Being emotionally detached from really stupid leadership decisions is harder than it seems
Took me a lot of years to not think it’s my company that is being run into the ground. I should not - and nowadays could not - care any less.
my company
You mean “my responsibility”, right?
The book The Responsibility Virus helped me a lot with this. Most people are over-responsible for the choices of others, specifically ones they can’t reasonably influence, anyway.
I found out that https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ explains a lot of the dysfunctions that one finds in an office / corporate environment.
The company doesn’t care about you. The company doesn’t care about you. The company doesn’t care about you.
My uncle spent years preaching to me about the need to be loyal to a company. I never drank the Kool-Aid. He spent 21 years working for an investment banking company in their IT department. 4 years before he was set to retire with a full pension, etc. his company was acquired by a larger bank. He lost everything except his 401k. He then spent the next 12 years working to get his time back so he’d be able to retire. He died 2 years ago and the company sent a bouquet of flowers.
THE COMPANY DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOU!!
The company cares about you in the same way a beef farmer cares about his cattle.
No, they don’t care that much
They refer to you as … HUMAN RESOURCES
You aren’t a person, you are an instrument the company uses to make more money for itself. If you die or can no longer work, you will be replaced by another human resource.
I had a prof twisting himself into knots trying to argue that human resources really is a positive term because companies care about and maintain their resources
Not even if you do valuable or efficent stuff for the company. You’re disposable.
also you might not be replaceable but your manager might be an idiot
The company is always on the lookout for ways to replace you with somebody who will do more for less.
And in the meantime, they will squeeze you for every drop of effort they think they can get away with.
Or less for less. I know a woman who is a manager of a dialysis clinic, as soon as she was making over 100k she started getting pushback from higher ups, having more oversight, and having her funds for extra services to patients / staff cut. It’s clear they want her out even though she has the lowest mortality in the region, because they don’t need more than beds filled (Medicaid pays) and legally required minimums to be met.
The most important traits for doing well at work (in this order):
- clear, effective, and efficient communication
- taking ownership of problems
- having your boss and team members like you on a personal level
- competence at your tasks
I’m halfway through scrolling this long thread, and this is the first comment I’ve seen that isn’t overly cynical. It’s also correct.
I’ve been working for 38 years, and I’ve been someone who makes promotion decisions for 15 of them. The third one is helpful, not essential, but the others are super important. The people who rise to leadership positions aren’t necessarily the top technical people, they’re the ones who do those things with a good attitude.
The other thing I’d add is that they’re people who are able to see the big picture and how the details relate to it, which is part of strategic thinking.
Your employer does not care about you. You are not important or irreplaceable
Take your time and energy and put it into your life, not their business
I have had coworkers die (not work related) and by the time you hear about it (like the next day) they have already worked out who will get the work done so the machine doesn’t have to stop
I had a workmate develop a chronic illness after an infection of COVID, and he had to leave under hardship. People that hung out with him as best mates for years stopped talking to him in a matter of days.
I don’t think taking action to fill a hole is indicative of not caring.
You don’t have to run the rat race to get promoted. You don’t have to be at your desk at 7am and leave at 7pm to put on a show. Just be competent. Most people are not. You’ll eventually get promoted once you are old and white enough.
It should be noted that this is advice specific to white men in Western countries 😆 but yes, it’s true.
There’s no such thing as quiet quitting. I prefer acting your wage.
Explanation please? Not a native speaker here…
“Quiet quitting” is a term made up my small business tyrants in the United States to describe workers doing their job as it is described on the contract, and not going “above and beyond”. They somehow believe they’re owed more than they pay for.
I learnt meritocracy is a joke long before I discovered that it was literally invented to be a joke.
it’s the same story of ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ too
At least meritocracy makes sense vs the physically impossible bootstraps one.
Also, i thought ghengis khan was all about meritocracy. That and marrying off his daughters and sending the kings to die.
Also, i thought ghengis khan was all about meritocracy.
No… Genghis Khan wasn’t a joke. Meritocracy is.
There is no ideal place to work where they “do it right”, whatever kind of “right” you care about right now. When you change jobs, you merely exchange one set of problems for another.
Hold on dearly to any leverage you might have over your employer
Hold on to that leverage over your employer with a union
It’s suffocating to be in a middle management position because you get squeezed by the higher-ups and your own team. If the higher-ups make a decision that your team dislikes or vice versa, you’re going to be in the shitter with whichever party suffered every time even if you had the best intentions.
The longer you work anywhere – and I mean ANYWHERE – the more you see the bullshit and corruption and crappy rules or policies and inequality all over.
