away271828

Just the other week had a team meeting that was partly to discuss a possible round 21 of team charter/organization changes. Personally, I basically have bounced around multiple rounds of managers/teams/responsibilities in just the past few years. As the team lead philosophically said, many of you (senior) folks have seen maybe 10x employee growth since you joined and it's just a different company and the old one isn't coming back.

I've had that experience at a different company. Was really exciting when I joined and I had a very long leash to do pretty much whatever I thought was the right thing. Long-time manager left and did some new interesting stuff for a while. But then I bumped around a bit and I really just counted a couple years until my last major vests and retired.

I know there are a lot of people here who are determined to insist that remote work is an unalloyed good. And that any effort to get people to come into an office is a plot by commercial real estate-owning MBAs.

But things really aren't that simple. I work for a company that was pretty remote-friendly before and is quite heavily remote now to the point of closing down some major offices (mostly big suburban ones, not urban--which are mostly fairly small).

I think most people would agree that things have mostly gone "OK" but that forming new relationships has been harder, onboarding and mentoring new people has been more difficult, etc.--as well as softer things around engagement, connection, etc.

I've effectively worked mostly remote for many years but it's not all goodness.

I sort of let things drag out the past few years. Partly because of COVID (it's not like I could travel) and partly for other reasons. I wouldn't have been unhappy to get a severance or even just get pushed out at some point. But I used up a bunch of vacation time I had saved up and pretty much gliding to a comfortable endpoint. I didn't really need to additional money but figure I might as well take it if I can given working isn't really getting in the way of other activities.

I was in a meeting with ASML a few months back and people were pretty much slack-jawed as they were taking us through some video and slides of their technology. It was definitely one of those "this is just science fiction" things.

Even a relatively large 3,000 person company is much different from a much larger company and especially if you've dome well financially it's pretty natural to either leave or just coast for a bit. And depending upon where you are you maybe don't want to take a new job but just take your pay for a while.

It is incomplete however. For example, there was a long-running lawsuit against VMware that was never resolved. [1] Was sort of an odd case and pretty much no one else in the industry wanted to go near it.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-developer-abandons-vmwar...

Probably. Red Hat acquiring and then maintaining a failing CentOS was one of those solved a problem at a couple times things that just didn't make a lot of sense in the long run (and was almost certainly a mistake).

Right. And, given who is running this event, there is some backstory that makes it unsurprising that it's trying to be especially accommodating of people who are vulnerable.

We also seem to be in almost the talismanic phase of the pandemic. By all means, most should IMO get vaccinated to reduce the risk of serious disease. But I'm unconvinced that other mitigations for large indoor events are appreciably more effective than wearing an energy crystal around your neck.

It's honestly not clear to me at this point to what degree you can mitigate risks associated with air travel and large gatherings. In late 2021 I finally caught COVID attending an international event with a vaccination and mask requirement. And then it turned out that, in spite of testing negative twice, my very slight cough was in fact COVID when I tested again a week later after attending another event.

Even with the benefit of hindsight--and admittedly ignoring some periods when I wasn't really happy where I was--given a somewhat arbitrarily large amount of money in the bank, maybe I'd have taken a couple sabbaticals but I'm not sure that, in retrospect, I'd really have been happy retiring much before my late 50s.

Anecdotally, I see some people in their 40s or early 50s who made very serious money and worked really hard (founders, CEOs, and the like) end up doing some of the on-the-side type of work that gets thrown at people in that position (boards, "advisors," and the like). But I don't actually see a huge number of late career regular employees (even fairly well-compensated ones) retiring way early.

FIRE has so much MMM and other baggage associated with it, I prefer to avoid the term. What is true is that, as you get late career, it's probably simultaneously more difficult to land a new job, starting something brand new may be less appealing, and you may be in a position to not work full-time as an employee even if the move isn't quite on your own terms.

Personally, I've been in the position for about 5 years now where I could have ended up mostly retiring if that's what was in the cards. And it's a very liberating feeling even if you don't have to or choose not to exercise it. Makes it far more of a non-event (for you personally) when layoffs come knocking.

> "I want to do X" actually means "I want to have done X,"

I co-authored a book with someone, which ended up meaning I did 90% of the work and they could be prodded with considerable effort to contribute in a few areas and give feedback. But they were thrilled to have been an author and hand out copies etc.

No real harm from my angle. I have no issue with them being a co-author. Doesn't hurt me. But a perfect example of this principle. A former boss at a small company was a somewhat similar example. They liked being a $X. They came to not like doing the work of being a $X.

My observation is a fair number of people are doing this informally.

Spend Friday morning wrapping up the week, making to-dos for the next week, no meetings, minimal email, and generally shutdown for the day by lunchtime.

No. But there's generally a difference between what people can get off with at home and what they can routinely get off with in an office.

There's definitely a category of people who 1.) Are more or less available during work hours, 2.) Do a good job of what they say they will do on or before the deadline because they work quickly and efficiently and 3.) Don't work a full day to the degree they probably would sort of have to in an office.

What I've been seeing with the caveat that I may just be more aware of the senior people is a significant number of people with 10+ years tenure at the company leaving.

A lot of companies grew a lot, there's a lot of economic stress/caution, budgets are tight for things like travel, a lot of scrutiny around goals/performance measurement/financial metrics/etc. While there are certainly pockets of interesting activity, I see larger companies certainly battening down hatches. Was talking to someone just last night who is counting down the days to their next vest then they're out. I have to believe a lot of employee survey results at the moment are a train wreck.

>The primary reason the unemployment has remained low is due to so many people primarily baby boomers, leaving the work force.

I know quite a few people in the tech sphere who, under other circumstances, might have taken some late career job (or just happily continued in their current role) who are taking their vests, retiring somewhat early, and maybe do a bit of consulting on the side. There are fewer opportunities and a lot of work environments are under a lot of financial stress these days.

Did it occur to you that they're getting paid and possibly "bettering themselves" and enjoying family/friends in ways that have nothing to do with the company?

I don't know. It's a big and somewhat irreversible decision from a pay and career perspective. I can certainly see people hesitate to make the plunge and maybe stretch things out a bit further even though they're pretty sure they're fine finacially.

And you just have people who have been there for a long time, have made a ton of money, don't have a great fit any longer, etc. They're not even "resting and vesting" necessarily but they were in some valuable role at one point and now they're someone expensive who just doesn't have anything especially important or matched to their skills to do.

>I've tried to fit myself into what she needs like a square peg in a round hole. I have a very different vision for my role, and a specific understanding of how my strengths contribute to our team.

It happens and it's not necessarily anyone's fault. A new manager comes in with different views of what work needs to be done and what doesn't. For whatever reason maybe transferring internally is hard right now for whatever reason or maybe there just aren't other roles internally that excit you.

(What I have seen though is managers who come in, make changes in roles, and really try to hang onto headcount even if some of that headcount is people they wouldn't have hired. That's on them.)

Depending on a lot of factors maybe it makes sense to hang on for a while. But, at the end of the day, if you're in a job you don't really care for and don't really have the background for--especially if you're supposedly very senior--that's just not a stable or good situation.