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.
I think I share the sentiment with a majority of the responses from my fellow tech workers: fuck yeah, they deserve it. Those people are out in the elements (mind you during record breaking heat waves).
They deserve every dollar of that 170k and more as I sit in an air conditioned room pushing pixels
removed by mod
It’s a symptom of managers using bullshit metrics and processes to squeeze every possible cent of value they can from the fewest workers possible.
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 (and therefore more profits) forces employees to cut corners, they’ll cut corners.
It’s extremely unlikely they have the luxury of spending a month unemployed so your package simply isn’t worth it.
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.
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.
As a tech worker, I say good for them.
As a fellow tech worker, I agree. Probably most tech workers would agree, but since that’s boring, this article focuses on the opinion of just “some tech workers on social media”. So dumb.
“some tech workers on social media”.
“some tech workers on blind”. Even worse
Like 3 ancient jaded guys that are working on network infrastructure for a small hospital in Montana posted on Xwitter that they’re upset. 10000 bots reposted it…now it’s newsworthy.
Xwitter
I’m going with Xitter pronounced sh-ITT-er That makes tweets Xits pronounced sh-IT-s
As a tech worker in Europe, the concept of “deserving” or “not deserving” a specific number has always been a total joke. Your salary is like 80% determined by location alone.
Any notion of “merit” (whatever that even means, there isn’t even a good way of measuring it in many industries) has always been only very loosely correlated with compensation.
So if you can get it, go get it.
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.
I work in tech and have enjoyed good salaries, I wish everyone was so fortunate.
As for myself, it would actually be a huge relief to know that there are many career options for me that paid just as well, because sometimes I really want to do something else. If wages had grown fairly, then a lot more people would be making 100,000+.
As a tech worker my only anger is that they’re not getting paid more.
tech workers: i’m underpaid and everyone else should be too!
fucking unionize already. tired of this crabs-in-a-bucket mentality
I think people just don’t realize how underpaid they are. They think that because they make six figures, that means they’re getting paid what they’re worth.
If you were paid what you were worth the company wouldn’t make any money.
Corporations exist by the excess value of their workers’ labor, by definition.
Eh that’s a paradox though. If the company makes no money, there’s no job for you in the first place making you worth nothing.
It’s not a paradox. The money the company makes is profit. Profit is what’s left of revenue after costs are subtracted. People’s pay is a cost.
No you are misunderstanding the roles of labor and capital. If I withhold my labor, then the owners have nothing to sell. If they withhold pay to me, I go to another company with my labor. Capital cannot create value, only labor can.
You can go to another company, but they too wouldn’t exist if they didn’t make money.
Actually what people don’t realize is what the above poster means between the lines, this is an article by big corp to make the general public angry at unionized organizations.
Bingo. A greedy neoliberal company putting out articles to help greedy neoliberals companies.
They might tolerate competition and superficial disagreements, but the moment something is a threat to profits they have incredible class solidarity.
Companies are not liberal or conservative… They are all capitalist.
They all push neoliberalism because it’s constant failure to deliver on it’s promises makes them rich.
They’re quoting Blind users though, Blind is a cesspool of silicon Valley tech bros. It’s often just a dick measuring contest between FAANG workers about who makes more money.
Some tech workers. This is just a stupid ragebait piece.
Or, perhaps this article is just trying to sow discord between workers.
One of the old tricks in the books to make people despise unions is to take the very best union deals and sensationalize them, so that others hate the union out of jealousy.
Make it appear like the UPS driver is getting paid $170K for 32 hours of work, in a fully A/C’d vehicle on a short, easy route, starting pay, right out of college without a degree, four weeks of vacation yada yada.
When in reality, the $170K probably only kicks in if you take the absolute worst routes, worst shifts (weekend/night) with max overtime and even then, a third of it is retirement, insurance and health care contributions. And you only get the max after 10 or 20 years of service, if they didn’t fire you as you increased.
During an earnings call on Tuesday, UPS CEO Carol Tomé said that by the end of its five-year contract with the Teamsters union, the average full-time UPS driver would make about $170,000 in annual pay and benefits, such as healthcare and pension benefits.
The headline is sensationalized for sure. But the article itself actually makes the point that the tech workers are misunderstanding that the $170k figure includes both salary and benefits.
“This is disappointing, how is possible that a driver makes much more than average Engineer in R&D?” a worker at the autonomous trucking company TuSimple wrote on Blind, an anonymous jop-posting site that verifies users’ employment using their company email. “To get a base salary of $170k you know you need to work hard as an Engineer, this sucks.”
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. Currently, UPS drivers make an average of around $95,000 per year with an additional $50,000 in benefits, according to the company. The average median salary for an engineer in the US is $103,845 with a base pay of about $91,958, according to Glassdoor. And TuSimple research engineers can make between $161,000 to $250,000 in compensation, Glassdoor data shows.
On the whole though this is a useless article covering drama on Blind, wrapped up with a ragebait headline.
On the whole though this is a useless article covering drama on Blind, wrapped up with a ragebait headline.
This is the buried lead. Blind is a negative echo chamber where your posts gets no value if you don’t mention your TC (total compensation). Opinions from there should be taken with a grain of salt.
The phrase is “bury the lede”, but most autocorrect doesn’t like that.