For me it has been about the 3 year mark anywhere I’ve worked: once you get past that, you fade away from “damn I’m glad to have a job and be making money!” and towards “this is absolute bulls#!t that [boss] did [thing] and hurt the workers in the process!” or similarThanks, I agree!
Today businesses increase like mushrooms after rain, and decrease like mushrooms before summer.
Don’t get attached, move on to the next better mushroom 🍄
3 years? What nirvana corp do you work at?
Funny, that’s actually what motivated me at my last job. Things were fucked up, but not so fucked up that it was overwhelming. It was the Goldilocks zone of just fucked up enough that I think I can not only fix it, but look good if I do. It was a fun journey, all told, but there were definitely frustrations, even ones that lasted years.
the Goldilocks zone of just fucked up enough
Hahaha, I love it
You can’t get sick
What job do you have where you’re not allowed to take care of your health when necessary?
I think we can all guess the country. I wish you all the best, wakkawakkawakka.
North Korea?
Jesus Christ, you need help
North Korea has the world’s worst human rights, so when they made it sound like only one country had this issue, that was my guess. I’m in North America and never experienced what is described. Unless I’m wrong to have even the amount of faith required to believe there are no North Korea denialists here.
North Korea has the world’s worst human rights
You understand propaganda like a fish understands water
When I say that, I’m going by every regular source that ever existed, plus satellite images, its near-impossible standards for leaving or entering, its lack of internet access (who here has seen anyone who is actually from North Korea), and the fact that the average North Korean adult is only five feet tall, with height being an indicator of health (the taller the healthier). What do you weigh against it that inspires you to posit it’s all just propaganda and hearsay? Other hearsay (as opposed to a conflict within the narrative you oppose)?
source:
According to who?
Could it be, the United States? The most vicious and bloody empire the world has ever known?
That aside (like, wow, holy fuck)
If you could not recognize the earlier comments as an indication of western capitalism, you are rich or otherwise so privileged you cannot comprehend the struggles of the average person
In communist North Korea, over a million died from COVID, 45,000 die a year from lack of health insurance, and 200,000 die annually from poverty.
Hey wait a second…
Sounds more like North America
North Korea had none of the pandemic protocols as America.
America had a larger infection rate and mortality rate than North Korea.
I know what you’re gonna say “oh they lied about their numbers”. Why would I trust the US to be honest about theirs? Why would I trust the US media in their claims about North Korea lying about its numbers?
The US had several whistleblowers like Rebekah Jones getting arrested/abused/harrased for their reporting on the state of the US obfuscating data.
The american media has been shown to lie time and again, especially when it comes to foreign matters - Most famously about Iraq. What reason do I have to trust it?
The United States has the largest prisoner population in the world and has a history of persecuting minorites and political dissidents like leaders of black lives matter. These dissidents are dissapeared at secret police blacksites where they are tortured. This prisoner population is used as slave labour, which is still legal.
Why would I trust the lies peddled by this authoritarian regime about a country whose population they relentlessly bombed until they’d murdered 20% of it.
At least South Korea and North America shut down for the pandemic, North Korea did not. I rest my case.
North Korea was shut down anyway, it took a long time for them to have their first covid outbreak and I think when it finally did happen they did shut down.
Also, I am glad you have come out so strongly in favor of the PRC approach, or so I must convlude.
Being so close to China, North Korea couldn’t be in a position to escape being one of the first to suffer. Kim Jong-un spent the first part of it saying it didn’t exist. What’s worse is health in North Korea is poor, so there were more casualties. Any true response was too late.
An American job
I’m in America and this isn’t an issue. I don’t know anyone where this isn’t an issue, in fact there’s this thing in America called SSI designed specifically to help the chronically unhealthy without even a need to work.
it’s a means tested program it’s really difficult to get onto especially if your disabilities make it hard to correctly sort out all the paperwork
Always agree on compensation/salary before starting your work.
People in your workplace don’t know shit. There are a few who know stuff but the majority is dumb, careless or the combination of the two. Surprisingly the higher you go the more dumb and careless there are. We are designing monster billion dollar construction projects and some of my colleagues have problems with understanding written english. Others cannot learn a software that has literally 3 buttons in them they have to press. I don’t even know sometimes why I am trying.
Success is mainly about sucking up to the right people. No matter how good you are at your job, you have to know how to play work politics. Most bosses don’t know how to evaluate actual ability, and they’re much less objective than they think. Usually they favor more likeable employees over capable ones if forced to choose. Human life is a popularity contest, always has been, always will be. That’s the side effect of being a highly social species…
