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Unemployed Fishing

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Re: Unemployed Fishing

#51

Post by doc_gunthrop »

agoodthrowaway wrote: post #45
doc_gunthrop wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - No matter what you hear about others, your severance will be a nasty insult and you will very likely have to spend to hire a lawyer to get what you are owed. Find one now and agree on a rate while you have a job. While it's a nice sentiment for thought, severance pay isn't mandatory in the U.S. and there's no requirement for it in the Fair Labor Standards Act[0]. Severance seems more like a customary courtesy, li…

I don’t think the GP was implying that everyone gets severance. Generally employers are often in legal grey areas when they are letting people go; particularly in cases where there is no legal or policy violation. In these cases they often try to bully you into giving up your rights. Severance is payment for agreeing to waive your right to sue for wrongful termination.

Fair point; severance pay can certainly act as a sort of "hush money". Not to mention how it can be used to keep ex-employees from exposing trade secrets with a competitor in the same industry.

Re: Unemployed Fishing

#52

Post by vkou »

sokoloff wrote: post #48
germinalphrase wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people working 50 hours a week are being compensated such that they can retire in 15-20 years? I’d guess vanishingly few.

Very few for sure. Even if it were only 1 person, I would still object to a government mandate to bar that.

1. Mandate 1.5x overtime pay for any hour worked over 25, and companies will very quickly be incentivised to hire more people, instead of overworking the ones they have.

2. You'd rather take all the social ills of 30-40% of the population being out of work, or doing shitty gig economy jobs?

Re: Unemployed Fishing

#53

Post by shoo »

motohagiography wrote: post #47
aklemm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very wise; excellent advice. Any adult who has faced the prospect of unemployment can probably hear this fairly well, but is there any way to communicate this concept to younger people? I'd have loved to come out of college with a better perspective on what "employment" means for a life.

Thank you. I think the point of an undergrad degree is to produce credulity. My recent comment history has one about about how money is made, and that's the perspective I think young people should have. tl;dr: it's a scale of dependency, labour, time, skill, risk, capital, power. STEM people are not typically taught negotiations, sales, political science, marketing, or business and we're often given this conceit that…

> STEM people are not typically taught negotiations, sales, political science, marketing, or business

Yup!

> we're often given this conceit that we're above all that, which I think keeps us stupid and cheap.

I was thinking along these lines some years back after finally realising that (i) I was underpaid; and (ii) I had no idea how to negotiate effectively; and (iii) that there are many opportunities in life to negotiate, and getting better at negotiation from "I don't even recognise that this situation is a negotiation" to "this situation can be negotiated, here's my very awkward and mediocre effort at doing that" would have a much higher return on investment than learning yet another technical or mathematical thing.

> point of an undergrad degree is to produce credulity

I went through a period of suspecting similar things: if there's a STEM education pipeline that products highly specialised technicians and engineers who aren't equipped with knowledge and skills to navigate and exploit a commercial environment or hierarchical political organisations, isn't the pipeline doing what employers might want? Producing very useful and focused and naive "resources" who don't understand their own value. Tools to be applied.

I'm not sure how much I genuinely agree with this. But perhaps some part of it is true, with the STEM pipeline being tuned to serve the interests of employers and universities and government, but not necessarily the people going through it.

If you're thinking along these lines, check out the book "disciplined minds". The author's argument is roughly that the major part of graduate education is political: demonstrating that you can serve the interests of your masters and perform creative and intelligent work on the problems you are assigned, within the constraints you are assigned.

It's a good read but probably far less actionable than cracking open a few books about how to get better at negotiation, or marketing, etc.

Re: Unemployed Fishing

#54

Post by jdavis703 »

shoo wrote: post #53
motohagiography wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I think the point of an undergrad degree is to produce credulity. My recent comment history has one about about how money is made, and that's the perspective I think young people should have. tl;dr: it's a scale of dependency, labour, time, skill, risk, capital, power. STEM people are not typically taught negotiations, sales, political science, marketing, or business and we're often given this conceit that…

> STEM people are not typically taught negotiations, sales, political science, marketing, or business Yup! > we're often given this conceit that we're above all that, which I think keeps us stupid and cheap. I was thinking along these lines some years back after finally realising that (i) I was underpaid; and (ii) I had no idea how to negotiate effectively; and (iii) that there are many opportunities in life to negot…

I know it pretty popular to bash George Mason University these days... But one positive thing is our applied information technology program has courses requiring business skills, ethics and understanding of the global economy and culture. If you paid attention, and listened to the guest speakers they had come out weekly for the senior capstone project lectures, you'd learn quite a lot about navigating the worlds of commerce and government.

