152 replies
3d2h
I began as a junior dev and climbed up the ranks til the point where I became the SME in some areas of the product.
Got laid off because sales goals were not met while they retained people which I think were incompetent in their work. Even some guys which I think were better and more critical to the projects were dumped.
I'm not climbing that ladder by being proactive and "pragmatic" again...
Call me a paycheck stealer, quiet quitter etc.
Just give me some JIRA ticket and let me read books while I get my job done in 1-2 hours a day.
Aren't we all (normal and decent people) doing this already?
As someone who cares about his work, has strong professional ethics and wisely chooses his employers to not end-up in such environments, no I don't.
The worst places for me are precisely those where you can get by with 1~2h of work a day because no one cares and the company's culture does not value the time and skills of his workers.
This is a pretty common attitude. That is, "I'm able to pick better workplaces than you are".
It implies you have control over the other people that work at the company. And unless you're the CEO, you don't. You cannot with any certainty tell what a work environment is like in the interview stage.
You can job hop a half dozen times until you find a good fit. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But framing it as: "I pick better work environments than you" is an attitude I'd really like to see disappear. It ignores just how much of a role luck plays.
You seem to be projecting a lot of insecurities. Some people prefer not to work in such an environment, and that is okay. Those people just switch jobs until they're satisfied, there is no "controlling other people" or whatever nonsense you dreamed up.
Interesting counter argument.
This is exactly what I said in my comment, if you take the time to read it.
Yes, how did you go from
to
instead of just assuming they'll just leave?
Let me ask this:
Do you agree that a work environment/culture is defined by the people who are a part of it?
Do you think that during the interview stage, an employer can characterize the work environment as different than it is in reality?
If you say yes to both of these, then I don't understand the disconnect.
Maybe I can summarize another way:
- It's not possible to really know what a work environment is like until you actually start working there. To deny this is to deny that other people at the company play a role in the work environment. Since you don't have control over other people, you don't have control over the work environment.
- Therefore, characterizing a decision to accept employment at a particular employer, as evidence of one's own superior ability to predict what the work environment is like is... misguided?
Job hopping until you find a work environment that fits is a good idea. But this is trial and error. It's not the result of a superior ability to sniff out work cultures before accepting employment.
My last question is: how did this line of reasoning offend you so deeply to suggest that I'm projecting insecurity?
Do you think you can't choose a different place of employment after saying "yes" to one? Do you think you're stuck there forever? Do you not realize you can choose a different employer, even after you already started working there?
At some point patience wears thin.
You're either a troll or have a reading comprehension issue. I think it's the latter.
Same goes to you. Are you dense?
You might benefit from: https://www.hookedonphonics.com/
It's more about not applying to certain jobs, or cancelling the process after the first red flag.
Sure I can. But I might have been at it for a decade or two longer than you have. Folks on HN talk about the warning signs and red flags in interviews all the time, and from my perspective they're mostly right.
edit: removed unfinished sentence
Guessing with a higher accuracy is still guessing.
If I'm rolling the dice then we've moved from d00 to d20 and saved a ton of time. Here are a few general examples of things I'll look at:
- Can I tell what the actual point of the job is from the job description? Does it describe what their services are in service to?
- How many non-technical, non-domain experts will I speak with before I'm talking engineer to engineer?
- How jazzed are the interviewers about speaking with me, in the moment? Are they interested in the details of earlier projects? Are they curious about me, or just running down a list of questions?
- Do they use leetcode or similar? There are a lot of really good reasons for a company to use leetcode in their hiring process, but none of those reasons are particularly good for me, as an employee.
- Do their interview questions make sense, given their context? E.g are they quizzing me on recursion from an environment where recursion wouldn't be a particularly great idea?
By that definition, nothing is a choice because nothing is 100% certain in life.
Even for something as simple as deciding to "go shopping" tomorrow, there is some probability that it does not happen. But it is still my decision to do so.
The only way to never fail is to never try. But it means you will never win either.
There is always an aspect of luck in everything. Also, the kinds of social skills which help you weed out bad potential employers and bad potential employees (when hiring) are likely learnable.
Not necessarily. It's "I'm less willing to stay at a bad workplace than you are".
Maybe it was bad when I picked it. Maybe it became bad after I was there for a decade. Maybe it became bad quickly; maybe slowly. Whatever. When I realize that it's become a bad place to work, I'm not "quiet quitting", I'm putting my resume on the street. I'm not desperately taking the first offer - I'm trying to find something better, not just something different - but as soon as I have a good offer, I'm gone.
This is harder and harder the more senior you get. It looks suspicious if you're hopping after 1.5-2 yrs.
One hop is probably fine. There wasn't a meeting of the minds. If it becomes a pattern, it will probably repeat.
Unless you want to get into a pure management position, the most senior (pay) technical resource is almost always a consultant. And you can give yourself the promotion to consultant any time you want. And when you're a consultant, job hopping is the expectation.
