If you wanna say “FUCK YOU” things, you better have “FUCK YOU” money!
In the meantime (while en route to conquesting filthy lucre), all of the hoops through which one must jump to enjoy the benefits of modern corporate (in particular, F500) employment are just an obstacle course through which some credible candidates cannot navigate. Learn to navigate them and forget those less agile, less flexible, less oleaginous former peers.
I didn't have enough money for a permanent vacation, but I saved enough that I haven't had to work for the last year. Depending how much I'm willing to liquidate and burn through, I could sit on my ass for at least five more years if I really wanted to. And I didn't even have to give up my CT5-V.
The problem with having fuck you money, is that nobody around you understands it. It's so inconceivable that some will likely resent you for it. I've actually taken to giving casual acquaintances a line of bullshit about working from home as a "consultant" to avoid the topic.
If you can find a way to pull it off, I recommend everyone take a fuck you break at some point. I'm (slowly) headed back to work as a corporate peon, but feel better about it knowing I was able to escape it for a bit.
I did that once for about six months. Then a job came up that looked interesting and it was funny that at the interview they wanted to know why I hadn't been working.
'I took some time off'.
"why would you do that?"
'Because I wanted to travel and go on a few trips.'
That wasn't exactly the truth, I just wanted to catch up on my reading and spend some time with family after being gone for over a year. But they bought it.
I had fight a misdemeanor reckless op earlier this year - got caught doing 20 over - and got a glimpse of the world of disorganized crime.
When I showed up in court, in a proper suit, several people dressed like homeless drug addicts (or grunge musicians, take your pick) asked me if I was their lawyer.
But the really telling part was the court docket. It was hung on the wall next to the door of the courtroom and was full of names straight out of Key & Peele's East-West Bowl skit.
I'm there for a bullshit technical foul, and I have to share space with misdemeanor trespassing, felony resisting arrest, multiple child support violations, etc.
I got caught doing 95 in a 55 7-8 years ago. I did not beat the charge. Reckless is 30+ over here. I thought it was a 65 zone. That was not a fun time. The day my court proceedings were finally over, the gf at the time dumped me. It's amazing how much of court is just "Yes, your honor" "no your honor" and not looking like a slob. I got off fairly light and the judge thanked me for being in proper attire. The worst part was sitting in the back watching some poor guy or gal getting into it with the judge and watching the fine/jail time go up with each sentence "Just shut up!"
I got clocked doing 55 in a 35 in Japan (km/h, so in real measurements that's what, 40 in a 25 zone?) which translates there as dangerous driving. I lost a day at work, two Saturdays for driver's safety classes (one of which I couldn't drive to because they suspend your license for that day only) and was relieved of over $1000. I don't recommend it.
I figure a big part of my getting out of trouble, other than a fine and points, was that I hired a lawyer well-versed in traffic cases, showed up well-dressed & clean-shaven, and basically stood there quietly while my lawyer did the talking.
Be smart enough to become indispensable, don't spend you bonuses, pay off your main property, don't get divorced, and don't buy new Porsches. Fuck you money will find you by the time you're 45.
You're in finance, right? Fuck you money is bigger for you guys because you need to keep up outward appearance of success even if it's heavily leveraged.
Among folks I've known who have been able to do whatever they want is a couple who ran a catering business out of a little commercial property. Not a fancy catering business, a school lunch/Elks Club steam table business. That paid for an expensive private school for the kids, college for two of the kids, and 6 to 8 rental properties in a very desirable area. He drives a 15 year old Honda Accord, she drives a Fit on her way to the horse barn for riding. No social media at all.
Finance, yes. I have no interest in “retiring” in the conventional sense. The “job” of relationship development / maintenance and thoughtful idea generation gets easier over time obviously, but I’d like to transition from advice peddler to capital provider at some point - i.e., on my own terms. Low eight figures would do it for me.
Being poor and independent in my early adulthood really helped keep this mindset. By doing so I hit 1M NW in my early 30s with very aggressive income growth, but not expendiatures. I don't even want to think about being beholden to anyone beyond 50-55, tops.
It's like you plucked this topic from my brain. I'm struggling with it mightily. To stay and be a cog in a small system where all the good happens because you're a part of it? Or, to take a chance and put your whole world at stake just so that billionare doesn't make another dime off YOUR hard work?
I'm perplexed. This is no good or right answer when thinking about it. We live in a world so interconnected and the lizard people just seek to take more and more options away from us. Like, wtf am I supposed to do when I cannot move because land costs significantly more now and I cannot get more for my house because the market has stalled out? This is a real problem that people who aren't focused on timing are running up against. So what do we do? We stay. We stay in that situation longer and longer because there doesn't look like there is an opportunity to get out.
So much of life feels like being in an abusive relationship. Maybe I'm just being over dramatic, but it never sounded like it was supposed to be this way.
Exploitation has been a part of the human experience ever since some bright fellow realized you could store some of this year's grain in a hut for next year, thus creating the concept of wealth. I'd suggest that the primary difference between today and the 1850s is that we no longer have privacy of any sort. Everybody has to live their life in public to some degree. I know more than one person who has been coerced into joining social media as a condition of employment. And it's not enough to join. You have to say the right things.
According to the Bible, when God found out that Adam and Eve disobeyed Him, He kicked them out of Eden and told them that from that point forward, they would only eat if they worked.
This is true, but in Genesis 1, God originally created Adam on the sixth day, the final day of creation, to *work*:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
---
So Adam was working from the literal beginning. Work is a great thing. Solomon points out in Ecclesiastes the uniquely sweet joy that comes from working hard and enjoying the fruit of your labor. But working in a field choked with thorns? Yeah, not as fun as the original design.
Good point. And his work was to tend God's creation, not extract a meal from the ground. In many ways it is a parable for the transition from hunter/gatherer to agriculture.
You're right, but in that perfect beginning, work wasn't work. It was a group of jobs to be completed yes, but it wasn't a miserable slog. One imagines Adam being very happy and contented with the work God had tasked him to do.
I think that is misunderstood. Nazism is the ultimate perversion. That is an example of taking a true and good thing and turning into the thing they did.
I'm not an atheist, but sometimes I wonder why rational people think total prostration before God is any better than prostrating yourself before some oligarch.
The same reason we don't think less of a dog for coming when you call him. Nature is hierarchical. If there is a God then we must kneel before Him. But why kneel before another man?
God created us equal to each other, which is why no human being wields Authority over any other human being, with the sole exception being parents over their minor children. This is not to say that humans don't have Power, but Authority being the right to rule without the consent of the governed, there's none where adults are concerned.
That's fair, although I feel like there are a lot of people who use "God" as an excuse to surrender all autonomy. If there is a God, I'd hope He wouldn't want us to sit back and pray while the lizards run roughshod over His creation.
Alternatively, I find it curious how people who refuse to kneel before God so readily kneel before the likes of likes of Brandon and Bezos.
The loss of privacy and the simultaneous loss of local community are interesting. No one has privacy and it's harder than ever to really know anything about anyone.
I'll state that the notion of a social credit score has merit when you understand Eeyore can still get money from people instead of being a known pariah.
Both the US and China have social credit scores. The difference is that China's is based on socially constructive behavior whereas ours is secretive and largely rewards you based on how hard you're willing to work to give people sexual access to children.
I would correct that to, "...China's is based on what the CCP thinks is socially constructive behavior..." The CCP is horrifyingly (terrifyingly?) dysfunctional and corrupt (Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Zero Covid, the looming real estate bubble burst, Winnie the Pooh's self-appointment as El Presidente for life, etc). The US certainly has issues, but China's are deeper and more acute, perhaps due to the fact that they have thousands of years of insanity baked into them compared to our mere hundreds.
80% of our new business is referral. We don't advertise at all. We have more work than we can handle. The Eeyore's of the world get what's coming to them.
I saw a lot of this coming a very long time ago. I have several internet cut-outs that are so old now, that there's no way they can be tied to me because they pre-exist the web. While I don't need them anymore, because I'm old and self-employed and no longer give a damn, for a long time they benefited me tremendously.
You have to find your little acts of rebellion and plan your little escapes years in advance, so if and when the time comes, it's there. Smart governments always leave a few bolt-holes to let the 'malcontents' escape the system, less said malcontents start a revolution and put said government up against the wall.
My history lessons would seem to indicate the collapse - though to those in charge they'll be thinking it's the success, right up to the moment where it turns on a dime like a flock of birds.
The EU is currently trying to shut down the majority of its food production. If you think this year is getting scary, wait until next year.
In the parlance of our times: I'm not a collapsetard nor am I doompilled but I want to see an end to our system, even if it means some hardship (complete collapse being an unfavorable scenario), because it appears to be slowly smothering humanity.
What it comes down to is that Klaus Schwab guy wants to take over the world. And he's got a lot of people in power who are all in with him. Yeah, he's nuttier than a fruitcake but he pretty much controls most of the western governments at this point.
Who controls him? No idea. Maybe nobody. Maybe the devil. Again, no idea.
Anyways these brilliant people who we've ceded control to because we allowed so many people who will vote for them because they're mental midgets to move into our country, these brilliant people think they've got it all figured out.
Meanwhile China is screwing with them every chance they get.
