I’m definitely jaded after 25 yeats of busting my ass in project management
My current role I’ve been in since 2021 after getting whacked after yet another major 5+yr project. I recently had my review and had a AA rating which is bacially “exceeds expectations” . It yielded me a whopping 3.3%. Last year I “met expectations” and got a 2% raise. All the pain and aggravation of meeting goals and objectives and busting my ass wasn’t worth the 1.3% extra .

I’m at the point in life I have zero desire to climb back into management or move up the ladder. It ain’t worth it at all. I’ve hated the field I’ve been in for 25 years, soul sucking work. Zero accomplishment. Zero reward. Zero sense of achievement. Zero interest. Just a meat grinder.

I couldn’t believe that 3.3% bullshit, just makes me want to do the bare minimum lime 95% of the office.

Buying brand new vehicles every five years? That’s certainly financially responsible

And yeah I am making stuff up for my amusement. Much like 70+ year olds believe iPhones and avocado toast are the roadblock to achieving the American Dream.

Don’t forget those super-expensive flat-panel television sets.

LMAO

I was trying a bit ago to think of this in your perspective.

I have a 12' shelf upstairs with a lot of stuff that has been replaced by your phone.
Polaroid camera, 2 Nikon 35mm cameras, early digital cameras, Cannon video camera, early GPS units, wall phones, a battery powered 4 in hand held tv, small recorder, variety of early cell phones etc. etc.

So if you add the price of all of those up they would easily come to the price you are paying for the latest phones.

I guess it is all about perspective. :thumb:

Yeah, I still can't wrap my head around the idea that some people actually watch games on their phone. :eek:

Look at the bright side

3.3% is better than being unceremoniously terminated due to yet another org restructure!

There are certainly people out there that buy the newest phone every year or two. Those people are going to make poor financial decisions their whole life across multiple avenues.

I’m just in the season of life where I get to pay roughly $1500/month in childcare. A grand ain’t shit anymore unfortunately

If I look back at electronics from my early childhood there were OBSCENELY priced compared to today. A video game has been $60 for the last 30 years and a system $500 as well

How the hell did my dad, a factory worker, afford that shit unless his dollar was just worth much much more than mine?

I guess at least he had factory jobs that paid a living wage to choose from.

Retired relatives spend about 16 hours/day on their iPad... and I know this because they constantly post dumb shit on FB saying their generation was/is different and "wE'rE nOt ThE sAmE" .....sorry, but shouldn't you be outside interacting with other humans from that high horse of yours? :D


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Actually since I retired I spend less time on places like Facebook, X (Twitter) and other chat rooms I used to frequent.

I will admit to being on here more than I used to be, but my overall time online has shrunk a great deal.

Part of that is due to trying to get healthy...and realizing that the aforementioned places are nothing but trash for the most part these days.

That's just not true, at least not in general. I work for a large corporation and have had several opportunities for promotion. It's true that they don't generally give raises other than year-to-yesr COL but there's plenty of opportunities to move up, maybe moreso because the company is massive.

Yeah, my point was that you can somewhat tell what people are paying by what device they are using. If you see your Uber driver with an iPhone 12 or a Samsung A15, they're probably paying $25 a month for Metro or Total. If they have the latest 16 Pro or Galaxy S25, they're probably paying $40 or more for AT&T or T-Mobile.

They're not super expensive. You could buy 4 or 5 55-inch TVs for the price of a new iPhone.

Not a big business, but I worked for a guy for a year and half, 60 hours a week and after a year with no raise, I bolted.

It was destiny, because it's what motivated me to jump off the cliff/flap my wings and become self employed.

I was 4 or 5 when my father bought an Intellivision from the local small town drug store.

$300. That's $1200 today. I'd tell my kids to play in traffic if they asked me to pay that for a Switch or XBOX.

We had two Betamax (yep, we were that family) video recorders so we could rent and record. Those things were insane expensive.

I'm not even going to look into what he paid for the Apple IIe I wrote papers on.....

The difference is, they didn't read it throughout the day.

I paid about $2000 for my IIc portable with 16-color monitor.

