14 ms·

I see what you are saying. I am an engineer-turned-EM and you don't know me, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt: > Your job is NOT safe. Not

• alangibson 3y ago
  You're both right. To be fair, it reads like he was saying > Your job is NOT safe. in service of > Take their fucking money, build a big emergency fund, save, invest, and focus on the rest of your life outside of work.
  • TheRoque 3y ago
    I understand this rationale, but personally I have an extremely hard time disconnecting from work. It sucks 40 hours a week, which is most of my "alive" time, also sucks my brain stamina. Finding life outside of work is not easy, and considering that your main "alive time" activity is something that shouldn't be a pleasure, and is a f*cking battle, feels bad.
    • Retric 3y ago
      A full time job is generally under 2,000 hours a year while you’re awake ~5,840 (16 * 365) hours a year. Overtime, long commutes, and thinking about the job at home can make it seem like all you do is work, but it’s possible to spend 40 hours a week having fun while you also have a full time job. Remember use your vacation and sick days, and say no to excessive unpaid overtime.
      • lobsterthief 3y ago
        I refuse to work anywhere that requires me to work over 40 hours a week. You can ask up front what that expectation is and start looking for another job if they violate it.
      • badpun 3y ago
        Most people don't have nearly inexaustible amount of energy, so they need to rest and recuperate (merely just sleeping will not do it for them). So, if they have a demanding job, the 40 hours of week of having fun outside of work will largely consist of vegging on the coach in front of some TV show, or some similar low-energy activity.
        • paulcole 3y ago
          People can always find a reason to rationalize why they’re not doing what they say they want to be doing.
          • marcus0x62 3y ago
            It could also be possible that other people experience mental fatigue differently than you do.
            • Retric 3y ago
              It’s also possible people are talking about mental fatigue when they’re really dealing with depression. If you’re mentally exhausted from work then going for a walk through a park is relaxing enough to regain some energy. If you’re depressed then you would still be vegging out on the weekend. Which isn’t to say vegging out sometimes is a bad sign. Watching TV is fun in moderation.
• sz4kerto 3y ago
  I disagree and I am sad that we're teaching each other to be skeptical and cynical. The company is not your friend and not your enemy, I agree. However, people _do_ develop personal relationship with each other. Sometimes even across the different levels in the company hierarchy. Yes, as with any other relationship, circumstances and interests might override this, but relationships still do matter. People have emotions, and there are managers who're not psychopats and find it very hard to e.g. let people go. And yes, value yourself, absolutely. And your job is not your family or your identity, and manage risk, and there are bad bosses and bad company cultures. But it's not uniform. But please don't think that nobody cares about you in your workplace and you're a completely fungible cog. It's a horrible life to live. Let's not tell the already cynical young people that this is how the world works. Even at big, bureaucratic companies like big investment banks, if you're at a certain level (not that high), eventually you'll mostly be taken care of. Not everyone and not always, but e.g. if you're an ED at an investment bank, you can have a job for life, maybe not at your current place forever, but the industry will take care of you. Similarly if you've been at dunno, Mercedes for 15 years and you're not the bottom 20 percent in terms of performance, then it's kinda guaranteed that you'll have a job in the auto industry forever. People who have been let go from Google today can have an extremely lucrative job forever in the industry.
  • geraldwhen 3y ago
    This is just unrealistic. When layoffs happens, whole departments can get cut. They don’t differentiate performers. Likewise, there is a huge bias in hiring against older developers. Getting laid off in your 40s is a death sentence. You’ll never make as much money again, and you’ll be lucky to find employment. Be ready to retire by 50, because anything else is both risky and improbable.
    • peacemaker 3y ago
      The idea that you must retire from tech before 50 is so incredibly false I have difficulty believing this view is even shared here. Perhaps in some of the "trendy" "bro-culture" startups you'd have a more difficult time as an older developer but even in those places, the level of experience and skills older devs bring can be extremely valuable. But say you were laid off in your 40's, now what? Well, there are so many bigger, less volatile companies out there with solid pay that are desperate for senior people with experience. There's also consulting for those who have spent a career building up a network of contacts. You can still leverage those old contacts for future opportunities as well. Governmental work and such is also a place where age is not a concern. Here I agree you might not make as much money but employment is always available to developers who are skilled, experienced and flexible.
