The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees • Hacker News Board

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#191

Post by mathgladiator » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:50 AM UTC

throwaway010718 wrote: post #165

pascalxus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the right financial planning, it can be done. But, if you've already taken on 20K in student loans and 5 year cell phone contract, it's gonna be much much harder. That's why we need to start teach financial education really early: like K-12. Food and water can be quite cheap: the grocery stores are filled with healthy foods you can get for less than 1$ per lb in most of the US: corn, whole wheat flour, bananas,…

> That's why we need to start teach financial education really early: like K-12 What you are suggesting would lead to a generation that saves more and consumes less. When GDP seems to be the only success metric that matters, I often wonder if such education is omitted intentionally.

The moment your life depends on a 7% return, you dont have a viable lifestyle for everyone.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#192

Post by mathgladiator » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:51 AM UTC

smileysteve wrote: post #148

stuaxo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, just that when people who are not poor live in small houses they live quite well, hardly shocking.

Or the opposite; tiny house permitting made it more apparent that many trailer parks have inadequate septic/sewer systems. Also see, the resurgence of Hookworm in Lowndes Al.

Is that more a function of density?

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#193

Post by washadjeffmad » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

dfsdfdsfds wrote: post #9

sjg007 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with work in the past being more healthy. It is not a this or that situation.

The way it is written suggests "the workplace" used to be better: "But I would say that with all the evidence I’ve encountered — and it’s not perfect evidence — I’ve seen nothing inconsistent with the statement that the workplace has generally gotten worse" - "I see a workplace that has become shockingly inhumane." Of course it is still valid to ask how a healthier workplace could be created. Just the notion that thi…

We might not be crushed in machinery as children or poisoned by the products we produce at the same rate as in the industrial era, but that was seen in the same way as humans living today to be an acceptable cost of making a living. The question is of the acceptance of compulsory discomfort leading to potential harm later being an unquestioned norm.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#194

Post by mathgladiator » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

ghettoimp wrote: post #173

dizzystar wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are so fortunate to only have to work a 9to5, there is no excuse to waste these years. How many musicians do you know that play in clubs? Most are working two restaurant jobs, renting a room, and scraping money together to buy strings, just for the chance to entertain a crowd for little or no pay. It's all perspective, really.

“Only” work 9 to 5? Don’t forget your commute. And you’ll still need your wife to get the kids to school and pick them up. Hope you earn enough for that and she’s happy st home. And you should help out with dinner and the lunches and homework. And when you get the kids to bed it’s 8 and you’re exhausted. Enjoy your weekend.

I chose not to have kids. Was a great call becauses kids are like 1,000,000 each (when you factor in investment returns).

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#195

Post by JBlue42 » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:55 AM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #130

onezerozeroone wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really the company's fault here. Policies like this exist because candidates have and will sue the shit out of you for any flimsy accusation of discrimination they can cobble together. Companies didn't create these policies arbitrarily and unprovoked. They became necessary because of some people who took advantage of the legal system to get settlements. It's in the company's best interest to protect itself from f…

This fear is overblown in my opinion. If people really want to sue then they will sue based on the fact that companies hire H1Bs into the position that they applied for. Then the company would have to prove not that the H1B was the better candidate but that the American was not qualified. Who decides on that qualification? Well a judge/jury based on the job description. If your resume matches those qualifications and…

People also act like everyone has access to good lawyers or ones that would take on a case like this. The aforementioned 'lying in business' part comes in to play here where instead of 'we don't hire [race x]' it's 'The candidate did not meet the qualifications' or some other bullshit excuse.

It would take some hard evidence for me, the unemployed or in the less powerful position, to really make a go of proving I wasn't hired because of some discrimination.

The fear of blackballing on the employee side for many things and the fear of lawsuits (which, when you sign on at employer, typically includes some language about arbitration these days) on the employer side are overblown, I agree, and makes everyone cut throat.

I want to make enough to pay for rent, food, and have some time off to chill. Your company wants to stay and business and make money. Let's make a deal that benefits us both.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#196

Post by beager » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:55 AM UTC

derrekl wrote: post #179

I'm a CTO at a YC grad Care Revolutions. There's a lot of comments on what kind of work environment is bad. What do y'all suggest a startup with limited resources do to be an incredible place to work for while also being a highly productive environment? I'm especially interested in suggestions as it relates to your health both physically and mentally!

I would start by recognizing that the physical and mental health of your employees is also a "limited resource". Many companies, from scrappy and small to profitable and mega-huge abuse their human capital because health and wellness of human capital doesn't show up in a P&L.

