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cowanon34

IMO, people generally only want a few things out of work:

- Sufficient money so you don't feel ripped off or left behind compared to others in your social class

- Agency over your day - you can take an afternoon off if you're feeling down, your kids are sick, etc

- Enough free time to relax and have an out of work life

- Lack of obstacle/roadblocks to actually doing good work

Most modern companies get all of this wrong. They pay the bare minimum and raises are small and slow, encouraging job hopping. You have to beg for time off like a child. No clearly defined off hours for most employees. The daily job is filled with bureaucracy and excessive micromanagement that slow you down at every turn.

Being disengaged is the logical response to these conditions.

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The reason I’m on year 20 with an employer is because they tick those boxes. And also box 5: reasonably interesting/challenging/creative work. For me as a software developer that’s as simple as ”not making CRUD webapps”.

No one interested in box 6: not f*cking our planet and other humans?

> No one interested in box 6: not fcking our planet and other humans?*

Empirically, no. It's an exernality. Expecting private parties to manage externalities in economic transactions is nice, but demonstrably insufficient.

I think you need a level of stability which generally doesn't exist in today's working environment to be able to pick an employer based on that metric.

I don't argue that choosing his employer is a luxury few can afford, but this is true of the other boxes. You might have to trade some boxes for the others are will (especially the first one regarding compensation - as it turns out, in this world there is strong correlation between "f*cking the planet and other humans" and making a lot of money)

Depends. I wouldn’t want to work in the oil industry if I could avoid it. But I’m sure it could be greenwashed, even to myself. I’d have no second thoughts about working in defense (I’m from a small country on Russia’s doorstep, not the US if that matters), quite the opposite it would be filled with interesting technical problems I’m sure. But defense usually has terrible wfh policies.

Google employees felt that way at one time, relying on the old motto “Do no evil”. How’d that work out?

i'd file that with

- Lack of obstacle/roadblocks to actually doing good work

...good having more than one meaning

I have a similar expectation: not working for any military tech and supporting genocide (with tech or association).

It's so disappointing to see how many people don't mind working on weapons.

Working on weapons is important to maintain the freedom to be disappointed in others working on weapons.

Freedom for whom?

What do you mean?

Whose freedom is maintained by working on weapons projects?

does this apply to genocide too?

Damn, 20 years at one place? I'm jealous!

I've been at my current place for about ten years now because it checks all the boxes for me, too. Unfortunately, as all things must end eventually, we're slowly in the process of shutting down and this current job market is terrifying.

If you're getting antsy and thinking of dipping a toe in the market, I'd say wait a year or two.

Never 20 years, but multiple 10 +/- stints. Fortunately, last job more or less aligned with retiring anyway.

Nice. Hopefully my next is my last.

I stuck things out as long as I could reasonably get off with at my last job past which there would have been "difficult conversations" for a variety of reasons (COVID factored in too)--but that was around the time I had decided I was going to semi-retire anyway. Actually, stayed a bit longer than planned. I still do some analyst work.

I'll add:

- Not to be made to feel like shit constantly with non-stop criticism about every little thing you didn't 100% get perfectly right, meanwhile management has no accountability on all the stuff they fuck up, so long as they stay angry enough and put all the blame on their team.

Not only no accountability, but their fuck ups are actively swept under the rug. Certain higher person in our place had a medium fuck up, which involved changing vendors. They clearly did it in a less than friendly way, because when the fuck up came to light, vendor simply said 'pay me', which the person refused to do. Instead, it became a separate, massive, end of the year project that probably had at least the cost of the vendor quote, but had the benefit of wasting everyone's time and making money for a 3rd party contracting operators.

Can you tell I am a little jaded?

"Lack of obstacles" really resonates. If we're talking about software dev, it's fun to get into a flow state and solve problems. Whether you actually get to do that at a BigCo seems like a roll of the dice. For every team that seems happy & effective, there are two encumbered by lack of agency, bureaucracy, pointless meetings, etc. Most people who got into software dev will work hard when there is actually something to do that is fun and engaging.

Don't forget:

- No pervasive surveillance, which is also a form of micromanagement

This is a lovely comment and I agree with your list. At least, it's been my experience.

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