I stopped reading Heinlein after 50 pages.
I stuck my dick in the mashed potatoes.
I used to spend a great deal of time wondering how many universes distant were the parallel worlds where I had done everything correctly, studied and networked harder in college, married correctly at the appropriate time.
I still do.
I went against my nature, applied myself whole heartedly to a single goal, and finished my Ph.D. I was able to get a job at not-selective college in an unattractive city and, despite all the nice things people said, I was never able to write my way to any university half as nice as where I am now.
What's weird about my life is that I am sort of living the counterfactual version of my life. If I had had my shit together to do what I hoped to do I would be exactly where I am now but ten years younger. And with way fewer stories. But sometimes it feels a little bit like I got retconned to an earlier timeline.
4- I thought the joke was a bowl of pears.
So this is the thread to discuss whether I should change jobs, then. Last time I was thinking about changing jobs (at the time unfoggeDCon) heebie said do it and she was correct. Interview in a couple weeks, but my current employer is making an aggressive counteroffer that is unfortunately too identifying to discuss in detail here.
So you get more money either way?
Can you do prospective counterfactual analysis?
Not clear at the current employer, but sets me up for a much bigger future payoff (possibility of position as a startup CSO in a couple years.) The money difference between the two isn't that much the issue, it's more that unless I change what I'm doing at the current place it's pretty dead end. A significant change is essentially what's been informally offered although it's not terribly concrete because it's a hypothetical new role specifically made for me and has complicated interactions with other people in the org.
Oh hey, is this the pick-a-C-level-title-at-a-startup thread? Because I need to do that soon and have no idea how, and hope not to counterfactually consider how I could have avoided screwing it up down the road.
position as a startup CSO in a couple years
Chicago Symphony Orchestra?
18: Information? Customer? Experience? Interactivity? Design? Interface? Technical? Organizational? Scientific? I think I've seen all of those.
Chief Science Officer? Wasn't that Spock's job?
Scientific, Executive, Academic, Operating, Information, Strategy, Financial, Development, Communications
"Pimp? Are you suggesting you be our company pimp?"
"Chief Love Officer!"
"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all." -- Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan
18
I've always been fond of "Senior Scientist," especially if you are under 40 at the time (for web startups, revise to "under 25").
If you want to be under the radar, "Programmer."
21: Lt. Whorf was the Chief Linguistics Officer.
As far as titles go, if you pick "Official Bikini Inspector", you can easily get t-shirts with your title.
in awareness that I'm inviting an orgy of humblebrags
Only 18 comments to get to "Oh hey, is this the pick-a-C-level-title-at-a-startup thread?"
Aren't startups more of an, I don't know, humblefail at this point?
12/15: Best friend's firing notwithstanding, the friends who worked at your current place (three total) as staff (not bosses) seemed to think management was pretty dysfunctional and that things got worse every year they were there. They're all in my immediate field, though, which is, um, more expendable.
I guess I shouldn't say firing . . . It's not like it was for cause. Layoff?
Apparently my high school friend who was featured on the Lean In website for finding her dream job as a C?O at a video game startup after quitting investment banking after quitting biglaw just quit her startup dream job. I assume someone new will soon start paying her in the mid six figures for something else that she has no experience in.
31- I think more so in tech, less in my field.
32- When I last brought this up a few weeks ago I figured out via some connect the dots who your friend is so I know exactly what you're talking about. Commentary on that is best left as a sanctified off blog discussion though.
Anyway, as I was telling a colleague maybe the decision is easy and I don't get an offer (I'm rather junior for the position) but I can still use pursuit of the non-offer to improve my current situation.
Off to play hockey!
CSO, abbrev. Counterfactual Significant Other; see also My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada
Someone in the locker room made a Roman Polanski statutory rape joke.
Ogged should have tied this in with the thread below - if you could travel back in time and screw yourself would you be happier?
Out of screwing those other people instead.
35: Yeah, not hard to guess, I should think. I wouldn't want to discuss specifics either (not least since it's totally none of my business), but the two friends before him both seemed pretty unhappy after roughly 3 years there, although they left on their own for other, greener pastures. I do hope everything is roses for you either way and that your stuff is always in vogue. Happy hockey.
Interview in a couple weeks, but my current employer is making an aggressive counteroffer
I feel like I do not understand the job-change process at all, not even in my own field much less any other, but isn't it very unusual to have informed you current employer that you're considering other jobs (so as to receive a counteroffer) before you have a firm job offer in hand? Speaking of which, without a firm offer in hand, is it really a "counteroffer"?
