https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/apr/05/millennials-are-exhausted-by-working-more-for-less
Letters: Readers respond to an article about quitting the rat race, with some saying their generation was handed an untenable position and others saying the struggle is nothing new
(water is wet and fire is hot).
Don't worry everyone, you 100% have the freedom to exploit the working class yourself. See? The system is fair. Oh, you're not exploiting the working class for passive income? Maybe you're just not smart like you think you are dummy!
/$
I get around $400/mo from the VA for being exposed to toxic chemicals that will lead to me having cancer in the next ten years.
Pretty good trade off, let me tell ya!
Yes, you do. If you need help, message me. No dox, but I can help you out.
Google “intent to file VA”, and fill it out right meow. Whatever claim gets processed will be backdated to the date that form was submitted.
I mean if you're wealthy enough you can just make money on interest and dividends. You can get a 5% interest rate on $2m right now and that's insured, no real risk. That's like 75k/yr without doing any work.
But that's probably not what most people mean when they say passive income. And basic income for the wealthy is kind of backwards.
It's real in the same sense that income from illegal activities is real. You have to report it to the IRS and it requires harming others in order to acquire.
Well, some stocks. Probably not going to get much in the way of passive income by buying DJT or RDDT
Rereading my comment I realize I was more vague then I meant to be lol
I meant any type of investment in a broad sense and not like "any crappy stock will do it!"
Obviously a bad investment is a bad investment and is not gonna bring in them dolla dolla billz
I make about $7k a year from some books and T-shirt designs I did a few years ago. I literally do nothing to maintain them (I put in the hard work making them originally) and the money just goes in my bank each month. It's certainly not enough to live on, I have a full time job, but it pays for our groceries.
I publish through Amazon Print on Demand services (Amazon Merch and KDP), and I have a few other stores selling items too. Basically I design the manuscripts and graphics, upload the files to the service, they list it, and when it sells they print and fulfill it and send me a portion of the profit.
One Christmas I made $8k in a month and we went on a cruise with the profit. Those were good times! It's settled down a bit now as more people have flooded the platforms and copied all the content.
It is real, you just have to have sufficient funds already to be able to pay someone else to do the active part of the income and make sure they are earning less than their worth so that you can pick up the excess. Most effective if there are many layers in between, so that the income becomes increasingly passive as you move up the chain, so that those under you have something to strive for, because you don't want to be in charge of hiring all of those people, so you hire people to hire those people, each taking a cut of the value along the way.
But don't worry, the American Dream™ is that, as long as you keep working about 10 layers deep in value cuts, eventually you might be able to get into layer 3 or 4 and get your kid into the job early so that they can get to layer 5 or 6, and maybe they'll have enough money to get their kid to 6 or 7.
Not with that attitude!
What about royalty income? Like, residuals, or…?
A few years ago I designed a bunch of clever tee shirts…and they keep selling. Not a ton, but enough for me to call it “passive income” at this point.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
—Anatole France
You joke, but that has been pounded into our heads our entire life, and even me (a gen x’er) feels like it’s my own fault because the world has been beating me down for not reaching whatever arbitrary standard it’s set for us.
We should get all of us together, pool what little money we have, and buy us a huge compound somewhere and have our own community. I mean, what could go wrong, right? 👀
People do this already, check Foundation for Intentional Community. You can find communities near you that are open to visitors or new residents and check them out.
Make sure you're well acquainted with the traits of cults to keep yourself safe. There are groups out there that are fundraising and building infrastructure for new communities, as well, so there are many ways to get involved.
"Just be careful, you might accidentally join a cult" lol I totally get your point but that just made me laugh.
I'm an older millennial and I look at the younger generarions with horror. We still had some good years. They only had worst and worst times. Disasters, wars, economic craches, pandemics, more wars... fuck! Guys you need to change the world!
This just puts a huge spotlight on the thing I hate the most about my line of work. I'm sure it's not just my line of work with this problem, but there's plenty of examples of workplaces that do not have this problem.
My career is in IT support. Whether doing systems administration or networking or something else related, it's my lifeblood.
Almost every job I've ever had in this field works on the basis of tickets. A concept which, isn't in and of itself a problem, nor is it unusual. Similar systems exist in many careers; they're similar to a chit in the restaurant industry, which contains an order, which is passed to the kitchen for the cooks/chefs to complete. Same thing. And there's examples of this same idea across many careers, called all kinds of things from a requisition, to a work order, they're all variations on the same idea.
The trouble begins with how tickets are worked and completed. In other industries, you pick up a task, whether a chit or work order, you finish the task, and you mark it as complete, but in IT, it's very different in one key way. We have to not only justify and report everything we do, but also mark down exactly how long it took. It's this last point that's the problem. I am under continual scrutiny, every minute of every day to justify what I've done, and when I did it. In every job I've had, my ability to fill every second of my day with records of what I've done and how long it took to do is praised, or the lack of that ability can create some significant issues with maintaining my employment status.
There are good reasons to keep these records, to have a record of changes, and coordinate with coworkers, in the event they need to continue work I've started, or vice versa, and to note when something changed so that if issues arise, those actions can be examined as a potential cause. But this requirement has become weaponized by every employer to keep a stranglehold on productivity. If you take too long on a task that they think should have taken less time, you're suddenly found in a meeting where you have to explain why you were so inefficient. If you excel and you're able to complete your tasks quickly, that faster pace becomes the new standard, and anyone who isn't capable of keeping up gets reprimanded for dragging their heels and wasting time.
The goal posts continually move. I can't so much as take an extended shit without someone taking notice.
Meanwhile, so many jobs are simply focused on being present and looking busy. Before I went into IT, I worked at a grocery store, and short of clearly and obviously standing around doing literally nothing, no manager even took notice of you. If you were doing something, literally anything that looks even remotely productive, you were left alone. Which isn't to mention all the down time, when there isn't anything to do, and you just go and adjust the products on the shelf needlessly because it made you look busy. That same concept can be applied to a lot of different jobs, but with IT, it's not sufficient to simply look busy. Your time must be put into a ticket.
It's oppressive and the way of things in IT.
The perpetual problem in IT
BOSS to you "If everything is working fine, what do I pay you for?"
Also BOSS to you "Things are broken, what am I paying you for?"
IT support
And the mentality you've described is extra bullshit in an IT or support role, as I'm sure you're aware.
This is paraphrased in the "Doom talk" I had to have with my boss back when I was working in systems maintenance. As in, he'd come into my office and complain, "Every time I come in here you're just playing Doom. You need to justify your salary or otherwise maybe we don't need to pay you."
What MBA's and PHB's don't realize is that IT and systems maintenance is not a production-oriented operation. You're not making widgets. The metric is not how many tickets do we generate and how fast are they solved. The metric is, how can we have as few tickets as possible? Because by and large what you're doing in support and IT is fixing stuff that's broken. The ideal state for the business to be in is not to have anything that's broken at all, on a minute-to-minute basis.
Boss, you want to see me in my office playing Doom. Because that means none of your millions and millions of dollars of mission critical infrastructure which your engineers rely upon to generate billable hours is on fire. If any of it catches fire today, I am on site to put it out. If anyone has a problem or a question, I am on call to solve it. If there is maintenance to be performed or new equipment to be rolled out, I'll be doing that. But otherwise I'm not going to invent busywork just to placate middle management which, as a whole, can't reliably remember which of the two mouse buttons to click.
Yep. I'm in the midst of that. We're in a "busy" season for my clients (mostly finance/accounting people), and I've reduced my output hours per day to a lower amount because I want to be more available for more time so that I can jump on critical issues as they arise. For the most part, you want to jump on critical things regardless of the situation, but right now it's more critical because of the busy season, so minor gripes get sidelined, all of my maintenance and other duties, like projects, scripting, etc, are all on hold, favoring time to resolution over almost everything else. So if I can be free more than normal so that I have the bandwidth to take care of things when they arise, so much the better. I don't want to be distracted writing a script when a critical ticket drops and I miss it by a few hours while the customers are unable to work because I was debugging a PowerShell function.
So my logged hours are down because I refuse to pick up dormant unimportant tasks while I'm idle. I use the time to review all tickets and just patrol the service tickets for critical issues. I have absolutely no reservations about doing it.
I agree, the goal should always be to play doom. Not because you ignore your work, but because there's nothing to do since everything works. IT support isn't here to justify their existence by staying busy. We're here so that when you need help, we can help. If there's nothing to do, then we're standing ready, and if we play doom, or Halo, or literally any other game/distraction/whatever, while we wait, as long as it doesn't impact our ability to respond when needed, then that's fine. That's what everyone should want. If the hardware is so unreliable that you're constantly having to work on it to keep it running, then, as IT, you fucked up.
I'll also mention that there's a paradox in IT: we're expected to do so much and if you just do all the work by hand, you'll be busy all the time. If you leverage scripts and scheduled tasks, you can significantly cut down on your workload. The paradox is that when you don't have those scripts and scheduled tasks, and you're doing everything by hand, you don't have enough time to create the scripts to reduce your workload.
I'll give an example. At a previous workplace, the bossman was very much in favor of doing things by hand, the original business model was T&M. He later moved to a more MSP model, where people are paying regardless of how much time was spent, so my focus shifted to automate everything and drop the ticket load as much as possible. In one such case, we kept getting issues related to a service failing. I don't recall what the issue was, nor what problem it created, but I remember that simply restarting the service fixed the problem. So instead of fielding dozens of tickets a year to restart the stupid service, I added a scheduled task to run a script that would restart the service automatically every week at (some godawful hour) AM, on a Sunday or something. Once that script was scheduled for weekly runs, we stopped getting those tickets.
