As far as research goes, working with collaborators helps.
When I think about how having multiple authors at different institutions slowed down the process of getting a paper submitted, I try to remember that the work overall was probably more efficient because having collaborators waiting for results discourages too much procrastination.
Oh god, having collaborators is probably the one point where I think the patriarchy cut me off at the knees. There were so many invisible social obstacles that I internalized that I don't even know where to start. That would have been a very different life.
Maybe "How much patriarchy?" should be an additional axis.
How about stagnation? Early on (I just passed 9 years, as attendees of UnfyCon 2 will recall) it was great, rapid growth of the group, more responsibility for me, leadership training and recognition, salary increases. Then a grant ended and there was some reorg and now I'm just one of several people at the same level and it's not clear how there's any advancement possible. Yes, I realize it's a bit churlish to complain about only having a high paying steady management job, but you did ask...
I'm trying to set something new up given some chess moves among upper management that have gotten a fan of mine in a position of power, but even that requires wider approval to hire someone under me which my current direct boss has been totally radio silent on, as in not responding to direct emails where I ask about funding for opening this position. Meanwhile other managers routinely request and receive approval for new headcount (which isn't necessarily the same, theirs are for specific projects with direct funding whereas mine is sort of an unfunded mandate/core support) but still it's frustrating to request a new role, be told that it sounds great and they're fully supportive, then have the whole thing stall for months (6 so far) because no one wants to actually commit money to it.
EVERYTHING is a fair reason to hate your job, in this thread.
Colleague just came by to tell me a funny story about his kid, who is 13 months old. "So Baby does not like milk," he says.
"Ok" I say.
"It turns out, she does like soy milk."
"Ok," I say.
It turns out that was the funny punchline. I was still waiting expectantly. Goddamn he's dull.
"And she can speak Spanish! Get it? Soy milk? I am milk???"
Oh Jesus this post, but I'm about to go to sleep.
Collaborators, yes, that's one thing I'm looking forward to if I can get this other thing, it's a major part of the job.
Things are changing so fast at my current job that I've been getting smacked down for doing things I used to do all the time. Like not going through all the proper channels before contacting another unit for something that used to be done, or to check that something had been done that was agreed upon, then also getting pushback for going through whatever these proper channels are (they change almost weekly it seems). It reminds me of the old cognitive dissonance theory of schizophrenia. I've delayed doing such simple and necessary tasks because I've dreaded the process of getting the proper permission, software, or whatever. It's maddening. And then the boredom and checking the news (and the horrorshow that our politics has become). This is all on top of not getting slotted into the proper grade for someone of my credentials and experience. I mean two relevant graduate degrees, one in Islamic studies from an Ivy which you'd think they'd value here, plus language skills...and I was slotted at the lowest grade for my position, others who came after me are at least two over mine with less education, no language or cultural knowledge...and then getting downrated in my performance review after it had been accepted by management because the parent org decided that all of the organizations under it and all their sub units had to be graded on a curve. Even though we are effectively a start up...yeah, I'm fucking bitter. But I'll do my work because I'm a professional but I will not put in a ton of extra time because I know it won't fucking matter a bit. That's what they taught me with that. Fucking thing is my enthusiasm is one of my best assets, it's palpable and practically contagious but it's pretty much gone except when I can get lost in the material I'm working with, which is really fucking cool.
I recently re-read Erving Goffman's excellent (and very pertinent in these times) On Cooling The Mark Out: Some Aspects of Adaptation to Failure and this passage really hit home:
Another line of action which a mark who refuses to be cooled c an pursue is that of turning "sour." The term derives from the argot of industry but the behavior it refers to occurs everywhere. The mark outwardly accepts his loss but withdraws all enthusiasm, good will, and vitality from whatever role he is allowed to maintain. He complies with the formal requirements of the role that is left him, but he withdraws his spirit and identification from it. When an employee turns sour, the interests of the organization suffer; every executive, therefore, has the problem of "sweetening" his workers. They must not come to feel that they are slowly being cooled out. This is one of the functions of granting periodic advancements in salary and status, of schemes such as profit‑sharing, or of giving the "employee" at home an anniversary present.