Putin is also screwing with them in ways that they can't see how they're being taken advantage of, because, again, these people just ain't that smart.
I don't know when it's going to reach critical mass and blow up, only tht once it does, it's gonna be really bad. I mean you have people believing now that nitrogen is a pollutant. It's 80 percent of the atmosphere!
Every milestone moment in my life seems to have met a very large challenge. I hate it. It also means that I should appreciate the easier moments. There are many things historically that were FAR FAR WORSE than anything me or my generation has went through. The difference really feels like the lack of privacy and the lizard people.
We bought but now our home is "valued" so highly that it wouldn't sell quickly given the market tanking. And, anywhere we want to live is just insanely overpriced.
I got lucky last year and managed a 6% raise. It finally took some pressure off healthcare and such. I then shut off my 401k to have more take home. Well what do you know... all our other costs ballooned further. It has been as if I had done none of that stuff for some time. Now I'm the guy spending 600 bucks while making 300. It aint good.
I'll be printing out my county's deeds next week. I wonder how much we're tanking. I keep waiting for it to happen, but still... not yet... But up here we're like a whole different country, so who knows?
I restructured my contract at work this year and got about a 12k bump. I was hoping to use it to pay down my mortgage faster and put the money towards other useful things. Instead, it’s basically being eaten up in inflation.
As you well know from my rantings, if the company isn’t pick pocketing your soul for profit, the government will gladly take over both halves the share to steal anyways.
I hate all of it. But even in my darkest days I don’t think I can go back to a cog. Your job brings untold joy to children. It’s basically like you’re a modern Christmas elf. There is merit there despite it all. I just make people money. It’s not really the same.
Life is a tough thing to navigate because everyone has competing interests. I'd argue that a benefit of Capitalism is that you can at least turn your worth into something fungible and move it around to places of greatest return. Not always easy, but Good Business is Where You Find It..
How could that movie not have made $eriou$ buckS ?! .
I remember my peers, some of whom were cubicle rats (? is that a proper name for them ?) told me it was a terrible movie so I didn't see it in the theater, much later I rented it and thought it crude but dead on point .
Had a joker at work print 50 blank copies of TPS reports and put them in the rack with the other paper. Even made a sticky to say they were TPS reports.
I for one absolutely abhor LinkedIn. It’s a giant circle jerk of ego and self perpetuance. The entire platform is just corporate Facebook where people blow each other with likes in hopes it will generate more financially. I think it’s more inline to your article than you give credit.
I’ve never been fired. I have been laid off three times in both enclosing of businesses completely where I am last out the door, getting bought out and stripped only to keep product and warehousing (a ship I was jumping anyhow), and then being part of a larger corporate layoff in the tech fields of Delphi where you are just a number on a spreadsheet and they shed entire divisions at will to make the profit margin that delights the share holder.
All of these places have taught me various lessons in a trial by fire fashion. In the end they pushed me to finally take the leap and work for myself. It’s been the hardest, most stressful and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. The blessing and fallacy is that there is no ceiling yet no giant corporate piggy bank. You have to build your own ladder while climbing for true fiscal gain, and uncle Sam is 6 rungs back trying to burn it from under you.
I think sometimes it’s just easier to take it in the ass and smile. That’s why it’s done. Why start at zero when you can walk back into ‘comfort’. It’s all a hedged value system where you wager futures and freedoms with the ever decreasing hourglass we rally against.
Frankly, the material stuff means less to me every year. I’d rather be poor with my dog as long as I can eat and have a roof. Fortunately, for now we are winning. I don’t take it for granted.
I havent updated my linked in profile in 10-15 years. It’s awful. I quit facebook cause it made me hate my friends. I joined nextdoor for “neighborhood updates” apparently my “neighbors” are all karens. I shouldve known this but I was being naive.
My actual neighbor is on Nextdoor and sends me stuff from time to time. Oddly I’m pretty sure he’s the Karen in the group. That or it’s just old man vibes kicking in...probably the latter.
A few years back I was being recruited for a job with Blue Origin. The recruiter called me to set up a date to fly me out for a final interview. She said “Oh btw you forgot to send me your cover letter. Can you send that over today?” I reminded her that “it’s 2018 and you’re pursuing me for this job. I will not be writing a cover letter.”
The noise she made could only be described as choking on her headset. (They still offered me the job.) I wonder if they still ask for cover letters today.
I got hired for a job that led me to my current amazing position and the manager took me to lunch and asked a bunch of questions. I said “didn’t you read my resume?” He never did. Resumes don’t matter…
Man, your timing on this is uncanny. Just got served divorce papers, sick of the administratively crafted shit-sandwich that is modern medicine, wondering if I sold the house and maybe the corvette, I could afford a few acres, a decent metal building, and an airstream to tow around when the wanderlust strikes. Just need to make it into the black, and fuck the mandated vaccinations, the diversity and inclusion consensual confabulation, the urgent requirement to pretend to like the constant barrage of focus-group generated powerpointed intellect-reducing offal showered over me daily like the pig blood on Carrie.
Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids, I'm never coming back....
I had the same ideas when I got divorced 10 years ago. I could have just lived in my paid off Nissan Quest and stayed at campgrounds two weeks at a time...except I ended up with custody of the kids. I wonder what ever happened to this fellow... https://avoidablecontact.substack.com/p/in-which-a-neighbor-opts-out
Having spent too much time watching domestic cases (because there is never anyone there and you can get work done sitting in the rows waiting for your trial to start in civil term) your ex must have been something. Lucifer on a pogo stick with two sources of income being an Only Fans account and writes porn with the kids in it will still get custody.
Thanks. It helped that she got arrested for DUI during the proceedings. One time the neighbor mom called me at work to say she found my boys wandering in the street in their underwear, looking for their mother. They were 4 and 6 at the time.
Glad you stepped up. That is one thing I will never understand is someone who is so into themselves that they come before their kid. There is some luck in choosing a partner, and I’ve gotten lucky, but I know that between me and our son on the losing end. She knows she would as well. Fortunately, we’re both in.
I hope they are thriving and well adjusted.
Hope the same for you.
Love the the writing stay for the comment s and people.
Agreed. I would never be with a woman who wouldn't step right over me to take care of her own child. It was *exhausting*, but the 4 years I spent as a single dad were the best years of my life up to that point. We had zero stress or drama in the house, and we spent every weekend riding motocross, BMX, skate park or at the shooting range. I could not be more pleased with the young men they have become. And then I met 2.0 and it took my life to the next level of happiness.
I remember reading this when you published. My wife was the one that stopped us from our first minivan which I would have been fine with. She did not want the soccer mom label. Glad you and the boys are out of the woods. Do the same thing with my son. Just went shooting last week. Now that he is wrapping up his Eagle Project he can start on his pilots license. Will be my favorite student.
If 2.0 happens hope you have success. Mine plays in some of our reindeer games but is happy to go off elsewhere with her interests.
Don’t quite know what is going on as what is printed is not what was written.
“ but knowing between me and our son I would come out on the losing end. She knows she would come in second if I was forced to choose. Fortunately we see things the same and still get on great after 25 years.
Nice to hear that, and I take it as a positive that the kids went to you (read your further comments below and it's great that they grew into young men, unusual these days). This is a nice outlet, and I think a unique community based on the common mindedness and general good nature of everyone here. At least there are no kids in our situation (unless you account her adult-aged but weirdly juvenile / volatile live-in daughter, who seems to be a big factor in the dissolution of things) involved, so it's just us and a not too acrimonious parting of ways, at her behest. Things can always be worse, until they are.
I once worked at a spin-off company that was, to put it mildly, a complete and utter shit show.
And I gave up a good job to be recruited by them because of the promises they made and because an old friend was one of the upper managers and he needed my help to get the job done and told me he'd take care of me.
I walked out (quit) a year after being there, (and by then there were a LOT of recriminations flying about and a LOT of execs, upper & middle management had been forced out due to 'sexual harassment allegations' - Not me thankfully i got out before that) I talked with a lot of the folks no longer there (as well as a few who were) and put it all together.
Honestly though, when the CEO turned DOWN an offer from Cisco that would have made us all rich, I should have told them to fuck off and left then and there - it was obvious that these people were NOT right in the head. Cisco then went and bought our competition who only had 10 percent of the market but in 2 years had 99 percent of it.
But what I put together afterwards was this one SOB who used to take off weeks at a time to do bicycle competitions was having an affair with the President's secretary and she (being gullible) was feeding him lots of private information that he used to find out WHO needed to go next in his quest to take over the company. Then said secretary or one other woman working there (who was NOT anything to look at - ugh with a personality to match) would file a sexual harassment complaint and BOOM they were gone.
They would also go as far as to delete your work from the file system, then swear you never sent it to them. All sorts of really low stuff. I actually wrote a long and involved web page about it with timelines and evidence and a lot of the former employees saw it and sent in even more incriminating evidence. Wow, what a learning experience.
Several years later I worked for a company that became one of the PREMIER companies on FuckedCompany.com (remember them?) I was quickly booted up to manager as the machinations of the VC's played out (word or warning folks - ALL VC are scum, no exceptions). But now, now I KNEW how the game was played. I helped all of my guys get CISCO certs so they could move on to better jobs when it became clear the end was near (we went from a leading technology to a pump and dump scheme so the VC's could skim off investor monies - what they did was patently illegal but remember the golden rule!).
