My grandpa told me "always call your boss sir, and respond "yes sir", youll be promoted real quick."
First day at my first job my boss tells me "by the way you don't need to call me sir, just Brian"
Its actually insane that the world that boomers lived in was that simple.
Dutch has a formal and informal 2nd person word (think "you" vs "thou").
I have an intern who will not stop using the formal version, and it feels super awkward. I keep telling her to stop it, but she said she always uses with older people...
She's 23, I'm mid 30s. Ouch.
At least she doesn't help you cross the street. Yet.
"Is your lunch soft enough? Should I cut it up for you? We have a blender back in the kitchen if you want?"
You do those shenanigans in french too.
Super complicated with SO family though uhg.
That advice could also be harmful to your career. Being subservient like that will make sure that your boss will never see you as an equal as e.g. a potential successor
Sir Brian of Work
sir doesn't sit well with me either for work positions, I say it to be nice sometimes, but not because you're my boss. and if someone calls me sir, my response is " I'm not your sir, just call me ..."
They didn't. Some Boomers are also in the "just Brian" camp.
"Find a job doing what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life."
I used to love software. Then all the Lumberghs took over.
How're your TPS reports coming along?
In our next union agreement "only one unified timesheet ever" is a demand we're putting forth.
And you know for us to put that in the deal and see what it'll cost us in return, we're fucking fed up.
I feel like that's the same as a TPS report.
Hobbies always change when they become a job because it transitions from well thought out, interesting and creative projects to mass production and monotony.
As a hobbyist you have the ability to discover and work on unique, novel projects, without stress but professionalism is about consistency and speed.
Usually by running the business you can dedicate some time and resources to the fun and novel stuff. Thats how I run mine at least, as a woodworker. I don't crank out high grossing trendy stuff day and night but take the time to explore new ideas and get creative with it. That and using handtools instead of power tools.
I find a lot of resonance in this comment, but my experience is striking out in 3D art.
Thankfully I'm friends with the client and it's not a hard deadline but I'm a month over on a sculpt because I have to learn new techniques, particular to this model, and I feel the need to get it right the first time because it reflects on me.
I know I'll get faster with experience but I'm asking myself if doing this professionally from a for-hire standpoint is going to make me loathe it in the long run, because business is all about faster and more and more and faster. I'm considering making my own work to sell as 3D printables or games in the future while I keep the lights on by slinging coffee or something...
Do you mean you used to like writing software by yourself, on creative projects that you were passionate about?
Sounds like somebody has a case of the "Mondays".
I mean, I 100% agree with this one. If I'm going to be at work eight hours a day, five days a week, I better damn well enjoy it.
I'm a software dev, too, but have always left companies / teams soon after a Lumbergh took over. That was always a very good career move for me, and I am almost always pretty excited to go to work.
Plus, Lumberghs will be there for things you don't enjoy as well. That would just make it harder, at least for me.
Before I post this, I apologize for the content length:
Yeah this one hurts, because I've heard it all my life yet in MOST situations when I research a job and think "Hey that could be alright!"
There's always some nasty hidden majority of it that seems to exist solely to make sure nobody enjoys doing it too much. Like there's some misery quotient to be filled. Misery must be some kind of profit currency as a means of doing business...
As a hypothetical example: You like working with your hands and think assembling widgets or tools might be your thing. You romanticize taking pride in your work and imagining the end user being happy with your efforts.
But you find that once you get there, you're a slave to some Taylorism machine that demands infinite widgets in increasingly unrealistic timespans or else. And you never see the finished product. They also ban music and glare at you like criminals the entire time.
Or perhaps you envision that hardworking but noble slice-of-life-anime vibe, where you and some cool co-workers run a coffee shop and you're determined to earn a reputation for the perfect brew... except it's just you, by yourself, and a long line of grouchy jerks, and some machine is there yelling at you if you're not doing so many transactions-per-hour and your manager is displeased because you aren't selling two-coffees-and-a-plastic-tumbler per customer or something.
Less hypothetical: People tell me I'd make a great teacher. Yeah, I don't need to elaborate on those realities. (God bless you, teachers. Seriously.)
The education system is also just a human conveyor belt at this point.
Where are the jobs that are "just okay" or "fine"? What happened to the humble honest living? It seems like everything can fit under David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" checklist anymore.
