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I think you're being a bit uncharitable and jaded here. For many, events like these are actually the catalyst that causes one to "grow up", which is what the au

I think you're being a bit uncharitable and jaded here. For many, events like these are actually the catalyst that causes one to "grow up", which is what the author is conveying.

dougmwne 4y ago
Absolutely. Nearly everyone I know left college doe-eyed and ready to dedicate a piece of their soul to their shiny new job. Everyone learned otherwise one person at a time. Some worked for “we’re all a family” companies and were able to remain innocent ignorants till the day the axe fell.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > Absolutely. Nearly everyone I know left college doe-eyed and ready to dedicate a piece of their soul to their shiny new job When did you graduate college? In the social media era, the sentiment has been more about "fuck you, pay me" and "H.R. is not your friend" type ideology. This is especially true in recent years, where a lot of college graduates have been exposed to years of /r/antiwork in their daily Reddit browsing before they even get their first jobs. A lot of juniors want to do good work and produce good results, but it's common for them to believe that corporations are evil, capitalism is a failed ideology, and that it's virtuous to minimize their labor input while maximizing their compensation. It can take a while to convince some of these new hires that as their manager, I'm a person too.
  - bradleyjg 4y ago
    This business about “fuck capitalism” and so on is also infantile, just in the opposite direction.
    - HarryHirsch 4y ago
      That's an assertion of belief, not a statement of fact. You'd have to bring arguments why the interests of workers and owners are congruent (which they are not).
      - bradleyjg 4y ago
        I don’t need to do any such thing. Just point out that no reasonable alternative has been proposed by anyone and conclude that it’s therefore infantile whining.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        German-style Rhine capitalism with co-determination for labor unions and a robust social safety net that isn’t even as leftist as the Scandinavian countries.
        bradleyjg 4y ago
        It’s still capitalism, so if you want that why are you going around saying “fuck capitalism”? Scandinavia has capitalism too, welfare capitalism, sure, but still capitalism.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        Who said I'm going around saying that? But it's still a reasonable alternative to the form of capitalism currently practiced in America. So you are incorrect in saying that nothing is being proposed.
  - DoughnutHole 4y ago
    People can hold a lot of cognitively dissonant but valid viewpoints at the same time. I put effort into my work because taking pride in one’s work nourishes the soul. I try to meet my manager’s expectations because I know him, he’s a good guy, and I know he’s got my back to the extent he is able to. I also know that my employer as an entity abstracted through a dozen tiers of hierarchy would feed me and my manager both into a woodchipper if it would increase quarterly gains more than the alternative would. I work to minimise how much of myself I give to my employer, and maximise how much I give to myself and to the relationships I value (which still includes workplace relationships!).
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    You being a person is not mutually exclusive with any of those other sentiments. They are able to coexist.
    - WeylandYutani 4y ago
      After WW2 they found out that a lot of the Germans who commited war crimes were completely normal and decent people just following orders. Managers aren't bad guys but they WILL follow orders.
      - uxcolumbo 4y ago
        Yes, be a good German, right? You can say no… I did when my then boss asked me to fire people because he personally didn’t like them.
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    Yes, I am older than that. I truly feel for a lot of the younger people who came of age during pandemic isolation and raised by YouTubers. I work with some of them and they are not having an easy adjustment into adulthood. Good on you for putting in the effort. The corporation cannot be your friend, but a good manager can be.
  - triceratops 4y ago
    > it's virtuous to minimize their labor input while maximizing their compensation It's not? That's what capitalism is. More productivity with fewer inputs.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > It can take a while to convince some of these new hires that as their manager, I'm a person too. However the company is not a person - RMoney be damned
- ThrowawayR2 4y ago
