thesmokingman

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I love gen-Z's attitude towards corporate culture ( lemmy.world )

i recently lost my job and it’s horrible being in the ‘unemployed’ class – you’re made to feel worthless, you have to take advice from people, perfectly well meaning of course, that are basically encouragement on digging your own grave - i love being in the position where i have to do some fake elizabethian courting...

thesmokingman ,

How Women Rise touches on this to an extent. With just a little bit of editorializing,

  • What do you want to do? Have interesting experiences and spend time with your close ones? Work is a necessary means to that end in probably any system to provide the resources you need. Your perspective stops being “fuck I gotta go make widgets for a bit” and becomes “making widgets helps me achieve my goal of doing cool shit.” This also changes the discourse to “how do we the widget process better for people just trying to do cool shit” and “Is making these widgets the best way for me to do cool shit?” You’re not telling the widget maker you’re perfect for this role, you’re excited about this role because of its ability to help you achieve your goals. Note that goals are not just capitalism. Several of my goals revolve around me being a better person and a better partner.
  • Networking specifically is only gross if you view as taking advantage of other people. If you shift your perspective to “we all gotta work together so let’s figure out better ways to do that” networking becomes a conversation about how I can achieve my goals while helping you achieve yours and is only gross if I’m not going to help you achieve yours. Sometimes helping you achieve your goals is just being around until you need something from me, even if I’m getting things from you the whole time. As a mentor, most of what I get out of networking is practicing teaching. I give a lot more than I get from a certain perspective. Some day I might need help and the people I’ve mentored will hopefully be willing to pitch in.

There’s no world where the things you have to do to survive make you happy all of the time. Ask any neurodivergent person with executive dysfunction about necessary chores. There’s also no world where you’re happy all the time even with a perspective shift. There is a world where we recognize that we all have to do things to get along. If we’re honest about that from the start, the hiring conversations get better.

thesmokingman ,

I feel like you missed that this is on a job application, not an offer letter. Unless I’m actually hired and get paid by you, you aren’t going to send me tax documents so you don’t need my address.

thesmokingman ,

In the US this is a web search or two away. I’d assume a majority of other places have similar setups from phone companies, public records, and data brokers.

thesmokingman ,

Quoting my response from elsewhere:

… FAANG. Hiring 500 engineers and bragging about it something you can do when you’re just interested in shareholder value not customer experience.

I wouldn’t hire the guy in the article because I haven’t seen strong candidates come from FAANG and I’ve been very happy to lose the people I did to FAANG because they weren’t good engineers, they just knew how to leetcode and tunnel vision trivia.

thesmokingman ,

Have you documented your setup? I’d be curious to learn more

thesmokingman ,

YNAB pulls in most transactions programmatically if you connect accounts. Some accounts don’t sync (eg Apple) and other accounts will only do an initial sync (most 401ks and loan accounts). I think the sync restrictions are a factor of the accounts themselves and not YNAB; I’d love to know if I’m wrong there.

YNAB does not categorize things for you. It’s a different approach where you define money buckets, assign funds to the buckets, and categorize transactions into those buckets. I moved over when Mint got acquired because fuck Intuit and I haven’t really put a ton of time into trying to understand the different paradigm, so I’m not sure I’m explaining it properly. I didn’t use YNAB before because the paradigm isn’t how I’m used to thinking about my spend.

Don’t start the trial unless you’ve got time to think about setting up your buckets and spending targets. Or, if you just want to test the import because you’ll make time later to set it up, it’s probably worth the trial. There is a “family” plan that allows an account owner to share things; I think that’s worth it if you’ve got some people you share financial info with who also budget and you want to keep costs down.

thesmokingman ,

Doesn’t matter. They have a massive lobbying arm that keeps the US government from making taxes automatic. Unless that lobbying goes away (or politicians start caring about constituents which is much less likely), Intuit will continue making money hand-over-fist from tax software that it can use to fund other dumb shit like acquiring then closing Mint.

SensualSass , to Work Reform
@SensualSass@slippy.xyz avatar

Do you think potential candidates should be reimbursed in some form for taking assessments that are required by the employer in order to be considered for employment?

Also, should this be available for only job candidates who are not considered for the position?

Or should it go for every job candidate, even the ones that get the position?

Thanks for reading and being your most precious and sensual self ❤️.

@workreform
@lemmy.world

thesmokingman ,

I am comfortable with reasonable interview lengths where I gain something. I learn lots from most interviews and I always get practice. That gives me value. Take home problems that don’t interest me? Won’t do it unless I’m paid because it’s suddenly one-sided. I gain value from conversations. Drug tests? I’ve been able to aim my pee since toddler years so I gain nothing of value there. Other things that do not involve a conversation between me and someone meaningful at the company I work at? No. Pay me.

This attitude has cost me a few job opportunities for sure. It’s also gotten me out of a few things here and there for jobs I got. And for the right opportunity I’ll bend things a bit.

thesmokingman ,

Having come out of the music scene in that part of the US, I vehemently disagree. There used to be some really cool weird shit. That’s been displaced now and the slogan has been co-opted, sure, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t rad as fuck a couple of decades ago.

thesmokingman ,

In the US, commutes aren’t covered and that’s part of law. However, the FLSA was passed in the 30s and the Portal-to-Portal Act was passed in the 40s so it’s arguably time to reevaluate.

As pro labor as I am, I do think it’s reasonable to put some cap on commute times so that commuters can’t abuse it. The hard part is coming up with a good one. You can’t give a max time without some idea of things like housing, public transportation, commute costs, etc. because then employers could abuse it by setting up offices away from everything or setting the radius too low.

A completely different problem for paid commutes is that suddenly it becomes work time. When I had a shit job doing pool inspections, the city controlled my time in the car from the office to the pools and back. The city did not control my time commuting. If the company is paying me for my commute, I’m on the clock, which means they can reasonably ask me to do things like not listen to my podcasts or take specific routes. If I’m on public transport, they can reasonably ask me to do work because I’m being paid. My solution here is working from home.

thesmokingman ,

Everything I said applies to office work.

As a manager with a limited budget that I want to stretch as much as possible, I need to limit the amount of it I spend paying for commutes. At the same time, I need to make sure my team is protected from the company abusing a commute cap.

Similarly, if I’m paying for an employee’s commute, I’d like to get some value out of that. That’s money out of my budget I’m spending for no appreciable gains unless they’re producing. I can build work that’s doable on a train or a bus.

Of course, all of this is solved by WFH as I said at the end of my previous post.

thesmokingman ,

If I’m actually onsite, my employer has tremendous control over that. They can play the music they want and ban headphones. They can put a bunch of informational literature all over the bathrooms (this is a thing Google does/did). If I start getting paid for the commute, suddenly my employer has the ability to start controlling that.

You and I agree that commute should be paid. What I think you’re lacking right now is my point about the commute being controlled. If it’s paid, it can be controlled, and that’s something I’m personally not comfortable with.

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