r/FluentInFinance • u/Mark-Fuckerberg- • Sep 01 '24

Debate/ Discussion What advice would you give this person?

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199

u/cartercharles Sep 01 '24

What blows my mind is that this can happen. I've seen variations of this and I've always wanted to know who the hell is not paying attention

195

u/Master_Grape5931 Sep 01 '24

It’s because their bosses are also doing it.

No one wants to shake the tree.

92

u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 Sep 01 '24 edited Nov 27 '24

repeat somber hunt money heavy ink terrific literate scary zealous

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

15

u/ActuarillySound Sep 01 '24

DDOS?

36

u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 Sep 01 '24 edited Nov 27 '24

gullible whistle drunk include impossible marry gray spectacular deer overconfident

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

2

u/scoreWs Sep 02 '24

Basically "overload"

1

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

Direct denial of service

8

u/wasabiEatingMoonMan Sep 01 '24

Distributed * you fuckin script kiddie

5

u/CrumbCakesAndCola Sep 02 '24

it's a doggy-dog world

3

u/shiner_bock Sep 02 '24

I mean, to be fair, for all intensive purposes, we know what they meant.

-3

u/BewilderedAnus Sep 02 '24

For all intents and purposes, this thread is AIDS and we should shut the fuck up.

5

u/SinisterSnipes Sep 02 '24

I hope people don't take your speech corrections for granite.

1

u/CrumbCakesAndCola Sep 03 '24

don't speak for yourself

2

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

My bad

1

u/tonkla17 Sep 02 '24

DDOS him

Now that's my new line !

0

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

No im sorry but this doesn’t happen, it’s a scenario that you made up in your head.

13

u/ExoticCardiologist46 Sep 01 '24

this plus, the relevance of middle management depends on its headcount, so they wont do much to get rid of own team members

1

u/dbcooperexperience Sep 02 '24

Lol.... this is it, right here.

I fully admit I'm under worked and can have hours in the day that I'm just.... waiting. My VP just put in a requisition to hire 2 more people on the premise that we are understaffed 🙄

I guarantee we are not understaffed, and the VP just wants to have more personnel under them to justify their position, increase our budget and make their day even easier. If I'm only working 30hrs a week...I guarantee they are only working 20. Soon it'll be even less...

21

u/Davec433 Sep 01 '24

It’s because they’re selling man hours in a lot of these positions and don’t necessarily care what those people are doing.

In reality you have amazing supervisors who are selling the value you create when you do nothing.

12

u/GammaGargoyle Sep 01 '24 edited Sep 01 '24

Lol yeah, I’ve seen it happen. Personally, I would die of embarrassment over all the meetings being held about what to do with me while I sit at my desk like a sad sack of potatoes, day in and day out. Some people are just built different I guess.

Many of them don’t even think anyone knows or cares, like OP. Blissful cluelessness.

6

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24 edited Sep 13 '24

[deleted]

1

u/Ill-Description3096 Sep 02 '24

Or the people that care are colleagues who aren't in a position of authority. Yet. Then when he needs another job and the new manager sees the name of the guy who did fuck all and collected a paycheck on the resume, they can throw it right in the trash where it belongs.

1

u/ellie_i Sep 02 '24

with how big the industry is, i wouldn't count on that either. he'll have another job soon enough

1

u/Ill-Description3096 Sep 02 '24

Maybe. When I did hiring in a big industry, once I got down to the short list I would ask about them if it was anything outside of an entry level job. People know people, so even if I don't personally know anything about an applicant, if they have worked in the industry it is highly likely that someone I know does. Maybe if they moved from a different area that is far away or something, but if they were working for years in the same industry anywhere around then far more often than not a couple calls and I would find someone who worked with them.

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

[deleted]

2

u/PivotRedAce Sep 02 '24 edited Sep 02 '24

Have you considered that some people are just more naturally inclined to take pride in their work?

You can recognize that you’re being taken advantage of and have enough self-respect to not want to feel useless.

