After a few more minutes and another set of whines, the guy asks the barman “so why doesn’t he move?” And the barman says “it probably doesn’t hurt enough for him to get up.”
A job change can also mean - inheriting someone else's problematic code base, new office politics and colleagues who may not get along with you. Hardly 0-5% of pay rise really does not justify all this. All in all, one cannot switch jobs easily when the options and benefits of switching are not so good.
This is not true. There are many such opportunities if you ask, especially now.
> it's not that you will get a 20% pay rise every time you switch
If you work in IT (generous, but it is HN...), this should be your experience unless you switch more than once every two years. Then everyone will mistrust you, but you can still do it as a contractor.
> On top, it is extremely hard to find software development jobs that pay around or above 100K. Most jobs are around 60-80K.
Making around or above 100K in the EU is indeed very unusual. Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape. The lower top salary in the EU comes with the benefit of knowing that if you go blind you won't have to die shitting yourself in some crackhouse.
Your statement definitely does not apply where I currently live (Austria). No tech company I've interviewed here is 100% remote as of now. They always expect more or less around 30-50% in office presence for new hires. They almost always have some staff at near 100% remote but those are usually tenured employees that management does not want to lose, so they get extra privileges as a bonus.
>Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape.
That's also not true. American tech workers don't have higher salaries because they get less social safety, but they have higher salaries because a lot more investment money, by orders of magnitude, gets poured into their tech sector compared to Europe where most goes into real estate instead, while the US also has a smaller supply of devs due to their expensive higher education and tougher immigration laws than Europe, meaning that the high demand of devs in the US can't be met by their low supply of workers, so their salaries naturally rise accordingly. It's that simple, basic supply and demand, nothing to do with the presence or lack of social safety from the government, as US taxes aren't that much lower than in Europe.
US taxes being similar to Europe (which in my experience is true) certainly does not equate to an equivalent safety net.
>Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape. The lower top salary in the EU comes with the benefit of knowing that if you go blind you won't have to die shitting yourself in some crackhouse.
Can you elaborate?
I assume the canonical source for information about the US is American TV, but I really can't imagine what you watch that makes you think there is no safety net, even for people making $100K.
In (most) European states it's just not a concern that anyone ever has - if you are getting treatment under national health service then it has nothing to do with your employment status and any treatment would just continue. If you need time off due to ilness it has to be paid for as well(employer only pays for a while, then the state takes over).
So there is obviously no bottom-most robust safety net, as plainly evidenced by the homeless situation. But there are a bunch of safety nets that do sustain millions of people. Welfare, subsidized housing, social security (retirement, and disability), medicare, Medicaid, to name the big ones.
>So there is obviously no bottom-most robust safety net, as plainly evidenced by the homeless situation
What is your perspective on schizophrenia?
Every single US citizen I've ever spoken to has made this clear (sometimes only after a while) without fail.
Apart from anything mentioned in this thread.
Tough but fair.
This. Everything you said is true about most of Europe, and even more so outside of major tech hubs.
Companies call the shots and employees have to follow if they want to stay employed, because there are no good alternatives to go to, when all companies just act the same and pay the same. And most companies here don't give a damn about what their employees actually want and presume they can bait you with a +10% salary increase but exact same inflexibility, toxic environment and management practices. Good luck with that.
Plus, interviewing and changing jobs in the tech world is a monumental effort, taking both time and a mental toll after several rounds of interviews with several companies, on top of your regular job, time that could have went into hobbies, dating, socializing, travelling, cooking, etc., so there's a lost opportunities cost associated with the job hunt.
I've been interviewing around for about 4 months so far, to hopefully change to a better , less stressful tech job, and I'm already completely exhausted from all the "complete our 20-questions, 6 page HR online form about yourself, before you can submit your application, because our time is more valuable than yours", "solve this week long take home test, and when you're done, we'll let you know that unfortunately this position has already been filled", "there will be several rounds of interviews after wich we'll just ghost you, because f*ck you", "you didn't sound passionate enough about our company's products in your cover letter", etc. And, apparently there's a labor shortage. Yeah ... right.
God, I'm so exhausted from all this, some days I just can't get out of bed anymore and sit there wishing I get hit by lightning, or die in my sleep and end my misery.
If I had two offers, and one was 20% less compensation plus WFH and the other +20% but working from office ONCE a day, I'd go for the WFH one.
Of course everybody's factors are different.