Your point is absolutely valid, nonetheless.
What strange math. My healthcare costs are DEDUCTED from my salary
Most places I’ve worked at say “it would cost you 5,000 / month for healthcare, but we’re only charging you $500 / month, so that’s $4,500 / month we’re paying you”
My guy at work is amazing. He’s almost always on time somehow, gets in and out, knows the answer to stupid questions people ask him and has classic rock from a bluetooth speaker in his truck. He deserves every penny, and some damn air conditioning.
Highly likely.
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…”
Can we react more about trust fund managers and CxO salaries instead?
Interestingly, we sort of can’t. Someone would have to write an article about it and no large, for-profit media company would publish it.
The amount of shit a delivery driver puts up with? They certainly deserve it. Good on them, we should all be well paid, and thinking otherwise is Stockholm syndrome.
That crab mentality (crabs in a bucket) can be hard to shake but it’s got to go. The Boondocks explained it nicely (short SFW extract from an otherwise NSFW TV programme here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipg4EL_JUyE)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=ipg4EL_JUyE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Good bot. Do we do that here?
As far as I’m concerned, why not? Useful bots deserve recognition as well
Meanwhile software devs? We sit around in a comfy meeting room sipping coffee and are occasionally a bit stressed. Sure there’s exceptions, but most devs I know have it pretty good while making a shit ton of money
And I will add that you also deserve to be well paid and have your own stressors and those matter too. We all deserve a good wage. What’s the point otherwise?
But I’m especially glad because delivery drivers are often treated poorly.
Also make sure you add the amount of schooling, training, and certifications that you as a Tech industry worker are expected to shell out for to get ahead, gone are the years where a high school diploma and some skills gets you in the door in Tech. Also the hours we need to put in.
So sure it’s not as physically demanding as delivery driving, but it is absolutely mentally demanding and time consuming. Most things in tech are also things the average person isn’t interested in learning, so it’s not like a delivery driver can go and code or engineer some kind of solution for complex IT problems or environments, but a developer/IT worker can absolutely get out there and deliver packages if they had to for some reason.
Either way, good on the UPS folks, now it’s time to take that and leverage it across the board for all of the other career paths.
Your response implies that tech workers are mentally more fit than those who work for UPS. This is flatly untrue, if tech workers are so damn smart, why don’t we unionize? We would make a ton more money, have better work life balance, and job security! It’s the same story for every industry, unions are the antidote to capitalism death cult.
I think they were more so arguing about the costs of the training itself. Those loans aren’t free for a lot of people, and scholarships aren’t unlimited.
A lot of people don’t have time to work while they’re in school, so those loans can also take on a pretty nasty interest rate.
I’m of the mindset that people who work hard deserve good money. If a job is something that most people can’t or won’t do, companies will usually have to pay more to encourage people to stay and do those jobs. Otherwise, why would people go into debt for schooling and training? Why go through the stress and expenses for no reason? Yes there’s passion for some people, but that doesn’t pay tuition lol
Well the one thing that pandemic has taught us is that people are never satisfied no matter how much they get. Before the pandemic, nobody gave a flying shit in the tech world, specifically the devs, about work from home or hybrid work nature. But somehow now they are entitled to it. Still the tech giants obliged and are allowing them to work from home. Now they are pissed that someone who works physically and deliver items to their door steps is earning as much as they are while they sit on their fat asses watching a screen. Sure they have other deadlines and stuff which the drivers won’t have to face, but don’t be so fucking greedy and jealous when someone is getting paid for their hard work.
What are you trying to say? Devs don’t deserve it because they’re not exposed to the same conditions as a UPS driver?
Where’s your class solidarity?
This is in no way to undermine the argument that UPS drivers deserve every penny they get paid. I am regularly very stressed out by my current client. Consulting can be an absolute bitch.
While my job can be stressful, I switched from contracting to a ft job with a single employer well over a decade ago and never looked back. Have I earned less money over those however many years? Oh, yes. But I work regular days, rarely get hassled, know the system inside and out, and really like my coworkers who are mostly people who have also been there for a very long time.
100%. Besides, a rising tide lifts all boats. Personally I’m thrilled for them. If anything I see this as an agenda piece. “Hey group 1, talk trash about group 2”.
No no you’ve got it all wrong… Workers in group 3 are the real enemy! The capitalists told me so!
deleted by creator
Damn, I must have had the wrong dev job. Did one for 13 years where i had to wear flame retardant clothes, drive up mountains in the winter and sit out in the desert in the summer, annual training as a first responder. But I did sip a lot of coffee and have a lot of stress.
Why does this article exist? Who cares what tech workers think about someone else’s pay rate?
Why does this article exist? Who cares what tech workers think about someone else’s pay rate?
is there to make people mad that the drivers are getting paid more and make you more predisposed to hate unions.
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.
A majority have crabs-in-a-bucket mentality and this “news story” is meant for them
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.
Finally…good for them. If you’re bitching about them making too much, I’m pretty sure they’re hiring.
This is a little misleading. It’s $170k in pay and benefits, not just salary. Still, UPS drivers deserve it and this will make everyone’s experience with UPS so much better.
Yeah but have you sat in a UPS truck even it’s parked? It just beeps non stop.