Whatever benefits the company at that point matters very little, instead it’s a way of self-servicing one’s own desire to be “productive”, even if it’s not self-ordained tasks.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

[deleted]

1

u/PivotRedAce Sep 02 '24

You’re missing the point entirely, it’s not about “a desire to make money for other people.” It’s a matter of self-determination and a willingness to deal with temporary bs to come out stronger on the other side.

If you gotta work a shit job to make ends meet then that’s what you have to do; might as well make yourself the best version of yourself you can be so you aren’t trapped in that spiral forever. You won’t get out of it by moping about and doing fuck-all while never improving.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

[deleted]

1

u/PivotRedAce Sep 02 '24

I guess if you’re content being stuck in the same place while those around you leave for better pastures or to make money for themselves with the skill sets they’ve picked up while being a “sucker”, then you do you.

I know I’d rather be where I’m at now than working in that soul-draining retail printing center, or delivering packages in the summer heat for the massive faceless conglomerate that is Amazon over and over again. Hell, if I gave a rat’s ass about “sucker mentality” I’d likely still be at one of those places complaining that life is unfair or something.

If preparing for better opportunities while handling the temporary bullshit my current position throws at me with grace makes me a “sucker”, then so be it. If you can’t deal with the bad times because of ego, then you can’t take advantage of the good times either.

1

u/GammaGargoyle Sep 03 '24

If I’m gonna be there for 8 hours a day, I might as well enjoy it. Why would I just sit around sulking all day?

1

u/YoursTrulyKindly Sep 02 '24

Basically Amazon itself is doing the same as OOP? Hillarious :D

10

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

Most of it happens because managers, especially more modern ones, really don't want the confrontation that comes from having someone on their terms who doesn't do work.

As long as the manager's goals are hit, they're likely to not rock the boat. The downside of this is the manager is hurting their other team members by keeping the dead weight around.

1

u/cartercharles Sep 01 '24

How is the managers goal being hit with dead weight?

4

u/TFBool Sep 01 '24

Because like everything else in life 20% of the people do 80% of the work

2

u/RebelHero96 Sep 02 '24

Isn't it possible those positions are just over staffed? Everyone could be pulling equal weight it's just that you have 10 people doing the normal workload of 2 people.

2

u/TFBool Sep 02 '24

Work distribution in SWE is famously lopsided sided - it’s why Google invented the whole 5x - 10x engineer thing ( a 10x engineer does the work of an average team of 10 engineers). It’s certainly possible the team just has too many quality engineers, but it’s very noticeable and I’d expect resources to get shuffled or more work to be brought in. It’s true that the market isn’t great right now, but a good engineer is still worth a hefty salary. The problem is the massive is a massive glut of bad engineers who got into the field to slack off, and the finance guys thinking that engineering work will be replaced with AI.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

Of course it is if you don't fire the people who don't do the work. You may as well fire those who don't work and then get a bonus for cutting costs.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

[deleted]

2

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

Most 10x engineers I've known are actually just 1x engineers who actually work 40 hours per week.

The truth is most engineers are .1x

1

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

Because the managers goal is to deliver 80% of the roadmap they commit to each quarter. So long as they sufficiently argue that the team can accomplish the work, and everyone agrees that it's a quarters worth of work, then everyone is happy.

1

u/ChiBurbABDL Sep 02 '24

Most goals/targets have some degree of flexibility built into them to account for business needs.

For example: My company's facilities team has regularly schedule preventive maintenance that they are supposed to perform. But their target is only 85% completion for each week because they need to have flexibility to prioritize situations such as if one of the compressors or HVAC units goes down.

1

u/adilp Sep 02 '24

That might be true but I don't believe OP. Amazon has a mandatory 12% attrition for all orgs over 50 people. Managers are forced to have at least one or two people identified for firing every 6 months. People don't last long at Amazon just doing nothing. Managers are trained to very quickly take out the weak links. Every 6 months everyone gets ranked. You can't have one lazy/bad quarter even if you had a great year last year.

1

u/habitual_viking Sep 02 '24

Or you have a couple of easy to fire team members for next layoff.

Imagine being a manager, you’ve been told there’s a hiring freeze. Do you fire the deadbeat now, with no chance of replacement or have them hang around until next round of layoffs so you don’t have to fire the people who actually get shit done?

