re: People who live to work

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So you're admitting to slacking off yet chastising the dedicated people who keep the company running so you can leave at 4:55 every day? Bold strategy.

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And then act shocked when they get laid off.

I have been blessed with good managers almost all of my professional life, but excelling has served me well. When I am doing more than I am paid for, I make sure my manager knows it. The one single time that my manager agreed with me AND didn't do anything about it, I left. Every other time, telling my manager my talents were being wasted resulted in either a reality check, or a review and promotion shortly after.

Lifes to short to deal with that bullshite, and you are 100% correct. Its a delicate balance between giving them your life and being exceptional at your work.

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Either mom works or you downsize, sell that jet ski, and drive a used truck.

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Sure, and then you do what you must do to keep mom at home and get a new truck, if that's what's important to you.

Of course you can't decide you want a 64 viking and go get one tomorrow. Your goals must be attainable. But you should have your next goal in mind. Accomplish one, and another, and another, and when you are an old broken down sick man you'll be able to tell yourself you lived an accomplished life, whether you ever got that 64 viking or not.

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64 viking and

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Jesus man. Quick google search shows ENTRY at $1.5. Good for you…

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So you're admitting to slacking off yet chastising the dedicated people who keep the company running so you can leave at 4:55 every day? Bold strategy.

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My work gets done, I’m not sitting around all evening to shoot the shite with these people.

I have direct reports of my own, and I’m the only leader in my broader organization that hasn’t had turnover since taking over 3 years ago. I fully believe it’s because I treat them like people and understand when they need to take off or leave early due to home life.

Here’s an example. One of my direct reports is a single father due to a really tragic situation. He also doesn’t have family around him to help. He missed two irrelevant in person meetings last year. One because his kid was sick, the other because his kids were on fall break. My manager wanted me to give him a subpar rating for 2024 because of that. I told her I wasn’t doing it because all of his metrics were met or exceeded and we went 10 rounds about it before she finally gave up. I’ll probably get dinged on my own review for it, but frick people like her.

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My wife had a female manager who had no kids or husband and basically was a vindictive bitch whenever anyone on her team chose to pick their kids up from school instead of stay at work. She even randomly "bragged" to my wife about how she's gotten a reputation for driving people to quit.

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Probably a DEI hire, my manager is definitely one. She constantly talks about how she’s “a Jewish female in senior management.” Tells me everything I need to know about her. The funny part is that she doesn’t know anything about the actual work going on nor what it takes to get the job done.

Nah not a DEI hire. From what my wife says she is very competent, just an insane bitch who holds the fact that they have a family against her subordinates. I guess she has nothing else going on in her life, so she's jealous that others do and takes it out on them.


Apparently there was a guy who got transferred into their group and had to relocate for his new role. His house was like 1 mile within the radius that the company wouldn't automatically pay for relocation. He asked for it and the manager at the time said that wasn't a problem and he'd get taken care of.

Well that manager moved on and was replaced by the bitch mentioned above before the new guy's start date with that team. She found out about him receiving the relocation package despite not being outside the radius and then went out of her way to cancel the relocation package for her new subordinate.

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I knew my last job wasn't going to work when a coworker said " I was eating dinner with the family last night and I was thinking about our problem with such and such account...."

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These are the same people that type up emails on Friday afternoon and then send them out on delay on the weekend to make it look like they've been at the office.

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Seems like you ignored the point and focused on a sentence.

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Well, then things are not always what they seem.

Because it seems to me that you—while claiming and attempting to maintain an air of complete objectivity—slipped up a little on the sentence I quoted and allowed your own biased definition of success to creep in in an exposition on how everyone gets to define success their own way, strongly implying that there is no "wrong" definition.

BTW, I think there is a wrong definition. I don't think Walter White's definition is valid, for example.

And I understand what shaped your values early in your work career. As I mentioned earlier, I've never worked for a large corporation. I can't say first hand what that is like.

Given your description of that environment, I agree that it probably required too much of a time and stability sacrifice to allow for a stable and successful marriage or home life. I'd probably evaluate it similarly to the way you did.

Having said that, not so much responding to you but the tone of the OP, two things:

1. I think between the ever more popular "Work-Life Balance" narrative combined with the permeation of feminist thought into popular culture over the past 50 years, I think we've lost the value systems that most of our grandparents and great-grandparents had. I think that's why the divorce rate is so high as well.

People used to think about their obligations to their family and their community a whole lot more than people do today. Today it's a very selfish baseline that most people live from. I could say a lot more about that and if anyone doesn't get what I'm saying there, let me know and I'll be glad to. But I don't think that will be a very contested statement and I think most, if not all, will understand and agree with it.

2. I understand that there are valid complaints about work culture, but I have to also believe that some percentage of people who don't like people who "live to work" are really just pissed off because they are trying to cruise and do as little as possible just to keep getting their paychecks and the motivated employees make them look bad.

I know no one is going to admit to that in a message board, but I have to think it's true. It would violate general human nature if it weren't.