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Being emotionally detached from really stupid leadership decisions is harder than it seems
Took me a lot of years to not think it’s my company that is being run into the ground. I should not - and nowadays could not - care any less.
You mean “my responsibility”, right?
Yeah, in a way. As in, I don’t feel like I have any responsibility in things in the company going to shits (which I would if it were, well, my company).
The book The Responsibility Virus helped me a lot with this. Most people are over-responsible for the choices of others, specifically ones they can’t reasonably influence, anyway.
I found out that https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ explains a lot of the dysfunctions that one finds in an office / corporate environment.
Yes. This lies among the reasons I find it easier not to blame enterprises for their dysfunctions. The unsustained growth imperative of our economic systems makes the Gervais Principle behavior the path of least resistance. Indeed, the only way to stop it seems to come down to the heroism of one key influential person who chooses differently.
This also accounts for why I stopped trying to fix enterprises and instead focus on helping the well-meaning people who otherwise would need to fend for themselves.
That hit hard 😶
I’m determined to ever only work in public, state-owned companies. I believe in a causal connection between being a private, profit-oriented business and the daily “wtf” moments, the only true measure of quality.
Edit: fixed the link.
I’m afraid I’d be even more depressed by the wtf moments in a public organisation, but I am also considering it.
The company doesn’t care about you. The company doesn’t care about you. The company doesn’t care about you.
My uncle spent years preaching to me about the need to be loyal to a company. I never drank the Kool-Aid. He spent 21 years working for an investment banking company in their IT department. 4 years before he was set to retire with a full pension, etc. his company was acquired by a larger bank. He lost everything except his 401k. He then spent the next 12 years working to get his time back so he’d be able to retire. He died 2 years ago and the company sent a bouquet of flowers.
THE COMPANY DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOU!!
How do you lose a pension? It doesn’t matter where you work or if a company gets bought.
So the way he explained it to me was that essentially when the company was purchased all your accruals were reset and the pension was tied to years of service, which he hadn’t reached yet, then with the merger you were essentially a new employee. There was also a lot tied to retirement plans linked to corporate stocks that were basically useless after they merged. Either way, beyond working for the same company forever, his eggs were (mostly) in one basket.
Yet another reason to be glad to live in the EU:
TUPE Regulations
Basically, “any employee’s contract of employment will be transferred automatically on the same terms as before in the event of a transfer of the undertaking. This means that if an employer changes control of the business, the new employer cannot reduce the employees’ terms and conditions”
This regulation and strong unions are the backbone of job security in the EU.
Yeah. Very Strong…
The company cares about you in the same way a beef farmer cares about his cattle.
No, they don’t care that much
Not even if you do valuable or efficent stuff for the company. You’re disposable.
The company is always on the lookout for ways to replace you with somebody who will do more for less.
And in the meantime, they will squeeze you for every drop of effort they think they can get away with.
Or less for less. I know a woman who is a manager of a dialysis clinic, as soon as she was making over 100k she started getting pushback from higher ups, having more oversight, and having her funds for extra services to patients / staff cut. It’s clear they want her out even though she has the lowest mortality in the region, because they don’t need more than beds filled (Medicaid pays) and legally required minimums to be met.
also you might not be replaceable but your manager might be an idiot
They refer to you as … HUMAN RESOURCES
You aren’t a person, you are an instrument the company uses to make more money for itself. If you die or can no longer work, you will be replaced by another human resource.
I had a prof twisting himself into knots trying to argue that human resources really is a positive term because companies care about and maintain their resources
The people on the top of the company don’t care, either… Even if it seems like the really like you alot.
The most important traits for doing well at work (in this order):
I’m halfway through scrolling this long thread, and this is the first comment I’ve seen that isn’t overly cynical. It’s also correct.
I’ve been working for 38 years, and I’ve been someone who makes promotion decisions for 15 of them. The third one is helpful, not essential, but the others are super important. The people who rise to leadership positions aren’t necessarily the top technical people, they’re the ones who do those things with a good attitude.
The other thing I’d add is that they’re people who are able to see the big picture and how the details relate to it, which is part of strategic thinking.
I was taught that my job is “to make sure all my bosses surprises are pleasant ones”. 15 years of working as an engineer and that never changed. Now I have my own business and that’s the thing I look for employees… someone I can leave on their own to do a job. It they have problems they can always ask me. If they screw up I expect them to tell me immediately and to have a plan of action to fix it and to prevent it happening again. And I never ever get cross if someone does come to me and say they screwed up. Far better that we tell the client about a problem than wait until the client finds the problem themselves.