I have dozens of other examples along the same lines. One of my most proud moments was a script to fix a service where, if another service was running before it, the service wouldn't load properly. The program service just wouldn't start if a system service was running. It was a non-critical system service, but both had to be running after boot time. I had already tried every combination of delayed start, and every time, the program service would fall because the system service ended up running too quickly. So I made a script to shut down the system service, start the program service, and then restart the system service, and scheduled it to run 15 minutes after boot, anytime the system restarted (usually overnight for patching). Once that was in place, complaints of (program) not working after patch day, went away.
I hate repeating process because nobody thought to actually fix the problem, they just patched it back together manually. When faced with a reoccurring problem, I look at how I can stop it from happening; of course I fix it in the short term but as soon as I'm done I'm working on a script that can do it for me, then figuring out the best way to trigger the script so that I don't have to be involved.
No matter how busy you are, finding a way to get rid of problems like that, by any means necessary, is essential; otherwise, you'll be drowning in tasks to fix stuff that shouldn't be broken.
Yeah, firefighter mentalities are terrible.
That said, as someone in software development, wouldn't there be some optimization work you could do? Keeping up with the technology? Preparing training material? Figuring out the next steps for the next improvements to be done to the system? Looking at solutions to better monitor what is going on? Scripts to automate tasks?
I find it hard to believe that things are so static.
Absolutely! Those things are known to management as, variously, "wasting time," "spending all day surfing the internet," "submitting frivolous RFQ's," and heaven forbid if you want to attend training or a trade show, "accruing unnecessary travel expenses."
you made the criminal mistake of this not being a ticketed item, and for that, you get banished to hell
I feel you fellow IT brother/sister!
The IT world is chock-full of this garbage, and all it really forces people to do is A. Provide lesser service so that it "takes longer", inflating their time metrics, and B. Causes people to make shit up, or submit their own BS tickets to make it look like they're doing stuff to justify their existence.
Ultimately holding people to a metric-based system like this leads to worse service, and make people hate their jobs.
The job I had before my current one, I was site lead for Field Services. Luckily we were sort of a start up/experimental program, so the technician metrics weren't tracked at all. MAN it was nice. Nobody felt stressed out needing to justify every second of their day, they wound up doing the work in an appropriate amount of time because it didn't matter how long an individual took (be that long, or short). We only had an SLA to meet for the customer, which was easily hit.
I even took it a step further and didn't really pay much heed to the corporate timekeeping rules... If someone needed to run an errand or "telework" for a day; fine by me. The company didn't give anyone sick time, or enough time in general, OR a big enough salary, so they can eat my whole ass. Lo and behold, our section had the lowest MTTR, and highest amount of tickets closed, all with 100% SLA met. Crazy what you can achieve when you treat people like adults and actual human beings instead of soulless automatons.
Agreed. The time wasted just marking down what you did and how long it took you is incredible. If I get too busy, I look like a fucking slacker because the first thing I just cannot do when I'm too busy is to mark down exactly how busy I am. It just doesn't happen. I'm moving from one task to the next so fast that I barely have time to take a drink, nevermind write a short story about how I did a thing and figure out exactly when I started working on something.
Compounding this, when it's that busy, I'm often flip flopping between tasks, while I wait for a program to install or a file to copy or something, I'm off trying to chip away at something else. When it's slow, I can take a minute while thing copy/load/whatever, and update my notes. My tasks occur sequentially, so it's easy to see, I started on this at 9:30 and working on this and only this until 10:45. Meanwhile when it's busy, I did X from 9:30 to 9:48, then Y from 9:48 to 9:56, then X again from 9:56 to 10:10, then Y from 10:10 until 10:18, then I finish X from 10:10 to 10:45, and finished Y from 10:45 to 11:05.... Yeah, I'm not entering all that time... At best I'm going to guess, at worst I'm just going to not enter anything. Closed/resolved. Worked for unknown time, text entry: "fixed problem" done.
The task of entering time takes more time to do. If I'm too busy trying to put out fires, I don't care what the time sheet says, I care that the fires were put out as quickly as possible. So I look like I did nothing, but I damn near lost my mind trying to get it all done.
This was a major problem at my last job. Not only would I be so busy, jumping from one foot to the other trying to put it fires, but people would continually walk over to my desk and bug me about unrelated crap. 90% of the time they were managers or senior staff whom I couldn't just ignore, or tell them to go away. So now I'm not putting out a fire instead I'm taking to Sally, who is the daughter of the owner, about her stupid Excel issue that she can, has, and could continue to work around, but she wants it to work in a different way that she never learned how to do from the cut rate community college during the business course she took.
I dunno Sally, why don't you fucking Google it? I'm not your personal chat GPT of problem solving shit that's not broken. I'm currently trying to solve a problem that affects hundreds of people, and this issue barely affects one. Can you go away and stop distracting me? But nooooo. If I tell Sally to go away, daddy bossman will hear about it and I'll get pulled into yet another pointless meeting about my "attitude" towards staff, that will only put me further behind on fixing contoso corp's file server, which is preventing them from doing millions of dollars in business today alone. Apparently Sally's feelings are more important until contoso corp changes IT providers because we couldn't meet our SLA with them, which will also be my fault because I'm lead technician on that account.
Fuck.
That sounds like hell.
Then there's the IT support team I have to design systems for in my org that are COMPLETELY useless. They can't be bothered to do their job, and escalate tickets randomly to Tier 3 without any triage, documentation, or careI wish their management would put even a semblance of accountability on them.
I think a middle ground would be fantastic for everyone.
They can't be bothered to do their job, and escalate tickets randomly to Tier 3 without any triage
Level 1 support teams are universally useless. I think I've ever worked with one that's actually effective.
Can you imagine that in a hospital? "Oh this guy came in with a broken finger, I'd better call the lead surgeon." Now of course the lead surgeon can fix it, of course they can, everyone can fix it, but you can't send the patient back down to accident and emergency because then you get complaints about why you're passing this poor guy around.
Mechanics at your local car dealer likely get paid on flat rate. That means they get paid a set amount of hours based on the time estimate for the job, regardless of how long it takes. Also, manufacturers set lower times for warranty repairs than you would get paid if the customer had to pay. Also, if there is no book time, you have to guess ahead of time. If the vehicle comes back, you have to work on it for free. You also get service writers and managers breathing down your neck while you're trying to troubleshoot and not understanding how long things take and also pressuring you to upsell unnecessary services and repairs. Anyway, I don't work on cars anymore.
I write software for car dealerships so have been aware of all of what you said by proxy for some time simply by virtue of having to write time tracking code which handles all that.
It's insane.
I understand why. I have had a bit of insight into how all of that works and short of being a prodigy, you can't really get ahead.
This is why I do a lot of my routine maintenance on my own car. If all I need is a wrench, some materials and a few hours, I'll do it myself. I've become quite skilled with mechanics over the years; I'm sure it's nothing compared to what an actual mechanic knows, but brakes, tire changes/rotations, battery replacements, even coolant changes and thermostat replacements, totally do-able. I could go on with minor repair crap I've learned but you get the picture.
I did a brake job on my SIL's car and discovered that the last person in there didn't lube anything up, I had to beat it with a hammer to get the damn brake pads out. I put the right lubrication in the right places and put everything back together better than I found it. I even did the slide bolts, which I had to break out the torch to get loose. New pads, rotors, slide bolts, slide bolt boots, the whole nine yards. Pretty much everything short of doing the calipers and brake fluid.
I suspect the last few techs that touched her vehicle were trying to move so fast that they didn't bother doing anything to the side bolts even though they would have been obviously in need of maintenance/replacement.
The thing that bothered me is that she sold the car a few months after I spent 10+ hours fixing the stupid brakes. So next time I have to go look at her vehicle, it'll be a surprise for what things were not done, or were not done right.
grumbles
In order to avoid that kind of situation many shops will simply quote a "loaded caliper" for each side. It includes the caliper, hardware, brake pads, and bracket. You simply disconnect the brake hose and take out two bolts that hold the caliper bracket on. Give the rotor a couple of slams from the hammer, clean up the hub, reassemble everything and bleed the brakes. It might cost $600, but it saved a ton of time for the shop and prevents a comeback when the old caliper decides to get stuck anyway.
Yeah, she needed it on all four. I think I needed to torch out at least three of the slide bolts around the car. We saved a bunch of money by having me do it, but I broke my cheap torque wrench in the process, snapped the socket connector right off the end of it trying to loosen the lug nuts. I only used the torque wrench for loosening things because I didn't have another tool long enough to pull them off (aka a breaker bar, I think it's called). So, RIP. I told her that if she wants me to do another wheel/brake service, she'll have to buy me an impact wrench, and I'll send her the link to one I found that will fill the purpose (which is both compatible with the stuff I already use and was tested and recommended by the torque test YouTube channel). Because I'm not dealing with getting, and breaking, any tools to get her tires off because some crackpot at the shop decided to torque her lug nuts with an impact.
I only want to reduce my workload and not sit there standing on a breaker bar, unable to get the damn lug nuts off... I'm not light, over 200lbs, so if I need to stand on a bar to get the lug nuts to loosen, someone probably did something wrong.
Never again.
I have one of those "compatible with" Milwaukee impacts and it works great for most things. I also have a couple of really cheap 1/2" breaker bars that I bought years ago that just won't break. I have a 3' cheater bar that fits over them and I've had to put some weight into that a time or two.
