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The three year myth

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Re: The three year myth

#81

Post by PlatoIsADisease »

hnlmorg wrote: post #26
yellow_lead wrote: post #14

I've been told to wait for a pay increase/promotion twice. And I got it both times (luckily). The time periods were only a few months or a year each time. I think it's a judgement call but making such a long-out promise like 3 years in the tech industry is a huge red flag. Even at one year you should be skeptical and asking how/why as the author suggests.

Being told you have to wait until the next pay review cycle, is normal. It’s how a business with healthy and defined processes should operate. But you should only be waiting at most a year. If you get told “wait 2+ years” then that’s usually a sign that they’ve already decided you’re not eligible (for whatever reasons they decide) but don’t want to be candid with you. If you get told to wait for any duration beyond t…

Can I get an exception of it was a terrible fiscal year?

Take the startup situation:

We were unprofitable year 1, we were break even year 2. Year 3 we look to repay investors and begin fun times. Year 4, fun times.

I suppose I can think of enough exceptions that I reject the theory the original OP posted.

Re: The three year myth

#82

Post by alansaber »

jimnotgym wrote: post #42

I like the other employment 3 year problem. In this the company fills jobs with keen but cheap young people to save money. These people work hard, get experience and take qualifications. Three years later you have a cohort of young people with excellent CVs and qualifications above their peers... that the company can't afford to pay the market rate for! Then it loses a whole cohort of great staff.

I suspect many companies factor in that young people are the most likely to churn, so don't expend much effort retaining them

Re: The three year myth

#83

Post by keybored »

jtbayly wrote: post #78
K0balt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If losing your job is traumatic, I’d suggest reviewing your relationship with employers and employment in general. It’s not a stable situation, and there is no social aspect in reality. It’s an accounting decision. Employment is almost always exploitation on one side or the other, with the best case being mutual exploitation. Employment inherently involves paying less for your work than it is worth. In an ideal situa…

I challenge you to think about the implications of if you were right. If employment is violence, we should end it. But then almost everybody would die. If paying for labor is violence, paying for a product is violence. Nobody should be allowed to buy or sell (or trade). But then everybody would die. In a good economic transaction, whether purchase of product or labor, both parties end up happy with what they got out…

That employment is exploitation is evidenced by profits. Employment is a commodity. Any business expects to get more value out of a commodity. Not to break even.

> If employment is violence, we should end it. But then almost everybody would die.

Everyone would die? Are you assuming that employment gets eliminated and nothing is replaced by it?

Anyone who is against the employment relation wants something different. Not something farcical like voluntary self-elimination.

Re: The three year myth

#84

Post by keybored »

locknitpicker wrote: post #80
K0balt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If losing your job is traumatic, I’d suggest reviewing your relationship with employers and employment in general. It’s not a stable situation, and there is no social aspect in reality. It’s an accounting decision. Employment is almost always exploitation on one side or the other, with the best case being mutual exploitation. Employment inherently involves paying less for your work than it is worth. In an ideal situa…

> If losing your job is traumatic, I’d suggest reviewing your relationship with employers and employment in general. This is a rather clueless and ignorant opinion to have. Your job is what pays your mortgage/rent and your bills, and it's a key factor in where you chose to live. Your job has a fundamental impact in your personal life and your family's experience. Once you are fired, odds are your life will change rad…

I think they are saying you should look at the employment relationship more generally and see that this holds across the board.

It’s more like a woman breaking up with a man and someone else says “realize that all men are pigs”.