Reading all these comments makes me realize how lucky I’ve been in my career. I’ve always had great bosses who defended me and backed me up.
I’m not sure if the competence is really in the last place. I’d say it’s on the equal level. Great communication and ownership of the problems means little if you can’t really solve the problems.
People have those things in spectrums, not all or nothing. You have to have at least some of all of them, but I’d argue that mediocre competency with really good communication and accountability is a better combination that really good competency with one of the others being mediocre.
I still kinda disagree. We’re talking here about engineering role after all. I have a colleague who is a code wizard, but has kinda problem with (under)communicating. He’s still widely respected as a very good engineer, people know his communication style and adapt to it.
But if you’re a mediocre problem solver, you can’t really make up for it with communication skills. That kinda moves you into non-engineering role like PO, SM or perhaps support engineer.
But I would say this - once you reach a certain high level of competence, then the communication skills, leadership, ownership can become the real differentiating factors. But you can’t really get there without the high level of competence first.
I think we might be agreeing, it’s just that “mediocre” means different things to each of us. My team supports human spaceflight, and no one we have is crummy. The “mediocre” people have pretty decent technical skills if you’re looking across all software development domains.
Personally, I’ve found the decent technical skills to be easier to come by than the other ones, and having all of them in one package is a real discriminator.
Your employer does not care about you. You are not important or irreplaceable
Take your time and energy and put it into your life, not their business
I have had coworkers die (not work related) and by the time you hear about it (like the next day) they have already worked out who will get the work done so the machine doesn’t have to stop
I had a workmate develop a chronic illness after an infection of COVID, and he had to leave under hardship. People that hung out with him as best mates for years stopped talking to him in a matter of days.
Did you? 🥺
I sent him
a few3 message to see how he was doing. NGL we weren’t super tight before COVID, we never hung out outside of work, and people not masking around me really drove a wedge between us. I’m trying hard not to justify what happened, but who knows maybe I am a little bit.I don’t think taking action to fill a hole is indicative of not caring.
I’m all for filling holes!
Hole filling action, even!
True but there’s also absolutely no reason to think they care. Even if someone dies. Because they really don’t. So it feels extra soulless when they send out the email redistributing tasks right after the generic condolences email that goes out to the whole floor
I mean, how do you gauge how much someone cares? What would make you think someone cared (either at work or anywhere else)? I think all actions by a company would make people think it’s just an unempathetic gesture. Even if it was a small company and the employee was there for very long and was actually missed.
This depends. I’ve had easily 100 shit jobs where nobody cared. I’m now a software developer for a small business <10 employees and they do care.
I am aware I am living the dream now and this can’t be the case for most.
There is no ideal place to work where they “do it right”, whatever kind of “right” you care about right now. When you change jobs, you merely exchange one set of problems for another.
Having worked 7 different jobs that all were in the same field made me have some backbone of standards that nobody else could have built without going through that, though. It’s a blessing and a curse, so be warned. The things I picked up on that I never realized I would care so much about in the healthcare field is good office administration and Director of Care leadership. The morale is just as important as the pay rate.
i worked at all the pizza chains delivering ---- the absolute shittiest ones were a nightmare, for the same 3 reasons:
not letting employees make food themselves. it’s a restaurant, you have abundant food, it’s cheap, we all know it’s cheap, we work long shifts, come on. the cobbler’s son should have good shoes.
overemphasis on dress code – if you genuinely give a shit if the pizza guy has his hat backwards, you should literally be sent to the gulags.
being overworked for low pay, especially being made to drive when exhausted [literally dangerous and life threatening!!]
As a consultant, I now feel grateful to the variety of dysfunctions that I experienced, because they provided me with some of the credibility that I use in advising others. That’s the blessing part.
That, and comedy equals tragedy plus distance.
That said some companies do it more right than others. The problems at the current company are ones I can live with. Which is why I’m still there after way more years than expected.
Indeed, that’s what I mean: you’re always exchanging one set of problems for another, until you find the set of problems that you can accept (enough (for now)).
Is this still true if you’re self-employed?
Absolutely. There is no business yet in which you invent money from nothing. Everyone works for someone else. It might be a capitalist boss, it might be a client, it might even be constituents or donors, but no one truly works for themselves. The only winning move is to not play, and the ones fortunate enough to not have to play were born rich. Being self-employed and/or owning your own business is just trading one boss for another.