This is the way.
The impact wrench I'm looking at is one of the newer lineup from DeWalt. I have DeWalt everything already (impact driver, hammer drill, circular saw, reciprocating saw... Even my hedge trimmer, string trimmer, lawnmower and snowblower), all using the 20v MAX or compatible batteries, except the snowblower, which uses the power flex 60v (which can be used in 20v tools, but 20v MAX batteries cannot be used in it). The impact wrench uses the same 20v batteries. So I just need the tool. It's still something like $200 for it, but I don't think I'll need anything more for power tools for a long assed time after that.
We picked most of this stuff up over the past year starting with a kit (impact driver, hammer drill, circular/reciprocating saws, even a small light, with some batteries and a few extras) about a year and a half ago, and we've been steadily adding to it. I chose DeWalt because I have an old, 12v drill I used for like 10 years and it still works. The original battery has left us but the second battery I bought when it was new (it came with one and I bought an extra so I could have one in the drill while one was charging) is still kicking. I got a replacement for the original battery that shipped with it, so I still have two for that unit. It still works, and it's fine, but there were a few times I really needed a hammer drill and the puny 12v was all that I had... But that was literally my only real gripe about it. Given that history, I wanted to keep with DeWalt because they clearly make tools that can last.
I wanted to go with one brand so I didn't require several different battery chargers for different tools. DeWalt was only missing a snowblower, but they released one late last year and we obtained it shortly after it hit the market, which completed our large tools. There's only a small number of handheld tools in the DeWalt lineup that I still want to get. The impact wrench is one. Another is a brad nailer (IIRC), because I have to install some baseboards/trim, but it's hard to justify buying a $500+ tool for the job.
My entire automotive kit probably needs to be replaced. I have a complete socket set with ratcheting wrenches, and not a whole lot besides that at the moment. I will need to get a new torque wrench, breaker bar... Probably a lot more that I'm not thinking about right now. I have access to my brother's Jack and Jack stands, so I'm ok there. For the impact wrench, I'll need to add a small set of impact ready sockets for it, otherwise I'm going to rip my sockets to shreds.
I have a ton of electrical testing stuff for my other hobbies, so I'm good on that front, but I notably don't have a CCA tester, which I would like to get. Among my more electronic things I have a fairly crappy, and old, OBD2 reader, which has come in handy plenty of times.
As you can imagine, I'm the "handy" guy in the family. I just find it all fascinating, but I wouldn't want to make it my job. After working on a vehicle for a few days, I don't even want to look at a wrench for several weeks.
By day, I work in IT, so I'm generally sat at a computer pushing buttons until the screen dots show up in the right order.
I have several socket sets and wrenches from harbor freight that are perfectly fine. The 1/4" set, the open ended ratchet set, the short impact set, and the long metric wrenches, these cover 99% of everything. If you don't abuse your tools, then they won't break. I even have a second 1/4" set from Aldi of all places and never had an issue with it. I'm not using them all day every day, so I'm not that worried about buying expensive stuff.
Opposite scenario in my dept. The boss wants to improve our time tracking so he can justify asking for more staff.
"Yes the rest of the org needs 500 new starters a week but you guys can manage, right?"
Yeah, they say that.
When you're too busy to actually get your time in and you look like a damn slacker, they'll use it as evidence to say that you don't need any additional help. I've been through this song and dance several times.
The problem is your boss. I work with tickets and just have a maximum for the average amount of time to be under for the quarter. It's very relaxing.
You need to explain to your boss that different tasks take different amounts of time. Explain that you may be able to do things faster at the risk of larger issues taking up more time later. Then when they tell you to work faster, reiterate that it will cause bigger issues.
Literally give them what they want: fast solutions at the expense of quality. Then don't worry about it when things eventually break.
Literally give them what they want: fast solutions at the expense of quality. Then don’t worry about it when things eventually break.
You're not wrong, but the problem with this is that the worker will be blamed for the bad quality, not the manager.
In fact, it'll be the manager rating the worker poorly because of the quality at review time, and they just won't care or won't connect the fact that the worker is not being given enough time to have a level of quality that would be acceptable to the manager.
That's not how reality works. If your goals are time-based and you hit your goal, then you did a good job. Quality is different. It's the managers job to balance speed and quality.
You just say "I achieved my time limit for tickets" and leave it at that. If they give you incompatible goals, that's the manager's fault. Just tell them it's not possible to do a good job quickly.
I'm not talking about the literal who's right or who's wrong/fault, I'm talking about the politics, about who has the power, who doesn't, and who can get away with mistakes by putting the mistakes on others.
That’s not how reality works.
I've literally seen what I've described happen, on multiple occasions, throughout my career. /shrug
Literally every boss I've had has been like this. I don't think there's a whole lot of IT jobs that aren't at this point. I've worked several and if they're not call centers (a few have been - where call time is factored in), this has been the primary time system, required by all employees.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I think the issues that you mentioned are becoming increasingly prevalent in other lines of work as well. I do not work in IT, but really resonated with what you mentioned about documentation/reporting requirements being weaponized by upper management to increase "productivity" regardless of the cost (namely, quality of the work performed). I wholeheartedly agree that this environment is toxic, oppressive, and unsustainable.
There are times I've worried about not having kids, but comments like this help me feel good about my decision. Why would I want to put someone I love through this? (Or anyone, for that matter)
i'm often sorry i had kids - not for myself, because i love them, but for them.
i'm glad they're not interested in having their own kids, and i hope they are able to stick with it. and hopefully none of them/their partners ever needs an abortion.
This is exactly why I'm opposed to bringing kids into the world.... I mean, have you looked at the world? It sucks. Why would I want to condemn another individual, whom I'm sure I will love wholeheartedly, to suffer through all of this for their entire life?
I didn't have any say in being born and if I had even an impression of what I was in for, I probably would have said no thanks.
The only thing I'm thankful for from my parents is that they took care of me for so long. I'm not thankful that I'm alive and I'm not thankful for being born. That said, I'm also doing my damnedest to be a force for good in the world. I'm not making a significant impact, because I'm just one guy working a menial job, but I'm going my best. If I must continue to be alive, I might as well try to make everything suck a little less.
you’re suddenly found in a meeting where you have to explain why you were so inefficient.
probably an account of the being in meetings questioning me about my efficiency, which proceed to then lower my efficiency, which then proceeds to spawn more meetings, and then proceeds to lower my efficiency even more.
Seems rather obvious to me.
I am still in my first job as a B2B tech and thought this was something only my workplace did, was scrutinise ticket time.
I continue to find it hard there because I legitimately don't slack but gaps end up between my time records (its hard to continuously work 4 hours at a time with zero downtime) and the boss comes down saying his KPI of ticket time / worked time teamwide keeps going down, and like you say the goalposts keep shifting.
I even went to the trouble of making my own time tracker that gave me even more information about my time entries and what was left for the day and how much I was out, way more info than what PSA gives you, but then got scared of continuing to work on it as the goalposts shifted again to billable time entries / worked time, and doing a time tracker isn't billable to a client.
My advice: fib.
Not really, but yes. Fib. Lie. Put down what you think is appropriate. Don't exaggerate, don't over bill, just adjust for what fits.
For me, I refuse to track my time down to the minute. I realized that if I put in 5 minutes for sending an email, I would get credit for 0.08 of an hour, but, 5 minutes is actually 0.083333... of an hour. So I started putting in 6 minutes instead (0.10 of an hour). Rather than be irrationally docked the 20 seconds or so, I'm getting a whole ass extra 0.02h (or rather 0.1666.... of an hour).
I'll do 6 minutes, or anything in 15 minute increments. If it took 7 minutes, that's 15m. If it took 20, that's 30m on the record. If I'm looking for a ticket, or closing a ticket (after my time is entered), or even if I go to take a shit while working on a ticket, that goes in the time entry. I might be in the bathroom, but my brain is working on the problem. I'm not exactly taking a break from working the issue, I'm just trying to brain storm while I'm away from my keyboard.
Every second from the time I start looking for a ticket to work, to the time I've closed it, should be on the books. I didn't work from 9:35 to 9:56 on anything, I spent 9:30 to 9:35 finding, and opening the ticket prior to my time entry being started. I spent 9:56 to 10:00 closing the ticket and mentally preparing myself for the next task. Minute by minute tracking is unreasonable, and bluntly, you shouldn't do it. You'll lose more time from what I call "grey time" (doing all the things you need to do in order to account for your time), than you account for actually doing your job. Reading email, looking at documents and keeping up to date on technology issues.... All of that is grey time.
I've put in time for internal meetings, "ticket review"s, even "reading email". None of which has every been questioned. You need that time to simply keep yourself organized. Don't hesitate to mark it down and bill it to your own employer. I know they don't want you to do that, it "artificially inflates" your worked time, but bluntly, if they're going to require that you account for so much of your day that you can't have grey time anywhere in there, you're doing yourself a disservice by not adding some kind of entry to account for it.
The only thing I strictly do not do, is mark down my time for lunch and breaks. That's not acceptable to me. Everything else, sure. But I'm going to pad it to account for my grey time. When I spend too much time doing stuff that I consider grey time, I'll put in an internal entry for it, and bill my employer. I try to keep these to a minimum, but it's an easy entry when you get called into a meeting or something.
Once you start seeing all the losses from grey time adding up, you'll be able to account for 6-7 hours of your day easily. Plus 30 minutes for lunch, and 2x15 minute breaks, and you're missing an hour of your day at most.
