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Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

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Re: Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

#61

Post by skybrian »

hagbardgroup wrote: post #23

The new system is not 'better' than the old system, and is probably significantly worse. While it's true that Welch's advice is no longer valid, it's because the legal, financial, and monetary environment has changed so much since the heydays of GE. My grandfather retired a millionaire after working as a basic GE accountant for his entire postwar life. So as far as he was concerned, GE treated him well, and it treate…

The original post was short on actual advice. My advice would be to make sure that what you do makes sense to the many people you work with, to people who don't know you at all in other parts of the company, and sometimes even the outside world.

This doesn't mean endless propaganda. It means taking the outside view, writing well, and perhaps sometimes giving presentations that are actually useful. It means earning trust at a distance, not backstabbing like you claim.

Re: Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

#62

Post by Ixiaus »

zenbowman wrote: post #55
sarreph wrote: post #2

There's no real alternative offered here. I understand there's a whole 'open' and 'small' world out there and I can learn lessons from my peers, but if I'm not supposed to be 'working hard for my boss' in the modern corporate world, what am I supposed to be doing to 'get there eventually'?

Work hard for your boss, but learn to, and intentionally practice communicating your work to a wider audience, so you are not tied to the fate of your boss or company. Speak at meetups, conferences, take an active role in mentoring, and develop meaningful relationships with peers in other companies so that when you want to move, its easy to do so.

Contributing or producing your own oss software too. Writing your thoughts and experiences in a blog our book too.

Re: Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

#63

Post by phpnode »

michaelochurch wrote: post #53
ForHackernews wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, your idea of "terrible" luck basically means "having to switch jobs several times and making less than $250,000 as a 30 year old". I mean, I get it: There are plenty of people who are less deserving than you that have been wildly, disproportionately successful. I can understand why you're envious. But don't kid yourself, most people would kill to have the supposedly miserable failure of a career that you'…

your idea of "terrible" luck basically means "having to switch jobs several times and making less than $250,000 as a 30 year old". Nah, that's not what it's about at all. It's definitely not about the salary. If you're a novelist and you make even a quarter of that number at mid-career, you're a huge success. It's about autonomy, importance, reputation, etc. Personal financial stress (which I have suffered, although…

Seems like you might be living in a bubble. Guess what - you don't have to have won the startup lottery to have personal autonomy, be financially independent or build a strong reputation.

Your reasoning is this:

I am extremely clever and I have a certificate to prove it!

I have chosen an extremely lucrative career.

Why don't people see how important I am? Where is my respect?

And then you say things like "I take pride in resenting those with undeserved success", "They're a cancer. I'm the chemo." and "most of [my failures were] not my fault".

Do you think statements like this foster respect for you?

Would you respect you?

Re: Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

#64

Post by zw123456 »

The reason that successful people tend to give such useless advice about how to be successful is that most of them do not recognize how much of their success is due to luck. There is a tendency of humans to minimize the degree to which luck contributes to their success. The also tend to minimize how various advantages they were born with (social status etc.). Basically successful people want to believe that their success is 100% due to their brilliance and ability and anyone could replicate it if only they worked as hard as they did. When confronted with trying to explain how they became successful, they resort to all sorts of silly sounding platitudes.

Re: Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

#65

Post by tormeh »

scythe wrote: post #58
tsunamifury wrote: post #51

Cooperate-Cooperate, Betray-Cooperate, or Betray-Betray. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_game In the golden era we imagine the corporate worker relations was a cooperate cooperate game, producing hard work, good will, and strong meaningful community for everyone. Then corporations realized they needed workers to cooperate while reserving the right to betray them (layoffs, terminations etc) because as the mar…

Not everything is the prisoner's dilemma. There's no reason -- at least not in your post -- that self-motivated individualism can't be efficient; such ideas were advocated by e.g. Hayek and Friedman (to say nothing of real macroeconomics). If my time is better spent somewhere else because they offer me more money, maybe that's because the work I do there will produce more value for the world overall. In other words y…

You assume that your wage is proportional to the value you deliver to the world. Bad. Not correct. Try again. There is a positive correlation on the population level, but on the individual level the relationship is tenuous at best.