Source: Was in private practice for a decade; now I’m a corporate attorney, and it’s just a different set of people making my job hard.
The self-employed person does have the option to say no or not work for the clients/customers that want them to do stupid things, assuming they have enough other business to still make ends meet. I thinking artists especially.
I feel better about the things I do wrong, because at least I made the decisions and I can only blame myself. I can also choose which things I especially care about doing well instead of being subject to someone else’s preferences. It feels better, but still yes.
And, as CEO of a tiny company, I have to interact with bureaucracies more than I did as an employee, so becoming my own boss didn’t mean escaping that nonsense, anyway.
You don’t have to run the rat race to get promoted. You don’t have to be at your desk at 7am and leave at 7pm to put on a show. Just be competent. Most people are not. You’ll eventually get promoted once you are old and white enough.
Getting promoted isn’t a race. It’s a marketing campaign. The squeaky wheel gets the grease sadly. I hate it but that’s the game. You can be great but if the right people don’t hear about it it won’t bring a reward.
The funny thing is it’s a loss for the employer since it means people spend time self-promoting themselves and their achievements instead of just doing things well.
Some leadership will actively not promote you, even block attempts by you, if you’re at the top of your role and consistently outperforming peers, why would they let you move up? You make them look good right here.
Had a sup that did that to me. It sucked. Glad I’m not working for her anymore.
Getting promotions and raises is rare. Haven’t seen that happen very many times. However, many people have told me that the best way to get a raise is to switch to another company.
I worked at “AT&T wireless” back in the day when dirt was new. This guy would say “ squeaky wheel gets the grease.” One day after he said that our team lead said “Or gets replaced.” Then they walked his ass out.
Yeah. I always tell newbies “nobody ever got a promotion for work their boss didn’t know they did.” Sadly if you produce 100 units of value and the boss only knows about 10 of them the guy who did 20 units but won’t shut up about it looks 2x as valuable even though he’s actually doing 1/5 the work. Trick is to be doing the most work and have people see it
If we take it from the other side, it’s difficult for management to understand how well you’re doing if you’re not communicating it properly, especially if your job is highly technical but they aren’t. Technical experts who would understand your work alone don’t necessarily make good managers.
Most probably you will never be promoted anyway.
I must not be old enough because I’ve never been promoted even though I’m practically white as a ghost. Every promotion I have ever received is from getting a new job at a new company and ending up making significantly more money that way.
How long do you work for the same employer though? What field are you in?
I’ve worked for the same employer for 12 years and never got a promotion because there was only one way up and a pool of over 1000 employees to pick from, then switched to another job and got a promotion under a year…
Around 3 years per employer, so it’s a bit on the shorter end, but not too far from the average for my field.
I’m a programmer. Not a ton of competition per team, especially when I usually work on smaller teams.
Oh yeah if you’re “just” a programmer (in the sense that you don’t have other formations) you might have to do management courses on the side, that’s what my friend had to do to land a permanent promotion…
It’s true management would likely get me promoted faster but honestly I always wanna stick with the programming side of things. As I get more experienced I will keep getting larger salary bumps, but it’s almost definitely not gonna be from promotions but rather from switching jobs lol
May I ask, what is the most important thing to show in a programmer CV?
Im a junior programmer. I would say im good at the job. I can easily create new software and also find problems in other codes and fix them. However I have no idea what I would say in an interview. Its not like I learn code by memory.
Unfortunately in your case, the most important thing is experience. You just need the years for employers to want to hire you, and with this year in particular, the competition for jobs is insane because of all the layoffs. Make some cool personal projects, that sort of thing can help.
in rough order of important:
if you have no previous job, then yea. It’s rough. The first job is always rough, and even in software that’s no exception. You will want to talk about decisions and features you worked on in personal projects for that stuff. And of course, really nail down your fundamentals; they really drill you with those interview questions as a junior.
If you have a job, then talk about that. Maybe there’s some NDA, but you can talk about some problem in general terms and what you needed to do to solve it. You’re not expected to do anything crazy as a junior, so your answer relies more on you knowing how to work in a team than novel architectual decisions.
Personal example: my first job was at a small game studio and my non-BS answer would be that I simply did bug fixes for a game. Nothing fancy, probably something an intern can do.
