Reddit Advice on Coping with Salaryman Work

[WFJ]

Anyone who thinks work provides more than a paycheck is delusional (sometimes work provides a catered lunch, but that perk will get cut shortly). It is like a farmer expecting more from the crops than food. My armchair psychologist hypothesis is these are sick depressed people who just blame the low hanging fruit of work. Once work is removed (FIRE,retire) they blame something else (relationship, politics, "them") and never address their own shortcomings.

This is like Naomi Osaka having mental health issues for travelling on private jets, staying in 5 star hotels, playing tennis a few months a year??? Tennis/work is not the issue.

[grundomatic]

MMM wrote this https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/09 ... ve-percen/ over a decade ago. Basically, for those (orange achievers) that have to compete, maybe pick a realm other than soul-crushing office work to compete in. It seems like a seed that might one day sprout into a way out of the earn-spend mindset.

[Humanofearth]

Surprised nobody mentioned that in Asia, the North Star is obvious: to care for your family.

[jacob]

According to SD, the north star would be

1) purple: family
2) blue: duty
3) green: happiness/passion

1) beige: survival
2) red: power (alpha)
3) orange: career success
4) yellow: a vision

Workers who tend to pick from one group would tend not to pick from the other. If they do they'll pick close to the same number from the other group.

[Frita]

According to SD, the north star would be

1) purple: family
2) blue: duty
3) green: happiness/passion

1) beige: survival
2) red: power (alpha)
3) orange: career success
4) yellow: a vision

Workers who tend to pick from one group would tend not to pick from the other. If they do they'll pick close to the same number from the other group.

And people with all these differing north stars are together at work! As a vision-oriented person, I found it cumbersome.

A few takeaways:
1. In an organization, the culture ends up mimicking the masses who reflect leadership. (High functioning leaders are rare.)
2. Diversity in colleagues, which seems to be diminishing in education and academia, facilitates higher functioning.
3. There’s a point where playing along is impossible to justify. (My reason to be FI was to not lose my integrity. Ironically, my value-system and thinking style kept me stuck. The price of playing along became harder and harder to impossible.)

[7Wannabe5]

My reason to be FI was to not lose my integrity. Ironically, my value-system and thinking style kept me stuck. The price of playing along became harder and harder to impossible.

Hear you. This was one of my reasons for semi-FI-ing/starting-my-own-business the second or third time I did it. I think it might be easier to just put up and shut up in a situation in which you are mostly doing the work of a Technician. When your role is more Management, it's more difficult to enforce bad policy on your team of employees or your students. Roughly analogous to how some "good" people will stick with an abusive relationship as long as they are the only one directly affected, but when the abuser lashes out at one of the kids, they are out of there. For instance, I remember being kind of puking in my mouth after sitting in on a secret management meeting outliining how a lot of employee jobs were going to be downsized or eliminated in some kind of idiotic corporate move, and other members of my management team were actually acting kind of smug and relieved to be "in the know" and "out of the line of fire." I resigned a few weeks later. A large number of years later I ran into one of the employees who was affected, and he said "I always remember you as one of the good ones." I am definitely not always capable of keeping my behavior in alignment with my ethics, so I appreciated the nod for one of the times I did. Clearly, I would make the world's worst soldier If/when I don't outright disobey or break chain of command when given "bad" orders, I tend to at least engage in malicious compliance. What SD level was Hawkeye Pierce?

[zbigi]

Hear you. This was one of my reasons for semi-FI-ing/starting-my-own-business the second or third time I did it. I think it might be easier to just put up and shut up in a situation in which you are mostly doing the work of a Technician. When your role is more Management, it's more difficult to enforce bad policy on your team of employees or your students.

One of big reasons why I didn't stick with management. As in IC ("Technician"), I am merely a participant in someone else's madness, but as a manager, I am expected to be fully commited to it and to help it spread.

[jacob]

Another way to cope would be to embrace the Gervais principle. I think Venkatesh Rao's "The Office According To The Office" is brilliant in that regard. The Office (the TV show) becomes a lot richer using the lens of the Gervais principle: Jim Halpert who realizes that he can either be a loser or sociopath and chooses the latter. Toby Flenderson who has chosen the opposite. These are the two most interesting characters because they make a deliberate choice whereas the rest of the crew are generally either clueless or losers or sociopaths w/o questioning it or seeing it as a choice.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/t ... he-office/

[Seppia]

Sorry for the basic advice, but maybe in some cases the solution is just to change jobs?