I understand what you're saying but respectfully, that is not what the person I am replying to said:
It seems like the truth though.
I have a friend who can only bear to work at places that provide meaningful work and aren't toxic environments. He finds "bullshit jobs" psychological corrosive and he will quicky become depressed if he finds himself at one. He will go six months to a year between jobs, and will leave a job quickly if it turns out it doesn't meet his criteria.
On the flip side when he finds something he likes he works 60+ weeks and never less than everything he can to the job. He burns bright and generally leaves after two years, repeating the process.
Most people aren't like this. They will work just enough at a job that is just good enough. It's not about being better, it's about taking a different approach to finding and retaining a job.
Why does he leave a meaningful company and gamble on the next one?
You named the solution. Switch jobs until the right one. That’s how you pick better. You can even formalize it. “Hey I would love to consult for 90 days; let’s skip the bulk of the interview process”
You can ask. Don’t tell me it’s impossible if you haven’t even tried
No. Many of us are working hard, trying to get real work done. And spending 20-40 mins a day checking Hacker News :)
Seriously though, don’t you feel bad by not pulling your weight? Someone has to get your work done.
That's often the problem, in that it doesn't truly matter if the work got done
There's a ton of "fake work" in corporate america. This is basically busy work that isn't used by any real customer, external or internal. That work doesn't need to be done, but shows up because someone committed to it for political reasons (or because they were clueless.) Someone needs a box checked, but didn't check if the box needed to be there in the first place.
And a lot of people can question these decisions and make and impact if they cared enough. I get tired of people, especially those with “senior” in their title complaining “they’re doing it wrong”, instead of participating in the planning and feedback and escalation process.
Do you ask them to participate? Many companies don't, because they don't want anyone but yes-men that will agree to the plans around.
It doesn't even need to be fake/busy work. It might just not be quite what's needed by the business or customer and see little/no use.
True, though often that sort of work "feels" different from the more traditional fake work. It's at least built with the intent / belief that a customer will actually use it.
You get the work done that the position requires. If you can do that in a couple of hours, I see no incentive whatsoever for most employees to increase productivity beyond the requirement for the position plus maybe some minor stuff that won’t be enough to encourage additional responsibilities.
If they want more than that, employers should pay significantly more than their competitors for those services, or significant stock bonuses tied to departmental efficiency, or some other add-on compensation that incentivises increased productivity.
A lot of promotion and salary increases comes from demonstrating your growing and operating towards the next level. Doing the minimum isn’t doing yourself any favors if you have any aspirations at all.
That’s fine for those who knowingly make that decision, but there are consequences.
This simply isn’t the case in the vast majority of companies, and honestly just seems kind of naive. Corporate America is a game of politics. Yeah working hard always looks good, but the guy who gets the promotion is the guy your boss plays golf with, not the guy who works 60 hours a week out of some idealistic obligation.
I’m skeptical of the “vast amount”.
But first I’m not suggesting 60 hours I have never worked a 60 in my life. But a solid 30-45 goes a long way, which shouldn’t be radical but some people here are advocating for 5-10 hour weeks…
There maybe a certain type of job (“middle management”?) where “golf” gives you an edge, but for companies with engineering tracks to the top, you need to demonstrate performance and be able to deliver and show impact. Some of that takes “politics” but you also can’t play politics in 5-10 hours either.
I should have added that my perspective is one of a founder, not an employee. It is just my observation of behaviour, not a moral position.
Its not your work unless you own the company
Then there will be no company
Your work is what you agreed to in exchange for your salary.
"your work" means "your responsibility" or "your part of the deal" here, not "you get legal ownership of the project".
The premise of a working contract being that you have to work in exchange for a salary...
You're applying emotion to the cold calculus of economics. I'm supplying an acceptable amount of labor to my boss (evident by the fact that my boss hasn't fired/complained to me) in exchange for an acceptable amount of money (evident by the fact that I haven't quit).
We're all on salary. Unless whatever I'm working on is going to boost my options enough to make it worth my while (it won't), there's no reason to break my back.
Exactly. If my boss is happy with my output, and work is still getting done on time, why does it matter how many hours I actually work? I don’t get paid more for going above and beyond. The only reward for busting your ass in corporate America is more work. It’s a depressing reality but it’s the truth.
Why should I bust my ass, just to get an extra percentage point on my yearly raise? I can work 30 hours a week and get 4%, or 60 hours and get 5%. The math just doesn’t make sense unless you’re working for a company you either founded, have significant equity in, or there’s some kind of profit sharing mechanism that actually results in a substantial amount of money.
this mindset only makes sense when the mission of the company is noble and appreciated by the greater community. otherwise you are a fool for having this attitude
20-40 mins an hour here chief.
What makes it "my work"? That is for management to decide, is it not?
