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Would you rather work a high profile job for no pay, or clean sewers for $100,000 per year?

Would you rather work a high profile job for no pay, or clean sewers for $100,000 per year?

  • Work a high profile job for no pay

    Votes: 2 14.3%

  • Clean sewers for $100,000 per year

    Votes: 7 50.0%

  • Either

    Votes: 1 7.1%

  • Neither

    Votes: 3 21.4%

  • Unsure

    Votes: 1 7.1%
  • Total voters
    14
There are probably multiple versions of this.

I saw a YouTube video at least a month ago where a guy in the street was asking people this question. The video shows many women taking the "high-profile but no pay", and many men taking the USD 100K job that involved hard work, discomfort, and no status. Videos are edited of course - the split was probably exaggerated - but it was probably reasonable accurate.

This is no surprise, because it matches the real world closely. Jobs involving physical discomfort are heavily dominated by male workers.

Women select into:
* Caring, which can be hard work and uncomfortable
* "Talking" jobs
* Comfortable working environments

Obviously I've left out a lot of job categories. There are "person to person" sales jobs that are skewed (cars), but AFAIK real estate is more like 50/50. Professional fighters (boxing/MMA is heavily skewed towards males. You can figure out the female dominated comparison for yourselves.

Note: this isn't ideology, it's fact. AFAIK the US numbers for this are public domain, but I'm not from or in the US, and don't have the link.

There's a real discussion needed about work, but I think it would be impossible here.
So an uncomfortable though instead:

Uncomfortable male-dominated work is (statistically-speaking) much less vulnerable to being replaced by modern AI than comfortable indoor jobs (so not e.g. nursing, but many female-centric work categories are vulnerable.

This isn't the only "big thing" going on in society, but it will have a large effect.

(BTW: I work in IT. We've been automating our "drudge work" for 50 years (yes, really) and it looks like we'll get productivity improvements and less boring work, but the number of useful staff won't drop too much (there are "drones" in IT too OFC, but we won't miss them :)
 
Working in a sewer. For 100k I would find a way to make it work. Even if I have to wear a gas mask. I also could pretend I was a Ninja Turtle.
 
thejuice said:
Working in a sewer. For 100k I would find a way to make it work. Even if I have to wear a gas mask. I also could pretend I was a Ninja Turtle.
Click to expand...
/lol.

Actually with modern safety and comfort gear, and the fact that (for the exceptions) we get used to bad smells and they stop being unpleasant (**), it would probably be a good way to make 100K in a big city.

(**) The "sensors" in our olfactory system are continually replaced, so it's moderately adaptive.
The "rods and cones" in our eyes don't do that. Or if they do it's to a much lesser extent.
The "wetware" is trainable though.
 
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I regularly spend 6-8 hours a week supervising PhD students, interacting with undergraduate student project groups, and editing and reviewing journal papers. Periodically I am involved in co-authoring conference and journal papers. As an adjunct member of university staff I receive no payment for this. I am “retired” so I have no other “job”. (I am no longer treasurer of the local lawn bowls club, which used to consume another day a week.) That is now.

When younger, I spent part of a summer on a project in my job at the university dressed in a boiler suit, balaclava, boots, gloves and full-face mask spray-painting the interior of a fibre-cement-lined tunnel (i.e. asbestos) with bituminous paint. This was an Aussie summer, so 35C (95F). I was being paid as a laboratory assistant, so nowhere near $100k.

Part of the reason I can do what I do now, is that I did what I had to do then.
 
Ironically despite the common bio toxicological exposures to contend with below the surface in sewers, it's when you exit that manhole in the middle of a street is when you really need to worry. When your daily exposure becomes acute as any highway maintenance worker. Yeah, hope they are compensated well...
 
It's basically a bird in the hand vs 2 birds in the bush sort of question.

I would prob clean sewers

unless

The High Profile Job was in one of my dream careers, that is very hard to get into.
 
I went for doing the most important work I could tackle, with other work to support it. I might have taken the sewer job for one year and saved the money, or taken a contract and then automated it.
 
My brain is a sewer, so if I could get paid $100,000 to clean it up, I most likely would still fail.
 
I would never take an intership I do not work for nothing did enough of that when on the farm, basically was sewer job. Chicken poo was the worst turns into ammonia, likes sweat not good mix if you like your skin.
 
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Ronald Zeeman said:
I would never take an intership I do not work for nothing did enough of that when on the farm, basically was sewer job. Chicken sh*t was the worst turns into ammonia, likes sweat not good mix if you like your skin.
Click to expand...
Point taken. Many more ugly exposures on a farm in comparison. Not to mention an elevated amount of manual labor on so many levels. (My mother grew up on a farm as well.)
 
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Cleaning sewers is one of those jobs that no one appreciates and jerks would probably make fun of you for doing but I'd still take it because it's also a job that helps keep modern society running (not to mention that I'd rather make money than make no money).
 
I've already had the "high profile no pay" kind of job, and I'm kind of ready to go back to it. I was a singer/dancer/musical artist in a band (actually bands). I'm doing the singing/songwriting part again in a "music therapy" performance this Wednesday. It is a very cool kind of rush, performing. I get a lot out of it and money has never been a motivating force for me. I'm a very uncapitalist kind of person. It probably goes with my ASD2 diagnosis.
 
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