Job thread

[slog]

Well the specific thing I heard was that they offer healthcare, they just don't contribute to it. But also I'm at a dead end job and haven't gotten a raise since 2018 (and that was a $1/hour raise). This might get me out of the bottom 3 f13 members ranked by annual income!

Second interview went really well, and it sounded like it was already a done deal going into it assuming I didn't cock it up.

If I follow correctly, the job offers health insurance and you have to pay 100% of the cost?  That's not the end of the world.  For a single person, I would expect to pay about $500 a month with a $5000 deductible.  It should also comes with an HSA.

That is correct, and I'm hoping to get the exact details once I have a firm offer in hand. My wife covers herself and the kids, so yea I just need to worry about myself.

It might be cheaper for you to be added to her policy since she's already on a family plan.  You don't have to wait for open enrollment as you losing your coverage qualifies as a life event.  She will just need to call her benefits department to add you. 

[Sky]

Decisions would be a lot easier if we all had health care no matter what our jobs were...

YES

I'm eligible for full pension in roughly 9 years, but I have to work an additional 5 because of the cost of healthcare. And I'm squirreling away money specifically to enjoy a few more years of my life by just buying healthcare outright (my rough number is 12k/yr but of course there are the double-digit annual increases).

We're going to start looking at options for emigrating to a first world country so we can get out and maybe get health care while we're still young enough to enjoy it. Wasting ten years of my life just because our country is run by robber barons fucking sucks.

Meanwhile the old lady had been trying to get a sleep study for her sleep apnea for 10 years now. We may finally have a doctor that cares enough to endure the shitty gauntlet of insurance claim adjusters making medical decisions with people's lives. Fuck every single nazi just following those orders imo. I know this doc's son (also a doc), they spend something like 80% of every day arguing with insurance companies to get folks the treatment they need. She did finally get an at-home kit and it put her into 'medium' severity, which is enough to continue finding a course of treatment...but they're still trying to deny her coverage.

Anyone who claims to prefer this system has never used it or been very sick. Anyone who makes a living by denying people health care is a fucking ghoul who should slit their wrists immediately.

[Khaldun]

I got a test for sleep apnea and despite me having good insurance, the whole thing opened up a domain of medical care that was the most scammy-feeling thing I've ever run across. The hospital that does the test only lets you come and get it at a sleep-research office after 6pm; you take the apparatus home with minimal instructions. I got the distinct feeling that the thing was going to say "you need CPAP!" no matter what, maybe even if I didn't wear it at all. But ok. So I bring it back and they were like "oh go see this specialist right away"--no report to my primary care person, who normally has to give me a referral for anything, they just said "oh your insurance says you can just go see the specialist, no problem, no need to get the referral". Ok, so I go see the specialist. Waiting room absolutely full of people (this is pre-pandemic), I sit down, she hands me a scrip and says "go get your machine, you need it". I say, "well, hang on, I've been doing some reading and I have some questions and concerns". She says, "I'm not here for that, I'm here for you to get the machine, I got people to see". Five minute appointment and she shows me the door, next person in. Ok. So I call the guys and they were like "ok, you need to come and get the machine, it costs two thousand dollars; if you use it as we specify for two months, your insurance will give you the money back, otherwise it's on your dime". I was like, fuck that shit, that's not the insurance I have--my insurance covers this. I talk to my benefits guy in HR and he says "your insurance should cover that, tell them and give them my number". I call them and say "this is what my guy says, here's his number". They say: we don't need to call him and we don't care what he says. Come down here and bring your checkbook. Me: nope. They were like "we ordered this machine for you on orders of the specialist you saw, you have to come". Me: no fucking way, you guys sound like a bunch of mobsters. They called every day for three weeks. I talk to the primary care doctor and she's like "I dunno, I just tell people they ought to go over and get the test, I don't know anything about the rest of this". So, no machine. Maybe that's bad: I do wake up a lot, it's probably costing me a sound sleep and all the health benefits that come with it. But I have never been more creeped out by an interaction with this creepy system.

