pjbeam

This is one of those stories that make me wonder how out of touch these ebay employees were. To throw their careers away over such pettiness is insane.

Then I stop and realize it's not impossible for me to end up in a bizarre bubble like that. What a world.

Many things in life are to some degree what you make of them, but a lot of low skill jobs don't even offer the hope of learning or advancement. This seems like a real situation of despair to me.

I don't think pay would necessarily solve the problem though either (edit: I do support paying teachers quite a bit more just don't think that is a magical solution). I'm not a teacher, don't pretend to understand the nuances but there seems to be a nasty conflagration of political barriers to holding some combination of children/teachers accountable for outcomes. Probably something related to withholding finding or other perverse incentives. I'm sure I'm not the only person on HN who has left a very high paying job for a different one because of bad culture factors.

I was shocked to (re)discover that high school algebra is a multiyear course. And trigonometry is a year long.

What?

As a somewhat related aside I find the use of mills and other archaic units in this space to be kept around for no other reason than to confuse people.

I second Ellul recommendation, FWIW. The Technological Society is a great place to start.

Big difference between "yes I'll call you Sarah" and "trans women are women".

"aren't worthy of" is distinct from realized actions of the state. If you recall the impulse of the mob during me too was to burn without trial any accused--this sentiment is what I'm talking about.

You've picked the worst interpretation of the above. Addressing people how they'd like to be addressed is basic decency. Demands for affirmation beyond this is how I read the comment you're replying to.

But other people get to demand positive affirmation? This doesn't sit right.

None of the competing thoughtcrime tribes seem to care about things like free thought, discourse, etc. This is the frightening part to me--people in the "other tribe" aren't worthy of things like due process, and authoritarian approaches are fine as long as they are aimed at the "other".

I know history repeats itself but wow, c'mon.. the 20th century wasn't that long ago.

That's a bit unfair. Good management is partially about meeting the needs of the team. Some teams benefit from this sort of thing.

Traitor? To a company? What a concept. Corps will happily throw people on the street.. I don't understand that guilt that seems interwoven in your post. I changed jobs recently and got much better pay and WLB. Not doing so would have been betraying myself.

Do you have young kids? No clue if Adam's wife works/is in school/whatever but an additional 30 minutes of focus time is definitely an ask for busy parents of young children.

Work and job are not the same thing.

Low estimate over long enough timeline.

This is roughly similar to my experience changing jobs recently. Adam was definitely more organized than I was. In any event congratulations on the strong offer @acconrad!

Hi OP, if you want drop an email to my HN handle at protonmail dot com. I can't promise magic but can speak with a person at work tomorrow to try to get this resolved for you.

I am curious which topics are

> "too French"

for translation into the English language edition.

Yes, they are megacorp. In the general case I think that working to uphold brand standard is the parsimonious interpretation rather than hahaha won't fix.

It stays interesting, or at least it did for me. A lot of the thoughts in there capture the spirit of reflection during a long since ended period of the Internet but there are some timeless ideas as well. Enjoy!

It is totally okay to find humor in dark things. Necessary sometimes even. Taking yourself too seriously is not great for balance in life.

The US has a ton of regional variance in cost of living, not sure it makes sense to talk about average in this case.

A friend of Alice and Bob.

Which then in turn puts pressure on the spiral of talent loss in the departments management wasn't targeting.

You want to take someone's freedom for cheating on an exam? That doesn't sit well with me at all.

My prob and stats courses required the calc sequence (US based math undergraduate).

I agree with you but in this case I think the word choice fir the tenor of that parent's comment well--whether you agree or not is a different story but children as "resource" makes sense in the factory metaphor.

One of my biggest hopes is to be survived by all of my children. I can't imagine what it's like to bury your child. All the best to the Nadellas :/