I read that and thought fuck me, I've soured, do they even know what they did these stupid fucks at HR? I hope to god I get this new thing. A rational institution - as institutions go, and still doing the stuff I love.
Oh god that's a really incoherent rant above. Apologies. My hate for my job, let me show you it.
There's also the factor of control over schedule. How much does the job interrupt one's life (particularly outside of standard working hours). One of the best things about my job is that I generally have control over my schedule. But over the last three (?) years that's been less true because there's always something small but time-sensitive issue that needs to be addressed immediately.
The quote in 8 is spot on, yes. I can feel that dynamic inside me.
8 Should probably be presidential. I'm not sure I care but still. Maybe change it to this thinly veiled pseud?
I have absolutely no potential for advancement, but at least I never encounter the need to use the word "headcount" unless I want to make a cock joke.
12: I probably should have more appreciation for the fact that I've reached they age I have without my work ever requiring me to use the word "stakeholders".
A stakeholder is just a friend you haven't properly incentivized.
You're talking about giving them headcount, right?
Holy shit I did that without even realizing it, I had to go back and reread my comment after reading 12. I'm one of them.
The other problem is that my role for the last couple years has been in one of those no upside positions where you almost never get recognized for things working, only blamed if they fail, and it's a field that's not really my specialty but that I filled in because they needed someone who at least knew about the topic. Also been seriously understaffed because I'm the only person left at management level who also understands the amount of work involved. In the fall as part of the discussion about a new role I also told my supervisor this, that I understood the need to fill in to keep things running but that it was not something I saw as a long term role I wanted. I mean, I couldn't have been more obvious if I held up a flashing sign that said, "Retention risk!"
If you go through the trouble to make the sign flash, it marks you as attentive enough to detail that you aren't actually likely to go.
I think if I were born 20 years earlier back when collaboration between mathematicians was less common and more difficult, there's essentially no chance I'd have had any success in research and some chance I would never have finished my Ph.D. I was very very lucky to find two great collaborators at the right time. I'm running into some problems now though because I've always collaborated with people who were at the same career stage as me and where we were early in our career. My collaborators are getting older and busier and my old habits are just not working anymore. I think I need to start collaborating more with younger people.
I think I need to start collaborating more with younger people.
IYKWIMAITYD.
Agreed with the quoted portion in 8. Spot on, as they say.
I'm going with stagnation. I was hired years ago on the prospect of interesting, compelling work. And in some ways my job is that. But I'm a programmer, and I'm not programming. I get to do research about technology, but I don't get to build it.
Its getting time to move on from where I am but it looks like the Company has decided that programming is going to be outsourced. Consultants will be doing all the fun stuff, while any of the few opportunities for advancement for technical people are in project management roles. But when I was a kid I didn't want to be a project manager when I grew up. I wanted to be a programmer.
I've decided I'm getting out before my programming skills totally atrophy. I've put in my resignation, although the two potential jobs I had on the line have both gone bust - both organizations ultimately decided they didn't have money to fund the position after all.
So now I'm looking at being out of work by summer. Which I don't mind so much, but my wife is freaking out. Something about the importance of financial stability, she says. I'm hoping I can scrape up some consulting work from the Company, and other sources, so I can live out my dream of get paid to sit out on the dock of my little lake-side cottage writing artisanal code.
working with collaborators helps
That's it, you're blacklisted from my revolutionary cell.
My job is decent, but I'll proxy for my wife, who is hating her public-sector job: responsibility (management role) with no authority, due to an organization whose preferred way to deal with troublesome people is just to wait until they retire. Since they've been sued in the recent past and lost - deservedly - for various kinds of employment discrimination, anyone who can plausibly claim a protected category is ready to respond to discipline with a discrimination lawsuit, and everyone knows it.
There's also basically no upside or path forward - there are no performance raises or anything, and getting promoted up the management ladder, besides not obviously helping anything, means switching from being in the union to being outside of it, and with a hostile state government, that feels a lot more vulnerable (I don't really understand the sources of power in this organization - she doesn't feel like she can manage the people under her, but she lives somewhat in fear of what the people above her could do to her).