I played 'dumb' when their requests for the gear that they needed to learn and train on came across my desk (as the VC's all thought I was on their side, they signed for all of it not realizing I was wise to their game and was just fucking with them). When they eventually discovered I was sitting down with one of the original founders and helping work out exit plans for his loyal staff -at the VC's expense- so they didn't get screwed, I got let go.
I don't think they appreciated my laughing at them when I left the exit interview. But I'd learned by then to keep copies of all the incriminating evidence and to make sure that they gave me letters of recommendation BEFORE I walked out the door, so I'd 'keep my mouth shut'.
But the one thing I learned from that first brush with corporate and upper management stupidity is that these folks aren't very bright. None of them worked for what they got, it was all handed to them. None of them are ever as smart as they think they are. So if you know what to do, and how to talk, you can take advantage of a lot of them. I could tell stories all day long.
Hell a friend of mine wrote a book about it: 'The Chopping Block' because he went through something that was just so incredibly absurd.
If they'd taken the Cisco deal, we all would have vested instantly and made a couple of hundred grand, each. Maybe they just didn't like the idea of the peons getting rich?
Heh, had a neighbor who put in 20 at GM in research only to be packed off to Delphi so his pension, and the pensions of thousands like him, could get adjusted in the bankruptcy.
I wonder if the performative aspect is a journalism thing.
I’ve been an engineer most of my career, and while I’ve had to eat my fair share of shit like anyone in a corporate job, I’ve certainly never felt compelled to lie publicly about how good it tasted. Lie by omission in actual interviews, certainly, but to actually write a post like the one in question seems crazy.
My LinkedIn goes long stretches without being updated, I don’t follow my employers or coworkers or generally interact with anyone there unless I’m “Open To Work”, and yet when I need or want to change jobs, it’s been helpful.
Maybe I’ve missed out on chances I could have had by playing the game better. And yet, I’m reasonably satisfied with where I am. I think it’s easy to overthink things like this.
It’s true in the sense that I’ve gotten a ton of mileage out of the stereotype that engineers aren’t expected to be fashionable, modern, or literate. In some cases, I don’t even need to pretend…
This works for tax lawyers as well. I'm the nerdy guy that the shark in a $10k suit calls in when the questions start getting hard. That position allows me to get away with amazing things.
My father-in-law based his entire career on that. The college money went to pay for correcting his daughter's crossed eyes, but he ended up working on much the same jobs and doing the same things as he would have if he'd gotten his engineering degree, largely through sheer determination.
I'm gonna steal the trade-adjacent term. I travel to customer sites and I fix or commission semi complicated electrical systems. They pretty much let me do what I want as long as stuff gets fixed, the customer is happy, and there's no strippers on my expense report. But there's hell to pay if I don't fix it on time.
I am sure everyone has heard of https://womeninstem.org/ and other organizations like it. Well I am proud to announce the launching of https://womeninoilfields.org empowering and encouraging high school girls to be a part of the movement to increase female representation in oil fields.
There’s a whole lot to chew on here, Jack. I’ve been remarkably fortunate in life. I lucked into a high paying skilled trade early in life. I’ve never had to pretend to respect anyone. I’m eternally grateful to God for that.
Funnily, my son is also a second-generation CAP cadet. He found it light years more congenial than the BSA.
He was fortunate to have a CFI in his squadron who volunteered his time as a flight instructor to cadets. CAP also offers flight training scholarships to Cadet members and has, I believe, gotten much more serious about seeing that they are better utilized.
Long story short, my boy earned his PP certificate at age 17 with very minimal cost to me, and having had far better instruction than did I. CAP was very good to him.
I flew in the CAP briefly but my parents didn't really support it and in the long run I preferred bike racing to marching around a paved lot. My son, on the other hand, has made Airman First Class in the time it took me to figure out where the on-base bathroom was.
Jack, as someone that keeps your Linked-in profile booked makes as a model for offering advice to my colleagues as how to write a well put together selling tool. Today’s post makes me think of how when living in a china shop one should not invite a pack of German Sheppards to visit. Nothing there about the CEO of the begat shop laying off people in order to get the beget shop’s best customer to sponsor an event. Or said best customer who single handily was created a consumer product named after an ancient Mexican Indian tribe that drove a company into the ground. Or how the same customer was promoted to over see an operation in the South Pacific and likewise drive it into extinction. And then was promoted to oversee all company promotions and used that position to extract penance on a single line worker at the begat company…:-) :-)
As a corporate american, I can say with vigor that this article is SPOT F#CKING ON. Truer words have never been spoken, and I hate myself for playing this horrid charade every day, but there is little I won’t do to feed my family.
There's much agitation in the corporate press about how MILLENNIALS WON'T WORK THESE JOBS; like Malcolm X, I view that as the chickens of childlessness, sexual fetishism, and casual drug use coming home to roost. I don't think the C-creatures understand just how many of us only work because we have children.
And for anyone older but not too old, the healthcare. It's openly spoken in my field that almost anyone over 50-55 would be OTFD if 'Medicare for all' passed.
My employment experience is a bit out of the norm. All save for a stint as Office Depot Store 4008’s laziest and highest-grossing salesman in Summer 2020 has been independent contractor stuff running GOP political campaigns, where Ive managed to command respectable fees for being the only person in my area able to simultaneously write the ads, squeeze the PAC money machine, and organize the grassroots stuff with equal skill.
That said, my dad just retired after years in tech consulting. Decided to go manage his rental properties around Canaan Valley/Snowshoe and do a bit of IT stuff for some blue-collar clients. Part of this career was spent in the chemical sector, another at a PE Firm in the metals business, and the last doing government work. It was all drudgery. In Chem, it was a big Abbot & Costello skit. A new CEO or CIO would emerge, and with his Black Belt immediately force an offshoring of dad’s staff. This was usually followed by a series of problems, the sort one encounters when a bunch of 24/7 chemical plants in Appalachia suddenly have to rely on Chinese tech support for their shipping and receiving systems. Then, the executives would return--“Six Sigma metrics indicate that the Chinese support desk sucks; we need people on the ground.” Enter a series of H1Bs, and the only skilled IT people forced to task-manage them. PE was sort of the same, but especially flimflam--firm wanted to implement SAP on the cheap so its owner could unload the company ASAP and purchase part of the Atlanta Falcons. Enter 45 H1Bs and 2 Americans in a converted Indian restaurant in Ohio. Government work avoided the cost cutting but at the other end of the extreme--careers still made of simple projects (think 8 years to switch to VOIP phones, by an elderly, female, and minority employee who threatened EEOC action if prodded to expedite the task) an entire department consisting of people who were constantly “active” but seldom responded to emails or calls. Rube Goldberg chains of command, where a brilliant fellow decided to implement the “Matrix management model” in an organization with an approximate IQ of 70, leading to nobody really knowing to whom they report. After being asked to spearhead the creation of a PMO, dad realized that nobody actually kept metrics of....what their employees were doing all day or the status of any projects. And since it was a public sector Union environment, they spiked up like hedgehogs upon being asked for such documentation. The CIO held a Pomeranian while himself wrapped in a blanket during video conferences. Dad finally said “fuck it” and decided to close up shop. He likes to get shit done, and some of the organizational structures are outright designed to impede that. He feels much more fulfilled doing consulting work for electricians and plumbers. Can’t say I blame him.
Thumbs up for another Maiden reference, Jack. I saw them in Tampa last month, 36 years since I saw them as a teenager at the long gone Hollywood “Snortatorium”. They’re older. I’m older. Half of the guys I went to see “Somewhere on Tour” with are dead. I wasn’t sure how great it would be... until they melted the place! Dickinson’s voice is the only discernible difference, sound-wise, but he’s still 80% or better and absolutely nailing it at times.
I distinctly remember a time in my youth when I made fun of elderly crowds at (insert 30+ year old band here) concerts, jamming out to less than mediocre versions of played out hits of yore. This was not that (or was it?). Either way, there were several moments of greatness that night.
*Sorry for the distraction, but I obviously still have Iron Maiden on the brain.
I missed a chance to see the last tour -- haven't caught them since the 2012-era Seventh Son tour. I'm not sure there is a harder-working band out there, or one made up of people who care more passionately about both their craft and serving the audience. Turns out they were never edgy devil-worship types. They were English tradesmen.
Indeed. I just saw Judas Priest two nights ago with my 16 and 18 yo boys. Whatever Rob Halford's voice has lost at the age of 71 is more than made up for by his showmanship and stage presence.
Would love to see JP as that is one of the few groups I haven’t seen. Glad to hear Halford still has it.
Seeing both Maiden and RUSH you can say Maiden is the hardest working and that is true, but RUSH is just three guys having a great time, continuing age long inside jokes and making solid music. I know which I would rather be.
We have all learned a lot in work, but didn’t realize how good we had it with music and first jobs in the 80’s. The more you learn the more you realize you have to learn while avoiding the issues from previous lessons. No industry is safe and law is no less susceptible to the entitled and entrenched.
It is the same clowns you have previously described, doing the same humiliation, with the same people eating dirt.
