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Comment by arrrg | Hacker News Reader

Why does organizing mean you hate your workplace?

Organizing means you want more power, more control.

Also, there are many dimensions to liking or disliking your workplace. You may love the product your working on. You may really like your colleagues. You may also love the office environment. However, you may dislike the amount of vacation days, the lack of ability to work part time or the lack of paternal leave.

Workplaces have literally hundreds of properties, each of which you may like or dislike. So organizing to tweak those you dislike (while, on balance, you actually still like most properties) is very normal.

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Part of being an Adult TM is separating emotions from work.

Admittedly, I was able to work on some very cool shit at Amazon - however the job made me hate my life.

Ergo - adult logical cycles were spent, decided to get a new job after leetcoding for a bit.

The people who aren't skilled enough to get new jobs or improve themselves (also holds true in any industry) will always be some degree of fucked. I admit, some unions are good, but engaging in a system that grants most benefit to people not willing to improve or make the bar of performance set by the industry isn't good for anyone involved. That said, never work for a place that makes you hate your life. And yes... having the ability to make that choice is a privilege.

> not willing to improve or make the bar of performance set by the industry isn't good for anyone involved

You're complaining about the establishment, in black-and-white, of such a bar. A bar that will be enforceable via the contract terms.

We don't know the terms, so we don't know whether the bar will be lower or higher than the unwritten one that management decides through opaque processes / on a whim.

There are many reasons someone might want to remain at their place of work and still retain improved benefits and treatment from their employer. As an adult, it’s not for you to judge others’ reasons: who are you to say I should quit my job and spend my time solving stupid Leetcode problems?

If we can agree on that, then I’m not sure how we can disagree that unions can be an important tool in helping employees achieve greater representation in a system which generally privileges the will of execs and board members far above those of employees - you know, the people who actually make the company run.

If unions ever dominate the tech industry to the extent that they control the labor pool, we can discuss whether that’s a good thing. For now, that’s just a bogeyman. But having real leverage to increase your bargaining power in the workspace — IMO that’s very good. No one is stopping you from spending your time doing Leetcode, though.

"or make the bar of performance set by the industry"

Can you define that bar? That's the problem - there aren't any solid definitions without a contract, and it varies by company. The company can screw over people who are actually meeting the bar by simply saying the bar is higher than it actually is.

A level of performance / ability where you can interview, get a job and the salary you deem indicative of your skill. This varies from person to person obviously.

For instance, for a while I had a CS degree and was solidly above average, but I didn't quite meet the bar because I sucked at leetcode and didn't have enough experience. So I accepted this, improved, and now have a higher paying job.

I'm not talking about interviews. I'm talking about performance evaluation at the company. The issues are with moving goal posts, discrinatory practices, and office politics.

The only place without moving goal-posts and / or younger incoming / better skilled talent is a government job.

If you don't want to have to care about improving / competing work as a paralegal, in retail or for the government.

Yes, it sucks but it's a reality of working in an industry as well paid as software engineering.

I'm convinced that sitting on your laurels even if you're well above average for say 4-5 years and not actively improving / being cognizant of others around you and their skillsets will always result in poor career outcomes.

What does your first sentence mean? That you cannot have likes and dislikes and that you cannot want to improve the things you dislike?

I don’t get it. Could you explain that.

I think it may mean that the poster thinks that changing "at-will" to "just cause" is a language change rather than a procedure change (which now routes discipline and dismissal through a union intermediary.) It's the only way I can make sense of the language: that people are being sensitive snowflakes because they want these nicer words to be used.

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