Jobseekers are being gaslighted – all being told unemployment is their fault | Hacker News Reader

Jobseekers are being gaslighted – all being told unemployment is their fault

theconversation.com

42 pointsrustoo17 comments

i look at my employer with the same adversarial eyes it does me. what is loyalty? is it in your employment contract? I'm exchanging some output my employer wants for cash. I have a problem as a 1 person business because i have only 1 customer. other people make the decision to go freelance or something and trade some of the conveniences i enjoy like not having to find new customers all the time, for other benefits like maybe its not so bad if a customer terminates their relationship. in my case i think I'm giving my customer great value and they probably don't want to change their vendor for a while. but I'm aware they can conceivably find better value elsewhere and am ready.

like. why would macdonalds be devastated that i ate at bk or kfc? its just a monetary transaction. chill.

A cog in a machine, performing an operation.

I would tend to agree, but there is some asymmetry in the process.

An employer expects 2 week notice to provide continuity, but employees do not have that same expectation.

Obviously this is optional, but can stick with you if you need references.

And an employee expects a few weeks severance when being let go. Whats the asymmetry?

I'm guessing that is in the US, as here in the UK no company would expect just two weeks notice!?

My current contract is pretty typical requiring a months notice either way.

> what is loyalty?

I wrote an article on Loyalty a few years back while I was on an 11 month break:

https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/society/loyalty/

I'm not very 'loyal' to jobs, often trading for adventures every once in a while. It's a double edge sword; it's easier to get hired at places that really push the edge and want really motivated people. But not having more than 3 years at a single place does make it difficult when trying to find new jobs. At the same time, I'm paid at market value, where if I stayed at one place 10 years, I'd likely be at least 1/3 under market.

Since the housing collapse I have been saying we should change how resumes work: Prohibit dates. You would say what and for how long, not when. This would keep employers from discriminating against the unemployed and it would make age discrimination harder (simply leave long-ago jobs off your resume.)

Many employees have cause damage to companies when they are dismissed, so it's pretty standard to be escorted of the premises. Most people take that sort of thing personally when it's really no reflection on them.

Speaking of being gaslit, is everyone who applies to the Triplebyte told they received "among the highest score ever?" I know I'm adequately good but not a poet-ninja-pirate of software dev. So, it seemed like obvious BS that added to the red flags that led me to ignore them in-spite of potential $180k-ish opportunities because I just didn't trust them.

The timeless advice of Warren Buffett "no matter how good it seems now, you can never get a good deal with a shark."

What's wrong with someone from HR watching ex employee leave? What if someone misplaced a document or an item and the absence could have been attributed to the leaving worker, but because someone is watching this could be excluded. You also never know if an ex employee was slowly boiling resentment and is thinking of doing some parting damage. I've seen someone couldn't handle it and threw a chair at monitors. Better safe than sorry. If people think this is degrading, they need to work on their ego.

Somewhat telling for HN that this is the first/only comment to this story.

Treat people respectfully, genuinely value their time and work with them to facilitate a transition and it is amazing the kinds of risk that disappear, and goodwill that can be preserved.

You sound like the worst type of manager/employer, who wouldn't even give someone the chance to say goodbye to colleagues on the way out because it'll "jeopardize their production velocity".

This is so true. I had a person on a team I worked on who wasn't adequate for the role. Instead of being let go, the manager worked with him to find him a role at another company he would be a good fit at. Took 3 months but today this person has a better job and role than a better role than the manager and the rest of us left on the team.

I've seen too many times this kindness being abused. I can't see how this is disrespectful? It's both for ex employee and ex employer good so there is no room for accusations either way.

And? I've allegedly been a fairly reasonable, compassionate, high integrity individual my entire workimg life, and likely experienced more abuse than I'm even consciously keeping track of anymore. I've ensured the crown jewels of businesses that make orders of magnitude more money in a year than I will in a lifetime operate smoothly and to spec, in spite of disinterested/misaligned implementers and stakeholders contributions to crippling the system under scrutiny as a whole. I'm measuring the time I've been doing it in decades now. I'm not going to stop doing all of that just because maybe, just possibly someone might get one up on me. Especially now. You don't have the luxury of common spaces to ensure your team of intimidators or designated social engineers/legal entanglement minimization specialists are there to muscle the riff raff out the door so you can bring in the next cog. Hell, you can't even guarantee you get your equipment back right now.

We're all human beings, and we're all trying to make a difference, and do something that matters. If you start looking at people as a line item in a ledger, or an audit sheet, you lose sight of what is really important. We're all here whether we like it or not for the time being, and that isn't going to change. I've seen some of the cases where it doesn't work out, but it doesn't mean that I'm justified in making it work out any less favorably by dehumanizing someone. That simply isn't good business. Business, contrary to popular belief, is personal. What we do matters. Otherwise, we wouldn't all be doing it every day. Sociopathy being overrepresented in executive and management echelons notwithstanding. Shell games of corporate and brand identity notwithstanding. In fact both those things make the personal aspect all the more important. If you can't steer your company humanely, you'll never really be pick up that spark that leads to global recognition, and even if you do, odds are in the long run you squander it on holding the expectation bar lower for everyone else.

Maybe I'm young and naive, but I've still been around the block more than once, and it is amazing how much I've been able to accomplish without treading on other folks. In fact, the people I've been entrusted with leading to accomplish good things do much better at doing so when they aren't worrying about getting stabbed in the back.

I'm not giving up on it. I don't know what you've been through, but I know what I have been through. As a knowledge worker, my mental state is my number one most important tool, and people and organizations that have jeopardized it out of some misguided notion of professional disinterest are all companies I refuse to do any business witb ever again. I'll take the risks inherent with being what I judge to be a decent human being and businessperson, and you'll take yours, and we'll both go our own ways into the market, and we'll both probably end up with a lot of stories the other hadn't even been in a place to imagine.

Maybe we'll even run into each other at a convention or something again once things settle down again and recall this, and have a good laugh over it.

No hard feelings, just a difference of opinion and philosophy really. I will not stop looking for ways to get everyone where they can do the most good. That to me, is the single greatest kindness I have been shown by the people I'm most grateful for having shared a lifetime with, and I fully intend to pay it forward, because I have seen no greater value creation methodology than that.

> Maybe I'm young and naive, but I've still been around the block more than once, and it is amazing how much I've been able to accomplish without treading on other folks.

This is extremely undervalued in today's society. Not being a dick is one of those things that it may feel like you're not winning in the current, but long term it usually bodes well for you.

“You also never know if an ex employee was slowly boiling resentment and is thinking of doing some parting damage.”

If this is true at your company, I recommend you leave.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com