On the general job-change topic, as far as I can tell based on the first three weeks, my new job is nirvana. (And I probably just cursed it, but oh well.)
I also didn't mean nirvana, I meant utopia. Or something like that. I'm tired.
Oh hell I don't know what I meant. "A big improvement."
Confusing nirvana with utopia. Totally different decades.
Oh, and urple, that sounds great (whatever it is called). Good for you!
45- No, you're correct, it's not normal procedure in my field, but it's an unusual combination of circumstances and some loose lips- I had to ask some coworkers for connections to the potential employer and work got out to other people. Glad your new job is good.
Did this turn into the regrets thread for a minute? The one that's bugging me a lot lately is staying 6+ years at a job that, though really great in a lot of ways, had zero possibility of advancement and left me where I am now, a 40-year-old taking entry level positions with people in their 20s. I REGRET THAT. Oh wait I'm supposed to put a veneer of bragging on or something: I made the best fucking pasta on Tuesday.
Sometimes I think maybe I should have gone to the other grad school I was considering for history. Almost everything was "right" for my professional interests about the one I went to and it was in a place I preferred to live. But the other program was larger and almost certainly would have been better socially. It was just as good academically, and overall had more faculty in my fields of interest. But I wasn't particularly eager to move there and the advisor I had in the program I attended was better suited for me, though because I never finished my dissertation I never got the full benefit of having that advisor.
I've since lived in the town of the place I didn't attend (as a non-student) and hated it - I actually didn't think I'd dislike it so much, since my earlier visit had been fine - and yet it's still not clear I made the right choice not to go there. On the other hand, I've never really regretted the choice I made, though I have regretted not staying out of grad school for longer altogether.
I also occasionally wonder if I should have stayed in the east and tried to move to an actual city, since I appear to like denser cities for day-to-day living even though I prefer the landscape and open space you get in the west coast cities I've lived in. But for family, and to a certain extent career*, this made the most since.
*I'm doing more and more interesting stuff in my new position. But I had established a good enough track record at the last place that I probably could have gotten onto the ladder and started climbing, even though I was technically in a term limited position. The organizational structure probably would have kept me off of some interesting things even then, but the payscale could go higher than it could here (I suspect).
Although I have to say, if your new job is Nirvana you're going to be disappointed in the afterlife when you realize it's just like your job.
I regret writing "since" for "sense". It's an error not befitting a graduate of [HUMBLEBRAG] university.
If your new job is Nirvana you're finally excused from having an afterlife, thanks be.
If you don't believe in counterfactuals, you don't believe in SCIENCE!
I don't think I have, but C is possibly in this situation. Not sure what there is to brag about in it, apart from that people want to employ him. So 3 years ago come October, he left the job he loved and moved to a new job which he ended up hating and which was really bad for him. After 15 months of that he moved to his current job, which is fine, not misery-inducing, but a bit boring, not enough interesting stuff to do. And so yesterday he came home and said he'd had a long talk with his original boss about getting his original beloved job back again (as the current incumbent is leaving). (These are all in the university, so just shuffling about.) Too weird?
Personally, I'd be quite happy for him to have a slightly boring job for the next couple of years, with the chance of e.g. taking 2 weeks off at Easter like he did this year, as I'm starting my course in September and will be really busy and in odd chunks of time so no one actually has a chance to get used to any particular routine. So having him be able to pick up the slack will be useful. This really wasn't possible last time he was doing Job A.
There would be no financial difference. I'm loath to encourage this plan for - well, was going to say my own selfish reasons, but actually I'm thinking more of the kids than myself. But then otoh he'd probably be more pleasant to live with (when he was around) if he were happily busy.
That turned into a bit of a splurge.
position as a startup CSO in a couple years
My background in water pollution control leads me to read this as "Combined Sewerage Overflow". But, hey, it's a steady job.
Working in water pollution control: apparently the right thing, but I achieved sod-all and wasted a year of my life.
It's hard to come up with any where I specifically did the [deontologically] morally right thing, but it would have been better [consequentially] if I'd done the [deontologically] morally wrong thing.
I've certainly had girls/women who I shouldn't have done anything with sort of throw themselves at me, and I've turned them down, but I don't really regret those decisions.*
But, twice, I've missed getting on the 'property ladder' when I could maybe just about have managed to secure a mortgage, and now, I suspect, I probably never will. Condemning me to a life of over-priced shitty renting. So, I'd go back and make those decisions differently. And I should certainly have realised that graduate school is almost entirely about making connections and self-marketing, rather than what I (mistakenly) believed until far too late.
