I have spent thousands of hours honing my software craft outside of work/school hours. I guarantee you most folks working those minimum wage jobs are not doing the same in their field. If they were passionate about it (whether front of house or in the kitchen) they would also hone their craft and work their way out of minimum wage.
The problem is that the turnover rate in restaurants is ALREADY very high. Most employees see it as a “stepping stone” while they get their careers on track.
Hi there. I went to a 2 year college, spent hours outside of work reading and working on my craft and was still the highest paid line cook at a multi-million dollar restaurant at a WHOPPING 15 dollars an hour in 2016 in New Jersey.
The industry is terrible. If you didn't work in it, your solutions sound a whole hell of a lot like "bootstraps". I think "there should not be such thing as poverty wages" or "if you can't afford to pay people you can't afford to run your business" are better
> Low wages are the most common reason people cite for leaving food service work. But in one recent survey, more than half of hospitality workers who've quit said no amount of pay would get them to return.
> That's because for many, leaving food service had a lot to do also with its high-stress culture: exhausting work, unreliable hours, no benefits and so many rude customers.
Some folks would say the same thing about software development sucking.
I think it probably depends on which restaurant you work at and on your skill set and ability to thrive in that fast paced environment.
The difference is that software is easier money if you have the knack for that type of work.
But it’s like anything: you have folks who are passionate about cooking but not business savvy. They might be excellent cooks but the potential customers just eat greasy shit and don’t appreciate nuance of vegetables and spices—and so the chefs are at the mercy of substance-less customer demands. How can one be excited about that?
Anyway, I don’t think the folks quitting their jobs fit this category because talented chefs can make a lot more than minimum wage. But it’s still relevant as one must be excited to go to work in the morning.
> I think it probably depends on which restaurant you work at and on your skill set and ability to thrive in that fast paced environment.
Equally true of software development, systems/network administration, etc. It can totally suck, or it can be a source of joy, growth, and profit, all depending on where you're workin' and who for. Some of the best jobs I've had in both industries have been almost like "gettin' paid to play" because the whole crew was doin' stuff they already enjoyed doin' and doin' it for a boss that knew how to motivate in positive ways and how to join in and be part of the fun of it all. That plus a paycheck and benefits? Why would anyone ever want to go back to a shit job after knowing good jobs exist out there.
In the end restaurant work is completely unfulfilling, largely because tons of customers treat you like shit. I've never experienced that as a software engineer. It's not even about the pay.
Technology is often simultaneously an art, science, and business.
Now, I’d imagine for any creator the art and science portions are the more interesting bits.
But what you’re talking about is technology as a means to some financial end (which likely ends in technological abandonment via sale the the highest bidder).
I personally believe the product should come first. All of the greatest products come from passion about building something; and then it takes partnerships with folks who have the business vision—after all, the art and science of business folks is turning something into a financial success.
If you enjoy tech but feel burnt out, I’d recommend playing with some retro computing. I find going back to the DOS era there was tons of passion. There’s plenty of books on Archive.org. Even though it’s lower level development the beauty is it’s just you and the machine (more or less) and none of these Python vs Ruby vs Go vs Rust vs Java vs Scala vs yadda-yadda. :)
And most likely there is limited way to make money selling DOS warez these days so it CANNOT be about money, just pure enjoyment, for the greater good.
Honestly a lot of folks should assess the value that big tech provides. We survived the 90’s running MSDOS backing stuff up to disks. And storage is cheap. Cloud this-and-that is great in theory but in practice it makes things too complicated. For instance, whenever I use a cloud-centric application I’m thinking okay… so where’s my files? And the answer is who knows!
More specifically I used to use OneNote when it used the local file system and I could get to my data. Then MSFT puts everything behind a cryptic ten-layer hashed URI…
The tech industry is like an insurance company now selling people on fear of losing files or productivity—but I’d wager more often than not technology gets in the way of folks productivity. By technology I mean fluffy clouds because obviously tech CAN help.
We need a better balance and a lot of that starts by keeping it simple.
So it sounds like skill + luck: key in the hole gives random chance of winning.
Honestly, these kind of lawsuits are ridiculous. People need to sue General Mills for false advertising instead because sugary cereals causing diabetes; or any other big-food company brainwashing children on YouTube kids.
No, that's now how it works, according to the article, which is going by what the manual shipped with the cabinet states.
The machine will not allow a win no matter what until a set number of losses has happened. The default shipped setting is to not allow a win until there has been 700 losses. Some other vendor in Arizona is noted as having been sued because he ran his games at a required 2200 losses to allow a payout.
Actual gambling devices are much more regulated and have much better payout odds most likely (depending on what's winnable), but more importantly are actually random.
These games are not chance, and they aren't skill, they're a scam that market themselves as a game of skill.