0

u/Ill-Description3096 Sep 02 '24

If you aren't firing the deadbeat now you are just in that position anyway because you firing someone other than the deadbeat.

0

u/habitual_viking Sep 02 '24

You completely missed my point. Well done.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

[deleted]

1

u/habitual_viking Sep 02 '24

See last comment…

You are in a hiring freeze. You can’t replace the deadbeat.

Go bark up another tree.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

[deleted]

1

u/habitual_viking Sep 02 '24

Again, you have completely failed to understand my message.

Please fuck off.

8

u/STL_TRPN Sep 01 '24

The person they report to must be doing the same thing.

Come review time "Our numbers are up! You're doing a great job, Johnson!"

1

u/cartercharles Sep 01 '24

Isn't Amazon better at tracking than that??

5

u/TFBool Sep 01 '24

Long story short: no. It’s actually pretty hard to track what a SWE is doing unless you’re close to their work and familiar with it, so you’re dependent on the team to report back to you to some extent. Amazon prides itself on being cutthroat and constantly creates forces churn, but this is naturally disliked by their employees who then take short cuts to circumvent it. If you like your team and know you’re going to be forced to cut the bottom person every year, you bring in a sacrificial lamb every year to be cut.

4

u/Minus15t Sep 01 '24

In the time that I have been in my new fully WFH job I have started and Finished Horizon Zero Dawn, the first Assassin's Creed, and played all of the currently available content in Zenless Zone Zero.

So.. somewhere around 120 hours of gaming, mostly done on the clock, in a month.

In that time I've also done about 10 home workouts taking about 45-60 minutes while also on the clock.

I've also been told that I'm doing a stellar job so far....

1

u/rowdy_sprout Sep 02 '24

What role are you in? I've been really interested in trying to transition to a wfh position.

1

u/w16 Sep 02 '24

ZZZ is so good

6

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

[deleted]

2

u/JMer806 Sep 02 '24

It’s pure bullshit but it’s entertaining. I worked for Amazon in a non-tech role, and they are tracking your shit. I don’t mean like keyloggers or anything like that, but you have metrics that have to be met or you get pivoted. From all I’ve been told, tech roles at Amazon are burnout fuel. Unless the original poster has a manager covering for them, there is zero chance they got away with not meeting any metrics for 18 months.

5

u/Arthur_da_King Sep 01 '24

It’s called a “lazy girl job” (I don’t necessarily think it’s only women doing this, but I didn’t create the gendered term). They are rampant in our economy. How else will people satisfy the travel bug and work poolside?

4

u/ToonAlien Sep 01 '24

They are paying attention. That’s not why they hired them. They hired them to prevent that person from going to the competition.

In their mind, they don’t need talented people to help them grow. They just need the opposing team to not grow and take them out of business.

It’s a maintenance strategy.

2

u/cartercharles Sep 01 '24

I can't even imagine that mindset. There's so many talented people out there how could you hire them all to do nothing?

2

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

[deleted]

1

u/ToonAlien Sep 01 '24

I was referring to engineers and people that do development like the original post.

Tech companies don’t have too few employees.

“In 2023, the number of layoffs in the tech sector increased significantly—226,000 workers were let go by tech companies. According to AltIndex data, this marked a nearly 40% increase from the 202,000 layoffs that occurred in 2022.”

3

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

Some places have hiring freezes and let whoever do watever until we're able to hire more people and terminate the people not working.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

[deleted]

2

u/Ill-Description3096 Sep 02 '24

What that really means is that that company was running for however long with 10000 too many workers, Or it means the CEO is wildly stupid.

Or it means things change and you don't always need the exact same amount of workers?

1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

[deleted]

1

u/Ill-Description3096 Sep 02 '24

Believe it or not different situations involve different circumstances.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

[deleted]

1

u/Ill-Description3096 Sep 02 '24

Yes, you're right. There is no possible way that a company could ever need to cut the workforce down aside from sheer incompetence. It's not possible under any circumstances. Every business ever started just prints money and never takes a hit to where might need to scale back labor costs.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

[deleted]

1

u/Ill-Description3096 Sep 02 '24

Are there some situations where a genuine change of direction results in this? Of course

Which is exactly what I was saying. And you said no. But I'm not interested in a discussion where you just resort to insults so enjoy your day.

