Old Man Yells At Cloud
I’m going to try to present this idea in the most non-hostile way possible, I’m not trying to shit in anyone’s cereal but this has been bothering me for some time.
Do any of you feel like you work with a ton of people now who would be better off the private sector if the economy was as good as it was 30-40 years ago? My folks retired about a decade ago, and they were grandfathered into their company’s contractual pension plan that includes lifetime health care coverage, something totally nonexistent in the private sector of today. The company actually fought tooth and nail to void all those old contracts from the 70s and 80s so they could treat folks from my parents generation with the same kind of brutalist wage slavery they’re treating people with now, but thankfully they lost that legal battle.
It feels like the 1811 series positions are increasingly attracting people who just want a middle class white collar job with benefits and pension and would not necessarily be about this life if they could find those creature comforts literally anywhere else in today’s job market. Recently a had to listen to two of my newer coworkers, both in their 20s and very newly out of training, have a *90 minute* long conversation about how they were calculating their retirement and what TSP contributions they were making. Like… shouldn’t you be excited about this job instead of already being so focused on what you’ll do when it’s over? Shouldn’t you be talking about your cases or bouncing ideas off each other for how to get to a hard target? Shouldn’t you care just a little bit more about this position and what it represents outside of a benefits package?
I get that maybe I’m being a little too harsh, but this IS a dangerous job, and I find myself wondering how I feel about making an entry at 0600 with someone who would be way happier as a sales associate or a software developer and is just here standing behind me with a gun so they don’t have to pay $3,000 a month for their kid’s health insurance.