> If you can't stand for your values because of "social anxiety" then maybe you don't value your values that much?
I’m not going to downvote you, but if you don’t suffer from social anxiety, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. As someone who is affected by it, I can tell you it’s soul crushing when it prevents you from making a move out of a bad situation. It’s completely paralyzing.
I mean yeah, if you have a medical condition obviously it's different but that's not really what I was getting at. I'm sure a few Googlers have genuine reasons for being stuck in their jobs and maybe that's one of them but I'm sure it's not the case for most of them.
My overall point is basically: if Google engineers can't justify quitting their jobs on moral grounds, then who can? We're utterly privileged compared to 99% of job sectors. If we are willing to give them a pass then we really can't complain about, say, people working for PRISM or military personnel in the drone programs, because I'm sure many of these people are in a much more precarious situation than your average Google engineer.
I've been considering getting a budgie for a long time. Is it ok to keep a single one? How much attention to they need every day? I'm out all day for work, but I could give it attention for hours in the evening and early morning. Also, what is an appropriate cage size? I live in a small condo.
I wrote an initial answer to this which was basically "get a pair!" and then decided to start again.
As a child, I had a lone female budgie. She was completely tame - almost "post-tame" to the point that she knew you weren't a threat so was quite OK with biting you to make a point if you tried to get her to do something like the perpetual ladder game. I'd get back from school and she'd sit on my shoulder all evening chuntering into my ear.
When I started my degree she - age 10 - had to move on, so I gave her to a friend to look after. The friend had, until recently, had a pair of budgies, but sadly was left with just the male. Upon introduction the two lone budgies bonded immediately in a completely heartwarming display. She lived for 2 more years happily with her new mate, and I always felt guilt for keeping her on her own all that time.
Fast forward to now and I have two budgies together, and they're really happy. They're all over each other all day. They have arguments, and they work through them, and they end up smooching and grooming and feeding each other again. They're so loving they're gross.
But do I think my first budgie was unhappy? No, I don't. She was fine, she just identified with people for most of her life.
Then, do I think these budgies as a couple are happier than she was? Yes, I think they probably are.
Ultimately it's up to you and how you want to care for the bird. If you want a super tame bird and you think you can provide enough time for them that they won't be lonely, you can make the decision to get a single budgie. If you want them to be able to have fun on their own when you're not there, get a pair - because then they don't need you.
Both of my current budgies are finger tame, but for them interacting with humans is mostly an annoyance. They will get curious and start chatting with you if you come to the cage, and they will get on your hand - but if they hear the other budgie that takes priority. One thing I haven't tried is getting two young birds and taming them independently before introducing them to each other...
Cage size I think within reason the bigger the better. Tall thin cages work well if your space is restricted, since vertical space is usually more readily available.
There is no need to jump in as a PhD. Enroll as an undergraduate anywhere that has a good department in the area you're interested in, and then express interest and work as hard as you can -- if you show promise, the faculty and graduate students will notice you and enjoy your conversation. However, if you want a paid career as a researcher, you will absolutely need a PhD.
Try to hustle your way into a Research Software Engineer [0] role somewhere. The role isn't formally acknowledged in the U.S. (outside of Google) but you can usually find them posted on university job boards as "Programmer/Analyst" or something similar. Downsides include crap pay and the potential for your job to spontaneously disappear after soft money [1] runs out.
If you know python and college level statistics you should be able to find someone. Everyone needs to crunch data (and some graduate students feel its beneath them :-)
Having worked at Microsoft and being now at another big tech company, that hasn't been my experience at all. Those companies seem to be trying to mimic startup culture internally, so they promote the "entrepreneurial employee" idea and try to organize groups internally as small startups.
I wish I could do the 9-5 thing at those companies (given the great pay and benefits, adding a predictable and sane work schedule would be perfect).
You may last a couple years being the odd one out doing strictly 40h a week, but performance review is going to catch up with you at some point.
These days I bite the bullet and stay till 8 or 9pm at the office regularly.
You may last a couple years being the odd one out doing strictly 40h a week, but performance review is going to catch up with you at some point.
That doesn't sound like a performance review. It sounds like a "are you staying late in the office" review. If the way to get ahead isn't to be good, but to just stay late, is it really worth it? All those extra hours of your life, sitting at a desk, wishing you could go home, but instead flicking through another batch of click-bait articles and padding out your timesheet.
Although I suppose if that's how it is, one could game it. Turn up a little early even, make a big noise so everyone sees you're there (oh, that guy, he's ALWAYS here early - that's what they'll remember, even if you're actually in early less than everyone else), and then just leave for an hour to have a leisurely breakfast. Pretend you have a meeting before lunch and one after, and just go to the gym and take a long lunch; you could even find a "meeting buddy" - someone with whom you have meetings, on the understanding that neither of you will be there. Faking decisions and the like from meetings is easy; generally, you can make the actual decisions in sixty seconds on your own. Identify days that the boss will be in late or leave early and treat those as short days. Get into the habit of podcasts or self-education during those long evenings at the desk. I suppose if one embraces it and games it for what's being measured - time on the clock - it wouldn't be so bad.
It’s not about perception. I have to stay late because the work itself is insane. Crazy deadlines, dependency on other people/teams, that sort of thing.
I understand the evidence indicates that with long-term excessive long hours, performance is worse. You could be the outlier, able to work efficiently after ten to twelve hours, but I understand the probabilities are against this and that actually it is about perception; that the person in charge of saying how good you are at your job is effectively incompetent and can only measure time in office.