I'm glad you acknowledge it; with rising cost of living, housing prices, and (in my case) medical expenses (the part not covered by insurance, like physical therapy; we're still trying to get a diagnosis so it will be covered), I can't afford a 20% pay cut.
Even pre-pandemic, I rejected an offer from a company literally across the street from where I live, because their offer was >30% lower than what I was earning at the time. I just flat out told them I wouldn't be able to afford to live there - and I live in some of the cheapest houses in this area.
There are switching costs which mean the employee often takes a hit on attempting to move. It's like buying a car, car doesn't work as advertised so someone says, "well stop whining and sell it, you're in market." Like yes, but also nope.
"Love it, change it or leave it. No amount of complaining will ever do anything else than paint you as a naysayer."
Was a hard pill to swallow, but my own experience proved me again and again he was spot on.
My current lesson is - most things that look like an easy win would have been claimed a long time ago if not for some unholy hidden mess. If I'm to vote for "change", I should be prepared to deal with the unholy mess. It doesn't matter that I don't see it, it's out there somewhere.
Since I rarely want to take on an unholy mess, and I'm not good at the kind of doublethink that would allow me to love a thing I'm not inclined to love, usually that just leaves one option.
Yes. This is the old point about the Serenity 'prayer': grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference. Or, as soldiers say more succinctly, "Pick your battles".
I've slowly internalised this over the years. It also applies on a micro-level: when reviewing someone else's work, if something that isn't critical actually gets the job done, just go with it, unless there is an actual problem with an obvious solution that you can suggest. Don't complain just because something is done differently to how you would do it.
The point about Unknown Unknowns is also totally relevant. And cans-of-worms. You really must be very confident you are right before opening them.
One of the things I've learned is that authority is a real thing. If you don't have the authority to change something, don't try. You will fail, and it will do nothing but cost you. I've jousted with this many times, and it was a failure every time. (More technical type stuff, but the same holds for this sort of thing too.)
Authority doesn't have to be given from on high; there is also some distributed authority that arises from the unofficial de facto org chart that every organization has. I've managed to push some things through with that (and relevant amounts of consensus) when I was more careful to ensure I had the authority.
But if you don't have at least some authority, you will fail.
This comment is is, not ought. You are welcome to feel about it however you like. But when it comes time to determine your own actions, you should work in the space of is and not ought.
That doesn't mean the only option is to give up. One may attempt to acquire the authority. This can either be by direct appeal, or in some cases, through the long-term acquisition of authority called "respect". One may attempt to convince an existing authority to help with whatever your issue is. Though in this specific case if the problem is specifically fighting existing authority that may not help. There are other options.
But it is a total wishful thinking myth that if you're just smart enough and good enough and just take charge, by golly, you can get anything done! In fact, after a while, when you see someone and on day 3 you see them charging around just trying to change things, you start to see someone who isn't going to be there long.
(Now, I actually like fresh perspectives on my team and don't squash people if they have new ideas, but at the same time, I ask them to take a couple of weeks and be sure they fully understand the changes they are proposing before we consider their suggestions. The end result is better suggestions, and we have taken many of them. This is why I'm specific about it being "day 3"; on day 3, you may know enough to have identified a problem, but you don't know the solution yet.)
But if you can't acquire some authority somehow, your options are reduced to deal with it or leave it. There is no "just bull through and change things anyhow". The entire political structure built into our very genes will not permit it. You're fighting not just your current organization but millions of years of evolution. You will not win.
I guess this is what it looks like when a nerd learns how to do politics.
My theory has been that you look for things people already want to do but can't, and try to enable them with the resources at hand. You can change things that you don't have formal authority for (possibly not for the better) by simply removing roadblocks.
To vanquish these, in the name of The Right Way, one ultimately must engage them in social combat, whether by proxy or directly. And they're better at it than you are. Nerds may be clever, and they may actually be right, but the other players are usually more convincing. And I don't mean merely argumentatively.
The "Schmoozer" class is full of this type of crap. I'm convinced that outside of a few unicorn companies, meritocracy is an illusion.
Actually that's often the best choice, you need to pick your battles.
“It’s not about the nail.” https://youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg
The cliché is true during the hottest hours, but it fails to admit that it is simply because most activity moves to the twilight hours when the heat subsides.
When I left, I thought it was so stupid to build these big offices near the desert and to pack them full of people working 9 to 5 with massive amounts of aircon, effectively imposing on them the Northern European way of life - folks have been inhabiting those areas for millennia, they know how to properly deal with the environment they live in, let them work at night instead and save all that energy.
