For me:
Sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you work, your going to get laid off either way.
Just showing up can sometimes make the difference.
Your not paid to be a software developer. Your being paid to be a problem solver.
These are my grandfather’s words not mine: no matter how much of an idiot your boss is, he is still your boss
Join a union the first chance you get, they exist to fight against HR, and to fuck over the company if they try to fuck you over
Somehow, I’ve got HR fighting for me. What a great country to live in.
You can get away with a LOT if you keep people up to date with what you’re doing
If only I’d think of that while doing it.
It’s usually a “This will take 20min or so” and turns into an “I know I am 3 hours into that but I know I am close to fixing it for good!”
Reward for being even slightly competent and having work ethic is more work. To the point where you are doing everything until you break.
If you do something that needed to be done out of curtesy it’ll become your responsibility.
If you want to find someone who understand something about the corporation, look at the basement.
A corollary to your first one: if you take on extra work people will forget it is extra work when it’s not delivered on time or has issues. It does not matter how much the first three people fucked it up, you touched it last.
People (customers and coworkers alike) are generally not very bright, putting it politely. No matter how foolproof you design a system, the human race is out there absolutely cranking out bigger fools than you even imagined.
for me:
Your
Your
Your
You’re represented by your words. It can cost you opportunities.
We had big layoffs last year. The order of layoffs was troublemakers that couldn’t be fired for other reasons > attendance > performance > how recent you were hired.
troublemakers that couldn’t be fired for other reasons
They got me before the layoffs started by fiting me after I sought FMLA for my mental health after months of deterioration following discrimination from my director. My discrimination lawyer loved that addition to our case.
I watched a Director level employee get let go during a round of layoffs because he caused to much trouble by fighting for his employees.
This goes for just about anything in life:
“First seek to understand, then to be understood.”
*You’re. I’m sorry for being that guy, but you’ve made that mistake three times.
Anyways, it is never worth being the hard-working type. I’ve learned the lesson that once you prove to be reliable, management is going to gravitate towards you and work you to death. That means, they’ll want you always helping others, they want you in multiple departments, they want you doing extra tasks on top of everything you do.
So, don’t be reliable. Just do what you can and call it a day. Don’t over-achieve, especially if the company-related rewards aren’t worth it.
It’s not just heat that can burn you.
Being right doesn’t matter if you can’t convince others.
Also that the best way to convince others that your ideas should be done is to make them think it is their idea. Worrying about getting credit works against getting things done.
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.
And then you get laid off. 🪿
That’s a great question and there are so many good answers in this thread.
Don’t expect your superiors to ever back you up. I got burned so many times. I knew I was right, but they didn’t have a backbone and only thought about the budget, their reputation, and the work they’d have to put in for damage control. I wanted to shut restaurants for their filthiness, but “Oh noes, what will the community think”. Well, if someone dies, then it’s on your head. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.
Even if a conversation or direction was made verbally, always follow up with an email to say “Just to confirm our conversation today, you have directed me to…” Even if it’s about holidays. My old boss was such a prick. Him and all upper management are the reason I am suspicious of everyone and everything.
99% of people don’t wash their hands properly.
The number of times I’ve seen people get out of the shitter and just head back to work, is disgustingly too damn high. I used to bring sanitary wipes with to clean every door handle. Now I work from home thankfully.
Now, picture the same people in restaurants preparing your food. It’s exactly the same thing 💀
same here, so exhausting.
Just because someone was made a supervisor it doesn’t mean they know what they are doing.
I was once made a boss over this particular employee who was better at their job than me, and much older. I made it clear to her that I had no desire to wield any authority over her and that I considered us peers.
If my bosses knew what I’d done I would have been roasted but I feel like I made the right call. And having her respect was more invaluable than anything my bosses ever did.
My manager has been the manager of my department for over 7 years and admitted to my face that she has no idea what we do. 💀… And then did not make any effort in the last 8 months to learn what I do.
Forget the 8 months, it’s the 7 years that makes you think ‘how come you’ve not taken some of that time to learn what we do’?
Ah yeah, well, it was about 8 months ago when she said it to me, and somehow she’s gotten away with it because my department knows what it’s doing at all times. She’s being investigated and has decided this is the time to retire. Good riddance, absolute piece of shite.
I had worked at a theme park a couple summers. I operated one of the rides during a state inspection. It wasn’t a simple push the button and off it goes kind of thing, you manually controlled it. There were three big hydraulic motors with tires that powered the moving portion. The goal was to never equal the tires and I was good at it.
A new supervisor was promoted only because her sister was a manager already. She didn’t know how to properly operate the ride and was training others. I walked past one day to hear it roaring around one direction then the tires started screeching as it was hammered the other direction. I put in my notice the same day as that was my tipping point of stupidity, I wasn’t going to be there when someone was hurt or worse.
The supervisor who promoted her only did it to kiss ass, she complained she hadn’t had a single day off all summer because the new supervisor couldn’t perform the job.
That’s flat out nepotism, and an impending disaster. Good call on getting out sooner rather than later. The pay 100% was not worth the risk.
HR protects and represents the company, not you as an employee.
It can take them up to a year to realize that I totally lied on my resume and am incompetent, by which time I am no longer so incompetent.