Re: Unemployed Fishing

#55

Post by shoo »

jdavis703 wrote: post #54
shoo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> STEM people are not typically taught negotiations, sales, political science, marketing, or business Yup! > we're often given this conceit that we're above all that, which I think keeps us stupid and cheap. I was thinking along these lines some years back after finally realising that (i) I was underpaid; and (ii) I had no idea how to negotiate effectively; and (iii) that there are many opportunities in life to negot…

I know it pretty popular to bash George Mason University these days... But one positive thing is our applied information technology program has courses requiring business skills, ethics and understanding of the global economy and culture. If you paid attention, and listened to the guest speakers they had come out weekly for the senior capstone project lectures, you'd learn quite a lot about navigating the worlds of c…

it's good to hear that at least one university is making some effort to equip graduates with a more broader view of the world.

i ended up doing mostly pure-math in undergrad -- because i found it interesting, with no view on how it might contribute to a career -- so my naivety is arguably partly self-inflected!

Re: Unemployed Fishing

#56

Post by pascalxus »

Waterluvian wrote: post #10

What I want to read more about are people in industries in steady decline and why they didn't or couldn't get out before the end of the road. And maybe about those who did. There wasn't a sudden ban on journalism. And the story behind why he stuck around until the end is what interests me.

What else can he do? There's not many high demand industries.

Re: Unemployed Fishing

#57

Post by DoreenMichele »

Waterluvian wrote: post #10

What I want to read more about are people in industries in steady decline and why they didn't or couldn't get out before the end of the road. And maybe about those who did. There wasn't a sudden ban on journalism. And the story behind why he stuck around until the end is what interests me.

A. We currently have worse income inequality than in the Gilded Age. It's so bad, we have terms like The 99 Percent to describe the poverty and disempowerment of the vast majority of people.

So there's really no place to go. There are no safe harbors.

B. I left a corporate job in part because I was having nightmares that I was on a sinking ship. I've done freelance work and similar since then.

All things considered, I feel like I made the best choices available to me. But see A above. I'm still not rolling in dough, though I'm no longer homeless.

Go, me.

Re: Unemployed Fishing

#58

Post by sokoloff »

vkou wrote: post #52
sokoloff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few for sure. Even if it were only 1 person, I would still object to a government mandate to bar that.

1. Mandate 1.5x overtime pay for any hour worked over 25, and companies will very quickly be incentivised to hire more people, instead of overworking the ones they have. 2. You'd rather take all the social ills of 30-40% of the population being out of work, or doing shitty gig economy jobs?

I’d happily pay a good SWE 40 hours for 35 hours of work. Less coordination and a smaller comms network is a win. Good SWEs would happily take that deal as they’d be making 4x the median instead of 2.5x the median and could live better and save more.

I don’t believe in restricting freedom of employees to work. If that means the hardest working and most skilled live meaningfully better than the median or 10th percentile, then yes I’m totally ok with that.

Re: Unemployed Fishing

#59

Post by raincom »

"I hit the wilds of Prince George’s County, forgotten fishing trails with jungle undergrowth and hand-liner litter where catfish-seeking Central Americans seem to have constructed altars of beer-can empties to the Lords of Modelo."

When I was living in Piscataway, NJ, I used to roam along Raritan River during the bad period of my life. I used to see lots of central Americans who fish there. I hardly saw any one who is fully employed (40 years a week, with benefits). Just undocumented workers, and those who are out of luck.

Re: Unemployed Fishing

#60

Post by wallace_f »

ianai wrote: post #32
wallace_f wrote: post #3

In one paragraph: >85 percent of workers worldwide hate their jobs >Anything that restores hope becomes worth the exercise. In other words: Many may hate their livelihoods, but liberation can be scary. Personally, I was once of the benefit of having mediocre tech skills and an employer who paid ridiculously well for them. But when I started having problems with stalking, break-ins and intentional ill will, they told…

“But when I started having problems with stalking, break-ins and intentional ill will, they told me to just leave” I don’t understand. Was your employer breaking into your home?

No, someone else. I've been having problems with stalking and break-ins, physical assaults, and more.
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