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

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

#371

Post by criveros »

kamyarg wrote: post #348
pjc50 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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…

In Turkey you can get residency with investing in real estate. Not sure if there is a minimum investment required but doubt it. Does not give you the right to work though.

250k USD and you have to keep the property for 3 years.

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

#372

Post by zanellato19 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #28
Yaa101 wrote: post #8

The problem starts with the name, humans are not resources. Stones. metals and food are resources. It's a slave term to see people as resources. I will never contract myself to those companies and people.

Yes we are. We are hired by a company to use ours skills and time to complete a task or set of tasks. Depending on when they want a project done and what skills are required, they must hire/buy accordingly. I personally find this a very comfortable arrangement. I am a merchant of my own labour. I can upgrade the value of my labour by adding skills (in the same way that a merchant of stone could get a better price by…

This is indeed the way companies treat us, just don't forget that they work to devalue those things much more than you work to increase their value.

And another thing, you are not free to terminate the arrangement because you need money to live, the company is indeed free to terminate it.

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

#373

Post by eythian »

hypervisorxxx wrote: post #139
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…

My friend and I (both females) one the CEO of a tech company and me a Staff Engineer, have talked about how to do HR right and we came up with an idea but havnt done anything with it. Since HR is clearly biased towards the companies and this has proven to cause a lot of problems, they will never side with you over the company if the company is indeed wrong. HR should ideally be an independent third party and all issu…

In the Netherlands, where I am, it's a requirement of companies over a certain size to have a "works council", which is something like, but not quite, a union. It's made up of employees and they are legally empowered to be a go-between between employees and the company if required.

This year, for example, the council members where I work have been very busy ensuring that company plans for layoffs were as fair to employees as it was possible to be, by doing things like ensuring that if someone could be moved to another role they were, that the voluntary layoff system was suitable, and so forth.

There are also unions which are cross-company and were involved to a lesser degree in this process, providing advice and specialist support, consulting with members, and so on.

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

#375

Post by b0rsuk »

d--b wrote: post #284

HR is neither your friend nor it is some evil secret police that’s here to root out the saboteurs in your company... HR is an agent between you and the company. It’s there to run the negotiations between what the company wants and what you want. If you don’t understand that, you won’t be able to use HR to your benefit. HR is there for you to ask stuff. You want a shower on your floor? Ask them. You want a course in R…

HR is taking money from the employer. It's not taking money from employees. In theory they should help both sides, in practice you don't need to look hard to spot a conflict of interest.

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

#376

Post by nojvek »

> Performance reviews are a joke because almost nobody knows how to measure anyone else's effectiveness. They are just a continuation of the same popularity contests you thought you left behind from middle school, high school, and maybe even your college/university days.

This has a bit of truth. In my experience climbing up the ladder is so disconnected from actual reality. There’s quite a bit of a buddy buddy / quid pro quo system that goes on when it comes to promos.

There are people who do the actual work and take it 99%, and others who stitch the last 1% and take credit for all of it. Our Industry loves rewarding for features over things that customers actually care about. I’ve seen many feature promos in my life. One year later we’d have to kill the whole feature because it’s not worth the maintenance cost.

One of my managers believed folks who write python and JS are not real programmers, C and go programmers faced hard problems therefore they are more real. There was also the unconscious bias that women can’t lead projects so opportunities weren’t given to them. Over time women kept leaving. Over time really stellar frontend engineers kept on leaving.

It also baffles me how much energy is spent on hiring people, vs mentoring and fostering them so they grow and are promoted.

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

#377

Post by koonsolo »

klodolph wrote: post #209
koonsolo wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to view the world like this? This kind of mindset puts you in a very weak position. I look at it like this: I work for a company because it's a win-win. They need some work done, and I need money. In fact, as a coder, the company is the one in the weak position. If I leave for another company, I can get paid the exact same amount instantly. They will have to get a new person, pay them the same, but fi…

Are you under the impression that everyone here is in the same kind of position of power that you are? 1. Not everyone here is a coder. 2. Not everyone who codes is in the US, or a small number of other countries, where salaries for coders are high. 3. Not everyone lives in a part of the US with multiple employers that they could work for (relocation may be infeasible for various reasons). 4. The company may be spons…

1. If I didn't have my brain, I would be a plumber. These guys start earning when they are 18 or younger, and make a shitload of money because we have a shortage here. So even if you work with your hands, you can choose something that is in high demand.

2. Coders in US and EU are doing OK. Coders in Ukraine and the likes (I have multiple colleagues in that region) are absolutely killing it. They earn about 2x less than us, but 10x more than their neighbors. They don't borrow money to buy a home, they just buy it.

3. No idea about that one. But in US it's so hassle free to start your own business.

4. Yeah, then it's up to you what your options are, and how much you are willing to put up with.

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

#378

Post by scsilver »

_nrv9 wrote: post #90
firecall wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And nor does anyone have a 'career'. You have a job. When you lose that job, you may not get another one. It's an illusion. One minute you think you are a high profile manager with budgets and power. The next you are packing your desk up into a box and rethinking your entire life. We are not our careers!

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…

Because hard work is not a safety net. The network and relationships you embed yourself in is the real safety net. Get social, get connected, get valuable to the networks you are a part of and expand them.

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

#380

Post by crispyambulance »

akmarinov wrote: post #269
_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…

Not sure about Thailand and it really depends on your lifestyle, but 100k will get you through 2-3 years at most in the other countries, if you live in an urban setting, not really pinching pennies.

None of these "cash out your lifesavings of 100K" when you're a 20-something and go live in the woods/foreign-country plans are realistic.

Sure, it's theoretically possible, but it's much better to redirect that effort into finding a job you can live with in your own county. Nothing wrong with a bit of wanderlust, and you can certainly get that out of your system with the safety-net of a sustainable career. Do I sound like a parent yet?

The expat thing is done by every generation, it doesn't stick. Gen-X-ers (my people) went to Prague, had great times, made lifelong friends, saved nothing, often developed mild drinking problems, in the end they lost a few years of their earning potential. Did it develop character? Yes. Could it have been done in other ways? Yes. Was it worth it? ehh.

There are other ways to escape from the searing banality of a career inside of Mega-corps filled with assholes, HR drones, soul-sucking labor.

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