@6YrLetterman I'm upper end Gen X and I am glad to see kids in their 20s learn the lesson it took me to my 40s to learn. Get paid. It can be something other than money, lieu time, remote work, less stress, whatever it is, but get paid.

(long tweet warning) This. Not only this, those on the Right sneering at Gen Z in particular need to truly consider and internalize this. There are no guarantees in life is as true as it it trite. Of course there's not. I spent years working for a plaintiff side PI firm where the business model required awful things to happen to people unexpectedly. There are no guarantees is simply true. There are, however, supposed to be actions that a person can take to hedge against the vicissitudes of life. Those hedges appear to have been set on fire intentionally in order to be sure that Line Goes Up. The trite part is this - there are no guarantees in life is, far too frequently, being used to hand wave away people making legitimate objections to having done what there were told would lead to success and then that success does not come despite those people doing nothing wrong. People went to college and put in the extra time and were loyal to a company and did all the things they were told would lead to success and the reward for that was getting fired while the company is making record profits and the CEO is getting a huge bonus because, hey, labor is just another line on the spreadsheet to optimize. Actions are supposed to have consequenes. Working hard is supposed to be rewarded with something other than more work. When people mock Gen Z for asking about work life balance because when you start a career, you have to be prepared to put your time in to get ahead, those people are ignoring that putting the time in no longer has any rational connection to getting ahead. Why on earth would a human being donate time to a for profit company, which is what working extra hours without extra pay is, when said for profit company will turn around and fire that person at any time? There has to be some financial reward that will materialize in this mortal plane on a rational time scale for someone to work extra hours and telling Gen Z that look just slog through and, in three years, you'll get that promotion makes Gen Z, justifiably, laugh in the face of the person saying that because more likely than not in three years that company will be firing people wily nily. A job is a job and it is what a person does to make money and when the money will not be there, it is insane to tell people they should do the work anyway. Does a company owe a person a job no matter what? No. However, neither do human beings owe their labor to a company. It is supposed to be a mutual exchange. Human being gets compensated, company gets labor. The hoary old joke of a company wants to pay as little as possible for the most work while a person wants the most pay for as little work as possible was also true and trite. There was never going to be a perfect balance there because this all involves humans and thus perfection is impossible. Yet, people muddled through. I stayed with the Psychopaths for as long as I did because I was paid enough, both in direct pay and in benefits, to make it worth it. Psychopaths had to pay about 25% over market rate for employees due to having the earned reputation of being a horrific place to work. That was the balance, Psychopaths were horrible bosses and thus quite literally paid the price for that. Those of us who stayed there knew, to the penny, how much our dignity and pride were worth. The market corrected. The problem is that there now seems to be a fundamental break in that marketplace correction. Working longer hours does not result in promotions, it results in headcount dropping because, see, the remaining staff picked up the slack. Credential creep drives up the entry cost for even being considered for a job in the first place. Line Goes Up is looking at the line on a quarter by quater basis, not with any kind of longer term plan as to what will happen next year when headcount is down and now there aren't enough people to do the work. Crony corporatism is parasitical and anti-human. I despair.

(long tweet warning) This thread and I want to discuss the issue of the elderly and feeling like second hand citizens. It is DISGUSTING to me that medical providers now shove everything online. My mother was never technologically oriented and now that both her memory and eyesight are failing, she's given up using a computer or cell phone, let alone a smart phone, at all. It causes her genuine distress to have to try to do so because it makes her feel like she is stupid. Every medical appointment is check in through whatever branding the medical provider has slapped on EPIC. There is a massive push to have all visits be virtual. My mother cannot navigage that at all. And, again, making her do so makes her feel stupid and small. As you can imagine, I take that well. No, do not hand my mother a tablet and say here just do this. She can't. She is not cognitively and physically capable of doing that and asking her to do so is just flat out mean. It's also pushing off work from staff to the patient but that's a whole other discussion. My father, bless him, tries to do the check ins and he sorta kinda knows how to use the messaging system. What my father does not know, because I do not tell him as I do not need to hurt his pride, is that all his medical providers call me to ask to clarify what on earth he sent them since his typing is so atrocious. He cannot do virtual visits unless it is set up either first thing in the morning so I can log him in before heading off to work or at a time I can run down during my lunch hour (bless my work for being incredibly understanding of my having to come in late/take long lunches). All the robo calls to confirm appointments come to my cell phone because otherwise my parents wouldn't even get the calls due to the robocall blocking that is set up on their landline. Even something as simple as watching television can be a problem since they'll accidentally hit a key on the remote and that switches the input and they have no idea how to switch it back, even though I have typed up instructions for them in 45 point font so they can read it easily. Fortuantely, my parents have me, someone who is at least moderately tech savvy. I take care of the digital lives that are forced on them. If they did not have me? I do not know what they would do. This enrages me. My parents should not be pushed to the very edges of interacting with society just because they can't use a smart phone. Yet here we are. /fin