What happened in 1995? There must have been a change in the law or regulation.
eyeamom,
If your response was to my frustration with the huge pay discrepancies between entry level employees and the millions made by “top brass” , I was referring to corporate America (and international corporations), not us small business owners who often work or are available 24/7 and make many personal sacrifices to keep the businesses afloat. Apologies for any confusion. And if your post was not in response to that, as Roseanne Roseannadanna said… never mind 
There was less inequality, and probably more upward mobility, but the absolute standard of living decades ago was worse. Families’ “American dream” houses would be considered unacceptably small today by many and have no air conditioning and perhaps not much insulation, the family would have one car that leaked oil and needed frequent repair, air pollution was much worse, etc…
Nearly 40 years ago, when we bought our first house as newly employed people (double income), we could afford a brand new house in the Chicago suburbs, with air-conditioning, a large yard, two car garage, the whole thing. The only thing we didn’t have were things that hadn’t been invented yet.
Today few young couples are able to buy a new house even on two incomes. Everything costs much more relative to income than it did 40 years ago; health insurance, utilities, home and auto insurance, cars, food, and on and on.
Many, many people in HI have 2 (or more) jobs to be able to make ends meet. Our wages are low and cost of living is sky high. Folks realize this and end up having to have as many room mates as needed and commuting as far as needed, or sadly they move and take jobs elsewhere. People with masters degrees and decades of experience are those who are earning $50K if they have a “good” job. Many households are multi-generational to cut costs.
When you raise the minimum wage and require employers to provide insurance for folks working 20+ hours/week, you end up with LOTS of part time employees working 19 or fewer hours/week and more “self service” and automation and jobs moving off island and out of country.
My S works a full time job as well has a lucrative part time hobby to afford the lifestyle he prefers instead of ranting about how unfair the pay scale system is. Relatives I have who have professional degrees and full time jobs in SF live with room mates so they can afford a more comfortable life than they would otherwise. They work very hard, including nights and weekends, and will for the years it takes.
No, have no sympathy for a ranter who comes across as entitled. She does raise some important issues, but the personal attacks detract from them.
I think some of you guys are just in the wrong business. This is a supply and demand economy after all, and you must follow the demand if you wish to reap the benefits. Engineering, for example, is just one of many industries that will allow young people to live a comfortable lifestyle, with a healthy standard of living.
On the other hand, if you choose to major in Medieval History, well… I don’t really know what to tell you.
Times have changed. You need to go where the economy wants you to go, and you need to think outside the box. Avoid the areas where there is oversaturation and low demand.
I don’t think this young woman was promised a better job after working at the call center for X amount of time. People read these articles about some high power executive at investment banks, consulting firms, high tech companies started in the mail room and worked their way up. Or work at a start up with no pay, in hope it’ll be bought out or go IPO. It gets all of those young graduates starry eyed about taking those low paying jobs (or no pay) with hope of making it big some day. This is all very exciting, but one needs to figure if one is in a position to do that. Do you have a lot of student loans? Do you have parents who could help you out with insurance, phone, or emergency money if necessary?
I have a niece who graduated with an Anthropology major. Instead of working on some blog, marketing, media job and getting paid no money or minimum wage, she got herself a job at a consulting firm making 75k+. I am sure it crushes her creativity, but she is self supporting. D2 is graduating this with as a philosophy major. She will be making 60-70K as paralegal before she goes off to college. She is not going to work at some magazine or non-profit where she will not be earning a living. She will be living at home to save money for law school. At the end of day, it is all about choices.
“And if its an issue of false advertising to college kids, the market will correct that as kids will talk (particularly on college campuses) so that it will be difficult to get recruits on college campuses. Reputations on campus can take a long time to change.”
Sometimes, it takes a brave “rant” to expose these practices and spread the word.
I agree with some of you who said that she should have not taken the job. The young lady should have tried to get a job at Amazon.
