Ahhh tech jobs, the constant changing cycle and struggle. It was a struggle in 2017 when i went to my computer career to get my first IT job but now I'm doing hvac controls 7 years later after moving to programming the final year and getting laid off a few months ago. Some regret but there are benefits too. Also been in the trades in the past so all that helps.
My thoughts on remote work from a leadership perspective....leaders have to look at productivity from a team/group/department perspective. Being more productive as a remote worker is an individual effort unless there is specific team level data that shows otherwise. The happy medium is for leadership to construct a self managed remote team, but that takes trust and experience working with each of these individuals.
Agreed. I've been lucky enough to see both extremes of remote teams. One being just a collection of individual contributors, another being a real team. The later got good at async comms and that was the difference. Plus it was a higher trust environment so people were constantly collaborating with each other in various channels.
Very well said. I have mirrored and or witnessed a lot of what you describe. Currently going through a rough patch as many are, but its isn't my first and have prepared a bit, adjusted and sacrificed where needed and am looking to pivot, not only my skillset but my ideals and goals based on what I see and what I have in front of me. You can control how you react to the situation. That is all. So react positively, decisively and in your favor.
yup. I'm continuously surprised that my profession still exists, I guess actual human reasoning is still required, but I am glad I'm too old to need to worry about my career, but now I need to worry about retiring
A reasonable video. There are a couple points I'd like to add on to. You said, correctly, that we can't change the employee-employer relationship. But that's not the whole truth. The actual situation is that we can't change the employee-employer relationship alone. But by acting together, it may be possible. The most accessible way to do it is collective bargaining. In any case it requires organization and acting in concert with your fellow workers. Like you said, saying things like "the government should do X, the company should do Y" is idealism and when they inevitably aren't realized, they lead to cynicism. But "we should build a movement to make the government do X, we should collectively bargain with the company to get Y," if we act together and have a strategic approach that's grounded in reality and building power, we may be able to win some concessions. For example, in certain countries there are laws against laying people off unless it's absolutely necessary for the company to survive. There's no fundamental law of the universe that says we have to have at-will employment instead of a law like that. We have at-will employment because companies have the power to lobby the government to institute the law that allows it. If we want another law we have to organize enough to become more powerful than the companies. There are other ways of getting organized and effecting change but RUclips doesn't like me talking about those very much so I'll just leave it at that for today.
Great comment. And I agree in theory on the idea of the power in groups to enact change. But on what timeline and at what personal cost? Outside of changing the labor laws themselves, this is very hard to do inside a company without changing the power dynamic itself. And/or without sacrificing years of bashing your head against the wall. This is coming from years as an “agile coach” and failing over and over again to enact any meaningful lasting change. Of course I could just be a poor change manager.
I could say a lot about the practical considerations here, but the most practical short-term way to change the power dynamic within the company is to organize a labor union that's supported by the majority of the lower-level workers. If you search "CWA how to organize," you will find a pretty comprehensive guide with contact information. Of course, there are a lot of obstacles to successful organizing, especially if your team is highly distributed or reactionary. And if you're in a leadership position, you cannot really be involved in the organizing effort and must keep your mouth shut if you know about and support it. Simply advocating for your team as a manager won't give you the same power as your workers having a union does. That's the biggest reason why you couldn't get anything done as an "agile coach," because the things you wanted to do were probably things that the bosses would never, ever do unless you had some way to make them do them. I think it's fair to say there are a lot of things that we need to make the bosses do if we want to stabilize things and improve conditions for the people who work in this industry. But it will take a lot of solidarity and working together in an industry that's crawling with false consciousness. We have to learn to work together to make things better instead of being mercenaries whose humanities courses in university were huge wastes of time, the type who tries to be the king of his own individual career and sees his coworkers as competitors or enemies.
The other option is starting a company that's a worker's cooperative. Then you're trading off the difficulties of unionization for the high failure rate of a startup. But these are the most effective things you can do without "the process required for wide-ranging, immediate changes to class relations within the whole society."
If the only answer is unionizing then the industry really is screwed 😆, but I hear what you’re saying. Unionizing has its own problems and IMO would just accelerate the movement of jobs out of the country. But unfortunately those in power at companies need to be incentivized to create humane work structures. For white collar work it so far has been the simple fact that there’s a labor shortage in general. But with more global options as well as AI productivity gains, that could also shift.
It's not going to be easy but if you want to "incentivize" those in power to create humane work structures, it's necessary for the workers to have power of their own. And not unionizing is hardly going to help prevent further outsourcing. It would be more productive to bring your new coworkers in other countries into the union than to just sit there and watch the process happen impotently. Besides, it's not like unions are absolutely unheard of in tech. Activision-Blizzard unionized pretty recently, you know.
Sorry, i haven't learned smth new. There's a contract, why one should expect more? Why should one expect help? There are trade unions and insurances if u need more.
Ahhh tech jobs, the constant changing cycle and struggle. It was a struggle in 2017 when i went to my computer career to get my first IT job but now I'm doing hvac controls 7 years later after moving to programming the final year and getting laid off a few months ago. Some regret but there are benefits too. Also been in the trades in the past so all that helps.
