111–120 of 429 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've both layed people off and been laid off. I have a pretty good idea of what both sides feel like. Both sides suck. Really bad. It hurts like hell. Probably worse to be layed off than do the laying off.
Probably? Odd thing to say. If someone actually believed that they would quit rather than lay someone off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many times do I have to get annoyed at my kid for waking up in the middle of the night before you're OK with me kicking him out of the house? Keep in mind that he is currently 11 months old...
Kicking your child out of the house for doing what a child does is not in your long-term self interest or his.
I recommend an episode of RadioLab called "The Good Show"[1].
This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…
Job relationships ("voluntary, subject to termination by you or company at will, for any reason or none, with or without notice, at any time") are not even close to family relationships.
Until we get job-divorce judges like we have family court judges, with the power to divide assets, the idea that a workplace is a family is wishful thinking, at best.
This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…
It's moronic drivel, isn't it. Apart from being nonsensical (how can you bring less than your whole self to work, unless you've had some sort of psychotic breakdown) and the poor English ("seeing team as family") it just reads like corporate babble. It's not a family. I care about my family. I don't care about my job, its stakeholders, its values, its products or its customers. It's just a job. I'm a wage slave so I do it for the money and for no other reason at all. Whenever I see a company stating their values I immediately lose any respect I might have had for them. It's as if they've been on a fact finding trip to north Korea.
This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…
> "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." This is total BS that employers might say to employees but either people will be foolish to believe so. In India I worked for a large company that indeed operated like family. The company avoided layoffs by cutting salary of high performing employees to retain non-performers. Promotions were based on…
On the contrary, they absolutely should. It means they failed. Management should be punished for letting it get to that point, not rewarded for doing it as they often are.
FWIW, here's their public spreadsheet of salaries and calculations. Not sure if it's been recently updated (on closer look, seems to reflect the founders' stated pay cuts, and new hires as recent as last month): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l3bXAv8JE5RB9siMq36-... edit: Adding links to their blog posts: https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/ https://open.buffer.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffe…
I admire Buffer for being so transparent with their salaries, but I don't think I would ever decide to work for a company that mandated it. In my (admittedly limited) experience, mandating salary transparency tends to increase the salaries of low performers and reduce the salaries of high performers. It usually eliminates the potential for negotiating raises and poses difficult questions about paying some employees m…
Around here, $50k entry and $90k 10y+ senior for developers is fairly standard.
This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…
> Don't confuse your job with your family. Reminds me of this terrific article from David Brady. https://heartmindcode.com/2013/08/16/loyalty-and-layoffs/
This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…
I'd say no relationships, including family relationships, should be maintained if they aren't in the long-term self-interest of all parties. In other words, every relationship is a trading relationship, and the currency of the realm isn't always, or even often, monetary in nature.
I actually agree with you. In a relationship we trade constantly, something for something else: love for love, company for company, or any combination. They are like constant bi-directional streams.
As long as both parties are happy with what they receive and give, they will maintain the relationship; when that's not the case, well, that's when we get divorces, friendships destroyed, etc.
Yes, blood relationships are somewhat special, but if for instance you permanently severe the relationship with your kids, even though you can still claim they are your kids, I don't think is any different than not having kids at all.
However, if you factor in the fact that humans are emotional and highly unpredictable by nature, you'll quickly realize that constantly applying strategies from the business world to your personal relationships will quickly blow up in your face.
Flexibility and balance in how you approach things are key.
This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…
I agree 100%. I've worked for multiple companies that say "we're a family", then lay off people with no warning or remorse. Businesses are not families.
The Buffer guys clearly feel remorse, and wish they had better sense about warning. They regret that the layoffs are necessary.
But they are still doing it--which they should--its the people (including themselves) who deceived themselves about the relationship they have with the company that are in trouble.
This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…
I agree 100%. I've worked for multiple companies that say "we're a family", then lay off people with no warning or remorse. Businesses are not families.
And businesses are cutthroat capitalists when it benefits them.
All that family nonsense is just to talk employees out of looking after their own interests.
Your relationship with your employer is inherently antagonistic, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you some BS. That doesn't mean you can't work well together, but sometimes your interests align with the company, and sometimes they don't.