You can push back or negotiate the deadline. In my short career, I found that most deadlines are BS. They're just there because someone somewhere made the arbitrary decision that it needs to be delivered by then. There is no reason behind it.
He did say "telco, bank, large internet company". I don't think MS and Amazon are like that.
I worked at a very large company, one of the top 40 on the stock market. The attitude is quite complacent. Everyone except senior management is forced to work 40 hours. As in they are all given generous vacation time, and the electricity is cut during holidays so nobody can work. Any contact outside office hours is highly discouraged by management.
A lot of those companies are not bad. They attract family people who are super smart and hard-working, but prioritize work-life balance. These giant companies know they can't attract the young and ambitious, so they go for the older and experienced.
Seriously, I need names. I have daily daydreams about the “comfy, 9-5, well-paying corporate job”. Maybe it’s the Seattle area but I’ve never heard of one here. Every job ad no matter the company always has the subtle wording that indicates you’ll be working under a lot of pressure and forced to multitask like crazy and spend long hours in the office.
Dunno about US, but in Europe all banks are like that. They know the work is frustrating and boring (they almost never want to rebuild stuff from scratch, so you end up building on decades-old layers of undocumented crap - COBOL etc.) , so they compensate with good pay and low expectations.
You can follow the 9-5 routine, however at some stage you will bomb the performance reviews. Be overlooked for promotion or terminated altogether. I suppose if you are sharp enough and productive enough, maybe you can pull it off at a B2B type company where pressure is lower.
I would like to extend a thank you from your bosses that you are spending your entire life in the office so the company can make more money from your hard work.
You may get a promotion, of course expecting you to send even more hours in the office and work even harder. But that's what you want anyway.
Have to agree there. I rarely stay in the office that long. Usually it's because I started later on that day, so I stay a bit longer. 39h/week and senior dev in a big IT company (4000+ ppl) so yea, I like it here and can't comprehend some of these comments here.
Impossible to immigrate to Sweden? They take enormous amounts of immigrants every year. If you just find employer, they will handle the bureaucracy for you. At least you'll get a work permission for certain time and it can be extended if conditions are ok. Consider Finland too.
> You know how to tell when the economy is in the last 25% of an economic expansion? When everywhere you turn is another white collar professional under the age of 30 in the middle of an existential crisis.
Can you elaborate on that? I feel like you’re talking about something quite important but I can’t really grasp what it is.
He's saying the luxury of an existential crisis is a symptom of a bloated economy. In 2008, you'd be lucky to have a job at all, and very grateful if you did. As that memory fades, people feel more and more entitled to a comfortable existence. When they reach the level of "if i'm the least bit unhappy with my job, fuck it, I should quit and do something else"...we've jumped the shark. At least, that's my read of what he's saying.
True. Last year, I resigned and then started looking for a job and got several offers. This was only possible because all of my co-workers were able to find better opportunities. If it weren't for the good job scene around me, I probably wouldn't have resigned.
Yeah that's basically my point. I want to state, though, that I'm not just beating up on the under 30 crowd. I empathize with all struggles. But the same way that some people have never known a world without the internet, some people have never been hit by an economic recession. So, you have a lot of smart, ambitious people aged 24-32 who have built an impressive ~5 year career during a time of great economic expansion. For someone in this category, my advice is this: find someone 10 years older than you who works in your field, and ask them what their life was like from 2006-2010.
I’m always afraid of letting me consider I have it, because I always seem to be put in positions where I’m incompetent.
It’s been a pattern in my career so far, and I don’t know how to break it. I join a new team, learn fast, do good work, everyone loves me. Then management assumes that because I’m good at x, I’m also good at y. So they put me to work on y and I fail miserably. Someone else has to come in and help me/fix it, and now all my credibility is gone.
I try not to beat myself up about it. I consider it a management failure. My current instance of this is management assuming that because I’m a good cider, I’m also good at dealing with infrastructure/operations type stuff. Which is simply not true.
>people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence".
>employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another
Note that the original text was satire, but the idea itself is quite satisfying, and if true would explain all the bad bosses in the world.
Yeah, it's something akin to the Peter Principle. Except I'm not being promoted. I'm still in the same position, except I always get assigned to do stuff I have no clue about, while there are a thousand other areas in the project where I could be doing my best work. I don't understand it.
Sorry, but seriously, I've been trying to work on this, as well. I don't know your exact situation, but I've found a lot of this comes down to being able to have the confidence to tell your boss "No, I don't think I should be working on that, for X, Y, Z reasons."
There are shit bosses out there, who will still blame you if they put you in a bad situation and it goes bad, but the best you can do is be upfront that you do not believe this situation is set up for success and how it could be improved.
I don't slack off, but I feel like there's a position as a Software Engineer past which I wouldn't want to be promoted. I see folks in the higher levels and the stuff they have to deal with has zero appeal to me. My salary and bonus at my current level are already more than enough to sustain my lifestyle and save plenty for retirement - I don't need more.
A lot of people are attracted to the idea of "getting more responsibility", and they like the prestige/visibility that comes with a fancy (e.g. "Principal" or "Staff") title. Me, I just want to put in my hours solving problems and go home do something else.
At a past job a very technically strong coworker spent months on a problem and eventually threw the towel and handed it to me. It took me another couple months to find a reasonable solution to it.
Some problems are _really_ hard and no amount of help will get a dev to solve it faster.