• The_Colonel 3y ago
  > Nothing will make execs happier than having this line of thought popularized amongst engineers. It will allow them to hire cheaper, and exploit existing engineers more. Why? The lay-offs are so broad, not selective at all. You're just as likely to get cut if you're working hard or not, if you're overpaid or underpaid. It's completely out of the employee's control, so why would it change the employee's behavior?
  • ghaff 3y ago
    When companies make broad cuts, especially if they're eliminating projects or divisions they've decided are no longer important, the reality is that they don't do a lot of micro-optimizing at the individual level about who they keep and who they shed. Sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time--and maybe it's even the impetus to do something different.
  • myth_drannon 3y ago
    Depends, in my company layoffs were based on compensation. All the high compensation locations employees were canned.
  • ctvo 3y ago
    > It's completely out of the employee's control, so why would it change the employee's behavior? Employees don’t have visibility into their peers actual performance. They see a silver of it and infer. This makes layoffs look random. Then, we rely on publicly reported “I was given a great review and still let go!” posts — which are all self-interested. No one wants to hire or refer someone who was doing poorly so there’s an incentive to fib or have selective amnesia. The whole cohort of folks let go are incentivized to keep up the fiction that it was random. All things being equal, there is no reason to layoff someone high performing over their less capable peer. I’ve never seen it done randomly, and I’ve sat in these meetings. This is not to say whole divisions or companies haven’t been let go, but that’s not the same situation here. We’re talking about selective cuts across the entire company where core, or advertising lost some folks, while others remained. That is not random.
    • 3y ago
• katzgrau 3y ago
  For anyone reading this, please don’t subscribe to this level of cynicism. For SWEs at Google and almost anywhere else, the wind has blown very favorably for you and that’s something to be celebrated. The direction of the wind has shifted, but we can never expect it to stay blowing in one direction forever, even if others get lucky and catch one like that. You will no doubt set your sail and take it to new and wonderful places. Let’s take a minute and be grateful for how good SWEs have it - we are frequently so insanely disconnected from the realities and struggles of the normal working class and we should remember and express some gratitude for it regularly.
  • hotpotamus 3y ago
    If this is merely the result of a change in weather, then Sundar Pichai must be the god of the winds.
    • pas 3y ago
      at Alphabet he[0] most certainly is [0] well, probably not he alone, but he is the figurehead of a group that put him there and keeps him there, and at Alphabet that group shits the wind
  • rkachowski 3y ago
    Are you seriously saying that people should express gratitude for being fired without ceremony, whilst the company at hand makes record profits? All the "wind", "sails" and boat metaphors won't change the fact that loyalty is a virtue that fits very poorly on both sides of employment.
    • JohnFen 3y ago
      That wasn't how I read that comment. What I heard him say was that we should be grateful for having been able to take advantage of an unusually favorable environment, while at the same time recognizing that it's been an unusually favorable environment that will, sooner or later, regress closer to the mean.
• twh270 3y ago
  "Your job is not safe" does not mean you should do everything possible to keep your job -- allowing yourself to be unfairly exploited and abused. It means that you need to be responsible for yourself, and not allow thoughts like "I'm a valuable employee", or "I have too much seniority", or "my manager and I get along great" to convince you management won't lay you off or fire you or that they owe you anything. As others have said, the employer-employee relationship is first and foremost a business relationship, i.e. transactional: you work and they pay you. When that relationship doesn't work any more for one side or the other, it ends. It does often happen, of course, that professional friendships or even personal friendships develop. You are, after all, spending a lot of time with your co-workers. But don't think your good relationships or friendships will help if the business decides a layoff is necessary.
