The company doesn’t care about you. The company doesn’t care about you. 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
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!!
How do you lose a pension? It doesn’t matter where you work or if a company gets bought.
So the way he explained it to me was that essentially when the company was purchased all your accruals were reset and the pension was tied to years of service, which he hadn’t reached yet, then with the merger you were essentially a new employee. There was also a lot tied to retirement plans linked to corporate stocks that were basically useless after they merged. Either way, beyond working for the same company forever, his eggs were (mostly) in one basket.
Yet another reason to be glad to live in the EU:
Basically, “any employee’s contract of employment will be transferred automatically on the same terms as before in the event of a transfer of the undertaking. This means that if an employer changes control of the business, the new employer cannot reduce the employees’ terms and conditions”
This regulation and strong unions are the backbone of job security in the EU.
Strong unions
Yeah. Very Strong…
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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.
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.
The people on the top of the company don’t care, either… Even if it seems like the really like you alot.
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.
I’m not sure if the competence is really in the last place. I’d say it’s on the equal level. Great communication and ownership of the problems means little if you can’t really solve the problems.
People have those things in spectrums, not all or nothing. You have to have at least some of all of them, but I’d argue that mediocre competency with really good communication and accountability is a better combination that really good competency with one of the others being mediocre.
I still kinda disagree. We’re talking here about engineering role after all. I have a colleague who is a code wizard, but has kinda problem with (under)communicating. He’s still widely respected as a very good engineer, people know his communication style and adapt to it.
But if you’re a mediocre problem solver, you can’t really make up for it with communication skills. That kinda moves you into non-engineering role like PO, SM or perhaps support engineer.
But I would say this - once you reach a certain high level of competence, then the communication skills, leadership, ownership can become the real differentiating factors. But you can’t really get there without the high level of competence first.
I think we might be agreeing, it’s just that “mediocre” means different things to each of us. My team supports human spaceflight, and no one we have is crummy. The “mediocre” people have pretty decent technical skills if you’re looking across all software development domains.
Personally, I’ve found the decent technical skills to be easier to come by than the other ones, and having all of them in one package is a real discriminator.
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.
Having worked 7 different jobs that all were in the same field made me have some backbone of standards that nobody else could have built without going through that, though. It’s a blessing and a curse, so be warned. The things I picked up on that I never realized I would care so much about in the healthcare field is good office administration and Director of Care leadership. The morale is just as important as the pay rate.
i worked at all the pizza chains delivering ---- the absolute shittiest ones were a nightmare, for the same 3 reasons:
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not letting employees make food themselves. it’s a restaurant, you have abundant food, it’s cheap, we all know it’s cheap, we work long shifts, come on. the cobbler’s son should have good shoes.
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overemphasis on dress code – if you genuinely give a shit if the pizza guy has his hat backwards, you should literally be sent to the gulags.
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being overworked for low pay, especially being made to drive when exhausted [literally dangerous and life threatening!!]
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As a consultant, I now feel grateful to the variety of dysfunctions that I experienced, because they provided me with some of the credibility that I use in advising others. That’s the blessing part.
That, and comedy equals tragedy plus distance.
Is this still true if you’re self-employed?
Absolutely. There is no business yet in which you invent money from nothing. Everyone works for someone else. It might be a capitalist boss, it might be a client, it might even be constituents or donors, but no one truly works for themselves. The only winning move is to not play, and the ones fortunate enough to not have to play were born rich. Being self-employed and/or owning your own business is just trading one boss for another.
Source: Was in private practice for a decade; now I’m a corporate attorney, and it’s just a different set of people making my job hard.
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I feel better about the things I do wrong, because at least I made the decisions and I can only blame myself. I can also choose which things I especially care about doing well instead of being subject to someone else’s preferences. It feels better, but still yes.
And, as CEO of a tiny company, I have to interact with bureaucracies more than I did as an employee, so becoming my own boss didn’t mean escaping that nonsense, anyway.
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.
I must not be old enough because I’ve never been promoted even though I’m practically white as a ghost. Every promotion I have ever received is from getting a new job at a new company and ending up making significantly more money that way.
How long do you work for the same employer though? What field are you in?
I’ve worked for the same employer for 12 years and never got a promotion because there was only one way up and a pool of over 1000 employees to pick from, then switched to another job and got a promotion under a year…
Around 3 years per employer, so it’s a bit on the shorter end, but not too far from the average for my field.
