Here is one curiosity. My wife worked for a while as a translator of educational materials for the Quebec Ministry of Education. In addition to statutory holidays (which includes the Friday before and Monday following Easter) she was supposed to have three “discretionay” days off per year. The first year she was there she asked for a discretionary day for Yom Kippur. It was denied. She was told that it was at the discretion of the Ministry, not hers. Her immediate superior fought for her but to no avail. She had to take it unpaid.
Yeah, but that’s the BS companies (at least American companies) try to get you to buy into. Hey, you’re a smart, motivated employee who worked really hard to get here and does what it takes to get the job done, right? You enjoy our unique corporate culture of excellence, kegerators and cappuccino machines? Then I’m sure you won’t mind working this weekend or taking this 2am call or taking some time out from your busy vacation.
I try to do a good job at work too, but how many nights in a row should I be expected to stay up until 3am calling India?
Maybe a couple times a year. Knock off after lunch, get whatever rest you can and fire back up.
Do you really think that’s what it’s like? Maybe some companies I suppose, but we where lucky to get free coffee. And a cheap coffee maker.
We had/have pride in what we did/do. Got it done. And where paid for it. Simple as that.
(The past tense wording is because I retired 2 weeks ago).
I was actually referencing @Reply 's description of his old job. Or many of my old jobs. A lot of them are pretty similar culture-wise to what he describes.
I’ve always worked for these tech companies and consulting firms that always had budget for espresso machines, monthly happy hours, fancy parties, ski trips, corporate retreats at Disney parks and whatnot. But then without warning you get one of these invites to a meeting letting you know you’re in the group that’s getting laid off this quarter.
I think that’s why so many Americans feel so anxious about corporate work all the time. It’s not so much that they are “mistreated” or even paid poorly. But so much of the work is unnecessary bullshit, it’s hard to get a sense of whether the work is important or even necessary.
Congrats on the retirement though.
I think it’s less that whether the work is necessary or not, it’s more that there’s a sense that the axe could fall at any moment, for any reason.
I mean I’ve seen layoffs that are basically throwing heavy stuff out of the flaming airplane to keep it in the air, but I’ve also seen layoffs that are “We can make more money by letting several hundred people go and consolidating this division” type bullshit. I’ve also seen people let go (typically their position gets ‘reorganized’ out of existence) for stuff like personality conflicts or worse, just not having the “right” attitude toward working nights, weekends, vacations, being crammed into a conference room with 10 other people on a ‘tiger team’ to solve some problem for several months, etc. Or they bitched too much about that sort of thing. And some were just laid off because they got a mandate to reduce head count by X amount, and they were the least likeable people on the team. And the same is true about stuff like your benefits- corporate management can and does change that stuff without warning. I went through about a five or six year stretch where we changed health care insurance carriers every year, and the coverage changed every year as well. Exhausting.
So working in that environment feels very vulnerable and insecure. You may trust and love your immediate boss, but he’s got little ability to defend you from corporate bullshit and shenanigans, and you feel like if you don’t work like a cracked-out hummingbird and sing all the proper corporate paeans at the right times, you may be next. It’s a huge recipe for burnout, and it’s also not great for people’s mental health either.
It was a huge adjustment moving to the public sector and realizing that I wasn’t going to get laid off or fired unless some pretty damned dire stuff happened. As in the only people I’ve heard of being fired were the ones who did egregiously bad stuff, and merely not being good at your job wasn’t a reason, much less having a bad attitude.
I think that — the ease of layoffs and firings — is also different in other countries. The EU has better worker protections in that regard, e.g. Navigating Severance and Notice Periods in Europe – A Crucial Guide for Mid-Sized and Foreign Companies (basically statutory minimum notice periods and severances)
The “party line” on that in the US is that at-will employment works both ways. Meaning that both sides retain the right to break the employment agreement at any time, for any (or no) reason.
It’s often touted as being beneficial to workers, as they can just bail for better jobs without warning or consequence, and the implication is that in Europe while employers can’t fire you without jumping through many hoops, you’re also not free to quit either- there are hoops you have to jump through as well with respect to notice, etc…
Is this the case? Or is it just some bullshit that people assume must be true, as the converse of at-will employment letting both sides go their separate ways whenever they choose?
As a European resident and worker, I can confirm that I am free to give my resignation at any time and for any reason but my notice period is prescribed by law and varies according to my tenure. Based on how long I’ve been at my current job, my notice period will be 60 days. My employer is free to decline some or all of my work during this period and put me on “garden leave,” where I get paid to sit at home and be on call until the notice deadline (this is common for sensitive-IP jobs where you’re going to a competitor).