Fun fact: Actual Gambling machines are also audited on the reg.
A college friend works for my state's gaming commission. During a 'drinking talk' about digital signatures, she told me an interesting part of her job; not just going through the slot machines and validating the payout settings, but also checking the EEProms MD5 Hash* to make sure that it was in a list of 'approved' code hashes.
* - This was 15 years ago, I -really- hope they use something better nowadays.
Yeah, I've hear as much before. That's one of the things that makes this worse, these cabinets are (were?) a loophole that allows fleecing people without oversight. It's not like gambling is in your favor when you do it at a casino, but you can usually trust that the state has kept it from being egregiously unfair.
> checking the EEProms MD5 Hash* to make sure that it was in a list of 'approved' code hashes.
> This was 15 years ago, I -really- hope they use something better nowadays.
I dunno. If the hash is generated and displayed by the hardware on a separate LCD display (or a serial you attach) and maybe a bit of non-flashable code, that seems pretty good to me, especially that it's regularly spot checked in person. Something like that is far harder to fake and fool real people with successfully for an extended period, IMO.
"something better" was referring to the MD5 algorithm in particular. It'd be really easy today to make a fair firmware and a rigged firmware with identical MD5 hashes.
Ah, that's true. I was thinking less of the specific hashing used, but MD5 is problematic so that's likely what they meant. I thought they were referring to the process in general.
The lawsuit is not rediculous. These are marketed as being games of skill, which means there's always the ability to win on every turn. This is obviously false and people lose tons of money on this thinking it's fair.
> something is "ridiculous" because there are much worse cases to be taken care of
Yeah, same can be said about "brainwashing kids on YouTube" (whatever that's supposed to mean anyway) or "false advertising" of cereals ... what is your point?
It isn’t luck, because the game has a 0% chance of winning until X number of loses. That is like saying that getting heads on a coin toss is a game of luck, except they are actually using a double tails coin for 700 tosses. A game of luck or chance requires some chance that you could actually win on a given play.
It isn’t luck, because the game has a 0% chance of winning until X number of loses. That is like saying that getting heads on a coin toss is a game of luck, except they are actually using a double tails coin for 700 tosses. A game of luck or chance requires some chance that you could actually win on a given play.
Skill when the machine decides to let you win, no chance when the machine doesn't want you to. It's not at all like poker and very much like the well-known shell game with a pea.
Every winner will have made a skillful shot, hence a skillful shot is required to win. It's a combination of both therefore you obviously can't claim no skill is required at all. Nobody says that a slot machine is a game of skill because nobody considers having the coordination to pull a level to be a skillful attribute.
Moat losers will have made an equally skillful shot, and the ratio of losers to winners is >> 100 : 1 because that's what the device has been programmed to do.
Nobody said that skill was sufficient to win, I am simply pointing out the obvious fact that it's still required (in response to nkrisc who claimed that no skill was required at all, only luck).
It does matter. A person with skill has a higher probability of winning than someone without skill. There are two sequential checks... first, the check that the user is not in control of, the "will the game let you win" check, then the "did the player use enough skill to win?" check.
Let's say the game only allows 1/100 tries to have the chance to win. Player A has the skill to win 50% of the time, player B 25%.
Player A will end up winning 1/200 times, while player B will win 1/400.
Your "big" difference is useless and changes nothing to the topic at hand. Nkrisc claimed that no skill was required at all, only luck, which is clearly false. I was just pointing out this obvious fact. Nice strawman attempt though.
Okay, I can accept that. But poker is still considered gambling, and we wouldn't allow arcade owners to target poker games at children. Why should this be allowed?
I 100% think this is a gambling game and should be outlawed in places gambling is illegal.
I was only saying that there is skill involved. Gaming laws never classify gambling games as those that require zero skill. Otherwise, poker, blackjack, even craps wouldn't be gambling, because all bets do not have the same odds, and therefore skilled players do better than unskilled.
> It is one reason why some places, like California, have poker rooms.
No, that's because some instances of gambling involving betting against other players are sometimes selectively regulated differently than betting against the house. Its the same reason some places, like, again, California, that prohibit casino gambling allow parimutuel betting on horse races.
This makes sense to be domain specific. But it’s all in the realm of what interests people.
Personally, I like to code, I like to draw, I enjoy maths, music and many other things. All of those skills actually augment each other: geometry aids art, art aids programming and so forth.
I don’t agree with Bret Victor though I think design and algorithms should actually be explored with pen and paper and through other means. And I think the current way of doing things is okay like in REPLs but understanding the design and ideas outside of the computer is crucial.
The problem is that the turnover rate in restaurants is ALREADY very high. Most employees see it as a “stepping stone” while they get their careers on track.