You falsely assume the only 'work' to be done is that immediately aligned with sprint velocity rather than all that done to make someone a valuable contributor in the first place (what your employer is actually paying for). The person who spends ~2 hours a day 'working' and the rest of their day on research, self-education, or more theoretical domains will become exponentially more valuable over time compared the most endurant hamster wheel runner as a function of qualitatively superior capabilities. Smart engineers realize this growth curve and alter their trajectory, benefitting both themselves and their employer long-term.
I've known many such in my career. They weren't fooling anybody. Everybody knew who they were. When they'd get laid off or were passed over for a raise they were always baffled and outraged.
I think this highly depends on the manager. Some know (Manager A), and either work to correct it, or get their ducks in a row to fire them. Plenty of managers, though, (Manager B) have no idea what a reasonable amount of work output is, and can be easily convinced that what took 1-2 hours to do constituted an entire 40 hour week. You get some developer who's good at "managing upward" and they'll bullshit/charm and walk all over that manager. Often these managers are themselves "managing upward" to their directors, and so on up the chain, resulting in an entire reporting line successfully doing nothing.
It doesn't matter that the slacker's peers know exactly what is going on. They're too busy doing their own work, and if they complain about it to Manager B, they won't be believed.
To be clear, there’s a big difference between taking 4x as long to do something useful, vs actually doing nothing, or something of negative value ;-)
If you’re fast and working remote, you can still achieve seemingly normal output while reclaiming much of your time
The negative value is the worst. I was working on a project with someone. I'd check in periodically. After a couple weeks, he fesses up and tells me he hasn't been able to get very far, but things are "mostly done", I "just" need to test it for him and integrate it with the rest of the system. By mostly done, he meant the code had no tests and was never even run manually. In fact, the code would not even execute due to syntax errors.
I had to spend another week and a half reworking things. I got it to work well enough, but it would've gone smoother if he hadn't been involved at all. The result was crap.
I'm sure there are a surprising number of Brillant Paula Beans[1] still employed in software roles. No idea how you can pass a technical screen and multi-day interview loop without knowing anything about writing code, but it keeps happening.
1: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_brillant_paula_bean
I can tell you why. The CEO wanted to "hire quickly" for a project that did not even go live until 3 months after the original fake deadline. He ignored any suggestions that we keep looking at other candidates, then left for a different job several months later.
PS. I love TheDailyWTF!
I've been a manager and an employee and I've talked to many managers. They know who the slackers are, but there can be reasons why they take no action. When an opportunity arises to get rid of them, they do.
Yes. I've been specifically told that they are unable or unwilling to do anything about the slackers, but "understand the situation."
Yep. I've seen it happen. If you have too many clueless people at the top, the tail will wag the dog, so to speak. The slacker's peers often don't care as long as the slacking doesn't cause more work them. It's a "don't ask, don't tell" situation all around.
Until your manager and skip director are equally phoning it in and you're the only idiot being productive.
Uh huh. The more common case is they get promotion and raises like everyone else while sometimes producing -ve value. Even if there's a comeuppance one day, this can go on for years before there are any consequences.
Ignoring the amount of time spend working for a moment. I would be miserable if all I got to do during that time was work on Jira tickets others created.
I've seen a few places turn into "feature factories" where this is the day-to-day.
If you’re in a team lead or staff (most places) kind of position you can’t…
No. I feel ownership and collaboration over what my team does. We prioritize, design, review, and build together (not endorsing a methodology, just a culture). It has been this way since I was a junior engineer. I want to understand and solve problems. I want to learn and build bigger and better tithings.
Punching in premade tickets for 2 hours a day sounds like you’re already dead.
No, definitely not.
I've never felt secure enough to check out like this, even when my position was effectively locked in. I always want to improve and attain something bigger, so I look for problems beyond my scope when the work isn't coming to me. I feel comfort thinking I know how to take an idea through the full execution cycle due to my practice in seeking and solving problems. But it is hard for me to relax and let go.
I’ll be you ten bucks they got rid of people who bring up bad news and kept the yes-men. A company that doesn’t know what’s broken is doomed to mediocrity.
But some people want to play music while the ship sinks. So they arrange for the most pleasant rest of the voyage they can, instead of saving as many people as they can.
I’m pretty cynical and assumed this was how layoffs worked but at least in faang and even smaller (maybe 500 people) SV companies, I actually don’t think this is the case anymore. Most I’ve seen have been extremely random – it seems like they cut teams/orgs very differently but on an individual level it seems random. I got the impression it’s some lawsuit thing, because they never leak the info beforehand so managers and other seniors can chime in, so it appears they’re cutting blindly from the exec level. There’s probably some politics going on in the higher echelons and maybe they force individuals out but with managers (including decorated ones) and regular employees it has not looked like a surgical political - not performance - play. From what I’ve seen.
I wrote a comment on some other thread but there's just a lot of wrong place/wrong time at an individual level. If a company is doing a substantial layoff there just isn't the time, energy, or resources to train and fit people who may be generically "better" at some level into roles that already have people presumably doing adequate jobs filling them.