* teen/early-20-something ttaM used to get quite a lot of those offers, sometimes (unbeknownst to said friends) from partners of friends.
AND NOW YOU'VE CONDEMNED ALL YOUR DESCENDANTS TO SHITTY RENTING TOO
It's hard to come up with any where I specifically did the [deontologically] morally right thing, but it would have been better [consequentially] if I'd done the [deontologically] morally wrong thing.
Same here. Come to think, riffling through my past for noticeable decision points where I did the morally right thing (that is, the other option would have been attractive, but I rejected it because it was wrong) I'm not coming up with much. I may be history's greatest monster here.
Or else you've been fortunate enough always to have the morally right thing also be the consequentially right thing. Like the Old Dope Peddler, doing well by doing good.
re: 63
Too true, Thomas. Too true.
re: 64
I suspect deep down I'm something of a prig [and probably a bit judgemental with it]. Not in the sense of thinking that all sorts of fun things are morally wrong -- booze, drug, and shag away, folks* -- but in the sense of being fairly able to turn down fun things if I think they are morally wrong. I'm not very good at self-deception. I can't kid myself that it was OK to have done $thing, because deep down I really wanted to $thing.
* except where you are exclusively committed to someone else, or your boozing and drugging is going to make other people's lives miserable.
And I should certainly have realised that graduate school is almost entirely about making connections and self-marketing
I really hate that this is true, because I will never be good at these things. Not when I was in graduate school, not ever.
And I should certainly have realised that graduate school is almost entirely about making connections and self-marketing
I really hate that this is true, because I will never be good at these things. Not when I was in graduate school, not ever.
Unfortunately I wasn't really all that good at either the substantive stuff *or* the networking stuff. So, at least I've got that going for me.
"Would you like to see my teddy?"
Dammit. Now my brain is putting that into that song from Frozen
It doesn't have to be a teddy.
It doesn't have to be a teddy.
Right. A dirndl works fine.
When I stopped looking for a tech job and went back to school it was for nominally moral reasons -- the jobs I had didn't seem to be helping anybody, and arguably something I learned in school could -- but it was also because it was really hard to find jobs at that point and I didn't really have another idea. Which makes the fact that things shortly thereafter rebounded and I could have spent the years I spent banging my head against the wall trying to finally rouse myself to get through school making loads 'o money doing reasonably fun work not quite fit the OP's structural demands.
There have been lots of other circumstances where there was one option that seemed fun but was a terrible idea for practical-life-living (but not moral) reasons, but in those circumstances I always went for the fun bad idea, at least up until the past few years when I got some sense in my head.
I probably shouldn't have dropped out of college to spend sophomore year with my bong. But my career path has been perhaps not so different than if I hadn't.
73: you could have gone my route and taken a year off before college to do that. And then, you know, only made it a half year or so at college and then dropped out and gone back like a decade later and had some other shit happen and then finished hilariously tardily. I mean, I'm not recommending it or anything.
I do sort of wish I'd had a different moral system in years past, since I ended up several times basically torturing myself by doing what I thought was honorable or the only morally acceptable option, but that's mostly just out of a wish to be nice to my past self and not because I want a different current reality.
Hm, times when I have done the right thing for the world but the wrong thing for me...Well, I've been offered a couple of jobs for which I was not qualified and which I declined on those grounds, even though I could have taken the jobs and flailed until I could manage. (None of them were very glamorous, but all would have put me on a much more middle/upper-middle career track).
I'd say that I've declined a lot of stuff that I felt I didn't deserve or where the outcome would be worse for the cause/organization but better for me personally - most of it was relatively small potatoes, though. Declining to speak on panels because I felt like they didn't need another white person level of stuff.
I'd say that the biggest humblebrag mistakes I've ever made, though, were taking the fall for two screw-ups made by activist groups of which I was a member at the time. I felt like someone had to step forward and be the face of "we should not have done this", and as a result I was the person who wrote the apology/attending the awkward meeting and got yelled at, even though I had almost nothing to do with one issue and was only involved in the other because people in the group had overridden my "we should do this a different way I think" suggestion. The end result has been that people think of both those things as my fault, I lost a lot of community credibility and several friendships and the people who were actually responsible just sail on their way. It's actually been pretty depressing, because the real lesson is "even if your organization screwed something up, never apologize". I had to fight my group pretty hard, in one case, to get them to admit that we'd done something pretty stupid and that folks were mad at us for legit reasons, and all that happened was I'm the one with the reputation. There are guys who are known rapists who are taken more seriously than I am in certain circles because I became the face of Bad Thing.