Then it's time to let people go. Early on in COVID leeway definitely needed to be given with daycares closed, people transitioning to WFH, etc... But at this point, if someone can't get their work done remotely, then they should find a non-remote job.
We went fully remote prior to the pandemic, and I remember someone in senior management asking me, 'how will we know people are working at home?' My response was 'how do we know they are working in the office?' If people aren't getting any work done it doesn't matter where they are. Management just feels better about seeing them in the office.
I don't understand why this issue is being raised now - surely they already have existing processes in place to deal with people who underperform, in which case those same processes can be applied regardless of WFH status. The fact that they haven't suggests that in the end work is being done satisfactorily and someone is just jealous or on a power trip.
A Company is not a charity, people are not kept on payroll just because
It’s easy for people to game the system and turn around and claim that it’s a discriminatory practice. It’s also easy for management to cut off an employee in bad faith to drum up a case for termination.
The easiest way to weed out the assholes is to change the rules for everyone, and purge those who are insubordinate. You’ll lose a few producers, but not as many as HN would leave you to believe.
Now that the economy is "back on track", we need them to be working - like they did before the pandemic, not like they did during the pandemic - so the work organisation gets back to a pre-pandemic state.
This idea that people were slacking off during COVID is a myth.
basically not only people took a 2 years paid vacation, they also could not be fired which incentivized the more parasitic workers to work even less
I know personally of a mailwoman working in Northern Italy for Italian Postal service (a public service) that went back to her home in Sicily and never showed up at work for 9 months because she could not be laid off.
So my mother in law who's also almost blind didn't get her mail for many weeks.
Nothing we could do about it. There were no consequences whatsoever.
Sounds nice until it's your bonus tied to revenues or people start nominating your mini-empire to shrink headcount.
Ween yourself off the "yeah, no" pattern.
My wife, who spent much of her career in corporate HR, would often note: "People who want to work, will work wherever you put them. People who don't want to work will find a way not to work wherever you put them."
The people who used WFH as a "2 year vacation" are the same people who will wander the office engaging in random conversations and scrolling Facebook the remainder of the day.
I always wondered why we presume traffic and cubicles are a cure for the lack of motivation.
You probably lock the front door of your house. The reality is, it’s not a meaningful thing in most cases, as a moderately in shape middle aged man, I could likely kick or pry it in in seconds.
We do it because it keeps honest people out and increases the friction for the bad guys - kicking the door down in itself becomes a felony. (Burglary)
Likewise, people are on a bell curve of sorts with respect to motivation. The people on the bottom are a waste of oxygen and require explicit directions for every task, and the other extreme are self-motivated and will create novel tasks to complete without any direction.
Some people need the office to function appropriately on that curve. I have one guy on my team who came to work physically every day during the full lockdowns in NYC because for him, the context shift of being in the office was important. He is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met, but he can’t work at home. Another colleague is living on an island somewhere.
The rest of us are in the middle. Combine that with other business requirements, and you have to make a decision that’s best for the business.
1: they have the effect of warning you of unauthorized access: you can maybe break a door/window in a matter of minutes but you wont catch me napping nor you will be able to make it look like nobody broke in.
2: they keep unmotivated attackers out and can move the attacks off to you and on less protected properties.
Locking your door looks more like an historical artifact from the time the police wasn't ready available for policing the neighborhood of normal people.
Look at what happened to COBOL people. Eventually, the bean counters figure it out, and “work from home” becomes, “work from the Philippines” at 1/5 the cost.
WFH is not outsourcing. And outsourcing is not offshoring. Folks mix up things all the time because they don’t know.
None of those points prevent you from looking to see what other jobs are available and applying for any that look interesting. Who knows, you might find something that is better on all counts. Worst case scenario you don't find anything better, which will mean you're no worse off than you are already, you learned a few things in the interview processes, and maybe the knowledge that your current role is better than various alternatives you looked at makes things seem a bit more tolerable where you are now?
I'm glad they did...I got a substantial severance package, "retiree" benefits, and a much better fully remote WFH gig that pays better.
I would have stayed at the first place if it was possible to do so, but I'm much happier since they forced my hand. I'm certain I won't have to go back to an office before I retire.
Have you used these to go to your CEO directly re your WFH request? It's where I'd start.
It's a business not a skate park, tell your CEO that you appreciate the positive feedback but that if he really means what he is saying: he should put his money where his mouth is and give you a sizable raise or a considerable bonus.
