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Comment by el-dude-arino | Hacker News Reader

Ah you beat me to it. Layoffs like this mitigate the drama for sure, but also mitigates legal liability, which just goes to show you; you're a fool to remain loyal to the company. A lot of the people fired were rated highly in their performance reviews, I'm sure. But if you're too ambitious or criticized the boss for making a mistake or just looked at him wrong... you're gone.

My advice:

- Always be interviewing

- Never stay somewhere longer than 2-4 years

- Don't take on extra work or go above and beyond

- Try to work two or more remote jobs

- Kiss your boss' ass

- Never take a stand on anything

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You’re likely mistaken about the value they’re contributing. Corporate America can be a heartless place, for sure, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to straight up fire underperforming white collar workers.

The difficulty in firing is directly related to how risk averse (lawsuit averse) HR is.

There is no heart or soul, rhyme or reason in it. It's all about who's friends with who, and each particular cult of marketing of apparent utility.

This feels like a self fulfilling thing. You get laid off, so you start following these rules and you are even more likely to get laid off.

I can honestly say I not only don’t follow these rules, I think I follow almost their direct opposite, and despite many around me being laid off I never have been even when voluntary redundancy was being offered and applying for it, I have more than enough money to walk away from a job if I want to.

If you find every workplace so hateful that you must follow these rules have you considered that the problem might actually be you?

I'm glad you've found fulfilling places to work, but I think you might have a bit of survivorship-bias.

Yeah, your comment above really hit home for me. Had the exact experience and younger me could've used that advice. Things are good now, but yeah

This is a little too jaded, but in all seriousness younger me, everything except the 2+ remote jobs is true.

Always ask yourself _does my manager want this, or do I think my manager will want this when I'm done with it?_.

Also, you never take a stand on anything in the sense that _you never want to be the only person in the room advocating for something longer than a couple sentences_.

Adults are just as nasty as middle schoolers, but to your face, they won't say a thing. They are old enough to have learned its easy and feels good to shit on other people, and it is hard and feels bad to have a Discussion(tm).

Nah.

Hold yourself and those around you to high standards and you’ll develop a keen sense for when people aren’t doing the same.

That helps you avoid the shitty companies and bosses that make these coping mechanisms seem necessary.

> Never take a stand on anything

"If you stand for nothing, Burr, what'll you fall for?" (c)

agree, I'd rather be a professional with a shorter lifespan than a henchman/goon that can survive anything

> Try to work two or more remote jobs

What, routinely?

No.

It's not as hard as you think, especially if you do contract work on the side while you have a full time job.

So now you have three jobs?

You work too much.

How much money do you need?

Enough to tell my boss to get f*cked

The "48 laws of power" gets a lot of (perhaps well deserved) shade, but there are some insights there, if your post is any indication.

Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri did a really interesting deep dive into this book and its author in their podcast "If Books Could Kill". Recommended listening.

TL;DR: It is theorized that the author (Robert Greene) studied classics and wanted to write a book about influential leaders throughout history, but the only way to get such a book green-lit by a publisher was to wrap the history around a "self-help for men" context, which naturally gravitates towards building empires and making more money. This is why, like many self-help books, the advice is dubious, but unlike almost all self-help books, the historical anecdotes are extremely correct.

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