Moral of the story: if you want to be a saint, you've got to be ready to be a martyr.
I am perfectly willing to be a martyr, but never a saint. That part of my moral code hasn't changed.
I got nothing. maybe I shouldn't have plead and made up with college/grad school boyfriend after cheating on him (twice), and gone on feeling really guilty about it despite the fact that he was cheating on me every time he left the country (so like 4x a year min. something I was not entirely aware of. half-way aware.) but he wanted me back; even at the very end I had to be the one to break up with him. if I had done so earlier I might have gone out with someone who didn't use heroin all the time. but I think the same was true for him. he combined a perpetual "maybe we shouldn't live together anymore" attitude (like moving from NYC to berkeley) with him choosing berkeley after I did--he followed me there when he could have gone elsewhere. but if it wasn't for hot, emotionally distant, dismissive boyfriends whose attention you must strive ever vainly to attract, what boyfriends would crazy girls have at all?
78 Last: Nice Guys, of course.
Regrets? Here's a few:
I should not have taken a medical leave from my PhD program. As bad as my health crisis was at the time I should have figured some way to ride it out. As it was I had to fight hard to get the leave in the first place which left me with even less energy to deal with my (now thankfully in the past) health issues. Fuckers.
I should not have married #2. Or even gone out with her in the first pace.
I still don't understand what's so bad about emotional distance. Ironic detachment works for everything.
Here's one: I was too scared to take a year off after undergrad and screw around and get to know myself, but that would have probably been the Right Thing To Do.
However, I applied for grad school one year before the dot com bubble burst, and I went on the job market the year before Lehmann Brothers went bust. If I'd taken a year off, I probably wouldn't have gotten into my grad school (the caliber of student increased dramatically) and I likely wouldn't have gotten a similar job, because I would have been competing with a ton more candidates for fewer jobs.
So let's hear it for operating out of fear!
78: this is actually pretty embarrassing, but we're celebrating our 16th wedding anniversary today so the whole thing's legit. I did, in fact, marry a real nice human being who is male, and who was my friend for like three years before I broke up with my other boyfriend(s), and who was in love with me that whole time.
83.2 is me, but replace "taking a year off" with "getting a masters" (and never getting any postgrad education). I also went on the job market the year before Lehmann.
76.1: I made the opposite choice about a year ago - took a promotion to a manager role that I didn't think of myself as competent to fill - and am still flailing about ineffectually. This is not just the usual mild impostor syndrome, it's embarrassingly bad. All I have to show for it is the extra money, and possibly a humiliating demotion in a few months.
More to 76: There are ways to do this sort of damage control without lying, I think I'm okay at them, and I'd be happy to help you plan a strategy next time shit gets fucked up and you don't want to get blamed for it.
The downside is you end up seeming like a bit of a smarmy little shit, but that's not really so bad an outcome, people forget about that as long as you don't make it a habit.
76: Funny, I have exactly the opposite story (in a much less big deal kind of way): I had an administrative role in a college organization that made me responsible for getting a particular task done; I delegated bits of it in a completely half-ass way that resulted in its getting screwed up in a manner that was completely my fault, and I had to scramble (and put out a very small amount of money that I suppose technically I shouldn't have been responsible for paying for personally, but there wasn't any more organizational money, and managing to collect some would have been a huge hassle) to get it fixed. The initial screwup was all on me, and getting it fixed wasn't any more than I was responsible for doing the job.
But I could not tell the story without getting a "Golly, you're such a good, conscientious person, covering for other people's mistakes. Wow, you're awesome" when the real story was "Jeez, I guess you'll know better than to fob off work onto other people without communicating clearly next time." That reaction gave me the creeps -- I was not trying to be self-aggrandizing, and could not figure out how I was telling the story wrong.
It's worth distinguishing between "I would be better off now if I had done this thing" and "I would be better now if I had been the sort of person who would have done that thing."
Do you wish you had slept with your girlfriend's friend because you've traced the counterfactuals forward enough to say that, with that one decision, you and/or other people would now be better off? Or do you think that if you were the sort of person who would have slept with your girlfriend's friend - more impulsive, more aware that the current relationship was bad, whatever - you'd be a happier person overall, regardless of the immediate fallout?