The hours are OK but extremely rigid; even the salaried employees like her have to clock in and out, and there's some nonsense where they're officially getting paid (and earning vacation, retirement benefits, etc) for 37.5 hours per week, but working 40 hours "is just what we do in this office".
there are no performance raises or anything
Yeah, that's another thing. Glowing evaluations from my supervisor don't get me shit.
I think the nominal purpose of continuing with my job has something to do with money, which has something to do with having income to donate to worthy causes, which is a good idea in light of the fact that apparently 20 million people are facing famine in four different countries this year, and I bet that list will get longer.
FRANCE 24: Has there been any progress in the way humanitarian agencies deal with famine situations?
WFP: Early warning systems in the last 20 years have really gotten a lot better. We receive a lot of warnings when a famine is looming. We are using things like SMS and mobile phone services to reach people in areas in Yemen and South Sudan that are cut off from us reaching them. We can take surveys and see from families how many meals they're eating. Have they fallen into debt? Have their livestock died? The kind of things that are survival strategies for families before they end up in famine. Famine is when they have absolutely nothing left. The difficulty is that many people will hold off when you warn about a famine and say we will only contribute, take it seriously when a famine arrives and by then it is too late. A large number of people would already have died.
Maybe the famine fundraiser people could use each famine to fund the next.
(I know obviously famines are mostly political problems and if people with power weren't terrible excuses for human beings, there would be available money to address them anyway. BUT if it really were just a time lag problem, they could fix that.)
Reason: The guy at the top of the org chart is some rich clown jerkface from New York. He's only had the position for a month, doesn't appear to know what he's doing, and nobody likes him.
28: yeah, the article implies that the scale is unprecedented, so they may not have enough even with advance planning. But also that logistical barriers are severe, which might also be a reason to make donations ASAP, since everything will be delayed and fucked up for months.
Worst part of my job by far is colleagues, who vary from casually telling me they think I work on the wrong things or spend my funding or time in the wrong way, to actively interfering with my research or telling me to rewrite my recommendation letters for their favorites. But they all have a vote on whether or not I get kicked out in a couple of years so I have to smile and go along with whatever they say.
Second worst is younger collaborators who figured out that I'm under more career pressure than they are at the moment, so that I will pick up their slack and get our papers written even if they do minimal-to-absolutely-no work.
Isn't the famine in Yemen a direct result of the blockade of the ports by the Saudi navy?
is just what we do in this office
You say these people have been sued over their employment practices, and lost? Hard to believe.
I was at a dinner last semester with your boss, but at a different table. That table had your boss and two Fields medalists at it, and apparently there was a bit of a funny story where one of the Fields medalists and your boss got all bothered that the neither of them knew who the other person was, and the other Fields medalist who knew them both had to smooth things out and explain to them both how famous the other person was.
Interesting phrasing there, "your boss," since presumably I know who you mean and yet of course our colleagues are not supposed to be our bosses.
I thought I took the term "boss" from your comments? Though maybe that was from back when you were a postdoc?
33: If the public sector job is in the state I think it is and with the agency I think it is, I'm not surprised.
The towns here are pretty good employers, but the state treats people like shit. Crappy vacation too.
My friend who worked in a hospital and is on crutches was told, when the elevator was broken, that she couldn't either (1.) use the service elevator or (2.) temporarily work in an office on the ground floor.
36: Oh, I probably did at some point. It has felt a bit less like that over the last two years since I haven't directly collaborated with that person. (Except on grant proposals, which... involves some wacky things that I am not bold enough to relate on the blog even in Google-proofed form.)
31.2 does a good job of providing a counterpoint to my comment in 1.
28.1: My understanding is they do just that as far as they're able.
I think the critical factors that determine whether I love or hate a job are: (a) engagement, and (b) respect.
||
Speaking of people who love their jobs, Milo the shit has just lost his book deal and his speaking gig at CPAC. Apparently advocating sex with underage boys is a bridge too far for conservatives. For now, at least. Schadenfreudelicious.
|>
43: That and the vending machine stocked full of unicorn jerky is all I need.
