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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 similar
I learnt meritocracy is a joke long before I discovered that it was literally invented to be a joke.
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.
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
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.
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.
Can confirm, not in retail but a fully remote programmer, managers are still very often concerned that "everybody has something to do" much more than "everything gets done".
Hold on dearly to any leverage you might have over your employer
Hold on to that leverage over your employer with a union
Success 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...
Minimum wage, minimum effort
The company doesn't care about you. The company doesn't care about you. The company doesn't care about you.
The company cares about you in the same way a beef farmer cares about his cattle.
My uncle spent years preaching to me about the need to be loyal to a company. I never drank the Kool-Aid. He spent 21 years working for an investment banking company in their IT department. 4 years before he was set to retire with a full pension, etc. his company was acquired by a larger bank. He lost everything except his 401k. He then spent the next 12 years working to get his time back so heβd be able to retire. He died 2 years ago and the company sent a bouquet of flowers.
THE COMPANY DOESNβT CARE ABOUT YOU!!
How do you lose a pension? It doesn't matter where you work or if a company gets bought.
So the way he explained it to me was that essentially when the company was purchased all your accruals were reset and the pension was tied to years of service, which he hadnβt reached yet, then with the merger you were essentially a new employee. There was also a lot tied to retirement plans linked to corporate stocks that were basically useless after they merged. Either way, beyond working for the same company forever, his eggs were (mostly) in one basket.
Yet another reason to be glad to live in the EU:
Basically, "any employee's contract of employment will be transferred automatically on the same terms as before in the event of a transfer of the undertaking. This means that if an employer changes control of the business, the new employer cannot reduce the employees' terms and conditions"
This regulation and strong unions are the backbone of job security in the EU.
Not even if you do valuable or efficent stuff for the company. You're disposable.
also you might not be replaceable but your manager might be an idiot
HR protect the company first, the employees second.
100%. The rebranding of some HR departments as "People Officers" or "People Team" drives me bonkers. When push comes to shove, they will always protect the interests of the business before the interests of the employee. Full stop.
You are right, but to be fair. "Human Ressources" was an awful name to begin with.
Sometimes it's better if your employer doesn't know everything you can do. If you're not careful you'll end up Inventory Controller/shipper/IT services/reception/Safety officer, and you'll only ever be paid for whatever your initial position was.
I wanted to be a system engineer, I got hired as a devops, I started doing a bit of system engineer, called hr and said that I'm working on infrastructure and I need my title changed or else I won't be able to continue my work, my title was changed, no I do system engineer stuff and less of devops, this was a very rare occasion but it can happen from time to time.
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
I don't think taking action to fill a hole is indicative of not caring.
I'm all for filling holes!