The 80's really were something special weren't they? Mostly peaceful, decent economy, abundant personal freedom, new technological wonders all the time, great cars, and nobody's parents were home.
Except Ronnie Ray Gun was going to end the world with him being so evil and all. Remember that? Yet we are still here and have a Potato running the government in 2022.
Funny thing, Reagan was losing it in his last couple of years in office, but held it together. Only in hindsight was it noticeable. I can understand that potential upheaval was primarily the reason and he and they just wanted to get to the finish line. Then knew it was time to hand over the cars keys after office and bow out gracefully.
"Joe maybe you ought to rethink running..." Naw dawg, I'm good. It's my turn.
Ha. Have shown my son a bunch of videos and items from the period. All the DARE stuff, weird commercials and clothes but most of this was harmless other than the beginning of offshoring jobs. We can’t make it though an episode of Stranger Things without an iPad and going through a rabbit hole of related subjects. Yes then nuclear war was a real possibility and commies were everywhere.
Thank god I was smart enough and contributing enough that I didn’t have to totally prostrate myself in fortune 50 hell. But it didn’t even seem like these were affronts to the midwits. Whereas the smartest find these situations pretty unbearable.
I agree that the humiliation rituals are actually ENJOYABLE to a lot of people, most of whom are women. They LOVE the performative aspects of it, just like they LOVED being able to call themselves "heroes" for getting a shot or wearing a mask or showing up to pull a shift at Whole Foods.
The ox rarely feels his yoke, but try putting one on a lion.
I could never give an answer for where I saw myself in 5 years. “On a boat with instagram models a million miles away from ever smelling an Indian here again”
That stuff is all fairly easy, too. High social rewards with absolutely minimal effort, just like staying home to flatten the curve "for two weeks."
Our landlord was the director of a local homeless shelter for a while and does a lot of hard work trying to help them out. I think he's received an occasional beating for his effort, judging from the black eye he was sporting earlier this year. When we move out he's going to transition our half of his house into a sort of homeless-family-relief thing. Right in the middle of a neighborhood where houses regularly sell for $0.5mil to obnoxiously self-righteous professors and lawyers with yards full of political signs. I wonder how they'll feel about issues they "care about" being moved in right next door...
EDIT: edited comment to show house prices at half a million instead of five million because I'm a dumbass and didn't catch the absent decimal when I proofread it before hitting post.
I'd love to see a DeSantis-vs-Martha's-Vineyard thing play out, only without the national guard coming in to rescue the professors and lawyers. At least, once we're securely in the hills.
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman
Experts necessarily are backwards looking but science looks forward into the unknown. If science was "settled" why bother with experiments? Does Newton work at subatomic levels?
"Science" apparently means testing the same hypothesis over and over again expecting new results. Or frankly, simply stating the results are opposite. Most people who cry "science!" don't even know what a hypothesis is. In my most autistic moments, I'd only retort by shouting back which logical fallacies the person was committed. APPEAL TO AUTHORITY!!1!
I'm thankful that one of my neighbors had a sign telling me how to vote on a state proposal. Around here you sometimes have to vote no to mean yes so I wasn't sure about Prop 2 till I saw this neighbor supported it, so I knew to vote no.
My biggest regret in my career is not finding a niche skill set with my brain. I romanticized the ‘humiliation’ of industrials that get offshored by low intellect MBA kiddos. Even my controls knowledge isn’t special to anyone in particular. Should have been a skilled trade.
Low intellect MBA's is an understatement. I got laughed at in a meeting because I made the point that people who break the law aren't necessarily criminals. Yikes.
Worked with a guy that years later became the CIO of a Fortune 100. His brother told me "I wouldn't want his job at twice his pay". Ultimately he got canned. New boss wants his own people. Of course, he wanted to "move on". Like they all do. Seems they set him up in a consultancy for a couple of years to make the fall a bit easier. Meanwhile the brother is nearing retirement and shows up in the Computer OPS department everyday in jeans and is happy.
Funny thing, I would look the guy up on political contributions. Completely in lock step with company management. When he was canned, the contributions stopped. Maybe he didn't want to give 5 figures every year to the higher ups pet politicians.
Yeah these people work far more than I am willing to, as well as playing all of the political games.
And the unfortunate fact is that in a large corporation these positions are far rarer than the people willing to do anything to get them, so your shelf-life is short. They are highly replaceable and interchangeable.
Intelligence is overrated. Plenty of 140+ iq tech guys who would get on their knees for Steve Jobs. I'm sure there is a minimum intelligence requirement but a lot of the most successful people I know are midwits with the BALLS to go out on their own. Some perspective. I do 400+ 1040's every year. I just looked through my top 50 clients in terms of AGI. 18 of those are self made. Probably another 5-10 in the lucky sperm club. Everyone in my top 50 makes over 400k per year. In my top 15, 6 are self made. Everyone in my top 15 make over 1mm per year. There's probably a couple of geniuses in there but not the majority
In law you have partners who can and sometimes become horrible people than the client who are just as bad, but know what you mean. Just getting ready to make a move to avoid the sucking.
I wish MSU affiliates didn't have such an inferiority complex. Nobody made you guys get Bs in high school.
The reason why State grads hire Michigan grads is that they are smart enough to know that the Michigan grads have learned a thing or two in A2 and are probably smarter than they themselves are. At the risk of killing the joke, that's why it's funny, eggheads working for practical folks.
While I respect MSU as my father's alma mater in veterinary medicine (my mom said he also got a MS in cytology while earning his DVM but her memory was going by then) the fact remains that Michigan is one of less than a handful of public schools that are considered elite, along with Berkley and maybe Wisconsin.
Agree with you but having family that have gone to both the best and second best schools in the state up north as well as ND I chose tOSU after being accepted to U of M.
It’s all semantics. What you do with the knowledge after is all that matters. But I enjoy the tribe pride and rivalries.
Enjoy the family diversity and be glad they are not inbred Ivy League.
The only universal trait of my friends that make a lot of money is that they are OCD or perfectionists. They have an intense desire for things to be new, clean, neat and orderly. This desire drives their motivation to earn more money in order to attain them. Conscientiousness is maybe a better descriptor.
The testable IQs and education are variable, medicine, law, entrepreneurship, real estate, pilot.
If you wanna say “FUCK YOU” things, you better have “FUCK YOU” money!
In the meantime (while en route to conquesting filthy lucre), all of the hoops through which one must jump to enjoy the benefits of modern corporate (in particular, F500) employment are just an obstacle course through which some credible candidates cannot navigate. Learn to navigate them and forget those less agile, less flexible, less oleaginous former peers.
"FUCK YOU" money comes in many forms.
I didn't have enough money for a permanent vacation, but I saved enough that I haven't had to work for the last year. Depending how much I'm willing to liquidate and burn through, I could sit on my ass for at least five more years if I really wanted to. And I didn't even have to give up my CT5-V.
The problem with having fuck you money, is that nobody around you understands it. It's so inconceivable that some will likely resent you for it. I've actually taken to giving casual acquaintances a line of bullshit about working from home as a "consultant" to avoid the topic.
If you can find a way to pull it off, I recommend everyone take a fuck you break at some point. I'm (slowly) headed back to work as a corporate peon, but feel better about it knowing I was able to escape it for a bit.
I think what you have is Blow Me money, not Fuck You money.
Either way you call it, it's a nice thing .
I never quite made it and foolishly said (often literally) "FUCK YOU ~ I'm out here !" when I had no other job prospects .
Looking back that wasn't overly smart but I felt I had to do it at the time .
-Nate
I did that once for about six months. Then a job came up that looked interesting and it was funny that at the interview they wanted to know why I hadn't been working.
'I took some time off'.
"why would you do that?"
'Because I wanted to travel and go on a few trips.'
That wasn't exactly the truth, I just wanted to catch up on my reading and spend some time with family after being gone for over a year. But they bought it.
I took a year off in my twenties. During that year I got busted on some bs misdemeanor charge. The judge asked if I had money to defend myself:
me: Yes
J: How much
me: 60-70k
J: How do you have 60-70k?
Me: Umm, I saved it when I had a job.
She was baffled
I didn't spend any money until I got a wife and kids
I had fight a misdemeanor reckless op earlier this year - got caught doing 20 over - and got a glimpse of the world of disorganized crime.
When I showed up in court, in a proper suit, several people dressed like homeless drug addicts (or grunge musicians, take your pick) asked me if I was their lawyer.
But the really telling part was the court docket. It was hung on the wall next to the door of the courtroom and was full of names straight out of Key & Peele's East-West Bowl skit.
I'm there for a bullshit technical foul, and I have to share space with misdemeanor trespassing, felony resisting arrest, multiple child support violations, etc.
I beat the rap, though.
I got caught doing 95 in a 55 7-8 years ago. I did not beat the charge. Reckless is 30+ over here. I thought it was a 65 zone. That was not a fun time. The day my court proceedings were finally over, the gf at the time dumped me. It's amazing how much of court is just "Yes, your honor" "no your honor" and not looking like a slob. I got off fairly light and the judge thanked me for being in proper attire. The worst part was sitting in the back watching some poor guy or gal getting into it with the judge and watching the fine/jail time go up with each sentence "Just shut up!"