Off the top of my head I can't think of any times I made the decision for "good" reasons, whatever that means, and regret it now. But I can think of a lot of periods when being more selfish or impulsive or whatever would probably have got me to a happier place more quickly.
||
W00t! A biggish grant that my unit applied for just got funded. More minions for me. More interesting work for all, for a little while anyway.
>
I no longer feel bad for cheating on ex-boyfriends in college. Partly because it's long enough ago that I'm not worried it's a Core Aspect of Heebie, and partly because I absolve myself for being one player in messy situations where everyone was acting really poorly.
I guess that's the opposite of the OP.
I turned down an implicit offer of top shelf nookie in order to stay true to my fiancee, who eventually dumped me and ran off with another dude. I'm a bit bitter about that, since the nookie would have been much more of the flavor I like than what I was getting at home.
It's worth distinguishing between "I would be better off now if I had done this thing" and "I would be better now if I had been the sort of person who would have done that thing."
But can you make that distinction? If you have done X then by definition you are the sort of person who would have done X.
If we are doing "the version where everything goes less wrong": it's 1998 and I've had a good three years of being a slacker. Instead of doing an arts admin internship and getting two incredibly stupid jobs in NYC and falling in love with a 21-year-old who is emotionally 14 and moving to California and breaking up and going to a PhD program and having a small-batch, artisanal nervous breakdown and applying to MSW, I skip all of that. It's 1998 and I apply to an MSW program, preferably Hunter because I did need to see the world a little. Then I stay a few years in NYC and move back to Austin and I'm 30ish and not a husk of a human being and, as the song says, all is well, all is well. Some of the best things in my life don't happen in that version though so OH WELL, NO TIME MACHINE.
I suspect deep down I'm something of a prig [and probably a bit judgemental with it].
Come to think, I suppose this describes me too, mostly. Not that I'm all that moral a person, but I do tend to focus on likely bad consequences. So ill-advised moral decisions aren't all that appealing, because I'm so clear on how they are inevitably going to go wrong. (When I have actually done things that I thought of as wrong, this has prevented me from actually enjoying them much.)
So let's hear it for operating out of fear!
I've been thinking along those lines.
When I saw the OP, it just made me think that when I look at my life it's mostly unexciting but I think I have done well compared to most counterfactuals. You can't know for sure, but I think I'm in the top 20% of outcomes given my personality.
The biggest thing for me is that I'm risk averse (CHANGEBAD) and have a low appetite for novelty. I like having interesting work, but I'm perfectly happy to keep working on the same thing for years and years and still find it interesting, and I eventually ended up in a job in which that impulse has worked out well. I have a lot of responsibility and autonomy, and the overall situation is relatively steady state.
It's easy for me to think of ways in which I would have ended up spending years in a situation which was just slightly worse in a variety of ways and stayed there for years.
W00t! A biggish grant that my unit applied for just got funded.
Congratulations!
Neither of these have a moral valence, but I do think I'd have been happier if I'd stuck it out at MIT (physics, probably not the right major. I wasn't interested enough to put in the effort. I was thinking vaguely about civil engineering at the time, and I think that might have worked out well) or at least come up with a path to employability that wasn't law school.
As good as my current job is compared to prior legal jobs, I have in the last year or so come up hard against the realization that literally everything I do is because someone is being an irrational idiot. If people weren't assholes, my job would not exist.
That's the best possible job security.
Jesus Christ, wear to start?
If we're specifically talking about taking the route of duty/morality over personal benefit, most of my last several years in the financial industry, and my shift to other work probably qualify. The rest of the things I screwed up were mostly just me being lazy.
Blinded studies show that most people can't distinguish the flavor of top-shelf nookie from middle-of-the-road stuff. It probably depends what you use as a mixer though.
Oh hello 53, how the hell are ya?
Also, I ate some pretty fucking good pasta last night.
94
But can you make that distinction? If you have done X then by definition you are the sort of person who would have done X.
Situation A: I'm the same person(*) with the same personality, up to this one particular decision. Maybe there was just a tiny bit more temptation, maybe the circumstances were a tiny bit safer in some way, maybe I was a tiny bit more drunk, maybe a coin flip went the other way. But whatever the case, everything is the same until this one decision, and every difference comes from it.
Situation B: I'm the same person(*) with the roughly same history, but my personality is different. Maybe some early childhood formative experience is different, maybe my brain chemistry is different, whatever. But whatever the case, I have some personality trait that makes me choose to do what the real me didn't. This one decision is probably not the first difference with the real me's life, just the first noticeable one, and probably not the sole cause of all later differences.