Games actually went down in price in the early 2000's. They were around $50 current gen in the 360 era. Then $60. And now the starting price for a AAA with no battle pass or add-ons is $70.

He lost a lot of talent because he was short-sighted.

I have a talk with every one of my employees when they've been around for years. I ask them what they really want in life, stability or wealth. I can provide stability along with a lot of help in their personal lives, but I can't provide wealth. If they want to chase wealth they are going to need to go out on their own.

Most people are happy with working for someone they respect and pays what they are worth. They don't want the stress of being boss/owner, and that's just fine, it's not for everyone.

My best days are when I get to jump in and drag knuckles with my employees. They see I'm pretty damn good at it, and that they are learning from someone that knows exactly what they are doing. It beats the heck out of customer relations, quotes, management (although I enjoy that, too).

Games used to be expensive due to material cost. Material cost is now dirt cheap but development of games is basically a movie-budget.

Yep. Also, in the early days, most file storage was done in the physical game disk. Once they moved to optical, that cost went away as well.

And you're right. For example, Assassin's Creed Shadows reportedly cost over $250M to make.

JFC

I remember saving up to buy a NES game. Usually 40-50 bucks thanks to chips. That's like 100-125ish today but you got the whole game, didn't need subscription or pay to win BS.

250 million to make a game is INSANE.

Shit I spend $515 a month on coffee.

But I have absolutely no bills of any kind. No debt. House paid off. Car paid off. My biggest expense is property taxes and insurance which have also gotten outta control.

I wouldn't know the difference by looking at them myself but I bet my daughter and grandsons would.

It is crazy what the evolution of the cell phone has been. In 96 when moving to Chicagoland and going to work for a Motorola cell phone supplier, they were dominating the market with their flip phone and shortly after the little star tek. Then they decided China had a bigger emerging market and moved there.

Then Nokia was kicking everyones ass with their cheap little simple phone. Then the Blackberry with their keyboard became the rage, on and on.

I took it he was teasing me for my $6000 dollar 50 in plasma purchase in 2004. LMAO

Sure, it wasn't updated real time and accessible on a device that fits in your pocket.

I just find it dumb when the gap in generations and technology skew towards people being vastly different like they were just naturally go-getters/smarter/etc.

If everyone had iPhones 70 years ago, lots of people would have been glued to them 70 years ago. And if kids didn't have smartphones these days, they wouldn't just be sitting around staring at the wall.

Some people want to make it some divisive thing that it's not. Social media is rotting a lot of people's brains for sure and devices distract some people from being productive, but that spans across generations.

I feel this not so simple a stat.

I think some generations, including people over 60 are working MORE these days and some younger age groups much less in a "don't let life pass you by" mindset.

Work to live and not live to work.

Well at least they weren't driving the train while reading the newspaper. But even that, since the tracks keep it going in the right direction is much safer than driving a car while looking at a phone.
My Challenger is 17 years old now and has a handsfree system to marry to your phone. Do new cars not have that where you can talk hands free?

Oh, I am typing this from my Dell laptop in between interacting with the outdoors, etc. :p

Me too, in fact I got bumped into yesterday by a young lady looking at her phone, even when I tried to step out of her way.

That part is funny, but I see them more and more driving down the highway with their phone leaned onto the center of their steering wheel while they read it.
A couple days ago a lady was driving really slow in the left lane and when finally went around her, she was doing the same thing.

Yeah, us old people are the problem by gosh! Heck, I don't even turn on the radio anymore as I don't need the distraction. o:-)

The technology already exists. Newer cars can already use it. There will be a day when you can't use your phone while driving.

I hope that day comes soon!

It is out of control around here, not sure about there and how your state has handled it.

Old people think they still are, hence the joke.

Self-driving car tech will probably have taken over before that point

Not all old people do....

If you go up there whatever you do don't mention drugs, not even Tylenol.

I thought about that right after I posted that. I think self-driving still have a ways to go before mass acceptance.

