Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-workers-comments-170k-ups-driver-deal-anger-admiration-2023-8
Tech workers react to UPS drivers landing a $170,000 a year package with a mixture of anger and admiration::Some tech workers questioned whether UPS drivers deserved high pay — others jumped in to note the importance of the jobs and harsh working conditions.
As a tech worker my only anger is that they’re not getting paid more.
This reminds me of what happened at my last job towards the end of the lockdown. Previously, you started at a certain wage and increased a specific amount every 500ish hours, up to a limit. The last “raise” was only like 4 cents, but you still had to work the extra 500ish hours to get it.
Well, the company decided that they weren’t paying enough to be competitive, so they suddenly raised everyone to the top rate. This put people who just started their very first job at the same pay rate as the people who had been there for multiple years. Their “solution” was to give the long term employees a one off, taxed, check for $200. To say that people were angry would be an understatement.
Personally, I think they should have just increased everyone across the board, especially after previously bragging about making record profits multiple years in a row.
IMO, when someone else makes more, it gives me room to also argue for more. Otherwise, why not go to another company that will pay it? Getting angry at the guy with the raise won’t give you one. Inflation will still happen.
Who are these tech workers getting mad?
As a tech worker, fuck yeah! You earned it. Delivery people deal with so much shit. And I’m rooting for your success.
No anger at the UPS drivers, just my employer. But I can’t exactly stop working without risking my life collapsing around me so 🙃
I think I share the sentiment with a majority of the responses from my fellow tech workers: fuck yeah, they deserve it and more. Those people are out in the elements (mind you during record breaking heat waves).
They deserve every dollar and more as I sit in an air conditioned room pushing pixels
how is possible that a driver makes much more than average Engineer in R&D?
They don’t…and if you aren’t in that range with 2-5 years of experience, you should be exploring opportunities.
The other thing, it looks like their TOC is 170k, not their base pay. So that includes their health, time off, retirement, etc…
Any halfway competent engineer should be making that TOC.
Hmmm Dev bros, what we do now?
Unionize
Talk about an NP-hard problem.
Grind leetcode!
Keep doing our jobs. We get paid well enough to afford the price increase in shipping things via UPS.
Why does this article exist? Who cares what tech workers think about someone else’s pay rate?
Why would I hate unions if they are capable of getting me 170k salary? Sounds like I need to be in a union. My last thought is hating them.
Points from the article:
could get $170,000 in pay and benefits in five years’ time in a new contract.
“This is disappointing, how is possible that a driver makes much more than average Engineer in R&D?”
“This is disappointing, how is possible that an average Engineer in R&D makes much less than a driver?”
It is important to note that the $170,000 figure represents the entire value of the UPS package, including benefits and does not represent the base salary.
Despite some tech workers’ resentment, many workers pointed out UPS drivers work under difficult conditions.
“I’d love for you to meet my dad who has delivered for UPS for over 35 years, hauls 100s of packages in the 105+ degree Texas heat, is literally Santa Claus in Dec, and does it for 9+ hours a day at 67 yo,”
My FIL recently retired after 25+ years with UPS. He made pretty good money, but he worked a ton of overtime. IIRC their top pay rate was somewhere between $30-35/hour. That puts base pay at about $75k/year. I wonder how UPS calculated the extra $100k/year in benefits or if they’re assuming their average driver works some quantity of overtime. I’m betting it’s the second, which would drive the numbers up. However, to make that kind of money you’re going to be working 50+ hours a week and most holidays.
There are guys at my hub that make 150k take home, but never see their families because all they do is work. Sorry. That’s not for me. I like my wife and kids way too much to sacrifice what little time we get on this earth. I do my 40-50 hours a week and go the fuck home for weekends and take my vacations.
The way this reads to me: “Some tech workers [who have never had a hard, physical job but also want their packages delivered in one day] questioned…”
Hopefully, the mixture is 1% anger to 99% admiration. And that they are inspired to demand more for their labor as well.
As a union electrician that’s not $170k on the check. They still making like $95k a year but have benifits paid into the package. Medical, pension, 401k, etc.
Yeah but have you sat in a UPS truck even it’s parked? It just beeps non stop.
Oh… Cool… We get it - So you’re saying fuck the bosses, right?
Headline should read “Corporate Magazine Attempts to Stoke Up Some Of That Old Anti-Labour Heat From The 80s.”
