I have no problem with mercenary advice, in fact I give it myself often: most relationships with a company are adversarial and it’s fine to operate on that basis… but I felt that the exit interview article was wrong: I’ve personally benefited from attending exit interviews and never incurred any costs because of one, and so from a purely selfish point of view, it makes complete sense to attend an exit interview. There’s a lot of value in relationships.
Is my advice too mercenary?
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Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#22I’m not inclined to do an exit interview because I’ve likely already expressed my opinions.
I do think the “the company doesn’t care about you” type advice does require some nuance.
Different companies make different choices and just because someone moves from mega corporation to mega corp doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust anyone…
There’s space in between giving your entire self to a company and imagining everyone is out to get you.
I’ve worked with folks who are absolutely obsessed with protecting themselves from being stomped on by a company, and nobody wanted to work with people who ooze cynicism like that / talk about taking a better job all the time . They of course interpret the results (not being put on some team or another) that as being punished because they “know” / are willing to express what they thin the truth is…
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#23I can imagine a lot of new graduates having trouble with this: > I think many people, especially those newer to the working world, underestimate just how ruthless and sociopathic our late-stage Capitalist working conditions really are [...] I’d love to live in a world where less mercenary advice wasn’t dangerous, but that’s not our world.
I'm 46 and never in my whole career have working conditions been less ruthless nor less sociopathic than they are today. I'm constantly barraged with acceptance training, "human connection" training and calls where the expectation is to "share and connect" by telling the group something personal. I'm not with a bunch of kids either, these are all upper management very high 6 figure types. I don't want to be one of th…
I'd like to agree with the latter part of this sentiment as a young person who didn't experience any other times of working to which you refer.
I got fed this narrative that the corporate environment was ruthless and cutthroat, but I found it highly resistant to even profitable, labor-saving new ideas or practices in favor of ego management, image management, and non disruption.
Maybe it's a false expectation on my part, but I would have at least expected ruthless people to be pragmatic and open minded toward things which may be of benefit. That's not to say they're without fault or downside, but that's certainly not generally characteristic of the corporate environment I've experienced.
OTOH, I've found smaller employers with a more direct connection to market forces much better in this regard. I don't think those two things are unrelated.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming this is by design to keep the US population "on their toes" and at work doing productive things. Otherwise why would it be tied to employment?
The origin of the tie between US employment and healthcare was during the Second World War when wage controls were put into place. Employers competed for workers by adding benefits packages, which later became ossified and further entrenched with exemptions in the tax code.
And it wasn't until the 90s that individually purchased health insurance become unviable for the average family. https://listwithclever.com/research/healthcare-costs-over-ti...
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#25I can imagine a lot of new graduates having trouble with this: > I think many people, especially those newer to the working world, underestimate just how ruthless and sociopathic our late-stage Capitalist working conditions really are [...] I’d love to live in a world where less mercenary advice wasn’t dangerous, but that’s not our world.
I'm 46 and never in my whole career have working conditions been less ruthless nor less sociopathic than they are today. I'm constantly barraged with acceptance training, "human connection" training and calls where the expectation is to "share and connect" by telling the group something personal. I'm not with a bunch of kids either, these are all upper management very high 6 figure types. I don't want to be one of th…
I'm constantly barraged with acceptance training, "human connection" training and calls where the expectation is to "share and connect" by telling the group something personal
We had a "leadership training" thing a few weeks back where one of the segments involved a breakout session with a random coworker who you may or may not already know, with the expectation that you share something deep and revealing you've never told anyone else.
The person I got paired up with and I were both incredulous about the exercise, specifically the "something you've never told anyone else" part, and shared a couple of surface level phobias "I'm afraid of spiders", I told him. He told me he was scared of sharks. We spent the remaining 5 minutes of our breakout talking about local sports.
Companies need to back the hell off with this stuff. I pay a therapist for those kinds of conversations.
