6 ms·

After pouring through your comments throughout this thread I'm kinda left with the following conclusion (take it for what its worth, a random person on the inte

by taurath 10y ago

After pouring through your comments throughout this thread I'm kinda left with the following conclusion (take it for what its worth, a random person on the internet): you have a mindset problem, and you're generalizing to the point that you wouldn't be able to accept nearly any job, or be happy in one. You've determined: Most companies are bad/wrong/awful/burnout machines All recruiters are either spambots or leeches If you have this mindset, you've set the bar way too high. You say you've turned down many positions, and yet are in a big financial struggle now. Take a job that doesn't sound quite as bad as the others, before you're forced to take ANY job. I'll bet this rubs off on anyone who's interviewing you as well. You obviously have the skills and experience necessary to be a good engineer from what you've said, but engineers are in higher demand now than just about ever. If you can't find a job to your liking, the problem is you, not the industry.

p4wnc6 10y ago
I understand where you're coming from, but I also feel there's a serious argument to be made, Moral Mazes / Peopleware style, that most companies are bad/wrong/awful/burnout machines. The fact that open-plan offices are widely used is a perfect example. It's a condition fundamentally at odds with the productivity it is alleged to facilitate. Cost has long been disproven as a favorable factor for choosing open-plan, as the productivity losses quickly destroy any real estate savings. Instead it's about status and affiliation -- accepting non-functional designs in order to seem impressive looking in a superficial way. And something like open-plan offices are merely the tip of the iceberg. Superficial reasons for big showy tech re-orgs around the latest and greatest trends are very similar. The ambient background of political dysfunction intensified in start-up environments, etc. Huge exposes in major media outlets describing the way e.g. Amazon employees are made to cry frequently at their desks and encouraged to use gossip hotlines to backstab colleagues, followed shortly by their own CEO releasing a statement to shareholders basically saying if you don't like the cutthroat, anti-human environment then just get out. ... It is a mammoth challenge to find employment that is minimally acceptable for human cognitive health. The way corporations behave, a la Moral Mazes, is just exceptionally maladaptive for human cognitive function. There is real theory behind it. In my own experience, part of what made my previous employment so disastrous is that it involved an employer doing some substantially illegal things to me -- to the point that I had to hire an expensive employment attorney when leaving that company and go through a bunch of hoops to document things. Maybe you've been lucky to never have been treated this way by a company, but I can tell you it's real, and many, many executives go absolutely unchecked and have incredibly harmful views about how they believe they are allowed to treat people.
- taurath 10y ago
  You're getting all your news and concepts about how to work from one perspective - your reply confirms to me that your assumptions are killing you. Many many companies allow remote work. I have an open office which I dislike, but I can also work at home 2-3 days a week. It's true, people don't trust companies like they did in the 50s, for good reason. Many many people though have families and work is not the highest priority in their lives. There are entire industries full of people that respect each other and just work 9-5. You are being taken in by the anecdotes and horror stories and ignoring the vast majority of people who are paid well, go home to their families on time, rarely have to do overtime, and aren't terribly worried about a layoff but could find another job easily. People in many companies are treated with professional and personal respect. It's not that hard to find one even. But you need to believe they exist or your mindset will just be one of trying to find all these triggers and land mines you've set our before yourself. I have no college degree or any eminent qualifications, and am not the best coder around. But I have had no problem getting hired into good companies that respect me and I think its because I don't allow myself to get jaded after many setbacks.
  - p4wnc6 10y ago
    I appreciate your reply, but I also feel you are too nonchalantly dismissing something like e.g. Moral Mazes, which is a significant longitudinal study of bureaucracy and management hierarchy, using tools from academic sociology. It's not just some fly-by-night opinion. In my experience, it is extremely hard to find jobs that provide a combination of paying well, allowing you a personal life, and having reasonable enough hours to avoid excessive fatigue or burnout. I've interviewed with places top to bottom and had four post-graduate jobs, all of which failed in at least two of those categories while having appeared like they would succeed in all of them when I did interviews. All of my friends and colleagues report similar anecdotes, as do many, many commenters here. The anecdotes describing jobs in which you feel you are well paid, have a feasible work/life balance, and freedom to pursue a personal life, are unequivocally in the minority. That's not "my perspective" ... that's just collecting data in the wild. And though I think I've had it bad, my experiences have been like a dream vacation or something compared to what my mother has lived through in her job as a court reporter in a small town courthouse. Rampant sexism, ageism, uncompensated overtime which is not allowed for her position, bosses (judges) who demean her, yell at her, do illegal things like carry out their private landlord affairs in their judges chambers during work hours and force her to handle the paperwork for it. Or my brother, a factory worker in the area whose work stories almost cause me to have an aneurysm out of frustration. More uncompensated overtime, overtly insulting and demeaning bosses, sales staff who make jokes about all the catered meetings they get and how they will leave the day-old food out on the factory floor because the floor workers are so desperate for a free meal that they'll eat anything. He earns just barely over the poverty line, has no vacation, commutes around 40 miles each way plus traffic, and every single other job in the region that he could possibly get is no better. All so he can just barely service college loan debt that has been utterly useless for getting employment. The problem of finding employment that can sustain human cognitive health is massive and hearing you utterly dismiss it like this makes me feel like you reside in an incredible bubble where you've been shielded from what it's really like, and that while I appreciate your advice, it is just not applicable.