(*) Not that being completely "the same person" is possible, but that's a problem with all counterfactuals.
As to the OP, going to college. I absolutely should have gone into the military instead. I hated a lot of aspects of formal schooling at the time and did terrible and wasted a lot of time and money.
"and when you retire you'll only be thirty-eight!"
A couple of years ago I turned down a job that would have paid $40 K more than I make now, had more job security, and put me into an area that I am more interested in. Seemed like a bright idea at the time. WHOOPS -- OH WELL.
106: Why military rather than having been a cop earlier? You seem to like it a lot.
Also, I ate some pretty fucking good pasta last night.
Futurist cooking will be free of the old obsessions with volume and weight and will have as one of its principles the abolition of pasta. Pasta, however agreeable to the palate, is a passéist food because it makes people heavy, brutish, deludes them into thinking it is nutritious, makes them skeptical, slow, pessimistic.
[Pasta] is completely hostile to the vivacious spirit and passionate, generous, intuitive soul of the Neapolitans. If these people have been heroic fighters, inspired artists, awe-inspiring orators, shrewd lawyers, tenacious farmers it was in spite of their voluminous daily plate of pasta. When they eat it they develop that typical ironic and sentimental skepticism which can often cut short their enthusiasm.
Any pasta eater who honestly examines his conscience at the moment he ingurgitates his biquotidian pyramid of pasta will find within the gloomy satisfaction of stopping up a black hole. This voracious hole is an incurable sadness of his. He may delude himself, but nothing can fill it. Only a Futurist meal can lift his spirits.
109: You can't be a cop until you're 21 and I wouldn't have been as good at it as I am in my 30's. I could have done 14 or 15 years in the military and started being a cop at the same age I did but would have had free education, training, and retirement at like 37 percent of my salary.
I could have done 14 or 15 years in the military and started being a cop
...assuming an IED didn't get you. Dude. This was not the 14 or 15 years to be in the military for the free education.
You didn't become a cop until you were 32? Aren't you my age?
I have a very persnickety sense of chronology, and I do not like it when things don't line up. You've been commenting here as a cop for longer than four years, admit it.
112: Well yeah, but none of that was on the horizon in '94. Or I could have just done 5 or 6 years or something.
113: Started in July '08, just after I turned 32.
So you were lying about being my age.
Could someone dangle a length of linguine down the black hole of futurism so that ajay could use it to scramble back out?
If you hadn't been a bored office drone before being a cop, you'd never have found Unfogged, so there's that.
After my first layoff, I took a couple of weeks off to rest and take a family vacation before starting my formal job search (I had been working pretty much non-stop for the previous few months in an effort to get off the looming layoff list). In the middle of the family vacation, I got a call from a friend of mine who had heard I was available, and wanted to know if I could come in for an interview the next day. Instead of dropping everything to drive home for the interview, I told him I'd come in the following week after I returned. The interview the next week went well, and they were getting ready to make me an offer, when all of a sudden they announced the company was getting acquired, with an associated hiring freeze.
If I had dropped everything to go for the earlier interview, I probably would have snuck in under the wire to get hired, and been sitting with a paying job and suddenly very cashable stock options instead of being without a salary for the next two years. That could have made quite a difference in my overall financial position. I did have one more option a few months later to get a different job that I've mentioned in TFA, but that involved a much more deliberate choice on my part.
116: Huh, I thought we were, or pretty close. I was born in '76.
118: True that. And everything worked out well overall.
Huh, I guess I'm a futurist.
To the OP, I always find these kinds of questions hard, since I've had pretty much the cushiest, most opportunity-filled life imaginable and have still managed to achieve nothing more than mildly depressing, very comfortable mediocrity, by mildly fucking things up in predictable ways that seem like they would have happened no matter what. So it pretty much seems like all realistic hypothetical roads would ultimately lead to the same place, mildly depressing very comfortable mediocrity.
I don't know, maybe if I'd counter-factually had a more horrible start to life, then mildly depressing very comfortable mediocrity would feel AWESOME.
98: If people weren't assholes, my job would not exist.
It's what most of the economy runs on. Managing bullshit is an order of magnitude harder than producing bullshit.
Wow, 122 makes me feel depressed. Aren't you some sort of big shot IP lawyer (and peak physical specimen)? If that's mediocrity, what's success?
