In my personal experience, companies turn to these tools when there are organizational problems because it places the burden on the individuals instead of the system. Who has a large influence on the system, those at the top.
Readit Newsbobbytherobot commented on Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types daily.jstor.org/why-compa... · Posted by u/samizdis
Pros
The environmental initiatives are wonderful and they've got a surprising amount of market traction.
Cons
Grove is a place where meritocracy-espousing libertarian men get together to talk about diversity and inclusion in between the more pressing conversations that dominate their Marin-dwelling lives concerning craft whiskey and Teslas. They all agree that diversity and inclusion are good things to invest in, but they don't actually want to promote anyone that doesn't look or sound just like them so they tend to focus their virtue-signaling efforts on volunteering their time outside the company and sending everyone emails about how woke they are because they say “Latinx” or something. Of course they’ve hired the obligatory token PoC HR muppet to sit there and shut down every uncomfortable Slido question that comes in on their behalf—rest assured, this person is nobody’s ally.
Even if you accept a role that you find interesting and report to a person you respect, that will all change very quickly when that person disappears to go do something else and you get traded to some other team. Your primary responsibility as an individual contributor at Grove will likely be to make sure that your manager fails up no matter how little management acumen they demonstrate or show an interest in acquiring. You should take pride in either training your department's "director" or flat-out doing his job for him (yes, it will be a man) because that's what being a team player is all about. Yeah, his CV says he's got 20 years of experience, but he's only been here a few months. He just needs to learn. Also his contract says we have to pay him for the full year if we fire him so... Remember, we have a "blameless culture." The valley’s a small place—you wouldn't want to say anything that might hurt your career, would you?
To make all of this worse, one of the investors who is (rightfully) tired of letting these entitled brats run around with his money recently decided that Grove needs to have an IPO immediately because IPOs are hot. The entire roadmap was thrown out the window to try and get the CTO’s disaster of a monolith ready for an auditor and every middle manager in every unnecessary fiefdom is convinced that they're some kind of diabolical chessmaster who's going to use the ensuing chaos as a smokescreen that will enable them to pull off a coup of the entire operation and crown themselves the holy king of soap subscriptions or something. It's toxic. Really, really toxic. I shudder to think how awful life must be for the folks in the fulfillment centers given what I've experienced as a well-compensated office drone with the privilege of saying "no" when somebody tells me to do something completely insane.
Advice to Management
Find something useful to do with the all-hands meetings. Marketing does not need a captive audience to congratulate themselves in front of every single week.
bobbytherobot commented on The Inheritance Tax Is Far Too Low nytimes.com/2020/06/24/op... · Posted by u/tysone
I've never understood why the government thinks that just because someone has died, they deserve 40+% of money that has already been taxed.
The government doesn't tax anyone who dies. They tax the estate of the wealthy. Few people will be affected by it.
There is plenty more you can read on the topic. The general idea is that it helps create a meritocratic society.
bobbytherobot commented on The Inheritance Tax Is Far Too Low nytimes.com/2020/06/24/op... · Posted by u/tysone
The money that was used to purchase the stock originally was probably post-tax dollars
You pay taxes on the gains. (Unless you purchases them through a Roth 401K/IRA where you don't, but those have tight limits on it.)
bobbytherobot commented on Ask HN: Moving from a startup to a big co, what should I be aware of? · Posted by u/1729
Having worked at Big Co and then on my own company for years, this is exactly what I was thinking.
You'll lose professional autonomy in exchange for a good salary, job security, and resume bling. And you probably won't have to work as hard or as often (again, probably).
"you probably won't have to work as hard"
For me, it was a question of: do I put in 40% to get 90% completed, or do I put in 150% to get 99% completed?
bobbytherobot commented on Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms techcrunch.com/2020/05/27... · Posted by u/patd
Media literacy and criticism classes in middle school?
Sure, I'm all for teaching it. It would still face the same issues as other education topics. Use science as an example. It is taught in schools. And yet, we still have a strong anti-science culture in the U.S.
bobbytherobot commented on Paying Remote Employees Fairly blairreeves.me/2020/05/22... · Posted by u/rmason
The other factor I'm not hearing in this conversation is that there is a third-party in why the Bay Area has so many high paid tech jobs: the VCs. I know of multiple startups orignally based elsewhere who were pressured to move their company to the Bay Area by the VC. I suspect there are many ways in which the VCs have an invisible hand in creating the Bay Area market.
I don't know how to unwind the VC intanglement when talking about compensation. I do think it should be part of this conversation.
bobbytherobot commented on Sell Yourself, Sell Your Work solipsys.co.uk/new/SellYo... · Posted by u/ColinWright
It helps to reframe the issue. "Selling" yourself is distasteful for many, because it smacks not only of loudness & brashness, but of straight up lying.
Look at this instead as a problem of knowledge distribution. In the extreme case, you do absolutely brilliant work, but tell nobody - how would people in charge of promotions/funding know you did that work?
That's the first step. You need to let people know your work exists, otherwise they really can't reward/recognize it. (Or really, in the extreme, you need to let them know you exist as the very first precondition).
The next step is the fact that you are the person who has likely spent by far the most time on the problem. You intuitively understand why this is an incredibly important problem, and why the solution is really, really good. I guarantee you that the people around you don't. How would they? They've spent much less time on it than you have.
And so part 2 becomes educating others on the problem and on the solution.
So, no, you don't "sell" yourself. You publicize and educate. It's still incredibly hard, but it captures the core of what's actually necessary much better. There's no need to be loud & brash, to paint everything in the brightest possible colors, but there's a need to communicate.
If Einstein hadn't written a paper on special relativity, he would (obviously) not have been recognized for it. And if he hand't communicated his insights very clearly and crisply, he wouldn't have been recognized, either - several people before him spelled out some of the insights, but in a much less clear manner.
So, don't "sell", just let people clearly know what you do,and why you do it. Looking at it from that angle has helped me tremendously getting over the "selling is gauche" issue.
> Look at this instead as a problem of knowledge distribution
I personally found this to be helpful. I find it more comfortable to document and present internally to my companies than to the public at large. I've tried blogging, but it feels pointless. At least with internal presentation, I hear positive feedback from it. Maybe it is just that one person six months later who messages me that I saved them days of work.
While a regulation and mandates usually requires an employer to keep extra records, cause confusion for a lot of smaller companies trying to comply based on each different governments rules, as well as generate more government costs to enforce, the Texas heat is nothing to mess with just as in many states in the south.
I would think an employer who has crews working in the heat would want their crews to be rested and hydrated. Someone handing heavy machinery and passes out, or god forbid, dies on a job would crush that company and cause hell on the general costs of insurance. Also with the number of construction companies, ones that basically tell their staff they can’t drink water I would have to believe quickly will find no one will want to work for.
1. Emotions are bigger factor than logic when it comes to business decisions.
2. We often assume wrong on what a “rational” economic choice should be. We believe it would be constructive, but economically beneficial choice for an individual often does not align with the constructive choice.