Devil's advocate: sometimes organizations change. A change in management can bring a bad boss (not due to "taking the wrong job offer").
I do agree that this approach seems juvenile.
I've seen a few cases of bad managers, in one case the boss's boss was notified of the problems (it was a team effort, as the sibling comment notes), and said boss was eventually laid off. In another case, it was the employee who took the "honorable" way out (and the PHB in question is still safely ensconced in his position).
Edit: the bottom quote in the site is pretty defeatist: "Gone are days where workers could organize and negotiate company-wide change"
I agree 100%. Having a bad boss in college is what motivated me to start up my own company. I had drinks with one of my former coworkers recently and she told me that he was new and also had a terrible boss who didn't emphasize leadership.
He's apparently a much better manager now. I can imagine that he was also incredibly stressed and unhappy in retrospect, and I can only imagine that sending this card would have had a ripple-effect of passive-aggressiveness on the team.
Even if you think someone is going out of their way to make your life shitty, you don't know what other baggage they're carrying for the day. The best thing you can do is be nice and in the meantime, look for another job or try to positively create change.
You're right, your system works for you, but could you explain why you expect it to work for other people with different situations and experiences from your own?
I don't believe it's applicable very widely at all. For example, when it comes to "braving the consequences," the consequences affect those beyond ourselves, such as our dependents. I could be extremely courageous and then brave, but it doesn't feed children, in-laws or pay the mortgage if the consequences involve getting fired or demoted.
If you (the general "you", not you specifically, and hopefully not you at all :) are working someplace where this sort of anonymous nastygram to a manager is the most pragmatic way to make your voice heard, the fact that you work in that sort of environment is a much bigger problem in your life than whatever problem the anonymous nastygram might help with. Your time would be better spent finding a new place to work rather than sending anonymous nastygrams.
The best possible outcome from an anonymous nastygram still leaves you working someplace where the only way to make your voice heard is via anonymous nastygrams, and that's unacceptable as a long-term solution for anyone, anywhere. As a short-term solution to a specific problem, it's still not likely to help- it'll just foment paranoia and ill-will. In fact, the passive-aggressive approach is probably only going to have a constructive outcome with managers who care enough about their employees that it would be better to just talk to them anyway. The terrible managers this is designed for will just double down on their terribleness if they were to receive something like this.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that someone in this situation should quit their job and then start looking for something new. No one should ever do that if they can reasonably avoid it. But that person should definitely be putting all their energy into finding a new job rather than trying to patch up their current, unfixable employment situation to be more bearable.
I have two kids and a mortgage--I think I understand where you're coming from. If toughing it out or raising your issue up the chain are not options, it's best to start looking for a new gig in the evenings after the kids go down.
>Keep your mouth shut and blow off steam at the gym, bar, or therapist like everyone else.
I don't think I've ever seen a bigger example of a statement against worker's rights than this. This is exactly something you'd expect your boss to say.
Workers' rights? Which country is this? In the U.S., you have a right to a physically safe work environment free of harassment and discrimination (explicitly defined protected classes) and to be paid for the work you do.
You don't have a "right" to a non-asshole boss, a happy and fulfilling work environment, or the right to express your opinion at work. Job satisfaction is not a "universal human right".
Workers rights are whatever we decide them to be collectively. How do we do this? We apply pressure on employers and vote in candidates who support labor rights.
How do you think we got to a five day work week? 40 hours a week? We just keep turning the ratchet.
PS you have a right to a non-asshole boss. You're buying someone's time, not their dignity.
I think you are confusing "rights" with "entitlement". Everyone have as much rights to a non-asshole boss as they want, but in order to materialize that right they need the courage to stand up to their current bosses' BS.
Which is exactly what the GP post is saying. "Keeping your mouth shut" is an option, but unless you are doing it as part of a bigger strategy it is a very bad option and either of the other two would be preferable. If you accept as true the statement that reads "like everybody else", it means that too many people are taking the bad options and that most of they do not have any particular reason to do it besides cowardice. This is a problem for the rest of us, - specially the ones that want to make changes from within, - because it validates the bad bosses' behavior.
And just to be clear, to "shut your mouth" strategically is, in my mind, a form of delayed action. You do not accept the BS because you have surrendered to authority; you just avoid conflict in the short term to have peace of mind while you prepare your exit.
> Gone are days where workers could organize and negotiate company-wide change. Today, new companies must be formed with these changes in mind from the beginning.
Uh, if anybody needs an example how using an online service to convey emotions toward a co-worker can backfire, this case should be one for y'all to keep an eye on:
"Dallas HR director files suit to find out who sent her penis-shaped candy"
Are there any metrics on how many Larry Wildmans (Wildmen?) are engaged with the site already, and how many new corporations have been formed? And any challenges yet to anti-poaching clauses?
It seems most of the "anti-poaching" cases that have come up on HN end in favor of the employees (in California at least). Curious if there's national precedent.
California being the example, and in the tech sector. Less progressive states take a bit more draconian view, but typically seem to involve bosses taking team members and not team members clumping together.
I think this is a neat idea, however I'm pretty sure the boss who'd know what to do with it probably isn't the boss who will get (m)any of these.
As a founder who's always open to feedback I want to know if someone thinks I'm/we're doing something wrong. But... I also understand how hard it is to tell your boss you think he/she is wrong, especially if there's no additional feedback. Still, if you think something can be better you should always speak up.
Fun project. But thats about it. I can only imagine trying this and then next morning, the boss pulling in everybody in a meeting just to ask "whodunit".