44 Is Schadenfreudelicious indeed.
8. One consequence of my souring as a result of arbitrary down-rating of my performance review plus being slotted into a lower grade than I believe I should have been has been how it has made me almost completely immune to the incentives embedded in the performance review/promotion scale. My supervisor has actually made reference to the fact that they will be reviewing my performance at the end of the FY and it's been all I could do not to smirk. This is a year in which I've brought in some major items to which the institution will have some serious bragging rights.
And now it's off to work.
If I could get respect, l wouldn't have to drown my sorrows in mythical snacks.
Should I go see this film tomorrow? https://vimeo.com/160158306
51 Don't know the film but I've read about him. It sounds fascinating so yeah, why not?
I forget, is the James Baldwin doc "I am not your Negro" playing? Definitely go see that if it is.
42: yeah, I was being obnoxious. Sorry.
In my experience, that shit they sell as "unicorn jerky" is usually just horse meat and glitter.
53: No offense taken! I remember this coming up as a problem because the aid organizations are pushed toward essentially blowing each crisis out of proportion so they'll have a surplus left to buffer the next one.
I assume Milo was being disingenuous in his apology, since that is his thing, but I do regard victims/survivors as being entitled to all the gallows humor they need. Not too much freude at him abusing that particular privilege; sympathy on the off chance that he's earned it.
55: this was something they were looking at solving with catastrophe bonds but I guess those don't work if you have a politically caused famine with no underlying natural disaster.
Though I suppose if you have bought enough catastrophe bonds then your counterparties will just naturally start trying to avert famines for their own good.
Not to worry, S&P has strong incentives to model genocidal intent accurately.
55: this was something they were looking at solving with catastrophe bonds but I guess those don't work if you have a politically caused famine with no underlying natural disaster.
You could try to encode political/military triggers. FIFA did a cat bond protecting the World Cup (or at least its revenue) against terrorism risk, but not world war risk. But, the pool of buyers would presumably be smaller than for traditional cat bond risks. Maybe they could try to get green bond certification and sell it to those funds.
Though emulating FIFA's financial management might be a tough sell for NGOs.
61: I think we need to avoid creating incentives for major investors to actually start wars.
Let the market reveal its own incentives.
Well, presumably the investors would be incentivised to prevent them (unless war was an excluded trigger, which would seem pointless in this case).
65: The counterparties definitely would be, assuming that the market remains restricted to charities (who are structurally short famine) and their direct counterparties, presumably fixed-income investors looking for a bit of diversification. So you have a situation where Goldman arranges a pilot cat bond issue by Oxfam and places all the bonds with Ogged Investment Management, and Oxfam pays Ogged $1m a year unless there's a famine, in which case Ogged pays Oxfam $10m. So far so good. Ogged's happy, he's got a nice diversified cash stream. Oxfam's happy, they're insured against the risk of a famine.
But what if a secondary market develops? Suppose Oxfam later decides that, even though the transaction looks good from a financial risk management point of view, it doesn't like the optics of using its donors' cash to pay an annual coupon to Ogged. So it won't be doing any more of those, thank you.
But Ogged, meanwhile, quite likes the cat bond; it's nicely uncorrelated to lots of other things in his portfolio. In fact he'd like to own more. Then you get a situation where Ogged is asking Goldman to source some more cat bonds for him to get into. Well, Goldman didn't get where it is today by telling big customers no, so it'll need to look for someone to take the other side of those deals... who will then, essentially, be taking on massive upside exposure to a famine breaking out.
Surely you aren't suggesting there are people in the world evil enough to invest in a vehicle where they profit if people die from famine insert favorite disaster here, who would then intentionally bring about such a disaster. That would be like a an arms producer/exporter advocating for war, which has obviously never happened in human history.
Ah, fair enough, the synthetic CDO angle. That feels like it could be prudentially regulated against by, say, restricting the "credit protection" buyers to qualifying NGOs and other similar measures. Obviously this could be arbitraged at the margin, but it seems like you could put enough pressure on market participants to keep it from being a realised risk, if you really wanted to. But, frankly, the returns on having all this complex machinery around what would be an expensive form of insurance seems a bit pointless when you could just have an endowment and use that to fund famine relief.
the returns on having all this complex machinery around what would be an expensive form of insurance seems a bit pointless when you could just have an endowment and use that to fund famine relief.
