The internet has made a lot of people armchair experts happy to offer their perspective with a degree of certainty, without doing the work to identify gaps in their knowledge. Often the mark of genuine expertise is knowing the limitations of your knowledge.

This isn’t a social media thing exclusively of course, I’ve met it in the real world too.

When I worked as a repair technician, members of the public would ask me for my diagnosis of faults and then debate them with me.

I’ve dedicated the second half of my life to understanding people and how they work, in this field it’s even worse because everyone has opinions on that topic!

And yet my friend who has a physics PhD doesn’t endure people explaining why his theories about battery tech are incorrect because of an article they read or an anecdote from someone’s past.

So I’m curious, do some fields experience this more than others?

If you have a field of expertise do you find people love to debate you without taking into account the gulf of awareness, skills and knowledge?

  • @kopasz7
    3•7 months ago

    If everyone got what their work was worth then the company couldn’t make profit as each individual’s contribution and pay would scale proportinally.

    And since there are people who are overpaid (eg I) there will always be more underpaid people in total.

    Just as body weight depends on calories in/out (work/pay) at the end, but what’s inside the diet (compensation package) is still important. (even though you could lose weight while only eating junk food, you shouldn’t)

    I might just be the idiot here, but this is how it makes sense to me.

    • @[email protected]
      2•7 months ago

      If everyone got what their work was worth then the company couldn’t make profit as each individual’s contribution and pay would scale proportinally.

      How much do you think C-suites are truly worth? If everyone’s salary should scale up, does that mean they’re currently underpaid?

      Also, why do you think you’re overpaid?

      • @kopasz7
        1•7 months ago

        I can’t give an exact figure for c-suits nor how you could arrive at one. But their contribution is not worth orders of magnitudes more, I’m certain of that. Even the smartest and most hardworking person can’t do 1000x what an average worker does.

        As for why I think I’m overpaid? I can currently save ~90% of my earnings, working just 6 hr a week. That’s not typical. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad to have this and I wish others could too.