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:
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.
Strong unions
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.
Being emotionally detached from really stupid leadership decisions is harder than it seems
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.
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.
my company
You mean “my responsibility”, right?
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.
I stopped giving a shit a long time ago. I do my best to consult and warn and if they don’t listen it’s not my problem.
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 similar3 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.
the Goldilocks zone of just fucked up enough
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.
Thanks!
“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.
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I might have to use that in my next all hands
The most important traits for doing well at work (in this order):
- clear, effective, and efficient communication
- taking ownership of problems
- having your boss and team members like you on a personal level
- competence at your tasks
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.
We’re talking here about engineering role after all.
where? seemed like general advice.
Even then, thee aren’t mutually exclusive. your competence will affect how people see you on a personal level, at least at work. And your competence affects your ability to be given problems to own. You’re not gonna give the nice but still inexperienced employee to own an important problem domain. they might be able to work under the owner and gain experience, though.
Documentation and presentation are highly undervalued, and your ability to understand and spread that knowledge can overcome that lack of experience to actually handle the task yourself.
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
I’m now a scrum master in a government IT team. I asked my team - all new to the work - to do hands on practice of the new systems, try a first stab at building our changes. Our changes were done in the second sprint (a sprint is two weeks of work)
Another team with probably weaker leadership, and maybe fewer competent workers spent six sprints (12 weeks!) “learning” and is unlikely to finish their work before Christmas
Management think my team’s great, but I think we’re mediocre, just tall among dwarfs
Loyalty is vastly overrated. The only rational course of action is to complete exactly the tasks to which you’ve agreed for the wage they’ve determined. Your employer will demand loyalty but never reciprocate. Don’t let them manipulate you.
Also, never ever let them see you sweat. It doesn’t matter how good your employer is, at the first hint that you’re insecure, they’ll pounce and you’ll be treated like garbage. Always have your briefcase packed and a box to clear out your desk on a moment’s notice.
I’m learning that second point right now and it is tough.
It is. Especially if it catches you off-guard. Hang in there.
IMO acting out of loyalty is never good. That is a backwards application of the concept intended to make you to act against your own interests.
Some people like to flip the idea of loyalty around from a description of behavior to a reason for behavior as a method of manipulating other people.
Like, if people see me consistently supporting my friends even when that is difficult they might think I’m ‘loyal’, but that’s backwards. I’m not supporting them because I am loyal, I support them because I like them and want them to succeed (and hopefully they’ll support me too). If someone wants loyalty from me, that’s an immediate red flag that tells me they either don’t understand why I do things, or they don’t care and just want me to do whatever they want.
I’m not sure that I completely understand your point, but I totally agree that loyalty is earned and not automatic. And it can be used against you to coerce acting against your own best interests. I keep running into this with my employer, despite mountains of evidence over the years.
I’m a slow learner.
loyalty is earned
For me, it’s not even that. Loyalty is not owed, nor is it earned. It is nothing more than a description of behavior.
Think of it this way: I always do my grocery shopping at Target instead of Walmart, even if I see that something is slightly cheaper at Walmart I’ll still most likely go to Target for it. Some might see that and say, “Look, he has loyalty to Target”, assuming that I shop at Target because I am loyal to that brand. But that’s backwards. Really it is that I can be described as ‘loyal’ because I consistently go to that brand. ‘Loyalty’ is a description of the behavior, not the cause of the behavior.
it can be used against you
Only if you have bought into the coercive bullshit that ‘loyalty’ is itself a reason to do something. Employee or customer loyalty is nothing more than an observation that people consistently support the company. That loyal behavior is seen because those people consistently have reasons to support the company. If you observe that people are loyally supporting your company, that is because they have reasons to do so (for example, you might be paying them to show up and do shit. Or maybe they think the shit they are doing is important or fun).
People who want something from you for less than it is worth will try to convince you that loyalty is something you owe them or that they have earned from you because if you believe the lie that loyalty is a reason for action that makes it easier to get you to give them something for free.
We’re going to have to disagree about allegiance being a behavioral motivator since means a strong feeling of support. That seems impossible to express in any way except motivated action.
People who want something from you for less than it is worth will try to convince you that loyalty is something you owe them or that they have earned from you
On this we totally agree. It’s bullshit.
No, I agree that allegiance is a behavioral motivator, but I think it is distinct from loyalty and that people tend to conflate the concepts (similar to how people sometimes conflate or confuse infer/imply and borrow/lend).
Loyalty, a behavior, can be observed; allegiance, a commitment (maybe supported by emotion, maybe not), cannot.
Allegiance and loyalty are synonyms. Both are nouns. They are defined in terms of each other:
loyalty
Word forms: plural loyalties
uncountable noun
Loyalty is the quality of staying firm in your friendship or support for someone or something.
I have sworn an oath of loyalty to the monarchy. [+ to]
This is seen as a reward for the army’s loyalty during a barracks revolt earlier this month.
Synonyms: faithfulness, commitment, devotion, allegianceallegiance
Word forms: plural allegiances
variable noun
Your allegiance is your support for and loyalty to a particular group, person, or belief.
My allegiance to Kendall and his company ran deep. [+ to]
…a community driven by strong ties and allegiances.
Synonyms: loyalty, duty, obligation, devotion--Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers
I learnt meritocracy is a joke long before I discovered that it was literally invented to be a joke.
it’s the same story of ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ too
At least meritocracy makes sense vs the physically impossible bootstraps one.
Also, i thought ghengis khan was all about meritocracy. That and marrying off his daughters and sending the kings to die.
Also, i thought ghengis khan was all about meritocracy.
No… Genghis Khan wasn’t a joke. Meritocracy is.
What a unique take on that phrase!
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.
,“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.
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.
We don’t have time to do it right the first time, but we will make just enough time to redo it wrong a few more times before the customer complains loudly enough that the boss pulls someone from another job which will now not be done right because we don’t have time.
HR protect the company first, the employees second.
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.
Yeah, looking busy is way more important than being productive a lot of the time. You always need to be doing something, so you just go through the motions of doing things because otherwise you’ll get shit from your employers. Waiting in good faith for more real tasks to emerge isn’t enough, so you must invent chores.
At least, that was very consistently my experience in retail.
Can confirm, not in retail but a fully remote programmer, managers are still very often concerned that “everybody has something to do” much more than “everything gets done”.
“idle hands are the devil’s work” but also “god rested on the seventh day”… uh oh my brain is short-circuiting…
Walking somewhere looking focused while holding something is a great tip I picked up from a coworker.
Yeah. Most of what I did was fake organizing, straightening, tagging, etc.
Pretty sure I heard from Seinfeld once. Also huff, sigh, and look visibly annoyed doing stuff - to give the impression you are working under pressure.
That everything I buy can be measured as totalCost/wages*0.82=hoursCost.
I love measuring things in hours.
Let’s assume I make 12/hr. Is 24 cans of soda really worth more (taxes) than an hour of work? 12 bucks might not sound too bad, but over an hours wages does.
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.
Wouldn’t DevOps pay a lot more than Infra in general? Seems to be the more in demand skillset at the moment.
Well it depends, I had gotten offers double and triple my yearly pay to move to the capital or go outside of my country for a system engineer position. Devops pays more in the US, for around 20-30k MORE per year, but other salaries in the US and other salaries in EU.
Personally I like system engineer/architect jobs more, DevOps is nice but lacks creativity.