I got clocked doing 55 in a 35 in Japan (km/h, so in real measurements that's what, 40 in a 25 zone?) which translates there as dangerous driving. I lost a day at work, two Saturdays for driver's safety classes (one of which I couldn't drive to because they suspend your license for that day only) and was relieved of over $1000. I don't recommend it.
40 over. Ouch.
I figure a big part of my getting out of trouble, other than a fine and points, was that I hired a lawyer well-versed in traffic cases, showed up well-dressed & clean-shaven, and basically stood there quietly while my lawyer did the talking.
Be smart enough to become indispensable, don't spend you bonuses, pay off your main property, don't get divorced, and don't buy new Porsches. Fuck you money will find you by the time you're 45.
I’m 33 - let’s hope a little sooner! Working on a cool deal that should put me on that path 🤞
You're in finance, right? Fuck you money is bigger for you guys because you need to keep up outward appearance of success even if it's heavily leveraged.
Among folks I've known who have been able to do whatever they want is a couple who ran a catering business out of a little commercial property. Not a fancy catering business, a school lunch/Elks Club steam table business. That paid for an expensive private school for the kids, college for two of the kids, and 6 to 8 rental properties in a very desirable area. He drives a 15 year old Honda Accord, she drives a Fit on her way to the horse barn for riding. No social media at all.
Finance, yes. I have no interest in “retiring” in the conventional sense. The “job” of relationship development / maintenance and thoughtful idea generation gets easier over time obviously, but I’d like to transition from advice peddler to capital provider at some point - i.e., on my own terms. Low eight figures would do it for me.
Sheez, you're my kid brother's age.
Being poor and independent in my early adulthood really helped keep this mindset. By doing so I hit 1M NW in my early 30s with very aggressive income growth, but not expendiatures. I don't even want to think about being beholden to anyone beyond 50-55, tops.
It's like you plucked this topic from my brain. I'm struggling with it mightily. To stay and be a cog in a small system where all the good happens because you're a part of it? Or, to take a chance and put your whole world at stake just so that billionare doesn't make another dime off YOUR hard work?
I'm perplexed. This is no good or right answer when thinking about it. We live in a world so interconnected and the lizard people just seek to take more and more options away from us. Like, wtf am I supposed to do when I cannot move because land costs significantly more now and I cannot get more for my house because the market has stalled out? This is a real problem that people who aren't focused on timing are running up against. So what do we do? We stay. We stay in that situation longer and longer because there doesn't look like there is an opportunity to get out.
So much of life feels like being in an abusive relationship. Maybe I'm just being over dramatic, but it never sounded like it was supposed to be this way.
Exploitation has been a part of the human experience ever since some bright fellow realized you could store some of this year's grain in a hut for next year, thus creating the concept of wealth. I'd suggest that the primary difference between today and the 1850s is that we no longer have privacy of any sort. Everybody has to live their life in public to some degree. I know more than one person who has been coerced into joining social media as a condition of employment. And it's not enough to join. You have to say the right things.
According to the Bible, when God found out that Adam and Eve disobeyed Him, He kicked them out of Eden and told them that from that point forward, they would only eat if they worked.
Employment was the first punishment.
This is true, but in Genesis 1, God originally created Adam on the sixth day, the final day of creation, to *work*:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
---
So Adam was working from the literal beginning. Work is a great thing. Solomon points out in Ecclesiastes the uniquely sweet joy that comes from working hard and enjoying the fruit of your labor. But working in a field choked with thorns? Yeah, not as fun as the original design.
Good point. And his work was to tend God's creation, not extract a meal from the ground. In many ways it is a parable for the transition from hunter/gatherer to agriculture.
You're right, but in that perfect beginning, work wasn't work. It was a group of jobs to be completed yes, but it wasn't a miserable slog. One imagines Adam being very happy and contented with the work God had tasked him to do.
Or it was the initial step towards freedom.....
-Nate
"Arbeit Macht Frei"
I would disagree
I think that is misunderstood. Nazism is the ultimate perversion. That is an example of taking a true and good thing and turning into the thing they did.
I'm not an atheist, but sometimes I wonder why rational people think total prostration before God is any better than prostrating yourself before some oligarch.
And vice versa.
The same reason we don't think less of a dog for coming when you call him. Nature is hierarchical. If there is a God then we must kneel before Him. But why kneel before another man?
God created us equal to each other, which is why no human being wields Authority over any other human being, with the sole exception being parents over their minor children. This is not to say that humans don't have Power, but Authority being the right to rule without the consent of the governed, there's none where adults are concerned.
That's fair, although I feel like there are a lot of people who use "God" as an excuse to surrender all autonomy. If there is a God, I'd hope He wouldn't want us to sit back and pray while the lizards run roughshod over His creation.
Alternatively, I find it curious how people who refuse to kneel before God so readily kneel before the likes of likes of Brandon and Bezos.
Heinlein had an interesting view of this in Methuselah's Children.
Because God is real, there is a natural order, and you don’t get to choose not to serve, you just choose what you serve.
I'm not in a faith that does the prostration thing but 1. Oligarchs come and go 2. Eternity is a long time
The loss of privacy and the simultaneous loss of local community are interesting. No one has privacy and it's harder than ever to really know anything about anyone.
I'll state that the notion of a social credit score has merit when you understand Eeyore can still get money from people instead of being a known pariah.
Both the US and China have social credit scores. The difference is that China's is based on socially constructive behavior whereas ours is secretive and largely rewards you based on how hard you're willing to work to give people sexual access to children.
I would correct that to, "...China's is based on what the CCP thinks is socially constructive behavior..." The CCP is horrifyingly (terrifyingly?) dysfunctional and corrupt (Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Zero Covid, the looming real estate bubble burst, Winnie the Pooh's self-appointment as El Presidente for life, etc). The US certainly has issues, but China's are deeper and more acute, perhaps due to the fact that they have thousands of years of insanity baked into them compared to our mere hundreds.
Some day, the CCP's "mandate from heaven" will run out, like all of China's previous rulers.
One hopes .
-Nate
80% of our new business is referral. We don't advertise at all. We have more work than we can handle. The Eeyore's of the world get what's coming to them.
I saw a lot of this coming a very long time ago. I have several internet cut-outs that are so old now, that there's no way they can be tied to me because they pre-exist the web. While I don't need them anymore, because I'm old and self-employed and no longer give a damn, for a long time they benefited me tremendously.
You have to find your little acts of rebellion and plan your little escapes years in advance, so if and when the time comes, it's there. Smart governments always leave a few bolt-holes to let the 'malcontents' escape the system, less said malcontents start a revolution and put said government up against the wall.
I hate living during what increasingly appears to be one of history's pivot points.
Are we just being narcissists?
I am (naturally) inclined to say no because I swear it feels like there's something big moving just 'neath everyone's senses.
What you're feeling is either the triumph or collapse of The System. I just don't know which it is.
My history lessons would seem to indicate the collapse - though to those in charge they'll be thinking it's the success, right up to the moment where it turns on a dime like a flock of birds.
The EU is currently trying to shut down the majority of its food production. If you think this year is getting scary, wait until next year.
In the parlance of our times: I'm not a collapsetard nor am I doompilled but I want to see an end to our system, even if it means some hardship (complete collapse being an unfavorable scenario), because it appears to be slowly smothering humanity.
What it comes down to is that Klaus Schwab guy wants to take over the world. And he's got a lot of people in power who are all in with him. Yeah, he's nuttier than a fruitcake but he pretty much controls most of the western governments at this point.
Who controls him? No idea. Maybe nobody. Maybe the devil. Again, no idea.
Anyways these brilliant people who we've ceded control to because we allowed so many people who will vote for them because they're mental midgets to move into our country, these brilliant people think they've got it all figured out.
Meanwhile China is screwing with them every chance they get.
Putin is also screwing with them in ways that they can't see how they're being taken advantage of, because, again, these people just ain't that smart.
I don't know when it's going to reach critical mass and blow up, only tht once it does, it's gonna be really bad. I mean you have people believing now that nitrogen is a pollutant. It's 80 percent of the atmosphere!
But these are the people in charge now.
Or which is worse?
Every milestone moment in my life seems to have met a very large challenge. I hate it. It also means that I should appreciate the easier moments. There are many things historically that were FAR FAR WORSE than anything me or my generation has went through. The difference really feels like the lack of privacy and the lizard people.
I'm in a rental, when I moved in the house was valued at ~$400k.
Last estimates were almost +50% in 4 years. I'm not earning 50% more money.
We bought but now our home is "valued" so highly that it wouldn't sell quickly given the market tanking. And, anywhere we want to live is just insanely overpriced.
I got lucky last year and managed a 6% raise. It finally took some pressure off healthcare and such. I then shut off my 401k to have more take home. Well what do you know... all our other costs ballooned further. It has been as if I had done none of that stuff for some time. Now I'm the guy spending 600 bucks while making 300. It aint good.
I'll be printing out my county's deeds next week. I wonder how much we're tanking. I keep waiting for it to happen, but still... not yet... But up here we're like a whole different country, so who knows?
I restructured my contract at work this year and got about a 12k bump. I was hoping to use it to pay down my mortgage faster and put the money towards other useful things. Instead, it’s basically being eaten up in inflation.