Aren't you some sort of big shot IP lawyer (and peak physical specimen)?
Not really.
what's success?
When the US Supreme Court takes the bench to the sounds of Anthrax's "I am the law."
I may be about to get fired from one of the two jobs I'm working! Exciting! I'll find out next week. It would suck from a money standpoint, but not working evenings and weekends would be nice.
Shit, I was just sent a form with the "current salary/expected salary" shenanigans. Didn't we discuss the propriety of answering those questions previously?
Halford wants to be emperor. Moderately successful lawyer just isn't going to cut it.
Right! Did Emperor Bokassa I have to respond to a bunch of fucking discovery motions?
Obviously, a lot of us (some of us?) here feel like we shortchanged ourselves. What I most often think about that is that it's rooted in not having fully gotten over the standard model of success, and also in overestimating how much your will or willpower is under your control. I could be wrong about both these things. We might all be losers.
130: Success is the willpower to make people's heads explode, Scanners-style.
The nice thing about taking forever to get your shit together is that you can defer a reckoning of whether you're successful for ages.
I just blame my lack of success in the legal world on anti-semitism.
Never answer expected salary. Respond "in line with market for the position" or something like it. Current salary is also a bullshit question but can be harder to dodge. If pressed, just answer it.
I see no reason not to tell them your current salary and bid a little higher than that if you're going into something comparable. If not a comparable job google around like crazy and try to figure out the median salary for the position and bid a little higher than that. Or a lot higher if you think you're a hotshot.
I'm getting a late start to a career, but I can't see past self having had the maturity to handle things correctly, so I can't really see having gotten an earlier start. (This is not to say I'm now super mature and not fucking things up. But I would have been a really tremendous fuckup if I'd tried the same path ten years ago.) It's weird, but when I look back over my life, especially the periods where I might wish I'd made different choices, there's a strong sense of inevitability. Like, I wish I hadn't gone to the college I went to, but there was no way that 18-year-old me would have done things differently. I don't know if this is a healthy way of looking at it. In a way, it's good because I'm letting myself off the hook. On the other hand, it might be a sign of presently letting myself off the hook when I should be trying to change things about myself that aren't very functional.
130. I don't, for whatever it's worth.
This feeling comes from a) seeing that people 1 level above me have only marginally more freedom of action or satisfaction. As far as I can see, that obtains at the next level too-- more freedom in principle, but everyone with that much responsibility has internalized so much meritocratic and procedural poison that I don't want their outlook, also would not enjoy the stress.
Also b), while I still have ambitions, I recognize that the ability to contribute meaningfully requires luck (being in the right place at the right time) as well as skill and diligence. Life is long, this right now is a recovery from a shitty economy and regulatory loopiness in the US. I've had better years than I'm having now, sure. But that's no reason to slide into fatalism or bitterness.
Also, with a few notable exceptions, the gals who throw themselves at you haven't looked into the noble recesses of your soul, they're unhappy, or noticed height or slenderness or something.
Goldhattedness or high-bouncing, maybe?
Hat. Actually seems about right for the OP.
I've gone through a bazillion counterfactuals wrt BOGF (and a couple at the margins with HS GF), but since it's critical to me that I ended up in AB's office on 1/5/00, none of them are ultimately satisfactory.
Professionally, I'm sure there's something I could have done that would have turned out better, but I've no idea what. Like Halford, I think that my current position is sort of a gravity well of who/what I am. There have been jumping off points to a more interesting/significant career, but nothing in my actual career suggests that I was ever going to be the guy who went to South Africa to help people in the Townships learn to build themselves rammed earth houses, even though that's very much in line with what my ambitions were ~20 years ago.
Inflate your current salary with any bonuses or anything that could plausably be counted as salary, or barring that, any bonuses you felt you deserved and didn't get. Expected salary should be that + 20%.
I heard that you should limit it to your twice your current salary minus 14.
My plan is to report my current salary and say that I expect my base to be that rounded to the next 10k; current place doesn't do bonus, it's all base, so the delta would be any incentives which is a significant percentage from what I've heard.
Wait what's the diff between bonuses and incentives?
Also, I've read so many things questioning whether it is even legally acceptable for someone to ask this question.
Does anyone here know full stop?
Incentives, bonuses, it all counts. 401k matching too. If they subsidize your parking and give you a free gym membership, throw in the cost of that.
I heard that you should limit it to your twice your current salary minus 14.
No no no no. It's square root plus 12.
116: Huh, I thought we were, or pretty close. I was born in '76.
