Your employer does not care about you. You are not important or irreplaceable
Take your time and energy and put it into your life, not their business
I have had coworkers die (not work related) and by the time you hear about it (like the next day) they have already worked out who will get the work done so the machine doesn't have to stop
The longer you work anywhere -- and I mean ANYWHERE -- the more you see the bullshit and corruption and crappy rules or policies and inequality all over.
For me it has been about the 3 year mark anywhere I've worked: once you get past that, you fade away from "damn I'm glad to have a job and be making money!" and towards "this is absolute bulls#!t that [boss] did [thing] and hurt the workers in the process!" or similarSuccess is mainly about sucking up to the right people. No matter how good you are at your job, you have to know how to play work politics. Most bosses don't know how to evaluate actual ability, and they're much less objective than they think. Usually they favor more likeable employees over capable ones if forced to choose. Human life is a popularity contest, always has been, always will be. That's the side effect of being a highly social species...
People in your workplace don't know shit. There are a few who know stuff but the majority is dumb, careless or the combination of the two. Surprisingly the higher you go the more dumb and careless there are. We are designing monster billion dollar construction projects and some of my colleagues have problems with understanding written english. Others cannot learn a software that has literally 3 buttons in them they have to press. I don't even know sometimes why I am trying.
Your employer is ALWAYS looking for a way to either get more work out of you for the same compensation, or replace you with some one or some process that produces the equivalent output for less cost. The entire idea that employees should be loyal to their employers is one of the most successful propaganda campaigns ever spawned by capitalism.
Loyalty is vastly overrated. The only rational course of action is to complete exactly the tasks to which you've agreed for the wage they've determined. Your employer will demand loyalty but never reciprocate. Don't let them manipulate you.
Also, never ever let them see you sweat. It doesn't matter how good your employer is, at the first hint that you're insecure, they'll pounce and you'll be treated like garbage. Always have your briefcase packed and a box to clear out your desk on a moment's notice.
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Minimum wage, minimum effort
Yeah, looking busy is way more important than being productive a lot of the time. You always need to be doing something, so you just go through the motions of doing things because otherwise you'll get shit from your employers. Waiting in good faith for more real tasks to emerge isn't enough, so you must invent chores.
At least, that was very consistently my experience in retail.
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Boundaries. Establish them and defend them with every ounce of your being. If you don't, most employers will grind you in to the dirt and send you out to pasture when you eventually crack under the pressure. Better to establish healthy boundaries up front. Not only will you find yourself more frequently surrounded by people you like and share mutual respect with, you will be happier and land fewer "shit" jobs because employers looking for people to send to the meat grinder will see that they can't grind you down and you'll be filtered from the hiring pool before you ever have to suffer at their hands.
Never do more than you are asked, especially for free
If the company claims that "you need to work overtimes because we are short on stuff", then that's definitely their failure to hire more people. NEVER work overtime, except if you get appropriate compensation for it.
"No" means "no", also in and especially in the work environment. If your boss asks you to stay longer to "finish the task", just say "no" and walk away.
It has taught me that imposter syndrome fucking sucks.
On a more serious note, itโs taught me to be a solid ally for colleagues but always be skeptical of the business owners and decision makers themselves. I woke up to a layoff along with 5 other people and was laid off for 3 months before I found a new gig. Donโt allow emotions to cloud your job search. Itโs all a negotiation and you should push for whatever you can get in terms of salary, PTO, etc. Never sell yourself short because the company sold you some story about how they need help.
It's suffocating to be in a middle management position because you get squeezed by the higher-ups and your own team. If the higher-ups make a decision that your team dislikes or vice versa, you're going to be in the shitter with whichever party suffered every time even if you had the best intentions.
The company doesnโt care about you. The company doesnโt care about you. The company doesnโt care about you. The company doesnโt care about you. The company doesnโt care about you. The company doesnโt care about you.
No matter how much you invest you're time and effort for your job: You are expendable, and the only people who will know you were absent from home because of work 20 years later, will be your kids.
My biggest lesson was that decades of work means nothing if you become disabled (in the US).