As you well know from my rantings, if the company isn’t pick pocketing your soul for profit, the government will gladly take over both halves the share to steal anyways.
I hate all of it. But even in my darkest days I don’t think I can go back to a cog. Your job brings untold joy to children. It’s basically like you’re a modern Christmas elf. There is merit there despite it all. I just make people money. It’s not really the same.
There's a lot of truth right there in what you say. That joy is what keeps me going some days.
Life is a tough thing to navigate because everyone has competing interests. I'd argue that a benefit of Capitalism is that you can at least turn your worth into something fungible and move it around to places of greatest return. Not always easy, but Good Business is Where You Find It..
You are describing the movie Office Space. It didn't make a dime and it's considered a cult classic 20 years later.
Cheer yourself up by looking for the printer scene on Youtube. Always puts a smile on my face.
How could that movie not have made $eriou$ buckS ?! .
I remember my peers, some of whom were cubicle rats (? is that a proper name for them ?) told me it was a terrible movie so I didn't see it in the theater, much later I rented it and thought it crude but dead on point .
-Nate
Had a joker at work print 50 blank copies of TPS reports and put them in the rack with the other paper. Even made a sticky to say they were TPS reports.
I made a TPS reports joke at Chemical Abstracts Society in 2003. Turns out they actually HAD a TPS report. My contract was not renewed.
The movie cost 10 million to make. IMDB says world wide gross was $10,828,256
Hey, i've been in an abusive relationship with the concept of employment since I was 16.
I for one absolutely abhor LinkedIn. It’s a giant circle jerk of ego and self perpetuance. The entire platform is just corporate Facebook where people blow each other with likes in hopes it will generate more financially. I think it’s more inline to your article than you give credit.
I’ve never been fired. I have been laid off three times in both enclosing of businesses completely where I am last out the door, getting bought out and stripped only to keep product and warehousing (a ship I was jumping anyhow), and then being part of a larger corporate layoff in the tech fields of Delphi where you are just a number on a spreadsheet and they shed entire divisions at will to make the profit margin that delights the share holder.
All of these places have taught me various lessons in a trial by fire fashion. In the end they pushed me to finally take the leap and work for myself. It’s been the hardest, most stressful and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. The blessing and fallacy is that there is no ceiling yet no giant corporate piggy bank. You have to build your own ladder while climbing for true fiscal gain, and uncle Sam is 6 rungs back trying to burn it from under you.
I think sometimes it’s just easier to take it in the ass and smile. That’s why it’s done. Why start at zero when you can walk back into ‘comfort’. It’s all a hedged value system where you wager futures and freedoms with the ever decreasing hourglass we rally against.
Frankly, the material stuff means less to me every year. I’d rather be poor with my dog as long as I can eat and have a roof. Fortunately, for now we are winning. I don’t take it for granted.
The worst is now the fake pr announcements about taking a new job or some personal bullshit I couldn't care about.
I havent updated my linked in profile in 10-15 years. It’s awful. I quit facebook cause it made me hate my friends. I joined nextdoor for “neighborhood updates” apparently my “neighbors” are all karens. I shouldve known this but I was being naive.
My actual neighbor is on Nextdoor and sends me stuff from time to time. Oddly I’m pretty sure he’s the Karen in the group. That or it’s just old man vibes kicking in...probably the latter.
A few years back I was being recruited for a job with Blue Origin. The recruiter called me to set up a date to fly me out for a final interview. She said “Oh btw you forgot to send me your cover letter. Can you send that over today?” I reminded her that “it’s 2018 and you’re pursuing me for this job. I will not be writing a cover letter.”
The noise she made could only be described as choking on her headset. (They still offered me the job.) I wonder if they still ask for cover letters today.
I got hired for a job that led me to my current amazing position and the manager took me to lunch and asked a bunch of questions. I said “didn’t you read my resume?” He never did. Resumes don’t matter…
Man, your timing on this is uncanny. Just got served divorce papers, sick of the administratively crafted shit-sandwich that is modern medicine, wondering if I sold the house and maybe the corvette, I could afford a few acres, a decent metal building, and an airstream to tow around when the wanderlust strikes. Just need to make it into the black, and fuck the mandated vaccinations, the diversity and inclusion consensual confabulation, the urgent requirement to pretend to like the constant barrage of focus-group generated powerpointed intellect-reducing offal showered over me daily like the pig blood on Carrie.
Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids, I'm never coming back....
This is the modern equivalent of Mencken's "raise the black flag." BRAVO.
I had the same ideas when I got divorced 10 years ago. I could have just lived in my paid off Nissan Quest and stayed at campgrounds two weeks at a time...except I ended up with custody of the kids. I wonder what ever happened to this fellow... https://avoidablecontact.substack.com/p/in-which-a-neighbor-opts-out
Having spent too much time watching domestic cases (because there is never anyone there and you can get work done sitting in the rows waiting for your trial to start in civil term) your ex must have been something. Lucifer on a pogo stick with two sources of income being an Only Fans account and writes porn with the kids in it will still get custody.
You are a unicorn.
Thanks. It helped that she got arrested for DUI during the proceedings. One time the neighbor mom called me at work to say she found my boys wandering in the street in their underwear, looking for their mother. They were 4 and 6 at the time.
Glad you stepped up. That is one thing I will never understand is someone who is so into themselves that they come before their kid. There is some luck in choosing a partner, and I’ve gotten lucky, but I know that between me and our son on the losing end. She knows she would as well. Fortunately, we’re both in.
I hope they are thriving and well adjusted.
Hope the same for you.
Love the the writing stay for the comment s and people.
Quite a good community here.
Agreed. I would never be with a woman who wouldn't step right over me to take care of her own child. It was *exhausting*, but the 4 years I spent as a single dad were the best years of my life up to that point. We had zero stress or drama in the house, and we spent every weekend riding motocross, BMX, skate park or at the shooting range. I could not be more pleased with the young men they have become. And then I met 2.0 and it took my life to the next level of happiness.
If Jack doesn't mind me posting this, I told the story of my divorce in the guise of a long-term ownership review of my Nissan Quest for anyone who's interested. https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/04/nine-year-quest-learned-stop-worrying-looking-cool-love-van/
I remember reading this when you published. My wife was the one that stopped us from our first minivan which I would have been fine with. She did not want the soccer mom label. Glad you and the boys are out of the woods. Do the same thing with my son. Just went shooting last week. Now that he is wrapping up his Eagle Project he can start on his pilots license. Will be my favorite student.
If 2.0 happens hope you have success. Mine plays in some of our reindeer games but is happy to go off elsewhere with her interests.
Hmm. Looked at the article for the first time in years. The pictures are out of order and it the ending was removed. *shrug*
Don’t quite know what is going on as what is printed is not what was written.
“ but knowing between me and our son I would come out on the losing end. She knows she would come in second if I was forced to choose. Fortunately we see things the same and still get on great after 25 years.
Nice to hear that, and I take it as a positive that the kids went to you (read your further comments below and it's great that they grew into young men, unusual these days). This is a nice outlet, and I think a unique community based on the common mindedness and general good nature of everyone here. At least there are no kids in our situation (unless you account her adult-aged but weirdly juvenile / volatile live-in daughter, who seems to be a big factor in the dissolution of things) involved, so it's just us and a not too acrimonious parting of ways, at her behest. Things can always be worse, until they are.
Me too!
I once worked at a spin-off company that was, to put it mildly, a complete and utter shit show.
And I gave up a good job to be recruited by them because of the promises they made and because an old friend was one of the upper managers and he needed my help to get the job done and told me he'd take care of me.
I walked out (quit) a year after being there, (and by then there were a LOT of recriminations flying about and a LOT of execs, upper & middle management had been forced out due to 'sexual harassment allegations' - Not me thankfully i got out before that) I talked with a lot of the folks no longer there (as well as a few who were) and put it all together.
Honestly though, when the CEO turned DOWN an offer from Cisco that would have made us all rich, I should have told them to fuck off and left then and there - it was obvious that these people were NOT right in the head. Cisco then went and bought our competition who only had 10 percent of the market but in 2 years had 99 percent of it.
But what I put together afterwards was this one SOB who used to take off weeks at a time to do bicycle competitions was having an affair with the President's secretary and she (being gullible) was feeding him lots of private information that he used to find out WHO needed to go next in his quest to take over the company. Then said secretary or one other woman working there (who was NOT anything to look at - ugh with a personality to match) would file a sexual harassment complaint and BOOM they were gone.
They would also go as far as to delete your work from the file system, then swear you never sent it to them. All sorts of really low stuff. I actually wrote a long and involved web page about it with timelines and evidence and a lot of the former employees saw it and sent in even more incriminating evidence. Wow, what a learning experience.
Several years later I worked for a company that became one of the PREMIER companies on FuckedCompany.com (remember them?) I was quickly booted up to manager as the machinations of the VC's played out (word or warning folks - ALL VC are scum, no exceptions). But now, now I KNEW how the game was played. I helped all of my guys get CISCO certs so they could move on to better jobs when it became clear the end was near (we went from a leading technology to a pump and dump scheme so the VC's could skim off investor monies - what they did was patently illegal but remember the golden rule!).