I’m a programmer. Not a ton of competition per team, especially when I usually work on smaller teams.
May I ask, what is the most important thing to show in a programmer CV?
Im a junior programmer. I would say im good at the job. I can easily create new software and also find problems in other codes and fix them. However I have no idea what I would say in an interview. Its not like I learn code by memory.
Unfortunately in your case, the most important thing is experience. You just need the years for employers to want to hire you, and with this year in particular, the competition for jobs is insane because of all the layoffs. Make some cool personal projects, that sort of thing can help.
Oh yeah if you’re “just” a programmer (in the sense that you don’t have other formations) you might have to do management courses on the side, that’s what my friend had to do to land a permanent promotion…
It’s true management would likely get me promoted faster but honestly I always wanna stick with the programming side of things. As I get more experienced I will keep getting larger salary bumps, but it’s almost definitely not gonna be from promotions but rather from switching jobs lol
Just be friends with the manager. That’s who I found was promoted the most in my career.
tbh its pretty common in IT to find your squad (and your squad leader) and follow ‘em everywhere.
Except it’s often a boys club with its toxic behaviors, which not all people will fit in.
Not been my experience but no doubt it exists in the field
Sometimes it’s better if your employer doesn’t know everything you can do. If you’re not careful you’ll end up Inventory Controller/shipper/IT services/reception/Safety officer, and you’ll only ever be paid for whatever your initial position was.
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…
Begrudgingly given upvote. Sigh.
I don’t think you’re entirely wrong, but I think maybe you downplay the importance of a good team dynamic when choosing people. I’d take someone less skilled over a highly skilled but unapproachable jerk for the long-term health of the crew. In that way, I don’t think it’s bad to favor the more likable one depending on how we’re defining likable, and I don’t think that makes it simply a popularity contest either.
Your employer is ALWAYS looking for a way to either get more work out of you for the same compensation, or replace you with some one or some process that produces the equivalent output for less cost. The entire idea that employees should be loyal to their employers is one of the most successful propaganda campaigns ever spawned by capitalism.
There was a time where more companies held on to people and you could start and retire in the same company. That’s now decades ago. That era ended with the oil crisis and never came back, despite bosses pretending it’s still there.
Oh, how they hate the new generations doing exactly the same as they do, and only being interested in what’s in it for them in the short term and not trusting any promises.
Well said.
If any new hires want to test this, simply ask your interviewer about the opportunities for advancement for the role you’re interviewing for, as well as the ways the company rewards good performers, initiative, and efficiency. They will 100% give you an excited, optimistic view of how there’s plenty of opportunity at this company and how effort and initiative are rewarded with bonuses, raises, promotions, etc.
…ask about any of those opportunities again in 2 years.
“Your work was perfect and thanks to your continued efforts going above and beyond we achieved record profits. Unfortunately the budget doesn’t allow any raise this year.”
The most likely answer to get in 2 years.
In what will probably be the best career coincidence of my life, I had searched, applied, background checked, interviewed, been offered, accepted, and set a start date for a new job while working at my current job…and the date I was to submit my 2 week notice ended up, after being delayed 3 times, being the date of my annual review.
Thus, I sat through my excellent review and was told pretty much exactly what you just said, with the bonus of “since you’re doing so well, we’re going to let you do the extra work of another employee who just quit due to over working after we laid off the other person who was with them…but also you’re still not going to get paid any more”.
I sat through the whole review and at the end of it, got the reward of getting asked if I had any feedback for them, and being able to say, “So… you’re telling me I’m doing everything right, and as a reward for that I’m getting no raise and double the responsibilities? I’m sorry but that doesn’t sound reasonable to me.”
And just as my boss started launching into the routine about being a team player and these are difficult times, I cut him off and said, “Sorry, but that doesn’t make it okay. In fact, this is my 2 week notice. I wanted to hear what my review and outlook for the next year would be before I said anything, but the company, through the review, has confirmed to me that I’m making the right choice. This isn’t anything personal against you…but it’s just clear the company doesn’t value me as anything other than an exploitable labor source and has no plans for me to advance in rank or pay…only in workload.”
I’m looking forward to enjoying this same experience in the next month or two. I’m about to interview for a new position that will more than triple my salary and half my workload. My current company loves to dangle the carrot ,“Do the work of a position two levels above yours for a year, and then maybe we’ll consider changing your title and compensation to match.” But of course they never do.