You can end up with literally nothing and lose literally everything if you become disabled. Even if you still have skills, even though you worked hard to contribute to society for decades, it can all go away overnight and you can suddenly not afford food anymore. Thereโs no safety net, and you wonโt learn that until you need it.
Because fuck you.
The "family" talk is only just talk. If an employer says "we're family here" or some similar nonsense, it's not family as in "we stick together through everything" - what a family actually is or should be.... It's more of a farengi perspective...
Rule of acquisition 111: "Treat people in your debt like familyโฆ exploit them."
And rule 6: "Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity." (Which is also cited as "Never allow family to stand in the way of profit")
Fact is, they want you to be family in the way that you'll do anything for them, like you would for your own family. But when it comes time that you need them to help you out like a family would, they'll show you the door very quickly.
Related: if you're hit by a bus tomorrow, your job will be posted before your obituary. You're just a cog in their money printing machine. As soon as you lose your value in that regard, you're gone. If you slow down the machine too much, they'll find a cog that is more easily lubricated (to push the analogy). If you're broken and can't work, they'll replace you without a thought. Management is there to put a nice face on the company (for your benefit) and make it seem less like you're a number; but that's all you are.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
Everyone has a right to be lazy except for you.
Recruiters do nothing except tell people "no" when they need a job, and companies aren't really looking for new people otherwise they wouldn't turn down someone for not meeting ALL of their ridiculous demands.
Capitalism gets IN THE WAY of hard work, and sees hard workers as suckers, rather than rewards it.
The company has an obligation to find workers who don't know their worth and continue to do more work without more compensation. Take the additional work, get them used to doing it, and get that raise at the next annual review, or leave.
They're not your friends, even if they act like that.
The management just sees you as expense factor and does not care about you except for how to get the most work done for the least amount of money. Your team leader does not care about you and only cares if their numbers look good. Your colleagues do not care about you and only see you as competition or the idiot they can give their work to.
If someone is nice to you they want something from you not because they like you.
Learned this very early at my first job. I was new to the whole content writing industry so I kept to just writing the minimum expected 2000 words per day.
Meanwhile two other coworkers with more experience wanted to impress the management I guess and wrote way above that.
The result? More and more work for them. And also when performance reviews came along I was the only one to get a raise because โthe quality of my writing was above average in the company.โ
In the end, they were punished for โover productivityโ while I was rewarded because sticking with the minimum word counts meant I had time to polish my work.
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You are more important than the company, put you and your family first.
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If your company doesn't provide a pension plan you have no reason to be loyal and stay.
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Telework is an excuse for minimal working. Most remote workers schedule emails, get their work done quickly than spend the work day doing personal work on the clock.
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Charisma is more important than performance for career progression.
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Favorite employees are typically the easiest to be manipulated and taken advantage of.
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Knowing enough of the process makes it incredibly easy to slack off, and that should always be the goal.
Itโs about who you know. Donโt socially isolate your self even when you are great at your job. Being invisible is a sure fire way to be overlooked when it comes to promotions or a raise. Also being likable means your colleagues will more likely have your back and root for you.
A couple of months ago there was a post on Reddit of a Gen Z person who hated when people would say a simple good morning to them. They rather walk into work, sit down, do their work and go home without talking to anyone. And a lot of other Gen Z people agreed with them. Crazy that they donโt understand how the โgameโ works, nobody is going to root for you when you act like that. Also no wonder Gen Z is struggling with loneliness.
No matter if it is paid or volunteer work, living in a liberal society means that any of your coworkers can and many will throw you under the bus.
Find a new job before those new owners take over the business.
When Im working hard to get somewhere in the company I get shit from people:
"ThE cOmPaNy dOeSn'T cArE aBoUt YoU...."
Yeaah I fucking know the company doesn't care. But its not like I'm getting a different and better role + a better salary if I just work the bare minimum and give zero shits about everything. In the end some people just work harder for selfish reasons, I doubt its for company loyalty or Love of flowers.