People are not fungible. Someone can be in a role where they're really valuable. But the company evolves and roles evolve and the needs are different. Sure, they might be able to excel in a new role eventually--but maybe it's not optimal to try to make them fit especially at a senior level.
Ok then why do we still have recruiters and HR? If their job is impossible why do we pay them to pretend otherwise? If people aren’t fungible why do we force them into fungible roles?
If the reality is that people are fungible and leadership is just out of touch and made bad decisions then they’re the ones that should be canned.
Hiring people is expensive. Firing people is expensive. Reorganizing people requires competent leadership.
You're cutting a division. You're cutting a project. Yeah, if you were hiring into a new position, you might hire some of the people you're cutting. But you probably aren't. So, yeah, you might try to retain some specific people but you mostly aren't interested in doing a large-scal rewizzle which will probably disrupt things even more than the layoff is already going to do.
Then why hire at all? If it’s all a project or disposable division just hire temps and contractors.
That's the case with many roles in many industries. Films are largely made on a project basis today rather than stars being tied to a studio.
In US tech, companies today generally prefer some degree of continuity/culture of employees and many employees prefer some degree of stability but it's hard to argue that there isn't less of both than in the past.
"Ok then why do we still have recruiters and HR? If their job is impossible why do we pay them to pretend otherwise?"
The same reason many devs exist - people convinced them it's better or more convenient to have an expert. The number of systems that could be an excel sheet...
And even if you mostly just have temps and contractors, you still need some HR/recruiters at any sort of scale. And you do still have costs associated with, especially, onboarding new people.
That’s how salesforce did it. One way you can tell how terribly uninformed the layoff choices were is that there were people who were actually rehired immediately.
When I got laid off at SFDC, I found out that they wanted to get rid of certain localities. Heroku was always a remote friendly place, which apparently irritated some of the new Microsoft-derived management; the story I heard was they wanted to consolidate Canada's talent in my branch in Toronto and Vancouver.
I'm glad I left as I got a large pay raise and didn't have to move to Toronto; but I wouldn't say it was random, just based on metrics unrelated to the individual's contribution.
You're right, it could have been based on the number of letters in their name, or the last digit on the clock when their name came up for a decision. It could have been every employee who hit a certain ratio of salary/years of experience. For the purposes of many employees being laid off, it was completely random. We had a lot of farewell drinks in Seattle, but the offices there aren't going anywhere.
I can see how it could be seen as random after reading that. It certainly wasn't a "fair" layoff in that there was literally nothing an employee could do to keep their current job from a performance standpoint.
Incidentally, did they do the "2 months to find a new job" thing for you too? I remember the whole process of looking for internal jobs to have been a bit chaotic and not very well planned at all. In retrospect, it made more sense to not apply anywhere, and just take it as a vacation, since they didn't pay out my vacation days. (I wonder if that wound up as an extra boat for someone)
-edit- I have absolutely no idea why your post is being downvoted, and I have started seeing this random downvoting everywhere.
I didn't actually get laid off, I was one of the people still there trying to figure out who was gone. Part of what makes the random nature so memorable is the refusal to tell us who had been laid off, so everyone spent days pinging others and building lists (when someone tried sharing a list of laid-off people in a public slack channel they were told to take it down). I got the bonus bizarre experience of eventually hearing that my direct manager was gone.
I charge 3x my hourly rate and a two hour minimum to talk to anyone who laid me off.
If I worked somewhere that I loved that much that I’d even entertain the idea of coming back, I’d probably be too gutted to talk to them about it.
This is a legal thing. If you do a layoff it's for business reasons and you can avoid all of the PIP and such. But if you do it that way you can't select based upon performance.
Isn’t this why some people are so into performative work? In a layoff the people they suspect might be underperforming go onto the list. They keep the people who look good on paper, the ones who play the game.
Not the “untapped” people the author is talking about.
That's exactly it. The untapped people are actually getting bunched into the "underperforming" category because in the eyes of the beancounter they are not meeting some benign performance metric that the company wants to see.
Say I'm a phone support company. I have a script I want my employees to follow and the average support time per phone call should be anywhere between 15-30 minutes. Sally Sue is on the phone for the full 8 hours and handles 16 calls a day. Billy Brass is on the phone for 4 hours of the day but handles double the amount of calls a day.
To the bean counters Billy is underperforming because he only spends 4 hours time on the phone and the company only makes money for the amount of time they can keep people on the phone. In this example it doesn't matter that Billy is an all-star because he completed more calls, he's underperforming because he's not following the script that should keep people on the phone for as long as possible.
The point is that Billy will feel resentful because even though he's able to help more people in less time he's getting penalized so Billy has less incentive to go above and beyond and in fact needs to degrade his workflow to fit someone else's metrics. So Billy becomes "untapped" because the company has restricted his autonomy. He "CAN" do more but that's not what the company wants from him so he will choose not to do it even if it's to the benefit of the company.