Interesting. Anybody can just quit in the US. My wife and I had a combined total of 67 years with county government. I let them know that I was retireing about a year in advance. Not required, but I like these people. Then I just worked on training the folks at what I do/did.
That’s a good reason to keep your employees happy. I would never have left them in a lurch.
How does all that work as a practical matter? Slavery is outlawed in most modern countries so you can’t make someone work for you if they want to quit. So what if I give 60 days notice and just sit there not doing any work or I don’t show up at all?
Well that is a very different work culture than the sort of companies I tend to work with and would explain why your coffee situation is so terrible. I’ve also worked with a few public sector clients over the years.
This
You want to talk about exhausting, try having 30 year stretch of having to change jobs every 1-5 years. Because AFAICT, there’s nothing specifically or obviously “wrong” with me that I can pinpoint.
I think a big part of the anxiety people feel is because the actual work is so decoupled from leadership it’s impossible to figure out what to do to get ahead or even keep your job. Take Elon Musk for example coming into Twitter or his DOGE bullshit and just basically smashing everything with no regard for how stuff actually works. Or @Johnny_L.A in this thread getting laid off after 20 years from his job of (if I understand it correctly) fixing incoming client data feeds. Like is that no longer an important function?
As a “management consultant” I am part of the MBA-o-sphere of professions that IMHO has shitified Corporate America. We don’t really mean to be. But the career path and culture is such that we take lots of young, eager, fresh-faced undergrads and steer them towards these jobs in consulting firms, investment banks, private equity firms and whatnot where they don’t really learn any practical skills besides making Powerpoints, working 12 hour days, and sucking some partner or managing director’s balls.
So no wonder people are constantly anxious for their jobs. If you’re actually doing real work, at any moment, some manager might eliminate your position because some Mckinsey consultants showed them a slide deck where your job was no longer necessary because they don’t understand it. And if you are in one of those MBA-o-sphere middle management jobs, on some level you probably realize, even if subconsciously, that your job really only exists at the whim of some more senior middle managers all of whom may have only a vague understanding of the work.
Well we just had cheap Walmart coffee makers. Like you would find in any kitchen in the US. The last place I worked for 33 years had a buget for good coffee to put in it. It was fine. I mostly drank tea anyway.
The place before that back in the 1980’s was a 24/7 shop. Those fuckers took away our free coffe and put in one of those pay per cup machines. When you are doing shift work, you live on coffee.
The company I’m at now is in the middle of being acquired. Earlier this year they rolled out an RTO, to get people to leave on their own. What’s ironic is that they didn’t even budget for basic office supplies, we ran out of coffee back in November, and a few weeks ago the bathrooms ran out of paper towels. It’s pretty mind-blowing.
As a database developer who also spent about ten years running my own business before returning to corporate life, it’s disappointing to see how little has changed since the early 2000s. There are more remote work options now, but even those seem to be disappearing. The US corporate culture of busywork, reports, and unnecessary processes is still very much alive. At my current job, everyone is always on time, no one comes in late or leaves early, yet it often feels like the structure exists more for optics than for productivity.
I spent 20-something years trying to do the best job I could, not be a pain in the ass to my bosses, and generally be a model employee. Didn’t get me anywhere, and just made me one of those people who they couldn’t promote because I knew how everything worked and fit together. But I never really felt comfortable, because un-promotable doesn’t mean un-layoffable.
Changed jobs (for an 18% raise no less) and tried something different. Instead of spending all my effort doing actual work, I prioritized socializing and looking like I was working hard, etc… Deliberately showing up late for meetings and shaking my head when I got there, sneaking in a bit late, but showily leaving a little late. Eating lunch with bosses / other managers. Making a point to swing by their offices and chat about their knick-knacks and backgrounds, etc…
What happened? Two years in, someone quit and I was #1 on everyone’s lips as the successor. I now make 24% more than I did when I started this job, which is something like 40% more overall than I did at my previous employer.
On one hand, I’m glad I figured it out, but on the other, I’m kind of dismayed that what’s important is your visibility and optics, not your actual job performance. And the job I’m doing is not what I’d call challenging in an intellectual way. Despite the cheerleading from the nonprofit that provides certification and training, it’s still a paperwork jockeying and gatekeeping job, and it’s boring as hell, even if it does pay well and allow me a lot of personal latitude.