Grey time. Log it.
Thank goodness the dollar is going so much further than it did back then.... I've made myself sad on Friday...
You say this as corporations are making record profits.
The US recovered just fine, the elites just didn’t think it necessary to include us in that recovery.
My issue is that I have to believe my lying eyes. Rates of homelessness, buying power, financial solvency, they all dropped through the tank and never really came back after what amounted to a financial earthquake for many many families. Whole extended families dropped through the cracks and never came back. There was basically no relief for the working families most effected by the incident, and basically no consequences for those that cause/ profited from it. Covid and the financial repercussions seems about the same. We've "recovered" from it "economically" because those permanently impacted by it that will never recover stopped being counted.
Yeah that’s pretty much what I’m saying. The elites are doing better than ever while we struggle.
The hedge funds are helping to rig the system even worse. People absolutely don’t realize how big of a bubble we are in, and when it pops governments will let the masses starve rather than let the donor class fail.
So am I. My rent however is three times as much (for a worse apartment), food is 2-6x as expensive, gas is... shockingly about the same but it was killer in 2012 too. Utilities are up, insurance is at 250%, medical aid remains unaffordable even with insurance, and I'm older will more medical problems, less energy, and it's harder to learn new things. Oh and I'm in much more debt due to all the previously mentioned things, so I don't even have space on credit cards for emergency purchases.
And 9/10 people I talk to are in the same situation.
Sounds rough. But I wasn't trying to invalidate the other guy (nor you now), just making a point that individual circumstances don't dictate the state of things overall.
Guess the juxtaposition by itself was too subtle to convey that, lol. Oh well.
Millennial and I’m making over twice at much as I was in 2012. 🤷♀️
And able to afford a third as much..
What is that then? I'm looking for a percentage or something. What does it mean that you haven't had much of an increase in 16 years. At that length of time I would blame you
I’ll chime in here.
So… I buy the cheapest bologna I can buy for my work lunches.
I switched to the cheapest brand I could in 2016 when I consciously made the decision that I don’t care if my lunch is good as long as I have sustenance to get me through the day.
The bologna I used to buy for $1.25/pack in 2016 is now $3.29 at the same store.
My wages have gone up, but they have not more than doubled since 2016 like the price of bologna has. I think this is a good metric for comparison because we truly do live in a bologna economy.
A side note: expecting strangers to give you exact numbers about their wages on the internet is pretty ridiculous.
I appreciate you actually responding. Your example is 8 years. Also, what is the difference in take home pay after these 8 years?
The person I was responding to said they haven't had any increase in 16 years. So unless bologna has gone up from .75 to 3.29 in 16 years and that ratio is relatable to all of their life then I don't get it.
My situation isn’t going to be all that helpful for you.
My take-home has actually dropped by about $60,000/year, but that’s because I went back to school during that 8 years for a career change after hitting a dead end.
Now, I work far fewer hours than I did in the old career as I’m still working my way up in the new one. Hourly though, I make about 25% more in the new career than the old.
Now I’m single with no kids, so going back to school was an option for me. It won’t be an option for everyone.
Not sure how this is millennial-specific. Everyone has been doing this for a long time. One of the few good things to come out of Covid was work from home being integrated into scheduling. Of course big business is trying to rob people of that again.
Sorry but for those of us not in industries where WFH is even an option, it ruined things for us.
I have to quit my job eventually and move to a completely different state because once WFH took off and everyone that could move out of the areas their jobs were in did so the housing market exploded.
I had just reached a point where I was financially healthy enough to consider buying a house and then pretty much immediately had the rug pulled out from under me.... Now between greedflation and everything else, the raises I had been fighting for are equal in purchasing power as my income was like 4 years ago...
I don't think WFH is completely to blame for that. A significant contributor to the explosion in housing prices was historically low mortgage rates (<2%) as part of the covid era stimulus plans. This triggered a wave of home buying, which in turn led to a lot of panic from people that were afraid they would be priced out of the market and fueled further home buying.
Pretty sure it was Blackrock, Vanguard, and all the shadow LLC’s from the big banks buying up homes as soon as they went on the market as well as rich pukes abusing first time home owner mechanics to buy AirBnB investment properties.
Not really normal folks buying home with low interest rates.
I'm sure large investment firms did buy a lot of homes, but to pretend no normal people took advantage of the interest rates is just ridiculous.
Homes at large went from being owned by normal people to financial institutions. Yep, some people might have got lucky, but society overall lost.
Case in point: There are eight houses on my block. Pre-COVID, one was a multi-unit rental and the rest were single family.
Post COVID? Now only my house and my next door neighbor's house, and the lady's place on the far corner are privately owned. All five of the others sold and are now either short term rentals (2) or AirBNB's (3).
...In my shitty cracked out corner of America. Where there's even this bastard who runs motorcycles in his driveway all the time (i.e. me). Who the fuck is going to want to travel to and rent an AirBNB here? Nobody, that's who. There ain't nothing here but bikes, mud, guns, dirt, and fentanyl. So they're basically full-time empty. Some asshole or asshole(s) with capital decided this would be a great "passive income" opportunity and spent big bucks to squeeze out any private buyers. My only solace is that they've got to be getting raked over the coals now, because there's no way they make enough in rentals to cover the mortgages, utilities, and taxes.
Yeah screw those people being able to be happy and move to an area that doesn't bend them over almost definitely worse than you. What assholes! They should have to stay in the downtown centers and pay $15 million to live in an old phone booth with a sink.
This has the same energy of people being pissed off with student loan forgiveness or something. "If I had to deal with it, so should you! I can't be happy so you can't either blah blah"
What? That isn't even remotely close to what I was expressing.....
They mentioned wfh being a good thing from covid and I mentioned how it affected other people using my own experience. Fuck me for wanting to buy a home in the same damn state that I work in, excuse me. Only their experience is valid apparently.
The point of course is that there shouldn't be entire towns that are on affordable. Expensive houses / condos in the city? Sure I guess. An entire city where nothing is Affordable to people working normal jobs there? No that shouldn't be a thing anywhere and it needs to be made impermissible. We need a lot of non-market housing
Yeah, OP doesn’t get how many, many things can cause house price rises and that you shouldn’t stop a good thing just because a bad thing takes advantage.
But I never said to stop it.
Too many people are taking my "there's 2 sides to this so called benefit" as "crab mentality."
I'm happy people got to be happy, but their happiness came at my expense.
We all made decisions as to where we wanted to work, people chose cities for high incomes, I hate cities, traffic, overpopulated areas, so I chose the opposite and work in a factory far from a city, but now everyone got to leave the cities and that caused a massive increase in prices pretty much immediately. Again, good for them, I was just pointing out to OP that it isn't all sunshine and rainbows, for some WFH coming from covid ruined their plans.
I either keep the position I worked for and never own a home now or I have to start over somewhere else.
😮💨 I understand too well. "Average" single family homes in my area were like $400,000, now it's $820,000. Rents for single bedroom apartments went from about $800-900 month to $1,600+ per month. I live in a town of about 65,000 in the Rockies, middle of nowhere, like minimum 5 hour drive to a city with more than a million people, yet somehow, people are still flocking here from all across the country.
We need to tax big corporations and use it to fund public housing at a rate of one unit per 1000 residents in every Big City to small town in this country, and that's the minimum amount some areas will need much more
Shift your blame to the housing market for jacking prices up for well over 40 years. Yes they used wfh as another excuse but seriously housing market has been fucked looooong before wfh
It's not "they," I've been watching my local market because I had been looking to buy.
One simple, extreme example: a piece of shit shed masquerading as a house sold for 65k in 2016 then in 2021 the asshat that bought it put it on the market for 190k
In what universe is that even a reasonable increase? It wasn't 40 years, it was a direct reaction to "supply and demand." Real estate agents were telling my friend who actually had the money to buy "if a house is on the market for more than 5 days there's something wrong with it."
That's not a normal situation affected by decades of increases.
I hate the housing market too but it’s been going bonkers way before covid and WFH.
Sure WFH added fuel to the fire, but that fire has been growing and would have grown without WFH.
Yeah like. I’m sympathetic to this arguement, but anyone thinking the average American today works “harder” and more strenuously to the average American in like 1920 is off their gourd.
All this stuff is really hard to measure, and ultimately we just need a system where people can live decent lives and not be miserable. There’s a difference between working hard and having a happy & fruitful life out of it and working little while remaining miserable
Edit:
Only in Lemmy could you get downvoted for suggesting that maybe doing enjoyable productive work is an okay thing. Day by day I’m more convinced the average user here just wants to live in the space ship from Wall-E getting force fed milkshakes all day
Productivity has gone up, pay has remained flat or declined when adjusting for price increases. How is that not “working more for less?”
And your read on the average lemmy user is inane. Most of the people I’ve interacted with want to do meaningful work and be able to live without the constant threat of homelessness, starvation, or death from easily preventable causes.
If you do “enjoyable work” and get paid enough to have a personal life that is also fulfilling, bully for you, but the vast majority of people are fucking struggling.
Productivity has gone up because of technological and logistical innovations. Not because you personally work so much damn harder than your great grandpa ever did.
Did you seriously not understand that? This is like middle school economics.
And yes, I am literally saying most people should be able to do a good amount of enjoyable work for good pay. It is only freaks like yourself who have a knee jerk negative reaction to that because you read the word “work”
This guy thinks productivity has gone up because he personally works harder than the massive amount of people working 16 hours a day since the day they turn 14 a hundred years ago and not because of technological innovations hahahahahahahah
the average American today works “harder” and more strenuously to the average American in like 1920 is off their gourd.