  The Dilbert comic strip has been running since 1989 and was about the life of engineers at something that nominally looked like a tech company and, even then, people were remarking that a lot of its humor worked because it was true. If anyone graduated without the awareness that the working world wasn't going to necessarily be all rainbows and unicorns, they weren't paying attention.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    And yet people are willing to give a lot of credence to pointy headed bosses, as many discussions on HN will attest to.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  It's almost like... people really want to find meaning and purpose in an occupation, community in the place they spend at least half of their waking hours, and work they can be proud of. How... immature? I agree that the present society cannot generally fulfill these wants/needs.
- musicale 4y ago
  > "we’re all a family" ... that's why our valued Craptech employees should not be surprised if they are subject to abuse, estrangement, abandonment, financial hardship, mistreatment in care homes, abortion or termination of life support, etc., concurrent with our expectation of absolute loyalty at the expense of happiness, health, and sanity. And of course our gender pay policies are modeled on domestic work.
bradleyjg 4y ago
You know who was a bit uncharitable? The people saying “okay boomer” to the Bobs of the world when they kindly tried to share their experience.
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  I'm curious about this. My experience is that people in my age bracket (early 20s) have been saying "okay boomer" to the people telling us that being in your 20s and 30s is about hustling to show loyalty to your company, showing up at the office five days a week, ingratiating yourself with your boss, spending late nights at the office and being buddy-buddy with all your coworkers. I have never ever witnessed anyone employing this phrase as a response to someone's pessimism about the capitalist society we live in.
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    [dead]
  - bradleyjg 4y ago
    Trying to make it about capitalism is also silly. Those rant and rave about that have no alternative to offer. At best they suggest Scandavian style welfare capitalism, which has capitalism right there in the name, but call it socialism because it sounds cooler. They should grow up too.
    - actionablefiber 4y ago
      Hot take but I think everyone is allowed to recognize the cutthroat, impersonal nature of corporate hiring and firing and commiserate about it without needing to walk around with a fully-formed proposal for an alternative economic system in their pocket.
      - sangnoir 4y ago
        I may try out gp's approach with the next adverse code review I get: "While my naming is generic and the code difficult to understand - it is the best solution to date. Stop whining and provide your alternative diff before I can take your criticism seriously"
rayiner 4y ago
Thats unfortunate because this is a lesson you should learn much earlier in life. Like, how do you get to adulthood not knowing how the world works?
haswell 4y ago
And it’s just one of many ways people can come to realize this over time. I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid the experience of layoffs, but learned the same lesson by pouring too much of myself into a role and burning out. Until you’ve directly experienced the reasons work isn’t a family, etc. it can be hard to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that it is. I would also say that most takes on this are a bit too binary, and some of my longest lasting and strongest friendships came from past jobs. I think the key to use work as an opportunity to establish those relationships instead of a ready-made support system, and not extending the personal aspect of those relationships into workplace behavior (e.g. doing more work because it’s “family”).
- fsociety 4y ago
  Burning yourself out sucks, but is not an equivalent experience to being laid off. Not sure how you came to this conclusion.
  - haswell 4y ago
    I'm not claiming it's an equivalent experience. I'm saying that burnout was my path to thinking differently about my relationship with work. Burnout is a whole other beast, and recovery from it a whole other topic.
jrockway 4y ago
I don't know if I agree that "growing up" and "becoming bitter and cynical" are the same thing. Getting more bitter as you age might be something to work on with a therapist, not something to aspire to.
- atomicUpdate 4y ago
  They aren’t telling you to “become bitter and cynical”, they’re saying to be realistic. Life isn’t fair, and part of growing up is realizing that.
georgemcbay 4y ago
I agree. IMO its worth mentioning the reality of the employee<->corporation relationship because MANY companies in both tech and outside of tech have long tried to sell employees (particularly junior ones) on the idea that the company is a big family (without really acting like one beyond a very superficial level, eg. enjoy the free costco snacks, and or catered lunches/dinners when you're here for 12 hour days building value for the family!). When you're a bit more experienced its easy to be more realistic about this relationship due to seeing that lie revealed a couple of times on a personal level, but that doesn't mean its not worth pointing out and talking about the lie.

