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HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#351

Post by mercer »

rocqua wrote: post #320

I really don't enjoy the tone here. The derision with which it speaks about managers, like they are either evil or incompetent, is unfair in my experience. (my) Managers are just people. They have a task, they do their best to get that task done. Sometimes they decisions that seem bad to me. Often that is because I misunderstand their goals. Sometimes, it is because I know something they don't, and something they cou…

I agree that there are good or even bad managers who have 'wider business goals' that I just didn't see.

But in my experience working for various large corporations, I've found that the sentiment expressed is very accurate. Managers were the bane of our existence.

While we as developers and other areas involved did our best, the managers were with few exceptions absolutely terrible. I was often amazed that anything got done at all.

In smaller companies or startups I definitely learned to respect the concerns that managers had to deal with that I didn't, sure. But in BigCo's it was generally a shit show of, basically, royalty running the show badly: ass-kissers, psychopaths, etc.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#352

Post by jiggawatts »

apatters wrote: post #236
jiggawatts wrote: post #14

Many people think that they live in a free democracy. In reality, something like 50% of all working people are employed in a strict hierarchical organisation that is essentially feudal in its nature. Most employees are the equivalent of serfs, overseen by lords, with a king in charge. The common employees don't get a vote. Their managers are not elected. They don't get a say in policy. The managers in turn form a str…

Come on, this is counterfactual hyperbole. In actual feudalism, if you disagreed with the king he could arbitrarily kill you or jail you. Sure, corporations are lame and if you work for one you're a cog in a machine, I agree it can suck. But it's crazy to suggest that this somehow invalidates democracy. The first job of a functioning government is to establish a monopoly on violence and prevent it from being used aga…

> arbitrarily kill you or jail you

At least in some countries, if you have a life-threatening medical condition and you lose your job, you're at a significant risk of death.

Just because you have it easy, doesn't mean everyone does. Billions of people are terrified of losing their jobs, because that means starvation or a slow painful death from a disease they can no longer afford to treat.

I worked with an Indian woman that was worked so hard that she had a spontaneous abortion. On a Sunday. And was made to go back to work that same day.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#353

Post by Aeolun »

pjc50 wrote: post #318
_nrv9 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am always terrified of losing my job. It's a fear I've had even though I've been a top performer the entire five years I've been professionally working. Maybe it's because I grew up poor or because I think things are too good in tech and about to crash any day. My antidote? $100k in liquidity. Preferably not invested in the NASDAQ. If tech crashes, you can take your liquid $100k and move to Thailand, Spain, Portuga…

> $100k in liquidity. That of course puts you into the 1% of people in terms of liquidity. Quite a lot of people are a long way below that: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-we... Retirement saving are interesting because for a whole bunch of public policy reasons most people have illiquid retirement savings. > move to Thailand, Spain, Portugal, Turkey Check your visa requirements: can you rea…

It’s enough to qualify for the entrepreneur visa in Japan. I have to assume thailand is less.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#354

Post by jiggawatts »

madhadron wrote: post #175
MattGaiser wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike the serf, I can go find another Lord. I can pit the lords against each other for a better deal. I can try and become my own lord. HR has a lot fewer tools than the inquisition. Fear of lawsuits reduces their toolkit even further.

In Western Europe, serfdom was the exception. It's more of a Russian notion. Commoners in most of feudal Europe had an explicit "right of departure."

This historian says that despite this theoretical freedom, most peasants were just as trapped: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#355

Post by rkachowski »

rocqua wrote: post #320

I really don't enjoy the tone here. The derision with which it speaks about managers, like they are either evil or incompetent, is unfair in my experience. (my) Managers are just people. They have a task, they do their best to get that task done. Sometimes they decisions that seem bad to me. Often that is because I misunderstand their goals. Sometimes, it is because I know something they don't, and something they cou…

The article ends with "reasonable exchanges are only possible with reasonable people". If you have an unreasonable manager or are dependent upon unreasonable people, there is no amount of meditation upon unaligned goals or rationalisation that will change the situation. Expecting everyone to act rationally in the best interests of a shared goal is an exercise in frustration and a fast track to burnout.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#356

Post by nicoburns »

bananapub wrote: post #350
nicoburns wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in London (one of the most expensive places in Europe), and it'd take me 5-6 years to get through that. And I'm not overly careful with my money. Of course this is as a single person. It'd be different if you had a family to support, etc.

do you not have rent to pay? 6 years of extremely cheap 600gbp/month rent is ~$us60k

Rent just makes up the majority of my expenses. I was basing this on rent + bills at £800/month. Leaving £400/month for other expenses ~= £15k/year ~= $20k/year = 5 years.