Our friend and neighbor got a very attractive job offer in SV area. He and his wife carefully investigated what it would cost to give them a comparable lifestyle in SV–housing, private school for their teens, etc and decided even with the nice salary it wasn’t worth it for them to relocate, so they opted to remain in HI.
It is responsible to check out housing costs and other expenses before committing to accept a job at whatever wage/salary rather than ranting about unfairness and poverty later. No one is FORCING anyone to accept jobs that don’t pay a living wage–if there are t enough folks filling the positions, employer will have to rethink and figure out other ways to get the job(s) done.
It was often (always?) part of my hiring papers that I would watch my out-of-office criticisms (couched in there with other wording about protecting proprietary info.) I signed. (Maybe I was one of few who knew what we were signing.)
“…you have worked and had only positive experiences and ample pay. You’ve never had jobs that make you miserable, to the point where you are depressed.” Of course we’ve had miserable experiences. Of course, we’ve been so wrung out we’ve been zombies on a Friday evening. For years, I’d get what I called “the Sunday afternoon blues,” knowing my weekend was almost over. We had a sense of paying our dues, knowing we were grunts until we had acquired enough experience (and that didn’t mean showing up for the 8-5, just doing the “job.” It meant finding ways to add experiences that showed our stuff.) And the pay for being a rookie was lousy.
That’s what I taught my kids. I was aware, many of us are aware, and we make this a life lesson for them. I’m sorry for any kid whose family doesn’t educate them to this. Or kids who think the grass will always be emerald green. Same as, as someone posted, the deal with college loans. Life doesn’t come to you. You have to make it happen.
Btw, my first tech environment job was in SF (ages ago, when my then employer was a bfd.) I was paid a very very low salary, correlating to my very low job. Had a roommate, we packed our lunches. We knew we were paying our dues. Hated the job. Loved the city.
San Franciscan here, with 25 year old daughter. I agree with HiMom that the author has some points, but they are lost in her unrealistic entitled attitude. Yelp has got to be pretty cheap to recruit college grads for minimum wage. In my experience here, only the worst jobs and companies pay minimum wage. Entry-level retail at decent companies (non-chains) usually pays more.
That being said, Fractal don’t diss History majors. D was one, and after having a just-over minimum wage job she switched to a higher paid “career” job so she could move out. She found an reasonably priced apartment near transportation in a safe neighborhood with a roommate ($700, not $1200). All was fine, except she realized that she would never get anywhere with a $40k salary in the Bay Area. So after a year she left her job, moved home and learned software engineering. She’s now gainfully employed in a job she loves. Point being, as Oldfort says, even liberal arts grads can realize they have to make do for themselves. And if the situation is not working you have to change it. The unemployment rate is great here, and really almost any semi-employable college grad can find some job for higher than minimum. True it is truly difficult to live here on almost any salary, but if you want to live here you have to make allowances.
That the author expected Yelp to solve her problems is kind of ridiculous.
Nearly everyone I know has paid his/her dues and had very tough jobs for low wages. No, this precious snowflake isn’t the only one.
Back in the day, one of the attorneys who worked very long hours for the prosecutors or public defender’s office was also waitressing at a restaurant to help pay off her ed loans.
I have relatives doing internships and residencies where they work upwards of 80 hours/week for low wages as part of paying their dues. Holidays and nights and weekends are worked as well. They have room mates to defray housing costs. They don’t get free food at work.
@lookingforward, for one thing the point I was making was not that people should not have to pay their dues and endure hard work. I was responding to a series of comments blaming this young woman for saying that while working at this job she wanted to die. Apparently it wasn’t enough to bash the young woman for her letter, it was also necessary to bash her for bringing her negativity and depression with her wherever she went. My point: There are in fact job situations that can create this kind of depression and the person’s demeanor changes once free of the job.
Secondly, the point here is that she may have thought she was paying her dues but discovered instead that she was stuck in a dead end job. There’s an enormous difference.