I played 'dumb' when their requests for the gear that they needed to learn and train on came across my desk (as the VC's all thought I was on their side, they signed for all of it not realizing I was wise to their game and was just fucking with them). When they eventually discovered I was sitting down with one of the original founders and helping work out exit plans for his loyal staff -at the VC's expense- so they didn't get screwed, I got let go.
I don't think they appreciated my laughing at them when I left the exit interview. But I'd learned by then to keep copies of all the incriminating evidence and to make sure that they gave me letters of recommendation BEFORE I walked out the door, so I'd 'keep my mouth shut'.
But the one thing I learned from that first brush with corporate and upper management stupidity is that these folks aren't very bright. None of them worked for what they got, it was all handed to them. None of them are ever as smart as they think they are. So if you know what to do, and how to talk, you can take advantage of a lot of them. I could tell stories all day long.
Hell a friend of mine wrote a book about it: 'The Chopping Block' because he went through something that was just so incredibly absurd.
I have a tale about a successful Cisco purchase that I'll tell in the weeks to come -- you may feel better after reading it, or worse.
If they'd taken the Cisco deal, we all would have vested instantly and made a couple of hundred grand, each. Maybe they just didn't like the idea of the peons getting rich?
Never work for someone else's startup.
Wow that hurts. Not all VC's are scum, but 90% are.
What a great piece. Thank you, Jack.
It struck me very close to home. I was sacked from GM after 13 lousy years and felt that humiliation clearly. Never more.
Heh, had a neighbor who put in 20 at GM in research only to be packed off to Delphi so his pension, and the pensions of thousands like him, could get adjusted in the bankruptcy.
I wonder if the performative aspect is a journalism thing.
I’ve been an engineer most of my career, and while I’ve had to eat my fair share of shit like anyone in a corporate job, I’ve certainly never felt compelled to lie publicly about how good it tasted. Lie by omission in actual interviews, certainly, but to actually write a post like the one in question seems crazy.
My LinkedIn goes long stretches without being updated, I don’t follow my employers or coworkers or generally interact with anyone there unless I’m “Open To Work”, and yet when I need or want to change jobs, it’s been helpful.
Maybe I’ve missed out on chances I could have had by playing the game better. And yet, I’m reasonably satisfied with where I am. I think it’s easy to overthink things like this.
Engineers are trade-adjacent in that respect.
It’s true in the sense that I’ve gotten a ton of mileage out of the stereotype that engineers aren’t expected to be fashionable, modern, or literate. In some cases, I don’t even need to pretend…
This works for tax lawyers as well. I'm the nerdy guy that the shark in a $10k suit calls in when the questions start getting hard. That position allows me to get away with amazing things.
I'm not an engineer, but I play one at work.
My father-in-law based his entire career on that. The college money went to pay for correcting his daughter's crossed eyes, but he ended up working on much the same jobs and doing the same things as he would have if he'd gotten his engineering degree, largely through sheer determination.
I'm gonna steal the trade-adjacent term. I travel to customer sites and I fix or commission semi complicated electrical systems. They pretty much let me do what I want as long as stuff gets fixed, the customer is happy, and there's no strippers on my expense report. But there's hell to pay if I don't fix it on time.
To some degree, you can tell how important a job is to society by how strictly its practitioners are tone policed.
Well, that's one good thing about the oilfield. No one has to pretend they are out there for anything other than the money.
I am sure everyone has heard of https://womeninstem.org/ and other organizations like it. Well I am proud to announce the launching of https://womeninoilfields.org empowering and encouraging high school girls to be a part of the movement to increase female representation in oil fields.
Don't give them any ideas.
In one of his old bits, Bill Burr talked about women thinking the "man's world" was a buffet they could just pick and choose from.
"Ohh, I'll take equal pay, that's nice. Eww, pick up the check, no thanks."
You mean you were not motivated by the simply delightful prospect of a dirty, dangerous job extracting oil from a reluctant earth?
There’s a whole lot to chew on here, Jack. I’ve been remarkably fortunate in life. I lucked into a high paying skilled trade early in life. I’ve never had to pretend to respect anyone. I’m eternally grateful to God for that.
Funnily, my son is also a second-generation CAP cadet. He found it light years more congenial than the BSA.
He was fortunate to have a CFI in his squadron who volunteered his time as a flight instructor to cadets. CAP also offers flight training scholarships to Cadet members and has, I believe, gotten much more serious about seeing that they are better utilized.
Long story short, my boy earned his PP certificate at age 17 with very minimal cost to me, and having had far better instruction than did I. CAP was very good to him.
I flew in the CAP briefly but my parents didn't really support it and in the long run I preferred bike racing to marching around a paved lot. My son, on the other hand, has made Airman First Class in the time it took me to figure out where the on-base bathroom was.
Jack, as someone that keeps your Linked-in profile booked makes as a model for offering advice to my colleagues as how to write a well put together selling tool. Today’s post makes me think of how when living in a china shop one should not invite a pack of German Sheppards to visit. Nothing there about the CEO of the begat shop laying off people in order to get the beget shop’s best customer to sponsor an event. Or said best customer who single handily was created a consumer product named after an ancient Mexican Indian tribe that drove a company into the ground. Or how the same customer was promoted to over see an operation in the South Pacific and likewise drive it into extinction. And then was promoted to oversee all company promotions and used that position to extract penance on a single line worker at the begat company…:-) :-)
If I had your height and your looks I could get away with saying all of that!
The true Mark of Excellence.
Only nobodies fail downward.
As a corporate american, I can say with vigor that this article is SPOT F#CKING ON. Truer words have never been spoken, and I hate myself for playing this horrid charade every day, but there is little I won’t do to feed my family.
"there is little I won’t do to feed my family."
There's much agitation in the corporate press about how MILLENNIALS WON'T WORK THESE JOBS; like Malcolm X, I view that as the chickens of childlessness, sexual fetishism, and casual drug use coming home to roost. I don't think the C-creatures understand just how many of us only work because we have children.
And for anyone older but not too old, the healthcare. It's openly spoken in my field that almost anyone over 50-55 would be OTFD if 'Medicare for all' passed.
My employment experience is a bit out of the norm. All save for a stint as Office Depot Store 4008’s laziest and highest-grossing salesman in Summer 2020 has been independent contractor stuff running GOP political campaigns, where Ive managed to command respectable fees for being the only person in my area able to simultaneously write the ads, squeeze the PAC money machine, and organize the grassroots stuff with equal skill.
That said, my dad just retired after years in tech consulting. Decided to go manage his rental properties around Canaan Valley/Snowshoe and do a bit of IT stuff for some blue-collar clients. Part of this career was spent in the chemical sector, another at a PE Firm in the metals business, and the last doing government work. It was all drudgery. In Chem, it was a big Abbot & Costello skit. A new CEO or CIO would emerge, and with his Black Belt immediately force an offshoring of dad’s staff. This was usually followed by a series of problems, the sort one encounters when a bunch of 24/7 chemical plants in Appalachia suddenly have to rely on Chinese tech support for their shipping and receiving systems. Then, the executives would return--“Six Sigma metrics indicate that the Chinese support desk sucks; we need people on the ground.” Enter a series of H1Bs, and the only skilled IT people forced to task-manage them. PE was sort of the same, but especially flimflam--firm wanted to implement SAP on the cheap so its owner could unload the company ASAP and purchase part of the Atlanta Falcons. Enter 45 H1Bs and 2 Americans in a converted Indian restaurant in Ohio. Government work avoided the cost cutting but at the other end of the extreme--careers still made of simple projects (think 8 years to switch to VOIP phones, by an elderly, female, and minority employee who threatened EEOC action if prodded to expedite the task) an entire department consisting of people who were constantly “active” but seldom responded to emails or calls. Rube Goldberg chains of command, where a brilliant fellow decided to implement the “Matrix management model” in an organization with an approximate IQ of 70, leading to nobody really knowing to whom they report. After being asked to spearhead the creation of a PMO, dad realized that nobody actually kept metrics of....what their employees were doing all day or the status of any projects. And since it was a public sector Union environment, they spiked up like hedgehogs upon being asked for such documentation. The CIO held a Pomeranian while himself wrapped in a blanket during video conferences. Dad finally said “fuck it” and decided to close up shop. He likes to get shit done, and some of the organizational structures are outright designed to impede that. He feels much more fulfilled doing consulting work for electricians and plumbers. Can’t say I blame him.
Now I know why Reuss got so mad at you. It wasn't because you were wrong, it was because you were right.
The dude green lit the fucking aztec and jacks the one who gets fired. You Gotta be fucking kidding me.
One of the last things Lloyd Reuss did at Buick was greenlight the Grand National and then the GNX.
They say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. That may be true but sometimes it rolls a little before it comes to a rest.
Thumbs up for another Maiden reference, Jack. I saw them in Tampa last month, 36 years since I saw them as a teenager at the long gone Hollywood “Snortatorium”. They’re older. I’m older. Half of the guys I went to see “Somewhere on Tour” with are dead. I wasn’t sure how great it would be... until they melted the place! Dickinson’s voice is the only discernible difference, sound-wise, but he’s still 80% or better and absolutely nailing it at times.
