Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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!
This is a known medical condition :SMACSS
Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome.
Researchers are still searching for a cure!
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.
Imagine all the people...
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.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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.
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*
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.
Correct. And they shouldn't give a fuck how she makes that happen because her bad financial decisions are not the employer's problem.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
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?
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:
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That's an interesting point. In that case, there are only a few solutions:
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...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
$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.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
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?
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You might enjoy reading this "open letter response".
https://medium.com/@StefWillia...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.