I think you're being a bit uncharitable and jaded here. For many, events like these are actually the catalyst that causes one to "grow up", which is what the author is conveying.

dougmwne 4y ago

Absolutely. Nearly everyone I know left college doe-eyed and ready to dedicate a piece of their soul to their shiny new job. Everyone learned otherwise one person at a time. Some worked for “we’re all a family” companies and were able to remain innocent ignorants till the day the axe fell.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> Absolutely. Nearly everyone I know left college doe-eyed and ready to dedicate a piece of their soul to their shiny new job When did you graduate college? In the social media era, the sentiment has been more about "fuck you, pay me" and "H.R. is not your friend" type ideology. This is especially true in recent years, where a lot of college graduates have been exposed to years of /r/antiwork in their daily Reddit browsing before they even get their first jobs. A lot of juniors want to do good work and produce good results, but it's common for them to believe that corporations are evil, capitalism is a failed ideology, and that it's virtuous to minimize their labor input while maximizing their compensation. It can take a while to convince some of these new hires that as their manager, I'm a person too.
- bradleyjg 4y ago
  This business about “fuck capitalism” and so on is also infantile, just in the opposite direction.
  - HarryHirsch 4y ago
    That's an assertion of belief, not a statement of fact. You'd have to bring arguments why the interests of workers and owners are congruent (which they are not).
    - bradleyjg 4y ago
      I don’t need to do any such thing. Just point out that no reasonable alternative has been proposed by anyone and conclude that it’s therefore infantile whining.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        German-style Rhine capitalism with co-determination for labor unions and a robust social safety net that isn’t even as leftist as the Scandinavian countries.
        bradleyjg 4y ago
        It’s still capitalism, so if you want that why are you going around saying “fuck capitalism”? Scandinavia has capitalism too, welfare capitalism, sure, but still capitalism.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        Who said I'm going around saying that? But it's still a reasonable alternative to the form of capitalism currently practiced in America. So you are incorrect in saying that nothing is being proposed.
- DoughnutHole 4y ago
  People can hold a lot of cognitively dissonant but valid viewpoints at the same time. I put effort into my work because taking pride in one’s work nourishes the soul. I try to meet my manager’s expectations because I know him, he’s a good guy, and I know he’s got my back to the extent he is able to. I also know that my employer as an entity abstracted through a dozen tiers of hierarchy would feed me and my manager both into a woodchipper if it would increase quarterly gains more than the alternative would. I work to minimise how much of myself I give to my employer, and maximise how much I give to myself and to the relationships I value (which still includes workplace relationships!).
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  You being a person is not mutually exclusive with any of those other sentiments. They are able to coexist.
  - WeylandYutani 4y ago
    After WW2 they found out that a lot of the Germans who commited war crimes were completely normal and decent people just following orders. Managers aren't bad guys but they WILL follow orders.
    - uxcolumbo 4y ago
      Yes, be a good German, right? You can say no… I did when my then boss asked me to fire people because he personally didn’t like them.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  Yes, I am older than that. I truly feel for a lot of the younger people who came of age during pandemic isolation and raised by YouTubers. I work with some of them and they are not having an easy adjustment into adulthood. Good on you for putting in the effort. The corporation cannot be your friend, but a good manager can be.
- triceratops 4y ago
  > it's virtuous to minimize their labor input while maximizing their compensation It's not? That's what capitalism is. More productivity with fewer inputs.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > It can take a while to convince some of these new hires that as their manager, I'm a person too. However the company is not a person - RMoney be damned
ThrowawayR2 4y ago
The Dilbert comic strip has been running since 1989 and was about the life of engineers at something that nominally looked like a tech company and, even then, people were remarking that a lot of its humor worked because it was true. If anyone graduated without the awareness that the working world wasn't going to necessarily be all rainbows and unicorns, they weren't paying attention.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  And yet people are willing to give a lot of credence to pointy headed bosses, as many discussions on HN will attest to.
jrochkind1 4y ago
It's almost like... people really want to find meaning and purpose in an occupation, community in the place they spend at least half of their waking hours, and work they can be proud of. How... immature? I agree that the present society cannot generally fulfill these wants/needs.
musicale 4y ago
> "we’re all a family" ... that's why our valued Craptech employees should not be surprised if they are subject to abuse, estrangement, abandonment, financial hardship, mistreatment in care homes, abortion or termination of life support, etc., concurrent with our expectation of absolute loyalty at the expense of happiness, health, and sanity. And of course our gender pay policies are modeled on domestic work.

