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"but spend the majority of our lives working 40 hour weeks to outcompete each other and make rent" THIS. I am so sick of the competition in most tech jobs / c

"but spend the majority of our lives working 40 hour weeks to outcompete each other and make rent" THIS. I am so sick of the competition in most tech jobs / companies to climb the stupid ladder. Everyone just wants more more more and our society reinforces that. I _REALLY_ miss working on teams that didn't have that amount of competition causing mild dysfunction.

water-your-self 4y ago
Can I ask the rough scale of the company you work for?
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Do you feel compelled to participate in that competition? If not, why does it bother you?
- ThrowawayR2 4y ago
  Fail to compete and you'll be left behind in terms of compensation, performance review rankings, and career growth, the last of which also limits your future job choices. It also puts you nearer the top of the list for layoffs when corporate finances get tight.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    But those things shouldn’t bother you if you aren’t interested in the “more more more” society. It’s easy to get a stable programming job in the US that pays $80k and has very little lay-off risk. You can’t have it both ways complaining about being left behind in comp while not participating in the grind that allows those comps to go higher.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      Lower paid jobs can be worse. That they can’t afford to pay you more might mean they are doing something noble but usually it is a wannabe growth startup being badly run and pushing down pressure on lower waged staff to compensate. But you have a point: at 80k requirement you could easily freelance to earn that, for non technical people. Help set up shopify stores etc. and not need to constantly be on a learning grind.
      - uxp100 4y ago
        I don’t think wanna be growth startup is really typical. Typical lower, but not that low paid tech job is more like maintain software tooling that supports mechanical engineers testing, or aids insurance appraisal, or replacing ladder logic industrial automation with something that has more iot type features (and still might be partially ladder logic). Probably all those pay 80k-100k to someone with a few years experience. The downsides are dingy offices that you’ll have to show up in sometimes, and for the last one, potentially lots of travel to not too exciting places.
    - rchaud 4y ago
      Participating in the grind however means tossing away millions of employee-hours on paper-pushing jobs that don't really accomplish much, either in terms of personal development or corporate benefit. This is being evidenced almost daily by wave after wave of layoffs for the relatively well-heeled tech industry.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    You must live with a lot of fear. I am sorry.
    - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
      Why? I'm in a good place, thanks to awareness of risks and preparedness. Save your pity for those who fail to heed my words.
- lazyasciiart 4y ago
  I don't, but it bothers me because the people who win it get to decide what I work on and they are too often fundamentally incompetent.
bityard 4y ago
Just for some perspective, the 40-hour work week is a relatively new invention that only surfaced with the recent rise of the white-collar workforce. In my parents' day, the 40-hour work week was called "bankers hours" and this was used in a highly derogatory "sure must be nice" tone of voice. Many or most of us are probably descended from farmers that worked doing hard physical labor from sun-up to sun-down six days a week at a bare minimum with the rare holiday being reserved for family gatherings and religious observances. No travel at all unless you could hire someone (or left your kids at home) to feed the pigs or whatever while you were gone. I'll take 40 hours over that kind of life in a hearbeat, thankyouverymuch. Although I am still trying very hard to make it so that I don't have to do even that much for the rest of my life. In general, I don't disagree that it's sad that we spend such a huge proporation of our precious, finite time on our planet working. Most work without enjoyment because that's how you put food on the table. On the other hand, the person who cracks this nut will enjoy unprecedented fame and their name in the history books for the rest of human civilization if they figure it out. (And no, it's not going to happen no matter how many 140-char political rants there are on the bird site. Very arguably, those are in fact the opposite of progress no matter which "side" you think you are on.)
- teaearlgraycold 4y ago
  And thousands of years ago it would be feasible to live on 30 hours of work a week. I wouldn’t want to give up modernity for that, but it’s not as though tremendous amounts of labor is the original work week.
- andirk 4y ago
  But how many hours does the person who lives in the RV down by the Aqua Park work? They don't need to pay for refuse dumping because they simply dump in the lake which now has Hepatitis fumes so it's not a good idea to jog around there any more. And they have huge piles of bikes.

water-your-self 4y ago

Can I ask the rough scale of the company you work for?

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

Do you feel compelled to participate in that competition? If not, why does it bother you?

ThrowawayR2 4y ago
Fail to compete and you'll be left behind in terms of compensation, performance review rankings, and career growth, the last of which also limits your future job choices. It also puts you nearer the top of the list for layoffs when corporate finances get tight.
- kortilla 4y ago
  But those things shouldn’t bother you if you aren’t interested in the “more more more” society. It’s easy to get a stable programming job in the US that pays $80k and has very little lay-off risk. You can’t have it both ways complaining about being left behind in comp while not participating in the grind that allows those comps to go higher.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Lower paid jobs can be worse. That they can’t afford to pay you more might mean they are doing something noble but usually it is a wannabe growth startup being badly run and pushing down pressure on lower waged staff to compensate. But you have a point: at 80k requirement you could easily freelance to earn that, for non technical people. Help set up shopify stores etc. and not need to constantly be on a learning grind.
    - uxp100 4y ago
      I don’t think wanna be growth startup is really typical. Typical lower, but not that low paid tech job is more like maintain software tooling that supports mechanical engineers testing, or aids insurance appraisal, or replacing ladder logic industrial automation with something that has more iot type features (and still might be partially ladder logic). Probably all those pay 80k-100k to someone with a few years experience. The downsides are dingy offices that you’ll have to show up in sometimes, and for the last one, potentially lots of travel to not too exciting places.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Participating in the grind however means tossing away millions of employee-hours on paper-pushing jobs that don't really accomplish much, either in terms of personal development or corporate benefit. This is being evidenced almost daily by wave after wave of layoffs for the relatively well-heeled tech industry.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  You must live with a lot of fear. I am sorry.
  - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
    Why? I'm in a good place, thanks to awareness of risks and preparedness. Save your pity for those who fail to heed my words.
lazyasciiart 4y ago
I don't, but it bothers me because the people who win it get to decide what I work on and they are too often fundamentally incompetent.

bityard 4y ago

Just for some perspective, the 40-hour work week is a relatively new invention that only surfaced with the recent rise of the white-collar workforce. In my parents' day, the 40-hour work week was called "bankers hours" and this was used in a highly derogatory "sure must be nice" tone of voice. Many or most of us are probably descended from farmers that worked doing hard physical labor from sun-up to sun-down six days a week at a bare minimum with the rare holiday being reserved for family gatherings and religious observances. No travel at all unless you could hire someone (or left your kids at home) to feed the pigs or whatever while you were gone. I'll take 40 hours over that kind of life in a hearbeat, thankyouverymuch. Although I am still trying very hard to make it so that I don't have to do even that much for the rest of my life. In general, I don't disagree that it's sad that we spend such a huge proporation of our precious, finite time on our planet working. Most work without enjoyment because that's how you put food on the table. On the other hand, the person who cracks this nut will enjoy unprecedented fame and their name in the history books for the rest of human civilization if they figure it out. (And no, it's not going to happen no matter how many 140-char political rants there are on the bird site. Very arguably, those are in fact the opposite of progress no matter which "side" you think you are on.)

teaearlgraycold 4y ago
And thousands of years ago it would be feasible to live on 30 hours of work a week. I wouldn’t want to give up modernity for that, but it’s not as though tremendous amounts of labor is the original work week.
andirk 4y ago
But how many hours does the person who lives in the RV down by the Aqua Park work? They don't need to pay for refuse dumping because they simply dump in the lake which now has Hepatitis fumes so it's not a good idea to jog around there any more. And they have huge piles of bikes.