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What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

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Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#361

Post by TuringNYC »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #323
throwaway368 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the kind of moronic bs that I haven't and will not put up with. Executives most of the time are paid, and compensated to be there 24/7. Software engineers are not. While founders and other execs have tendency to forget that - deal with it. I am there between 8am - 4pm, or 6am - 2pm or what ever it says in my contract. No more, no less. You want me to do extra hours, fine, most of the time happy to, yo…

My colleagues have base pays > $150k/yr and I'm closer to $200k/yr. I consider myself very well paid, I'm grateful for it, and I'm available whenever I'm needed, within reason.

I once had a conversation with an HR manager in our Manhattan office, she was upset that the office cleared out at 5pm and how we didnt have a "banker's hour culture." I just nodded but knew the problem -- we had an underclass of workers, mostly H1Bs, on a tight HR-policy driven rate card, most making 2/3 or 1/2 that other workers were making. They made ends meet by living in outer New Jersey and commuting 2hrs each way. They jetted out quickly to catch the 5:35pm train out to NJ before express trains stopped. I'm sure the more we paid them the closer they could live to the office and the longer they would work. In NYC, homes and rents go down as distance to Manhattan increase.

I knew this as a fairly senior manager. Many people dont realize the stark differences in pay across different classes of workers. Getting up at 3am to fix a problem doesnt work for someone who needs to then get up at 5am to commute into work. It needs more thought and I did just that -- we had workers rotate night batch schedules and gave them Work-From-Home days or late-come-in-days during on-call periods. Even some of these things require thought -- allowing someone to come in late does'nt help if they live so far away that express/local train schedules dont make it feasible to come in mid-day...the commute ends up being as long as the half-day.

Sorry for the ramble, TLDR: be mindful of people's situations and things they dont control. Not everyone has it as good as you do. HR can save a dollar here but it comes out of productivity figures. Don't expect "banker's hours" but forget "banker's pay."

ASIDE: Several years later, the HR group got absorbed into the executive offices in posh rural Connecticut, where few low-level workers could afford to live locally. Low-level workers were required to visit the head office 2x/wk. The same exact HR manager then complained (in earshot) of how her commute was close to 3hrs each way and how she planned to sneak out at 4:30pm because she couldn't take it anymore.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#363

Post by edblarney »

kazagistar wrote: post #336
edblarney wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 'college education' one is tough. 'Opening a restaurant' does not require a Uni education, but I'd rather the person be smarter, more educated, understand aesthetics, customers, finance etc. - and be college educated. You don't need 'high school education' to do a lot of construction work, but I'd rather hire high school graduates. There's a lot of intelligence that goes into many of these kinds of jobs. As peop…

Do the schools cause the intelligence, or does achievement just measure it? Cause if level of schooling acts more like a measure of certain aptitudes, with the actual information learned being largely useless, then we still are faced with the problem of some people being increasingly unemployable.

You could argue then that only few need to go past grade 4 :).

I think that Uni develops character, opens horizons, builds esteem and competence in some areas, helps people organize their ideas, 'think bigger' , expose them to all sorts of ideas and disciplines they may have never heard of.

People are sometimes smug about 'MBAs'. I was an Eng. - and never took an Econ course in my life. My MBA was mind-altering (granted I also did it overseas and that provided some other kind of exposure).

Uni is usually worth it if the kids try to get something out of it.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#364

Post by cesarbs »

jcoffland wrote: post #356
cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

I don't want to work with you if you're a nine-to-fiver either. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with you for feeling this way but I don't want to work with people who don't love what they do. Edit: to clarify, by nine-to-fiver I mean someone who is just punching the clock in order to make a living but does not care much about what they are doing. I don't really care what hours you work if you're real…

Why the false dichotomy? Can't someone designate a certain amount of time of their day to work, and focus on other things in the remaining hours?

I love writing software, but that does not mean I don't love other things. Years ago I lived and breathed software. That's not the case anymore. I'd much rather help my daughter with her homework than read about the latest uber nifty JavaScript transpiler that will change my life and make everything awesome with unicorns and whatnot.

Our field churns the same ideas over and over. After a few years things get old really fast.

But there's what I said in another comment in this thread: I love writing reliable, correct, secure, well-documented software. Focus on those and my passion comes out. But come 5-ish o'clock and you bet I'm leaving the office to pick up my daughter from school and spend some time talking with her about her day and what she learned and whatnot. And then my wife will come home, we'll have dinner and we'll spend some time talking about our days and watching TV. Without those things I might as well not have a life.