With job satisfaction it seems either 1:100,000 odds like "career actor" or "beloved artist" or something, or you're just in the soul-grind machine that takes a perfectly human craft or interaction and forces it through a filter of spreadsheets and "KPIs" and "metrics" and "management" that makes everyone want to stop waking up.
I'd say the tasks and role of your job should at least be enjoyable enough to not hate it but what I think is even more important (and makes me enjoy my job) is the work climate, being appreciated by colleagues / customers / management, and a sense of purpose.
You're totally right. I just want to be in a position where I'm not "face of the house" and actually get to talk with coworkers once in a while.
Jobs these days seem to love putting people by themselves. I don't even mind being by myself with a task where I can listen to music or something,, but with whiny customers? Nightmare.
The coworkers on the other side of the building who weren't about to snap had something in common: They worked beside someone else occasionally, who wasn't their boss.
Before that, I was in a retail situation where I would have a cool coworker, in a small space, otherwise empty store, getting things done. But the manager would squawk at us about "hearing a lot of talking" and "that doesn't sound like work." Absolutely psychotic and I have no idea how I put up with that behavior.
Happy wife, happy life. Marriage is about compromise and sometimes I want to be happy too.
Happy spouse happy house is a better version. Both people should be happy.
Happy mate. Happy estate.
Never heard this version, I like it
Yeah old school relationships are insane. Always upset because of the "old ball and chain".
I went out to drinks with older coworkers earlier in my career, and each time it was just constant wife bitching. Oh she does this, I hate that, old ball and chain. They came to me, I was in a long term relationship (who I'm now married to), and I just didn't have anything to share. Things were going fine. They laughed and said you just wait har har har.
Well, that was 10 years ago now. We're happily married, our marriage is full of compromise and mutual respect. We have tiffs, but never full on screaming matches. I still don't have anything major I'd share at a bar.
Them though, 3 of the 4 of them are now divorced. Maybe spending all of your time at the bar complaining about your wife wasn't the best for your marriage. But honestly too, good. If you hate them, why the hell are you married?!
That was my take from the very beginning. I hate that one.
Sure, but in fairness I think that the intent of that saying is not to say that husbands should not be happy but to counterbalance the trend that used to be more historically prevalent in marriages for the wife to be treated as an appendage of the husband and taken for granted. If you view your partner as co-equal then arguably this saying simply does not apply to you at all.
I have never, ever heard it uttered by anyone except a married man who definitely meant it to mean "Give in to her every demand as written at any cost and you might have a moment of quiet."
My preferred edit is "Happy Spouse, Happy House"
If you're a quiet dedicated employee your value will be recognized and rewarded.
Yeah, that doesn't work well anymore. Gotta be a noisy dedicated worker, and be willing to move jobs a few times to start seeing the rewards
rewards mostly come from job hopping. Raises at every place I've worked arent callibrated to inflation, so your 4% raise that the boss thinks is so great is closer to 0-1%/
I put that into practice and just got promoted last Halloween! Let people know that you're smart and interested in how your job works.
Yeah, that doesn’t work well anymore.
It never did.
Working hard will get you far.
This works as long as you apply some level of thought to it. Digging a ditch with a spoon is hard work, it's unlikely to help you get anywhere.
Depends. For someone else? Maybe not. On yourself? Definitely.
Work hard studying and exercising. Self improvement I'd important, and its not related to job opportunities, but rather mastering the art of living.
Something along the lines of "don't ever go to bed angry at each other." Like, yeah, you should try to work it out, but if you fucked up real bad, don't push it. Sleep on the couch.
Sleeping on the couch isnt gping to bed, though...
So, they technically didn't go to bed angry
Correct, it's going to couch.
Besides couch is superior to bed, those nights when I can't get sleep in the bed the couch provides. Couch best. Even the cushions are for some reason nicer than pillows. Should definitely consider moving to the livingroom.
Start an argument. Live your dream.
Or getting a better bed
"Fully empty your battery before charging it up again, it increases the lifespan of the battery."
This was true before lithium-ion batteries became the norm. But for lithium-ion batteries, the opposite holds.
Remembering which of my devices are old method charging and which are new method is a pain.
I have several camping lamps from like 20 years ago that I almost threw out because they weren't holding charge anymore, before I remembered to be fully draining the batteries and recharging them once a month. They work like new now practically.
Well that one is still true if somehow you still have Ni-Cd batteries in your life.
“If you love something set it free, if it comes back it’s meant to be.” Nearly cost me the best relationship of my life because I was a dumb, impressionable kid that believed in wise sounding words. If you love something, hold on to it. Work for it. Don’t let it go just to “see if it comes back”.