Re: The three year myth

#85

Post by jtrn »

Majromax wrote: post #70
jtrn wrote: post #54

For anybody that is interested in a clinical psychologist's take, here is mine… This article triggers an overwhelming feeling that something is missing in the story. Of course, being fired is genuinely painful, and the author's emotional state is understandable. But I think there is a much better way to understand this situation that would be beneficial to the author. Please note that this is just a guess, and in rea…

> And receiving a formal warning is an extremely serious signal. To be nitpicky, the article doesn't say 'formal warning,' just 'warning.' That could have been anything from a gentle let-down to a reprimand. That being said, I think your broader point is reasonably true: the author frames the 'political games' of promotion as a regrettable necessity rather than a job requirement beyond the juniormost levels. Despite…

nitpick accepted :)

Re: The three year myth

#86

Post by jtrn »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #56
jtrn wrote: post #54

For anybody that is interested in a clinical psychologist's take, here is mine… This article triggers an overwhelming feeling that something is missing in the story. Of course, being fired is genuinely painful, and the author's emotional state is understandable. But I think there is a much better way to understand this situation that would be beneficial to the author. Please note that this is just a guess, and in rea…

Et tu, ChatGPT?

No, just me. As you can see from my long history I always took the time ever so often to comment in-depth on stuff i care about on HN, since its the place with the most interesting spread of content for me, and the place with the highest chance of getting interesting responses. I do admit that i use AI for spell-correction, but that sucks since it peppers my grammar with EM (—), which is obviously makes people suspect it pure AI. And i have to re-edit it to remove them to avoid comments like this. But its just me...

Re: The three year myth

#87

Post by AnimalMuppet »

locknitpicker wrote: post #76
krisoft wrote: post #31

If you ask for a raise and they say “maybe in two to three years” thats simply a polite no. > “you know the world outside is hostile to job seekers and a steady paycheck beats the unemployment line” You can search for a new job while employed. Unless you are stuck on an underwater submarine playing hide-and-seek you can always fire off a few inquiries.

> You can search for a new job while employed. Unless you are stuck on an underwater submarine playing hide-and-seek you can always fire off a few inquiries. Technically you can, but there are recruiters who tag you as unreliable and a mercenary for trying to jump ship. I had the displeasure of interviewing with a hiring manager who seemed to have booked an interview just to criticize the audacity of an applicant for…

Meh. Just walk out of that interview. Seriously. Ditch that place immediately.

Smart places know that the people they want to hire are the kind of people who already have jobs. A place that doesn't know that is going to hire the kind of people who are currently unemployed. They get people who have fewer options. And they tend to treat them less well, because they have fewer options.

Re: The three year myth

#88

Post by AnimalMuppet »

krisoft wrote: post #31

If you ask for a raise and they say “maybe in two to three years” thats simply a polite no. > “you know the world outside is hostile to job seekers and a steady paycheck beats the unemployment line” You can search for a new job while employed. Unless you are stuck on an underwater submarine playing hide-and-seek you can always fire off a few inquiries.

That's not a polite no. That's more a passive-aggressive no. ("Passive aggressive" may not be quite right, but it's something in the neighborhood, and I'm not coming up with better words.) It's "no, but we don't have the honesty to just tell you no".

Re: The three year myth

#89

Post by singpolyma3 »

My last acquisition they tried to convince us to give every employee a "slightly lower" salary coming in so they could "get a raise sooner".

I was like WTF are you trying to pull. If you know you'll give them the raise then pay them that now.

Re: The three year myth

#90

Post by jtrn »

oa335 wrote: post #58
jtrn wrote: post #54

For anybody that is interested in a clinical psychologist's take, here is mine… This article triggers an overwhelming feeling that something is missing in the story. Of course, being fired is genuinely painful, and the author's emotional state is understandable. But I think there is a much better way to understand this situation that would be beneficial to the author. Please note that this is just a guess, and in rea…

Honestly, I think your hypothesis betrays a naïveté on how corporations actually function. How much time have you spent working in a technical capacity at a mid or large size corporation?

Some. I was CTO of a mid-sized firm (~$30M revenue) and have sat on the board of two hospital psychiatric units. Granted, I'm in Norway, so office politics may differ.

But let me ask you the reverse: How much time have you spent helping people actually improve themselves? Because in my experience, the single biggest obstacle to professional growth isn't corporate politics, it's the lengths people will go to protect their ego from accountability. And focusing on systemic injustice is a destructive patterns I've seen in both the clinic and in the workplace.

So if you think Im naive with regards to office politics you might be right... But what if you are naive with regrades the psychology of defense mechanisms?

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