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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

#221

Post by LiquidSky »

codegeek wrote: post #76
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…

Because of these shitty corporate companies that don't give a shit about their employees, the well is now poisoned for companies that do care especially smaller ones. Employees don't want to give their best anymore because they are burnt elsewhere and they become unemployable at smaller companies. It is a sad state of affairs.

>the well is now poisoned for companies that do care

Because there's no such thing. Or rather, there are until it's unprofitable enough that caring seriously threatens the bottom line, or the nice owners sell off to someone less nice.

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

#222

Post by pjc50 »

Aurornis wrote: post #131
pjc50 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A good long explanation of the issues: https://www.slatergordon.co.uk/newsroom/can-i-walk-out-of-my...

The flip side is that other employers understand that you can't fill a position immediately. There's not many circumstances where a unique opportunity really appears on no notice.

In situations where you are in dispute with your employer and want to walk off, the traditional solution is to file a number of disputes and get yourself signed off as sick with "stress", then quietly negotiate a mutually agreeable exit.

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

#223

Post by gambiting »

superfrank wrote: post #206
compiler-guy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do like it, and I'm glad it's working out for them--I really am. But adding all that manager and corporate discretion sets one up for abuse when things go wrong at either the manager or corporate level. For some, I suppose the benefit is worth it--but if "unlimited vs set days has almost no bearing on how many PTO days someone will actually take", then people are giving up a lot of guarantees for very lit…

> But adding all that manager and corporate discretion sets one up for abuse when things go wrong at either the manager or corporate level I have never worked at a place where I didn't need manager approval for my PTO. That includes places where I had a set PTO balance. In my experience, having banked PTO days doesn't actually give you any real protection from abuse. A manager can still deny every single PTO request…

>>A manager can still deny every single PTO request or load you up with so much work that taking any PTO will result in you falling behind.

I was once on a team where the manager thought he was being tough by really discouraging PTO taking in their team, and it was all great until we got to the end of the year with pretty much everyone on the team still having 20+ days of PTO left. HR just made everyone take the entire december off to use those days up, after that once incident no one had any issues booking PTO the following year.

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

#224

Post by Frieren »

darth_avocado wrote: post #21
Frieren wrote: post #14

Big tech owns a big chunk of the job market. So, the job market is not a market but a centralized system were big-tech has all the power to shape it. Unionizing is just part of the fighting back. Only splitting the big monopolies can bring back competition and healthy salaries and promotions. Monopolies are bad for consumers, but they are also bad for employees when that monopolies control most of the jobs of the ind…

> Big tech owns a big chunk of the job market Big tech employs less than 1% of the people in the country.

Monopoly is not about owning all the products, but just one. That same applies to jobs. Tech jobs sucking is caused by industry consolidation.

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

#225

Post by davkan »

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.

I have unlimited PTO, called DTO (discretionary time off). The only downsides in my case are that since it’s not accrued hours you are not owed it on termination and we are limited to two consecutive weeks. Otherwise I have never once been denied DTO, even when I’ve had bad overlaps with my coworkers. I would guess I take somewhere around 6 weeks off per year plus holidays. A few vacations and then odd days and long weekends here and there. I’m not really sure though, I don’t think about it, I just take off when I want. It’s absolutely wonderful.

I’ve heard horror stories about unlimited equating to zero. But I’ve also heard plenty of horror stories about PTO and unpaid time off getting denied as well. There is not much for employee protections in the states.

Maybe the hate for DTO in well compensated circles like this comes from people who were already getting 6 weeks of PTO. I would imagine they’re not comparing DTO against the 4 weeks my sister has as a senior dev in a marketing firm with an extra day per year of service or the _3_ weeks my mother had at 65 working as a data analyst for a healthcare company. Or maybe my company is just a unicorn in a sea of companies abusing it with people not being able to get any time off at all.

People are talking about how it’s always busy, there’s never enough time etc. That’s true almost everywhere. The work never stops. There’s always a project, always a critical bug, always a new initiative, always the next sprint. There’s more work than could ever be done with twice the employees. Good culture just mandates that you work around peoples absence and so is fine if people are out. Likewise as a good employee you don’t abuse unlimited and take off half the year.

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

#226

Post by ramon156 »

I want to view this from the other angle but have a hard time.

Lets say your company breaks even. There's a savings jar, people's salary are being met, everyone's happy, and idk, you bought your first yacht or whatever.

Shouldn't you calculate expenses on the assumption that people will get a salary increase? Or is that a weird thought? Is that just a fixed variable, and when someone asks for a raise you can say "sorry, our budget is tight"

I have a feeling many Founders/CEO's aren't honest about expenses and earnings. If my company made a million and someone earns on average 50k, then I can hire a lot of people with that money. If they all cost 60k (big promotion imo), then I need to hire like they'll earn 60k.

Maybe this is all bs, but I feel like a lot of founders can pay but won't.

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

#227

Post by b112 »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #209
b112 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I looked at this, the first thing which popped into my mind came from the 95th percentile graph... third one I think. If you're a CTO, CEO, CxO, you have direct, in depth knowledge to how the company is doing. You also likely have insight into how that translates into free capital to spend on wages. Many companies are not public, and even when companies are, earning reports aren't easy for a line worker to fully…

Income Statements didn't change in the 70s.

Not sure what you're talking about. Whose income statement? And why would that matter, in reference to what I said?

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

#228

Post by mk_stjames »

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 have this little insight into PTO that I keep saved, from the book "Algorithms to Live By" by Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths (a nice read). I think of it often when hearing about people and their work schedules in modern salaried positions and these 'unlimited PTO' offers:

  >All employees want, in theory, to take as much vacation as possible. But they also all want to take just slightly less vacation than each other, to be perceived as more loyal, more committed, and more dedicated (hence more promotion-worthy). Everyone looks to the others for a baseline, and will take just slightly less than that. The Nash equilibrium of this game is zero.

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

#229

Post by marcuskane2 »

mk_stjames wrote: post #228
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 have this little insight into PTO that I keep saved, from the book "Algorithms to Live By" by Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths (a nice read). I think of it often when hearing about people and their work schedules in modern salaried positions and these 'unlimited PTO' offers: >All employees want, in theory, to take as much vacation as possible. But they also all want to take just slightly less vacation than each othe…

> hence more promotion-worthy

Relevant for big companies where people intend to have decade spanning careers with multiple promotions.

But for the tech worker who is going to have a series of 1-3 year stints at different companies, their promotions are more likely to come from switching companies than from showing loyalty or commitment to their current employer.

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

#230

Post by rsynnott »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #64

Stalling out on promotion has always happened. It can be explained almost entirely by two factors: As you become more senior, the success metrics for your role change significantly. Mentoring only goes so far because there is a large element of self-awareness and a willingness to change. Some people never recognize this and many never successfully adapt to what seniority entails. It is the career equivalent of trying…

Also, sometimes, the next level up is something that not everyone will actually want to do. And, depending on personal circumstances (and what the company's expectations are; many will have a level that there's no expectation people progress beyond), that may be _fine_.
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