Making Green: A Wage Slog Thread

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@“captain”#p152367 new Youtube ads lately which I did not foresee becoming even worse than they used to be

the grammarly youtube ads drive me crazy, mostly because of how accurate they are. this one is really great because it shows someone in middle management doing absolutely no work at all outside of farming ideas out to underlings and AI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9-O22pl7h4

@Taliesin_Merlin i used to teaching writing in university before i made the jump to tech, which is far more stable and morally justifiable than education even if it pays less. i agree that we're on the verge of something changing--whatever that change is will likely be worsened or exacerbated by the millions on american children growing up who [don't be reading so good.](https://online.regiscollege.edu/blog/child-illiteracy/)

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That Grammarly ai/layoff stuff is a bummer. My partner loves Grammarly because they are dyslexic so its very nice to have a tool at hand to say hey you made a big mistake you‘re not going to notice normally and they can rely on it for that. The changing tone stuff though is always annoying. I will look at their work sometimes and they’ll ask me about suggestions, especially if Grammarly is suggesting tone changes and I usually don't like them. They sound artificial or too formal.

Also I guess along those lines I would say most of the upper management and executives I work with are pretty bad at writing emails. I don't mind, they are usually effective enough. It's just interesting how that happens.

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@“MoH”#p152374 yikes, this is so gross and creepy. I especially hate the idea sound effect as one of her underlings throws the winning idea at the wall and it sticks.

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Why do I find this such a demeaning thing to offer people? There‘s something about having an AI suggest ways to appear more confident that don’t sit right with me for some reason, but I can't put my finger on it.

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Grammerly more like HARDAC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roGoK2AuYQs

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@“Viralata”#p152394 it’s reducing the range and variety of human experience into quantifiable and weighted data

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@“MoH”#p152405 yeah and it seems intentional that me that the person in this ad seems to be able to work from home. This might seem like an unimportant factor in all of this, but as someone who mostly interacts with co-workers through Slack or email, I am disappointed but not surprised that this is a thing.

I feel quite alienated from the way I communicate with the rest of my coworkers -- having to come across as jolly/confident/decisive through text is not intuitive for me, so I just mimic how other people do it. So something like this might help someone like me or my bosses outsource/automate/speedrun leadership skills in a digital workplace.

Not saying this is Cool and Good though. Quite the contrary. I find it depressing and unfortunately just makes me feel gross about the kind of person who would rely on something like this in their day to day.

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@“Gaagaagiins”#p152003 Update on this situation… I think I‘ve achieved what you’d call in certain TTRPGs a mixed success.

HR got back to me about the complaints I submitted. While they did say that they don't think the incidents I described constituted workplace harassment (which I don't find surprising, if anything I'd find it surprising if they did), they did say I identified "ways in which my manager needed to improve." They then also approached my manager about it and I suppose will respond accordingly in the future.

I did tell HR that if things don't get a lot better relatively quickly that I will continue to document incidents as I see fit (and don't you worry I will be recording any private conversation I have with them) and follow up if I don't start getting work to do, as then it would be about an ongoing failure to manage me properly now with a retaliatory element.

I'm still kinda half on and half off edge because the manager in question was travelling this week so I have had some peace either way, and even started to get some work. But there are still lots of lingering problems.

I'll just have to wait and see and keep trying to act with integrity.

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@“Gaagaagiins”#p153203

The good news is that I'll have plenty of time to play _Final Fantasy VII Rebirth_ in this upcoming week, but the bad news is it's because I got fired on Friday.

Same as last time--no real explanation, no warning, and as far as I can tell, little to no chance for any sort of recourse. Whatever they asked my manager to improve on, they sure didn't, as they basically ignored me for two weeks. I feel pretty sure they must have twisted the Executive Director's arm or something like that, misrepresented things I said to make me appear to be insubordinate, hid the fact I was trying to negotiate how to keep contributing to the program, something like that. I don't know. As my last parting shot, I told the chill guy who spilled the tea about my former manager (who as part of his role had to escort me out of the building which is so humiliating but whatever) that whatever stats my manager submits for the quarterly report needs to be audited 'cause I'm only more convinced from this that I'm just being scapegoated to conceal a larger problem with the program's operations, or I've run afoul of yet another narcissistic manager who only wants employees that make them look good and who can be easily manipulated.

At this very moment I feel relieved to not have to go back there, but job hunting is and always has been a horrible, demeaning, frustrating, confusing, and arduous process for me. It's maybe not the worst time to do it (it's coming up on the end of the fiscal year and the kinds of programs and services I do work in revolve around Ministry funding, meaning there could be a big wave of job openings coming up soon) but there has never been what feels like a good time to do it for me. It feels even worse that I have to tip-toe around having been fired from my last two jobs for reasons I can't even explain. Do I just go for the throat and say that I strongly suspect I was subject to an act of reprisal for making formal complaints about my manager? I can at least say that both times were explicitly stated to be without cause.