Well, why does anyone buy insurance rather than just having an endowment?
Broadly speaking, because insurers have ready access to long term funding and a cheaper cost of capital than insurees and their ability to pool risk means they can price the insurance accordingly.
Given modelling, concentration and liquidity risk, it's doubtful that any hypothetical famine cat bond would be particularly cost effective, even setting ethical concerns aside. It seems like it would be politically easier to persuade some governments to chip in for a famine relief fund than to foster a vibrant market in death securitisations.
69: Isn't that what an insurance company is?
I wonder if BetFair or similar betting exchanges take very large bets against the assassination of prominent figures.
There is a market for "Trump Exit Date".
Stress pure and simple. Retired early because I couldn't take it anymore. The job originally was challenging and interesting with travel to cool places. I was pretty much on my own with little direct supervision but the last few years all my work started to be inside the beltway at 3 letter government agencies. Those mofos are absolutely whacked. Trying to get anything done following their (useless) security procedures was impossible. Made lots of money for my company but not for me. My blood pressure went through the roof, couldn't sleep and I was drinking too much. Retired early - best thing I ever did. I am now a Gentleman of Leisure.
74: For the record, I was thinking of Katy Perry.
75: That's not bad if you can get away with it. Gentleman of Greeting Walmart Shoppers might be less appealing.
52.1: All the showings of that documentary at the Wexner Center last weekend sold out.
Can hardly believe I'm typing that -- a sold-out documentary in Columbus, Ohio!
I probably should have said a Gentleman of Semi-Impecunious Leisure. Still better than what went before
Hey CharleyCarp, sorry about not getting any film recommendations, it only just occurred to me that a large part of my followers/following on Twitter is made up of so-called Film Twitter so I just put out the bat signal.
Enjoy your semi-impecunious retirement OOTB!
The biggest reason I've hated jobs in the last decade is the constant fear of losing the job--layoffs, getting fired (as eventually happened, some of you may recall). I wound up eating so much shit, making changes to projects for people who didn't know what they were doing but felt the need for input, running around in a state of panic trying to make deadlines because other people had thrown wrenches in the work. It just totally killed me inside.
I haven't had paying work in 6 months and am living off my retirement savings. I'm trying to figure out what comes next. I was good at what I did and I liked the industry I worked in. Jobs in my field and in my industry have started requiring expertise in a couple new areas that I 1. Don't have. 2. Find totally unappealing.
I look around and nothing appeals outside except maybe doing some kind of political/volunteering work--which doesn't pay the rent and the child support. I have this vague idea that I could retrain into doing UX/UI, but starting at the bottom after committing to loans and continued unemployment during the retraining would still mean not having enough for rent/child support.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll figure something out, but I think the capitalist cultural relationship with work is fucking broken. UBI can't come soon enough in my book.
Bottles of Budweiser are $6 in the Lincoln airport. Factor that into retirement budgeting.
Thanks, Heebie. The last couple years have been a journey--things are getting better in a lot of ways, but there's this one big thing I can't seem to fix. Like I said, I'll make it, but I'd love to be someplace financially stable and emotionally rewarding sooner rather than later--it gets old.
Yeesh, Chopper, that sounds exhausting and discouraging. I'm sure people here who might be resources for you would be happy to be.
My biggest complaint is that being hourly and having to take time off for appointments at least twice a week and often more takes a toll when the checks come in, but my boss is being understanding. It really annoys me that Lee only works two days a week, but her days and her time with the kids are off-limits, so coparenting therapy has to happen when I'm either working or lining up childcare. But everything about her annoys me.
I hate my job because I work in a dying industry for a company managed by arrogant fools and almost every year when my contract comes up my pay goes down and my conditions get worse. This has no relation at all to the quality of my performance. Also, the new boss has a peculiar charm you could bottle and sell for weedkiller.
I'm annoyed because most of my peers, who I interacted with a year ago, stepped away to go work for the competition. It was a pretty rapid shift over three months; for several weeks we'd be "celebrating" the last day of one person and the next would give notice.
While we've shifted people around and hired to make up for the change, the team composition feels very different--and I've gone from junior to senior on the team without any real acknowledgement.
