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Is my advice too mercenary?

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Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#51

Post by colinmhayes »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #42
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #5

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.

As an American who has worked closely with the Federal government, I'm significantly more afraid of the idea that the government would be responsible for my medical care.

That's not what anyone in the US is proposing though. Even medicare for all would still have the same private companies responsible for your care, they would just be paid by the federal government.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#52

Post by bin_bash »

tschellenbach wrote: post #17

At the end of his book AMP it up, Frank Slootman provides some career tips. The things he focuses on. 1. Join a company that's growing and moving up. He talks about getting in the elevator by joining the right company. And how everyone during certain years at Microsoft did well (just one example). 2. Next he recommends ignoring compensation in the early days of your career. I see this at my company sometimes. Mid lev…

If it's early in your career (After that I think you have a point. I work at a FAANG as a SWE (15 YOE) and want to move into management, but it requires a SWE promotion first to staff engineer I don't think I'm capable of getting at this company. (I've been a staff engineer at a previous firm though).

I could switch to a lower tier company and definitely find a way to move into management and develop my career on that ladder but I would likely have to take a big pay cut. I think the trouble is people with 10+ years of experience are like me and have families and a mortgage. It's just not an option to make less for me even if the future was bright.

EDIT: As someone pointed out, 10 years entirely in FAANG is probably not as good as a varied career that includes FAANG.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#53

Post by dangerlibrary »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #42
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #5

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.

As an American who has worked closely with the Federal government, I'm significantly more afraid of the idea that the government would be responsible for my medical care.

Medicare (single payer healthcare in the US for everyone over age 65) has a lower fraud rate than private insurance, serves millions of seniors and has for decades, and as an American there is a big discontinuity in actuarial data where your life expectancy literally goes up at 65 because you get access to it.

Maybe don't generalize from a few personal anecdotes to the functioning of the entire 4 million employee federal government?

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#54

Post by arghnoname »

chasd00 wrote: post #8
charbuff wrote: post #2

I 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…

Do you think this is real though? I always put this in the bucket of "HR is my friend" level of lying. When it comes down to brass tack, outside of a few virtue signalers, I think we'll be fed to the wolves the minute it is expedient to do so.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#55

Post by brimble »

kube-system wrote: post #41
agentdrtran wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are free to buy your own (expensive, much worse) health insurance rather than through an employer, sure.

Having had both, this is not my experience. My experience is that employer plans have fewer choices and similar or higher rates. They're cheap because my employer is paying most of the bill.

Varies a lot state-by-state. Ours has no individual plans offered outside the "marketplace", which most years only has a couple companies offering plans on it, all with bad networks, bad coverage, and terrible rates. A fairly bad employer plan is a much better value than the marketplace plans while a middling employer-provided group plan will be way better than the best plans on the marketplace, and there are, I repeat, no other providers that will sell you an individual plan in this state (I've checked, both with brokers and with major providers around, all said the same thing: "no-one sells individual plans in this state anymore, your only options are whatever's on the marketplace")

And yes, it's a red state.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#56

Post by vmception »

uoaei wrote: post #48
vmception wrote: post #14

Thank you for this! I have been raised in and appreciate a Machiavellian approach to society, especially upwards mobility. I have no sympathy for workplace advice that attempts to coddle someone who cannot psychologically operate in a world told more truthfully. “Mercenary” advice works in this environment, being more like a mercenary, a “sell sword”, is a pragmatic approach than being gaslit by the company’s “were a…

I see only a complete rejection of the collaborative organization that is society, which provided literally everything that gave you the opportunities and outcomes you now enjoy. And now you brag about enriching yourself beyond your share, occupying space where others could make use of those opportunities, reducing the opportunities for everyone in the future. Society improves when more people have more chances to co…

Society is collaborative, the private sector of society is not. Its a flawed incentive model that most of society periodically navigates through. These are different things than society as a whole. It is aspirational to want something else and be in an environment to rely on different advice. You are either conflating society and the private sector or projecting something I have no idea about. (I dont really understand who the “you shutting off opportunities” is about. What specific thing am I doing exactly?)

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#57

Post by muh_gradle »

I read through the exit interviews are a trap blog post and now this latest one. If you're leaving a company because of one particular person (manager, co-worker), then I agree that there's not much to gain from divulging honest feedback. That's a clear case where things can get ugly and personal and you're better off just not being 100% honest. But very often, there are inefficient processes that can't be attributed to one individual. Even when I left my recent team of 5 years, I wanted my co-workers and manager to be able to get support from upper management. To me that's worth providing feedback in an exit interview even if it does nothing and the cost is pretty minimal.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#58

Post by arghnoname »

dvtrn wrote: post #25
chasd00 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neve…

I know someone who had a similar event happen in training, except the deep and dark secrets were meant to be shared among a group of six or seven. People shared actual deep and dark secrets; crying was involved. My friend who told me about this was deeply uncomfortable with the whole affair and found it bizarre and cultish, but of course, they went along with it and made up some semi-plausible thing to be a "team player." Amusingly enough, IIRC, it was also a phobia.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#59

Post by shakezula »

le-mark wrote: post #7

I’ve seen too many layoffs where critical people were fired, and experienced the resulting train wrecks first hand, to have any sympathy for companies or management in this regard. Team mates yes, psychotic dystopian organizations? Hell no!

For real, I've seen companies fire some of their best and brightest, I'm talking top-tier academic talent in some cases, because they didn't think they were committing code frequently enough, only to wonder why their shit is on fire 6 months later and why the systems those same engineers maintained aren't able to produce new features as fast as before, messing up their delivery timelines, etc...

Even funnier is when it's not a money issue, some middle manager just thought they could find better or wanted to make room for some of their own hires.

In all of these cases, the company held "exit interviews", in some of these cases myself being one of the few or many others, and I have to say, there's nothing you can tell them that will benefit anyone, even your old co-workers who you're not trying to actively harm.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#60

Post by brodouevencode »

kache_ wrote: post #31

Actually, fuck you, got mine _is_ my attitude. It just turns out that getting mine involves helping others

This is the point most people miss. People operate by incentives, mostly internal ones. You go where you derive the most value.

He also lost me at `late-stage Capitalist` as if that were a real thing.

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