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Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

adamconrad.dev

331–340 of 447 posts

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#331
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not selling your soul. It’s called being disillusioned with your impact on the world, a feeling that more and more people are feeling. Not even this, it's just seeing a job exactly and only for what it is. As opposed to having some pompous judgemental false self-image of "helping the world" when in reality you are way too lazy and selfish to actually do that, like most other people. It's a common leftist agend…

I don’t see the link between thinking it’s a bit sad that money seems to be the only driver of a growing part of the population and the left-right political divide. I don’t personally think it’s a very new phenomena however. My main takeaway from it is that in the USA software jobs have started replacing or at least being seen as as attractive as finance and consulting as a career of choice for people who are mostly…

> I don’t see the link between thinking it’s a bit sad that money seems to be the only driver of a growing part of the population

Because it's not the only driver, it's the most important driver of the money making part of your life. Which is turn is just a means to another end, and that end is your family, hobbies, self actualisation, experiencing the world etc.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#332
post #33

This whole process seems a bit psychotic. Is it really necessary to cram like you're taking the SATs again to get a good job as a software engineer? Is "has memorized some number of coding problems" really a test of engineering knowledge? I suppose it's appropriate that after all that work, the author wound up at Facebook, the most soulless company on the list.

> Is it really necessary to cram like you're taking the SATs again to get a good job as a software engineer He is explicitly optimizing for compensation so yes, he needs to nail the interviews. It's a bit of a "don't hate the player hate the game" situation. He does what is needed to achieve the objective. > Is "has memorized some number of coding problems" really a test of engineering knowledge? Absolutely not, but…

The interesting thing is that we collectively decide what the game is and isn't by how and what we play.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading judgmental comments like this also upsets me. It’s not selling your soul. It’s called being disillusioned with your impact on the world, a feeling that more and more people are feeling. Long gone are the days where you believed an individual could make a difference. At big corp, you are a small cog in the big machine. You are replaceable. I’ve volunteered on political campaigns. I’ve volunteered for non profi…

Because not everyone is a twenty year old second generation immigrant with no family wealth who needs a lifeboat. Are you under the impression the blog post author is? Look if people need money I don’t think many of us are passing judgement on that. But if you’re privileged and your sole criteria for a new job is accruing capital, you bet I pass judgement on it. And honestly once you get over 200k a year I think the…

"But if you’re privileged and your sole criteria for a new job is accruing capital, you bet I pass judgement on it."

That's fine, but you realize your judgement is no more valid than anyone else's right? And to think otherwise is quite arrogant?

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#335
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The massive amounts of money available for software professionals is an American problem I hope to some day have.

Of course colleges are admission free, insurance prices are fairly reasonable, property taxes are nonexistent, public infrastructure is top notch, car dependence is cool (and to own/pay for more than one car). Non problems really

I've made the switch and yeah, the compensation easily covers those and more.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading judgmental comments like this also upsets me. It’s not selling your soul. It’s called being disillusioned with your impact on the world, a feeling that more and more people are feeling. Long gone are the days where you believed an individual could make a difference. At big corp, you are a small cog in the big machine. You are replaceable. I’ve volunteered on political campaigns. I’ve volunteered for non profi…

Because not everyone is a twenty year old second generation immigrant with no family wealth who needs a lifeboat. Are you under the impression the blog post author is? Look if people need money I don’t think many of us are passing judgement on that. But if you’re privileged and your sole criteria for a new job is accruing capital, you bet I pass judgement on it. And honestly once you get over 200k a year I think the…

I didn’t try to assume anything about the blog post author. But it’s irrelevant — I was commenting on the comment calling people in general soulless for maximizing compensation.

I agree there’s a point which that moral inflection point occurs, but I think the number is complex to come up to.

I’ll give an example. I make a pretty obscene salary that falls within your definition of “needing to care”.

But I live in a VHCOL city. I would love to move and work remote, but my partner has a career that’s in tech, but much less remote friendly.

I’m into personal finance, so here’s my projection. Assuming I want to own a home and have kids in this VHCOL region, I will need to work about 20-30 years to achieve this goal. And it’s 1 poorly timed recession from derailing. You know what I really wanted to do in life? Teach high school chemistry and own a cafe.