[01101010]

I got a test for sleep apnea and despite me having good insurance, the whole thing opened up a domain of medical care that was the most scammy-feeling thing I've ever run across. The hospital that does the test only lets you come and get it at a sleep-research office after 6pm; you take the apparatus home with minimal instructions. I got the distinct feeling that the thing was going to say "you need CPAP!" no matter what, maybe even if I didn't wear it at all. But ok. So I bring it back and they were like "oh go see this specialist right away"--no report to my primary care person, who normally has to give me a referral for anything, they just said "oh your insurance says you can just go see the specialist, no problem, no need to get the referral". Ok, so I go see the specialist. Waiting room absolutely full of people (this is pre-pandemic), I sit down, she hands me a scrip and says "go get your machine, you need it". I say, "well, hang on, I've been doing some reading and I have some questions and concerns". She says, "I'm not here for that, I'm here for you to get the machine, I got people to see". Five minute appointment and she shows me the door, next person in. Ok. So I call the guys and they were like "ok, you need to come and get the machine, it costs two thousand dollars; if you use it as we specify for two months, your insurance will give you the money back, otherwise it's on your dime". I was like, fuck that shit, that's not the insurance I have--my insurance covers this. I talk to my benefits guy in HR and he says "your insurance should cover that, tell them and give them my number". I call them and say "this is what my guy says, here's his number". They say: we don't need to call him and we don't care what he says. Come down here and bring your checkbook. Me: nope. They were like "we ordered this machine for you on orders of the specialist you saw, you have to come". Me: no fucking way, you guys sound like a bunch of mobsters. They called every day for three weeks. I talk to the primary care doctor and she's like "I dunno, I just tell people they ought to go over and get the test, I don't know anything about the rest of this". So, no machine. Maybe that's bad: I do wake up a lot, it's probably costing me a sound sleep and all the health benefits that come with it. But I have never been more creeped out by an interaction with this creepy system.

Yeah, my wife just got referred for a sleep study because she is the worst sleeper I have ever known. She's putting it off due to the pandemic partly and mostly because that whole industry is shifty as hell. In addition, she definitely will never wear a CPAP mask to sleep.

[Samwise]

Officially told my boss today that I was leaving.  After about an hour of experiencing very mild "oh no what did I do" anxiety, I feel as if a massive weight has been lifted from me and I can't stop smiling.  Made the right call.

[Khaldun]

Congrats. It's a good feeling.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Decisions would be a lot easier if we all had health care no matter what our jobs were...

health care is the thing

my life right now is ONLY a little complex because of healthcare, I've bent over backwards to absolutely take the system for a jaunt around the block and it's not fun

Health care is indeed the thing. And the big companies that own/run our country know it, and have zero interest in loosing their grip on all the slaves/indentured servants/salaried not-outsourceable resources who would walk out the door the day it wasn't.  You want to cut through all the conspiracy theory and disinformation crap, just follow the money. Who profits?

On a related note, back in July, after 6 months that included ever-increasing anxiety/near-panic attacks due almost entirely to stress at work and 3 new Doctor specialists I'm now seeing on regular rotation including for my increasing a-fib and surgery for a tumor (turned out not malignant, thank God, but a month of living under the C-word scare really helped me put things in perspective) and a second hospital visit to get the stents out (oh man were those awful!) and almost two months off on vacation and surgery and FMLA on doctor's orders to try to deal with the anxiety and the pressure of our absolutely critical to the organization yet horribly underfunded, criminally mismanaged and absurdly timelined 1.5 year project (which needed at least 2 years with 25% more resources but did manage to go live while I was on FMLA trying to put myself back together so I could function at all, with my stuff all working perfectly except for the one part they changed against my advice while I was out - and I was the sole DBA!) and facing the prospect of the loss of what little other expertise we had as the best contractors bailed (for places like Amazon and Dell) and my manager took a lateral transfer just to get away and they were forcing us back to working in the office while the ICUs were filling up again, I learned an interesting thing.  I learned that I did not have to get to full pension to get in on the pension plan group health insurance! In fact, it would even be at least partially subsidized based on years served. Oh, and as it's just a transfer to a different sub-group within the same health plan, my deductibles for the rest of this year would transfer over intact (and I had already hit max out-of-pocket back in June)! And I still had 9 weeks of banked personal leave. And I turn 62 in November and become eligible for Social Security.

I looked at the numbers, talked to the Countess (who has been urging, demanding, pleading and nagging me to retire or at least get out for two years now) and gave them my notice literally the next day.

So, I'm out. My health insurance is partially subsidized based on years of service, so it's $500/mo for 3 years for really not bad coverage until it dumps me into Medicare, and that is half of my pension.  I start Social Security at the end of the year. We have the Countess' (also partial) pension and social security, and a smallish 401K and over $200K equity in our house.  We won't be touring the world or living in the lap of luxury or anything. Inflation is now a fear instead of a potential blessing. And we may have to make some hard choices regarding the house.  But I have a vastly better chance of actually surviving the next couple decades to deal with those rather than dying before I even retire.

