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The three year myth

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Re: The three year myth

#151

Post by K0balt »

roarcher wrote: post #136
K0balt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If losing your job is traumatic, I’d suggest reviewing your relationship with employers and employment in general. It’s not a stable situation, and there is no social aspect in reality. It’s an accounting decision. Employment is almost always exploitation on one side or the other, with the best case being mutual exploitation. Employment inherently involves paying less for your work than it is worth. In an ideal situa…

> If losing your job is traumatic, I’d suggest reviewing your relationship with employers and employment in general. Should I also review my relationship with my need to eat and have a roof over my head?

Being dependent to that degree on something you have ultimately no control over is the problem. In that situation, I am always hedging my bets and preparing for the worst.

Because it’s not if but when. I work like hell to get out of those situations and into a situation where I am more in control of my destiny.

That people get lulled into a sense of security in typical employment situations is to me extremely bad judgment on their part, if not outright denial of the reality of their situation.

The only thing sure about employment is that it will end.

Re: The three year myth

#152

Post by K0balt »

Throaway1982 wrote: post #75
K0balt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If losing your job is traumatic, I’d suggest reviewing your relationship with employers and employment in general. It’s not a stable situation, and there is no social aspect in reality. It’s an accounting decision. Employment is almost always exploitation on one side or the other, with the best case being mutual exploitation. Employment inherently involves paying less for your work than it is worth. In an ideal situa…

Being told you no longer have the ability to provide for yourself is also violence, especially when the onus on finding a new means of provision is 100% up to you.

Clearly. And it’s also the 100 percent predictable outcome of every single employment situation. Employment is a stopgap measure on the road to something more stable.

Reaching high enough salaries so that you can coast 4-5 years between jobs is also an option, but at that point it’s not regular employment in any sense of the word, when your lawyer is drawing up your severance package.

Re: The three year myth

#153

Post by K0balt »

imtringued wrote: post #147
K0balt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been on both sides of the table for decades. I try to find ways to bind incentives from either side so that they are better aligned, but it’s always exploitative in one way or another. It’s just suboptimal. Perhaps employee owned businesses are the solution.

The solutions will always be the same: demurrage currency and land value taxes.

Perhaps. But that also erodes the stability islands that motivate people to be hyper productive, and encourages investment in external economies, starving the local economy. So I don’t think those work, or at least I’ve never seen a working example. Costco, on the other hand, and many other employee owned cooperatives do seem to align incentives better than most situations without discouraging investment.

demurrage currency otoh is probably worth looking closer at IF a way to build an equitable two-tiered system could be developed. Perhaps corporate money would be demurrage , with personal money that has passed through a tax window stable.

Re: The three year myth

#154

Post by K0balt »

Nevermark wrote: post #145
K0balt wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if you limit “violence” to violence against humans only? I’ve always thought that violence was applicable to animals and plants as well, so I guess we differ there. Intentional harm that causes death is firmly in the violence category, imho. the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy is pretty much the accepted definition, afaik I’m not thinking of violence as some kind of universal…

You are using a word in a way it is seldom used. You could define your take up front. Or better yet, figure out the words other people will be able to recognize and understand you, without unnecessary linguistic gymnastics.

Huh. I don’t think in my experience that the term violence is seldom applied to things outside of humans, and IME the terms economic violence and social violence, emotional violence, and many others are common parlance. Perhaps we come from different cultures. At any rate, given the definition I find in several dictionaries I think my point stands. I will concede that coercion, exploitation, or extortion might be better descriptors.

Re: The three year myth

#155

Post by Throaway1982 »

K0balt wrote: post #152
Throaway1982 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being told you no longer have the ability to provide for yourself is also violence, especially when the onus on finding a new means of provision is 100% up to you.

Clearly. And it’s also the 100 percent predictable outcome of every single employment situation. Employment is a stopgap measure on the road to something more stable. Reaching high enough salaries so that you can coast 4-5 years between jobs is also an option, but at that point it’s not regular employment in any sense of the word, when your lawyer is drawing up your severance package.

ok?

Re: The three year myth

#156

Post by dasil003 »

jtrn wrote: post #54

For anybody that is interested in a clinical psychologist's take, here is mine… This article triggers an overwhelming feeling that something is missing in the story. Of course, being fired is genuinely painful, and the author's emotional state is understandable. But I think there is a much better way to understand this situation that would be beneficial to the author. Please note that this is just a guess, and in rea…

I gotta say you really nailed a solid explanation for what I felt reading the OA but would not have been able to articulate it this clearly.

As someone who personally had a history of wanting to be right, sometimes at the expense of being effective, this is a lesson worth taking to heart.

