10 ms·

Silicon Valley layoffs are a reminder that your job won’t love you back

50 points by e2e4 4y ago

jleyank 4y ago
You must cultivate a sense of self (and self-value) separate from your job or career. Otherwise, whenever you’re laid off, or ultimately retire, you have no “you”. Work is a large part of your life, but it’s a means to an end.
- scaramanga 4y ago
  And you should also, presumably, cultivate a way to pay the rent. Perhaps with mana from heaven?
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Having to work does not have to mean “be the work”.
- musicale 4y ago
  In Silicon Valley, work often determines much of your social life and most of your social status, and you also depend on the company for health insurance. So losing your job isn't just losing your livelihood - it affects social life, social standing, and even health. When people ask "what do you do?" they are also asking for your professional affiliation and social status. It's considered shameful to lose your job or be unemployed, which can certainly affect your mental and emotional health as well as social relationships.
TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
Because working for somebody is not "your" job at a first place. It is somebody's else job and he is allowing you to do it. Create your own job, if you want to own it.
- scaramanga 4y ago
  Or another way to put is "exploiting you into doing it" because you need to pay rent and he has money.
- harimau777 4y ago
  Unfortunately, it's unlikely that I could create a job which reliably pays me in the same neighborhood of what working for someone else does.
  - machinevision 4y ago
    Why do you think so?
    - nnoitra 4y ago
    - harimau777 4y ago
      I don't have the personality/aptitude for the business aspects of consulting work; e.g. finding contracts, managing billing, etc. I have the skills and resources to work in a crafting/cottage industry. However, I know a number of people who work in various cottage industries (massage therapy, tailoring, art). They all make significantly less than I do. The work is also often extremely unstable. I don't have the resources or knowhow to start a business in a capital intensive industry like manufacturing or trucking.
Barrin92 4y ago
> Having a transactional mindset about work — that it is something you do in exchange for pay — can help put things into perspective, and so can finding meaning outside of work, said Stolzoff. the alternative is not chasing super high compensation packages and hustle culture copmanies but picking an employer who is oriented towards long term steady growth, low debt, fiscal responsibility, and so on. Plenty of them exist, usually family run businesses, even in the software industry. What we here in Germany call the Mittelstand.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  Until they sell the business to someone else and they "streamline" it. The best move is to stay on your feet, safety is at best illusionary.
- kaashif 4y ago
  The alternative to high pay is low pay.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    An alternative to high pay is sustainable working conditions.
  - m0llusk 4y ago
    An alternative to high pay from corporate work is high pay from your own work.
- atemerev 4y ago
  Could you remind me how the typical German salaries for software engineers stand against https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi? I have seen much more German software engineers move to the US than vice versa, and there’s a reason for that.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    I find it odd that in a post where I explicitly make an argument for a strong and unified work culture and an intact social contract with your employer at the expense of salaries your response is to show me that you can make 250k at Wells Fargo.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
> The layoffs in Silicon Valley come after a decades-long trend at tech companies to “live and breathe” your job and make it part of your identity. I think I made the defection a decade ago when I, getting older, started taking an exercise break in the middle of the day — at first running for 20 to 30 minutes (later that became 20-30 minute walks as my knees got bad). It seems a little odd that I should feel guilt about popping out for a half-hour each day to exercise. Perhaps the guilt was with regard to my co-workers who were still slaving away back at the bit-mill while I took in the sun and breeze of Cupertino. To be sure, I knew of some employees that popped off to take advantage of the gym that Apple provided. (I don't think I judged them per se — maybe wondered to myself how they coped with their own guilt, ha ha.) But guilt is certainly what I felt and I think it took my aging and concern for my health that made me decide that there were a few things more important than my job. But this was maybe the first moment when I consciously thought, "Yeah, this is just a job; they don't really care about my health; I'm going to do this for me."
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  at so many jobs, you are only as valued as the last big thing you did, and that is just impossible to sustain when you get older and have kids etc... your mental and physical health must be your first priority, once you lose those, a) it is guaranteed you would get fired anyway and b) these things don't heal as rapidly once you start getting older. So my advice in all that is prioritize yourself first and take risks (even risks that require you to push yourself to the edge) but only if those risks enable you to someday be ok with the consequences of what you had to do. Acceptable Risk: I'm working my ass of for a company which has promise and the work i'm doing here is directly valuable and is teaching me many things. Even if this doesn't work out i would have been richer for having experienced it. UnAcceptable Risk: At my big corp, i've worked 50 tickets this year at almost burnout pace while my coworkers only worked 25 (aren't i the man?)
mac3n 4y ago
"cattle, not pets"
scaramanga 4y ago
Article doesn't contain the word "union" anywhere in it. Of course it won't love you back if you won't even take your seat at the negotiating table. Duh.
- prisoner655321 4y ago
  Why would being in a union make your job love you back?
  - scaramanga 4y ago
    A lot of people seem to be getting very confused between a job, and the social institution which makes all the decisions about your job. What is wrong with loving computer programming? Or baking cakes? Or whatever? The social institution (the corporation) is a coercive structure which removes your autonomy, and working on command makes people feel hollow and unfulfilled. In much the same way as you feel when living with a partner who doesn't love you. Kind of because that's what it is. Of course you need to live in the reality where you recognise that you are coerced in to submitting tot his social structure for survival, and it obvious that this is much better for your mental health than deluding yourself into thinking the nature of the social structure is kind and caring and you are just broken and unworthy. Human connection, shared goals, working together, these are things which don't feel fundamentally coercive, hollow, and exploitative. It seems self-evident that the only way you can make an institution that loves you back is by... (i mean, duh?) making an institution that loves you back (ie. that treats people decently). In our culture, unions are the only chance working people have at creating institutions based on mutual support, solidarity, and providing the opportunity to take back some autonomy over their working lives and create decent working conditions for themselves. To other posters on the thread, the fact your union sucks is very much like the fact your democracy sucks. You have to ask the question: if we sit here complaining and waiting for it to be fixed, who will come along and fix that for us? Perhaps god will swoop down from the sky, or the BatMan? Or perhaps these institutions simply need your input if they are going to have a chance of functioning in the way you want them to function.
    - 4y ago
musicale 4y ago
"At Craptech we're always looking for passionate ninjas who dream of sacrificing their health and happiness to build value for our investors and directors!"