But interview spin: doing those bug fixes
Best of luck
Fully agree. You can be lazy AF, as long as you get a few key assignments done or overfulfill them. Everybody will be like ‘ooh, he so good’ and forget that you don’t do shit for 95% of the time.
Just be friends with the manager. That’s who I found was promoted the most in my career.
It should be noted that this is advice specific to white men in Western countries 😆 but yes, it’s true.
Sometimes it’s better if your employer doesn’t know everything you can do. If you’re not careful you’ll end up Inventory Controller/shipper/IT services/reception/Safety officer, and you’ll only ever be paid for whatever your initial position was.
I wanted to be a system engineer, I got hired as a devops, I started doing a bit of system engineer, called hr and said that I’m working on infrastructure and I need my title changed or else I won’t be able to continue my work, my title was changed, no I do system engineer stuff and less of devops, this was a very rare occasion but it can happen from time to time.
HR protect the company first, the employees second.
Just remember what hr stands for. You are a resource. No more than a stapler, that can be replaced at any time
Well, sure. Unless you’re talking about a red Swingline. I can’t compete with that.
100%. The rebranding of some HR departments as “People Officers” or “People Team” drives me bonkers. When push comes to shove, they will always protect the interests of the business before the interests of the employee. Full stop.
You are right, but to be fair. “Human Ressources” was an awful name to begin with.
Yeah, neither is great. Needs to be called something like “Employee Business Relations” maybe?
Liability Protection
Company interest workers?
Yeah, that sounds way better!
Hello fellow resource, uh i mean human.
There’s a reason they’re called “Human Resources” and not Human Relations.
Success is mainly about sucking up to the right people. No matter how good you are at your job, you have to know how to play work politics. Most bosses don’t know how to evaluate actual ability, and they’re much less objective than they think. Usually they favor more likeable employees over capable ones if forced to choose. Human life is a popularity contest, always has been, always will be. That’s the side effect of being a highly social species…
Begrudgingly given upvote. Sigh.
I don’t think you’re entirely wrong, but I think maybe you downplay the importance of a good team dynamic when choosing people. I’d take someone less skilled over a highly skilled but unapproachable jerk for the long-term health of the crew. In that way, I don’t think it’s bad to favor the more likable one depending on how we’re defining likable, and I don’t think that makes it simply a popularity contest either.
The longer you work anywhere – and I mean ANYWHERE – the more you see the bullshit and corruption and crappy rules or policies and inequality all over.
For me it has been about the 3 year mark anywhere I’ve worked: once you get past that, you fade away from “damn I’m glad to have a job and be making money!” and towards “this is absolute bulls#!t that [boss] did [thing] and hurt the workers in the process!” or similar
3 years? What nirvana corp do you work at?
Thanks, I agree!
Today businesses increase like mushrooms after rain, and decrease like mushrooms before summer.
Don’t get attached, move on to the next better mushroom 🍄
Funny, that’s actually what motivated me at my last job. Things were fucked up, but not so fucked up that it was overwhelming. It was the Goldilocks zone of just fucked up enough that I think I can not only fix it, but look good if I do. It was a fun journey, all told, but there were definitely frustrations, even ones that lasted years.
Hahaha, I love it
There’s no such thing as quiet quitting. I prefer acting your wage.
Explanation please? Not a native speaker here…
There was a phenomenon in the US labor market during 2022/2023 called “quiet quitting” where laborers across the market realized that companies weren’t paying wages adequately or to a level that reflected the kind of work laborers would perform.
It was thought that companies paid their workers short of what the workers are owed, and in response to that, a large number of people, many trending young, started behaving according to those wages.
This often meant reducing work speed or efficiency, reducing communication, etc. Laborers would claim that they were doing the bare minimum to match their wage compensation.
The other side of this is that the US labor market at that time favored laborers over companies. Workers had more leverage about getting job offers and negotiating terms than companies had, partly due to a rebound from COVID.
This meant that there wasn’t as much of an anxiety of workers being fired from their position since they would find it easy to get another job. So people did look for other jobs, often while working, to see if they might improve their circumstances and land a job that pays better.
The “quiet” part was about sliding back on performance or even job tasks themselves, and the “quitting” part was about workers possibly leaving companies for other offers.
I might have conflated The Great Resignation with this, but both phenomena affect the other.
You speak funny words, magic man
If someone is paid three times the average salary of his county, acting his wage would be actually working his ass off?