What I’ve learned is that raw engineering chops and deep end-to-end thinking is highly valued if and only if you understand where leadership is trying to go and you bring people along in your vision. If you pitch your boss and they say no, you need to take it to heart and understand why, if you plow ahead vowing to show how right you were you are forcing them into an awkward position where you can only lose.

A lot of replies in the thread siding with the original author and indignant on their own terms about how they’ve been wronged by “corrupt” leaders. But this betrays a misunderstanding of how large orgs work. The nature of success is you have to subvert yourself to the whims of the organization, and only stick your neck out to challenge the status quo when you have sufficient air cover from someone higher up who believes in you. Corporations are often dysfunctional and anyone working within them can clearly see the flaws, but you’ve got to be clear eyed about what influence you have, and even then, pick your battles, or you’ll be rejected like an immune response from the organization.

Re: The three year myth

#157

Post by notepad0x90 »

imtringued wrote: post #148
notepad0x90 wrote: post #123

On one hand there are places that will look out for job-hoppers so the 3yr rule is good. But for promotions, job-hopping is the best strategy. The part people don't talk about much is the toll it takes on you when you switch jobs. It's like moving but worse. It's not like switching your wardrobe or something, it's a very drastic and intense change. There really is no hard-and-fast rule with these things, you just hav…

"What matters is how valuable you are to individuals." Specifically "What matters is how valuable you are to" the individuals that decide your paycheck.

That matters, but not always. you might want to move to a different team for example. You could be valuable to the people that decide your pay check, but if you made it politically untenable to promote you or give you a pay raise, they'll still value you, but only right where you are. They'd want to help you out more, but then they would lose a valuable resource and it would hurt them, or they'd have to pay others more. But if others also value you, then they'll snatch you out of your old leadership's claws, or it might be easier to create a "special" position just for you so you can get paid more, if everyone outside of your managers and team like you enough to not have a problem with it.

Re: The three year myth

#158

Post by lunar-whitey »

jtrn wrote: post #141
lunar-whitey wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there is another diagnosis that is blindingly obvious but i wont name it out here. I wonder why a self identified mental health professional would go to such lengths to deny the viewpoint many of autistic people, who frequently report that the truth of what they say matters far less to organizations than the manner in which they say it.

Because it’s annoying that people can’t even stick with the criteria that are basically the same across all the major diagnostic manuals. And because I believe that words and concepts should mean somethin. Because it’s proof that they are not really as focused on details as they claim. Every time someone wrongly claim they have PTSD, which is a lot these days, they water down and diminish the experience of people who…

I honestly hope you are lying about your profession, rather than venting your personal frustrations with clients by arguing with people that you believe resemble them online.

Re: The three year myth

#159

Post by Nevermark »

K0balt wrote: post #154
Nevermark wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using a word in a way it is seldom used. You could define your take up front. Or better yet, figure out the words other people will be able to recognize and understand you, without unnecessary linguistic gymnastics.

Huh. I don’t think in my experience that the term violence is seldom applied to things outside of humans, and IME the terms economic violence and social violence, emotional violence, and many others are common parlance. Perhaps we come from different cultures. At any rate, given the definition I find in several dictionaries I think my point stands. I will concede that coercion, exploitation, or extortion might be bet…

You are right, some people are stretching that word a lot.

I don’t think that’s changed how most people interpret the word. More of a weakening of its meaning often with an activist or persuasive bent.

Toxic is another word similarly getting stretched and watered down by some.

> Farming is violence.

This would definitely fall into the stretched / watered down pattern.

I don’t think the other strong words you are using are any different in this context.

I am not saying you don’t have a point, but over dramatizing can make it hard to relate to, when people are being expected to accept a level of verbal shrillness that isn’t necessary to make a point.

Humanity is certainly damaging a lot of ecosystems, not by any single farmer, but in aggregate. Change is normal, but we are driving it faster than nature can keep up with. It is a problem.

But outside of poetic or proselytizing use, violence usually means inflicting intentional harm, not a problem of conflict between reasonable local tradeoffs (creating food being a positive use of land) vs. the global impact that needs to be balanced too.

Re: The three year myth

#160

Post by tekla »

theonething wrote: post #108
ozim wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am doing that but I also got annoyed by recruiters or HR or whoever that was in last 2 inquiries I sent out. They would call me out of the blue in the middle of the day expecting I pick up and have time to talk with them like I would be jobless person waiting for them to call. I didn’t pick up at all because I was busy. Earlier I remember I would get an email to at least give me heads up they will contact me next w…

You actually get phone calls from recruiters? All my initial interactions with them have invariably been over email, LinkedIn, etc. Been that way for many years now.

Yes, at least once a week. It's actually annoying
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