His other business will be marketed using direct mail. A day or two after the anonymous post card is sent, another post card is sent, offering the boss a chance to pay for the identity of the previous card's sender.
A variant so archaic that I, a linguistic pedant par excellence, have never even once seen it used in anything written since the turn of the last century, save mentions of its existence as an archaic variant of the common form, and its usage in the phrase "weather gage", itself (and the concept it denotes) rather outdated since the close of the Age of Sail.
In any modern usage not deliberately aping archaism, 'gage' for 'gauge' is fairly called a misspelling.
The dozens of people I deal with at the US Army Corps of Engineers prefer 'gage' to 'gauge'. Both when used as a noun or a verb. I have no idea why that is their preference but I have been made aware of it on multiple occasions. When 'gauge' is used in USACE software or documentation it is treated as a typo and results in defect reports. On one occasion someone's (not saying who's) slides were mocked for using 'gauge'. It's entirely possible that you are technically correct.
If you are looking for example reading material that uses the 'gage' spelling see usace.army.mil
3a. Although it's unclear where they get their info from, Dictionary.com makes no claims to it being archaic, and says that "gage" is used "especially in technical use."
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gauge
3b. Dictionary.com claims the verb "gage" is only archaic when used to mean a "pledge, stake or wager," which is not how it's used. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gage
4. The Oxford English Dictionary makes no claims to the verb gage used as a synonym for gauge being archaic. Only when used to mean "Offer (a thing or one's life) as a guarantee of good faith" and that's not that spelling, but the meaning which is archaic. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/gage#gage-2
In fact Merriam Webster [1] very explicitly advocates for "gauge":
> The verb gauge, which refers to measuring or estimating, also has a variant gage. This variant appears to show up primarily in informal sources, though not often. Gauge is by far the preferred spelling in general usage for both the noun and the verb; we encourage you use it.
This isn't a discussion about whether a source encourages its use or not. It's about whether it's a typo or a correct spelling.
Your quote above, in which 'gage' is implicitly referred to as a spelling further supports that it's not a misspelling.
I don't know how to state this in a more friendly way. These are merely facts documented here for verification purposes. If anyone's immediate reaction to verifiable facts in the face of an imposter spreading misinformation differs from gratitude, I would fear for their ability to take in other easily verifiable facts.
The ~1920-~1960 bump is surprising, but not significant when "gauge" has one as well, and especially when taken alongside the solid difference of usage frequency that's persisted since before the American Civil War. If you favor prescriptivism in general, that's your lookout, but to argue that "gage" in this context might not be a misspelling seems quixotic at best.
Unfortunately, merely counting spellings of the word in books as that graph does isn't sufficient evidence. It fails to account for how the word is used over time. It's fully possible "gauge" as a noun experienced a radical uptick following the Age of the Sail as steam machines were introduced. These usages would obscure the frequency of the "gauge"(verb) vs. "gage"(verb).
Nevertheless, the corpus of "gage" merely underscores its acceptability. Even if it's not as popular, it continues to be used to today, as your evidence shows, so it is both correct and not archaic.
I value greatly the perspective you've brought, but it's just not aligned with the evidence and facts. If one were to adopt that worldview, one would have to call every less popular option archaic. But would it make sense to say that red is an archaic color for a car, because it's less popular than white and black? https://www.terrapass.com/images/blogposts/car-color-popular...
Finally, with respect to the descriptive usage of language, I will document these entries directly from "the wild" as used by our colleagues on Hacker News, deploying 'gage' in the Larry Wildman sense:
You're underplaying your hand; the most recent non-nominal instance of "gage" I can find in comment search is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13118997, from a month ago. Your most recent example is a couple of years old.
To your point about "gauge" (v.) vs. "gage" (v.), the end of the Age of Sail (ca. 1860) overlaps the rise of steam machinery by a century more or less. If steam drove the difference in usage that chart displays, then we need to explain why that took a hundred years after the advent of steam power to happen. We also need to explain why "gage" (n.) was left behind to the extent that it was.
Pedant though I am, my querulousness is not entirely without limit, and I have other things to do today, too. I'll concede "archaic" and soften it to "old-fashioned" if you'll acknowledge the plainly obvious fact that "gage" in this usage is a clear typo, just one of many which existed (and may still exist) on the rather longwinded page under discussion, rather than a deliberate stylistic choice on the part of that page's writer, who does not seem overall to have invested a great deal of close thought into his use of language thereon. Fair?
Why not concede "archaic" based on the dictionary alone and confront consensual reality where you have leverage? Even if I had desire to idiosyncratically corrupt "gage"(verb) to "old-fashioned," much of the rest of the English-speaking world would still require persuading they're old-fashioned or stylistic.
I'm not up for that. I'll settle having read the dictionaries and considered the evidence presented in order to communicating with the world at large on its terms. Using "gage"(verb), I'll be able to communicate with the prescriptivists and the descriptivists. And apparently the Army.
Irregardless, for all intensive porpoises, it's a doggy-dog world. Now excuse me while I kiss this guy.
FYI, I think you're being downvoted because of your tone. You can point out things like this in a friendlier way, and I think HN will respond positively.
- Summon the courage to say something about it and brave the consequences.
- Leave the company honorably and work somewhere else (or start your own company).
- Keep your mouth shut and blow off steam at the gym, bar, or therapist like everyone else.
If you can't go to your boss or boss's boss with a legitimate problem, you took the wrong job offer.
If I was an angel investor, I would not work with anyone who participated in this site.