We compromised, my contract says I work from home and they pay me for my time and travel if I go somewhere, and they can afford me.
Can they justify paying you an extra $50k a year (or $10k, or $100k) just to have you in an office?
>I'd leave, I even feel I'm morally in the wrong for not leaving.
>But the thing is that the pay is good
The situation in my company is simple to manage - we hire good people who are very capable and then trust them to get on and do the job. That works with the sort of people we hire and the sort of work we ask them to do. If they're at home we'll generally work just the same, because we're pretty well motivated.
Not all companies are like that though. My partner worked for a charity where maybe 2/3 of people worked exactly the same during the pandemic, but a good chunk (mostly of the lower level admin staff) didn't. Some of them were very unsubtle - they'd never answer Teams calls, and would return them half an hour later and never produced any output anyway. Some were more subtle like the colleague who'd log into Teams first thing and then go back to the Playstation for a few hours of the morning before actually starting work. Having these people in the office WOULD result in more work being done.
What we need is for these employers to be focusing on output rather than hours in the office. They are stuck in a mindset and approach that barely worked in the past where if you had someone in an office for 8 hours a day you'd probably get something out of them. If they focused a little more on what they were getting (and I don't just mean some basic metrics with no human insight) then we wouldn't need bums on seats and the people not doing anything at home would be pretty obvious.
It's a pretty kafkian environment, but it's sort of a golden cage too: Pay is good, benefits great, stability rock solid. I'm used to a freedom of agency and independence that I'm afraid would go over badly in a normal place. So I stay.
I think you're underselling the rest of the world a bit. Many if not most companies aren't great, but there are a good chunk that do empower their employees to do their job properly and that's how you get the most job satisfaction. Of course, this is without knowing your sector and role - it does vary.
You're in a great position that you're in a job you're largely happy with. You should use that as allowing you to carefully choose your next role, rather than as an excuse not to. It's also great in salary negotiations - you can pick a large number because in the worst case you go back to your perfectly reasonable job!
I disagree as I think those people did no work while in the office and kept doing no work outside the office.
I worked in a building where one person had a personal laptop open, daytrading all day. Instead of working. Of course they should have worked, but they didn’t.
People will shirk work in the office and outside.
I think it’s silly to assume someone who would log into Teams and then play PlayStation wouldn’t just close their office door and play games on their iPad for hours.
This is exasperating: it’s basically saying managers aren’t doing their jobs and you should pay the consequences. If someone really did goof off that much, their supervisor should be looking for a new job too.
What I suspect is that nobody did this and what you’re really hearing is that senior management are distrustful and don’t believe people are working if they don’t see them. Everywhere I’ve heard that, it’s been pure projection.
Either way, I’d reconsider leaving. You have a stable situation so you can look for a place you really like without time pressure but the respect gradient probably won’t improve unless you have C-level turnover.
How is it not easier to fire those individuals? And not now, when you can just bring them to the office and have them be productive from day one (unlike new hires who would replace them), but one year ago.
Anyway, the rules and processes exists. Essentially PIP someone, explain and document expectations, and follow up. And you know what, most of the time, people can improve.
I suppose it depends on the government, but my experience is that it’s extremely difficult to fire people. I spoke with HR at a US federal organization that said their termination rate is .1% of employees and half of those are during the 1-year probation period.
That’s extremely low and I think an indicator of how hard it is to fire people in government.
I do have people say funny things like “It’s easy to fire people, you just fill out this paperwork and spend 20% of your time tracking a performance plan for two years.” Even though theyve never successfully fired anyone. While pointing to their group’s lack of firing as an example of their great management.
I think this is an example where theoretically it is possible, but practically it is very difficult. As evidenced by very few being fired.
One big confound to remember is that it’s generally hard to get US government jobs because a lot of work has been outsourced to contractors, so the federal workforce trends older and more experienced. That pool of people is less likely to be fired for cause in general.
When thinking about why you believe more people should be fired, consider the politics — both the general managerial class tendency to shift accountability to workers and the specific culture war points favored by people who oppose government regulation – and ask whether what you’re basing that on is fully in the worker’s responsibility. I’ve seen plenty of .gov inefficiency but an awful lot of that has been required by policy (not just agency, often by Congress) and underfunding. The latter often isn’t just a simple number being too low but also things like having money budgeted to contract out work but not to hire people to adequately supervise them. Very, very few situations have been as simple as “Fred chose not to do his job” without significant other factors contributing to the problem.
