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People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

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Re: People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

#81

Post by nostrademons »

nasalgoat wrote: post #60
sharkweek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think deep down, a lot of people have a low hum of awareness that they don't believe what is being said, but it's a survival mechanism to repress this in order to maintain a sense of worth in the work being done/not get fired for not being a team player.

My personal perspective is cynical like yours - that it's generally a scam to try and extract more "value" out of workers - but my wife works at a large corporation where they seem to genuinely try to make it an enjoyable place to work and the people involved, all the way up the ladder, are committed to that ideal. Praise flows freely, they do a ton of charity work, and it's not a thin veneer over a corporate machine…

Why is it a scam to try and extract more value out of workers?

They're going to spend that time on earth somehow, and if they're not actually working when they're at work, it'll just be Facebook or Zynga or YCombinator or Reddit that's extracting value out of them. Actually caring about the work just means that they'll actually learn some skills and develop a good professional reputation, which'll set them up for a better next job.

(I'm assuming a company with reasonable working hours but a strong mission alignment, not one that works their employees 24/7 for dubious returns.)

Re: People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

#82

Post by TheCoelacanth »

I wonder if that is roughly the age where it usually becomes apparent that further career advancement is going to be much harder. I'm 29 and I'm pretty sure one more promotion will be fairly easy to get, but after that it looks much harder and will require developing some skills that I haven't needed much in my earlier career.

Re: People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

#83

Post by [deleted] »

_ncxu wrote: post #9
karllager wrote: post #6

I believe the tech sector is extremely prone to this: If you cannot climb out of a technical role, over time, you realize just how clueless most people are, especially those who imagine themselves of being "in control". Not just a bit uninformed, no: absolutely positively clueless[1]. If you go the management route, you often give up, what got you started with all this is the first place: curiosity and exploration, c…

I'm only 31 and found out the hard way that 90% of the way successful people got to where they are is through charisma, lying, and cheating others.

[deleted]

Re: People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

#84

Post by beezelbo »

SubuSS wrote: post #47
_ncxu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only 31 and found out the hard way that 90% of the way successful people got to where they are is through charisma, lying, and cheating others.

If you meant 90% of successful people's way is paved by those things, I don't agree: It is very easy to discount hard work and forgive our own laziness by zeroing in on 'bad' stuff. If you meant 90% of the successful people got there by those things - then I would want to understand your definition of success. The folks I consider successful have always used their opportunities well, not just rode out the luck. We al…

I think it depends a lot on the field and where you work, and how you define "success".

I used to think the way you're describing until I got where I am and saw just how dysfunctional the system is in my field--the corruption and sheer luck. It gets worse the higher up you go.

I think there's also problem with these types of discussions because of survivorship bias, which is rampant in contemporary society. That is, the experience of individuals who either benefit from, or who are shielded from, these types of problems, aren't aware of them, and therefore have a different view. This isn't to imply that if you don't agree, you're corrupt, but I think some individuals by virtue of certain attributes aren't aware of the problems that ensue--notice that the OP included charisma in the list, which isn't an ethical problem among the charismatic necessarily but is one that creates ethical problems for those who are not.

I guess what I'm saying is that I appreciate your encouragement, but you have to keep in mind that things worked out for you. If they didn't, you might be offering a different explanation.

I think we tell ourselves that meritocracy works because the alternative is much darker and harder for us to wrestle with, because it invokes a feeling of moral obligation to do something to fix it.

In my field as I go up, what I see are people succeeding on the basis of popularity, which is not necessarily the same as contributions. For some, this is because of outright corruption. For others it's because of something many would consider ethically problematic, even if unintentional. In still other cases I think there's just basically luck, in the sense that they applied for jobs at the right time and where they ended up just happened to be exactly the right fit, which was not what happened to others who then languished.

I have very close friends who I would consider as successful as they possibly could be in their field, but not once would I ever say they are really deserving of that success more than many others. My convictions over time have only hardened, because I've seen their reversals switch due to natural experiments of sorts, where they are repositioned for reasons outside their control.

