So I saw this xweet the other day and it gave me some food for thought. Bit of a paradigm shift. The basic message is “you shouldn’t have to ask your wife what needs to be done. You should already know and just do it.” You shouldn’t ask for what’s on her plate. You should know what’s on the plate, then take it off. You share the plate after all. And if you’re not, you’re using weaponized incompetence. I don’t think this statement is necessarily true. I think it can be used as such. But I consider weaponized incompetence to be closer to this. As you can see, Bart is…
-
-
Why I Don’t Take Vacation
Planet Money recently ran a podcast about why Americans don’t take more days off from work. In fact, even if they had as many government-required days off as Europe or South America, they wouldn’t take it. Last year, Americans left $65 billion dollars worth of vacation on the table. Just forfeited it. And the funny part is Planet Money couldn’t find a real answer why America is such an outlier when it comes to this. No one seems to know why Americans like to keep working, but I know that I’m one of them. And so are my workmates. At my job, December becomes a kind of “non-month” because everyone…
-
When the Offices Closed…
So on January 31st, my office will be officially closed and I’ll be in a permanent working-from-home situation. I’ve been working from home since March 2020, but now it’s permanent. Covid was the boost my company needed to go digital-only. Which makes some sense–it’s a big company but with little offices all over the world. A large percentage of my co-workers are in different places and had to be communicated with over e-mail or phone anyway. I only had a month in my new job before I was relocated. But I’m surprisingly sad that I won’t be going back to it. All the signs say I shouldn’t miss it. There…
-
Them Deck Chairs Ain’t Gonna Arrange Themselves
So I’ve noticed something at the last few companies I’ve worked at, including this one. And it seems be correlated with this new movement toward “agile” methodology. “Agile” is just one of the many “get work done” formulas companies adopt to get deliverables out the door faster. It’s a grand tradition–every few years there’s some new approach, usually peddled by think tank snake oil salesmen, promising to “more, faster, and better”. They’re like diet fads, and just as effective. You only ever hear “agile” and “waterfall”. Sometimes “kanban” and “scrum” are thrown around, but it’s all Agile. Or at least it tries to be. See, the thing is, all I…
-
American Factory and Unions
So before I started my new job, I watched American Factory on Netflix, just to get myself in the mindset for the working world (i.e. becoming a corporate drone again, as opposed to a stay-at-home slob*). It was more objective than most documentaries I see. (I kinda got soured on them because I’ve seen so many that have a point they want to reach, then manipulate what you see to prove that point.) But this one shows the good and the bad of an American glass factory bought and run by a Chinese CEO. They call him the “chairman” and he comes in and asks for a $35,000 garage door…
-
Job References Rant
One thing I didn’t talk about in my rant about job-searching was references. These are the stupidest, most antiquated, most useless pieces of the process and they should be eliminated. Point number one: Most companies don’t even serve as a reference anymore. They have policies that say all they can do is confirm the terms of employment and job title. That’s information you can get from the government. This is especially prevalent in the big companies, where liability rules all. They don’t want to get sued because some employee had beef with another. Point number two: everyone moves on. I have one reference from every place I’ve been employed. I’m…
-
Back Into the Work Grind
I’ve got to tell you, I’m afraid of working again. Biggest problem? Being bored. In my last job I had looooong stretches of just doing nothing, because of the way they assigned work. They were a big corporation that set a firm workload for every two week sprint and nothing beyond that. No backlog, no tech debt, because it was a tightly controlled financial industry. No unapproved work would pass their gullet for fear of breaking something else. So that meant I got one task assigned to me every two weeks and nothing else. I would usually get done with it in a day. Sure there would be some maintenance…
-
How Robert Half Screwed Me Over
So now that I have a real job again (I’ve verified it–I’m sitting in the seat and everything) I feel comfortable enough explaining how I got into this position in the first place. Some background: in my last position, I was hired for Robert Half’s “Salaried Professional Services” program. Basically a contractor, but I was a salaried employee, so I got health insurance and didn’t have to worry about an hourly rate. It all started on a Friday. Robert Half called me to let me know they’d be looking for new opportunities for me since my current assignment was ending. That was news to me. In fact, I thought they…
-
Now I Know Why They Call Them Headhunters
Never sign up for more than one job site. At least don’t make your resume public. Because your cell phone will get racked by fucking outsourced recruiters who don’t give shit one about your needs as a job-seeker. They just throw everything at everything and pray. Love that shotgun technique. And none of them are from companies I applied for. I don’t even need to know what variation of “eInfoTechSysPartnersTalent” they’re from. I know where they’re from because they all have the same four features. They’re always Indian. Always. I have never gotten a call from a white man. The caller ID says they’re from some out-of-state city, usually coastal.…
-
Why is it so difficult just to get a cubicle?
So in trying to find a new job that I like, has good benefits, and where I fit in, I keep seeing that so many of these work environments just look like crap for personal work habits. How hard is it to make a cubicle? I’ve seen so many computers lined up like they were on sale. I’ve seen offices that have so little space, employees need to use a meeting room for lunch. So many places I’ve interviewed at are just tables or pods or some kind of communal space. Which I hate–they make everything look like a sweatshop. How special do you make your employees feel when you…