Same could probably be said for just about any seemingly wise sounding sayings.
I think it's more about control than sending what you love away.
"Set it free" means let your love interest choose to stay or leave on their own, don't try to keep them caged.
Depending on what you mean, it's possible that your love you regret letting go of wouldn't have lasted even if you had held it and fought.
Though if you mean you took that saying and thought it meant you needed to push your love away to see if they returned, then yeah, that's not a great strategy.
Yeah, the latter is how it was explained to me. Like, literally break up with the person you love to see if they’ll fight for you to take them back. Or push them away and wait a few years to see if they magically reenter your life or something. Crazy, I think some people believe they live in a hallmark movie
Could have also meant just not working to maintain it. “Let it go” could (foolishly IMO) mean “stop feeding it”.
Go to a four year college so you can get the best jobs.
Nah, that advice is still correct. The 4-year degree provides a huge benefit over not having it.
It's just that a lot of people don't realize just how much shittier not having a degree in 2024 is compared to not having a degree in 1974.
So while the baseline has gotten worse, and the actual benefit of college has shrunk, it's still easily worth the 4 year commitment and the tuition/opportunity cost.
Counter-point: not everyone is cut out for a four-year degree*. Some people are better suited for trade schools. My wife worked at a university and saw a number of students that were attending just because family wanted them to, but their heart wasn’t in it. Often they’d drop out with student debt and no degree to show for it.
*or at least when they’re young
The 4-year degree provides a huge benefit over not having it.
For average lifetime earnings.
So for some it may not provide a big help.
Right now trade schools are actually providing a better cost to income ratio than college.
It’s anecdotal but my friends in the Boston area were all making 120-150 in salary plus bonus before I was even out of school and I started in software at 65k and didn’t break into that level for another 4 years. Now I make 230 but they’ve all got houses and decked out retirement funds from having that good money when they were much younger. That extra 20-30k/yr in 401k and IRA funds with 5-6 years more growth time in the market isn’t something to shake a stick at.
There's also a lot of things that people ignored from this advice. No one said get literally any degree, art majors have been the source of unemployment jokes since before I was born. No one also said take 5-7 years or more to get the degree either.
Oh wow that's a good one! There was a time where it worked out great the vast majority of the time. Not so much now, definitely aged like milk
Skip the line with a blue badge at amazon (not financial advice)
My parents separated when I was really young, roughly 5 yrs old. As I grew up and had visitation with my dad he always drilled into me "women just want a man who can provide for them, in the end they all just want money." Being young and obviously not knowing how crazy my dad was yet, I believed him for a long time.
Turns out when you treat people like they just want you for your money, that's the only kind of people who will put up with you. Kinda self fulfilling. Found a nice lady now, happily married and caring about each other, not just money.
Ages like milk...
Drink a full glass of milk at every meal. Otherwise, your bones will turn to pudding and you'll get kidnapped at the mall because you'll be too soft to put up a fight. Or whatever scare scenarios Big Milk pushed in the US in the 80s and 90s.
Now everyone's drinking nut and oat milk because of health reasons and also drinking the milk of another mammal is kinda weird.
Because drinking "milk" from nuts and oats isn't weird?
People have been drinking animal milk for thousands of years so the weird ones are those pretending some heavily processed industry process isn't weird.
"Milk" from nuts and oats is just a word. Call it oat juice, oat extract, make up a new word and call it oat zligbab. The actual thing being drunk is not far from the realm of things we already drink and eat. Getting hung up on it being called "milk" is a superficial and disingenuous argument against it.
If you want to compare the extremes of industrialized processes, are you familiar with commercial dairy farming?
I mean soy milk has been around since the 14th century.
Processing and industrialization is something that's happened to most things in our food chain, including actual milk.
Find what you love, and then figure out how to make money on it.
It worked for me, but not my spouse. Sometimes you just need to find something you're happy enough doing to make the income.
Yeah, finding a career that is acceptable and pays enough to afford the lifestyle you crave is a balance. Usually that advice comes from people who love doing something that is coincidentally also highly paid.
Also, loving something and being actually good enough at it to make a career out of it are also two different things
I always thought that was really dumb. After hearing stories from people then "find a skill in demand that sounds like a fun challenge" is a way better approach. I went for software but mech/civil engineering, carpentry, electrician and architect would all also be great choices.