I’d also note that while I have seen a couple of cases like that, that’s less than I saw in .com or .edu and for exactly the same reason: they were high enough up the org chart and a buddy even higher up sheltered them. HR could have fired them if they weren’t being told not to.
But my point is more about contrasting people who say firing is east without and experience or data to back it up. It’s like saying “Batting .500 is easy” when their own at bat it .200 or not even measured.
What was the relative breakdown of their workforce by seniority? What did that look like on the .gov side if you include the contractors who've been the majority of the workforce growth since the 90s? I've seen a lot more churn in the latter and suspect that if you combined the two that gap would close considerably.
> But my point is more about contrasting people who say firing is east without and experience or data to back it up.
On the subject of data, you have one anonymous anecdote of unknown size or completeness.
I wish I had better. But I have tons of anecdotes of people claiming firing is easy without any direct experience or data. So there’s that too.
Contractors are completely different as they aren’t fired at all and are easy to get rid of, sort of. But comparing contractors and employees in federal government is comparing apples and oranges.
But I stand by that it is very difficult to fire government employees.
We start back at the office next week and this sums up exactly why I have no interest in going back full time.
so you also have time to go hunt for another job before quitting at least, if that's where you want to go.
This approach worked well for me, but maybe I was just lucky.
I've found that once you start having thoughts like this, you've left already, if only in spirit, and you remain physically only as a form of self-delusion or rationalization of fear. You can find good pay and slack elsewhere. Your current employer sounds like a nightmare.
Your decision to not even try will cost you more jobs than ageism
All your reasons is why I have never had any interest in working in an office, ever. Now that my current company has been remote since the start of the pandemic and I've gotten an exception to be permanently remote, I will never step foot in an office again if there's anything I can do about it. I couldn't care less about supposed career growth impacts, free snacks or food, collaboration, all the other propaganda they put out. You are right to be insulted by not having an option to work remotely and you should just start looking for better jobs
This. WFH fights this more than anything. When interviews were happening online, i had deliberately set lighting to be low so that my wrinkles are not clear.
If your company won't play ball, it's time to find another field to play in.
I've looked at some recently and tons of jobs require office presence. Finding something outside of US is near impossible.
You could see that the past year and a half in restaurants that are willing to close down entirely (often with a sign saying they're short staffed) for days, weeks, or permanently, rather than raise their wages enough to hire and keep the employees they need to function.
[1]: "Newly published research from the Pew Research Center that surveyed roughly 10,000 Americans from Jan. 24 to Jan. 30 found that nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 6 in 10 U.S. workers who say their jobs can be done from home, at 59 percent, are doing so from home all or most of the time. Now, more workers say they are working from home out of choice than necessity.
Among those who have a workplace outside of their home, 61 percent said they are choosing not to go in, while 38 percent said they’re working from home specifically because their workplace is closed or unavailable to them.
Interestingly, Pew Research noted just the opposite was true earlier in the pandemic, with 64 percent of people indicating they were working from home because their office was closed while 36 percent said they were choosing to work from home."
https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities...
Most companies are in this situation.
I hate being back: My gear at home is better, I have to work in uncomfortable clothes and at a room temperature that makes me sweat within minutes. I have to work in an N95 mask since we are packed in small 4 person cubicles and COVID numbers are still too high in my area. I'm spending more on gas and wasting time in traffic. I'm eating worse quality food. I keep getting interrupted by exactly those sames guys that took the 2 year vacation. I feel hard to concentrate and I'm angry all the time so my output has suffered.
I keep sending IMs to people I work with, we never need to actually meet.
Now you have to apply for a new more restrictive WFH scheme. Those wanting to sign up to it had a meeting with our direct manager where he tried to discourage us with thinly veiled threats about "special performance measuring procedures" and trite arguments about how it is unfair not being here for the people that want to come.
We applied the same, but now HR is telling us that they can't approve our WFH requests since they can't guarantee that our screen setup at home is safe and we haven't completed a "Data Display Device Setup and Handling" course in the last three years. They don't know when the course will be offered again. I've been programming for more than 35 years now, so again I kind of feel doubly insulted, both by the bare faced obstructionism and ridiculous particular hurdle.
I'd leave, I even feel I'm morally in the wrong for not leaving. But the thing is that the pay is good, that I'm of an age prone to experiencing ageism in the job market, and also this is a place where I have ample slack for tuning my output and inmerse myself in side projects or personal improvement, so their loss...