I guess the solution being proposed is that all our kids need to major in engineering or computer science and get high paying jobs. No artists, musicians, readers or writers. Thank goodness I didn’t pass that lesson on to my children. My eldest somehow managed to find her way and yes, she, like most of her friends, had a miserable first job experience that she left quickly, and has ended up earning more than the consulting salaries named above doing what she loves.
@fractalmstr, you idealize engineering and other “practical” technical fields, and your supply-and-demand argument doesn’t hold water. The reality is that science and engineering grads comprise a small percentage of the work force; unemployment rates in engineering rise with the employees’ age: it’s a field notorious for outsourcing and laying off the over-40 crowd; and that some of the most heavily financed scientific fields are among the least lucrative in the genre. And I say this as the mother of a daughter with a grad degree from a Ivy-caliber universtity; the daughter, sister and aunt of electrical, civil, computer science and chemical engineers. Lots online about the myth of the superiority of engineering degrees. I suggest you take a look.
You want a field where you’re certain to make good money? Become a plummer. If you don’t mind being up to your elbows in someone else’s toilet 8 to 10 hours per day, you can make a fortune.
everyone is talking about paying their dues. forget that i want to be like le bron james…straight of high school making big $$$$, lots of perks (can you say private jet) and fame and prestige.
paying dues is for the small people!
“Secondly, the point here is that she may have thought she was paying her dues but discovered instead that she was stuck in a dead end job. There’s an enormous difference.”
“My eldest somehow managed to find her way and yes, she, like most of her friends, had a miserable first job experience that she left quickly”
EXACTLY what the yelp girl should have done. As your daughter did, she should have gone out and found another job. The time she spent writing and posting her tirade would have been better spent on looking for a new job…unless her end game all along was vying for attention.
Of course there are artists, musicians,readers or writers. You can do it if you have parents who are willing to subsidize your EC or you can be good enough to be self supporting. I wasn’t willing to subsidize my kid to be a dancer.
My kids didn’t major in STEM (nor did I.) The blame isn’t for choosing a humanities major, not one bit.
Did she say she wanted to die every day at Yelp? I thought it was those feelings in her former life that made her up and move. She’s got a fire to speak out that way. Let’s hope she can channel it into something that works for her future. The first thing I learned in corporate was that life can be a B. It’s not school, where every semester you get a grade and a pat on the head, get to somewhat choose the work you take on, get scheduled breaks. And where they encourage you to speak your mind, tilt windmills, take a stand and defend it.
In this day of internet and LinkedIn, boy, the other lesson she missed was about not burning bridges.
We don’t know whether she left and found another job. We don’t know whether she was looking for another job. We only know that she criticized the company and the working conditions and then was fired for it. For all we know, as you point out @doschicos, that was her game all along.
Someone who took the job my daughter left was summarily fired. She’d been there for all of 2 weeks, maybe less. She was one of succession of fired employees but she was the only one who decided to bring suit against the employer. I don’t know how it ultimately worked out but I believe she too received a vigorous negative reaction. It kind of goes with the territory and it takes a certain amount of courage and/or naivete.
I was really struck by how dismayed she was that she would have to do this job for a WHOLE YEAR before she could apply elsewhere in the company. That seemed very “millennial” to me. My oldest D has this itch – not less than a year, but shortly after a year in a position, she starts to look for promotions/new opportunities. She has been in her current position for 18 WHOLE MONTHS, she complained to me the other day. Now… her company is very millennial focused, and in fact does try to move them at least every couple of years. But sometimes I just have to say, “Honey, most of the working world doesn’t work that way – most places you get a job and spend several years in it before promotion or change.” I happen to work as a consultant, partly because that makes me crazy, but I do think this generation of grads is more impatient to keep moving up or at least laterally with new responsibilities. They don’t get that you really aren’t very productive your first few months in a position and it cost money to train you – so then they want some return on their investment before you move on.