Depends what part of the process you like. Some people like to be very meticulous in their hobbies, and somewhat of a perfectionist. That rarely exists in a professional environment, where everything is based on getting projects out the door, on schedule and on budget.
I actually like banging out projects quickly, so the professional life of my hobby suits me well (woodworking). I love pounding out big mortises with a sledgehammer, planing big boards and watch chips go flying. I hate fiddling with joinery and slowly fitting them for 10 minutes (slowly learning how to do them faster). For other people, joinery is their favorite part.
I love sleeping.
Effectively ALL of what I was told about what makes a satisfying and successful life. I was told the right thing to do is work hard, go to school, get a good stable job, get married, settle down, have kids, buy a house, own several depreciating assets.
Life is about being happy. Nothing else. Do what makes you happy, because that car, vacation, or other piece of consumer shit won't. Nor will living by scripts somebody else wrote for you.
I had my house paid off at 30 and was traveling 5-6 times a year. High-level in the gaming, lottery and promotions industries. Misery. Now I have a humble life and I paint and craft things and I go dancing. And I'm happy. I could pick up the tools again and make a highly successful Steam game, but I won't. I already proved my point in my career and creative output, and I don't want to anymore.
Bro, won in life, now doing sidequests
I gave everything away and now I live a simple life where I volunteer, work at crisis shelters, do recovery mentorship, housing outreach and other things. I am happy and I do not care about the trappings of the material world anymore. I chased the hologram until I caught it and discovered its true nature.
I'm happy for you. :)
One of the things I’ve learned from my favorite psychology professor is that paying attention to my conscience, doing what my gut tells me is the right thing to do, is the most effective treatment for depression I’ve ever found.
I used to be enamored of basically financial success and exploration. Now I most highly value the lack of things nagging at my conscience.
I’m pretty poor, but I’m happy.
I used to make a lot more money making software. During that time, I kept maybe 25% of the promises I made to people professionally. I would very often say “This’ll be done in three weeks” knowing I’d have a better chance of landing this or that contract, also knowing the three weeks was extremely optimistic.
I did that all the time. Very bad character in retrospect. No wonder I was anxious and depressed. Always feeling like some kind of hunted animal. Somehow, I thought of myself as a good person because I lied to myself.
Now I do work where I keep approximately 97% of my promises (I track this). I make less money. Honestly the work I do is easy. But the payoff in terms of my serotonin and dopamine levels is huge. I feel solid. I rarely have trouble getting started with my day.
I’m hoping to take on slightly harder, slightly more meaningful work. But now that I have a taste of being reliable, I never want to go back.
~2004. My highschool civics teacher told the class that real estate was always a good investment because it only went up. I didn't really trust him at the time though.
Real estate can be a good investment, even pre 2008 crash. What can be dangerous is over leveraging. A primary residence isn't really an investment, still worth buying though.
He was just echoing the same sentiment lead to all those house flippers. He was a wealth of conservative BS and that was just one of his thinly veiled prosperity gospel moments.
I mean, if you had money at the time and bought a house in one of the larger cities or their suburbs, you would probably be loaded by now, even though you would regret it for about 5 years after the crash
You have to be loaded to be loaded? Got it.
This "teacher" also would complain about wellfare queens who had children just to claim more benefits, that the best thing that could happen to a country is to be invaded by the US because they'll rebuild afterwards and that every Union but teacher's Unions were obsolete today, among other things.
he was a terrible teacher.
the wealthy have always considered real estate to be a liability that requires constant upkeep. they are money pits.
this is why they truly own nothing but physical assets(gold, paintings,etc) and leverage any liquidity on acquiring assets.
Work hard and do your best at work and you'll go places.
Yeah I got moved around several times in the office. That's about it.
I mean, if you don't try at all you're far less likely to succeed.
Don't believe anything you read on Wikipedia.
That infuriates me. “Oh but anyone can edit”. Yes, but see for how many seconds your stupid edit will last. It’s the single most rich and accurate encyclopedia humanity has seen, ffs.
Teachers should be using Wikipedia as an opportunity to teach skepticism and following sources. I wouldn't allow Wikipedia to be used as a cited source, but as a starting point for finding other sources on a topic.
Does anyone still say not to trust Wikipedia? They did so in the beginning and it certainly didn’t have to turn out trustworthy so that was good advice for a few years.
Now we see it’s the most trustworthy encyclopedia, and my kids’ teachers qualify it as “an encyclopedia is not an original source “, which is correct and a valuable distinction. They recommend it as a starting point but don’t allow citing it, as is correct.