  • Frost1x 3y ago
    >"Your job is not safe" does not mean you should do everything possible to keep your job -- allowing yourself to be unfairly exploited and abused. In my opinion it should mean that you not only consider the relationship transactional, you consider yourself as an independent business operating within a business transaction, an LLC or sole proprietorship if you will. Remove yourself from emotional attachment this way. This line of thought leads people to naturally adopt the exact same sort optimization (exploitation) strategies businesses (your employer) does with the same justifications they use. As such you should focus on diversifying your employment or making sure you’re diversely employable should you need new revenue streams, have savings and cash reserves for economic downturns, and focus on your profit margins (time invested vs paid) and so on and optimize around these sort of criteria. Obviously if you have a good transactional relationship and are to some degree dependent on that relationship you don’t do everything possible to undermine it (just as employers have limits they’ll stop at before employees start to flee) but never consider it at any sort of emotional or attached level, it’s merely a strategic relationship and be ready to optimize wherever you can for your LLC depending on its goals (i.e. your goals).
    • TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
      > This line of thought leads people to naturally adopt the exact same sort optimization (exploitation) strategies businesses (your employer) does with the same justifications they use. But that’s exactly the kind of relationship it is. Instead of maintaining some fantasy, you should call a duck, a duck.
• christophilus 3y ago
  > offshore your life's direction to the company That's a good way of putting it. I've let it happen to me in the past, and I've seen it happen many times. Your comment is solid advice.
• varispeed 3y ago
  > Nothing will make execs happier than having this line of thought popularized amongst engineers. It will allow them to hire cheaper, and exploit existing engineers more. How is that? If a job is less secure, typically commands more pay. If you know you will be out of work in 6-12 months, your pay better include some cushion to cover time between jobs.
• wonderwonder 3y ago
  I appreciate your view but I took OP's comment differently. "Your job is not safe" in my view means you should treat work as if you are a mercenary. Treat every role as short term, go in do the job, get paid and always be looking for the next better thing, no emotional ties. Be prepared to cut them before they cut you. I feel like it would actually drive salaries up as people move to higher paying roles and companies scramble to keep people that they would have otherwise expected to remain for years. For context, I once worked at company A for 2 years then got a new job offer for 20% more than I currently made. I accepted the offer and then told my VP that I got a new job and the offer was 35% more. He matched the 35% so I stayed for another year and then got a new job for 25% more than that. A little after that, Company A started doing layoffs. If I had been loyal I would have likely been laid off, instead I left with a much higher salary because I was loyal only to the money. Companies used to be loyal but no longer are, your job is not safe. Perhaps we actually are on the same page in principal as I agree with all of your other suggestions "diversifying your options, building an emergency fund, have a fulfilling life outside work" just a different take on the original comment.
• game_the0ry 3y ago
  I hear you. I am also an engineer-turned-EM. > Your job is NOT safe. Nothing would make me happier than to eradicate this line of thought, but laying the responsibility of that on the employee is poor management at best, malicious bullshit at worst. We EMs do nothing to re-assure our employees that they are valued co-workers and not "resources" to be managed. When one of my valued employees comes to me and says "I got another job offer and the increase in TC will change my life," most of the time they are a top-performer I want to keep, so I go to my manager asking to match their comp. But...they have to ask their manager, then their manager, so on and so forth. Even HR sometimes steps in with excuses why we cant. By the time a decision is made, if one is ever made, the employee I wanted to keep is already at their new employer. So I would recommend my employees look out for themselves, bc I (and my management hierarchy) certainly won't (though they can, they just don't want to). And if you are still looking to lay responsibility on to someone, look in the mirror.
• mp05 3y ago
  > "a job is not your identity" This is so important.
• gdilla 3y ago
  This. Your company is not every going to fix you, optimize your life, or be loyal to you. But you can take responsibility of all those things, and never let up. Get better, look for opportunities that satisfy what you value - always.
• mguerville 3y ago
  Parts of it is that when you're cutting an arbitrary number (like 5%) just because.... you kind have to do it "randomly" so that there's no claim of discrimination. If it just so happens that all you best performers share a demographic trait of the protected or protected-adjacent kind (sex, orientation, religious beliefs, etc.) you'd expose yourself to discrimination lawsuits by people who don't match that facet. It sucks and it's a symptom of risk management being a leading consideration to the process of a layoff, more so than performance optimization or culture change, but that's how it "makes sense"
• tnel77 3y ago
  I think the biggest thing any one person can do (regardless of your occupation) is to build up that emergency fund. Life happens and having those funds gives you options!