50 points by e2e4 4y ago

You must cultivate a sense of self (and self-value) separate from your job or career. Otherwise, whenever you’re laid off, or ultimately retire, you have no “you”. Work is a large part of your life, but it’s a means to an end.

scaramanga 4y ago
And you should also, presumably, cultivate a way to pay the rent. Perhaps with mana from heaven?
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Having to work does not have to mean “be the work”.
musicale 4y ago
In Silicon Valley, work often determines much of your social life and most of your social status, and you also depend on the company for health insurance. So losing your job isn't just losing your livelihood - it affects social life, social standing, and even health. When people ask "what do you do?" they are also asking for your professional affiliation and social status. It's considered shameful to lose your job or be unemployed, which can certainly affect your mental and emotional health as well as social relationships.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago

Because working for somebody is not "your" job at a first place. It is somebody's else job and he is allowing you to do it. Create your own job, if you want to own it.

scaramanga 4y ago
Or another way to put is "exploiting you into doing it" because you need to pay rent and he has money.
harimau777 4y ago
Unfortunately, it's unlikely that I could create a job which reliably pays me in the same neighborhood of what working for someone else does.
- machinevision 4y ago
  Why do you think so?
  - nnoitra 4y ago
  - harimau777 4y ago
    I don't have the personality/aptitude for the business aspects of consulting work; e.g. finding contracts, managing billing, etc. I have the skills and resources to work in a crafting/cottage industry. However, I know a number of people who work in various cottage industries (massage therapy, tailoring, art). They all make significantly less than I do. The work is also often extremely unstable. I don't have the resources or knowhow to start a business in a capital intensive industry like manufacturing or trucking.