£600/month is also definitely doable in London (even in Zone 2). I have quite a few friends who earn less than me that wouldn't even consider a room costing more than that.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#357

Post by ivanche »

mcv wrote: post #300
pearjuice wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though not a bad idea, $100k cash is slowly being chipped away at with inflation every day. Due to how our financial system works, you are probably ticking off days of that decade yearly by leaving it in cash.

Invest it in index funds. That's pretty safe, and gives pretty good returns. The only way that's going to disappear is if the entire economy dies, and then money won't be any good either. If you want to prepare for that , you need to buy land.

Just to add, invest in broad-market index funds (or ETFs). Something which tracks FTSE All Worlds, MSCI World, maybe even S&P 500. Nowadays, there are hundreds of indexes that are so narrow I'm baffled how they're useful.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#358

Post by vaduz »

scoutt wrote: post #332
vaduz wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are not impartial - their power in the company is proportional to the number of unionised employees, so they have an incentive to take your side if you are a member - and against you if you are not. It's more complicated in practice, but impartial they are not. Arbitration may be impartial ("sometimes"), court system may be impartial ("sometimes") - but you still have to be represented by someone who can navig…

At least in Italy, your work contract always falls within the general rules established with the unions. At the end of the day, you are somehow unionized. If there is a dispute you can always call an union representative for arbitration. I saw it happen several times, and more or less they were siding with the employees. I know the issue has 1000 shades of color, but if somehow, someway, in a sunny day, with all the…

> At least in Italy, your work contract always falls within the general rules established with the unions. At the end of the day, you are somehow unionized.

That is true in many countries - though there are some (US being one) where non-union employees are ostracized or pushed away from being employed, especially as the law allows exclusive union representation in about half of the states [0]. The unions have been known to argue for union members and sacrificing non-members as part of exclusive bargaining with the company.

> I know the issue has 1000 shades of color, but if somehow, someway, in a sunny day, with all the possible luck in the world, someone sides with you in a dispute (and is not a lawyer you are paying), that will be unions.

That's not being impartial - that is being on your side. Yes, there are conditions in which unions may be on your side (in which case: great, but still bring a lawyer) - but the claim in grandparent post is that they may be impartial, whereas they very rarely are.

[0] https://www.nrtw.org/your-right-to-work-rights-in-three-minu...

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#359

Post by plif »

rocqua wrote: post #320

I really don't enjoy the tone here. The derision with which it speaks about managers, like they are either evil or incompetent, is unfair in my experience. (my) Managers are just people. They have a task, they do their best to get that task done. Sometimes they decisions that seem bad to me. Often that is because I misunderstand their goals. Sometimes, it is because I know something they don't, and something they cou…

Glad to see this at the top.

This is a very cynical take that applies wildly general negative sentiment and statements to a huge group of people. It's not just about workplace dynamics. I couldn't keep reading after the ~5th paragraph where the (not so subtle) point is: how can _these people_ live with themselves?

I'll copy the relevant paragraph below:

> Expert gaslighters, they are. What really makes me wonder is how the people keep doing these jobs. Many of them are in the very classes that get abused by other people regularly. How can you honestly keep doing that job when you are just enabling the abusers?

Sorry, but this is insane. You're generalizing millions of people here. Imagine this type of statement made towards a cultural subgroup rather than a profession. What would we call it?

edit: removed quotes in the first paragraph to reduce confusion around attribution, as per post below. I don't have time to reply in-depth right now but I appreciate the rebuttal and I'll give it a shot later.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#360

Post by anonu »

ivanche wrote: post #357
mcv wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invest it in index funds. That's pretty safe, and gives pretty good returns. The only way that's going to disappear is if the entire economy dies, and then money won't be any good either. If you want to prepare for that , you need to buy land.

Just to add, invest in broad-market index funds (or ETFs). Something which tracks FTSE All Worlds, MSCI World, maybe even S&P 500. Nowadays, there are hundreds of indexes that are so narrow I'm baffled how they're useful.

When you have 2300 ETFs in the US and 7000 globally, narrow indices are important ways to tailor your exposure as the broad index stuff probably has ten different vehicles to invest in..
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