The tech for phones already exists and as more vehicle manufacturers adopt Android Auto and Car Play, it will become more prevalent. I've already seen demos where enabling Android Auto disables the phone's screen so that you can only interface with it via the auto's console or via voice commands.

That free market capitalism has created a pretty good quality of life compared to most of the world. Poor in this country is a 50" flatscreen and an Iphone 8 for 80% of the population. I would argue that the importation of low skilled labor and NAFTA was most detrimental to the middle class, and forced wages down or overseas.

If the car drives for you let ppl use their phone

Yeah, there’ll definitely be some holdouts - namely the older gens - but I think basically anyone, liiiike, 40 and under will welcome it with open arms. Being able to bullshit on your phone, text, watch movies, Netflix, etc. on your commute will be a game changer I think most can’t wait for.

You are far from old, Mos.

Life is even crazier than me. Homeless, an addict and never give up. Now 2 homes etc. I have to quit giving my $$ up tho. Went thru a million helping folks. But 1 Million is good for me. I live on like $20,000 a year except when I go to Chiefs games.

Just a simple man it seems.

This is me as well. I set myself up as salaried though. Family business that I am getting close to running on my own. I basically work 6:30-5:30 M-F with an hour lunch. Some Saturdays but very few.

I worked on a project in 2005 or so that was involved in land based, self driving attack vechiles. Being like a drone but grounded. There were some problems. Never heard whether they pulled it off.

I easily work 10-12 hours a week beyond contract time.

You are in a field that sucks when it comes to capped income, at least in public schools.

They have their scales, and the experience tiers which show what you can be paid.

true. A little unsure what I want to do next year. Lots of things going on in my mind.

I work from home. I probably get, the same amount, most likely, more done working from home than if I was in the office. I also, obviously, also get more done at home..

When I’m in the office I dgaf because you can’t tell me I’m not working if I’m at my cubicle… at home, if I’m gone for 1 hour doing grocery shopping and dishes?? Shit I come back to my desk blazing through my work…

Teaching is an odd one. I taught in public schools for 6 years. My last year I was making about 50k for 9.5 months of work with free health insurance and the Missouri teacher retirement is hella good. BUT I was 9 hours a day 5 days a week at minimum. So it was maybe 25/hr. So you had to do something else during the summer months. And I knew a lot of teachers in Springfield that worked night jobs on Thursday-Sunday during the school year.

And the explosion of AI, Ai Agents, Model Context Protocol, Topographical Quantum Qubits, and Active Inference... all of which are steamrolling to Superintelligence...

Most human resources will become marginalized and many will be obsolete.

So, you need to learn about this shit, or you'll be a have-not.

Tell all my friends and the kids in my neighborhood....or tell my bones that after my cardiac rehab....LOL

For most office jobs, there is little reason they need to be in-office.

I have worked remotely for most of the past 15 years (save for a horrific 4-year period where I was in-office). I am much more productive at home than on the random days when I go into the office.

My company, like many, is widely distributed across the United States. So when I'm having meetings, it is very, very rarely with people all in the same geographic location as me. And if one person is remote, everyone might as well be remote.

For people that say you can't coach or mentor or collaborate or build a team effectively online, I call b.s. on that. You have to do it DIFFERENTLY and it takes a different type of effort and approach, but good managers/leaders can do all of those things as well remotely as they can in person - again, for most office jobs.

There are obviously professions and careers that require being in-person. But most office gigs are not them.

Regarding working fewer hours, so many people work in corporate America now, I think that trend lines up with more people accepting the reality of how companies work these days. Especially if you work for a huge corporation... killing yourself for the company just doesn't pass a cost-benefit analysis.

Personal example:
In the early 10s, I was working for a huge company (top 10 Fortune company, and the division I worked for would have been in the Fortune 100 if it was its own entity). I worked from home, and worked a LOT. Like 55-60 hours a week a lot. I was the star performer on my team, received the top available review rating 5 years in a row... and my efforts were rewarded with "top of raise band" raises of 2.5-3%, and one year, a Christmas Bonus of... an Origami Christmas Ornament made from company cardstock.

I have shifted over time... some of those production hours now go to my family. Some more of them go into volunteering on the board of a local professional association I belong to.