"When you first move into a house dont make any improvements for at least 6 months."
I now see that its Terrible advice.
Haha, no.
When you first move in you see all the flaws that the previous owners got used to living with. Fix them while you're still motivated to.
Don't make any improvements is a crazy proposition. But I agree with living in the place 6 months before doing anything drastic unless it is obvious. I live in a very old house. It took us a while to see the reasoning behind some of the features in our house. We were tempted to scrap anything that wasn't typical in new constructions, but that would have been a waste of money.
I was happy saving up for a few months and observing the house to see where my money was best spent.
This is very true on codebases as well. There’s always this instinct to underestimate the value of what’s already been built.
Why is it not good advice?
You can always find it cheaper on Ebay.
This is actually somewhat true again now that Amazon has gone full monopoly abuse, but for a while Ebay was nothing but 1:1 with Amazon sellers and a serious lack of auctions.
Although you can go much lower with Ali Express and Temu, albeit with risk invovled.
Just as casual conversation, what items or categories of goods do you usually deal with? Just wondering, as I myself have noticed "the boat" rocking back and forth between different online buying options for years. I live a pretty minimalist life now (used to be heavy tech) so I don't buy much anymore and am pretty out of the loop now.
I thought eBay in this context meant second hand? Because here's the thing: i think second hand means you save a lot of money but you get less choice and less convenience; but platforms are getting good now so both of these factors are mitigated.
Anyway, eBay being 1:1 with Amazon is good enough for me, and i agree that AliExpress in particular is now better than Amazon in terms of price and choice. I don't even know how risky it really is, they can refun orders right?
Its always best to compromise
"In a negotiation about wearing black vs. brown shoes, compromise is wearing two different colored shoes. Nobody gets what they want and one of you ends up looking like an idiot."
Paraphrased from memory from a book called "Never Split the Difference: Negotiate as if Your Life Depends on it"
you wont be alone everyone finds a lifelong partner.
Calling that advice is like the opposite of a modern fortune cookie.
Buy GME
What? A buying stock in a company based on selling used media in an industry that is transferring heavily into digital? Thank god they have Funko Pops to save the sinking ship. GME is a meme stock because it's like Bitcoin or that banana duct taped to a wall. It's worth a lot to investors but not a lot to society. Actually I'd say the banana is worth more. If push comes to shove, I can eat the banana.
It's worth a lot to investors but not a lot to society.
Man, why does this seem to be where ALL the money is at anymore? =\
I mean... If you bought at $350, yeah, but anything less than $60 before the split is still positive.
Yeah, that tends to be the case, when you buy things for less than they're worth now you are making profit, thanks for taking the time to enlighten us.
nono, MOASS is coming soon™
The golden rule.
It's not gay if it's in a three way?
With a honey in the middle, there's some leeway.
$20 is $20
I wish that's what it was.
Which one?
"Treat others as you would treat yourself" or "he who has the gold, makes the rules?"
The first one.
People forget that it implies you're merely a good model or reference point for how you should treat others, and that it doesn't work when it comes to subjective interests or interactions where what you're doing regarding someone else is circumstantial.
The "rules for thee but not for me" mindset should be avoided, but circumstances should not be ignored. The other day, I was asked "you don't like being banned for being violent, why would you ban someone else for being violent" and it's just messy.
Why?
I think it has worked pretty well so far. You should never follow a rule strictly, it isn't law after all. But as a rules does it work. The few times I didn't follow it when I should did it bite me in the ass later.
A good example when it works in my favor to follow the rule: I am always on time or a bit early and all my friends who usually are late when meeting other friends are never late when we meet up, especially when it isn't a group meet up.
Having weighed all the times the gist of it made sense versus all the times the gist of it didn't make sense, I have found the latter happens more often for me. It is often synonymous with shifting burden, where you can't do so much as use discipline without it being brought up. It is also often synonymous with projecting one's interests onto someone else, since you are using yourself as a model. In this way, it is anti-negotiative.
Don't talk to strangers on the internet
Circa 2012 my boomer parents had me job hunting in person AND hand-writing the cover letters. It got me two jobs so maybe it wasn't the worst advice, but i would spend every day driving around and penning half a dozen letters for employers that, a lot of the time, weren't even hiring.
Anyway, that (12 years ago) was the last job hunt i've ever done, it's been nothing but networking and freelancing ever since