The heart of the change was induced because my senior peer had been doing the work of a manager without the pay or hours budgeted required. When she was replaced by an explicit manager, I was amused. When that manager fails to set up a team conference call--they used to be weekly, and are now barely monthly--I begin to wonder what he's doing. Oh... they're sending him out as a pinch-hitter instead of letting him manage.
Sympathies, Chopper and RP, both of those sound stressful (for different reasons).
Right this minute my job is awesome because I booted up Stalker to watch on the train ride home while working on the other half of the screen. I cracked up imagining the Stop a Douchebag guys slapping a sticker on the windshield of the car as it drives along the tracks.
I am working really hard in my new job, and I'm doing interesting work, which is intellectually quite satisfying much of the time. I like pretty much all of my colleagues, my own boss is very good, and the quality of work we are doing is pretty good.
But ... I spend a huge amount of time on management paper shuffling which I find really at odds with the purported commitment to 'Agile'. E.g. getting shit for estimates that were made 5 months ago (in my first week in the job), and which were signed off by two of the company directors, not being accurate now. When the project concerned has become subsumed into a multi-project platform with wildly different scope from where it was 5 months ago.
I nominally have a lot of authority (I'm head of a department/team, and 'own' a number of large projects). So I'll get asked, say, if some piece of R & D is billable. Say 'no' and then get over-ruled months later by someone, and then get given shit for going 'over budget'. i.e. for having my budget retrospectively fucked with so that staff time I was assured I had, I no longer do. It's the responsibility without authority thing, again.
Ironically, working for an ancient university, much of our practice was much more fluid and flexible, and the management overhead way less onerous.
So, I end up doing R&D work -- which I need to do if I'm to solve the problems I need to solve -- in my free time. I'm basically working all the time.
That said, I really am learning a lot.
E.g. getting shit for estimates that were made 5 months ago
I've kvetched about it before, but this is the linchpin Agile falls apart around. If you're doing anything that has any unknowns, known or unknown, your estimates are going to be awful. If people fuck up physical construction estimates, code, which is infinitely more flexible than mortar, is hopeless. On the other hand, without fanatic devotion to estimates Agile mostly just seems to boil down to "use an issue tracker." Perhaps there's a way to make it work for non-rote projects but I've yet to see it.
I'm so happy nobody tracks what I do that way.
The guy next to be on the plane was talking about how he manages things on a matrix but I think it was actually a Matrix.
CharleyCarp: I've heard good things about The Last Train Home and RIP Remix Manifesto .
44, 57: I think it's weird that *this* is what finally causes CPAC and Simon & Schuster to distance themselves from Milo. They were apparently fine with his outright racism, bigotry, misogyny, transphobia, cruelty and general vileness, but the fact that he is a victim of pedophilia who tried to normalize what happened to him is beyond the pale? What he said about having sex with kids was not acceptable or defensible, but given his personal history it's more sympathizable than most of the other scandalous shit he has stirred up in past months.
98: I had no idea he was alive still.
99: This time the horrible thing he's defending has white male victims.
I assume this thread is dead but I like to acknowledge these days that I am probably never going to like my job. It makes things simpler to admit it!
Sometimes at work when it is stressful instead of boring right now my mantra is "this is all I deserve" both because I think it's funny to have a self-obliterating mantra and because sometimes it works.
I mean, don't get me wrong, zero people who are reading this moribund thread: the current job is fine. It could be a lot worse. But fine encompasses: boring and depressing.
I'm reading! Not that I have anything relevant to say. My job has actually been pretty great lately, and I just had a short break from it, which was even better.
I'm reading too...but now off to an all day meeting at my now terrible job that I used to love.
I should adopt Smearcase's mantra as my own. Funny thing is there's an official slogan here that goes Arrakis deserves the best, and it's even more entitled and petulant in Arabic. I really wonder who signed off on it and how much the branding PR firm was paid.
Objectively this is all I deserve but I have no peace with that.
If this is all I deserve I am unaccountably fortunate.
Sorry if I'm coming across as bragging. My life has just been going unexpectedly well lately and I'm not sure how to process that.