The point is that the average person's work produces more value, but that increase in value is all going to corporations. The value of wealth went up, the value of labour stagnated. That means the rich have more of the pie, and since money begets money, the poor get less and less.
Yeah that’s fine, and completely true. I think people on Lemmy sometimes just get confused by the stat and don’t realize like… how hard most every generation before them also had to work (at least before 1970 or so). Like, on average, much harder than today.
People see the whole productivity rise and people who are maybe not exactly lateral thinkers think that means the average employee literally works so much harder compared to the “comparatively easy” lives of before.
It just ends up creating really… strange dynamics
most every generation before them also had to work (at least before 1970 or so). Like, on average, much harder than today.
How do we know, though? Everyone will think they worked the hardest, suffered the greatest, deserve the most.
Just because I'm not working in a rock factory doesn't mean I don't also work hard to sustain any measure of a valuable life
Comparison is the thief of joy
That doesn't make any sense lol
It reads like some Jaden Smith level of insight
But you have a good one
I guess a more optimistic way to say it is "ignorance is bliss". I never liked that saying. Ignorance is not a good thing.
Most of the news subs on Lemmy are just cynical pity parties for first world problems. Idk what to make of people here. Wealthy educated countries with historically low unemployment and yet no one can seem to find a decent job.
Because unemployment is a bad metric. If you are working part-time at a pay rate that isn't enough to pay the rent, you're not unemployed but you're also not living well.
If you're not working any job because your skill set isn't in demand but you can't afford to learn new skills because you're not working, you're not considered unemployed. And you can't just get an "unskilled" job because your experience makes you overqualified and applying without a resume won't get you hired and even if you did get hired see the first point for why even bother.
Good thing the US underemployment rate, which includes part time workers, is also at near historic lows (7.3%). I’m not saying everything is honky dory, but this obsession with how hard our generation (millennials) has it, in denial of living in the wealthiest parts of the world at the most prosperous and peaceful times in human history, is pathetic.
Lmdao. It would be amazing if the wealth wasn’t being stolen, privatized, and insulated to 1% of the populous.
I will give you my two pennies on this.
I had to go back to college after the army. My BA degrees in business and criminal justice were worthless then, and still are worthless now. I got them to go through OCS. I was going to go into computer science, but got a C in C++, so went into mechanical engineering instead. Was jealous of all my coding friends, except now they are all laid off. Every single one of them.
These were the good jobs, the guys making 100-350k/yr for their programming knowledge. Now they have nothing, and no job prospects in their field. Companies are laying off workers in expensive areas and hiring unqualified people in much cheaper areas like Vietnam, China, and India to use ChatGPT to spit out code. MBA folks think they cracked the code and are out producing other firms who don’t use AI, but in reality the AI code is mostly shit. It looks good on KPIs, which are helping to fuel a massive bubble. It allows those who do nothing to act like they are more useful than those who do work.
Why don’t people work a good job like the one I have? Because not everyone can get a masters in engineering. The “good jobs” are disappearing.
I hope things get better for your friends. Tech is taking a hit right now.
I had trouble finding work after college, had to work some shit jobs and move around a lot, but I was never out of options, never at risk of going hungry or not sleeping in a bed. It takes a hell of a lot to go hungry or homeless in the US. There’s an insane amount of industry, wealth, and opportunity here.
Meanwhile, in my home country, there is 70% inflation in the past year. There is war everywhere on the borders (and conscription). There is no opportunity for young people. Inflation has destroyed most people’s ability to emigrate or get an American/European education. They’re just stuck there with a crumbling economy, a refugee crisis (about 10% of the population), an increasingly religious and oppressive government, and the constant threat of war.
It’s hard to see so many posts like these complaining about how hard everything is for people living in US, UK, Canada, France etc. from people with the most disposable income in the world, the highest carbon footprints, the biggest cars, the most meat consumption, good labor laws.
Yes, we should still strive to improve things. There are tons of problems in this system that result in conflict and inequality. But this kind of article is the epitome of first world problems from privileged people.
This whole site is filled with these cynical, self-pitying posts so we can all read them and think “yeah, everything is so unfair for me, everyone else had it so much easier” like everything is happening to us, and we have no control or agency in our own happiness and satisfaction. We bear no responsibility for our own situation. We live in the best part of the world in the best time of human history, yet we’re all miserable because everything is so terrible and hard.
In power grids (where I currently work) we have a very hard time finding field techs.
It pays around 90k your first year, 150k+/yr after depending on how many jobs you take. It’s tough work, but it’s not hard since everything is so heavy. Not a lot of manual lifting, but you are out in the elements.
All hotel and meals are paid out on sight. Hardly anyone wants the jobs. You don’t even need a trade school anymore, all training is on the job.
There are jobs out there.
It’s the same in biotech and pharma. We are basically always hiring skilled labor, even during layoffs. You can get a 6 week certificate that will land you a manufacturing job for $80k per year plus OT. No college needed. Many companies will even pay for it if you agree to a 6 month contract with them.
Maybe a weird request but, would you mind posting a job listing as an example of the job you're describing? Doesn't have to be your specific company or anything.
Are they willing to hire people who don't already have 10 years experience? Are they willing to train people who are fresh out of high school? If not then those companies can only blame themselves for not having workers. After the Great Recession companies got entitled because they could hire whoever they wanted with whatever experience and degrees they wanted for rock bottom prices and that entitlement never left.
You need zero experience.
Have to 21 due to state laws in high danger areas and nuclear power.
You say it takes a hell of a lot to go homeless but there's literally homeless people everywhere in this country. I literally can't ride my bike to the thrift store (can't afford a car) without passing a half dozen tents on the sidewalk, and then you get to the thrift store and it's so deeply picked over there's nothing worth buying. None of that is a sign that things are good. America is a great place if you're rich not if you're poor
The problem is that in this cktnext, the cost of living has gone up significantly. But there's no equivalent increase in pay, so we see shit like the gig economy being more and more common.
Just because unemployment is low doesn't mean the jobs are good comment to the contrary the jobs are shit and you often need more than one just to survive
Yeah it’s just kind of like.. I don’t know what to call it other than pathetic. Everyone here postures themselves as being these great advocates for workers rights but seemingly that’s all contingent on a revolution that does nothing but give them more money for less work under the assumption that yunno, people like laborers and nurses and all the people with jobs that actually require continuous will just get fucked
I’d prefer top mgmt be removed and their wages be dispersed accordingly and have employees run the companies boards with equal representation, not investors.
There are plenty of employee owned businesses. You should work for one, or, better yet, make one.
That’s fine enough, but you realize people are still going to have to do 8~ hours of work a day under such a system, correct?
You guys realise most work is getting replaced by tech and automation FAR faster than new jobs are being created right? There isnt enough jobs in the 1st world to go around, and its only getting worse. 8hours only exists because we need to feed ourselves at this point, NOT because theres 8 hours of work that needs to be done
Okay, that’s fine too. And I agree with you there. But the only solutions there are:
Many of the disaffected computer programmers and office workers become nurses, builders, etc. Like, a large percentage of them.
We completely decide to stagnate as a society to approximately the year 2018.
Neither of these are great solutions.
Obviously in some far off future we can hypothetically get to the point where so much work is automated that work becomes more (but never completely) optional, but until we get to that point there are absolutely 8+ hours of work to be ton in a ton of fields.
Because - and this might shock you, civilization requires goods and services to be manufactured and performed.
I know it’s really easy to picture “everyone can just work a little less!” But remember… that’s not just you in your office tower. That’s nurses, and construction workers, and HVAC technicians, and builders, and farmers.
So you can have your vision where no one has to work 8 hours a day… but that also means housing will be even more scarce and expensive and the wait time for your mom to get into the ER goes from one hour to five…
It’s really really easy to say “we can just seize the means of production and everyone in the country will work less” when you don’t work in a vital industry. Things get a lot more complicated once you do.
If you want, say, a boat; its probably less work to build it from scratch than to 'earn' it for the overwhelming majority.
Which is wild: Even with modern tools, economies of scale, and specialized master craftspeople (or more likely; enslaved teenagers halfway across the world chained to a shop bench, similar effect here) its easier to DIY than go through 'society', unless the thing has been made deliberately difficult to DIY-which more and more things, especially repairs and retrofits, are.
It takes more work, more coordination, and orders of magnitude more time to get the government to raise your taxes to half assedly feed the hungry with food that was gonna get thrown away than it does to just find a patch of land nobody's watching and do it yourself from Fucking scratch. Every Fucking time.
All the big decisions, decisions about Commons, and decisions about the future, including habitability of the planet, are being made in what we can all agree is the dumbest fucking way possible, and regardless of our disagreements, 999/1000 random people off the street would find it difficult to make worse ones.
So, communist or individualist, insurrectionist or moderate, what kind of brain dead fucking moron would participate in this on purpose? Would follow the rules of this on purpose?
So, what the fuck is to be done?
P.S. If you say "vote" I swear I'll fucking scream.
Stand for election. Voting doesn't work unless people who aren't benefiting from the system stand for election. Join a party. Fake loyalty to that party. Fake moderate beliefs. Fake everything until you get selected to stand. Keep faking until you're elected. Once elected, wield whatever power you have for the good of all mankind. Prioritise the future, not the present.