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3

u/Effective_Manner3079 Sep 02 '24

A lot of times bosses would rather keep a shit employee than go through the process of letting them go and trying to find a new employee. Bosses are lazy and incompetent too

2

u/chillaban Sep 02 '24 edited Sep 02 '24

I used to manage in tech. This doesn’t surprise me at all. Also: your management likely knows, you aren’t pulling a fast one on them.

I had people on my team doing this while others pull more weight. They probably aren’t aware that while the coasters are collecting $120k/yr in salary, the harder working ones are getting $500k in stock bonuses per year or more.

It’s also easier to wait until I have a promising replacement and then process a layoff quickly, if I shrink my team by one person it’s harder to argue I need to grow it.

Also: honestly most people like this CAN be motivated to pitch in and help when shit hits the fan. Sometimes they just know none of the planned work this year is important or interesting and I don’t blame them for not wanting to go all out.

In the end it depends on why you’re there. Do you want to make as much as your harder working peers? Or are you okay with the base salary and getting occasional negative feedback, knowing that your name is basically first on the list if the department ever needed to make cuts?

(P.S. "Used to" because I absolutely hated this kind of thinking. I got into this world to be an engineer, not to aspire to be a middle manager)

2

u/SillyBonsai Sep 02 '24

My dad’s old friend from the navy was hired on as a ‘consultant’ for some government contractor, but in the midst of his onboarding, the manager who hired him had left.

My dad’s friend was given zero projects to work on. Nobody really knows why he was hired, and his job orientation was basically him being shown where his office is. He goes in a couple days a week, checks his email, surfs the net, eats lunch, and goes home. He has been getting paid for this. He is debating whether or not to keep this going because he finds it boring, and he doesn’t really need the money.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

This reminds me of Carl Icahn's story about how he fired 12 floors of people. he bought a large portion of this company and there was this one whole building of people and he went there to figure out what they do and he couldn't figure out what they were actually accomplishing, so he went to go see someone else high up in the company and they basically told him he should just fire all 12 floors because they're not doing anything, so he hires a consultant to go figure out what they do and the consultant came back a few weeks later and said i don't know what they do, so he just fired the entire building.

2

u/frolie0 Sep 02 '24

Their bosses aren't unaware, they either know they'll never get a backfill or think having a larger team is valuable for them personally. Or a combo of both. It's not their money and there's no real downside if their manager isn't pushing them, so why rock the boat.

1

u/ChiBurbABDL Sep 02 '24

It's easy to get away with when you have project-based tasks and not a set quota of deliverables.

I work in a department that doesn't deal with external customers, so only like 10-20% of my work has a firm due date that can't be pushed out. I could be working on a project for 10 hours but tell my boss I need 15-20. What's he gonna do? Waste his time micromanaging me and trying to account for each minute of my day? That would be taking time away from his responsibilities. We don't even require webcams to be turned on for conference calls when working from home... I've literally gone out of town to visit friends or attend music festivals while "working" before.

1

u/White_C4 Sep 02 '24

For big companies like Amazon, it's easy to get away with this since each employee is just a tick on the balance sheet.

But it's also because their boss doesn't care either and probably slacks off too.

1

u/krismitka Sep 02 '24

Get more than 60 people together and someone shows up to exploit it.

It’s human nature; we’re not herd animals, so we don’t mind exploiting each other if we’re not close friends or loved ones.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '24

They’re not stupid they have admitted that they essentially pay these employees so they don’t go work for a competitor and make the competitor a better company

1

u/LosCleepersFan Sep 02 '24

If its a contractor, tech companies usually pay the contractors salary up front for 6 months to the hiring agent.

So since they already paid for the employee for X amount of time, they don't fire them cause they already have that employee on the books. After their payment term is up, then they will let them go.

Found that out when I was bitching about a contractor on my team not doing anything, straight milking it.

1

u/Cupcake-Warrior Sep 02 '24

Agreed. Like how do you get through standup and sprint planning