7 ms·

Why are there so many people missing the bigger picture -- "the system is rigged, you'll never make enough to escape the wage slavery on the shitty salaries, bi

Why are there so many people missing the bigger picture -- "the system is rigged, you'll never make enough to escape the wage slavery on the shitty salaries, bitch, moan, complaint!" There's those types ^^^ Then there's the folks who shut up - do the work - and build shit. They're the ones who're taking the chance on hiring you dorks, knowing that you lack the initiative to build for the sake of the product, and are in a position where you value a paycheck versus the effort to build and the journey. This world is built on opportunity that was seized by opportunists - NOT built on complaining and swindling and the easy-road. So, take your $150k+benefits, shove it in your piggy bank, and get back to work. Then when you have enough to fuck off - go build your own shit, and see how your perspective changes when you need to hire. Think if you want to hire someone who's doing 10% or 5% or whatever.

glitchc 4y ago
Not everyone is working to build something new, and I say this as a builder. This is important to understand.
schmookeeg 4y ago
I think you're looking through one end of the looking glass. There's another. There are companies who tolerate C- teammates and reward them the same or quite close to the A+ teammates. It's where the whole "10X" appellation came from. One person pulling the dead weight around. It's a meme at this point. I've witnessed it plenty in my career. So yes, from your hiring perspective, it's fraudulent for anyone to do anything but give you their 100% at all times. But if you reward the C- guy and the A+ guy the same, I would argue you are not holding up your end of the firing bargain, or at least the accountability bargain. In that scenario, it might be completely rational for the A+ guy to do the math and realize that he does better for him or herself by being two C- performers at two different jobs, each within companies that either don't know any better, or are too poorly managed and not rewarding their star performers. Similarly, there are all sorts of imbalances in the workplace that are not accounted for, and someone might chafe at. Childless employees are expected to put in more hours/overtime/crunches than parents. Smokers are excused for multiple daily breaks. Older people are out for medical reasons more often than younger. Chronic illness is it's own thing. It exists all over the place. On one hand, it's sympathetic and realistic. On the other hand, if you don't have "life" chipping away at your productivity and causing you to miss work opportunities like these others, it's hardly fair if you're not rewarded. I've done the "overemployed" thing, but I try to only hold one W2 position when I do so. I believe that's slightly more honest. At the moment I hold a sole 1099 contract and am involved technically in multiple startups. My conscience is clear right now. If I get bored, though, and unchallenged -- I'll be out interviewing. $0.02. Twice. :)
- a_e_k 4y ago
  > Similarly, there are all sorts of imbalances in the workplace that are not accounted for, and someone might chafe at. [...] On the other hand, if you don't have "life" chipping away at your productivity and causing you to miss work opportunities like these others, it's hardly fair if you're not rewarded. I see this as a bit like insurance, though, where the healthy overpay while the less healthy underpay. It's not fair to the former at the time, but you pay into it because you never know when you might suddenly find yourself among the later.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  >...completely rational for the A+ guy to do the math and realize that he does better for him or herself by being two C- performers at two different jobs The only reward for a doing a good job is more work.
ineedasername 4y ago
You're assuming these people aren't actually doing the work. Dig into the OE community a bit. I just surfaced from that rabbit hold and its fascinating but one of the premises of the community is that responsible practitioners should actually be performing all of the job requirement, not coasting by on 5%, 20%, etc. Ever work with someone better, smarter, faster than you in every way? I have. They didn't need the full 40 to get the job done, the job that they were being paid to do.
- chii 4y ago
  Most salaries position doesn't describe specific tasks after the completion of which you'd be free - it's more that you're expected to do the maximum tasks your salaried hours would have you complete, to the max of your abilities. If you do two jobs at the same time, i find it highly improbably that you'd be doing both to the max of your abilities. If you do two jobs but serially - aka, a different job after hours of the first, you'd be burning yourself out i imagine.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    Two people qualified for a position both get the job (two openings). The job is only worth a certain amount to the company so they both get the same pay. Both are qualified but one is much, much better than the other. The slower one gets a perfectly acceptable, maybe even very good amount of work done in the allotted time, the company is happy! The other worker gets the same amount of work done but in only 20 hours of time each week. (This isn't hypothetical, I've seen it play out many times) But they still only get the same pay. And, as it turned out, the company hired two people to do the job because there's only two people's worth of work to do (at the expected normal pace of the slower worker) What's to be done? What is a fair solution here? Does fast worker slow things down since there's absolutely nothing to be gained from working faster, and they'll otherwise look lazy for half the week doing northing? What do they owe their employer, who made an agreement with them to do $X amount for $Y dollars with the expectation that it would (and normally does) take a person 40 hours to complete. I don't see an equitable solution here that says "Faster worker must find more work to do at the same pay rate". That is not a meritocracy. But the idiosyncrasies & cultural norms of modern working conditions don't allow a worker to negotiate with an employer in terms of "Hey Company, you say that block of work is worth $100k over a normal work week. I'll take the $100k but it will only take me Monday & Tuesday to get it done, but that's great! You get what you need much earlier and I won't even ask for more money!" No, instead we're fixated on the concept of a 40 hour work week as a on-size-fits-all model. And I can't for the life of me understand why a more talented worker should have to give more value per unit of time to their company for the full 40 hours a week without additional compensation, except for the fact of the social construct rooted in our collective sense of workforce norms. Hell I've even had it happen to me-- not claiming I'm a superstar, I don't work twice as fast or anything, but some things I'm a little faster at. Early in my career I worked in a department that had a slow current workload. The only available tasks was catching up writing some end user documentation, something a senior colleague (but not a supervisor) expected to take me the rest of the day. I'm a decent writer and a decent technical writer though so I was done by lunch time, screen shots, annotations, narrative and all. done, handed in. So I had nothing to do. There was no work, at all. So I opened a web browser and poked around some interesting site, only to have that colleague see me and proceed to ream me out as though I'd committed some horror. In front of the entire rest of the work group. It was one of the most infuriating and embarrassing moments of my career, and completely unjustified because even after all of that she could only make vague gestures in the vein of well find something! It's ridiculous. If companies are-- understandably! --not going to pay higher performers more for the same job just because they get it done faster since they have ample other "normal speed" workers who would take that place, there's no reason for them to do it, but there's also no reason the employee shouldnt be able to say "hey I did what you pay me for so I'm going to got do this other thing. Try to distance yourself from the idea that employees are signing on for a 40 hour work week: there's no verbiage of the sort in my contract. Once you separate that from the equation it becomes a negotiated exchange for the amount of labor needed to get the company's expectations of the job done, and if that's 20 hours instead of their expected-normal-capability-persons's 40 hours why should a person owe them more?