Oh my god do you think nobody's Fucking tried this? It doesn't work. The elections are fake, my dude. Remember 2000? Remember 2016 dem primary? Remember 194...4(?)? 2020 dem primary?
And I live in California. My vote literally does not count.
Fuck your bullshit elections, I can't respect that shit
Gotta respect your choice of home Lemmy tho. I feel ashamed for not thinking to do the same.
The issue isn't lack of effort, it's lack of scope. If everyone whinging online signed up to a party today, started attending every single local meeting from tomorrow onwards, put themselves forward for roles within that party, actually put in time and effort to get selected, get elected, move up, keep moving up, keep aiming higher, we'd have a completely overhauled political system in 5 years.
Granted it might be harder in the States (UK here), but for us, we have 650 members of parliament. That means we only need 326 individuals, members of any party, out of nearly 70 million people, who will vote in favour of any policy that will benefit future generations, be it climate related, electoral reform, workers rights reform, anything beneficial, and the country and world would start to get better. Instead hopelessness is pervasive, very few people try and as you point out, if they do try, they find themselves alone. Well now, how about we all just agree to do it? There are thousands, possibly millions of people who are under 30 and sick of all of this crap and follow pages on reddit, Facebook, Instagram, tiktok, any of the random new social media that I stopped keeping up with once I turned 25, pages dedicated to 'antiwork', political reform, climate issues, the general decline of western society under late stage capitalism.
If even 10% got off their asses and actually did something about it, everything would be fine. If YOU get off your ass and do something, it will help. I'm literally an elected politician at the local level in the UK. I tell anyone who asks that I'm only involved because I hated the idea that the climate crisis was raging and nobody was doing anything, so I may as well do something myself. I have seen that things can change at the local level because I'm there, changing them. I'm one person. In this mid-sized town, there are probably hundreds or thousands of others who are also scared that nobody is doing anything, but they're lazy, or apathetic, or just not aware of the possibilities, so I'm alone for the moment.
You asked what anyone can do, but you're complaining that you don't like the answer. Live in California? Move. It's expensive as hell anyway, so move to Arkansas or Missouri. Pretend you're a republican. Infiltrate. Change that party from the inside. Or move to a smaller town. Join the town council. Then run for mayor. Then for governor. Just do something. That is the only answer. There is no quick fix, no easy path. The solution is simple - make sure every decision you make for at least the next 5 years will get you closer to your goal of attaining political power so you can change things. That is the only way anything will ever change. Left to the hands of the 'default' political classes, they won't do anything. They won't change anything. They have it easier than you. They have connections at prestigious universities, they have more money, they have better access to internships and people of influence. Tough luck, but that isn't an excuse for you not to try. You will be alone at the start. Be the example. Bring people with you. Constantly encourage anyone you know who feels the same as you to get involved. Things can be changed for the better, but the first step is on you. Stop waiting for other people to make things better.
So I'm in the united states. The second (or third) major step towards fascism... Well here's how I remember it:
It was the year 2000, first election I was remotely politically conscious for. I, uh, didn't vote. Had opinions tho.
So there was this fascist piece of shit-his dad was a former CIA director, his grandpa was point man for a failed fascist coup (thank you smedley butler. Not that I knew about this at the time, being a literal child), and the guy running against him was kind of a bland milquetoast wonk-but his credentials and rep were, in retrospect, pretty perfect. Conscious and cautious about global warming, knew about the internet, kind of all the right shit for the moment.
So when the fascist piece of shit took office, everyone gave my mom shit, because she voted for a third party and allowed it to happen. Nevermind that we live(d) in CA, where votes in federal elections are between like 1/5th and 1/500th of a full citizen, and the electoral votes for CA still went to the bullshit wonk. She caught shit for years. And it kind of confused me.
Because here's the thing; the bland milquetoast wonk won the election. I don't mean "he won the popular vote; the electoral college is bullshit" (although he did and it is) but he won in college votes too. He won by every metric.
Nobody cared. Because elections don't count. They're not real, and you will never win begging. It was entirely a wasted effort. The aristocracy just appointed the guy they wanted. Don't get me started on 2008, the first one I did vote in, and how that bastard betrayed every single fucking thing he promised.
You tell me to get off my ass and do something, have you ever actually done anything in your life? I don't mean sucking some aristocrat's dick, so you can beg them for scraps later, that aren't worth 1/10 of the effort you spent doing the lobbying, much less getting them their throne, but actually fixing building solving something with your own fucking hands abd organizational capacity?
Ever? Or are you so obsessesed with being in a fucked up machine you can't even see what it's for, what its doing, and what purpose you serve within it?
When you see someone dying on the street between five buildings, all of them with '(residential) for rent' signs on them so old they're barely legible, what's your first thought? Do you think every politician doesn't fucking know? Is your first thought to beg all the people who are profiting off this poor fuckers death? This isnt a hypothetical BTW, I saw this enough times this week that I straight up stopped fucking counting. So what should I have done, according to you?
If everyone whinging online signed up to a party today, started attending every single local meeting from tomorrow onwards, put themselves forward for roles within that party, actually put in time and effort to get selected, get elected, move up, keep moving up, keep aiming higher, we’d have a completely overhauled political system in 5 years.
yes, if the system was built for people this would work. Currently it's built for people with money and incumbency. The new guy in the race is going to need one hell of a financial backing to get his name out there. Do you think they just mail shit to people for free?
Thank you! It's so refreshing to see someone actually taking action and doing something.
That constant stream of fingerpointing with the expectation that others need to do it, is just the prime form of entitlement.
I hope people follow your role model and start really doing something!
stop waiting for other people yo make things better
But also
beg the fuckers who ruined everything and the system designed to turn your horrified screams into complicit babble to make it better
I'm gonna try the first, which is what I said, rather than the second, which you seem to favor.
That's one tac. More in line with the Great Man theory of history. If I had to guess I'd say we have hundreds of people in politics who are exactly like this. And it's maybe a part of making things better.
But those people will be powerless to do anything until collective and direct action gives them the political capital to point out in a room full of chuds, "look we've got to give them something."
This is just to say, don't wait for your heroes to save the day for you. Even if they're there, dormant, they need your action to do anything.
You act like walking into your masters house and politely asking, even with friends, is gonna get you jack shit.
But if he doesnt see you as human (amd the oligarchs dont) If you don't put a gun in his mouth, it means nothing. At that point, why not just clean off the ceiling and do the thing you were asking permission to do (because its not like they actually do anything) anyway.
I am building a wooden boat right now, and this isn't true. I'm about $1500 in on a Bolger Cartopper, which is 10'6" with 4' beam.
Okay maybe boats were a bad example. I probably should have used something I know about, but that's all shit everyone thinks they can't do.
Still, compare the effort you put in, keep in mind you're being gouged on materials (because you're being gouged on everything), and figure out how many hours at minimum wage to buy the sameish quality.
Boats are weird. I've looked at buying kit from CLC to build a 15' Pocketship: about $12,000 US. Buying a used one, a couple years old? $15k.
Meanwhile, my local yacht club had a 26' 1969 Westerly Centaur one step away from being crushed. Prior owner stopped paying storage fees and refused further contact, so the club put a lien on it. I picked it up cheap, $500. Nobody bothered cutting the lock off the companionway; it was chock full of tools and supplies the prior owner was using to refit it.
I've dropped some cash into finishing the refit, but nowhere near what I would have spent on a 15' Pocketship, and I've got a much more capable boat. There are deals out there.
Very much the point. Building a boat is labor intensive. The materials are relatively inexpensive, compared to the time invested in building. The person selling that used Pocketship was likely the builder, and sees value in their time spent building it.
That ~50 year old Westerly? That labor is long gone. The previous owner did invest his time in a partial refit, but relinquished his interest when he stopped paying storage fees and let a lien be placed on it. The club has no time invested, just the lost storage fees, but would rather minimize future loss; an abandoned boat takes up space that would otherwise be generating revenue for them. The club members (nearly all power boaters) see little value in the boat itself. Any revenue gained from scrapping it would likely exceed the cost to scrap the fiberglass hull (again, a labor intensive process).
She really is a cool boat, though. I'm having a great time completing the refit, and I don't see my labor invested as lost when I'm enjoying the process as much as I am.
But generally things are made to not be durable, excess commodities are destroyed(at a cost, they pay to destroy them), and vintage goods are at a premium.
Yes exceptions exist, but this is a known exploit, mostly patched.
So I'm extra glad you found this. And I meant it when I said 'fun project'. I do love me one of those.
Slightly less obnoxious, but equally ineffective; vote with your hands, your eyes, your feet. Don't let them steal your labor your attention your time your anything. You can be passive and hold a strike. You van be active and strike back. I think a mix of both would be a lot more effective than just one.
But whatever you do, if its not just useless theatrical bullshit (which isn't to say all theatrical bullshit is useless; just the useless kinds) its going to be illegal, and will face state retribution, even if its explicitly legal and protected in your local constitution.
Slightly less obnoxious, but equally ineffective; vote with your hands, your eyes, your feet. Don’t let them steal your labor your attention your time your anything. You can be passive and hold a strike. You van be active and strike back. I think a mix of both would be a lot more effective than just one.
You can also strike without striking. There's a huge fuss over "quiet quitting"/"work to rule", where people are striking by only doing exactly what they're paid for, rather than adding in the extra that has become the norm. They're not adding extra hours or pulling extra duties.
When I say 'strike back' the labor actions that come to mind all involve machine guns.
