Skilled programmers working on boring stuff like office. Most programmers today don't have the skills they think they do and would find working on something like Office boring.
I don't do anything to compensate because I don't view it as a deficiency. If anything, I'm often asking/telling people to slow down. Spewing a bunch of half baked word vomit isn't impressive to me. I've done fine in life, I'm satisfied with the outcome of my approach.
It used to be like this in the US too. I’m still uncomfortable returning things because that’s how it was when I grew up. Walmart and e-commerce are when this all changed.
The next generation of devs became focused on their tools. Explosion of programming languages and frameworks. Cloud and all its vendor lock in. Agile. CI/CD pipelines. K8. Constant re-invention of the wheel just because. Lunatics are running the asylum. It's embarrassing, frankly.
If there's anything to be sure of, it's that this is bound to happen. The core ideas will always have staying power, but the current implementations are already seen as a silly by large swaths of us who don't disagree with the core ideas. I suspect the future will judge social mores from this time period much more harshly than a silly fad though.
A coffee shop is absolutely possible as long as nobody is interfering in the wage agreed on between employer and employee. We’ve had coffee shops forever and they have done fine. It’s only the modern expectation that they should pay more that is threatening that model.
Not sure what those jobs are - generally the less skill needed the lower the compensation. If there are some easy jobs like you say that pay better and employer and employee are both in agreement that’s great.
I’d suggest simply reminding people that if they don’t want to be homeless they need to learn a skill that pays a living wage. This is how it’s been forever.
No. I’ve probably had 20+ jobs in my lifetime and only expected to make enough to live with maybe half of them . The idea that working fast food, which I’ve done and anyone with a pulse could do, should pay enough to pay all of an adults living expenses is preposterous and makes no economic sense at all.
The idea that all jobs should provide enough compensation to live off of is just not possible. Face it now or later, but a charade which requires financial support will eventually crumble.