Quality is still important (at least, it seems, as an intellectual exercise); but TPTB seem to think that quality comes from a magic wand, and not from Experience.
Maybe neither , exactly. I’ve mainly heard that specifically about politicians. They shouldn’t get good health care coverage, they shouldn’t vest in their pension after 5 years and so on and so forth. Part of it is misunderstanding - there’s a politician resigning in January and a lot of news coverage says that the date is just after her pension will vest which is true. But an awful lot of people think that means she will immediately begin collecting the maximum pension, which is not true. She will have to reach a certain age, and her pension after 5 years service would not be the same as it would be after 10 or 20 years.
But there’s also another part of it that I can’t really describe ( and I really don’t understand) - it’s not really sour grapes nor is it that they really believe it’s not deserved. And the reason I say that is because I’ve also heard public workers complain about what a different type of public worker gets in terms of benefits - state workers complain about the benefits city workers get, postal workers complain about what state workers get. I’ve once or twice said to people “You know, the people whose taxes pay your salary probably feel the same way” and they just stare at me.
We did too. But when I started working from home, I would check in, and check on things throughout the day. No real set schedule. Surprise, I got more done.
What I hear a lot of has a few common threads:
- Public sector workers work for them, meaning the general public and in particular the cranky old farts who are prone to bitching about that sort of thing.
- Public sector workers are inherently lazy or at the very least, not held to the same performance standards as private workers (i.e. not in constant fear for their livelihoods)
- If most private workers don’t get such a sweet gig, then why are WE (i.e. the same cranky old bitches) paying for THEM to have it so good, if they’re so lazy?
The truth is that the calculus changes when people aren’t constantly in fear of losing their jobs- things lose some of their urgency, which is good. Not everything needs to be done right away, and certainly not at the expense of someone’s family life, etc… unless there’s a damn good reason for it. Most things can indeed wait an extra day or three, if it means that people aren’t having to work overtime, etc… The other is that the gig that government workers collectively get is how it should be for everyone. Nobody should be in constant fear that capricious nonsense from executives is going to mean that their health care coverage is going to end, or that their income stream is going to be interrupted. Everyone should have more public holidays. Everyone should have more vacation time. Everyone should have separate sick and vacation time, and so forth. It’s not a question of undeserved benefits on the part of public workers, it’s a question really of why don’t private workers have that too.
I mean, at first it seemed like shit didn’t get done when I started in the public sector. But what I learned is that it does indeed get done, just on a different time frame, and with a different sense of urgency and importance than in the private sector. Things tend to be more critically evaluated for whether or not they’re actually worth staying late for, or if it can wait, unlike in the private sector where people don’t do that equation because they’re afraid of their bosses.
I can’t answer for Cervaise, of course (who I think lives in Luxembourg??), but in the UK where I’m from, I assume in theory the employer could sack the worker still if the performance really was unacceptable, although I suspect time would run out before the many hoops you have to jump through here were completed. Or, again in theory, the employer could sue the departing employee for the cost of replacing them temporarily with someone like an agency worker? As you can tell I’m far from an expert on UK employment law so I don’t know for sure. In reality I suspect the attitude of the departing employee will largely reflect the one they’ve always had, I.e. a lazy worker will be a lazy worker during their notice period and a hardworking one will continue to be so. If they’ve got that much of a grievance then I suppose they could ‘go off sick’ and the employer would probably just turn a blind eye.
I actually don’t think about it all that much. But I imagine part of it is the optics of people in the private sector having to work crazy hours with a-hole bosses under the constant threat of arbitrary layoffs, then having what we earn taxed so politicians and government workers can receive the best health care and continue collecting a pay check after their job ends.
The tradeoff is some of the most rigorous worker protection and generous workers’ rights in the world.
- I get 40+ days of holiday annually
- unlimited sick leave (as long as a doctor is willing to sign off on it)
- automatic union enrollment and representation
- no layoffs unless negotiated with the labor council
- if I do get laid off, I’m automatically paid unemployment at a substantial percentage of my existing salary for several months minimum (both scaling up with tenure)
- I cannot be fired except for provable cause (and there is an extended formal process by which this is established)
- automatic salary increase aligned with inflation (called “indexation” and averages 3-5% per year)
- my work hours are enforced by law (if my manager tries to call me with any requests in the evenings or while I’m on holiday, they can face prosecution)
And this is on top of maternity/paternity leave, actual universal health care, and everything else that makes quality of life almost immeasurably better.
“Slavery.” Gimme a break.