And the key to that even being possible was finding affordable healthcare.

The insurance company must love me btw.  Since that time I've had a couple more specialist visits and yet another MRI and another surgery to have another tumor removed, and that's all been $0 out of my pocket.  If nothing else I definitely won the insurance game this year! 

[slog]

You might not like this advice, but you should at least consider it and talk to a financial advisor.  Unless you have no savings, it almost always makes more sense to defer your Social Security and live off your retirement savings.  

https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/social-security/601475/3-reasons-to-wait-until-70-to-claim-social-security-benefits

Edit: here is a better article with the math. https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-break-even-age

Here’s a simple calculation to give you an idea of how a Social Security break-even calculator works. Say that you have the option to begin receiving $1,200 a month in benefits at age 62. You’d receive $1,700 in benefits if you wait until full retirement age at 66. Or you could receive $2,200 a month in benefits by delaying them until age 70.

The break-even point represents when the cumulative benefits even out. So if you wait until age 70 to start taking benefits, it would take you until age 79 to break even with the benefit amount you’d receive if you started taking them at age 62. If you were to start receiving benefits at age 66, it would take you until age 75 to break even with the benefits you’d receive if you started them at 62.

Your cumulative benefits after 10 years:

    $144,000, starting at age 62
    $122,400, starting at age 66
    $52,800, starting at age 70

Your cumulative benefits after 20 years:

    $288,000, starting at age 62
    $326,400, starting at age 66
    $316,800, starting at age 70

Your cumulative benefits after 30 years:

    $432,000, starting at age 62
    $530,400, starting at age 66
    $580,800, starting at age 70

[Sky]

Great if you live to 100.

[slog]

Great if you live to 100.

It's really great if you make to 100.  If you die and your spouses lives to 100, it can also be really great.  If they outlive you, as they can collect 100% of your benefit.  Sometimes it makes sense only for the higher wage earner to defer as Social Security will pay the higher of the two amounts at death to the survivor. 

[Abagadro]

Got a private company coming after me for a General Counsel position. Having a hard time deciding if any amount of money is worth jumping out of the nice, comfy public sector where by defined benefit pension keeps accumulating.

[Samwise]

Got a private company coming after me for a General Counsel position. Having a hard time deciding if any amount of money is worth jumping out of the nice, comfy public sector where by defined benefit pension keeps accumulating.

Some amount is, certainly.   

The question to ask yourself is where you'll be if you take the job and end up hating it.  Do you make enough money after sticking it out for a year that it doesn't matter?

[Abagadro]

That is my big worry. Could easily coast in my current job for another decade and then just retire.  If this one totally sucks I would have to find my way back into the public sector which wouldn't be impossible, but not exactly easy (not many people do what I do but there aren't that many jobs for it either).

My kid is also headed to college in 2 years and wants to go to expensive places. 

[Samwise]

That is my big worry. Could easily coast in my current job for another decade and then just retire.

Having had the good fortune to spend most of my career in a job where I could coast, I realllly miss it and if I ever find another one like that I'm keeping it.  YMMV.

My kid is also headed to college in 2 years and wants to go to expensive places. 

Has he considered getting a job he might hate in order to pay for it?

[Sky]

That is my big worry. Could easily coast in my current job for another decade and then just retire.

Having had the good fortune to spend most of my career in a job where I could coast, I realllly miss it and if I ever find another one like that I'm keeping it.  YMMV.

That's why I'm still at the library. Not exactly coasting, but a pension is a unicorn. The old lady and I call it the velvet handcuffs.

Do some math on the impact of service years on the pension vs what you'd be able to realistically sock away at the new job. If you get any kind of insurance in retirement as well, I'd stay put and not think about it unless it's STUPID money. The only move I'd make would be into the school system, same pension system but they get insurance, as well. If we had insurance benefits (they got cut in retirement in the 08 recession), the old lady would likely already retire or at worst duck out in a couple more years when she hits 25yr vested.

[HaemishM]

Got a private company coming after me for a General Counsel position. Having a hard time deciding if any amount of money is worth jumping out of the nice, comfy public sector where by defined benefit pension keeps accumulating.

For me personally, that amount of money is "at least twice what I'm making now with the exact same benefits before I will even talk to you, you private sector dickhead." The private sector can eat a fat bag of rotten dicks.

