So I’ve had a pretty good run, career-wise. I did the follow-my-passions thing (for computer touching) and it worked out. The problem is that there are very few jobs of any social utility whatsoever to be had as a programmer in the US.
The thing I’m encountering is everyone in my social class (unless they’re only driven by money) seems to want that same thing: a prestigious, engaging & creative job that pays well, allows one to cultivate & showcase their individual talent, and has positive social utility. Unfortunately I haven’t ever actually come across one of these jobs. The closest is just people lying to themselves that their app does anything other than speedrun exploitation of marginal workers while making people in their own social class more comfortable.
When I think about social utility it makes sense to consider what things I require to live my day-to-day life, and think about what jobs are required to provide those things. Unfortunately here I run into what I think is a bourgeois mindset ingrained from birth: none of those jobs are good enough. Think about a shopkeeper, or someone sitting at the help desk at the subway station, or a picker at an Amazon warehouse. If I took one of these jobs my parents and social circle would all believe that I had literally gone insane. Objectively, every one of these jobs is necessary for contemporary society to function and the people filling them have easily contributed more social utility than my entire programming career. And yet the idea I could actually take one of those jobs runs into gigantic barriers that exist in my mind. A local political org is working to salt Amazon warehouses and this seems like a pretty easy way for me to get in. But I just can’t do it. Every time I try to articulate the idea I could work in an Amazon warehouse to one of my friends it starts to sound like a joke.
To me this indicates I have a fundamentally non-proletarian and thus anti-marxist mindset. I’ve worked jobs like this before graduating university and I know they suck. They are boring, the pay is bad, and worst of all - you get absolutely no respect. The lack of respect is what really sticks with me in my memories of those jobs, and still makes me burn with anger over a decade later.
Anyway I’m rambling but I guess my question is - does anybody relate to holding this attitude toward employment either now or at some point, and more importantly how does one overcome it?
You don’t need to take a minimum wage job to prove your Marxism.
You are correct that there are many computer programming jobs precisely because the technology reduces labor costs by increasing relative surplus value for the firms that use it. However, it’s just a skill. You can use this skill in line with your morals. One example is the Lemmy developers who make a small amount of money from donations as they build and maintain a leftist reddit alternative. There are leftist organizations, or state institutions like local libraries, which have trash websites or back-ends that you could improve through volunteer work or taking a job if you’re lucky. Countless nonprofits you could also work for which pay the same as Subway but leverage your skills and don’t make money for Big Sandwich.
The issues you write here are a common struggle for leftists. My opinion is as long as you are not building planes for the Luftwaffe, all wage labor in capitalism is shit so just do what you can to survive while keeping your morals reasonably in check. We will not stop climate change by turning off kitchen lights. Nor will capitalism end if everyone quits their jobs.