That's how I see it as well. In a layoff, the role is being eliminated as opposed to a person being fired. So they cut entire teams working on "unprofitable" products or certain roles deemed "redundant" within the product. You typically have the option to take a severance or apply for another role internally.
This is my understanding based purely on my experience getting laid off once - so take it with a huge grain of salt. The product I was working on was shutdown. I got paid a retainer to stay until the product can be properly wound down. Then got hired into a different role in a different team with a pay bump within a month. I got to keep the retainer as well - as long as I support the wind down efforts.
Unless they are given meaningful equity, it's not their ship, and regardless of whether it is or isn't, unlike the shareholders and creditors, they won't be sinking with it.
If you want worker interests to be even a little aligned with owner interests, the correct corporate structure is not an S corp, or a C corp, it is some flavor of worker co-op.
And even then, it can't grow too big.
A co-op only attenuates to employees. There are better options. Example: FairShares Commons
I am very interested in learning about these types of models.
I don't know what search terms would get me there, and/or any lists of these types of models that have been curated.
Could you suggest anything that would expedite researching this?
I'm sorry that I don't have a good index or personal awareness to share. Boyd's book linked in a peer response is a source but otherwise I can only offer that B-Corps [0] or Benefit Corps are the formally/legally recognized entry into space. A structure like the FairShares Common is a sophistication, based on the articles of incorporation above and beyond establishing legal obligations to a purpose (as is part of B-Corp incorporation). It is, itself, based on the FairShares [1] and Commons ideas [2].
[0] https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/ [1] https://www.fairshares.coop/fairshares-model/ [2] https://p2pfoundation.net/the-p2p-foundation/about-the-p2p-f...
That is helpful.
I previously had no idea of any existing frameworks.
I will undoubtedly gain a lot of insights through learning about them.
Thank you.
Don’t you have the same problem illustrated by this author? My perspective is the “untapped” people get diminished rewards for their inputs because they are being outplayed by politicos who inflate their importance to the process at the expense of others. For some people it is less work to make the system unfair than to excel on a fair system.
I agree that this structure has incentive problems and have so far avoided it. That said, I think it does better than a co-op. This fits the saying "the opposite of stupid is not smart". Standard corporations [frequently] used to serve only owners have a problematic incentive structure for everyone else. A co-op that serves only employees has a different bad incentive structure. Of course there are instances of improvements over the base incentive. The FairShares Commons attempts to be explicit about the balance between the stakeholders of the corporation. You can read more on Boyd's site [0] but really chapters 15 and 16 of his book Rebuild that seems to be linked there.
[0] https://graham-boyd.biz/fairshare-commons/
People get invested in their work. And there are a lot of software people who make their work part of their identity, and so when they are accused of doing bad work they take is as a personal attack.
Getting invested doesn’t mean your interests align. What’s best for your or the product can be different than what’s good for your boss, your company, your customers, or your teammates.
I used to document things in a way that would quickly get people up to speed, but was generally useless to current team members. Very useful if you where new or hadn’t touched the project in 3+ years, but no so helpful if you’ve been working on it for the last few months.
The part I'm confused at is it doesn't seem that they are doomed, and end up being very successful companies. But I think this is likely due to lack of competition.
I recently did an internship at one of these big companies, doing ML. I'm a researcher but had a production role. Coming in everything was really weird to me from how they setup their machines to training and evaluation. I brought up that the way they were measuring their performance was wrong and could tell they overfit their data. They didn't believe me. But then it came to be affecting my role. So I fixed it, showed them, and then they were like "oh thanks, but we're moving on to transformers now." Main part of what I did is actually make their model robust and actually work on their customer data! (I constantly hear that "industry is better because we have customers so it has to work" but I'm waiting to see things work like promised...) Of course, their transformer model took way more to train and had all the same problems, but were hidden a few levels deeper due to them dramatically scaling data and model size.
I knew the ML research community had been overly focused on benchmarks but didn't realize how much worse it was in production environments. It just seems that metric hacking is the explicitly stated goal here. But I can't trust anyone to make ML models that themselves are metric hackers. The part that got me though is that I've always been told by industry people that if I added value to the company and made products better that the work (and thus I) would be valued. I did in an uncontestable manner, and I did not in an uncontestable way. I just thought we could make cool products AND make money at the same time. Didn't realize there was far more weight to the latter than the former. I know, I'm naive.
So let's compete! What are they selling? What prevents competitors from springing up?
No connection to OP, but user base and network effect if I know modern online giants at all.
Yeah this is part of the issue with that particular product, the other is the initial capital. But also, the project itself was a bit too authoritarian style creepy so I'd rather not. But I've seen the exact same issues in MANY other products (I mean I could have told you rabbit or humane pin would be shit. In fact, I believe I even stated that on HN if not joked about it in person. I happily shit on plenty of papers too, and do so here)
I think what a lot of people don't understand is that there's criticism and dismissing. I'm an ML researcher, I criticize works because I want our field to be better and because I believe in ML, not because I'm against it. I think people confuse this. I'll criticize GPT all day, while also using it every day.