I'm fine being friendly and even making friends with my coworkers over drinks for a little bit work before we all go home, if it happens organically and in a way where people get to choose their level of interaction and disclosure about their personal lives, but a lot of this "top down camaraderie/management facilitated team building" going around feels like a toddler smashing a Barbie and Ken doll together making smooching noises at best, at worst it feels like mommy and daddy making play dates.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#26The problem may be that his advice is a defeatist "never do this". In the referenced article about exit interviews, the advice centers entirely around not providing feedback. Be as bland as possible. The workplace is presented in a combative manner where you cannot ever win.
While that article mentions game theory, and describes one situation where it seemed safe to provide feedback, it then focuses on that feedback being unproductive. The author could have offered advice on /how/ to provide feedback. If enough people leave for the same reasons it may start to turn the ship - so let's consider why the feedback was not well received.
Providing negative feedback to the company follows similar patterns to the company providing negative feedback to employees. We're still talking about humans communicating with each other - emotional, flawed, egotistical (aka fairly normal) humans. Decide which one or two points are most important to communicate. Offer genuine positive feedback to make it easier to accept the negative feedback, and try not to present other topics in a negative manner. Let the 1-2 negative points stand out among other positive language.
Some companies care. Some bosses care. Some don't. Some are combative, dysfunctional, or selfish. Some care but are misguided. Rather than blanket "never do this" advice, let's focus on learning when to offer vs withhold feedback, and how to offer negative feedback when it is warranted.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#27It truly is shocking that health insurance is tied to employment status. I really think this is a large part of the trend towards overt ruthlessness in the USA, no one has their back so they have no ones back, as people age and experience medical bankruptcy (or narrowly avoid it at great cost) they are realizing this ruthlessness in our system.
I'm assuming this is by design to keep the US population "on their toes" and at work doing productive things. Otherwise why would it be tied to employment?
I think you are framing it as a top down objective, but I think it's the opposite. Employers themselves offer healthcare because it's a way to attract employees. You can get other health plans (e.g. Obamacare) but they are not as competitive as employer-sponsored plans. To not have employer-sponsored plans, you would have to either 1) ban employer-sponsored plans 2) offer other plans that are competitive. #1 seems unrealistic, #2 is possible but would have to probably be done by the state, which the US doesn't really love.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#28It truly is shocking that health insurance is tied to employment status. I really think this is a large part of the trend towards overt ruthlessness in the USA, no one has their back so they have no ones back, as people age and experience medical bankruptcy (or narrowly avoid it at great cost) they are realizing this ruthlessness in our system.
As people age they do get “free” insurance from Medicare. And if a white collar worker experiences downward mobility they can qualify for free or cheap insurance through the Medicaid and Affordable Care Act provisions.
Every single one of those programs comes with a laundry list of asterisks that make them far worse than any employer provided insurance I have ever had.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming this is by design to keep the US population "on their toes" and at work doing productive things. Otherwise why would it be tied to employment?
Health insurance is "tied to employment" because of wage controls that were implemented in WWII. Employers still had trouble hiring people, and because they were prohibited from raising wages, they had to find other ways to attract people: benefits. Health insurance then became a popular benefit. Also, note that you can buy your own health insurance in the US. You are not required to use health insurance provided by…
You are free to buy your own (expensive, much worse) health insurance rather than through an employer, sure.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming this is by design to keep the US population "on their toes" and at work doing productive things. Otherwise why would it be tied to employment?
The origin of the tie between US employment and healthcare was during the Second World War when wage controls were put into place. Employers competed for workers by adding benefits packages, which later became ossified and further entrenched with exemptions in the tax code.
I knew an individual named Ron Hillhouse, he sold life insurance and built a large insurance company in Texas twice.
He sold it each time to a group in NY (MetLife each time if memory serves). He told me that his insight was that construction companies would have variable revenue and compensation requirements across TX building contracts (private vs government mostly) and to avoid discontent they would dump the difference into life insurance and other alternative compensation because as long as the take home paycheck was the same no one really complained about being put on lower compensation jobs.
Not sure if that was a similar origin for health insurance but I've always assumed it was.