It all depends on the cost of living relative to the wages accrued. Often wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living, so people feel more and more that the deal with their employers gets worse and worse. Someone earning 200k/year might be living the same as someone working 60k/year depending on where those people live
Now, there is something to be said about why cost of living should vary from place to place. Part of it is scarcity of habitation: if there aren’t very many available flats or lots, there might be fierce competition for people to fill what flats or lots do become available. Supply and demand.
Other aspects might be debt accrued by businesses that they pass on to their customers, externalities like wars or laws, etc.
I also want to point out that a lot of people associate more wealth with more consumption, so you might see people rise to spend all of the new resources they accumulate rather than securitizing and saving that wealth for unforeseen events. Lots of people consume at terribly non-sustainable rates, and there should be conversations about what effects behaviors can have on the world, outside of the economy.
“Quiet quitting” is a term made up my small business tyrants in the United States to describe workers doing their job as it is described on the contract, and not going “above and beyond”. They somehow believe they’re owed more than they pay for.
“Inflation-adjusted effort”
I might have to use that in my next all hands
My company laid off a few very efficient workers, who sacrificed a lot of time and mental health for the company, because people working remotely in India are cheaper.
Sounds like a company I worked for. I saw the writing on the wall and got out. A lot of good people were laid off and a second office in India was opened…
People in your workplace don’t know shit. There are a few who know stuff but the majority is dumb, careless or the combination of the two. Surprisingly the higher you go the more dumb and careless there are. We are designing monster billion dollar construction projects and some of my colleagues have problems with understanding written english. Others cannot learn a software that has literally 3 buttons in them they have to press. I don’t even know sometimes why I am trying.
I think we try because we can’t bear not to
Efficient workers get more work if you’re in the office. I work from home, and that allows me to work efficiently until my work is done, set up scheduled emails to go out at the time I would’ve otherwise been done, then do what I want until then.
I see your work doesn’t have invasive programs that check idle mouse and idle keyboard behaviors.
this is an old one but i can’t help thinking, what if they installed it without my knowledge, after all, my work laptop was given to me already pre prepared by our IT department.
There is an entire department at my work that employs thousands of moderators to review desktop screenshots of all employees every 5 minutes to make sure no one is “idle”.
Makes me want to scream when I think about it.
Yeah, they’re pretty behind the times, and I’m happy for that. They gave me a work laptop, but since they didn’t block me from just using my home computer instead, I just do that so that I’ve got an excuse if they ever bring up any strange data they might be skimming from the laptop. It’s been a couple years now without any word from them about it, though, so I think I’m in the clear.
Fyi. If your IT department is remotely on top of things - they know. They just might have larger fish to fry.
We can see all kinds of things about any devices that log on to check email, connect to the VPN, etc.
Yeah, I figured they’re aware I’m not using the laptop - I’m not on the VPN most of the time as a result. I’m still able to do all my work in my own copy of excel, though, so I’m hoping I can continue pretending I’m unaware that I’m not following the correct avenues to get my work done, at least until they force me to use the laptop.
unless the it department tell your manager that wouldn’t matter.
wow really glad you have that power
You you’re writing up more time that it actually took you. That is fraud.
I’m not writing up anything. I clock in when my shift starts, I complete the work designated for me for that shift, send it out by the time it needs to be sent out, and clock out at the end of my shift.
… same fucking thing, Einstein.
The non-fraudulant thing would be to clock out when you’re done.
Nope. They pay me for my availability, not how much of it they utilize.
If that is clearly state in your contract that way, sure.
No, that is literally how employment works.
That’s not fraud, that’s called “working smarter”. Not giving us a raise to account for inflation, now that’s fraud.
I’m not stealing, I’m just “shopping smarter”.
Damn that boot must be so far down your throat it’s comng out your ass
Maybe it’s meant to be, but my parents taught me about deliberate ignorance, and I intend to use it.
Also, malicious compliance
My parents tried teaching me that, but I was ignorant of their lessons.
Is it fraudulent for a mechanic working flat rate to complete a 10 hour job in 6 hours and collect the full 10 hours of pay?
Most shops I know of these days assign a labor time to any given job. You get charged that amount whether the mechanic does it in half the time or takes five times as long.
Anymore, it’s an internal benchmark for mechanics to build on the efficiency of their own work.
In my line of work, it may take me three hours to solve a client tax issue. I will bill for that accordingly.
If another client comes along the next day with the exact same issue, but this time I know the answer because I researched it yesterday, so I can solve it instantly, should the second client get charged nothing?
No.
It’s literally right there in the sentence you wrote, thankfully.
