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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

#441

Post by _nrv9 »

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…

I clicked your link and clicked on a couple tabs even but did not find data on what most people have liquid or illiquid. Can you point me to it?

$100k sounds like a lot but....I live in San Diego. All in, it costs about $4,200/month post-tax to live here. Sure, it can be done on much less. That means $50,400/year post-tax. So your $100k whether liquid or not only lasts two years max.

Let's say a real recession occurs and you lose your job. If your $100k is in the asset that crashed -- say real estate (which I like real estate) or speculative tech stocks -- oh boy. You're now probably at $70k hopefully. If it takes you 12 months from losing your job to finding a job. Now you're looking at only $20k left in your account....that is scary.

I know I am being paranoid because you'd get unemployment + could probably find a lower level job quick in the meantime + you would cut your $4200/month to bare minimum. But that's my point, I live in this fear and the $100k provides some peace of mind.

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

#442

Post by zanny »

baxtr wrote: post #266
zanny wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a wealth of statistical data that shows that cooperatives are more resilient and stable than classical owner run enterprise, here's a Stanford paper citing a lot of good sources on it[1]. Largely the reason so few businesses are cooperatives is because if you are an active participant in the founding of a business its in your own self interest to retain as much power over it as possible, which leads you to wa…

Interesting. Can you name large successful companies run as a democracy / cooperative? Apple, Google, Amazon etc. are clearly very hierarchical.

It's not that hard to find a list of the largest ones in the US, they collectively represent about 200bn in revenue: https://www.thenews.coop/122959/sector/usas-top-100-co-opera...

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

#443

Post by silexia »

If your company works like this, get a new job. There are companies out there that don't work like this. Her company sounds like a nightmare. Fortune 500s are usually like this, avoid them. VC back companies are even worse. Buy a company that is profitable and run by the founder.

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

#444

Post by baby »

Uberphallus wrote: post #324
baby wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you that you can live in the center of a French city for like 10 years on that money. You won’t have a crazy lifestyle but you can live in the center and do groceries and the occasional restaurants and drinks for that money. Most people would take like 5 years to make that much AT LEAST.

> I can tell you that you can live in the center of a French city for like 10 years on that money. What city, though? I live in a small city (coast, but still), and the absolute crappiest studio will chomp 500€/mo out of your wallet, which roughly translates to over $70k. Anything decent goes easily over $100k and that's rent alone.

I used to live right in the center of Bordeaux in a nice studio for 400 euro/month, you'd be able to find a nice place for that price in Lyon also.

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

#445

Post by baby »

dhekir wrote: post #323
baby wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you that you can live in the center of a French city for like 10 years on that money. You won’t have a crazy lifestyle but you can live in the center and do groceries and the occasional restaurants and drinks for that money. Most people would take like 5 years to make that much AT LEAST.

Can you get a long term visa without any job affiliations? I'm not sure that simply having the money is sufficient reason for an European country to give you a long-term visa (> 1 year), depending on which country you come from. Also, some countries have a "negative privilege" situation, where even if you try to get a low-wage job, you'll have less priority than others, or your employer will need to pay an extra fee…

good question, not sure about the visa but if you at least have a passport from a european country then you can travel and live anywhere there. I know several of my friends who have lived in Asia without actually working there.

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

#446

Post by deterministic »

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…

Your experience is different from most. The problem is that most managers have no clue how to be a good manager and/or they turn into little Nazis once promoted.

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

#447

Post by deterministic »

tasuki wrote: post #424
rmk wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience is atypical: most people will encounter bad managers in their careers, and more so in this industry, which deifies youth (twentysomethings managing people is a poor idea, period, as are teams comprising only twentysomethings). Things are further exacerbated by the reality that SV has above-average people in the technical sphere, but way below average people in the people-management sphere. Management…

I've had 7 managers in my career and none of them were bad. Several were inexperienced managers, and they still did fine.

You have been very lucky. Almost all managers I have experienced in my career were incompetent and had no clue how to manage a team.

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

#448

Post by baxtr »

zanny wrote: post #442
baxtr wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Can you name large successful companies run as a democracy / cooperative? Apple, Google, Amazon etc. are clearly very hierarchical.

It's not that hard to find a list of the largest ones in the US, they collectively represent about 200bn in revenue: https://www.thenews.coop/122959/sector/usas-top-100-co-opera...

Thanks. These almost all either agriculture or grocery companies. I was looking for a list of tech companies since that’s what I’m interested in and what’s usually discussed here.

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

#449

Post by plif »

wegs wrote: post #366
plif wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Cultures have different professional cultures. * Executive ethics focus on maximizing shareholder value, while individual incentives, on personal returns. If I can pollute a lake for an extra buck to my stock price, I'm expected to do this. * HR ethics focus on protecting the company. If they can lie to you as an employee to minimize legal risk, that's what's gonna happen. * Legal ethics focusing on protecting your c…

Point well taken about culture and great examples. I completely agree with your premise.

However, tone is an extremely important part of cross-cultural training, and the tone of this article takes its premise from: _you may have a conflict of interest with group B_ to something between _group B is out to get you_ and _group B is evil_. I personally wouldn't recommend it to anyone because of this.

> As a footnote, quotation marks suggest you're quoting someone. Your claimed quote doesn't exist in the source article. Your point would be stronger if you commented on what the author wrote than your (somewhat inaccurate) read-between-the-lines.

The original post has always had the exact paragraph that I derived my subtext from in it. Emphatic quotes are a bad habit of mine, so I removed those, but c'mon -- this is a pretty common grammar mistake and the sentence preceding it pretty clearly "implies" (emphatic quotes) that it's only my interpretation :)

> That's another place cultures differ a lot: how things are implied and subtexts. People misread subtexts, which I think you did here.

Can you please explain how you would otherwise interpret the exact paragraph that I quoted? I'm usually pretty good at seeing the other side, but I genuinely can't see this one. Maybe it's because I've been in management too long (or maybe I'm too Canadian). Either way, I'm genuinely curious.

I'll quote the paragraph again directly from the article for you:

> 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?

The only other interpretation I can think of is the author was referring to the people in the previous example. However, she switches from singular ("person A" / "person B") tense in the example to plural ("gaslighters" / "abusers") tense in this paragraph, so it's either an uncharacteristic grammar mistake or a generalization applied to a broader group.

The generalization is that HR people are "gaslighters" and managers are "abusers".

With that in mind, how would you interpret this sentence? "What really makes me wonder is how the people keep doing these jobs."

I can only see: _how can these people live with themselves_. How is that subtext not correct here?

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

#450

Post by TheCoelacanth »

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.

That's not safe at all if you need to withdraw living expenses. You will destroy your principal the first time that there's a downturn in the market.
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