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At my first job our manager was fired around the time his partner died of cancer and he was left with 2 little kids. He was slacking but also they knew about th

At my first job our manager was fired around the time his partner died of cancer and he was left with 2 little kids. He was slacking but also they knew about the whole situation. He was there for over 10 years. That changed me forever

wonderwonder 4y ago
That's really harsh. At the job I mentioned in the above they pip'd me because I delivered 8 points per week instead of 10 for 2 weeks right when COVID lockdown hit. They couldn't understand why the world melting down and my kids suddenly home schooling would have any affect on my productivity. Companies treat us as replaceable widgets. If widget A is broken just throw it away and use widget B. No reason to be loyal in that environment.
- _vbnz 4y ago
  To the suits we're just a translation layer between the business requirements to deployed code. And they'll be happy to reduce the work to story points and neo-Taylorism, so they can try to treat each person as an interchangeable unit of production, and then minimise costs. In an era of trillon-dollar megacorps and multi-billionaire CEOs, Marx was ahead of his time: > He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. [...] As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself
  - flashgordon 4y ago
    Ooh ooh ooh. I am unable to hold myself back but I'll try. The pipping system in most companies (especially "new age" faangs) is very very similar to the credit rating scheme. You are always captured, nay reduced, to a metric. All context is ignored/forgotten. And even worse it is a lot easier to drop on a metric than to rise back up again because when you drop it is purely objective but when you try to make up it is rarely ever objective. Only thing the faangs have done differently is lasted a bit longer in hiding their shadiness than their wall st counter parts! This unveiling could actually good be great for innovation again?
malfist 4y ago
I have a friend who spent 30 years working for a factory building aircraft for the military. One year, a new lead manager comes in and decides he wants everyone on the floor to have a college degree and fires my friend and the six other people there without college degrees. It really messed up my friend, he was really close to a comfortable retirement, but had to borrow against his 401k to make it through until he could get another job. He was the safety officer for the entire factory, 15+ years of experience doing that. Now he's too close to retirement age and no one will hire him, even though he's personally a long way from retirement. So now he's working a physically demanding job on the line making cars. All that experience and skills with safety? Junk. No company has loyalty to their employees. It's all about the next quarter.
- mooreds 4y ago
  Wow, that is a heart-wrenching story. What a shame. > It's all about the next quarter. Not sure that follows from your friend's story. In that particular case, it seems to have been about bad management, unless having only college-degreed folks on the floor improved short term financials. Definitely an example of a short sighted decision, though.
- flashgordon 4y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the manager who came in with this edict was specifically brought in to "weed" out those who could "escape" into a comfortable retirement just to extract more labor out of them!

wonderwonder 4y ago

That's really harsh. At the job I mentioned in the above they pip'd me because I delivered 8 points per week instead of 10 for 2 weeks right when COVID lockdown hit. They couldn't understand why the world melting down and my kids suddenly home schooling would have any affect on my productivity. Companies treat us as replaceable widgets. If widget A is broken just throw it away and use widget B. No reason to be loyal in that environment.

_vbnz 4y ago
To the suits we're just a translation layer between the business requirements to deployed code. And they'll be happy to reduce the work to story points and neo-Taylorism, so they can try to treat each person as an interchangeable unit of production, and then minimise costs. In an era of trillon-dollar megacorps and multi-billionaire CEOs, Marx was ahead of his time: > He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. [...] As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself
- flashgordon 4y ago
  Ooh ooh ooh. I am unable to hold myself back but I'll try. The pipping system in most companies (especially "new age" faangs) is very very similar to the credit rating scheme. You are always captured, nay reduced, to a metric. All context is ignored/forgotten. And even worse it is a lot easier to drop on a metric than to rise back up again because when you drop it is purely objective but when you try to make up it is rarely ever objective. Only thing the faangs have done differently is lasted a bit longer in hiding their shadiness than their wall st counter parts! This unveiling could actually good be great for innovation again?

malfist 4y ago

I have a friend who spent 30 years working for a factory building aircraft for the military. One year, a new lead manager comes in and decides he wants everyone on the floor to have a college degree and fires my friend and the six other people there without college degrees. It really messed up my friend, he was really close to a comfortable retirement, but had to borrow against his 401k to make it through until he could get another job. He was the safety officer for the entire factory, 15+ years of experience doing that. Now he's too close to retirement age and no one will hire him, even though he's personally a long way from retirement. So now he's working a physically demanding job on the line making cars. All that experience and skills with safety? Junk. No company has loyalty to their employees. It's all about the next quarter.

mooreds 4y ago
Wow, that is a heart-wrenching story. What a shame. > It's all about the next quarter. Not sure that follows from your friend's story. In that particular case, it seems to have been about bad management, unless having only college-degreed folks on the floor improved short term financials. Definitely an example of a short sighted decision, though.
flashgordon 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the manager who came in with this edict was specifically brought in to "weed" out those who could "escape" into a comfortable retirement just to extract more labor out of them!