bradleyjg 4y ago

You know who was a bit uncharitable? The people saying “okay boomer” to the Bobs of the world when they kindly tried to share their experience.

actionablefiber 4y ago
I'm curious about this. My experience is that people in my age bracket (early 20s) have been saying "okay boomer" to the people telling us that being in your 20s and 30s is about hustling to show loyalty to your company, showing up at the office five days a week, ingratiating yourself with your boss, spending late nights at the office and being buddy-buddy with all your coworkers. I have never ever witnessed anyone employing this phrase as a response to someone's pessimism about the capitalist society we live in.
- dumpsterlid 4y ago
  [dead]
- bradleyjg 4y ago
  Trying to make it about capitalism is also silly. Those rant and rave about that have no alternative to offer. At best they suggest Scandavian style welfare capitalism, which has capitalism right there in the name, but call it socialism because it sounds cooler. They should grow up too.
  - actionablefiber 4y ago
    Hot take but I think everyone is allowed to recognize the cutthroat, impersonal nature of corporate hiring and firing and commiserate about it without needing to walk around with a fully-formed proposal for an alternative economic system in their pocket.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      I may try out gp's approach with the next adverse code review I get: "While my naming is generic and the code difficult to understand - it is the best solution to date. Stop whining and provide your alternative diff before I can take your criticism seriously"

rayiner 4y ago

Thats unfortunate because this is a lesson you should learn much earlier in life. Like, how do you get to adulthood not knowing how the world works?

haswell 4y ago

And it’s just one of many ways people can come to realize this over time. I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid the experience of layoffs, but learned the same lesson by pouring too much of myself into a role and burning out. Until you’ve directly experienced the reasons work isn’t a family, etc. it can be hard to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that it is. I would also say that most takes on this are a bit too binary, and some of my longest lasting and strongest friendships came from past jobs. I think the key to use work as an opportunity to establish those relationships instead of a ready-made support system, and not extending the personal aspect of those relationships into workplace behavior (e.g. doing more work because it’s “family”).

fsociety 4y ago
Burning yourself out sucks, but is not an equivalent experience to being laid off. Not sure how you came to this conclusion.
- haswell 4y ago
  I'm not claiming it's an equivalent experience. I'm saying that burnout was my path to thinking differently about my relationship with work. Burnout is a whole other beast, and recovery from it a whole other topic.

jrockway 4y ago

I don't know if I agree that "growing up" and "becoming bitter and cynical" are the same thing. Getting more bitter as you age might be something to work on with a therapist, not something to aspire to.

atomicUpdate 4y ago
They aren’t telling you to “become bitter and cynical”, they’re saying to be realistic. Life isn’t fair, and part of growing up is realizing that.

georgemcbay 4y ago

I agree. IMO its worth mentioning the reality of the employee<->corporation relationship because MANY companies in both tech and outside of tech have long tried to sell employees (particularly junior ones) on the idea that the company is a big family (without really acting like one beyond a very superficial level, eg. enjoy the free costco snacks, and or catered lunches/dinners when you're here for 12 hour days building value for the family!). When you're a bit more experienced its easy to be more realistic about this relationship due to seeing that lie revealed a couple of times on a personal level, but that doesn't mean its not worth pointing out and talking about the lie.