It's not like the parent would have accomplished nothing in the 10 years. I think they are just talking about framing it in language palatable to the interviewer across the table.
Even in the most dysfunctional organizations you can't spend 10 years doing nothing.
GP was achieving what their bosses asked of them. It's just that it didn't align with their own professional goals of improving the product they work on.
Sorry, 20 years experience of actually doing things here. I've spent 10 of those years now doing consulting with everyone from 3-person pre-series-A startups all the way up to the Fortune 50.
Let me unequivocal: you can spend 30-40 years at a company doing absolutely nothing while getting paid for it.
Do not let anyone try to convince you otherwise. I've seen such much unethical bloodsucking in my career that at this point I wouldn't mind seeing a few companies collapse under the weight of their own karma.
oh man, respectfully but this cannot be further from the truth. SWEs have successfully convinced everyone that profession “is not about just coding” (you see a sea of these statements here on HN in 100x daily posts “will LLMs replace us”) and hence tools like Jira only amplify ability to do (mostly) nothing
unfortunately I have. It is indeed a hellscape of, as the kids say, "aura farming". Microsoft really seem to want to turn it into Instagram for some reason.
I don't mind the end of remote work, as long as the "cool office" actually comes back. Here in Ann Arbor it feels like the tech scene died with remote work and all the jobs are remote.
From my perspective, wages have increased faster elsewhere, and there are far more remote jobs than local ones. The whole reason I moved to Ann Arbor for work was because UMich had created a little startup scene that I could aspire to. I expected the scene to grow, not fade. It really seemed like the beers on tap, foosball table tech job fantasy for a few years there.
That's too bad. The little tiny "hip" area of town seemed pretty neat, as did the fledgling coworking spaces attached to a neat coffeehouse in an old brick building.
Of course, in my own operation it would be very hard to justify to building out some "cool office". Our workers simply seem to prefer other things. They sure aren't interested in forced socialisation.
I'm confused. If the software didn't exist then many humans would be needed to figure out on paper (or excel) how to make these decisions, wouldn't they?
That's true. But, to the point of eliminating labor -- there's still a human in the loop here.
In fact I would argue that while people were still making capital decisions, the idea of optimizing them is only practical WITH some kind of software / calculator / computer. The tooling I write has added jobs, not eliminated them.
Subspace/Continuum also used lag in its gameplay, with players warping to recently exploded spaceships so they could continue to invade. It was an established technique and had to be defended against.
In my experience, companies based in Michigan pay 20-50k lower and do not have staff/principal roles available. You have to find a remote role to stay competitive wage wise. Some companies are not willing to pay as much for Michigan workers as they are NY/SF/elsewhere workers, too.
I think the reality is Columbus and Chicago are growing quicker than Detroit. The relative increase here might be "buzzing" but in absolute terms, it's desolate.
To be fair, there are also a lot of rural areas not far outside Ann Arbor that are still fairly cheap, although obviously not as cheap as more rural areas farther north.
Ann Arbor has always been a pretty unique place that pushes pricing up above normal. UofM is a large college that has lots of international draw, it holds the best medical facilities in the entire state, and have uniquely liberal laws within the city and the city itself puts an effort towards keeping out state cops. In I believe 1972 they made marijuana possession a mere $5 fine within the city, while the rest of the state would bring the hammer down on people for it, and so it was de facto legal there and the city held Hash Bash ever year since with people all smoking up in public while the rest of the state had people worried about cops finding a single seed or roach in their vehicle.
It looks like the big issue with Ann Arbor is supply. I just pulled up Chicago Zillow for this criteria (1-1.25k sqft, 2 bed exact, 1+ bath, condos only, for sale not rent) and am having trouble finding one for more than $700k. Lots in the $350-400k range. Overall there are hundreds, with almost every block having at least one in the "nice" downtown area.
Leaving criteria the same and switching to Ann Arbor, I see four, with only one of them actually being downtown, for $725k (but the other three are all under $300k). I would consider Ann Arbor more expensive than Chicago, at least for this type of unit, but not necessarily because there's more demand.
A2 has surprisingly high demand for small condos. Many affluent parents like to buy them for their children while they attend UofM, or as alumni to attend college sports events (since UofM is a big sports Mecca), or as retirees to be close to campus/city activities and amenities.
Anyone concerned with cost of living should not be considering a condo downtown. Overall the COL in detroit is around 45% lower for real estate and over 25% cheaper groceries versus new york. There will always be overpriced condos available.
Isn't everyone concerned with cost of living? Isn't there a whole game of life where we all find some comfortable CoL and salary balance?
That's why salary via CoL never made any sense to me. It should be based on how hard people want to work.
These "it's cheaper in Michigan" ideas -- yeah you can come up with a boring lifestyle that is dirt cheap. I'm just in Michigan already. It's hard to leave. I'm a global dude. I travel domestically. I invest. These things don't have Michigan prices.
I think this happens in a lot of second-tier cities and it’s really frustrating. I’m currently interviewing for neuralink and they pay 30k less in Austin (which isn’t even really a second tier city) compared to Fremont; frankly I’d rather live in Austin but Fremont is more desirable with the pay boost.
Whoever thought up the line “it costs more to live here so we deserve more” was a genius. Logically you should get less if you live somewhere expensive since the companies rent and operating expenses are also more expensive, but I guess not
I would never do this, and if you would do this I wouldn't want to work with you. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I sleep alright.
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