Maybe someday I will end up seeing things as you're suggesting, and I'm just in a dark period of my life, but the way it seems to me, it's like a curtain was lifted and there is a very sinister wizard behind it.

Re: People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

#85

Post by dflock »

scrumper wrote: post #45
sharkweek wrote: post #10

I started to notice this in my late 20s. It felt kind of like a "the emperor has no clothes" moment when I was working at a tech startup that pushed long hours/weekend work in order to fulfill some "mission" and "greater purpose" and that I should feel a part of this for the greater good. It kind of hit me that this was mostly just a fantastic way to extract more work out of young, impressionable 20somethings who did…

I'm quite interested in fully worker-owned cooperatives, with necessary management hired in by and accountable to the collective (think: CFOs). I'm thinking of the kind of structure of the Martian cooperatives that Kim Stanley Robinson writes about. These organizations are likely extremely hard to get off the ground and certainly would be virtually impossible to grow beyond a certain small size, but the software indu…

These already exist and are much larger and more successful than most people realise. Start here and follow the links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

Re: People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

#86

Post by Stryder »

nasalgoat wrote: post #61
_ncxu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only 31 and found out the hard way that 90% of the way successful people got to where they are is through charisma, lying, and cheating others.

I was recently tapped for a VP position at a bank and out of curiosity I checked it out. An initial meeting later I could see I wasn't a good fit. I think there is a fundamental difference between myself and the people who are successful in such environments and I've been trying to figure it out. They all seem very confident, polished, with expensive clothes, but is there something deeper there involving people handl…

Do you feel like this is a problem? Were you able to become financially secure following your path?

Re: People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

#87

Post by Deestan »

vkuruthers wrote: post #66
ditonal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Went through this exactly. My guess is because founders select for overconfidence (necessary for pitching investors maybe?) It also ties into founder worship which seems really common (people always dropping reasons founder is some uberhuman). I just felt like my intelligence was insulted. I also found out a lot of the other people who "bought into" the "mission" were really just playing along. We also did a lot of "…

Sounds like your agile process was actually "flacid agile", this is very common. Suffering this at my current workplace too.

Agile implies flexibility and strength.

If you don't have "strong" - i.e. skilled and disciplined - people, or you can't allow things to happen outside "just because ok?"-rules, it's flaccid agile.

Like jelly in a glove, it's flexible but not in a useful way.

Re: People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

#88

Post by scrumper »

dflock wrote: post #85
scrumper wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite interested in fully worker-owned cooperatives, with necessary management hired in by and accountable to the collective (think: CFOs). I'm thinking of the kind of structure of the Martian cooperatives that Kim Stanley Robinson writes about. These organizations are likely extremely hard to get off the ground and certainly would be virtually impossible to grow beyond a certain small size, but the software indu…

These already exist and are much larger and more successful than most people realise. Start here and follow the links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

I had certainly heard of those (they're referenced in the books, by name and fleetingly, directly), but I had no idea of the scale. Very interesting, thank you.

Edit: how could I have forgotten John Lewis, a solidly middle class British department store and supermarket chain not a million miles away from Mondragon in structure.

Re: People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35

#89

Post by Stryder »

beezelbo wrote: post #84
SubuSS wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you meant 90% of successful people's way is paved by those things, I don't agree: It is very easy to discount hard work and forgive our own laziness by zeroing in on 'bad' stuff. If you meant 90% of the successful people got there by those things - then I would want to understand your definition of success. The folks I consider successful have always used their opportunities well, not just rode out the luck. We al…

I think it depends a lot on the field and where you work, and how you define "success". I used to think the way you're describing until I got where I am and saw just how dysfunctional the system is in my field--the corruption and sheer luck. It gets worse the higher up you go. I think there's also problem with these types of discussions because of survivorship bias, which is rampant in contemporary society. That is,…

What do you think about the idea of just actualizing your own potential one step at a time, rather than comparing to other "successful" people and what they do?

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just curious.

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