Many times jobs can be miserable because of contextual things: a terrible boss, a bad company culture, your desk neighbor has a conflicted relationship with soap, etc
All those are fixed by a change of scenery.

Also, from time to time, there is nothing wrong working towards a material goal
At 26 living in France I spent 20% of my savings to travel the western USA for three weeks, going from San Francisco to the parks in Utah, ending with four days in NYC where I saw the finals of the US open (Serena Vs Venus in 2008) EDIT it was just a random game lol. I should have known that at the time I could not afford the finals
I did this with one of my best fiends and it is a life experience I am super glad I had. Would never give that back for 20% more net worth (much more money today than in 2008).

[Seppia]

For many years I left cards scattered around the office entitled 'Work will blight your existence' and other factoids.

How is that helpful to people?
Feels like useless sabotage of the workplace.

[chenda]

How is that helpful to people?
Feels like useless sabotage of the workplace.

I was joking

[Stahlmann]

After 20-25 post somebody recommended dividend investing...

I will also be devil's advocate and their development (or advice) in context of:
"We work jobs we hate to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like"
changed to
"We work jobs we hate to buy things we think will make us more happy".

I think it's rather a lot for average adult in terms of intelectual and emotional journey... I think we also have there too many strawmans for "average worker who is stupid consumer" and knowing that average person is higly motivated and influenced by their enviroment, based on that we tend to create very ugly image of "them". Maybe I come from background where people don't buy specific gadget to boil an egg. I also ten to give too much benefit of the doubt for average person in terms of their intelligence (at the end of the day every person seems to be first sperm cell who reached the egg...).

[Seppia]

I was joking

Ahah sorry! I am not very smart

[Ego]

Sorry for the basic advice, but maybe in some cases the solution is just to change jobs?

Three pages of philosophy on how to think about it. One simple, clear, easy to understand sentence on what to DO about it.

Sanity prevails.

I would add that if several job changes have failed to solve it, maybe a career change is in order.

If the immediate response to the idea of job/career change is your brain puking up 101 reasons why it won't work, write those 101 reasons down. Those are the problems that need to be fixed first. You might find that once those 101 problems are solved, the need to change job/career simply goes away.

[jacob]

Three pages of philosophy on how to think about it. One simple, clear, easy to understand sentence on what to DO about it.

I don't think it's that simple in practice. The average person will have a lot of objections and arguments as to why they can not possibly change their job. If it was that easy, rural poverty would have been solved long ago with the simple, clear, and easy solution being: move to the city and get a job.

A large number of societal problems could be solved the same way: crime, shootings, obesity, pollution, war, ... The simple, clear, and easy solution being to stop causing these problems in the first place.

I would add that if several job changes have failed to solve it, maybe a career change is in order.

This would also lead to objections and arguments why a career change is unpossible. Family depends on money; can't afford to go back to school. nobody will hire someone my age; blabla ...

I would also add that if several career changes have failed, maybe it's time to look to alternatives to working. The objections here will be along the lines of it's your duty to family or society to work; what will you do all day; and not doing the simple math---more precisely not even realizing that the problem can be solved with simple math. For example, I didn't realize that it was possible to make money from savings until I was 26 or so. Previously, I only thought money came from either a job or the government.

All this is very easy to see from outside the aquarium. But for the fish inside in the water looking out; all they see when they try to look out is a reflection of themselves in the glass---they don't even see the glass. The advice to "just find your passion" can be damaging to those who fail to find it and proceed to conclude that there's something wrong with them. In societies where education is free, these are the people who go back to school over and over for decades after quitting their jobs after a year or two. In societies where education is expensive, they become the people with $200k student loans collecting semi-finished aspirational degrees that lead nowhere.

This is why theory is useful. Theory makes it possible to perceive what is not immediately obvious.

[7Wannabe5]

I would add that if several job changes have failed to solve it, maybe a career change is in order.

Quitting your job or making active plans towards quitting your job in the future towards FI(being your own capital manager), self-employment, or poly-jobbery is making a change. Although, I guess you have a point in terms of the psychology, because every time I have just started actually making and enacting my To Do list towards quitting a major job (or major relationship), the urge to grouse about it pretty much disappeared. So, maybe for some of us the problem is that a plan that requires even just 5 to 10 years of putting up with crappy job is too much/too long?