,“Do the work of a position two levels above yours for a year, and then maybe we’ll consider changing your title and compensation to match.” But of course they never do.
Yup.
At the job before the two I talked about, I got hired with a raise at 6 months built into my offer. After that, I was there 2.5 years with not one more raise, not even cost of living, let alone anything remotely keeping up with inflation or any sort of merit based increase.
The one time I asked about a raise, 2 full years in, I got the same response as you did. Work an extra job role on top of my main role for a year then we’ll think about it.
I asked in response what they’d say if I had walked in suggesting I should get a 50% raise for no extra work performance for a year, and then I’d decide whether or not I want to take on the extra work after a year of the extra pay. My boss kinda laughed and said that’s not how it works.
So I said exactly, it doesn’t work the other way either, and that was the end of that meeting.
…then it was total surprised Pikachu less than 6 months later when I gave my notice.
In one of my several “exit interviews” in which they tried to convince me to stick around (but offered only the “incentive” of letting me make more money…by working 5 hours of OT every week…when OT had been always available in unlimited amounts anyway), my boss asked me what was so bad about my current situation or what was so great about my new offer that I wanted to “hang him and the company out to dry” (they’d asked me to stay on indefinitely…at no raise…until they could recruit my replacement and I could train them…naturally I refused).
My answer was basically: “You remember how you laughed me out of the room when I suggested that instead of me working a year of double work for the same pay before you gave me a raise, and instead you give me the raise for a year and I’d decide if I wanted to do the work? Well this new role gives me a 40% raise and less than half the workload of my current role. Also it is strictly focused on my area of expertise and technical work instead of being 90% customer service like it is here, which I specifically asked about in my interview and was assured it’d be less than 25% public facing. So in effect, they’re actually beating the offer I proposed that you laughed at. Honestly, you wouldn’t even have to match their offer to get me to stay. Had you given me a 10 or 15% raise, I’d have never even gone looking. But now I’ve been offered 3 things I wanted, and you’ve made it clear that you never have any intention of ever even coming close to that offer, on any of the 3 fronts of pay, workload, and focus on technical work and getting away from customer relations.”
They said basically they were a small business and couldn’t afford to do any of that, and that was basically the end of the discussion.
Not always.
My company laid off a few very efficient workers, who sacrificed a lot of time and mental health for the company, because people working remotely in India are cheaper.
Sounds like a company I worked for. I saw the writing on the wall and got out. A lot of good people were laid off and a second office in India was opened…
We don’t have time to do it right the first time, but we will make just enough time to redo it wrong a few more times before the customer complains loudly enough that the boss pulls someone from another job which will now not be done right because we don’t have time.
Thanks, I feel like I’m at work again lol
cries in SaaS
My biggest lesson was that decades of work means nothing if you become disabled (in the US).
You can end up with literally nothing and lose literally everything if you become disabled. Even if you still have skills, even though you worked hard to contribute to society for decades, it can all go away overnight and you can suddenly not afford food anymore. There’s no safety net, and you won’t learn that until you need it.
Because fuck you.
What happened? I’m assuming you’re speaking from personal experience?
I learnt meritocracy is a joke long before I discovered that it was literally invented to be a joke.
Minimum wage, minimum effort
Document absoluely everything. Get every agreement in writing. If someone tells you to do something in a meeting, follow it up with an email response confirming the action. Keep a copy of those emails. If it’s not written, it didn’t happen.
I got this advice from my boss 35 years ago before texting and email. It’s so true. Beware folks that tell you things verbally, follow it up in writing. They may be trying to dodge accountability. We had a president known for not using email
Lots of meta-level comments here so I’ll add one that’s more in the weeds:
In an office job, it’s always good to be friendly with IT and the office manager/administrative assistant.
As a former IT guy you’ll get what you need when you need it by not being a pissy fart.
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You are more important than the company, put you and your family first.
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If your company doesn’t provide a pension plan you have no reason to be loyal and stay.
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Telework is an excuse for minimal working. Most remote workers schedule emails, get their work done quickly than spend the work day doing personal work on the clock.
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Charisma is more important than performance for career progression.
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Favorite employees are typically the easiest to be manipulated and taken advantage of.
Telework is an excuse for minimal working.
telework gives human beings their agency back. nobody, NOBODY needs to spend 8 hours straight doing emails
That is one of the benefits, minimal working. If you can get all your work done in half the work day, good for you.
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