Tomorrow, I'm seeing the Faroes whaling film. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theislandsandthewhales/197167321
112 That looks very interesting.
I was just giving a major presentation for work to an outside company only to have my time cut to a third of my allotted time and had it stepped all over by my supervisor and my manager totally fucking up my flow. Fuck them and fuck this place.
Such bullshit. I have a good tight schpiel and I know what the fuck I'm on about; give me the floor for 10 or 15 fucking uninterrupted minutes and then come at me with your questions. My bosses too, not the people from the company who wanted to hear what I had to say. And if they had come in and interrupted for clarification or to guide me in a direction they wanted I would have been fine with that. Fucking hell.
Sympathies, Barry. Hope you get to a better place soon.
I feel like I've hit stagnation more in my personal life than professionally but it's bled over to my work to the extent that my energy is down across the board. I have some real stability now which is great, but I don't want to keep just living basically the same life for years.
Leaving my job would be tough because there are few places in the west coast I'd leave it for and I want to stay out here for family reasons. And I've so far done a poor job getting the things I do in shape to hand off to a next person, which is a deterrent to leaving. But on the other hand I don't think it's going to be sustainable financially to stay where I am.
I suppose I could take a finance-first approach to dating and make it clear I need to be kept in a style higher than that to which I have become accustomed.
re: 94
We have one client that works in a way that fits quite well with "Agile", they basically have a huge backlog of issues, and prior to each sprint, we just collectively work through the backlog, pick what we are going to do, and get on with it. Billing every couple of sprint cycles. No huge upfront waterfall planning, no micro-estimating in advance of any useful information, etc.
But funding agencies don't usually work that way.
Ooh, fake accent, I look forward to reading about your exploits as a sugar baby.
112: Have you seen Man of Aran?
I've just been chewed out for pushing back in the interruptions during the first part of the presentation. I'm so beyond giving a shit anymore. I've go to get the hell out of here.
The problem with souring is it becomes increasingly difficult to put up a front, to put up with the bullshit. Bit by bit you let the mask slip.You become a little reckless. Dangerous.
When it's a genuinely shit employer the terminal slide is almost fun. In call centre hell my sour cow orkers and I made good sport of our supervisors, as they earnestly brandished their bonuses and deficits.
There was an amusement park in New Jersey with a terminal slide that was supposed to be really fun.
There was an amusement park in New Jersey with a terminal slide that was supposed to be really fun.
The infamous Action Park?
Thank you. I couldn't think of the name.
Did anyone go back for another turn?
It's New Jersey. Just getting anywhere is close to certain death. The park ran for years.
||
I'm thinking of trying to buy a plot of land and have a house built on it to my specs but I have not the first clue how to proceed. I'm in the just thinking about it phase right now but I thought I'd ask the mineshaft for pointers to resources. I've been through the house buying process twice now and both times were a giant pain in the ass. I assume it's the same for buying land, and building on it no doubt compounds the buttschmerz.
|>
Why, if I my ask? (I have no experience to offer.)
I've never bought land, but I have helped build houses. You start at the bottom and go up.
You generally hire a general contractor to build a house and then they hire people to put in the house. Somebody digs a hole, somebody puts in a foundation, somebody roughs in the plumbing, somebody frames the house, etc. You can get a mortgage for it, but it costs more than for a house that already exists.
Also, your contractor (or an architect) should draw up plans which you can go back and forth with until you're happy before they even put a date to break ground in their calendar. Architects don't come cheap, and some are taking the piss with the prices they quote, but a decent architect can in my limited experience make your life a lot easier. If your builder is qualified to do that stuff, that's good, but not all that many are.
I mean, the easy way is to buy the land and build your own house out of cob.
My take-away from watching someone re-build a new house on property they already owned was that prescription anti-anxiety medication is sometimes indicated. (So many decisions to make. Making sure the contractor stays on point.)
It can be exciting, though. And you get to have things set up the way you want them to be in building a new house. (Though the compromise comes from having to stick within your budget.) So good luck with the property search!
You should buy a boat instead. For the price of a not very impressive house you could buy a terrific boat. I mean one you could live on.
The problem with boats is you can't fire guns into the floor. You may as well live in an apartment.