I don't think that's uncommon or unhealthy.

Last day in my corporate role.

Another observation I would add regard to remote, hybrid, covid, work environments....

Before Covid, our company would have in-person meetings....this is obvious.

Since covid and the return to work....when we have meetings, 90% of them are from our desk over a zoom/teams call....even though everyone is in the office.

I dont know how I feel about that. It works....but I prefer to be in-person, if you are in the office.

The nature of my work was mostly contract work and less than 2 years in length but was always remote. I would get 50%-75% more pay than a full time employee. We got health insurance from my wife's employer so we went for the money with my job.

I'd put in a lot of intense hours when I was working but would sometimes take 6 months off or so to recover from the workload on the past job. Worked for us and our goals.

I posted that Minn is expecting state workers to be in the office 50% of the time Starting June 1. They are freaking out. Want to strike and protest etc.

Lord, I have no sympathy for them.

I had similar bullshit at a job and only lasted a couple years. Traveled all the time and made bank on per diem, but they started nickel and diming it and taking away other perks of travel. Worked ~50-60 hours/week.... we were contracted out for of course far more than we made which is here nor there, but then they'd do these company presentations bragging about how they were raising their rates by like $100/hr, while we got 2-3% raises per year (and in my second year, my manager had to do me a favor by changing my title because those were the only people getting raises that year).

Completely tone deaf company, all about their stock price while flaunting that fact to their employees and continuously giving them less and less incentive to work hard.

For me, I’m very unproductive when working from home what little I did of it during the pandemic lockdown. I think if I ever got a job that was specifically advertised as a work from home position, I wouldn’t do well. If the job gave me the option, I’d take the office

I'm complete opposite. First of all, the driving and getting ready robs two hours from my day. Then the office is uncomfortable and people come up to me and bug me and talk to me which makes things even more inefficient.

My biggest in-office time sucks that don't happen remotely...
- Morning chatter
- Post-meeting chatter (Teams calls are about the same when it comes to pre-meeting chatter)
- People stopping by my office for work reasons, then tangenting to other chatter
- Walking around the office for in person questions
- Going out for lunch sometimes
- People going into meetings without their laptop, making it more difficult to get quick answers to things
- Walking to/from meetings and waiting for a previous meeting to end (of course still happens to a small extent with Teams, but people are far more likely to say they have to drop from Teams than get up and leave a physical meeting)
- And not being able to physically get up and leave a meeting

I can fill in some of that time with CP and still feel far more productive. :D

Yep.

I get about the same amount of work done working from home as I did working in the office. I just can get other stuff done during downtime plus I got two hours back that I spent driving to and from the office.

This is why i hate the portrayal of WFH in the media as people just wanting to be lazy. Most people actually get more work done from home.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I definitely value eliminating the commute (which was 45-60 minutes one-way for me back in the day), and when I REALLY need to focus, I can crank through things far faster from home than I could with the distractions of an office.

On the other hand, there are a lot of times when I feel pretty isolated. I'll end up banging my head against a wall on a problem because I don't want to bug people where, in an office, I might just ask the people around me if they have any ideas.

I think in my perfect world, I'd work somewhere that has a 2-day-a-week hybrid policy. Everyone goes in a couple of days for collaborative stuff, and everyone stays home the other days to crank shit out.

I am a believer that all jobs should be hourly unless you like own the company or something. You may have a salary but you get paid by the hour once you go over 40. Employers can easily **** you over otherwise. Also people feel like they have to work OT in some instances to get ahead or just meet the status quo and they end up killing their self working 60 hrs a week before they know it only making money on the 40.

I am generally not very pro worker even and I have this view. Most unions I am against. I am against any minimum wage but employers can act oblivious and pour you more work than you can handle, then expect it on straight salary jobs and there isn't anything the worker can do about it.

When I worked...I definitely got more done in the office. I would dick off so hard at home. Now I probably worked harder at home but just so I could dick off if that makes sense. So maybe it ended up being a wash. I think it depends on the field but WFH definitely increased my quality of life.