It does not, or at least should not work like this. If you can do same work, with same quality in less time than average, then pay rate is higher than average.
Obviously not if it’s a flat rate. But empoyment rarely is flat rate based. The contract are usually require you to work a certain amount of time per week/month.
I remember those halcyon days when calling each other Sherlock and Einstein was the zenith of insults.
On the playground.
During recess.
In the fifth grade.
Which seems appropiate since most of people in this comment chain seem to be teenagers who’s only argument seem to be “boss bad” and “work bad”.
A lot of us speak from experience… it’s not just some opinion pulled out of thin air and being reductive and dismissive isn’t solving anything.
Well, surely there must be more constructive replies to that situation that just slacking on the job or wirting up fake hours.
Like does everyone here work for Evil Corp itself? If it sucks so bad, quit. Find a better job.
If you’re in tech, it can be absolute hell. I worked at an agency that required 7 hours clocked to projects every day. Doesn’t sound so bad until you realize you still need to eat lunch and deal with random non-billable things that arise. Now you’re working a 10-hour day to appease the numbers, while furiously clocking every minute to every job. If you estimate 6 hours for a task and find an efficient way to do it in 2, that’s the expectation going forward—even for the devs that haven’t done it before.
It doesn’t sound terrible until you do it for a while and realize that it’s a fucking meat grinder. Instead of being gauged by your abilities and skills as a programmer, you’re quietly evaluated by how many tickets you can get out the door.
I have tasks where I might spend 6 hours to make the task take a half hour going forward. That’s value-added work and I shouldn’t be rewarded with an onslaught of new tasks because of that simply to fill a void.
I deserve to find some ways to keep my sanity intact until I’m mentally incapable of continuing to write code anymore in the older years before ageism starts shoving me out the door.
I mean, sorry. That sounds quite horrid. But that just sounds like a really shit agency.
I do work in tech and I also have to write up all billable hours minutely. But most of the work I do is on internal projects anyway, so I have to write up the time, but it’s not billable. Paid work usually takes priority though.
But when it comes to it, I’m required to work 8h a day. Doesn’t matter what as long as it is what matters the most right now. And I could easily just keep it there and work my 8 to 5 if I wanted, not giving a shit.
But I actually like my work, most of the time. So I do. So when you have to solve a lot immediate problems, the internal projects often get delayed and you risk overshooting the deadline. That’s bad for the company in general, so best to avoid it. That gives incentives to solve everything asap and still get the internal stuff done on time.
And if we risk falling behind the deadline, that means overtime (voluntarily of course), but all of our devs know that missing a deadline could set us back quite far, so everyone shows up. Of course all overtime is paid and at better rates. Hell, I’ll sometimes do overtime just to get the better rate and get ahead of things I’d have to fix eventually anyway.
And the boss very much appriciated the effort we put in. In fact, he makes less money then me. I know that because I’m a shareholder and can read the yearly financial report, they gave all the senior devs a share when the company went public.
It was indeed a shit agency, but I’ve found almost identical practices in other agencies. It’s the nature of the work and it sucks, which is part of why I won’t work at another agency ever again. Another issue I’ve run into are colleagues that don’t clock all of their time for a task, which makes management say things like “well X did this in 2 hours; why is it going to take you 6?” It took me a long time in my career to arrive at a place where I feel like I have actual control, so I can empathize with younger devs that are feeling crushed under the weight of work.
My role now is all internal product work and I always clock my time spent, but it’s not crucial. I do it mostly to gauge how long things I build take (a lot of which are greenfield projects) and keep the data on hand as a point of reference for myself.
I like what I do but don’t really like that it’s become a big part of what defines me as a person. That’s really besides the point though. I think white collar employees like us have it easier than others in the workforce elsewhere, and that’s somehow with the absolute onslaught of tech layoffs I keep seeing. I have a friend that has been laid off 5 times in the span of 3 years, and I was laid off myself for 3 months before finding a new role. I’m actually shocked at how many times previous employers have tried to take advantage of myself or others. Those things are the reason wage theft in the US is a 50b dollar industry and it’s just going to get worse as capitalists try to squeeze as much value out of things as they can.
That all sounds very dire, indeed. Not sure what to say.
Come to Europe? .
It really is a problem that is unique to the US. So if you encounter a lot of us US folk that are angry and jaded due to work, that’s why lmao. The protections and time off that Europeans receive is leagues better than anything here. Europe is definitely something we’ve personally considered for the future.
