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Comment by physcab | Hacker News Reader

I think there’s also something else at play. Most of my friends also don’t believe for a second that a corporation has their best interests at heart. It’s not just promotions — it’s work life balance, it’s top-down decision making and political empire building, re-orgs every 4-6 months. The growth at all costs style of building companies chews employees up and spits them out.

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Absolutely. Even if you love where you work, the corporation is always going to look out for itself first and foremost. It’s a lesson that can be especially hard to learn if you’re an early employee that grows or at a startup that claims to be different, but as cynical as it may be, the sooner workers realize that they are expendable, the better.

I would also add that it’s not just corporations. A startup that goes from 9 to 300 people in your tenure doesn’t have your best interest at heart either. Before going to corporate America, I put my health, relationships, and personal life aside in place of the places I worked. For whatever reason, I thought I needed to do that and I thought it would pay off.

Narrator: it didn’t.

Now, that’s on me. My employers didn’t force that on me and my inability to say “no” is my fault, not theirs. But it taught me that I’m never not taking vacation ever again. I’m never making two connections to save the company $200 on a flight ever again (when others don’t and I’d still be in budget). I’m never staying late to do a job that isn’t mine because I’m afraid it won’t get done otherwise (it will. And if it doesn’t, it’s above my paygrade).

That doesn’t mean I don’t work my ass off or give 100% (if not more), but it took me until my early 30s to realize that the company wont reciprocate my loyalty.

IMHO to climb the corpo ladder you have to do your job and your bosses job but only get paid for your job. That aint for me.

That might be one way to do it. But that alone certainly is not enough. One will also have to have the political acumen to take credit and make sure the others' interests are taken care of as well. It's really a complicated game to play for sure.

Sometimes. And sometimes never saying no and pushing back just means you’ll always be asked to do more without promotion.

Honestly, climbing the corporate ladder is often about how good you are at politicking and working relationships as it is about anything else.

Can agree with some point -- but by definition, you are explaining exactly why you are definitely not giving 100% and then claiming you are giving more than 100%... lol.

We have different definitions of 100%. Staying late, working (unpaid) overtime, doing your bosses jobs... This is well above and beyond your responsibilities. When you hire a plumber to unclog your drain, do you also expect them to give their 100% by also cleaning your toilet, fixing that squeaky door, and doing the dishes? No, you hired them to fix a clogged drain and fixing it is 100% of the job. The rest is thing you'd like done (for free, preferably!) but it's in no way part of the 100%.

Yeah. No.

I don’t do five people’s jobs anymore —- which is what I did at past companies. But I do my job —- and more —- and I voluntarily take on more projects all the time. The difference is, I no longer put my job ahead of my health. I no longer go 18 months without vacation (I took my honeymoon 17 months after I got married. And when I got married, it was 3 days after speaking in Vegas — I was on a red—eye two days before my wedding — and I spoke at another conference two day after my wedding) and I no longer allow myself to be on-call at all hours of the day/night. The nature of my work has changed too — but even if it hadn’t, I still would have stopped.

The stuff I used to do didn’t make me a “better” employee. It’s not some badge of honor.

You don’t know me or my work ethic; to imply that because I no longer kill myself for a business that won’t kill itself in return, I’m not still a hard worker —- kindly fuck off.

Giving 100% != giving all of yourself to your job and employer.

I get what you are saying - could do more, doesn't.

But but but - here's the thing - health, relationships and career. There is a boundary which you can push past for your company which destroys your capabilities very quickly. You are doing more now, but will be doing less in a couple of months. Often people underestimate how much less, and they think that they will get a holiday to get over what they are doing, and they also think that things can be patched up, I'll get better, we'll get over this.

News just in - they can't. you won't. divorce. All promptly followed by dismissal due to underperformance or just not being as positive as management expects.

Choosing not to give everything to a job doesn’t mean you aren’t doing enough. And giving everything to your job very rarely pays off. Even if it’s your own company, choosing to kill yourself for a business rarely ends with a better business — it just leads to a sick founder of the person is pushed to exhaustion.

