It's like that in medium to big sized companies these days. They'll consider some people on merit, but most of the promotions to the big positions involve ass kissing, performing a Kalifornia Kamala on a higher up (you know, give head to get ahead), or simply being too competent at your existing position thus making you a threat to those above you. You have to walk a fine line of being mediocre while having an accomplishment here and there to be considered (these "accomplishments" are usually the work of someone else where the scumbag takes credit for the actual work). If you accomplish too much, you're going to frighten someone and you'll be stuck as a lead/director at best. If you do too little, you'll get laid off.
Small companies cannot tolerate that kind of bullshit ... they'll fail if they use it. That's why our government seems hellbent on snuffing them out.
You know, I think we can thank HR departments nationwide for this mess. If anyone wondered how all of this liberalism got into the corporate world, look to the HR departments of our nation's companies ... they are magnets for communist scumbags. I won't say all HR departments are run by pinko powermongers (the one that runs the HR dept at my current company is excellent, but we are a smaller operation), but if you see any kind of blurb from a company that resembles a DNC talking point, chances are that the company's HR department is a pack of fucked in the head communists making life miserable for those that want to work and succeed.
Well, very few good bosses too. I feel lucky to have had the ones I did. All the rest were wannabes who wouldn’t know what to do in a real crisis or how to create something of real value if their life depended on it. The corpworld literally makes my skin crawl. I only work externally if I must. HR is overrated for sure.
I have to disagree with you on small companies not following the ass-kissing rule of promotion. I work in a small company and the amount of ass-kissing and favoritism is sickening. If I could oust the executives I would because it’s completely imbalanced here
I realized after commenting and going back to work that you probably meant companies like small mom & pop stores lol. We definitely have more than 50 people.. for now. If they keep up their streak of pissing people off that number is very likely to drop soon.
I'm basically talking about tech companies / engineering :-) ... the big ones are a waste of anyone's time if they have talent and are looking to launch a career. It's even worse if you're not of a particular political persuasion.
Despite my rants, they're certainly worth checking out ... we are all different and they might be exactly what someone else is looking for ... some places live and die by claiming they have ex Apple/Intel/Google/Microsoft employees and are always looking to recruit them. I simply find more and more colleagues agreeing with me.
If you're experienced and can tolerate keeping your mouth shut and focusing solely on work, you can do very well working at a large company ... so long as you don't want to go the executive route and don't mind living in what is likely a liberal commiezone.
A lot of the political bullshit has trickled down to medium sized companies. I blame this on large company HR people moving to a medium sized company so that they have even less, mostly useless work to do :-).
Startups are awesome if you're young and don't buy into the "you're gonna be rich" bullshit schtick they are certain to throw your way. Just do some homework on the founders and never trade salary for stock ... they need you more than you need them. If you have a good team and the work interests you, they can be rewarding even without a massive payday. Just don't be surprised when 60-80 hour work weeks become normal for months at a time. Also, always keep in mind that 80% of them simply vaporize ... the remaining 20% have varying degrees of success (only the top 1-2% I think it was seem to have a big payday for the grunts).
I've found that the smaller companies are the best for a steady stream of income + doing side gigs here and there for bonus income is the way to go for me :-) (provided we are in cruise control mode at my day job with a current project). They're usually kind-of established so there isn't as much upside as a startup, but you can still do ok over the long haul with the equity they're likely to give you.
For side gigs, I've built a decent IP library of my own that I can use to get side contracts up and running fairly quickly. Reuse makes me look like a genius since I can get new hardware up and running fairly fast, but I can assure you that I do not possess that level of intelligence :-). Only caveat is that I can't make any exclusivity agreements since I need that code for other side jobs (I haven't run into that yet fortunately).
Sorry for the rambling ... I figure others might see this :-)!
It's like that in medium to big sized companies these days. They'll consider some people on merit, but most of the promotions to the big positions involve ass kissing, performing a Kalifornia Kamala on a higher up (you know, give head to get ahead), or simply being too competent at your existing position thus making you a threat to those above you. You have to walk a fine line of being mediocre while having an accomplishment here and there to be considered (these "accomplishments" are usually the work of someone else where the scumbag takes credit for the actual work). If you accomplish too much, you're going to frighten someone and you'll be stuck as a lead/director at best. If you do too little, you'll get laid off.
Small companies cannot tolerate that kind of bullshit ... they'll fail if they use it. That's why our government seems hellbent on snuffing them out.
You know, I think we can thank HR departments nationwide for this mess. If anyone wondered how all of this liberalism got into the corporate world, look to the HR departments of our nation's companies ... they are magnets for communist scumbags. I won't say all HR departments are run by pinko powermongers (the one that runs the HR dept at my current company is excellent, but we are a smaller operation), but if you see any kind of blurb from a company that resembles a DNC talking point, chances are that the company's HR department is a pack of fucked in the head communists making life miserable for those that want to work and succeed.
Well, very few good bosses too. I feel lucky to have had the ones I did. All the rest were wannabes who wouldn’t know what to do in a real crisis or how to create something of real value if their life depended on it. The corpworld literally makes my skin crawl. I only work externally if I must. HR is overrated for sure.
I have to disagree with you on small companies not following the ass-kissing rule of promotion. I work in a small company and the amount of ass-kissing and favoritism is sickening. If I could oust the executives I would because it’s completely imbalanced here
How many people ... I'm talking about organizations with 50 people tops.
There are always brownnosers, but if you put the wrong sort in a position in a company that's just getting it's feet wet, it is as dead as a doornail.
I realized after commenting and going back to work that you probably meant companies like small mom & pop stores lol. We definitely have more than 50 people.. for now. If they keep up their streak of pissing people off that number is very likely to drop soon.
I'm basically talking about tech companies / engineering :-) ... the big ones are a waste of anyone's time if they have talent and are looking to launch a career. It's even worse if you're not of a particular political persuasion.
Despite my rants, they're certainly worth checking out ... we are all different and they might be exactly what someone else is looking for ... some places live and die by claiming they have ex Apple/Intel/Google/Microsoft employees and are always looking to recruit them. I simply find more and more colleagues agreeing with me.
If you're experienced and can tolerate keeping your mouth shut and focusing solely on work, you can do very well working at a large company ... so long as you don't want to go the executive route and don't mind living in what is likely a liberal commiezone.
A lot of the political bullshit has trickled down to medium sized companies. I blame this on large company HR people moving to a medium sized company so that they have even less, mostly useless work to do :-).
Startups are awesome if you're young and don't buy into the "you're gonna be rich" bullshit schtick they are certain to throw your way. Just do some homework on the founders and never trade salary for stock ... they need you more than you need them. If you have a good team and the work interests you, they can be rewarding even without a massive payday. Just don't be surprised when 60-80 hour work weeks become normal for months at a time. Also, always keep in mind that 80% of them simply vaporize ... the remaining 20% have varying degrees of success (only the top 1-2% I think it was seem to have a big payday for the grunts).
I've found that the smaller companies are the best for a steady stream of income + doing side gigs here and there for bonus income is the way to go for me :-) (provided we are in cruise control mode at my day job with a current project). They're usually kind-of established so there isn't as much upside as a startup, but you can still do ok over the long haul with the equity they're likely to give you.
For side gigs, I've built a decent IP library of my own that I can use to get side contracts up and running fairly quickly. Reuse makes me look like a genius since I can get new hardware up and running fairly fast, but I can assure you that I do not possess that level of intelligence :-). Only caveat is that I can't make any exclusivity agreements since I need that code for other side jobs (I haven't run into that yet fortunately).
Sorry for the rambling ... I figure others might see this :-)!