Mostly capital? Honestly, I have no idea how to get initial capital. Yeah, I know what site we're on lol. But I'm not from a top university and honestly I'd like to focus on actual AGI not this LLM stuff (LLMs are great, but lol they won't scale to AGI). Which arguably, if someone is wanting to compete in that space, why throw more money at a method that is prolific and so many have a head start? But they're momentum limited, throw me a few million and we can try new things. Don't even need half of what some of these companies are getting to produce shit that we all should know is shit and going to be shit from the get go.
Regulatory capture, regulations in general, patents that shouldn’t have been granted, lawfare, access to capital..
Peoplw conceptualize businesses likr some super organism that should try to maximize the quality of its products.
In reality, it most.often maximizes its executives lives while minimizing all other forms of frictions.
Everyone whose worked with small businesses will rscognize this pattern easily. Uts only when you get a few e?tra executives that the equation itself gets comolicated, but its still typically about maximizing the executives livlihood.
I used to have that attitude, but since then I've grown to learn that people who bring back news are also creating the problems without providing any solution whereas the "yes-men" excuse is a coping mechanism to rationalize why those who try to actually tackle problems and are smart enough to not raise them before they actually exist ir have solutions are indeed an asset to the team.
No one wants to deal with a pain-in-the-ass who creates problems for everyone out of thin air. That's what gets you fired. Everyone has to deal with real problems, and they don't need the distraction of having to deal with artificial ones.
I have been doing this for years and I think it's the best output per hour worked strategy if you have a clear exit plan outside scaling the so-called ladder
Exit plan is FIRE. Everything else is circus and performance art. Others can play status games, I prefer wealth games: wealth is options and options are freedom.
Pragmatic, smart, skilled people are extracted from unless lucky and in a position to see outsized returns from their effort. Better to know what enough is, collect enough freedom coins, and enjoy the one go you get at life.
(n=1, ymmv, "show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome")
I had a bit of an epiphany when I read this comment since you hit the nail on the head so succinctly.
Wealth is the only true path that gives you options. All other paths are dependent on income.
There really is no other exit plan except financial security. Every other plan is just putting you into the walls a new rat maze.
True wealth has a lot of non-financial measures.
Non-financial goals are way way harder to achieve than FIRE: the biggest issue is selecting your non-financial goals. Money is a simple goal and it isn't impossible to achieve - then what?
Deciding that money should be your primary focus overoptimises for financial wealth against non-financial wealth.
For example, life satisfaction: do you know people doing jobs they love? People that would continue their calling even if it didn't pay them? Try to understand their wealth even if they don't have the financial freedom a successful business can give you. The main problem is most of those jobs are not in businesses and it is hard to understand things we haven't experienced. Jobs are a very poor example but you get the idea.
I've retired early: for me personally, financial wealth is not enough.
One limited resource that we are approximately all given the same amount of is time - you get fifty years between 20 and 70 to use the best you can. I think most people don't use their limited resource very well (even those that optimise their time well seem to use it poorly on bad meta-goals).
True, but I believe also its important to factor in that those in lower socioeconomic classes effectively have their time stolen from them in many ways.
ex: I don't enjoy fixing the vast majority of things I have to fix, (although there can be a sense of satisfaction in it sometimes), but I have to 1st learn to do so and then do it because I absolutely need it fixed, but don't have the funds to pay to have it done. To compound the loss of time, financially wealthy people can afford to buy new things, like automobiles, which dont break down or require nearly as much maintenance.
Many other things are also outsourced by people because their time is too valuable to do otherwise this outsourcing is just not an option for others.
Personally I find the words “stolen” and “theft” is usually just political signalling when applied to time. The metaphor has some sense, but so does pirating as theft of copyrighted movies…
One significant waste of our precious “resource” is often paid for in money regardless of our socioeconomic status - the 40 hours doing shit we wouldn’t do if we didn’t get paid for it - and then often using the money to win regretful prizes. Capitalism deeply sucks but it sucks less than some other things humans have tried.
a huge amount of wasted time in wealthy countries is under our control: the classic example of TV. Or working harder to buy a bigger house we don’t really need. My poorer friends choose to waste their time as much as my richer friends do.
My path to discovering this was costly and fraught with suffering. I hope by sharing, your experience is less so. The sooner you learn, the sooner you can modify your trajectory for a more favorable outcome. I wish you freedom.
You don’t need a ton of options. You can’t live fifty different lives.
Aggressive FIRE makes a ton of sense for the few people that know early what they want out of life. If you want to spend your life surfing by all means, work the system to the hilt (leetcode, job hopping, etc.) and retire by 30.
But a lot of people that go down that road get to 30 and find that they have no clue what makes them happy to begin with. Fairy tales for upper middle class young adults notwithstanding, travel doesn’t magically impart this or any other wisdom either.
