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Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

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Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#131

Post by Aurornis »

pjc50 wrote: post #92
MangoCoffee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

two weeks notice when you leave but where's the two weeks notice when they fired you.

Another "America vs Europe" (well, UK): I have my notice periods written in my contracts, whether that's one month or three months, and it is always bi-directional.

Giving up to 3 months of notice to change jobs is wild. What are the consequences if you tell them you're leaving in 2 weeks instead of the notice period?

Typically in US tech companies layoffs don't give employees a notice period, but they do give severance pay. So you stop working effective immediately but you either get a large check or continue to receive paychecks for a period. That period depends on the company but it's usually within the range of your notice period. You don't have to work during it, though.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#132

Post by cucumber3732842 »

deburo wrote: post #11
figmert wrote: post #3

There's no reward for loyalty any more, and it's caused everyone to job hop (at least while that was possible), including me. At the time, employees complained about it, and in the same breath refused to give out any promotions and/or reward employees. Or they'd reward them with some shitty voucher. The world has literally become the people vs corporations. There is no soul in working any more.

When was it different? I never saw that in big corporations, only SMBs when the founders were still at the helm.

>When was it different?

The British Army passed on promoting George Washington. Twice.

Nothing changes.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#133

Post by georgeecollins »

figmert wrote: post #3

There's no reward for loyalty any more, and it's caused everyone to job hop (at least while that was possible), including me. At the time, employees complained about it, and in the same breath refused to give out any promotions and/or reward employees. Or they'd reward them with some shitty voucher. The world has literally become the people vs corporations. There is no soul in working any more.

It is a trade off that also helps US companies be more efficient. If you want more job stability, try working in France where companies can't lay off workers as capriciously. But then they also don't staff up as fast, don't take as many risks. Pick your poison.

I prefer employment to be transactional. I think it always ultimately is. There is a role for government to not let employers unfairly take advantage of workers or cheat them, but beyond that my loyalty is to people and what I have equity in.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#134

Post by contagiousflow »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #82
contagiousflow wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ~50 years ago is when automation started to become more than a curiosity in industry Where did you get that idea from?

The PLC, Programmable Logic Controller, was 1968. After which it started to become possible to have automated assembly lines with a few humans monitoring specialized robots.

Yeah, that's one specialized piece of automation in a long line of automation throughout history. I'm not sure why taking humans off of the assembly line is a larger deal than taking humans out of agriculture, textile production, or printing?

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#135

Post by ausbah »

AlexB138 wrote: post #80

The youngest baby boomers are in their early 60s. I doubt it will make a difference in tech, but traditional industries, or what is left of them, should see a lot of senior roles open up as baby boomers begin to retire. Then, as they begin to pass away, a lot of their accumulated wealth will pass to their heirs as well. The baby boomers have been a serious "clog" in the system at a lot of levels. It will be interesti…

i suspect based off some light readings around this that there will be even more of a wealth transfer in the coming 20-30 years as the boomers fall off. medical costs for advanced age, asset prices like housing falling off in certain areas, mismanagement of retirement funds, and even just continuing the mentality of “i can’t take it with so might as well spend”

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#136

Post by willis936 »

tavavex wrote: post #87
arsan87 wrote: post #42

At my workplace we were hyped up for a special announcement during a company meeting. this is after, literally, years of layoffs, offshoring, cut after cut to benefits, and restructurings. Morale is incredibly low. The big announcement is they are giving everyone one extra day off around a national holiday as a reward. We already have "unlimited" PTO but of course can't really use it. So their reward is letting us us…

I don't understand. What is 'unlimited' PTO? And if it's so unlimited, why can't you use any of it? I've only had jobs with very specifically defined PTO that had no ambiguity in whether I could ever use it.

It's unlimited in that you can request time off at any time with no balance or speed limit. The first order justification is that it saves some money from having to pay out unused time off balances at the end of the year / tenure or have people burst time off at random synchronous periods. However the second order effect is that the "how much time off is too much time off" is never defined and is a moving target. "If I take four weeks this year and things get tight next year will I show up on a filtered list for layoffs?"