Am I better off than many many people? Yes. Do I have enough to take 30% pay cut to work at ? Are we saying I don’t deserve to live in the region I grew up in, and I should have to move to the Midwest, for the good of society? Force my partner to give up their dream career? Should I give up my dreams of an early retirement from tech into a field that “does good”?

My parents have nothing saved up. 2008 made sure of that. Should I sacrifice the planned war chest I want to build for my parents’ eventual long term care?

And finally, if I do all of this, how much does the world improve by me doing this? Will collapse because I’m not there? Will my wage be distributed to the service workers or Will they go to the next eager applicant? Will my CEO pay more taxes or lose money because I’m not there?

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s put it this way: if a company tries to brainwash you with 14 “core” principles, those cogs aren’t principled at all. I went through the loop and made it to final round, despite my reservations just to see what it would be like. Of the 6 people I spoke to, I only had 1 positive experience. Everyone else was either being aggressive for no reason, or they were regurgitating words and had no value in the org. Hell,…

Websockets at scale are a special problem and he was probably right. Asking questions for follow up meant you were missing some core piece of the ‘Amazonian’ way of tackling the problem. Not being able to take the hints or criticism and thinking about it for years is probably evidence that Amazon would not have been a good place for you. That’s not always a bad thing.

I think you’ve just made my point clearer that Amazon is good at brainwashing. You’re basing peoples capabilities to fit in so rigidly, and worse yet, in such an uncouth way.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#338

"Once I showed the potential salaries to my wife, we both agreed it would be perfectly reasonable for me to ask for 30 minutes of additional “me time” per day to prepare for my next job," What the hell? If he wants 30m to himself each day he needs to clear with his wife? Don't most people get more than 30m free time each day away from their partner? Just what kind of unhealthy relationship is this dude in?

I'd like to respond to all the replies saying "But they have a one year old":

TLDR: If baby needs $X hours of baby-sitting per day, and mum and dad do baby-sitting together at the same time, they both need $X hours per day to do it. If mum and dad switch roles every 90m-120m, then each parent gets $X/2 free hours per day.

I have a two year old at the moment. Last year he was one. Shortly after he was born (around month 2) my wife and I split the baby-sitting schedule as evenly as possible.

We have very little "together time" with the child (all three of us together) unless we are going out with him. What I insist on is that only a single person is responsible for baby-sitting at any given moment (and the moments are all well-defined).

In practice, this means that if my wife is baby-sitting, I will not be there at all (doing chores, focusing on something else, just relaxing, whatever).

It works the same in reverse: when I am baby-sitting, she is not there at all.

This gives both of us a lot more free time than if we both sit there baby-sitting. There's literally no reason for both parents to wake up when baby needs a 2AM feeding, or when baby needs entertainment (playing peekabo, or whatever), or even when baby is just napping.

My observation of couples with a newborn is that almost always both parents are baby-sitting the child together. In that case, sure, you are going to have a lot less free time. If you split the time equally, both parties get a lot more time.

Personally, due to how our childcare worked, even with a one year old toddler in the house, my wife and I were averaging around four hours of awake me-time per weekday.

If the poster is getting too little free-time each day to find 30m, then redundant baby-sitting is happening.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#339
There's a lot of negative comments on here, but considering we often make more per hour than lawyers or doctors, and we don't have bar exams or a medical license, I don't see what else could be done. If we have to retake a mini bar exam targeted to the new role every time we want a higher paying job, that seems like a more efficient "just in time" method.

We could go towards licensure, but I've seen even less interest in that, and frankly for how fast tech changes I'm not sure it's even feasible.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the primary purpose of your job is to raise funds for the things that actually matter, what other method would you use? Take the biggest bag that leaves you with enough time to enjoy what you worked so hard to spend that money on.

> If the primary purpose of your job is to raise funds for the things that actually matter, what other method would you use? Primary isn’t sole, and even if it was, all jobs aren’t equal in other ways, so the tradeoff varies by more than just compensation. Particularly, for someone without a myopic view but whose sole concern is providing money is sustainability of working conditions, because burnout is a thing.

Yeah but why entangle your need of helping others, with your employment? That just seems like making your life unnecessarily complex, especially when altruism is fundamentally opposing the goals of your organisation.
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