[Khaldun]

Remember re: expensive places colleges, some of them are in fact not very expensive IF you're not making that much money. That's the thing nobody really understands: at most of the selective privates, less than half the students pay full tuition. Everybody else is getting a discount; some students are attending for free. At a lot of them, you can get some kind of discount (aka "financial aid") even if your household income is somewhere south of 175k. For folks whose household income is less than 100k all told, if your kid meets the admissions standards, a lot of selective privates can be cheaper that public universities, or about the same. That publically quoted top price is very much a "soak the rich" price.

[Abagadro]

I'm likely in the donut hole of making too much to qualify for a lot of financial aid but not being stupid rich enough to just pay for it without it hurting.

[Khaldun]

You might be surprised--though if you're near that donut hole, you probably won't be getting a huge discount, sure. Anything less than 200k household income and you might still get something.

[Samwise]

I'm likely in the donut hole of making too much to qualify for a lot of financial aid but not being stupid rich enough to just pay for it without it hurting.

That's exactly what my mom always said -- she made just too much for me to be able to qualify for financial aid (but also not enough to pay anything toward my tuition), so I should go somewhere I could pay for outright and not expect to be able to get any help.  I was dumb enough to take her word for it.  (It worked out fine; UC tuition was cheap, I got an internship that paid better than minimum wage, and I graduated with no debt.) 

My sister put in the work to apply for everything she could find, and got a full ride to Fordham.  Moral of the story is don't pass on up potential free money just because you think you likely won't qualify for it.

[Teleku]

My kid is also headed to college in 2 years and wants to go to expensive places. 

Does he have any idea what he wants to major in?

[Abagadro]

My kid is also headed to college in 2 years and wants to go to expensive places. 

Does he have any idea what he wants to major in?

He is not sure. He is good at science/math but doesn't really love it, so he is mostly just looking at major universities that are pretty broad based in their programs.

[Rasix]

That is my big worry. Could easily coast in my current job for another decade and then just retire.  If this one totally sucks I would have to find my way back into the public sector which wouldn't be impossible, but not exactly easy (not many people do what I do but there aren't that many jobs for it either).

My kid is also headed to college in 2 years and wants to go to expensive places. 

Coasting is something I kind of do now. Not proud of it, but I don't try super hard most of the time, and I still get a lot of effusive praise. Of course, I'm underpaid, but my cost of living is fairly low, and I live in a place I love surrounded by the remaining family that means anything to me. We're like 2 miles away from one of the best high schools in the country (that is also free) that has a higher Ivy League acceptance rate than the super expensive private school near us (not boarding school cost, but it's more per year than I paid for grad school). The flexibility is really what I'd miss moving to another job. I can pretty much do whatever I want, when ever I want. I can be a dad, I can enjoy my weekends, I can work from home.

Kid's just in 7th, so we have time, but not that much time. Scary. No inkling what my kid wants to do other than play lots of Valorant. 

[Count Nerfedalot]

That is my big worry. Could easily coast in my current job for another decade and then just retire.

Having had the good fortune to spend most of my career in a job where I could coast, I realllly miss it and if I ever find another one like that I'm keeping it.  YMMV.

That's why I'm still at the library. Not exactly coasting, but a pension is a unicorn. The old lady and I call it the velvet handcuffs.

Do some math on the impact of service years on the pension vs what you'd be able to realistically sock away at the new job. If you get any kind of insurance in retirement as well, I'd stay put and not think about it unless it's STUPID money. The only move I'd make would be into the school system, same pension system but they get insurance, as well. If we had insurance benefits (they got cut in retirement in the 08 recession), the old lady would likely already retire or at worst duck out in a couple more years when she hits 25yr vested.

Coasting is gold.  There is no amount of money that can make up for letting stress ruin your life, be it health or relationships.  I was never able to coast in my supposedly cushy government job with pension, in spite of (or possibly because of) being better at what I did than everyone around me. And at what most of them did for that matter.  There is little if anything cushy anymore in IT, and they aren't refilling any pensioned positions. They're all going to disposable contractors.  So my velvet handcuffs turned into velvet barbed wire. But the subsidized health insurance on retirement, would have been full coverage if I'd made it to full retirement, might have made it worthwhile anyway.  Except I don't think the toll it took on my health was worth even that.  I should have gotten out 6 years ago when it all started going south.