It's uncomfortable for employees but employers tout how comfortable it is.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#137

Post by jandrewrogers »

tavavex wrote: post #108
AlexB138 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies use the term "discretionary PTO". That means that there is no set limit on PTO. The positive take on it is that this means employees can take time off within reason so long as they're getting their work done. The negative take is that it means you have no guaranteed days you can take, and cultural or managerial pressure will prevent you from taking even a normal amount of vacation. It also means that e…

Does this unlimited PTO still have to adhere to any legally required minimum PTO limits? If not, what prevents them from just not giving their employees any time off ever and bypassing the peer pressure part entirely?

PTO regulations are created by the individual States. None require PTO to exist. They do regulate accrual of PTO if it exists, sometimes with unintended consequences for employees.

The origin story is that "discretionary PTO" was created to enable people to take longer vacations than was feasible within the regulatory constraints of accrual-based PTO. It can be abused in other ways but the intent of the people that invented it were employee-friendly.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#138

Post by superfrank »

compiler-guy wrote: post #105
tavavex wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. What is 'unlimited' PTO? And if it's so unlimited, why can't you use any of it? I've only had jobs with very specifically defined PTO that had no ambiguity in whether I could ever use it.

"Unlimited PTO" is a fiction created by accountants that sounds good on paper. When you need or want time off, you work it out with your manager. No debate about how many days you have left this year, or how many you have accumulated. It's undefined and technically you are supposed to work together and away you go. Accountants like it because guaranteed time-off is a liability that appears on the company's books as a…

> But what happens in practice is no one feels like they are entitled to the time they should be entitled to, and negotiations from the employee side always come from a place of weakness. It's a terrible system

> Undoubtedly someone will respond to this post with just how amazing their manager is and that they have never had a problem.

That me! Except I don't think it has anything to do with my manager or company.

I've worked 5 different jobs over the last 12 years with 8 or 9 different managers and literally never had an issue with taking the time I want while taking 6-8 weeks of PTO a year. I've hit the point where when I'm looking for a new job unlimited PTO is kind of table stakes.

I manage a few teams now with some people in the US where my company does unlimited PTO and others in Canada where our company cannot give unlimited PTO. Looking at my teams, the amount of PTO people take has almost no correlation to whether they have unlimited PTO or a set number of days. I have US employees who take a ton of PTO and Canadian employees who have burned through their entire balance and then some and I have employees in both places who take essentially none.

I get that if you're in that second group it's preferable to be in a place where you'll get paid out for the days you didn't take, but I'm pretty convinced that unlimited vs set days has almost no bearing on how many PTO days someone will actually take.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#139

Post by yladiz »

nradov wrote: post #130
yladiz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employee I don’t care about the reasons that inflation exists, I care about getting the same real money over time (only counting inflation raises, not counting merit or other kinds). And citation needed about inflation raises driving inflation, there are much bigger factors that contribute to it.

Employers don't care about whether you're getting the same real money over time. Why should they?

Because I do, and if they only care about me as an economic output machine then why should I care about them?

Put another way, if they aren’t matching inflation, should I reduce the work I do correspondingly?

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#140

Post by 9rx »

contagiousflow wrote: post #134
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PLC, Programmable Logic Controller, was 1968. After which it started to become possible to have automated assembly lines with a few humans monitoring specialized robots.

Yeah, that's one specialized piece of automation in a long line of automation throughout history. I'm not sure why taking humans off of the assembly line is a larger deal than taking humans out of agriculture, textile production, or printing?

The only thing that is significant is that shift brought us to reaching peak human productivity. Prior to that, humans were not able to be as productive. Consider agriculture: You might be able to be maximally productive some times of the year, but usually you were waiting on Mother Nature to do her thing. This is why wages were able to grow alongside productivity as we started moving away from a pure agrarian world — having less reliance on external factors limiting what humans could produce. Once humans reached peak human productivity their human-based measures stagnated, but productivity itself did not stop as automation advances have kept that ball rolling. Taking people off the assembly line saw them move into jobs, mostly "knowledge-based" ones, where there was no way to become even more productive. You can only sit around in so many meetings each day, so to speak.

Maybe there is a new frontier where humans can start to become more productive again. Some say that is AI, but that remains to be seen. For now, we've hit our known limit. There is no longer anything outside of human control, like waiting for a crop to grow, that limits our human productivity. The only limiting us is ourselves, and it may be a fundamental limit.

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