I think that is a great plan and good advice, but you may find as you continue in your career that you enjoy work more. When I was starting out I was always tired, anxious and frustrated. Now I would never even get hired for those kinds of jobs (or take them). You may get to a point where you have a lot more power and discretion at work and enjoy it. There's a lot to be said for working at jobs you enjoy.
I hope to one day find meaningful work I am compensated for, or have accumulated enough wealth such that compensation is no longer relevant. Thanks for the reply.
Too late, FIRE'd at 30, never enjoyed work
I enjoy my work as well.
But I realize that things outside my control can force me into a poor working situation any day.
Did you get cut cause "we need a number" and you're expensive?
Were you the growth guy when they need run the busies blood and guts people?
Did they save 2 people in some other department who matter more with some horse trading?
You can go and be a clock puncher. It's perfectly fine to do so. I know plenty of them, some got laid off recently and cant seem to find jobs. The high achiever's the go the extra mile types who are LIKED (dont be an asshole) are all working already.
Down vote me all you want. I was here for the first (2000) tech flop. The people who went the extra mile and some safe and secure corporates were the ones who made it. Coming out the other side (the ad tech, Web 2.0 boom) there were a lot of talented, ambitious, hard working people around. Any one who wasnt that ended up in another field that made them happy.
Might want to think a bit about survivorship bias and see how it might apply.
Thats the point.
Who survives in a down turn?
It's not the folks who are "pragmatic" its not the folks who give up...
You work with two people, Bob who punches the clock and Bill who puts in the time to get the extra work done. You move on to a new job and your boss says "we need someone new on your team, Bob and Bill are here".
You're not picking Bob, Bill gets your vote.
Dont be an asshlole be known as at the hard worker, be helpful (maybe have to do some extra work)... your going to get picked when people are looking. Your old boss is part of your network, and so are your peers (who might end up your boss)...
All those people who are survivors, who put in extra work, have strong networks who know that they are strong hires in a tight market.
In the layoffs I've been through, it's just as often that it is Bob who gets the vote.
Not for any reason, it's just random. Bill rolled a 1 somewhere, in that layoff. Better luck next time … if there is a next time.
Nobody is picking. Nobody is choosing, or making rational decisions. Just one day, hey, this entire subtree of the org is just simply laid off — individual performance had nothing to do with it. Or other versions of this that are just equally as obviously random.
Yes, the survivors might have put in the extra work. But what the person above you is saying is that that wasn't why they survived.
It seems you missed a beat here.
The comment you're replying to isn't talking about the layoff round. It's talking about what happens next, when someone from the team gets hired elsewhere and the boss says "we need more people". Who gets brought in?
This is a very common scenario in our line of work.
Oh, a bit, the parent comment is a bit malformed at that point (why is the new boss talking about my old coworkers? how?), and yeah, I think your interpretation is probably correct.
… that's not really a situation that occurs, for one reason or another. Good people tend to be able to line up "next job" somewhat quickly and even if not, "my job" being a match isn't going to happen on a timescale after a layoff. I.e., we're laid off, time passes, I recover with a job, more time must pass before I'm going to be in the "we need more [good] people" and by that point there's basically no way they've not found work. Even then, getting a recruiting team to articulate a pitch in this industry is rending blood from a stone.
Been there. Done that. Doing the work of five people because I was the survivor and the others got a severance package was no fun. I could only pull it off for six months before being burned out.
That's uh, not survivorship bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#/media/File:...
"It can also lead to the false belief that the successes in a group have some special property, rather than just coincidence"
Manager propaganda to make us go the extra mile, don't listen.
It's all well and good to include a disclaimer about downvotes. But, it is somewhat irrelevant, as the reason you are most likely to be downvoted is not because you are touching on a sensitive subject. They are downvoting you because your argument makes it very clear you actually haven't read the article.
To assume all organizations reward or value expertise the same way is to cap your maximum lifetime earnings, methinks.
I'm in this trap right now a little bit. After a particularly egregious instance of feeling passed over for a promo, how can I trust that the next jerkoff won't do the same thing?
It's a pretty strong signal that your opinion of the value you're providing is not shared by those who are making the decisions. Regardless of if it's their own ignorance or not they aren't going to suddenly change their feelings about it.
Oh yeah, agreed; I quit the moment it happened. What I mean is now I'm sort of wary of the same situation re-occurring at the next place I work.
People aren’t all the same. It’s easy to forget this.
And it totally makes sense to be wary! That will help you pick a better place next time.
Although, to be fair, the average place probably closer to what you describe, meaning there is a limited supply of high quality places at the top end of the distribution.
I'm convinced there is no means available to an employee to "picking a better place". Last time I job hopped, I tried to do that — and largely, I think I succeeded. But company leadership changed, my good boss left and was replaced by a terrible new boss (who has since also left, and been replaced by a less terrible boss) … so what I evaluated when I joined is no more.
And that assumes I can even truly do a good job of evaluating a time of joining … I tend to believe I got more lucky than anything else there.