Worked in Ed-Tech making less than teachers while at the same time seeing that when the network went down so did the majority of teachers’ ability to teach. Didn’t make me mad that the person with a Masters made more than the person with an A+. Also spoke to a former tech who, in six years, went from making less than I did in the same position to making over $300k a year.
If you want it, it’s out there. You want UPS driver pay? You want to put yourself in one of the more dangerous jobs and do physical labor? You want CISO pay? You want to forego intimate relationships and free time? You want Ed-Tech Technician pay? You want to sit in an air conditioned office, answer printer and smart board tickets and goof off for half of every day?
High paying tech jobs are out there yeah but you gotta be an SME and own a solution which really involves in my POV knowing programming, some backend, networking and infrastructure. Tech work is so vast people only really master one thing. Tech workers are notoriously lazy as well, soon as people get a “cushy” job it’s like pulling teeth trying to get them to learn a new skill. Can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve tried to teach old school network guys some devops stuff and they say something like “I don’t want to have to learn programming” and when I tell them it’s really not as complicated as they think they have some other excuse locked and loaded
The Tech field does encourage laziness in certain specializations. Networking is notorious for it because once it’s up and configured properly you should be able to sit back and relax. For the most part it will run itself when set up correctly. And you pay for that downtime by not getting paid as much.
CyberSecurity is absolutely booming right now, and those dudes are making a mint. Why? Cause they’re going to run around like beheaded chickens more times than not with the pace that attacks are happening. What’s that do for their salary? Shoots it through the roof.
Just because your job is business critical doesn’t mean you deserve as much as someone else who’s doing business critical work. How much work are you doing to maintain the business is the real question, and like I said above, proper Networks should not require tons of intervention. Security solutions, however, do.
I was in that blind post and it was dumb. Why complain that someone else is getting more money. It’s not a competition. Everyone deserves a good life
UPS drivers currently make an average of about $95,000 a year with an additional $50,000 in benefits. - That is news to me.
The port workers in Vancouver BC also just landed a good deal after striking for a little bit.
I can imagine that UPS drivers would have a lot of leverage since UPS would suffer massively if they couldn’t deliver packages.
Westjet union also struck a new deal recently. I think it was something like 30% increase, captains making in neighbourhood of 300k.
I’m definitely very interested in joining a labour union for my next job. Tech workers should be looking to unionize.
I’m not sure tech workers could do UPS jobs or UPS workers could do tech jobs. Different types of people. I think some of the frustration could come from the fact that one requires advanced education. Ideally we’re all paid ‘enough’ and then some are paid more/less depending on skill. Tech workers on average might be better, but it’s still not enough in high COLAs to live in comfortable apartment and raise a family without stressing about money.
BS
I think the weirdest thing is that UPS is still in business. The company has a zero percent success rate delivering to my building. Zero.
My theory is the driver parks, gets out, slaps the “nobody home” sticker on the door and drops it off at the depot. That’s not delivery.
It’s a symptom of managers using bullshit metrics and processes to squeeze every possible cent of value they can from a worker.
The worker is neither lazy nor stupid, he is trying to hit a quota. If something about your building is a time sink, they’re going to skip it.
The metric is quantity, not quality, because quantity is easy to measure and easy to convert to a number that starts with a dollar sign.
If the insatiable thirst for better metrics forces employees to cut corners, they’ll cut corners. It’s extremely unlikely they have the luxury of spending a month unemployed.
We have 12 seconds to do a delivery.
That’s: Stop truck. Open bulkhead door. Find package. Go to door, ring bell, knock, yell “UPS!” Go back to truck. Fasten seatbelt. Start truck and drive to next stop. 12 seconds. If you are not home, we have to fill out the DR notice on top of all that.
You get two hard knocks and a ring before I have that slip filled out because I got to move on to the other 150-200 stops and pickups I have to do.
In this case it’s probably a case of repeated porch pirates. Or one of their neighbors ordering a bunch of stuff and reporting it stolen even if it wasn’t.
The scenario they are describing is more work for the driver, not less.
cybervseas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Did anyone read this article? The summary and title make it sound like a bad YouTube video in article form… “Tech workers react…”
Is there anything actually interesting inside?
ozymandias117@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s businessinsider. The answer is always “no”
They found a post on an anonymous forum complaining and made an article about it because it fits their narrative that workers are being paid too much
They even misspelled “job” in the middle of the article they spent so little time proofreading or fact checking
cybervseas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thanks, I figured as much. BI gonna BI…