Barrin92 4y ago

> Having a transactional mindset about work — that it is something you do in exchange for pay — can help put things into perspective, and so can finding meaning outside of work, said Stolzoff. the alternative is not chasing super high compensation packages and hustle culture copmanies but picking an employer who is oriented towards long term steady growth, low debt, fiscal responsibility, and so on. Plenty of them exist, usually family run businesses, even in the software industry. What we here in Germany call the Mittelstand.

willcipriano 4y ago
Until they sell the business to someone else and they "streamline" it. The best move is to stay on your feet, safety is at best illusionary.
kaashif 4y ago
The alternative to high pay is low pay.
- klyrs 4y ago
  An alternative to high pay is sustainable working conditions.
- m0llusk 4y ago
  An alternative to high pay from corporate work is high pay from your own work.
atemerev 4y ago
Could you remind me how the typical German salaries for software engineers stand against https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi? I have seen much more German software engineers move to the US than vice versa, and there’s a reason for that.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  I find it odd that in a post where I explicitly make an argument for a strong and unified work culture and an intact social contract with your employer at the expense of salaries your response is to show me that you can make 250k at Wells Fargo.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

> The layoffs in Silicon Valley come after a decades-long trend at tech companies to “live and breathe” your job and make it part of your identity. I think I made the defection a decade ago when I, getting older, started taking an exercise break in the middle of the day — at first running for 20 to 30 minutes (later that became 20-30 minute walks as my knees got bad). It seems a little odd that I should feel guilt about popping out for a half-hour each day to exercise. Perhaps the guilt was with regard to my co-workers who were still slaving away back at the bit-mill while I took in the sun and breeze of Cupertino. To be sure, I knew of some employees that popped off to take advantage of the gym that Apple provided. (I don't think I judged them per se — maybe wondered to myself how they coped with their own guilt, ha ha.) But guilt is certainly what I felt and I think it took my aging and concern for my health that made me decide that there were a few things more important than my job. But this was maybe the first moment when I consciously thought, "Yeah, this is just a job; they don't really care about my health; I'm going to do this for me."

strikelaserclaw 4y ago
at so many jobs, you are only as valued as the last big thing you did, and that is just impossible to sustain when you get older and have kids etc... your mental and physical health must be your first priority, once you lose those, a) it is guaranteed you would get fired anyway and b) these things don't heal as rapidly once you start getting older. So my advice in all that is prioritize yourself first and take risks (even risks that require you to push yourself to the edge) but only if those risks enable you to someday be ok with the consequences of what you had to do. Acceptable Risk: I'm working my ass of for a company which has promise and the work i'm doing here is directly valuable and is teaching me many things. Even if this doesn't work out i would have been richer for having experienced it. UnAcceptable Risk: At my big corp, i've worked 50 tickets this year at almost burnout pace while my coworkers only worked 25 (aren't i the man?)

mac3n 4y ago

"cattle, not pets"

scaramanga 4y ago

Article doesn't contain the word "union" anywhere in it. Of course it won't love you back if you won't even take your seat at the negotiating table. Duh.

prisoner655321 4y ago
Why would being in a union make your job love you back?
- scaramanga 4y ago
  A lot of people seem to be getting very confused between a job, and the social institution which makes all the decisions about your job. What is wrong with loving computer programming? Or baking cakes? Or whatever? The social institution (the corporation) is a coercive structure which removes your autonomy, and working on command makes people feel hollow and unfulfilled. In much the same way as you feel when living with a partner who doesn't love you. Kind of because that's what it is. Of course you need to live in the reality where you recognise that you are coerced in to submitting tot his social structure for survival, and it obvious that this is much better for your mental health than deluding yourself into thinking the nature of the social structure is kind and caring and you are just broken and unworthy. Human connection, shared goals, working together, these are things which don't feel fundamentally coercive, hollow, and exploitative. It seems self-evident that the only way you can make an institution that loves you back is by... (i mean, duh?) making an institution that loves you back (ie. that treats people decently). In our culture, unions are the only chance working people have at creating institutions based on mutual support, solidarity, and providing the opportunity to take back some autonomy over their working lives and create decent working conditions for themselves. To other posters on the thread, the fact your union sucks is very much like the fact your democracy sucks. You have to ask the question: if we sit here complaining and waiting for it to be fixed, who will come along and fix that for us? Perhaps god will swoop down from the sky, or the BatMan? Or perhaps these institutions simply need your input if they are going to have a chance of functioning in the way you want them to function.
  - 4y ago

musicale 4y ago

"At Craptech we're always looking for passionate ninjas who dream of sacrificing their health and happiness to build value for our investors and directors!"