You 100% can trust that they will do the exact same thing, accept that you are always rolling the dice and progress at the irrational whim of some higher power in the organisation.
You make think that you're hiding this attitude in your professional life, but you're not. The reason it keeps happening to you is you've created a self-fulling prophecy.
I'm a manager and it's odd that you think 1. we don't care for and push really hard to progress the people we manage, and 2. somehow we're so different that we're not in the same situation.
it's tough, but you should put some explicit thought in to what you expect, and what it's worth to you. You'll probably have to "give some of it away for free" to prove you've got something of value; the hard part is deciding when you've given enough and can leave or deliver an ultimatum. Define something you really want to do that demonstrates your value. Tell your boss explicitly what you want and how you're going to earn it. Do the thing. Ideally you'll get the reward but if not ask. Follow through on your convictions.
Control your destiny. Form an LLC and go prospect some customers on your terms.
And in the end, the terrible people won. Because you stopped caring seeming about anything, you're likely living a worse more jaded life, and your next company isn't getting a good employee.
Learning an important lesson isn't about flushing your aspirations down the toilet. That's just cementing your destiny as someone who will never achieve moderate success. If that's your goal, shrugs?
Life is more than your job.
When that dynamic takes hold, it is more that the good people failed. There is an extremely real subset of the population that gets a thrill out of telling other people what to do and damn the technical consequences of their orders. If people who are uncomfortable being in charge don't figure out a way to get over their own reservations; then guess who will hold all the positions of power? People who really want to. And not necessarily because they are nice or capable people, but because they'll say or do anything.
The part that frustrates me is that technically competent people often get brutally attacked because they lack charisma. It is wildly counterproductive.
Respectfully, I think this is rather judgemental (I realize the irony that I am judging you, too :)
It doesn't have to be a battle, there doesn't have to be a winner. Everybody is free to explore their limits and boundaries, and put energy into the areas of life that they find most fruitful.
Maybe OP really does want a kick-in-the-pants "get back in there and fight!" pep talk — in which case, ignore me. But maybe they just decided that it was not their particular hill to die on. It takes all kinds.
hmm, i seem to have made this a hobby of mine.
No. Terrible people won because terrible people were in positions of power, as is the case often.
Good jobs, great jobs even, can and do turn to shit overnight. It's often the management itself.
People don't leave bad jobs they leave bad people.
The job is something in their life workers, in a non-slave market, can take control of.
There's no good reason for a person to stay working for nutters.
There's no good|sane reason to reward bad behavior.
They have ZERO obligation to fix a toxic workplace and culture.
That is management's failing entirely.
Your next employee|team member isn't getting a good boss|colleague.
What about not fucking up your life and find a good comany to work for?
How is this “fucking up [their] life”?
Some people don’t care about the grindset or putting in 50hr weeks. As long as work gets done and you’re reasonably keeping your skills up to date, what does it matter?
If anything it’s more of a win by gaining hours of your life back that would’ve been spent people-pleasing.
You can write whatever you want on a resume and nobody can tell if you burned out on both ends or phoned it in for 1-2 hours. So, no, holding a position for X years, when presented in a reasonable manner at the next interview, cannot possibly fuck your life up.
That's a hard pill to swallow after years and years of the same routine 'unsuccesses' , and it relies on the personal belief that A decent life cannot be lead without success in finance and business; I believe that's simply not the case.
Since this is always relative, that’s like ‘why not just be rich?’ isn’t it?
The devil is in the details and the ‘how’.
That is why I work like I get paid, a little bit on Fridays.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I poop, on company time.
That was a rhyme from a simpler time. Now the boss makes a grand and I make a buck. So, let's steal the catalytic converter from the company truck.
Also saw:
The boss makes a dollar, I make a cent, need a side hustle just to pay the rent.
Yep. After being laid off, I decided that I am best working with the diligence of a Boeing QA engineer. Do the bare minimum and use overemployment to flee the work world as fast as possible.
You'd do better to go work hard for their competitors or create one.
I was layed off after being burnt out on exactly what you're describing. The organization lost 5 years of deep institutional knowledge into their systems that I designed because i couldn't get buy in on what I thought was important.
If it so happens that that company was wrong in what they did, you run the risk of optimizing for the wrong things based on one bad observation. The company doesn’t care. The negatives only affect your career.
Sounds similar to me. I didn't get laid off though, and my climb was only one actual promotion even though I was filling a tech lead position. I managed to switch teams right before the layoff/outsourcing. I tried hard on the next team and again achieved a great reputation in the department. But it meant nothing and I got nowhere. I even had a few people in the department ask why I was taking a demotion out of the group - I wasn't, they all just thought I was a higher level than I actually was... fuck the system.
My life exactly. I used to dream of a kind of high drive team, did more than I should, on obvious metrics (velocity, onboarding, performance, ..) .. but the average politics in all human groups makes it too rare and you end up suffering too much absurdities. It's a lesson in statistics and relativism.