That might have been an issue. I actually know a lot of people from the US, but because I lived near military bases or international schools. But those are probably not people stuggeling. I don’t have actual insight into the mood of the country or any personal expirence.
But going by this thread and comment chain, working conditions, even in sought of sectors like IT, are apperently exploited quite badly in the US. More than I could have imagined. I was not trying to mock people that just want to get by.
Still, it seems very sad that this is apperently a reality so many Americans have to deal with, even in IT. You desperately need better labour protection laws in generals. And unions.
It’s honestly like a pressure cooker sometimes. That’s why strikes are happening so much more often in the US. The attitude towards corporations here is rightfully really pessimistic because of the mass layoffs, the rising prices of rent and everything else, poor employment environments, etc. We’re facing the brunt of late capitalism.
What in the boot licking fuck is this?
Most employers pay you to be on standby for last minute tasks. That’s what you are doing for the rest of the time. You are also planing on how to do these tasks more efficiently. That is all billable in my opinion.
Wow you’re not very intelligent
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No unequivocally, you’ve shown us you fundamentally lack intelligence. You’re all over this thread accusing people of fraud for working smart.
You are under the delusion of meritocracy, that good workers get rewarded for being more efficient than their coworkers. If you actually worked an office job ever in your life, you’d realize very quickly that this is not a dynamic that exists there.
Instead, you accuse everyone here of being a teenager. I wager you’re actually the teenager because it takes someone with exceptionally little life experience to have the opinions you have.
Hope your days as pleasant as you are!
Alright then. Good luck with your childish “bare minimum mondays” attitude in the real world. Hope you get fairly rewarded for all that “hard work” you’ll clearly be doing.
Imagine caring about stealing from a thief.
They’re just stealing back a fraction of what is being stolen from them.
Stealing from a thief is still a crime.
BTW, if they’re a thief, report/sue them. Or are they just “thief” because of an ad hoc moral system you made up to justify anything you do?
Wage theft is one of the least acted upon crimes. This system is immoral, and the people who run it are immoral. Thinking you will get any justice except for what you take for yourself is naive and wrong.
This system isn’t designed for us, its literally designed for the people its named after… Capitalists. Taking anything you can back from them is perfectly fine.
I grew up in a communist country, and we had a saying “if you don’t steal from your employer, you’re stealing from your family”. And people acted accordingly.
You would love that! Or perhaps not, it actually sucked for everybody.
Wage theft (when employers don’t pay their employees what they’re owed) in the US accounts for more stolen value every year than grand theft auto, larceny, petty theft, and breaking and entering combined. Yet wage theft is not considered a crime.
It’s the same story all over the world. The real issue isn’t the economic system but rather greedy people in positions of power with no accountability.
The original comment did not suggest any wage theft happening, and the original comment from the communist commando treated all employers as thieves.
What the hell are you talking about? Are you an AI bot or just stupid?
Yes, because every single empoyeer is a thief. Capitalism bad, mkay. Fucking tankies.
Get a real job. You obviously have never had one if you think most employers don’t “steal” to some degree or pay fair wages.
Maybe you should have gotton some qualification or had a better work ethic and you wouldn’t be stacking boxes at Amazon.
Making fun of a person’s job is easily one of the most unappealing personality traits a person can have.
I didn’t even know what his job is, I invented it. And I’m pretty sure all boxes at Amazon are stacked by robots, so it’s not even a real job.
Amazon is still very much fueled by human labor. “Warehouse Associate” would be the job title. It is definitely a “real job,” and the people grinding their joints into dust deserve so much more dignity (and compensation) than Amazon, and society as a whole, really, deigns to give them.
They really do. I know the South Park episode.
You guys should have like union or something, where a bunch of workers bands together to demand better conditions and so on.
I own my own company dude lmfao
Imagine thinking capitalists deserve anything other than being kicked to the curb. Workers do everything, the sooner we control things the better.
Yeah, that’s exactly what they said… can you refute that surplus value is extracted through exploitation of labour forces? No? Didn’t think so. Much easier to insult and deride, and pretend that was a meaningful or valuable argument, than to actually make one.
shut the fuck up.
Your employer is ALWAYS looking for a way to either get more work out of you for the same compensation, or replace you with some one or some process that produces the equivalent output for less cost. The entire idea that employees should be loyal to their employers is one of the most successful propaganda campaigns ever spawned by capitalism.