I fucking _**hate**_ jobs, work, managers, all of it.

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@“Gaagaagiins”#p154502 "like"d out of support, not because I like that you got fired!

If you don't want to go in to the details of it, and you are ok with bending the truth (largely via omission) you could just say if/when asked that you were let go due to some form of structural / organisational changes or the like.

There's no such thing as a dream job -- why should anyone's dreams or aspirations simply be _to work_? -- but I do hope that you manage to find a role working with others that respect you and your time

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@“rejj”#p154528 If you don’t want to go in to the details of it, and you are ok with bending the truth (largely via omission) you could just say if/when asked that you were let go due to some form of structural / organisational changes or the like

classic move is just to say you actually still work there but are looking for a position with more growth.

also my condolences—work does indeed suck but you’re a smart and capable person so i have no doubt you’ll end up better than before

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@“Gaagaagiins”#p154502 I probably wouldn‘t go into too much detail regarding dramas with previous managers. I’d probably say something more diplomatic like not being the right fit for that particular work place culture, or that you're looking for a new employer as an opportunity to grow in your field.

If I were the hiring manager I'd probably see you saying that previous managers had a personal vendetta as a bit of a red flag.

Do you have previous managers that you can utilise as references that you've had a good rapport with? Also how long have you worked at this current (ex) employer? If it's only a couple to a few months I might consider not including that in my resume. Especially if you have extensive experience.

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@“rejj”#p154528

@"MoH"#p154536

Thank you for your kind words, I really hope that I can find something like that too. I don't even know why it's so hard, really. It's like, I like the work I sign up to do and I especially love the people I aim to serve, I always try my best to do it well, and the only people who end up disliking me at work are the ones who have firing power over me and itch to use it lol.

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@“rejj”#p154528 If you don’t want to go in to the details of it, and you are ok with bending the truth (largely via omission) you could just say if/when asked that you were let go due to some form of structural / organisational changes or the like.

I've thought of that, and honestly it might even be kind of true (with how little work I was being given to do I don't know why I'd keep me employed either), but the danger there is that it doesn't exactly explain why it is I'm not listing anyone from there as a professional reference (this caught me so off guard that I hadn't even thought to ask anyone to be a reference for me), least of all my former manager who has nothing to gain from saying nice things about me now.

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@“MovingCastles”#p154539 If it’s only a couple to a few months I might consider not including that in my resume.

This is probably the correct play, here, as it was indeed only a couple of months. However...

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@“MovingCastles”#p154539 Especially if you have extensive experience.

Yeah... that's my real weakness. I'm capable and I'm good at what I do but the opportunities I've had to actually demonstrate that are quite slim.

I don't want to sound like the guy who can't accept that they're the common denominator in all of their workplace woes, but it's been implosion after backstab after dud for me so far. I started working in the community service field about 6 months before the world shut down in 2020. My first job barely gave me any work to do and then my job basically didn't exist during lockdown. So, when it came to renew my contract after a year it was a non-starter. My second job was a short contract, and on one hand I chose to not accept the renewal for personal mental health reasons, but the person whose position I was covering (they were temporarily in some kind of COVID related role for some reason) contrived a reason to complain to the Executive Director about me and it all ended on a very sour note. Third job, the one before this, I was also fired without cause and without any warning and no real reason.

So I guess of the approximately 48-60 months I've been trying to get into this field, I've been employed for only about 26 of them. I don't know if I've just got horrible luck or what. It makes me feel a little better to think I just really piss toxic people off but I really wish they did not keep having power over me...

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Game I was working on was cancelled out of nowhere by the publisher. After months and months of hitting milestones on time, lots of hard work from the whole team, all for nothing. This industry is ass, man.

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@“Gaagaagiins”#p154545 ah if it‘s only a couple of months I probably wouldn’t even use it in my resume or job interviews. If any questions are asked you can get a little creative with the truth.

[URL=https://i.imgur.com/owheacB.jpeg][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/owheacB.jpeg[/IMG][/URL]

I hope it works out in the end man. Maybe it's just a weird industry to get into. Have you checked out similar employers via sites like Glassdoor?

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Hard pic of me still enjoying being at work after 13 hours haha
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a least once a week i got someone askin‘ if we’re hiring because they‘re “a BiT oF a BoOkWoRm!” and i gotta tell ’em that we all had to get masters degrees to cobble together five different on-call, unbenefitted positions across four counties to make under $40k by showing people how to use a printer and deescalating various violent social situations on a daily basis. “But it's not impossible!” i follow up with.

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Was going to do my taxes this morning, but I can’t access my W-2 because the website my employer hired to manage it and other payroll information is a broken piece of garbage.

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The one and only @Gaagaagiins has got a job interview in a few hours!!! Wish me luck! It’s for an interesting position that I’ll perhaps talk about if I can get it.

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Bit of insight as to what’s happening in my side of the world. Cuts all over the public service. Makes it hard for people to jump ship when they’re all sinking.

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