331–340 of 390 posts
I recently joined a big tech company. It was a long term project and something quite new to me as I switched career and was working in a different context. There are pros and cons, but it's a bit of a disappointment. I've got the impression very quickly that absolutely nobody cares about me in this company and that employees mostly don't love what they do. Specifically - There's a high turn-over - Everybody is focuse…
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If I overlay that spending graph with quality of life during the same timespan, I might conclude government spending is a miracle. A greater success within 200 years can hardly be imagined.
Correlation doesn't imply causation and the pirates disappearing didn't cause global warming. I'm grateful to entrepreneurs and companies for innovating so much, while the USA is turning into the largest employer in the world (bigger than China).
Yes, that's what I said. ;p
From gp: > There is a pretty simple correlation between growth in government spending and a reduced ability of businesses to have a positive impact in their community.
Oh really? I'm somewhat familiar with German companies and the extreme regulation and worker-focused rules they endure as a good comparison to American businesses which I am intimately familiar with. My takeaway is that while it's much much harder to operate and innovate in Germany, the citizens are better off in immeasurable ways. Spectra, pendula, all that...
Exit interviews are a trap...because everything you say and do at your company has little landmines built into it because they are constantly trying to use humans like cogs in a clock and when you wear out you are no longer helpful to the clock maker or the people who use the clock everyday...then you get removed from the clock and replaced quickly.
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> It truly is shocking that health insurance is tied to employment status. I think "annoying" is a better description. It's not shocking at all, it was a fairly predictable outcome given the situation. It is really annoying that we haven't managed to walk it back to something more reasonable since then.
“Annoying” for me would be stepping on a small LEGO. As a Canadian, I think that the US healthcare system exists in a first world country is absolutely “shocking”.
It 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?
...and obedient to corporations.
Such mechanism give corporations the power to decide who gets terminated and loses health insurance. It's very effective at discouraging people from doing anything that goes again the grain, like getting into an union.
One of the wisest pieces of career advice I ever heard was "you cannot change an organization by leaving it." It works both ways: if you're leaving in hopes that it'll be a wake-up call to management that a valuable person left, then it probably won't be. And, if you leave your workplace to improve your own life, you've also necessarily chosen not to try and improve the workplace. Leaving means giving up on trying to…
If anything, removing yourself from its workforce it's one of the most impactful things you can do!
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How is that any different than some fiefdom ruled over by some noble? The whole point of democracy and elective government is that you can't rely on a system like that to be consistently good, whether it's the Duke's son squandering all the wealth and not listening to the people or a shift in management at the company. Just because sometimes there were benevolent companies that decided to contribute to their communit…
The two main differences: 1) Nobody pretends that business skills are especially hereditary. It is common for people to enter and exit the 'class' of business owner. 2) Success as as a business owner requires steady economic activity where people get what they want. Success as a noble ruling a fiefdom requires kneecapping anyone who challenges your god-given right to rule. One big observations: This is what US govern…
Is this a joke? Nepotism is a huge problem in every step of the executive pipeline. The children of executives are often groomed to become executives themselves from basically the time they can talk.
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If you're middle class, with stocks, a professional job, your own house, you probably have been doing absolutely fine over the last couple of years. It's everyone else who's in trouble.
It might be worth noting that in the US, "middle class" is used in the same way as "working class" is used in the UK i.e. blue collar, non-professionals.