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Comment by jzwinck | Hacker News Reader

I just got a voicemail from my boss. Well, soon to be former boss. Not because I couldn't hack it at the job, but the business I was involved with had eroded over the years to the point where there was simply nothing left for me to do. I had finally given up. It wasn't really up to me. I talked with her about it a few times, but she wasn't interested in pursuing the sort of clients I used to work so hard to satisfy. So now my full-time job is finding a new job. I was in an interview when she called. I think this other firm is pretty lame but if I don't find something better soon I'll have to take it, so I'm hustling. Tonight I'm going to polish my CV and email some old contacts. I can call the old boss back tomorrow morning. What is she going to do, fire me again?

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Please do a writeup for the following article:

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140328120354-44...

And I quote:

"A while later (hopefully a few years), you tell me it is time to talk. You are not happy anymore and feel it is time to change things. Of course I’ll try to convince you. See if we can change something in your job description to make you happier, see if I can get you motivated in different ways. But if we can’t work things out together, if it is simply time to end the relationship, let’s talk about it like adults. Don’t come into the office one day telling me out of the blue that you haven’t been happy for a while, found someone else and will leave me as soon as possible. And now that you brought it up, why should I pay your full wage if you are only working at half force since you aren’t motivated anymore?"

Consistency doesn't appear to be Inge's strong suit.

> And now that you brought it up, why should I pay your full wage if you are only working at half force since you aren’t motivated anymore?

I think this is the reason why "openness" is tough to achieve. Most of the time, the stakes are much higher for the employee than the company-- the business can probably continue operating after separation, but the employee might not be able to pay rent without a paycheck. All information is power in the relationship, so I don't think an employee should ever feel obligated to share more than what is necessary. I wouldn't expect to be informed that my department's budget for salaries is $X or that I'm going to be let go, effective three months from now.

> Don’t come into the office one day telling me out of the blue that you haven’t been happy for a while, found someone else and will leave me as soon as possible.

Some people just prefer voting with their feet.

"Don’t come into the office one day telling me out of the blue that you haven’t been happy for a while"

The fact that she finds such "out of the blue" IS the problem.

As for "why should I pay your full wage if you are only working at half force since you aren’t motivated anymore?": you pay full wage because he's doing full required work, demonstrated by the fact that she didn't notice anything was wrong and was content to pay him for it. Maybe he's unhappy because he wants to do more but she's not making it worth his time/effort to.

And obviously the disclosure is "out of the blue" precisely because her first reaction is to cut his pay.

Nice writing. Somewhat amazed the other comment-folk didn't get what you did here.

Most likely because they didn't read the original text that the article references. Fairly typical for internet comments these days.

I consider it unsafe to click linkedin links anymore. I clicked through to the comments here because that's the closest I'm willing to get to content posted there.

What makes LinkedIn links unsafe?

I have read that LinkedIn will actively solicit your information to people that are near you once they find out where you are, and they will actively take steps to continue knowing who you are, even when you actively took steps to prevent them from finding out (like not logging in, and not accepting their cookies.)

Also they have been accused of dark patterns before, like that would result in people getting e-mail that purports to be from you, when you think you already unchecked the box and asked not to share your contact list.

The original didn't come up no the click-through, but I get it completely.

Be careful she might write a post on LinkedIn complaining how not motivated you are

Question: if you didn't get paid for the time between the agreement to leave and the moment you leave, you wouldn't complain because "now my full-time job is finding a new job"?

So you letting him pay you for hunting jobs? Nice...

Re-read (or perhaps, judging by your comment, actually read) the linked article. Then reread the comment. Hopefully it will click at that point.

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