I would say there is "doing your job" and "overdoing" if you work 8 hours productively that should be the deal with your employer. Sure, if there is some crisis maybe stay a bit longer to help the team.

But going out of your way to save the company money in transportation is a different kind of issue, and so is regularly overworking.

You are confusing 200% with 100%

If a salaried worker doesn't get overtime, then every hour they work past 40 reduces their effective pay by 2.5%.

Not all hours are of equal value. If you have activities planned that you would like to do, such as excercise, cooking, childcare, education, hobbies, visiting family, etc, and you have to give that up because you had to work late, then the marginal cost of working extra is far more than just salary divided by total hours worked.

Each hour past the agreed upon (or expected) # of hours cuts into your actual life, and is worth a lot more (to the person working). Too bad many people don’t see this or don’t have any options.

Can you explain the logic behind this?

If you work overtime in a week and aren’t paid for it then you have taken a pay cut for that week.

You worked more hours but made the same amount of money. Therefore the amount you made per hour is lower than your usual amount.

Bingo. That's what a lot of people don't get with there high salaries. On paper they sound amazing.

But if you calculate hours worked and salaries. More often then not. There promotion for example made them earn less and less per hour.

But as someone wrote on hackernews: if your company is using the emotional path they don't have anything to offer on the rational level.

tl;DR: calculate your income per hour, not monthly salary!

> if your company is using the emotional path they don't have anything to offer on the rational level.

Stealing this for my “don’t work for a startup” site!

It is not from me either :)

* their

>>a corporation has their best interests at heart.

A corporation isn't a living thing to think about you. Its basically one boss, or at best a few of them, who think about you. The good news is if they like you, they'll do something for you, or at least can be made to do something. The bad news is let alone hating you, if they as much as don't think much about you, there is nothing much you can do but to leave.

This. I know it's not the norm, but I actually had jobs treat me very well in the recent past, and frequently give me unrequested raises. Last one actually left me baffled since it was so unexpected. I know I've been lucky, but I almost never had to ask for raises before.

It really depends on the people and the size of the company.

Lol wonder if we work at the same ole big dusty corpo

C'mon, does the DMV have your best interests at heart? Who really does, other than your close friends & family? It doesn't mean they're bad people, they're just people. Corporations and other organizations often are bound together by a common self interest.

Besides, much evil in the world has been done by people with good intentions who actually believe they are operating in your best interests. I'll decide what's in my best interests, thank you very much.

The DMV doesn't (usually) lie to you or use things like "we're a family here at the DMV" to lean on you emotionally and get you to do things they'd like that don't benefit you at best or are detrimental to your health/finances at worst. Companies regularly do.

Do you really believe governmental employees and the people who manage them have your best interests at heart? (Of course, they'll endlessly claim they do.)

How about that guy that runs the FCC who ignores net neutrality sentiment? How about that county clerk a while back who refused to grant marriage licenses to gays? (Of course, she thought she was operating in the best interests of gays.) How about the police who confiscate your cash to fund their departments? Does the prosecutor who hides exculpatory evidence have the public's best interests at heart?

There's nothing special about government organizations that make them operate altruistically.

Ajit Pai is his own special kind of bad actor. Worked at the companies he now claims are good actors, lies about his motives. There's a case for arguing against net neutrality, like comcast does provide internet access for a lot of people and it works. But they do a lot of horrible shit (I HATE my bandwidth cap, and comcast is evil for lying, pushing legislation that only helps them and hurts individuals). But Mr Pai is way past that, basically lying about why he does things that are in no one's interest except big corps. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/08/ajit-...

Maybe things are different in the US, and your examples make sense. I don't live in the US thankfully and so I don't have to worry about these issues too much. Overall, where I live, governmental services are considerably less hell bent on convincing me that acting against my best interest is good for me and they won't go out of their way to manipulate me into doing those things. Every company I've worked at, not so much.

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