Further, this is one case where decidedly not voting (to borrow the analogy) would have an impact.
Reminds me of the short story Enough, by William Ledbetter that I just read.
See also https://bdsmovement.net/ for a practical, targeted example.
For whoever thinks not voting will be any form of good decision. Ask yourself this question.
How can someone distinguish a not vote because your fine with how things are from a not vote out of protest?
idk maybe ask the people that run the fucking electorate why there isn't a "fuck you this shit sucks" option.
Definitely not what I meant. My example would be more like refusing to pay taxes in protest.
Except thankfully it's not illegal to refuse to give money to corporations, just very difficult.
While I did misunderstood the goal of your comment, sry for that, it still holds some truth and might be applied concept wise to what you meant.
Refusing to pay taxes is, as much as refusing to vote politically, a refuse to participate. Why should someone get a say in something that they refuse to be a part of?
We are on the same side, even if it's not directly obvious. You showed that with you second point. By voting with you wallet for corporations that fulfill your values, you choose to give them more power over other corporations that don't.
The same concept applies to voting politically. You give your vote to a party that fulfills your values over a party that doesn't.
I the real world not paying taxes is not an option, as much as it's not an option to not spend any money on any corporation, if your part of the society. We are able to choose in a given context, that for sure has its limitations.
Let's say your not happy with the possible options that you can vote for, be it a financial or a political vote, you are free to fill the niche you think is missing. Start being active politically or economically and if there are more people that think like you and act according to this, things can change.
But if nobody does this, things will definitely move in the direction of the values from people that do the things above.
There is the famous phrase. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
I agree with the general sentiment but it's almost always much more work and money to build something from scratch, especially a boat.
it's more work, but you can absolutely do it for less money. You need to have a realistic scope and be able to meet your own needs, and nothing more. You probably don't need the shit that exists in a suburban home for example. So don't build one. Build something to specifically serve you.
It's a little different for boats naturally, but that was just an example.
I bought a 12 year old thinkpad laptop to be used as my daily driver laptop. It's not fast, it's not small, it's not light, but it's a fucking trooper of a machine, and i love it. It does exactly what i need a machine to do. And all in, including the screen upgrade which i got from another used machine i'm probably about 200 dollars in. And have two batteries that i managed to get from either machine. Did i get lucky? sure, unrealistically lucky? No, i was just eyeing ebay every now and then. And i have a spare parts machine.
My point is it fucking should be, with modern tech and skilled specialists and economies of scale, but rarely actually is.
That all that shit isn't for us, we do not see the benefit of it.
Like in what case? Even just in terms of material and ignoring the cost of one's own time and the tools required, it's usually cheaper to buy.
There is legit only a few things where it makes sense from an economic point of view to make on your own. Most hobby craftsman don't do it for the money. There's something to be said about quality but that takes practice and hence, more money.
idk man, i've found it vastly cheaper to buy lumber and build tables from that lumber, which are going to be vastly more durable than anything you can buy for that price.
You do need tools of course, but you might know someone that has some, or you can simply get into wood working, and start saving more money. They'll pay for themselves eventually.
PCs? You can often build those specifically to your needs, much cheaper than what can be found on the existing market. Especially for servers. Sure i spent 600 dollars on 36 TB of hard drives. How expensive is 18TB of cloud storage over the period of 5 years? (you might say 36TB* actually, but it's redundant for backup purposes. Trust me, it's worth it.)
this is genuinely my plan. Work in trades to pick up a skill (and hopefully make a decent bit of coin) buy some land, and build it out. Spend as little as possible, and enjoy it as much as possible.
I feel like it's viable. Maybe i'm hopeful, idk. We'll see.
I don't want to criticize that, it soubds pretty nice, but that's nowhere near as radical as I was thinking.
Plus, remember; there is no outside, walled gardens do not endure, thermodynamics apply, and you cannot lifeboat the coming catastrophes.
it's certainly not radical, i agree with that. Personally i just don't really care about others. So it's not like it would really bother me one way or the other.
I do have foundational beliefs on a lot of this shit, but if i don't have to think about it, then i won't, and i see no other reason others couldn't follow in suit.
reason others couldn't follow suit
It can look like there's an outside, but that's a lie our masters tell, so people who're fed up walk away instead of fighting back, violently or otherwise.
i don't consider it outside, i consider it to be the corner of a large room with a lot of people in it. But that corner just so happens to have very few people in it.
Til it doesn't. Good luck, I guess. Could stand your help to really fix shit though.
i'll be around, it's not that i won't, it just depends on how important it is to me really. If we're talking fundamental individual freedoms, i'll be there.
Vote and be engaged. Nothing else you do alone will be effective, including being upset about it.
Copy pasting:
So I’m in the united states. The second (or third) major step towards fascism… Well here’s how I remember it:
It was the year 2000, first election I was remotely politically conscious for. I, uh, didn’t vote. Had opinions tho.
So there was this fascist piece of shit-his dad was a former CIA director, his grandpa was point man for a failed fascist coup (thank you smedley butler. Not that I knew about this at the time, being a literal child), and the guy running against him was kind of a bland milquetoast wonk-but his credentials and rep were, in retrospect, pretty perfect. Conscious and cautious about global warming, knew about the internet, kind of all the right shit for the moment.
So when the fascist piece of shit took office, everyone gave my mom shit, because she voted for a third party and allowed it to happen. Nevermind that we live(d) in CA, where votes in federal elections are between like 1/5th and 1/500th of a full citizen, and the electoral votes for CA still went to the bullshit wonk. She caught shit for years. And it kind of confused me.
Because here’s the thing; the bland milquetoast wonk won the election. I don’t mean “he won the popular vote; the electoral college is bullshit” (although he did and it is) but he won in college votes too. He won by every metric.
Nobody cared. Because elections don’t count. They’re not real, and you will never win begging. It was entirely a wasted effort. The aristocracy just appointed the guy they wanted. Don’t get me started on 2008, the first one I did vote in, and how that bastard betrayed every single fucking thing he promised.
You tell me to get off my ass and do something, have you ever actually done anything in your life? I don’t mean sucking some aristocrat’s dick, so you can beg them for scraps later, that aren’t worth 1/10 of the effort you spent doing the lobbying, much less getting them their throne, but actually fixing building solving something with your own fucking hands abd organizational capacity?
Ever? Or are you so obsessesed with being in a fucked up machine you can’t even see what it’s for, what its doing, and what purpose you serve within it?
When you see someone dying on the street between five buildings, all of them with ‘(residential) for rent’ signs on them so old they’re barely legible, what’s your first thought? Do you think every politician doesn’t fucking know? Is your first thought to beg all the people who are profiting off this poor fuckers death? This isnt a hypothetical BTW, I saw this enough times this week that I straight up stopped fucking counting. So what should I have done, according to you?
Yes, don't try to fix it all alone. Organize. Change. But the systems that allowed these Fucking oligarch shit stains to ruin it so bad? The 'good' people when they do take the reins in a system where their only levers are 'taxes' and (ratcheted)'cops'? What century are we on of prison reform? 2? 10? I know it's been nonstop since before the steam engine. Still seems pretty bad.
Direct action doesn't mean 'go it alone'. Bring your friends. Collab with strangers. Make new friends. Actual democracy can actually be pretty fucking fun, but it gets a lot sweatier.
Definitely me. I just went several months interviewing and when they asked what my financial requirements were, I started saying I’d just like to be able to buy a house with my masters degree and 15 years experience.
Usually got a genuine laugh
They laughed not because your expectations were laughable, but because they expected you to state a dollar range, therefore when you made a blunt relatable reply, it had a comedic effect. Their laughter was a compliment of your wit.
I cannot buy healthy, tasty, food. I can work less hours, buy ingredients in the marker and make that food.
I will never be able to buy a house, never. Even saving over half my income by living in shit neighborhoods. The cost of houses goes up too fast. Even after investing, and getting good returns, on the little I managed to save, it is not enough.
So working a little less, and having healthy food it is.
After understanding the ongoing ecological collapse, I don't care much about a house anymore, rich or poor, we are all dead in less than 10 years anyway.
If you can, work less, play more. And I actually love what I do at work, but fuck that scam.
Every system is going down faster than expected. Food sources are already taking hits.
This will accelerate exponentially.
Unless we get unlikely, easily sacked, breakthrough energy source quickly or fucking aliens come down and save us, we are doomed.
Climate change was stoppable around 1980, the worst of it was preventable around 2000, now? We may survive if we put our resources toward adaption. Which we don't, and cannot unless some magic happens.
So unless you believe in fairies, don't bring children cus they won't grow old. If you do believe in fairies, you are too delusional to raise children.
It's exponential but you and I will still live our full lives, it's just going to get incredibly fucked up
It's not like one day everyone will die, first will be third world countries most affected by climate
We don't, scientifically, know which one of us is right. We can only go based on gut feeling and anecdotes.
My job is in bioinformatics, from the computational side. The measurements we took were assumed to be wrong due to how far they were out of the expected. Sadly, the equipment did not malfunction, the temperature of the environments we measured shifted drastically causing a reduction in community complexity.
My fun-time is partially in small scale farming, while some of my family members work full time in the agriculture. I've seen both small scale collapse, meaning a tree or a bush die from extreme weather. Members of my family now drink more, as they witnessed fields ruined in a few hours. Hail out of session, a once in a hundred years wind that blew day after day for a week, extreme cold (for the region), extended dry spells in winters with floods between. Each one of those events reduced the agricultural output of a given area to zero for that season.