Interesting I haven’t actually talked to anyone who moved from tech to trades. Does hvac feel more stable?
My thoughts on remote work from a leadership perspective....leaders have to look at productivity from a team/group/department perspective. Being more productive as a remote worker is an individual effort unless there is specific team level data that shows otherwise. The happy medium is for leadership to construct a self managed remote team, but that takes trust and experience working with each of these individuals.
Agreed. I've been lucky enough to see both extremes of remote teams. One being just a collection of individual contributors, another being a real team. The later got good at async comms and that was the difference. Plus it was a higher trust environment so people were constantly collaborating with each other in various channels.
Very well said. I have mirrored and or witnessed a lot of what you describe. Currently going through a rough patch as many are, but its isn't my first and have prepared a bit, adjusted and sacrificed where needed and am looking to pivot, not only my skillset but my ideals and goals based on what I see and what I have in front of me. You can control how you react to the situation. That is all. So react positively, decisively and in your favor.
Wise words sounds like we’ve been on similar journeys recently.
yup. I'm continuously surprised that my profession still exists, I guess actual human reasoning is still required, but I am glad I'm too old to need to worry about my career, but now I need to worry about retiring
Thank you for sharing these insights. Until we have the means of production in our hands, this sort of stoicism may be helpful, or even required.
Well said.
Happy to see some honest content
A reasonable video. There are a couple points I'd like to add on to. You said, correctly, that we can't change the employee-employer relationship. But that's not the whole truth. The actual situation is that we can't change the employee-employer relationship alone. But by acting together, it may be possible. The most accessible way to do it is collective bargaining. In any case it requires organization and acting in concert with your fellow workers.
Like you said, saying things like "the government should do X, the company should do Y" is idealism and when they inevitably aren't realized, they lead to cynicism. But "we should build a movement to make the government do X, we should collectively bargain with the company to get Y," if we act together and have a strategic approach that's grounded in reality and building power, we may be able to win some concessions. For example, in certain countries there are laws against laying people off unless it's absolutely necessary for the company to survive. There's no fundamental law of the universe that says we have to have at-will employment instead of a law like that. We have at-will employment because companies have the power to lobby the government to institute the law that allows it. If we want another law we have to organize enough to become more powerful than the companies.
There are other ways of getting organized and effecting change but RUclips doesn't like me talking about those very much so I'll just leave it at that for today.
Great comment. And I agree in theory on the idea of the power in groups to enact change.
But on what timeline and at what personal cost? Outside of changing the labor laws themselves, this is very hard to do inside a company without changing the power dynamic itself. And/or without sacrificing years of bashing your head against the wall.
This is coming from years as an “agile coach” and failing over and over again to enact any meaningful lasting change. Of course I could just be a poor change manager.
I could say a lot about the practical considerations here, but the most practical short-term way to change the power dynamic within the company is to organize a labor union that's supported by the majority of the lower-level workers. If you search "CWA how to organize," you will find a pretty comprehensive guide with contact information. Of course, there are a lot of obstacles to successful organizing, especially if your team is highly distributed or reactionary. And if you're in a leadership position, you cannot really be involved in the organizing effort and must keep your mouth shut if you know about and support it.
Simply advocating for your team as a manager won't give you the same power as your workers having a union does. That's the biggest reason why you couldn't get anything done as an "agile coach," because the things you wanted to do were probably things that the bosses would never, ever do unless you had some way to make them do them. I think it's fair to say there are a lot of things that we need to make the bosses do if we want to stabilize things and improve conditions for the people who work in this industry. But it will take a lot of solidarity and working together in an industry that's crawling with false consciousness. We have to learn to work together to make things better instead of being mercenaries whose humanities courses in university were huge wastes of time, the type who tries to be the king of his own individual career and sees his coworkers as competitors or enemies.
The other option is starting a company that's a worker's cooperative. Then you're trading off the difficulties of unionization for the high failure rate of a startup. But these are the most effective things you can do without "the process required for wide-ranging, immediate changes to class relations within the whole society."
If the only answer is unionizing then the industry really is screwed 😆, but I hear what you’re saying. Unionizing has its own problems and IMO would just accelerate the movement of jobs out of the country.
But unfortunately those in power at companies need to be incentivized to create humane work structures. For white collar work it so far has been the simple fact that there’s a labor shortage in general. But with more global options as well as AI productivity gains, that could also shift.
It's not going to be easy but if you want to "incentivize" those in power to create humane work structures, it's necessary for the workers to have power of their own. And not unionizing is hardly going to help prevent further outsourcing. It would be more productive to bring your new coworkers in other countries into the union than to just sit there and watch the process happen impotently. Besides, it's not like unions are absolutely unheard of in tech. Activision-Blizzard unionized pretty recently, you know.
The vocab word is “should” 25:30
Sorry, i haven't learned smth new.
There's a contract, why one should expect more?
Why should one expect help?
There are trade unions and insurances if u need more.