Agreed. Working in office, I’m already pissed off because I had to wake up two hours early and fight traffic on the way in.

Then, when 5:00 hits I’m running out the door to try to get home before the sun goes down; whereas, working from home, I’m far more likely to deal with a last-minute problem that pops up at 4:50.

:insert Spiderman pointing at Spiderman meme here:

I think there is value to being in office. An ideal setup for me would be in the office 1 or 2 days a week.

Don't have that luxury though. Have a lot of freedom for when I come and go and I can still do a lot from home but there are too much this is happening in real time you need to be there shit.

I think that flexibility is the key. Could benefit both sides at times. Switching full time to one or the other points out the negatives in each.

Humans need social interaction. No human wants constant negative social interactions or constant isolation. People's needs change and so do business needs.

I don’t know about that. I’d say whatever portion of the population is good at self motivating and time management can get more done at home. The other portion get less done at home. Whether that’s most or not, who knows, but my guess it’s probably a pretty even split. Some get about the same done. Some get more done and some get less done.

It is not for everyone. I get that.

I think there are some key things to do to make it work better for you. I have a whole list of those (Highlights: Separate work space; maintain a routine; don't work from your bed or couch; don't forget to get up and move around; don't forget to eat).

The fact I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere and spent a lot of time doing things by myself (and also spent all of high school basically teaching myself everything) probably makes it an easier adjustment for me.

And don't think companies aren't aware of that either. They know they can squeeze more hours out of you if you don't have to drive to and from and office.

I'm fully remote but went into the office recently because my boss was in town for a leadership meeting and I wanted to say hi. There's a couple people within the analytics space who go in, but I don't which days. Anyway, while there I overheard someone on the phone walking through the same data connection issue I was having. The result of that happenstance was a collaborative solution that may never have happened or at least taken me longer to solve

So I get it when its applicable and if I knew this persons schedule I may go in but I don't and that's what makes this hybrid thing really dumb

It should go back to pre-Covid when it was a conversation between leader and employee on what works best for everyone instead of a broad brush stroke approach of X number of days for everyone

This made me think about just the environment, not even the fact it’s at home or in the office. Everyone at home has a nice space, probably a window, maybe some music, their pets, etc. But in the office it’s usually so grey and sterile, maybe a cubicle, no window and just generally less pleasing to our senses.

Funny thing about the word “cubicle” it actually comes from Rome/latin where the word “cubiculum” which basically meant small sleeping quarters. Old English changed it to cubicle but it still meant small sleeping chamber. Eventually though it became the horror we know it as today.

See, we use Slack and I find instant messaging far more convenient than somebody coming to my cube and wanting to talk in the middle of work. As you can imagine, I'm the only member of my team in Iowa so I've always been "long distance" from my coworkers. We do all of our collaboration online and it works great.

Yep.

I don't need or want to socialize with coworkers. Been there, done that. I'm not 30 anymore. I interact with my family, I work with my coworkers.

A lot of places cite collaboration as the reason people need to be in the office but at the same time, they're adopting open floor plans. It was IMPOSSIBLE in the main office to take a conference call because there was no sound breaks. Everybody talking was just like a massive noise storm and you couldn't hear your calls.

You have to inject the top .1% of intellect into your day.

Very interesting discussion about the + and - of working from home. Just one more thing that has changed dramatically since I retired. Apparently for the good for many of you.

To be honest, I would have been way to tempted to sneak out and work on one of my cars or another home project probably. Also, my commute was about 10 minutes by bicycle since we bought a home near work. Previous jobs the longest was 20 minutes by car.

My last 18 years I had multiple department heads reporting to me as the work day progressed and some of it required my physical presence on the production floor, sales dept., shipping or purchasing. I have no idea how I could have duplicated that remotely.

However, both of my daughters have been successful working from home on a significant scale, mostly starting about the time of the pandemic. They have had no problems with distractions and I have witnessed it personally while visiting them.

State paid employees. Covid caused them to go remote. Post Covid they went to 1 office day a week.

... multiple workers are now home schooling their kids. LMAO