And if you feel with your limited resources that you need to push your work environment to an unhealthy point to survive, you'd better be sure that you're doing that only after exerting the same shrewd force to get the unreasonably good pricing from your vendors, squeezing your investors for as much money as they'll give you, cut-throating your competition to the same ethically-questionable level, and red-teaming your model and roadmap to be sure you're not wasting one breath on anything superfluous.

Beyond that, if you have truly arrived at a point where you are asking things of your employees that could jeopardize their physical and mental health, be honest and open with your people about it. Candor goes a long way. And then, identify the exact things that are taking a toll on physical and mental health, and address them one at a time.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#197

Post by chepaslaaa » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #158

bmpafa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most any form of helping someone out carries risks. Part of what makes acts of kindness praiseworthy is the acceptance of those risks for the sake of another person.

>> Most any form of helping someone out carries risks. Really? I've never heard that. Can you give some examples? Preferably ones that seem harmless but could go wrong. I guess providing such examples is my job but I'm too tiered, so help me out.

''Dressed in faded, threadbare GoreTex, a couple of months shy of his sixty-ninth birthday, Pete was a gangly, slightly stooped man who had returned to the high reaches of the Himalaya after a long absence. In 1966 he’d made the first ascent of the Vinson Massif, Antarctica’s highest point. In 1958 he’d made history as the driving force behind the first ascent of Hidden Peak, a 26,470-foot mountain in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan—the highest first ascent ever achieved by American climbers. Pete was even more famous, however, for playing a heroic role in an unsuccessful expedition to K2 in 1953, the same year Hillary and Tenzing reached the peak of Everest.

The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realizing that they would have to get Gilkey down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schoening and the others started lowering him down the mountain’s steep Abruzzi Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay.*''

Jon Krakauer wrote that in Into thin air

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#198

Post by oldandtired » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

remar wrote: post #90

mancerayder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like these are naive, if well-intentioned. Work cultures permeate industries, cities and more. Moreover, for most people, even in the lucrative tech industry such as ourselves, don't have the luxury to peacefully and calmly pick and choose the ideal job: rent is due, mortgage is due, savings go down, or anxiety goes up and we take what comes up. The myth of equal contactual relationship between employer/empl…

I always wonder what the life experiences and world view of someone like the person you're replying to, consists of. The older I get, the more apparent it becomes that most of my peers and friends have lived extremely "privileged" lives solely based on the freedom of choice that they've had over certain aspects of life. In most cases the source of the privilege is a combination of well educated guardians and money. I…

Yes workplaces are broken. I have been in those that are broken and in some cases I have persevered because of mortgage and other bills. But, I made choices to leave, even in the face of not having a new job to go to. Yes, it can be very difficult to do this.

However, if you stay in a job that is killing you in any kind of fashion, health, mental, emotional or spiritual, then you are staying for the wrong reasons.

There is always some kind of work available, even if you have to move to get it that will be better for you than what you may be in now. If you are in a horrible high tech job paying great money but it is killing you, then you may be better off riding the back of a garbage truck or cleaning the local municipal toilets.

Too many people fall into the trap that they have to stay in a soul-killing job because they have to pay the mortgage, the school bills, etc, etc,etc.

You don't have to do this and if more people actually bit the bullet and left, the reputation of those businesses would filter out into the broader community. As long as more people don't stand up and challenge the wrongness of these systems then they will continue to perpetrate.

The older I get, I have more and more peers and friends who are from all walks of life and at every socio-economic level. All face problems of some sort or another. It is a matter of what and how you do things. There are many situations that are extremely difficult to "get out" of. But you can, if you are willing to look beyond where you are and seek help. It is just that people don't seem able to do this.

When I first read the words "Fear is the mind-killer" in the Frank Herbert novel Dune, it struck me as having significance in everyday life. People fear many things. This fear stops them from moving forward. There is a solution to this fear, but for many people that solution is more troublesome for them than the fears they face, because it means giving up a lot of things (individual to each person) that they hold dear to themselves.

Seeking and knowing Jesus Christ is that way, but on His terms not ours. He never promised easy times or prosperity in the here and now. He did promised freedom and peace of mind in the troubles of the day. But of course, for those who rely on their own capabilities and knowledge such words are of little meaning and no effect.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#199

Post by sjg007 » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 2:07 AM UTC

AFNobody wrote: post #184

sjg007 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why they just have layoffs.

Correct in most cases but if they put an identical job title out at an identical location, they are still vulnerable so you have to pick someone a grade more junior or a grade more senior to replace them.

Or they work with recruiters.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#200

Post by sjg007 » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

jriot wrote: post #61

mathattack wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are liability reasons for not giving feedback. If I’ve had a good connection then I will give informal feedback on the phone only.

Everything appears to be a liability these days - that is the problem.

Too many law school graduates.