There is this group of people who constantly portray that you don’t have a ‘genuine’ interest in tech (or other fields) if you are interested in being paid well, which for the record is a bad take. The latest example of this is the following tweet which showed up in my feed recently though the original is from back in 2021.
People want to pretend that getting paid for your work is not something you should do. Sorry my dear, that is not how things work. You can be passionate about tech and still get paid well for it. I am someone who is a hardcore techie, I love technology and creating new things on computers. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want to get paid. As Jani put it, you can’t take your cool program (or your title) to the grocery store and use that to pick up groceries, you still need to pay for things. This means that we need to be paid for the work we are doing. This popular image of starving artists is just that an image. When you are starving you don’t code better or write better poetry or paint better pictures, it is actually the opposite. What it does mean is that while the creators are worried about food or making sure they have a roof over their head the companies are exploiting them by using their programs to make billions.
I am not saying that every developer should be paid millions but they should be paid a living wage and not have to worry about basic necessities of life. (I am using tech as an example, but the same applies across every field.
Also, so what if someone is here for the money? Are you willing to work for free? No, right? So what gives you the moral standing / authority to look down on people who want to be paid for their work? Please get off your high horse. I personally believe that if my job pays me to do something that I love doing then it is a win-win. Being miserable in life is not a good thing. I don’t think I have ever had the Monday blues or hated going in to office. Sure there have been days where I didn’t want to go in to work because I didn’t feel like it but not that I hated my life and job. This normalization of the statement that people should hate their jobs is not something that is healthy.
What do you think?
– Suramya