Well, you can, but not often. (cf. "All equipment is amphibious if you can get it out of the water again; all equipment can be air-dropped at least once.")
I guess I can have my cob boat then.
It's New Jersey. Just getting anywhere is close to certain death.
Between Action Park and Camp Crystal Lake, New Jersey must have been a dangerous place to grow up, back in the day.
I was in New Jersey for 12 hours last summer. I know all about it. Great lighthouses, but the roads are basically death.
133: I'm sick of not having space to tinker. My hobby is building small liquid propellant rocket engines, and that's not really doable in an apartment. I need some workshop space for machine tools. Also my lease forbids having things like dewars of liquid oxygen lying around. If I can design my own place I can have all the safety features built in from the get-go. I have access to some nice resources at work but not everything I need and the itch is building. What I really want is a granny shack attached to a two car garage sized workshop. I don't need a lot of living space, but I do want a lot of space to tinker.
If the land is very far out of town, you can do that pretty cheaply.
Just put in a pole barn and insulate/heat a couple hundred square feet of it.
You'll need a slab foundation for the livable part, and may want one for the whole thing. But the building itself would take a four-guy crew less than a week to put up.
My hobby is building small liquid propellant rocket engines, and that's not really doable in an apartment.
Eminently reasonable!
It's like you don't understand America.
The other way to get a cheap building put up is to find a contractor to built an in-ground pool and then sneak in to flip the plans upside down.
149: I've seriously considered just buying a barn and parking an RV in it to live in. That may turn out to be the lowest cost solution.
I'm thinking of trying to buy a plot of land and have a house built on it to my specs but I have not the first clue how to proceed.
Buying land - around here, plots of land show up on real estate listings, at least.
Building on it - may I recommend our esteemed commenter JRoth? It was a great experience and we love our addition, and it was carried out long-distance. The distance is not that big a deal when you know for sure that you are dealing with a smart person who you can talk to and trust that the communication process is actually occurring.
I'm not sure that's cheaper than a pole barn. Particularly if you're already doing to have to run water and lights into the whatever barn you use.
154 would be way cheaper than 155.
Who is the Frank Lloyd Wright of the pole-barn builders?
155.2: I was actually thinking along those lines m'self. I suppose the place to start is with a visit to the bank to see what my budget might be.
They will require a larger down payment than if you were just buying a house.
Has JRoth ever designed a rocket engine testing facility before? I'm sure that, like every architect worth his setsquare, he is raring for the chance. I'm sure he can do better than this.
https://pocketbookuk.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/spadeadamrocketteststand.jpg
I have always found the description of Chlorine triflouride intriguing. If you, or maybe a new assistant, proceed, allow me to recommend streaming to cloud storage of the lab's video monitor.
162 Subject of this classic "Things I Won't Work With" post.
Popping in late to the thread to say thanks for the notes of kindness and support. I never know how often to check back on threads these days--I recall the long-gone threads of yore where that would be 15 new comments on a thread posted during the time I was writing my latest comment. With the visceral immediacy of long ago removed (not a bad thing necessarily, I also remember lot's of viciousness and hurt feelings in those flame wars--things are ever so much more kind and supportive these days), my sense of timing and when to check back is off.
I also went to send a special note of empathy to Barry--I've been on the RAGEHATE slide, and it isn't fun and a snapping point can arrive out of the blue. All I can recommend is making sure you have all of your necessary ducks in a row from a financial/career escape (sounds llike you've got that well in hand)/relationship/visa standpoint, so that if and when the big snap comes, you have your fallback plan in place.
Thanks Chopper, and right back at you with the empathy. I hope you land something good soon.
All I can recommend is making sure you have all of your necessary ducks in a row from a financial/career escape (sounds llike you've got that well in hand)/relationship/visa standpoint
That and plenty of Chlorine triflouride.
And a good pair of running shoes.
Don't run away, you'll just die with more expensive plastic melting into your feet.
Relevant to this discussion: watching a new hire in the same role as mine go from fresh and energetic in August to burned out, miserable, and taking the day off due to extreme chronic insomnia six months later, makes me think there might be problems with this job that are not 100% internal to me. But I also blame myself for not supporting her more, as the senior colleague now.
