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I was really fortunate to be raised by parents who knew that was bullshit brainwash propaganda. Thanks mom and dad! You aren’t perfect but hey nobody is. Love you both!
I was always told asking makes you seem entitled and you should do the work without complaint. Now I believe that yeah I am entitled to something. Still don’t say though and just grumble under my breath
insight is the first step to progress. congratulations :)
30ish. Working for a company that wouldn’t let me move to their QA department because they “needed me more where I was” even though the manager of QA wanted me. The QA department didn’t have anyone that knew how my department worked so they had never done any QA checks on us. Would have been a pay bump and no after hours support rotation. I got another job and they asked what they could do to avoid my leaving, and I said if they had done it then I wouldn’t be leaving.
Narrator: and they didn’t learn they lesson…
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I’m not nice for someone else, I’m nice for myself. I like being nice to people, it makes me feel good, and that’s why I do it.
I’ve got a parent who’s incredibly selfish, narcissistic and evil. After processing the years of trauma he’s inflicted, I’ve realized all I want to be is a nice and genuine person. I want people to experience warmth and happiness, cause a life without it is not worth it.
It’s nice to be nice!
I don’t even like being mean in roleplaying games lol
aren’t we all roleplaying in the stage that is real life?
- I was working 80-100 hour weeks and they refused to give me a raise or promote me.
When I was about ten. Washed my uncle’s Corvette without negotiating a price. I finished and the fucker didn’t pay because “I didn’t set a price before I started” or something to that effect. 10. Years. Old. I’m now almost 60 and still haven’t forgot that. Hopefully I haven’t turned into the ass he can be
People like that will do shit like that and then genuinely think “I thought them a valuable lesson.” Like… no, arsehole, you just traumatised a kid for absolutely no reason and taught them that hard work doesn’t pay.
“Fuck you I got my single free car wash”
Hope it was worth destroying his nephew’s trust in him for life
That uncle
I would throw mud on his car every time i saw him until he paid up.
Turns out “teaching someone a lesson” can go both ways.
It’s honestly just who I am, I don’t understand moderation. I’m from the US and moved to Germany, and it’s exploited a lot less, which is nice, but I either give everything or nothing.
In a better world, being highly motivated to contribute to your neighborhood’s well-being and improvement would result in… a nicer neighborhood with happier, healthier people living in it.
But now we’re all just miners, digging up gold nuggets and hoping it means we get paid a fraction of their worth, with no regard to what this giant strip mine will do to the land we live in or our successors inherit.
Do you manage to get by with English or have you learnt German?
I’d already learned German, but I did begin as an adult and I’ve got C2 German, so it’s not impossible.
Career wise? The two metrics that matter is how well liked you are and how valuable you are perceived to be. Actually working hard and being nice can contribute to being well liked at work, and sometimes can increase one’s own perceived value to the employer. But being nice and working hard aren’t going to be rewarded in themselves.
I’m nice to people because it’s the right thing to do. But it also has generally made me well liked my whole life. So I’ve never had trouble negotiating above-market pay for my jobs.
And I used to work hard when the situation called for it. Which isn’t all situations. Most of my jobs had clients or customers, so doing right by them was usually more important to me than doing something right for the employer actually paying my salary.
But I also advocated for myself, made sure that a significant chunk of the “working hard” I did was towards actually documenting my value, or getting recognized for current contributions, and building my reputation for having the right skillsets and problem solving ability for future assignments.
Plus luck always plays a big role. Similarly situated workers at a booming/growing company paying out a bunch of bonuses, versus a failing company choosing which workers to lay off, are going to see very different results even if they’re equally perceived. Much of my own success is simple luck of timing, right place/right time type stuff. If I were born 5 years earlier or 5 years later, or simply 500 miles away from my place of birth, I think I would’ve been struggling a lot more.
Perception is so huge. Pre-pandemic, just looking around I assumed I was layoff-proof, but I got the axe anyway.
Last I heard there are two engineers and one manager sharing my old duties. 🙃
So many people got hit by a layoff during the pandemic it bet it opened lots of eyes. Mine included.
I was recruited to an ISP for my knowledge but my metrics were against new customer activations. I specialized in trouble calls so customer satisfaction. I bet I was one of the first to cut when they needed to tighten the belt.
One thing thst are me feel better is half the managers got cut too.
This is a good take. There is also a fair bit of luck in physical and mental health, and having a good environment growing up where you can learn all of the skills that aren’t taught in school. When I went through school the emphasis was on learning the facts and working hard… Neither of which are the top skills needed to make money.
About 10 years ago, when I realized that automating my job just means I get more work (when I share my automations). Now a days, I still share some of my automations, but I wrote and hoard scripts to make me look good (and also lets me write more scripts since it takes probably about as long as my mid-level coworkers).
Upside is I can look like an absolute wizard when I want to.
A professional is consistent and manages expectations. I believe my performance is much more liked because I’m incredibly consistent, smoothing out the highly productive days and blending them with the less productive ones.
This is it. You cant give it your all every day. Youll be filled to capacity every day and be miserable. Then those days / weeks where your work load increase, you turn it up to 11, hit all your deliverables, and look like a champ
I recorded a vim macro the other day that made me feel like a wizard
Half a year ago years old. I’m doing over 20 years in software engineering now. And apparently will have to repeat the lesson eventually.
Coming in from a European perspective. During my first real job, I wanted to impress my supervisor. I was working some overtime (much less than I did as a student). My supervisor started passing by my office between 4pm and 5pm, letting me know it was time to go home, there was no need to overdo it. He was great… often telling me how I was exceeding expectations, and that was great as long as I was keeping a good work life balance.
Socialised protections are amazing… I still work overtime at times, but only when I feel like it (and I still never report it), I only taken on the amount of work I feel I can reasonably do. I strive for efficiency, not overburdening myself.
As a person with ADHD. It feels like I always knew that working hard wouldn’t get automatic rewards. Because no matter how hard I worked, I was never like the rst of the kids, and was always told I needed to try hardrr.