The whole point of the book "The Renaissance Soul", which is how ENTP me initially linked on to "ERE", is that some people are inherently not well-suited for 40 hour/week 50 week/year in specialist role job/Career Ladder structure. Just like how some of us are not inherently well-suited for the Relationship Escalator towards lifelong, committed, monogamy. Poly-Homery, the desire to intermittently move or travel would be another variable. Same mono-job, same mono-relationship, same mono-location, same mono-hobby feels like living death for some of us. OTOH, there are very few humans who do well with all of these factors in constant flux. For instance, I need at least 1 factor held constant and can tolerate 2 held constant.

OTOH, maybe you are just implying that Fear of Change or lack of Skills Towards Making Change is the problem. Like how some humans stay stuck in bad relationships just because they hate dating?

[Frita]

think it might be easier to just put up and shut up in a situation in which you are mostly doing the work of a Technician. When your role is more Management, it's more difficult to enforce bad policy on your team of employees or your students.

Yes, it is easier to just be responsible for oneself. I also find that working wit troubled, irresponsible people creates contagion.

Another way to cope would be to embrace the Gervais principle.

One is still stuck in a box of choosing between roles, which may be more or less favorable depending on the organization’s lifecycle.

@Seppia and @Ego

Agreed, just do something different…and I am curious what prevents that from happening,Does work have to be something to endure? Is the objective to solve a problem or pretend to solve a problem? If the latter, is one able to step outside of themselves and what is the payoff?

[Ego]

I don't think it's that simple in practice. The average person will have a lot of objections and arguments as to why they can not possibly change their job.

The simple, clear, and easy solution being to stop causing these problems in the first place.

All this is very easy to see from outside the aquarium. But for the fish inside in the water looking out; all they see when they try to look out is a reflection of themselves in the glass---they don't even see the glass.

This is why theory is useful. Theory makes it possible to perceive what is not immediately obvious.

In general I agree with this.

Trouble is, tools are only as useful as how people use them. The (meta?) problem is how theory (the tool in this case) is used. Ninety-five times out of a hundred, theory is a manufactured distraction from solving the actual problem at hand.

This is why the people who know the most theory about crime, shootings, obesity, pollution, war.. are those benefiting from their existence. The people who know the second-most are the victims themselves who are good at rationalizing their victimhood and use the theory as THE reason why change is not possible.

Whereas making small iterative changes (even incorrect changes) often enlightens in ways that no amount of theory could.

[kane]

One simple, clear, easy to understand sentence

Yeah, just what the guy needs. A magic pill that will hopefully work or begin a stairway to heaven.

If you bang your head against the wall, changing the wall might change your situation somewhat. If it doesn't, maybe changing the building will? Another simple, clear, easy to understand advice is to bang faster or harder. I bet someone suggested that in the linked thread. I'm sorry I have not read it to the end, I get the same nauseating feeling from reading reddit, the same I get from watching tv or reading social media gurus thoughts. My advice on coping with depressing life is to first stop digging the hole.

You need theory in order to at least have a map of what to do. You need to know your aim in order to shoot. If you don't know it, sure you can try to shoot anywhere, and if it doesn't help, hey, at least you have tried.

I'm saying this being fully aware how important proactive attitude is and how hard it is to attain. I have changed jobs in the past because I was depressed or just called bullshit on management decisions. I could do it because I have read MMM and a guy that is pretty known around here and had stashed FU money to have an escape hatch in situations just like those and got the information that you don't have to keep the status quo in place because [you have children|your parents are counting on you|it's your duty|it's important in someone else's plan].

You need band-aids, they are really important and can perhaps save your life in certain situations. This guy perhaps need a band-aid, but he also needs a little bit of theory i.e. information that he needs to call Morpheus AKA MMM/JLF.

If you go around asking how to cope with something what you will (in the mainstream, mostly) get is a reflection of someone else's values. You need to have your own values (i.e. a plan; theory) to know what to do and do it.

[unemployable]

Didn't most of us here get to ERE, or are pursuing ERE, by working within the system? What other way is there, besides being born rich-but-not-too-rich?

Tells me the problem is all the other baggage people accumulate. Cars. Houses. Kids. Nice things. Disney vacations. Debt. I keep coming back to this, all those things are choices. If you weren't so poor you didn't have the ability to choose them in the first place, it follows you had the ability to not choose them.

The system as I experienced it wasn't terrible, not at all. More money than I needed to live off. Plenty of vacation days. Business trips staying at nice hotels and meeting with interesting people. Trips to casinos; I don't regret gambling. And I had a corporate job for barely three years.

But maybe that's just Reddit. Much of it is a good place to hang out if you need a reason to be depressed.