* Everyone seems to increasingly be in it for themselves
I was fortunate to have had a career with mild autonomy to help other team members even if it was slightly out of my job description. But this only happens in a shared office environment where you can see when someone is falling behind or overhear a problem. That physical presence also creates a bond with co-workers that's often more powerful than the corporate mission.
But working from home for the past years I feel like I mercenary working among mercenaries. Working with people that have never met and will never meet and for whom work isn't about the mission or the customer. If I get work done early, I now just call it a day. Why bother with ad-hoc testing, documentation, checking in on that new hire, proposing a conference paper, investigating technical debt, etc. It's liberating but it's also depressing.
On a motorcycle if I am at a stop with no one behind me I am periodically scanning my review mirror and considering escape routes. If some appears to approach too fast I start flashing my break light until it is clear they are decelerating at a comfortable level.
I am going to start taking a similar precaution when driving. I'll just flash of my hazard lights once and hopefully that triggers something in the driver or autopilot.
There is a secondary benefit in that it influenced people like me to save, invest, and work very very hard to get that status. I invested in one YC startup after achieving it and that felt like a major personal win.
However, the financial goal posts were set 20+ years ago should have been periodically updated for inflation.
We are on a serious tangent but I'll make a go at it. At the time a friend of mine felt that it should be a crime for anyone to use the hateful words "illegal alien" but the fine should be small "like $100". His comment which ended the conversation:
"I value language and am thoughtful with my communication. If I can do that why can't others?"
Maybe how I should have responded?: "So you always ask someone's pronouns prior to initiating conversation. You agree to those and should be obliged by law to not error ever?"
Or doing that may have backfired ? Now I am a self-hating Latino and transphobic ? Not a reputation I want and I have no power to change things. So why bother is the natural conclusion.
"It’s dangerous to complain about this stuff." Yep, I'm Latino but when NYC's law was going to make it a crime to call someone an "illegal immigrant" with a $250K fine I didn't even feel safe speaking out against this bad idea. Because I am in tech and high-income so "what do I know". Despite being slurred this way many years ago by a cop and despite assisting some cousins enter the country illegally and being held by a border agent.
All this "privilege checking" makes it difficult to speak out. The least privileged people have existential concerns more significant than our culture war so they don't speak out either. The Woke movement has been hijacked by narcissists. There is no resistance so this will only accelerate in the near term.
I was fortunate to have had a career with mild autonomy to help other team members even if it was slightly out of my job description. But this only happens in a shared office environment where you can see when someone is falling behind or overhear a problem. That physical presence also creates a bond with co-workers that's often more powerful than the corporate mission.
But working from home for the past years I feel like I mercenary working among mercenaries. Working with people that have never met and will never meet and for whom work isn't about the mission or the customer. If I get work done early, I now just call it a day. Why bother with ad-hoc testing, documentation, checking in on that new hire, proposing a conference paper, investigating technical debt, etc. It's liberating but it's also depressing.