unpolloloco (u/unpolloloco)

unpolloloco commented on Gov DeWine deploys National Guard to hospitals as COVID deaths surpass 2020 ohiocapitaljournal.com/20... · Posted by u/Geekette

lotsofpulp · 4 years ago

Have to incorporate a premium for the travel nurse job being not in your home office, income being more volatile than a salaried job, and travel nurses are independent contractors so they have to pay for housing/health insurance/taxes.

The $6k per week easily comes down to $3k per week or less of comparable W-2 income, which you can come close to or surpass doing virtual scrum meetings with none of the income volatility of nursing nor the messiness or risk of being infected or attacked. And not seeing your family/friends after work.

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

The travel job typically has housing built in too and often per diems. So probably closer to 4-5k equivalent! But quality of life isn't great to your point. Software is the objectively better job there unless you're really passionate about nursing!

unpolloloco commented on Gov DeWine deploys National Guard to hospitals as COVID deaths surpass 2020 ohiocapitaljournal.com/20... · Posted by u/Geekette

cheschire · 4 years ago

I haven't seen many "a truly free market would fix this" comments lately. Seen a whole lot of "we need more regulation" comments though.

I wonder if the race to the bottom is inherent in free market or if there's a truly free market solution to this issue with hospital staffing.

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

It's inherent when quarterly numbers trump long term stability. If managers are only incentivized to meet short term numbers, they make decisions that are detrimental to the future to meet present-day goals. Our financial markets reward this (though there's a question about why they do this that's open in my mind, as most of the money in the market is invested long-term!), so it trickles down into managerial metrics.

unpolloloco commented on Gov DeWine deploys National Guard to hospitals as COVID deaths surpass 2020 ohiocapitaljournal.com/20... · Posted by u/Geekette

adnmcq999 · 4 years ago

If only being a nurse paid as much as attending virtual scrum meetings

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

It does if you're willing to be a travel nurse and work on covid floors. I've been hearing $6000/week numbers being thrown around (and some nurses are picking up two contracts at a time!). It's insanely shitty work right now (surrounded by people dying left and right and understaffed on top of that, but the pay is good...).

unpolloloco commented on Gov DeWine deploys National Guard to hospitals as COVID deaths surpass 2020 ohiocapitaljournal.com/20... · Posted by u/Geekette

lotsofpulp · 4 years ago

> The problem is how many nurses just got up and quit in the past couple years

Hence the problem is lack of sufficient compensation for their quality of life at work.

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

Agreed! The job got a lot worse and extracurricular demands shot up, so people quit. How do you get them back? Pay more.

unpolloloco commented on Gov DeWine deploys National Guard to hospitals as COVID deaths surpass 2020 ohiocapitaljournal.com/20... · Posted by u/Geekette

andrekandre · 4 years ago

why did they get fired?

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

Probably because procedure volume was down, so they canned people who they could. And then got caught off guard when demand increased again suddenly. Same thing happens over and over in manufacturing.

unpolloloco commented on Gov DeWine deploys National Guard to hospitals as COVID deaths surpass 2020 ohiocapitaljournal.com/20... · Posted by u/Geekette

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

When push comes to shove, 99.x% of healthcare professionals get it. So we're taking a rounding error in staffing. The problem is how many nurses just got up and quit in the past couple years

unpolloloco commented on Harvard won’t require SAT or ACT through 2026 as test-optional push grows washingtonpost.com/educat... · Posted by u/ren_engineer

pumaontheprowl · 4 years ago

I wish I could laugh at this, but watching institutional racism come roaring back to life over the last decade has been extremely depressing. Is there any doubt that the goal of this change is to make it easier for them to reject Asian students?

The Ivy League schools haven't exactly been discreet about their desire to admit fewer Asians.

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

It's not clear that they want to admit fewer Asians... That is unless those Asian families aren't massive donors to the University...

unpolloloco commented on Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation axios.com/wages-inflation... · Posted by u/paulpauper

bryanrasmussen · 4 years ago

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the reasons the modern car has more parts and is not mechanically simple is not the boogeyman of regulations (although I suppose it could have caused some things like say seat belt alerts and airbags) but rather feature creep in the automotive industry, and computerization of everything.

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

This is a clear example of regulation making cars more complex! In the 70s, there were no crumple zones, airbags, backup cameras, traction control, lighting intensity requirements, or a whole host of other things that are mandated today. Those things do cost money.

That said, this is also a clear shift in consumer demand too - a 1970s $3500 car is going to be a sedan, small, and pretty featureless. Compare that to a $20k Corolla today - which is the same proportion of median income that the $3500 car was in the 70s. It's larger, more reliable, safer, and has a whole bunch more features.

unpolloloco commented on Why battery costs have plunged since 2010 fullstackeconomics.com/un... · Posted by u/gok

MomoXenosaga · 4 years ago

I hear a lot about replacing gas with hydrogen (completely doable with the existing infrastructure).

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

Which is effectively a battery! Hydrogen production is energy intensive, but if you produce it with excess energy capacity and then use it when it's needed, it's a decent energy storage method. Though mobile applications (air travel, trains, etc) are more likely to dominate in the shorter terms as it's lighter than batteries in high power applications

unpolloloco commented on Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis reuters.com/world/us/inju... · Posted by u/1cvmask

enragedcacti · 4 years ago

The facts we have are:

Amazon kept a warehouse open and operational, including bringing a new shift in, during a Tornado watch for the area. (this is in the article)

edit r.e. this point: other commenters have noted that while the circumstances for a tornado arising are known in advance, the tornado appears quickly enough that realistically the only option if workers are in the building at that point is to move them to a designated area of the building that's more protected. There isn't any evidence of this happening from what I have seen from the media or Amazon.

Amazon workers are penalized heavily for being late or missing shifts and the systems for calling out can be unreliable or your request can be rejected outright. Workers are also heavily penalized for Time-Off-Task and its unclear that the policy or tracking software acknowledges seeking shelter during a tornado warning as not TOT. [1][2][hundreds of anecdotal accounts across the internet]

Amazon has not released any evidence that they informed workers there wouldn't be a penalty for a no show despite having made public statements about the incident, nor have any workers who survived attested to that. (Impossible to provide a source for a lack of evidence).

and for opinion:

Even if Amazon had told workers they were free not to come in, I believe it is the responsibility of Amazon to determine the safety of their building relative to the inclement weather which they have clearly failed to do.

What else is there left unanswered about the situation, in your view?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-wor...

[2] https://twitter.com/LCampbell_35/status/1469815411462000647

unpolloloco · 4 years ago

Does anyone close down operations for a tornado watch? Maybe they should, but I've never heard of anyone doing that anywhere...

The bigger issue imho is that these employees don't seem to have been in a tornado shelter during a tornado warning?