[Khaldun]

I really feel for people who are on the wrong side of "everything is consultancy and contractual short-term", because they're getting the same pay as the people who were on the organizational payroll and nothing else--no security, no long-term guarantees, no benefits. And nobody in power seems to know or care. I had a rich guy tell me that this was great now that he's moved into the gig economy because he feels free; I was like, yeah, because you're already rich. You'd feel free if you'd decided to be a sideshow freak in a travelling circus or a shaman providing herbal medicine in the woods too because you're sitting on assets that will protect anything you decide to try.

[slog]

I'm convinced that a large number of job postings are just out there never to be filled because smart middle managers hold the position open so when it's time for layoffs they can just give up the open rec instead of losing an actual body. 

[Count Nerfedalot]

One of the sadder things I saw on my way out of the system was many (most?) of the tech contractors in our area are now refusing in-office full-time positions, not because of covid, or convenience, but because they can't cheat their employers by taking on multiple "full-time" contracts at the same time.  Heard this from the contractors themselves.  I mean, yes, the work environment at my employer sucks and employees are taken advantage of. But, if you agree to the sucky conditions and low pay, that's on you as much as on the employer.  Even morality and character issues aside, once employers get the idea that this is common, or even possible, the whole employment relationship is going to get REALLY nasty, starting with killing work-from-home dead cold just as it has proven doable and is starting to get traction. And it's not only the employer who is being cheated but the people who would have been willing to do the job being contracted if the pay were a little higher. The race to the bottom is not only in free-fall but at max thrust. EVERYBODY is being screwed because of those people who are cheating. Including the cheaters in the long term.

[Khaldun]

That's the proposition of the "gig economy": if you own the people you pay nothing, they owe you nothing too. There's a good book by the anthropologist Ilana Gershon about the underlying conceptual shift with the gig economy: everybody is just a contractor, really, selling a package of services on a contract, not somebody contributing to a shared institutional whole. That was never really true about corporations, in some sense, but there was some vague reciprocity--you build up the company or the organization, the company will hold you up. That's going, going, gone.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Yes that actually was somewhat true of corporations back in our parents day (or grandparents for some of you LOL). IBM and GM and GE and 3M and DuPont and the like really did offer jobs for life for people who were actually willing to work. Never entirely of course, but somewhat. Admittedly without serious analysis or data to support it, I suspect that there is strong correlation between the amount of mutual loyalty between a corporation and its employees vs the income disparity between the owners and the workers.  But looking back to the Rail and then Coal and then Oil Baron days, the income disparity was vast yet there seems to have been more mutual loyalty than now.  So I don't know.  Does that book offer any insight on that? Does it have theories for why/how this is happening or just analysis of what IS happening?

[Khaldun]

Mostly that it is happening and what it means; why it is happening is a bigger issue, but she has a few ideas.

I think ultimately the people in charge were thinking short-term, thinking austerity and efficiency: not having obligations to employees is great! Only as is often the case with short-term reasoning, none of the people in charge were thinking about the other shoe falling. (Or didn't care if they did: somebody else's problem.)

[Count Nerfedalot]

Yep, save money and time in initial development by cutting every corner possible, and a few that aren't. Deploy a POS that barely works but has pretty screens and immediately collect reward and move on with a big win on paper. Left behind is a fragile and completely unstable product with a couple burned out developers or contractors too broken or desperate to have moved on themselves left trying to hold the pieces together.  Assuming development is even responsible for ops/maintenance at all. Product lasts maybe two to six months before it falls apart, and there's nobody left who even knows how it works.

[slog]

We all just got an email from our CEO.  In addition to funding our bonuses at the highest level ever and all that, she decided that every full timer in the company gets and additional $5,000 and part-timers get $2,500.  There are about 40,000ish of us.

There are still employers that think taking care of your employees is a good idea.

[HaemishM]

Let me know when they lay you all off by June of next year. 

[Samwise]

Being part of the Great Resignation myself and currently feeling pretty secure in my ability to get another job any time I want, I do worry a bit that there'll be a sudden snap back sometime next year where everyone (having spent however many months recharging emotionally while depleting their savings) re-enters the job market at once and suddenly there are more applicants than openings.

[slog]

Being part of the Great Resignation myself and currently feeling pretty secure in my ability to get another job any time I want, I do worry a bit that there'll be a sudden snap back sometime next year where everyone (having spent however many months recharging emotionally while depleting their savings) re-enters the job market at once and suddenly there are more applicants than openings.

From what I have read, it's mostly the older people that left the workforce and retired early due to Covid and that won't change anytime soon.  Also, the Great resignation has been more about people leaving shitty low wage jobs and finding something better more than anything else.  You should be good