I don't like it when there's an expectation that I'll be available to work 24/7. I don't want people expecting me to be on social media promoting my work or things related to it. I'll disappoint anyone who expected me to think of work as my life's mission or anything like that (unless I'm using my skills to help find a cure to a serious disease, or realistically help solving the problem of poverty in the world - that would change the game).

I have a number of interests in my life that are completely unrelated to work. Those are the things that I live for. Working is a means to bring in some cash that enables me to enjoy other things in life.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#365

Post by mdpopescu »

sqldba wrote: post #227
cmurf wrote: post #226

Well, if we're going to simplistically blame just one thing and blame the premise of jobs, why not blame the premise that everyone has a right to propagate, or do so as many times as they want? Obviously it's less provocative to say fuck work than fuck children; or jobs are the problem than too many humans are the problem. But if there aren't enough jobs to go around, part of that is because there are so many people.

Agreed. Why stop there though? How come some people hoard and/or inherit millions or billions? Has one Bill Gates really done the work of 40,000 people worth a million each?

At the very least. I am old enough to remember when he said he wanted a computer on every desktop. It was an insane thing to say. 40,000 millionaires didn't try to accomplish that.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#366

Post by ajmurmann »

jcoffland wrote: post #356
cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

I don't want to work with you if you're a nine-to-fiver either. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with you for feeling this way but I don't want to work with people who don't love what they do. Edit: to clarify, by nine-to-fiver I mean someone who is just punching the clock in order to make a living but does not care much about what they are doing. I don't really care what hours you work if you're real…

Those things aren't mutually exclusive. I've worked with plenty amazing people who enjoy their job at which they write fabulous code and then go home at regular hours and spend many hours on their personal projects or just playing around with new, interesting technology. Unless you own part of the company you work for that's probably the smarter thing to do.

What I find concerning are people who write mediocre code 9 to 5 but don't do anything to improve their skills on their own time.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#367

Post by gordaco »

jcoffland wrote: post #356
cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

I don't want to work with you if you're a nine-to-fiver either. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with you for feeling this way but I don't want to work with people who don't love what they do. Edit: to clarify, by nine-to-fiver I mean someone who is just punching the clock in order to make a living but does not care much about what they are doing. I don't really care what hours you work if you're real…

There is a huge difference between not having passion and not wanting to overspend it.

I once believed the usual propaganda about "passion" and "work hard, play hard". But I was so miserable at my job that I actually wanted to quit software engineering for good. Fast forward 5 years and I now have a 9 to 5 job (8 to 4 actually, which is even better for me). I can assure you that the main difference is that my current job is emotionally manageable and, more important, sustainable. Which is good both for me and for my employer. Meanwhile, I've seen lots of burnout on people who continued to believe the propaganda. Which is, again, bad both for them and their employers.

Forgetting about my job duties and considering myself unemployed from 4PM to 8AM has done wonders for both my mental health and my output at work. It's a win-win situation.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#368

Post by drvdevd »

rplst8 wrote: post #350
drvdevd wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on both sides of this equation: not wanting to be availble outside of "business hours" and also feeling frustrated when colleagues aren't available when I need them. I view this as an engineering and social process problem: your systems should be reliably engineered such that off hours maintenance or other technical issues are minimized. This gets to the social part: people will be more receptive to off hou…

I'm not going to be on call for other's people's garbage they call a production system.

Exactly. And why should you? Especially if your own efforts to make something "production worthy" are shut down -- indicative of both a social and a technical problem.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#369

Post by reflexive »

snoman wrote: post #324
WoodenChair wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heck, even if you made that proposition to a fast food worker that he could do meaningful work instead of smelling like fried stuff all the time and always be worried about working enough hours for a crappy boss and no future, or to a janitor that he could help someone instead of cleaning pee all day, maybe they would do that instead. Maybe even to an office drone, who knows. You imply that being a fast food worker…

I'm willing to give GP the benefit of the doubt and was only speaking of the people who don't like, or are not suited for, those positions. I think there's enough people that fit that description in any reasonably sized profession to make it a valid statement in that context.

Almost by definition, there are aspects of work that you don't like. The trick is to find meaning in your work so that you have the strength to complete it.

The post seems to be suggesting that we should just eliminate all of the "least desirable" jobs, which is a fine idea as long as you realize that the next tier of jobs will then immediately become the "least desirable".

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