glitchc 4y ago

Not everyone is working to build something new, and I say this as a builder. This is important to understand.

schmookeeg 4y ago

I think you're looking through one end of the looking glass. There's another. There are companies who tolerate C- teammates and reward them the same or quite close to the A+ teammates. It's where the whole "10X" appellation came from. One person pulling the dead weight around. It's a meme at this point. I've witnessed it plenty in my career. So yes, from your hiring perspective, it's fraudulent for anyone to do anything but give you their 100% at all times. But if you reward the C- guy and the A+ guy the same, I would argue you are not holding up your end of the firing bargain, or at least the accountability bargain. In that scenario, it might be completely rational for the A+ guy to do the math and realize that he does better for him or herself by being two C- performers at two different jobs, each within companies that either don't know any better, or are too poorly managed and not rewarding their star performers. Similarly, there are all sorts of imbalances in the workplace that are not accounted for, and someone might chafe at. Childless employees are expected to put in more hours/overtime/crunches than parents. Smokers are excused for multiple daily breaks. Older people are out for medical reasons more often than younger. Chronic illness is it's own thing. It exists all over the place. On one hand, it's sympathetic and realistic. On the other hand, if you don't have "life" chipping away at your productivity and causing you to miss work opportunities like these others, it's hardly fair if you're not rewarded. I've done the "overemployed" thing, but I try to only hold one W2 position when I do so. I believe that's slightly more honest. At the moment I hold a sole 1099 contract and am involved technically in multiple startups. My conscience is clear right now. If I get bored, though, and unchallenged -- I'll be out interviewing. $0.02. Twice. :)

a_e_k 4y ago
> Similarly, there are all sorts of imbalances in the workplace that are not accounted for, and someone might chafe at. [...] On the other hand, if you don't have "life" chipping away at your productivity and causing you to miss work opportunities like these others, it's hardly fair if you're not rewarded. I see this as a bit like insurance, though, where the healthy overpay while the less healthy underpay. It's not fair to the former at the time, but you pay into it because you never know when you might suddenly find yourself among the later.
fbdab103 4y ago
>...completely rational for the A+ guy to do the math and realize that he does better for him or herself by being two C- performers at two different jobs The only reward for a doing a good job is more work.