Re: Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

#66

Post by CamperBob2 »

FD3SA wrote: post #41
justinmk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because the US no longer rewards loyalty in either the public or private spheres The comfort of 1950s US was an accident of the WW2 windfall resulting from our happy position as the creditor for most of Europe. Pointing to that accident as a model for future progress is childish.

That, in combination with the ~50% tax rate on income and capital gains. Turns out, when you redistribute wealth, consumption increases so rapidly that the economy takes off. That no longer is much of an option, as wealthy individuals have not only managed to reduce capital gains to ridiculously low levels, but also diversified their holdings throughout the globe. This makes taxation a poor tactic, as capital will ju…

Turns out, when you redistribute wealth under specific historical circumstances that no longer prevail, consumption increases so rapidly that the economy takes off.

Re: Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

#67

Post by CamperBob2 »

watwut wrote: post #50
hagbardgroup wrote: post #23

The new system is not 'better' than the old system, and is probably significantly worse. While it's true that Welch's advice is no longer valid, it's because the legal, financial, and monetary environment has changed so much since the heydays of GE. My grandfather retired a millionaire after working as a basic GE accountant for his entire postwar life. So as far as he was concerned, GE treated him well, and it treate…

You grandfather was not only one working for Jack Welch. He might have benefited, plenty of others did not. Jack Welch laid off a lot of loyal hardwoking capable people in his days. GE cut all businesses in which the company could not dominate the market in first or second positions and I doubt those all were slackers. Were your grandpa be employed there, his treatment would be much different. He used "fire 10% manag…

GE cut all businesses in which the company could not dominate the market in first or second positions and I doubt those all were slackers.

(Shrug) The ones who weren't slackers did better somewhere else. The ones who were slackers, Welch was right to fire. What's the problem here, exactly?

I'm not defending stack ranking -- it's stupid and counterproductive. But the notion that GE owes somebody a lifetime career at their shareholders' expense is unsustainable in a world that (rightfully) doesn't work that way anymore.

Re: Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

#68

Post by anigbrowl »

Amezarak wrote: post #36
justinmk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because the US no longer rewards loyalty in either the public or private spheres The comfort of 1950s US was an accident of the WW2 windfall resulting from our happy position as the creditor for most of Europe. Pointing to that accident as a model for future progress is childish.

Can you explain to me how the federal government being a creditor to European nations after World War II ensured happy times for employee/employer relations? If creditor/debtor status of the federal government makes such a difference, why didn't the massive US federal debt (around 110% of GDP) negate that creditor status? This argument has never made sense to me since a) most European countries had almost fully recov…

US federal debt was largely domestically held. Also 'most European countries had almost fully recovered by the mid-50s' seems quite wrong to me as a European. Certainly, they had functional economies again and cleaned up the mess of the war, but that's hardly a full recovery. European countries were paying off war debt far longer than that too. The US had a huge economic advantage for several decades.

Things like price controls and the GI bill and the Cold War all helped in their way, but I'm not sure that that's a formula you can deploy going forward.

Re: Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

#69

Post by pcrh »

Amezarak wrote: post #36
justinmk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because the US no longer rewards loyalty in either the public or private spheres The comfort of 1950s US was an accident of the WW2 windfall resulting from our happy position as the creditor for most of Europe. Pointing to that accident as a model for future progress is childish.

Can you explain to me how the federal government being a creditor to European nations after World War II ensured happy times for employee/employer relations? If creditor/debtor status of the federal government makes such a difference, why didn't the massive US federal debt (around 110% of GDP) negate that creditor status? This argument has never made sense to me since a) most European countries had almost fully recov…

After WWII, the US was pretty much the only functioning manufacturing nation for a decade. In addition, new markets opened up to US manufacturing due to the dropping of trade barriers with, and competition from, the markets of the British and French Empires as well as Japan. This advantage also lead to faster technological development in the US compared to other markets for a while.

These advantages slowly eroded as other economies were rebuilt. They nevertheless lasted well into the 1970's.

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