by taurath 10y ago

p4wnc6 10y ago

I understand where you're coming from, but I also feel there's a serious argument to be made, Moral Mazes / Peopleware style, that most companies are bad/wrong/awful/burnout machines. The fact that open-plan offices are widely used is a perfect example. It's a condition fundamentally at odds with the productivity it is alleged to facilitate. Cost has long been disproven as a favorable factor for choosing open-plan, as the productivity losses quickly destroy any real estate savings. Instead it's about status and affiliation -- accepting non-functional designs in order to seem impressive looking in a superficial way. And something like open-plan offices are merely the tip of the iceberg. Superficial reasons for big showy tech re-orgs around the latest and greatest trends are very similar. The ambient background of political dysfunction intensified in start-up environments, etc. Huge exposes in major media outlets describing the way e.g. Amazon employees are made to cry frequently at their desks and encouraged to use gossip hotlines to backstab colleagues, followed shortly by their own CEO releasing a statement to shareholders basically saying if you don't like the cutthroat, anti-human environment then just get out. ... It is a mammoth challenge to find employment that is minimally acceptable for human cognitive health. The way corporations behave, a la Moral Mazes, is just exceptionally maladaptive for human cognitive function. There is real theory behind it. In my own experience, part of what made my previous employment so disastrous is that it involved an employer doing some substantially illegal things to me -- to the point that I had to hire an expensive employment attorney when leaving that company and go through a bunch of hoops to document things. Maybe you've been lucky to never have been treated this way by a company, but I can tell you it's real, and many, many executives go absolutely unchecked and have incredibly harmful views about how they believe they are allowed to treat people.

taurath 10y ago
You're getting all your news and concepts about how to work from one perspective - your reply confirms to me that your assumptions are killing you. Many many companies allow remote work. I have an open office which I dislike, but I can also work at home 2-3 days a week. It's true, people don't trust companies like they did in the 50s, for good reason. Many many people though have families and work is not the highest priority in their lives. There are entire industries full of people that respect each other and just work 9-5. You are being taken in by the anecdotes and horror stories and ignoring the vast majority of people who are paid well, go home to their families on time, rarely have to do overtime, and aren't terribly worried about a layoff but could find another job easily. People in many companies are treated with professional and personal respect. It's not that hard to find one even. But you need to believe they exist or your mindset will just be one of trying to find all these triggers and land mines you've set our before yourself. I have no college degree or any eminent qualifications, and am not the best coder around. But I have had no problem getting hired into good companies that respect me and I think its because I don't allow myself to get jaded after many setbacks.
- p4wnc6 10y ago
  I appreciate your reply, but I also feel you are too nonchalantly dismissing something like e.g. Moral Mazes, which is a significant longitudinal study of bureaucracy and management hierarchy, using tools from academic sociology. It's not just some fly-by-night opinion. In my experience, it is extremely hard to find jobs that provide a combination of paying well, allowing you a personal life, and having reasonable enough hours to avoid excessive fatigue or burnout. I've interviewed with places top to bottom and had four post-graduate jobs, all of which failed in at least two of those categories while having appeared like they would succeed in all of them when I did interviews. All of my friends and colleagues report similar anecdotes, as do many, many commenters here. The anecdotes describing jobs in which you feel you are well paid, have a feasible work/life balance, and freedom to pursue a personal life, are unequivocally in the minority. That's not "my perspective" ... that's just collecting data in the wild. And though I think I've had it bad, my experiences have been like a dream vacation or something compared to what my mother has lived through in her job as a court reporter in a small town courthouse. Rampant sexism, ageism, uncompensated overtime which is not allowed for her position, bosses (judges) who demean her, yell at her, do illegal things like carry out their private landlord affairs in their judges chambers during work hours and force her to handle the paperwork for it. Or my brother, a factory worker in the area whose work stories almost cause me to have an aneurysm out of frustration. More uncompensated overtime, overtly insulting and demeaning bosses, sales staff who make jokes about all the catered meetings they get and how they will leave the day-old food out on the factory floor because the floor workers are so desperate for a free meal that they'll eat anything. He earns just barely over the poverty line, has no vacation, commutes around 40 miles each way plus traffic, and every single other job in the region that he could possibly get is no better. All so he can just barely service college loan debt that has been utterly useless for getting employment. The problem of finding employment that can sustain human cognitive health is massive and hearing you utterly dismiss it like this makes me feel like you reside in an incredible bubble where you've been shielded from what it's really like, and that while I appreciate your advice, it is just not applicable.