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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

Rachel had something about fixing corporate culture recently (hint: you can't), and sometimes really you can't leave. Some are shackled to their jobs through their visa, others because of healthcare needs (their health insurance has favourable terms, and they need to care for a family member), and others because of the nature of the industry (university faculty comes to mind, especially post-2008).

The fact that you are paid does nothing about the ennui. You clearly never held a no-show job before.

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The concept of fixing corporate culture seems like a weird one, if you remove corporate and go for the generic term, can you "fix culture"?

I think what you can do is influence the culture of a company and reap the rewards, having done the devops transformation in two difference companies that were deemed unfixable (both more than 4 offices and 3k people) I feel it is very doable! It just takes time and it is not an algorithm you can learn and apply blindly.

The type of person who will write blogs about how terrible a company is is not the type of person who has enough empathy to understand why things are as fucked as they are and how to fix them.

That's a really unfair comment on the OP, especially as the blog literally details why things were fucked and all their efforts on different teams to try and improve things.

What’s your deal against someone blogging? It helps others learn about the company, and the public perception might cause management to things they thought they could put off

The key ingredient, which you certainly had and the author didn't, was buy-in from an authoritative level of management. Yes, put in the work and it's possible... as long as the VP doesn't shut it down.

You'd rather say GP was hired by management to right the ship, for that kind of task someone external is needed. Tone is set at the top, and getting buy-in from the head bum to throw the bums out, that's unheard of.

If you have the political capital to spend, you can, for example:

- Model the behaviors you want to see.

- Thanks and recognize others when they do the behaviors you want to see.

- Use your Comment and Reject buttons when formal processes ask you to sign off on behaviors you don't want to see.

- Propose initiatives to influential people you trust and identify as likely allies.

Of course if you're wrong about having the political capital, and especially if your own manager is not on board, swimming upstream can be dangerous.

Insider club here? Who is 'Rachel'?

Blogger commonly linked to on HN, domain name is rachelbythebay.com

I guessed that is who it was but I you know she is not exactly 'PG'. And her name isn't unique enough like 'Elon'.

I read comments on another blog whereby one commenter thinks he is a guy who can use his girlfriend's name as if everyone should know that is who he is talking about like he is on a first name basis with the crowd.

Well, if you figured it out then maybe Rachel is unique enough =)

For your enjoyment: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/

Probably Rachel By the Bay: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/04/annoyed/

Hi?

hiya rachel. you good?

While all these are true, they don't sound relevant to this job, as portrayed by the person who wrote it anyway.

What happened in 2008?

The GFC.

>their health insurance has favourable terms, and they need to care for a family member

At 200k per year, you can buy Obamacare which is 6k per year and for an individual 6k max out of pocket.

So many people are fooled into thinking their companies health insurance is worth something beyond 12k/yr. And that 12k is firefighters union tier.

That math doesn’t look right. I think you are confusing out of pocket maximum with premium. Your premium depends on the people covered, their ages, tobacco use, the state you’re in, etc. It can definitely be more than 12k per year just for the premium.

That sounds crazy to me. I looked at federal "market-based" insurance in 2017, and it was just shy of $2k per month for my family. It covered basically nothing and had a deductible of several thousand dollars.

Interesting. How many family members?

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