Feudalism never ended, it just transitioned from a bunch of failsons inheriting land titles to a bunch of failsons getting middle management jobs through nepotism. Every company larger than 50 people is a vast internal labyrinth of lords-in-everything-but-name jockeying for promotions, accolades, and raises by inflating their roles, and the best thing you can do for yourself is find a position that isolates you as hard as possible from having to deal with that yourself lest you end up spending 50 hours a week working to get one over some petty rival of your boss.
If you're doing more than you're supposed to do, or doing things outside of normal work time, no matter what DOCUMENT IT. If they're a good employer, they'll compensate and reward you, if they're a bad employer you can leave and it'll be easier to update your resume by referencing your own documentation
There is so much internal politics, especially in larger companies.
I'm on the team that manages the core functionality of the product, but every other team twists our arms and escalates things all the way to the top-levels just so they can do things in the way they are used to or they just prefer. Apparently the other managers are aiming for promotions so it's a power grab. Meanwhile, the product turns to shit, my team gets blamed, we lose money, people like me who do the actual work get laid off (thankfully I haven't yet but idk)
Smaller companies are nicer, but they still have politics. Honestly I've been in cooperatives too and there is still some politics. I guess it's just the capitalist alienation between workers
HR is there to cover the company ass and not to help you.
How's about this one: verbal abuse is acceptable if money, revenue, and/or a managerial hierarchy are involved! Thanks, capitalism!!
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X post from user The Skinfluencer @angelamavalla: What is the biggest lesson that employment has taught you? Response from user Penunggu ExtraJenaka @Nazafi_Hamid: Efficient workers get punished with more work.
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A lot of truth in this thread, albeit too cynical for my taste. Yes, the company as soulless, emotionless entity doesn't care for you. However, your coworkers might, even your boss.
Also, my main take away:
- make sure you know your worth
- make sure the right people know your worth
- make sure the right people know that you know your worth
If you aren't working for yourself you are getting ripped off.
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That dealing with the bullshit of clique social groups and the fallout of not falling in with them doesn't end with high school. In fact, it gets even worse in the workplace.
That with the limited number of jobs to accommodate for, changing monetary values and demand for goods and services, natural disasters and game changers, and fluctuating, unpredictable circumstances that change how something plays out, there is nothing about the job force that isnโt fluid and prone to putting you in some kind of shifting interdependent situation, enough that making the job scene a bureaucratic construct was a big mistake and that having career dreams is too oversimplified an expectation. I knew this to an extent but now I know the full scope.
The way we've structured work in the U.S. is a capitalist farce. We've been duped into working our asses off to make someone else who doesn't care about your well-being a large pile of money. So, I get my work done, I don't slack, but, I'm not going to go out of my way to do things for a company that would replace me tomorrow if I got bit by a bus.
life is so much better when u find a job u like ( or learn to like the one u have)
Just because someone has done a job a while means they do their job well.
playing the game is a necessary function of corporate work, otherwise it will chew you up and spit you out. you can have autonomy if you've made the right people happy, the rest can get fucked.
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
It is "just a job" - just roll with it and pretend and you're fine.
If you make your work processes more efficient, you donโt need to tell anyone right away, if at all.
Communication is one way: they will expect you to communciate but will never communicate what they want you to communicate or that communication is expected.
to not get employed ever again
Yup. At my last job, I did my best to produce quality work, I got an award for making zero errors in a year, and I was one of the go-to people for new employees to ask for advice. I trained new team members, even while I was still a temp myself. Eventually got told that I was joining the team that dealt with all the escalation emails. I only knew how to work on 2 of the many types of products that went into that folder, but it was mandatory to work every single email that went into that box, 2 hour shift, every email had to be answered by the end of the 2hrs. I also only had a single 30min super quick "training" on how to even answer the emails (really complicated template system, which I still did not understand by the end of it)
I told my manager I wasn't comfortable working in that box, considering they never trained me to work on most of the other products, but she ignored me and said I'd figure it out. Luckily, I only had to do it once, then they delayed my actual start date for that task, until I got laid off (along with most of the rest of my team) 3 months later. YAAAAAAY. :|
Always agree on compensation/salary before starting your work.
Society doesn't deserve it.
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It's closer to feudalism than democracy
Employees who take initiative get to pick the job they do. Employees who dodge work get stuck with the shifty jobs