I distinctly remember a time in my youth when I made fun of elderly crowds at (insert 30+ year old band here) concerts, jamming out to less than mediocre versions of played out hits of yore. This was not that (or was it?). Either way, there were several moments of greatness that night.
*Sorry for the distraction, but I obviously still have Iron Maiden on the brain.
I missed a chance to see the last tour -- haven't caught them since the 2012-era Seventh Son tour. I'm not sure there is a harder-working band out there, or one made up of people who care more passionately about both their craft and serving the audience. Turns out they were never edgy devil-worship types. They were English tradesmen.
Indeed. I just saw Judas Priest two nights ago with my 16 and 18 yo boys. Whatever Rob Halford's voice has lost at the age of 71 is more than made up for by his showmanship and stage presence.
Would love to see JP as that is one of the few groups I haven’t seen. Glad to hear Halford still has it.
Seeing both Maiden and RUSH you can say Maiden is the hardest working and that is true, but RUSH is just three guys having a great time, continuing age long inside jokes and making solid music. I know which I would rather be.
We have all learned a lot in work, but didn’t realize how good we had it with music and first jobs in the 80’s. The more you learn the more you realize you have to learn while avoiding the issues from previous lessons. No industry is safe and law is no less susceptible to the entitled and entrenched.
It is the same clowns you have previously described, doing the same humiliation, with the same people eating dirt.
The 80's really were something special weren't they? Mostly peaceful, decent economy, abundant personal freedom, new technological wonders all the time, great cars, and nobody's parents were home.
They were. Had it better and didn’t know it. Had actual down time out of communication. Just didn’t know how good we had it.
Can’t even explain to the younger crowd
Except Ronnie Ray Gun was going to end the world with him being so evil and all. Remember that? Yet we are still here and have a Potato running the government in 2022.
Funny thing, Reagan was losing it in his last couple of years in office, but held it together. Only in hindsight was it noticeable. I can understand that potential upheaval was primarily the reason and he and they just wanted to get to the finish line. Then knew it was time to hand over the cars keys after office and bow out gracefully.
"Joe maybe you ought to rethink running..." Naw dawg, I'm good. It's my turn.
The difference is that the people surrounding Reagan, although often self-enriching, didn't openly hate the country and the people in it.
Ha. Have shown my son a bunch of videos and items from the period. All the DARE stuff, weird commercials and clothes but most of this was harmless other than the beginning of offshoring jobs. We can’t make it though an episode of Stranger Things without an iPad and going through a rabbit hole of related subjects. Yes then nuclear war was a real possibility and commies were everywhere.
I keep telling my boys I'm sorry they missed it!
Thank god I was smart enough and contributing enough that I didn’t have to totally prostrate myself in fortune 50 hell. But it didn’t even seem like these were affronts to the midwits. Whereas the smartest find these situations pretty unbearable.
I agree that the humiliation rituals are actually ENJOYABLE to a lot of people, most of whom are women. They LOVE the performative aspects of it, just like they LOVED being able to call themselves "heroes" for getting a shot or wearing a mask or showing up to pull a shift at Whole Foods.
The ox rarely feels his yoke, but try putting one on a lion.
I could never give an answer for where I saw myself in 5 years. “On a boat with instagram models a million miles away from ever smelling an Indian here again”
"not here ideally"
"Celebrating the five year anniversary of you asking me this question!" - Mitch Hedberg
That stuff is all fairly easy, too. High social rewards with absolutely minimal effort, just like staying home to flatten the curve "for two weeks."
Our landlord was the director of a local homeless shelter for a while and does a lot of hard work trying to help them out. I think he's received an occasional beating for his effort, judging from the black eye he was sporting earlier this year. When we move out he's going to transition our half of his house into a sort of homeless-family-relief thing. Right in the middle of a neighborhood where houses regularly sell for $0.5mil to obnoxiously self-righteous professors and lawyers with yards full of political signs. I wonder how they'll feel about issues they "care about" being moved in right next door...
EDIT: edited comment to show house prices at half a million instead of five million because I'm a dumbass and didn't catch the absent decimal when I proofread it before hitting post.
I hope the homeless escape, so to speak, and trash the neighborhood. It would be bad for your friend, but it would be instructive for everyone else.
I'd love to see a DeSantis-vs-Martha's-Vineyard thing play out, only without the national guard coming in to rescue the professors and lawyers. At least, once we're securely in the hills.
"This house believes in science blah blah blah"
"Love is Love".
"I stand with Ukraine". And if you don't have a sign, you don't, I guess.
Strange how people who "believe in science" never want to subject their beliefs to empirical analysis, isn't it?
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman
Experts necessarily are backwards looking but science looks forward into the unknown. If science was "settled" why bother with experiments? Does Newton work at subatomic levels?
People should look at the evidence! Think for themselves! So long as they only come to the same conclusions I do.
(Sadly, I'm guilty of this sentiment myself.)
"Science" apparently means testing the same hypothesis over and over again expecting new results. Or frankly, simply stating the results are opposite. Most people who cry "science!" don't even know what a hypothesis is. In my most autistic moments, I'd only retort by shouting back which logical fallacies the person was committed. APPEAL TO AUTHORITY!!1!
I'm thankful that one of my neighbors had a sign telling me how to vote on a state proposal. Around here you sometimes have to vote no to mean yes so I wasn't sure about Prop 2 till I saw this neighbor supported it, so I knew to vote no.
Why feminization of men is actually good for TBTB.
Well, yeah. Women seek alliances and nancies cower before your stormtroopers. A man will hunt you down and make an example of you.
My biggest regret in my career is not finding a niche skill set with my brain. I romanticized the ‘humiliation’ of industrials that get offshored by low intellect MBA kiddos. Even my controls knowledge isn’t special to anyone in particular. Should have been a skilled trade.
Low intellect MBA's is an understatement. I got laughed at in a meeting because I made the point that people who break the law aren't necessarily criminals. Yikes.
And those who do completely legal things don't necessarily have clean hands.
Never a truer phrase spoken.
Worked with a guy that years later became the CIO of a Fortune 100. His brother told me "I wouldn't want his job at twice his pay". Ultimately he got canned. New boss wants his own people. Of course, he wanted to "move on". Like they all do. Seems they set him up in a consultancy for a couple of years to make the fall a bit easier. Meanwhile the brother is nearing retirement and shows up in the Computer OPS department everyday in jeans and is happy.
Funny thing, I would look the guy up on political contributions. Completely in lock step with company management. When he was canned, the contributions stopped. Maybe he didn't want to give 5 figures every year to the higher ups pet politicians.
In my corporate days, bonus size was explicitly linked to your making the right contributions. No bonus, no contribution. QED.
Yeah these people work far more than I am willing to, as well as playing all of the political games.
And the unfortunate fact is that in a large corporation these positions are far rarer than the people willing to do anything to get them, so your shelf-life is short. They are highly replaceable and interchangeable.
Intelligence is overrated. Plenty of 140+ iq tech guys who would get on their knees for Steve Jobs. I'm sure there is a minimum intelligence requirement but a lot of the most successful people I know are midwits with the BALLS to go out on their own. Some perspective. I do 400+ 1040's every year. I just looked through my top 50 clients in terms of AGI. 18 of those are self made. Probably another 5-10 in the lucky sperm club. Everyone in my top 50 makes over 400k per year. In my top 15, 6 are self made. Everyone in my top 15 make over 1mm per year. There's probably a couple of geniuses in there but not the majority
The joke here in Michigan is "What do University of Michigan graduates call Michigan State graduates? Boss."
Well that’s what they get for going to the second best school in the state. Should have gone to Michigan State.
Honestly, having employees and working for large org, being a boss in a bureaucratic organization sucks balls.
Indeed. Instead of being simply ass fucked, being in middle management is being spit roasted.
Unfortunately that is too accurate and hits to home.
In law you have partners who can and sometimes become horrible people than the client who are just as bad, but know what you mean. Just getting ready to make a move to avoid the sucking.
I wish MSU affiliates didn't have such an inferiority complex. Nobody made you guys get Bs in high school.
The reason why State grads hire Michigan grads is that they are smart enough to know that the Michigan grads have learned a thing or two in A2 and are probably smarter than they themselves are. At the risk of killing the joke, that's why it's funny, eggheads working for practical folks.
While I respect MSU as my father's alma mater in veterinary medicine (my mom said he also got a MS in cytology while earning his DVM but her memory was going by then) the fact remains that Michigan is one of less than a handful of public schools that are considered elite, along with Berkley and maybe Wisconsin.
Agree with you but having family that have gone to both the best and second best schools in the state up north as well as ND I chose tOSU after being accepted to U of M.
It’s all semantics. What you do with the knowledge after is all that matters. But I enjoy the tribe pride and rivalries.
Enjoy the family diversity and be glad they are not inbred Ivy League.
Maybe the smartest realize that being a boss of a lot of people is actually a pain in the ass.
Dan Gilbert brings up the average, the rest of them are dopes.
The only universal trait of my friends that make a lot of money is that they are OCD or perfectionists. They have an intense desire for things to be new, clean, neat and orderly. This desire drives their motivation to earn more money in order to attain them. Conscientiousness is maybe a better descriptor.
The testable IQs and education are variable, medicine, law, entrepreneurship, real estate, pilot.