I live in a western country, we have no technology to stop that and it will become more frequent and global. We have no technology to save our own food supply.
We know how to grow food in building. If we have energy to replace the sun. We don't. So we are going the route of food collapse, leading to population collapse, extinction will follow a few years later.
No need to be ashamed. You’re doing a great job creating shareholder value. Just keep your head down and make doo with the scraps you’re given. You’ve realized that it’s not possible for this earth to provide 8 billion people with affluence and fulfilment. Your sacrifice is making a small percentage of people very happy. Keep up the good work.
Move where? I can move to a cheaper country, buy a house and push a local down the economical ladder. Or stay and stay in contact with people I love.
Grade schoolers are going to get called into the principal's office for not hitting their KPI targets.
Hasn't that always been a thing though? Isn't that essentially what report cards are?
This points out why the idea that boomers (as a whole) caused many of our modern problems upsets me
I sincerely doubt you voted for the situation you're in now
This in-fighting and blaming does nothing but detract from the real issue of who's doing this to us (spoiler alert: it's the politicians and it always has been)
Yeah some dude has a failed acting career, and now I have to hope my for profit insurance will cover a doctor or I'll be eating ramen for the rest of my life
"failed acting career" is apparently ending up the chair of the Screen Actors Guild, parlaying that into Governor of California and then the presidency, after being a known talent in the 50s.
Failed acting career applies to most of the current online right wing pundits spewing nonsense.
It’s not the politicians, they’re bought out for cheap, a low rung facilitator. A few tens of thousands is all the lobbying you need to own them.
It’s the corporations and capitalists who are to blame.
It's okay. Soon AI will take over our jobs and we won't have to work anymore. But we won't have wages either. So no food. No shelter. No clothes. No future.
Win-win.
Recommend watching this gem; onion future news broadcast https://youtu.be/iKC21wDarBo
And the moneyed and political class will continue this late stage capitalism trend by reducing any "upward mobility" opportunities.
Named generations don't exist and function as a working class divider. They're used so we squabble with each other and not those in power who force us all work more for less money. We all have to deal with their nonsense in unison.
I'm torn on my response.
Enjoying all the benefits and then trying to call for unity with those who havent urks me.
That said, I do enjoy a small handful of privileges over my peers, which I have not actively relinquished, and take a similar tone on other topics, because I only have my words of dissent at the the tilted scales, but I also won't turn down a free lunch.
Fuck it. Cheers mate.
Then there’s my boss who gets fined by health and safety and told to improve things and make it safer and guess what he doesn’t do anything about it.
Then if you have a problem they don’t care but expect you to listen to them all the time, it’s stupid and the problem is you can’t easily go get another job because all the other jobs require a stupid amount of qualifications that don’t really relate to what they are offering in anyway shape or form.
To put it simply I hate the fact that my work place has only 2 staff members that aren’t part of the family who own the business, me and one other person, we get orders that we have to complete and the boss keeps getting more and more people to order and yet there is 2 people doing all the work whilst the machines we use are ancient and are malfunctioning half the time and the boss is penny pinching and not fixing or replacing them and then has the audacity to tell us that we aren’t working fast enough.
So yeah this world is going to shit
the problem is you can’t easily go get another job because all the other jobs require a stupid amount of qualifications that don’t really relate to what they are offering in anyway shape or form.
Job postings are a wishlist for an ideal candidate. Only some of the stuff is actually required, For the rest, it varies based on how scarce people able and willing to work in that field are.
To see through the fog, you have to try reaching out. Either apply at places or try to build yourself a network. Sadly I'm not great at it myself. Alternatively, if you have the time and inclination to learn new skills, that's a thing you can do.
the very fucking concept of building a network makes me think violent thoughts.
"hey wouldn't it be funny if we put this job thing behind like 12 layers of people knowing people who know people because i think that would be funny"
Yeah I get that, and it’s just finding the time to get another qualification whilst still maintaining a decent income, I mean some job postings are quite straight to the point in that they literally want you to have about 100 different things all to get in
YAY WORKING 6 DAY WEEKS AT 2ND SHIFT I LOVE NEVER BEING ABLE TO GO OUT AND DO SHIT LIKE KEEP MY FRIENDS AND BEING ABLE TO VISIT MY MOM AND DAD BUT THE COMPANY REEEEEEEEAAAAALLLLLLLY NEEDS ME TO BE THERE SO TGE CEO OF ONE OF THE KARGEST COMPANIES IN THE WORLD CAN BUY THEIR 23RD BEACH MANSION THEYLL NEVER USE I FUCKING HATE THIS WORLD
The older GenX are voting to destroy the economy right along with the Boomers. Everyone under 55 is fucked at this point unless you are a trust fund baby or managed to get a government job with a pension.
Okay, I can't actually get work at the moment, I've ended up in the "precariat" despite my MSc because I didn't understand what would be helpful in the labour market when I was younger. Didn't have a supportive family, to make something of an understatement. So my question is, shall I kill myself? I've worked very hard in physical jobs so it's not laziness, the labour market is just very cruel and is happy to kill me.
Deaths of despair, you know? I just want something productive to do that doesn't destroy my mind and body and actually pays a proper living wage. I feel like I've got a lot to offer but I'm not able to work the system like some people. Or even navigate it.
Most everyone has been to this point some time in their life. The question is how you handle the answer.
The world is cruel and doesn't care. That's why YOU must care for yourself, not kill yourself.
My suggestion for you is to take stock of all that you have to offer and then list what you like. Interests, hobbies, skills, knowledge (like can you do your own taxes or expert at filling out student loan forms, you can do construction or plumbing, etc.). Anything goes.
Now see what lines up from column A and column B and write down a list of jobs that needs/uses those things. Now you know what kind of work you can do and won't hate.
Next list what you like and dislike about your personality. Then, do the same for everyone else. You should see a pattern (i.e. I like intelligent conversations/ I dislike loud people) of things that go hand in hand. Like the loudest person in a room is usually the dumbest too.
Anyway, once you know all these things, you should be able to tell if a job is for you and if the people you'll be working with are a match.
The key is to like what you do and the people you do it with. The money will eventually come if you don't hate going to work or the people you work with. At the very least, your life won't suck. Also, never stop looking for a better job or opportunity.
A perfect job doesn't exist (unless you are your own boss) and the good ones don't always stay that way. Adjust to that reality and always be looking ahead. That is how you navigate/work the system. I am a sore loser and never back down so letting the system win is not an option. It shouldn't be for you either.
I completely understand. I'm sorry amigo. Do you think maybe some volunteer work would be an idea at least to feel productive?
I've done so much work for no pay in my life I think I need to swear off it, but in principle yes, volunteer work is not a bad thing.
Yes in that respect it would be good, maybe I should consider it again. It's silly though, if that work needs doing maybe it deserves a wage.
i'm reading your comments and i don't have an answer for you. you sound really discouraged. i hope you will find a reason to stick around, and i hope it gets better for you soon. ❤️
You die eventually anyways. What's the rush?
You can't predict the future, you are not a far seer, you are not a fortune teller. You don't know if life gets better or not. The only way to find out is to keep hanging on.
There will be more jobs. Or we march in the streets. Don't let the capitalists win. They want people to take the easy way out. Every time they see an article about working class suicides they smile because it means nobody will quit their jobs just for the abuse.
If I ever end up killing myself over capitalism, I’m going to take out a CEO/rich bastard with me or die trying.
now, i'm not saying you should kill yourself, but in the way i view suicide, and in the way that society tends to exist as a functionalist unit.
I think there is a point where suicide does actually productively benefit society. But that's only under a very specific set of circumstances. It begins with being involved with a group of people fairly intimately, such that you are important to them. Since most people view suicide as an individualistic failing rather than a societal one (seriously, fuck you if you think this) they will inevitably be more upset that you killed yourself, rather than the fact that you were pushed to suicide. (really fucking weird take on that concept btw, can we stop doing that?)
If you exist around a group of people that believes that suicide is a societal failing, and can appropriately reflect on it in a manner to inflict societal change. Then perhaps there is a benefit to committing. The problem is, you will almost never find anybody that thinks like this, aside from me, and maybe like 5 other people. Most of which probably aren't here right now.
Suicide is a weird scenario when looked at through the social context of life. It can be a tool of change under very specific circumstances. But it also be the bearer of it's own downfall, shielding the truth behind it's grim exterior without people realizing what lies behind.
I've always found it weird how humans tend to have a particularly clocked response to suicidal ideation. Maybe I'm just too autistic or something, but it's always confused me. I have an appreciation for people who will entertain my thoughts, i find it also helps me to comprehend certain concepts better.
and for some parting rambles, it seems rather disrespectful to the individual to consider suicide an "individualistic failure" doesn't it? Isn't it weird how we always look at these scenarios as tragedies, that never should've happened "if only they were doing better" we think. Rather than actually being concerned about them as a collective. I realize the difficulty of doing this, it may be an impossible task in fact, i don't deny it. But i think it's a productive way of thinking about this scenario.
And some boards of canada as a parting message. Give it a listen, or don't, i'm not telling you what to do. just giving you some information.
At least I learned something from this article. Highfalutin is a word in the English language.
Highfalutin
highfalutin /hī″fə-loo͞t′n/
adjective Pompous or pretentious. Affectedly genteel; pretentious; haughty; snobbish. Similar: grandiosehifalutinhoity-toityla-di-da Self-important, pompous; arrogant or egotistical; tending to show off or hold oneself in unduly high regard. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition •
