Seriously? Do you think working at a McJob is unicorns and rainbows? Getting paid minimum wage, being on your feet all day, entitled customers constantly up your ass, a management team that literally thinks of you as a fully replaceable work unit (and you are !!)…
Yes I’ve done it. It’s not the worst job I’ve had but my current job affords me the opportunity to type this from a vacation house on the beach in Hawaii. When I told the people making my lunch last week that I was headed to Hawaii they said they always wanted to go there and hoped to do it in a couple years, like it was a once in a lifetime trip for them. And it probably is.
People need to actually pay more attention to the world around them and have some conversations to realize how well we’ve got it.
I worked a McJob (actually the McJob) from 16-20, and it was probably my main motivation in getting into the CS department at UW (it helped that I was interested in computers and seemed to have a talent for the field). Sometimes I wonder if any of my colleagues had to go through that, but many did. Surely not all of us programmers came from stable upper middle class or better backgrounds.
I did have some really good managers though, people I couldn’t believe weren’t doing better things (and some real bad ones, too, of course).
