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Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

ludic.mataroa.blog

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Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#331

Post by hotnfresh »

astrange wrote: post #117
mijoharas wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Graeber speak with people who self-reported their jobs being "bullshit"? Doesn't really sound like: > look at other people's work and conclude that it's useless just because you don't personally watch them all day.

Those people were harmlessly bullshitting (or maybe demonstrating the concept of revealed preferences), but you're still doing it when you take them too seriously and proclaim it's a society wide trend. (Not you personally I mean.)

There must be bubbles at play. Like some folks just don’t closely know enough people in enough parts of the economy to see what the other bubble sees, so assumes they’re wrong or exaggerating just to have a laugh or something.

There are definitely bullshit jobs, and jobs that are mostly bullshit.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#332

Post by Draiken »

sokoloff wrote: post #325
Draiken wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living below your means is separated from your standard of living. In a better world everyone should be able to live well without having to sacrifice as much. Somehow we've convinced ourselves that it's always the individual's fault when they have to live with a worse standard of living to maybe retire one day.

It’s the individual’s wise choice (not fault) when they do that, IMO.

I agree with you regarding the means of living but that's not what I said.

Accepting that you will have to work until you die is lowering your standard of living. So is accepting that any emergency can bankrupt you or that you will never be able to travel, and so on.

For some reason people are conflating standards of living with irresponsible spending.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#333

Post by uoaei »

harimau777 wrote: post #252
uoaei wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess misconceptions like these are why theorists abandoned the term 'communism' in favor of 'communalism' to explain what they meant. This isn't even a no-true-scotsman argument, but if all that comes to mind when communism comes up is Soviet dictatorship, the cold war propaganda worked.

For what it's worth, I understood the parent post to specifically be referring to instances like Stalinism, Maoism, etc. since it says specifically "communist dictatorship".

I suspect there was a sneaky edit between the time of my reply and the time you read it.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#334

Post by neogodless »

anvil-on-my-toe wrote: post #297
neogodless wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In places where houses are $500K, rent is probably $2000 / month. (More like $1200 - 5000 / month, but depending on the size, location, amenities, luxuriousness of fixtures, etc.) If you make barely $100K, and are spending $24K on rent, let's say you spend half of the rest on living. That leaves you with $38K savings per year. So it takes you 32 months to save up $100K for a down payment. The secret is don't spend al…

You forgot taxes. $38k - $27k in taxes = $11k savings. So 9 years to save up, by which time housing inflation will have taken the price to ~$700k. You are then $40k short for the down payment.

Do you know a lot of software engineers that barely make $100k?

That's why I'm not getting caught up in the particulars of this example.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#335

Post by oooyay »

ta988 wrote: post #306
oooyay wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me about five years to save my down payment. I lived very frugally, don't have a wife, don't have a kid, I paid less than $20k on note for each of my cars, and do not have college debt. I'd say it's fairly difficult if you start moving any of the knobs I minimized or set to zero above. Even then, after my down payment money was tight for the first year because it was everything I had. I got a mortgage similar…

So you are a both a bit of an exception nowadays with no family and no debt.

I'm largely an exception, yes

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#336

Post by throaway234 »

Draiken wrote: post #218
skrebbel wrote: post #192

Blog posts like these are a staple on HN and I’m always mildly offended by them. It seems to me that there’s a class of programmer that will take an overpaid job at a terrible BigCo, spend their evenings writing ranty blog posts about how terrible it all is, culminating in the inevitable “I quit” article, only subsequently to accept a job at a different terrible BigCo. At no point does this article, or most articles…

If we lived in a world where money wasn't so important I would fully agree with you. But it is. I can't earn the same as you all can because I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever. So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice. Choosing to earn less and hope for a lottery ticket win l…

> If we lived in a world where money wasn't so important...

Money being important is not part of the world, it's part of you. You even say so a few lines later:

> ... I don't want to work forever.

So yes, you indeed have no choice but to treat money as important because... you've chosen to treat money as important.

I'm offering this in the hopes that you can stand back and look at your need from a distance. What are other ways to satisfy this need without you writing useless software _and_ without money being the main constraint? Get creative!

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#337

Post by pmontra »

I'm sure that the author understands the difference between a clearcut fencing competition and the messy competition between companies and between the very people inside those companies. Yet there is little or nothing about that in the article.

Those Dereks can survive inside companies because the contribution of every single person is so tiny that it's very difficult to measure. Furthermore, most of the times it doesn't influence the success or failure of ambitious managers.

Those Dereks know it, maybe got their fingers burned attempting to be smart in the past, they do only what's needed to get their money on their bank account at the end of the month.

Move some of them in a position where their work makes the difference between losing and winning (software for a racing car team?) and they might undull themselves.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#338

Post by charlie0 »

Moru wrote: post #213
gcapu wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God points but: 1) For someone in BigCo it is fun to read. 2) BigCo is not a bad place for most people. Management should just shut up about efficiency and data driven. No one believes them, not even themselves.

It's also nice to read for us in SmallCo. We remember why we took that salary hit to stay sane.

Hey, some of us in SmallCo have dreams of trading in joy for a much larger paycheck at BigCo. No pain, no gain.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#339

Post by hef19898 »

anvil-on-my-toe wrote: post #251
neogodless wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No it's not really a choice. Hard disagree. Have never worked for "terrible big company" (though some mediocre medium companies!) But outside of the super high cost of living areas like NYC and San Francisco, it's trivially simple (if not easy) to live on $50-60K USD each year (adjust this number for inflation as needed) while still enjoying yourself, having high performance technology, doing some travel, etc. You…

$60-100k salary is not enough to support a family and retire; it's probably not enough for a single person to make meaningful progress towards retirement because at that level of pay home ownership is constantly out of reach and inflation outpaces wage growth. It's sacrificing your life so someone else can get rich.

Well, not being able to retire at 60-100k is such an US problem... It is enough to easily retirely at whatever the legal retirement age is, earlier if I include all tue benefits my boring big corp job and collectively bargained salary provide.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#340

Post by charlie0 »

pdimitar wrote: post #7

That article was a very nice surprise and apart from how crushingly accurate it is (before somebody jumps in to defend all the corporate chaos, of course) it also had me giggling several times while reading it. The answer of course is financial incentives. It is the answer 99% of the time, I know quite a few high-profile managers at this point and they are all very smart and get stuff done people and yet they allow t…

The good managers very much reminds me of this skit https://youtu.be/DYvhC_RdIwQ?si=Ex-kiOcrnA3PVsgI
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