There was a time where more companies held on to people and you could start and retire in the same company. That’s now decades ago. That era ended with the oil crisis and never came back, despite bosses pretending it’s still there.
Oh, how they hate the new generations doing exactly the same as they do, and only being interested in what’s in it for them in the short term and not trusting any promises.
Well said.
If any new hires want to test this, simply ask your interviewer about the opportunities for advancement for the role you’re interviewing for, as well as the ways the company rewards good performers, initiative, and efficiency. They will 100% give you an excited, optimistic view of how there’s plenty of opportunity at this company and how effort and initiative are rewarded with bonuses, raises, promotions, etc.
…ask about any of those opportunities again in 2 years.
“Your work was perfect and thanks to your continued efforts going above and beyond we achieved record profits. Unfortunately the budget doesn’t allow any raise this year.”
The most likely answer to get in 2 years.
In what will probably be the best career coincidence of my life, I had searched, applied, background checked, interviewed, been offered, accepted, and set a start date for a new job while working at my current job…and the date I was to submit my 2 week notice ended up, after being delayed 3 times, being the date of my annual review.
Thus, I sat through my excellent review and was told pretty much exactly what you just said, with the bonus of “since you’re doing so well, we’re going to let you do the extra work of another employee who just quit due to over working after we laid off the other person who was with them…but also you’re still not going to get paid any more”.
I sat through the whole review and at the end of it, got the reward of getting asked if I had any feedback for them, and being able to say, “So… you’re telling me I’m doing everything right, and as a reward for that I’m getting no raise and double the responsibilities? I’m sorry but that doesn’t sound reasonable to me.”
And just as my boss started launching into the routine about being a team player and these are difficult times, I cut him off and said, “Sorry, but that doesn’t make it okay. In fact, this is my 2 week notice. I wanted to hear what my review and outlook for the next year would be before I said anything, but the company, through the review, has confirmed to me that I’m making the right choice. This isn’t anything personal against you…but it’s just clear the company doesn’t value me as anything other than an exploitable labor source and has no plans for me to advance in rank or pay…only in workload.”
I’m looking forward to enjoying this same experience in the next month or two. I’m about to interview for a new position that will more than triple my salary and half my workload. My current company loves to dangle the carrot ,“Do the work of a position two levels above yours for a year, and then maybe we’ll consider changing your title and compensation to match.” But of course they never do.
Yup.
At the job before the two I talked about, I got hired with a raise at 6 months built into my offer. After that, I was there 2.5 years with not one more raise, not even cost of living, let alone anything remotely keeping up with inflation or any sort of merit based increase.
The one time I asked about a raise, 2 full years in, I got the same response as you did. Work an extra job role on top of my main role for a year then we’ll think about it.
I asked in response what they’d say if I had walked in suggesting I should get a 50% raise for no extra work performance for a year, and then I’d decide whether or not I want to take on the extra work after a year of the extra pay. My boss kinda laughed and said that’s not how it works.
So I said exactly, it doesn’t work the other way either, and that was the end of that meeting.
…then it was total surprised Pikachu less than 6 months later when I gave my notice.
In one of my several “exit interviews” in which they tried to convince me to stick around (but offered only the “incentive” of letting me make more money…by working 5 hours of OT every week…when OT had been always available in unlimited amounts anyway), my boss asked me what was so bad about my current situation or what was so great about my new offer that I wanted to “hang him and the company out to dry” (they’d asked me to stay on indefinitely…at no raise…until they could recruit my replacement and I could train them…naturally I refused).
My answer was basically: “You remember how you laughed me out of the room when I suggested that instead of me working a year of double work for the same pay before you gave me a raise, and instead you give me the raise for a year and I’d decide if I wanted to do the work? Well this new role gives me a 40% raise and less than half the workload of my current role. Also it is strictly focused on my area of expertise and technical work instead of being 90% customer service like it is here, which I specifically asked about in my interview and was assured it’d be less than 25% public facing. So in effect, they’re actually beating the offer I proposed that you laughed at. Honestly, you wouldn’t even have to match their offer to get me to stay. Had you given me a 10 or 15% raise, I’d have never even gone looking. But now I’ve been offered 3 things I wanted, and you’ve made it clear that you never have any intention of ever even coming close to that offer, on any of the 3 fronts of pay, workload, and focus on technical work and getting away from customer relations.”
They said basically they were a small business and couldn’t afford to do any of that, and that was basically the end of the discussion.
Not always.