired standard of living relative to salaries when choosing where to work. Then, when corporations can't hire the workers they want at the salary they are offering, they will increase their salary offers. Talia's problem is that she obviously didn't do that.

Re:Yes you are

[aralin]

You are not guaranteed your life or property either. You only get to keep your life, because I feel like to is to my advantage not to kill you. As you have made laws that guarantee I will starve and freeze on the street, because my skills are not useful anymore at this very moment, I have no incentive to obey any of the laws anymore. So I might just as well kill you, take your stuff and live few days longer.

So while people are not guaranteed food, shelter and healthcare, it is in my best interest to convince them there is a reasonable chance they might survive, otherwise my own life is not very safe now, is it? It does not matter what laws there are. If the society is severely unfair for 80% of the participants, you will either have apartheid or you won't have a lawful society.

So suck it and don't kill and starve people with your stupid attitude. Golden Rule, remember? If you want to live, that is.

Revolutions

[manu0601]

I'm just saying it's what WILL happen.

Indeed, history teach us that people revolt when they do not have enough to eat. But on the other hand, I cannot think about a democratic system been thrown away this way.

Therefore we are stuck with this alternative: either convince people to vote for someone that will fix the problem, or convince people the system is not democratic (which may be the case or not: what matters is how it is perceived) and they should revolt.

If you're going to San Francisco

[CanEHdian]

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to have some money in the bank
If you're going to San Francisco
You're going to meet some large expenses there

For those who come to San Francisco
Payin' the rent will be a worry there
In the streets of San Francisco
Young people, grey showing in their hair

All across the nation
Come see that abberation
People in trouble
There's a whole generation
With really no explanation
People in trouble
People in trouble

For those who come to San Francisco
Payin' the rent will be a worry there
In the streets of San Francisco
Young people, grey showing in their hair

Am I the only one that finds it ironic...

[Outtascope]

... that she got fired from Yelp for posting an unflattering review?

Re:Am I the only one that finds it ironic...

[__aaclcg7560]

Ironic that they couldn't afford to pay for a better review.