Oh, we basically are. February '78.
I could have waltzed into an A'zn job quite early - they liked R33dies & ex-coworkers were calling me to recruit. But my RSI was still acute & the A has no repute for good ergo. Would likely be crippled now, possibly crazy rich. Oh well.
My life's objectively going pretty well these days, but I don't think I'll ever get past a sense of having more or less wasted a decade.
151: Would likely be crippled now, possibly crazy rich. A friend with RSI (also R33die) was the n = less than 10th employee of google. Now he's retired and administers his charitable foundation while flying around the country on his personal airplane. No word on the whole being crippled thing, but I gather he's doing OK. I sometimes think about him and the time we threw ideas back and forth about how the web would be enormously great if only there was a way to pay people for shit over it. Then we got high and had awkward sexual tension instead of inventing paypal.
I'll ever get past a sense of having more or less wasted a decade.
Dude, do I ever feel you. And not in a good sort of fondle-y sort of way.
My old friend from undergrad, incidentally, was just cited in a supreme court opinion again (for evil, of course).
I'm feeling kind of guilty that we're on the garden tour this weekend and I've been all halfassed about my crappy garden and that maybe it will make everyone look bad and people won't buy houses in our neighborhood and Lee will be mad at me for being worthless, which is the only part that is accurate-ish. I think it's good enough, looks decent, I don't know. I should probably do better at things.
156: It really weirds me out. He's not going to be the Scalia of the future, is he?
Well, he doesn't have Scalia's horrible social views.
He's a genuinely great guy personally; it's just that he's going to be an increasingly effective and influential champion of a mistaken and dangerous legal philosophy. And of course there's a real chance he'll get a judgeship or higher one of these days.
I'll ever get past a sense of having more or less wasted a decade.
That's the advantage of having kids young, at least I was advancing the cause of "getting the kids out of high school by 40".
My brother & the Dwarf Lord are individually with-it, but any schedule with both of them in it is doomed. Thank goodness I didn't push for brother to move into our spare room last time he moved.
There! A happy counterfactual!
I can see in retrospect how I fucked up every significant piece of office politics that I have ever been involved in, mostly or at least often by failing to recognise that office politics were going down. I just never managed to internalise a model of a workspace which was not focussed on doing what it is supposed to do nor the idea of an impersonal management. It has cost me a lot of money over the years, and for very little benefit that I can see.
In the last three years I have lost a marriage, the company of my daughter, half my earnings, half of all my savings and pension, a big chunk of my main job, a chunk of heart muscle (followed by ten kilos of fat) and now my mother is in hospital, doubly incontinent, and may never live in her home again.
Curiously, I don't feel nearly as bad as I did three years ago. Perhaps I have just given up on unrealistic expectations and now concentrate on what I actually can change.
But in any case, Knecht, I can assure you that a comfortably mediocre existence is better than an uncomfortable one.
164: That is a terrible three years.
I just never managed to internalise a model of a workspace which was not focussed on doing what it is supposed to do nor the idea of an impersonal management.
I'm a bit surprised at the extent to which some people have internalized the behaviors of not taking responsibility for their mistakes, and not giving proper credit to their co-workers. Usually these are errors of omission -- the things they didn't say in front of the boss -- which makes them hard to pin down.
76: I think every organization should have an award for "cleaning up a toxic mess that no one else was willing to touch." It would be a lot more interesting than "employee of the year."
Too much good luck can also be bad. Being surrounded by prostitutes or winning the lottery are both fine. Put them together and trouble.
He's a genuinely great guy personally;
That's not how I heard it!
God that sucks 164. So sorry and you are totally right.
Of course it helps that I spend the latter half of my reign quite mad.
Adding to the chorus of sympathy, GIII, but glad you're actually feeling better.
Sorry you're dealing with even more now, George. I hope things start getting better.
Oh, and more than 300 people came through our garden today, and none said anything negative to me. Lee is very impressed with my work and with the results. So maybe I shouldn't have been so mean and panicky last night. Six more hours of tour tomorrow and then it's all done forever!
and then it's all done forever!
They'll probably just appoint a new tour organizing committee if you take out this one.
and then it's all done forever!
It's really very nice of you to let everyone enjoy your garden before you tear it out to install the helipad.
It kind of blows my mind that people are so nice, but our neighbors have been. That's worth the minimal amount of work this took. (And I get to feel like a better person than either member of the couple who had their entire place landscaped and are proud of it.)