ineedasername 4y ago

You're assuming these people aren't actually doing the work. Dig into the OE community a bit. I just surfaced from that rabbit hold and its fascinating but one of the premises of the community is that responsible practitioners should actually be performing all of the job requirement, not coasting by on 5%, 20%, etc. Ever work with someone better, smarter, faster than you in every way? I have. They didn't need the full 40 to get the job done, the job that they were being paid to do.

chii 4y ago
Most salaries position doesn't describe specific tasks after the completion of which you'd be free - it's more that you're expected to do the maximum tasks your salaried hours would have you complete, to the max of your abilities. If you do two jobs at the same time, i find it highly improbably that you'd be doing both to the max of your abilities. If you do two jobs but serially - aka, a different job after hours of the first, you'd be burning yourself out i imagine.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  Two people qualified for a position both get the job (two openings). The job is only worth a certain amount to the company so they both get the same pay. Both are qualified but one is much, much better than the other. The slower one gets a perfectly acceptable, maybe even very good amount of work done in the allotted time, the company is happy! The other worker gets the same amount of work done but in only 20 hours of time each week. (This isn't hypothetical, I've seen it play out many times) But they still only get the same pay. And, as it turned out, the company hired two people to do the job because there's only two people's worth of work to do (at the expected normal pace of the slower worker) What's to be done? What is a fair solution here? Does fast worker slow things down since there's absolutely nothing to be gained from working faster, and they'll otherwise look lazy for half the week doing northing? What do they owe their employer, who made an agreement with them to do $X amount for $Y dollars with the expectation that it would (and normally does) take a person 40 hours to complete. I don't see an equitable solution here that says "Faster worker must find more work to do at the same pay rate". That is not a meritocracy. But the idiosyncrasies & cultural norms of modern working conditions don't allow a worker to negotiate with an employer in terms of "Hey Company, you say that block of work is worth $100k over a normal work week. I'll take the $100k but it will only take me Monday & Tuesday to get it done, but that's great! You get what you need much earlier and I won't even ask for more money!" No, instead we're fixated on the concept of a 40 hour work week as a on-size-fits-all model. And I can't for the life of me understand why a more talented worker should have to give more value per unit of time to their company for the full 40 hours a week without additional compensation, except for the fact of the social construct rooted in our collective sense of workforce norms. Hell I've even had it happen to me-- not claiming I'm a superstar, I don't work twice as fast or anything, but some things I'm a little faster at. Early in my career I worked in a department that had a slow current workload. The only available tasks was catching up writing some end user documentation, something a senior colleague (but not a supervisor) expected to take me the rest of the day. I'm a decent writer and a decent technical writer though so I was done by lunch time, screen shots, annotations, narrative and all. done, handed in. So I had nothing to do. There was no work, at all. So I opened a web browser and poked around some interesting site, only to have that colleague see me and proceed to ream me out as though I'd committed some horror. In front of the entire rest of the work group. It was one of the most infuriating and embarrassing moments of my career, and completely unjustified because even after all of that she could only make vague gestures in the vein of well find something! It's ridiculous. If companies are-- understandably! --not going to pay higher performers more for the same job just because they get it done faster since they have ample other "normal speed" workers who would take that place, there's no reason for them to do it, but there's also no reason the employee shouldnt be able to say "hey I did what you pay me for so I'm going to got do this other thing. Try to distance yourself from the idea that employees are signing on for a 40 hour work week: there's no verbiage of the sort in my contract. Once you separate that from the equation it becomes a negotiated exchange for the amount of labor needed to get the company's expectations of the job done, and if that's 20 hours instead of their expected-normal-capability-persons's 40 hours why should a person owe them more?