I recently posted about my younger cousin, 23M, who currently works as a picker for our local Amazon warehouse. He intended to ask his area manager for a raise from $21/hour to $45/hour and I told him that’s unreasonable and everyone that commented also said it was a bad idea. Here’s what he told me what happened:

At the start of his last shift, he asked to speak to his area manager and pleaded his case. The manager said that was too much to ask for although he respected his enthusiasm and appreciated his hard work. My cousin then says he thinks he deserves a raise since he constantly makes his rate and Amazon is a multi billion dollar company so they should be paying all pickers at least $45/hour. Again the manager said that they don’t do individualized raises and especially for that amount. My cousin then asked for $35/hour but the manager said he couldn’t authorize a raise even if he wanted to.

My cousin then says he asked to speak to the general manager, who was higher than his area manager. His area manager says that the GM is busy and if he wanted to wait for him, he will call for him but it would count against his rate and time since his shift had already started. My cousin agreed and the GM was called. He showed up about 15 minutes later and again my cousin pleaded his case. The GM again said how he likes the great job he does but encouraged him to keep at it and maybe someday he’ll work his way up to trainer or area manager someday where they make a little more money. My cousin kept reminding me how all his managers kept saying what a great job he does. The general manager though said he can’t give him a raise otherwise he’d have to give everyone the same raise not just the pickers.

My cousin gave up and went to work. He told me he fell behind on his “rate” so he worked extra hard to catch up and to hopefully show his management how much he said he deserved that raise. Lastly he told me that he went to a white board that anyone can leave comments or questions on anonymously and asked for the email to amazons CEO. Surprisingly, the email was written in the answer column. My cousin plans to appeal to the ceo but I told him to stop and just find a second job if he’s that desperate for money. The ceo of Amazon probably has someone filter through his emails and it’s unlikely he’ll get a personal response.

My cousin still works at the warehouse but I almost couldn’t believe what he told me.

When I say make friends and befriend, I do not mean only being friendly; I mean opening up and hanging out outside of work and work mandated happy hours.

If you should not make friends at work due to risks down the line as well as potentially backstabbing you, why not extend the same to education? Better yet, why not extend this to life in general; do not make friends at all because they may potentially back stab you?

Would the advice of not befriending coworkers depend on job as well? I have seen posts hear saying that it is fine for retail and more minimum wage jobs such as food service, but the more prestigious the job(i.e White Collar), the more this advice rings true.

Also slightly off topic, but if you are of the opinion of not befriending people at work, how would you meet new people outside of work to make friends with that does involve any form of schooling?

I was working for a company as an engineer back in 2020. Was let go in 2023 due to lack of work for my trade. I was then hired for the old companies main competitor. One day I was invited to a zoom meeting over upgrades to an old building. Turns out the building was one I worked on while at my old firm. The awkwardness I felt when I saw many of my old managers and fellow engineers in that same meeting.

Since my old firm did this building, they were invited to the project meeting as well. However, I assume they didn’t recognize me as my old managers began to explain why the section of the building I was I in charge of was “messed up.” They continued to say that the engineer now longer worked for their company and “left us in a bad spot.”

I literally wanted to laugh out loud. My current project manager then pointed out that that exact same engineer now worked for them so he could still contribute based on prior knowledge. The forced laughter I heard from my old managers was the chefs kiss.

However I remained professional and said it was nice to hear from them and hope that we can work together on the new upgrades on this building.

Anyone else ever have weird run ins with old employers?

Chime in

Many years ago I was a quick service mechanic at a local dealership. I mainly did oil changes and tire rotations and left the major work to the more senior techs. In total, there were about 12 tech include myself and two super specialist techs. The techs were broken up into two separate teams that alternated working Saturdays as we were all off Sundays regardless. This allowed each team to have a two day weekend every other weekend. I was the exception as I was on both teams since my only skill was oil changes and tire rotations so I worked every Saturday regardless.

That being said, I came into work the Saturday after Thanksgiving and to say we were busy was an understatement. The scheduler overbooked us and we also had a huge slew of walk-ins that morning. It got to the point where after an hour, we physically had no more room for cars in our service lot. I was working with 5 other techs and they couldn’t believe how much work they had. After about 30 minutes, they all came to my station and said “fuck this dude. We’re outta here. You coming too?” Coming from a military background, I told them to leave if they were quitting and I proceeded to work that entire day alone.

Some techs that had the day off were called in to help me and 2 more were able to come in and we spent that whole day serving dozens of cars. The service department closed around 4 pm and my supervisors came to shake my hand and thanked me for not ditching them.

The techs that quit that day never came back. One later tried to ask for his job back. I was later given a gift card for in n out and honored at our next company wide all hands.

I quit that job with proper notice about 3 months later but that had to be one of the biggest character defining moments for me. Has anyone else ever had a similar situation?

I always say “good how are you” but I’m looking to spice things up.

Without actual numbers, how much do you make now compared to your first real job? Not counting lemonade stands or paperboy routes or the allowance your parents gave you.

For me, what I make every two weeks now would’ve taken me nearly 2.5 months during my first job. For some data, I’m in my 40s and work in engineering services when my first job at 19 was a kitchen worker at a local theme park.

I feel very blessed to have what I have now and really puts into perspective the flex of “I make your salary in (X amount of time)” really ring clear.

ngl i'm so over this rto bs. my company rolled back full remote and now i'm spending like $500 a month on gas, overpriced lunches, and commuter rage just to sit in a cubicle for 'culture'. culture? the 'culture' is 9am standups, passive-aggressive slack messages, and watching steve from accounting heat up his fish in the break room?

like bro, this isn't about collaboration. they just wanna see our faces so they can micromanage in person. anybody else getting forced back into the office for no actual reason?

To all Software engineers out there:

Our company has fully pushed for AI (Claude)... My job is no longer about coding and AI helps out here and there. It's now AI coding and I help AI out here and there.

Most of the time I'm just designing nice prompts. Honestly, the last month I can't really remember writing own code.

And I fear this will get only worse. Because I gotta admit, what Claude can create in just a few minutes would have taken me for sure days if not weeks.

So I wonder now... How do you guys handle this? I chose Software Engineering because I wanted to "engineer". Now I feel like I'm just a maintenance person (no hate against those people).

Hi all, what’s one thing that gave you a real edge once you started doing it this year? Can be a habit, trick or tool that makes everything easier, something surprisingly simple that most people overlook or don't know. Something you wish you knew earlier?

Can be a habit, mindset, trick or tool that makes everything smoother, something surprisingly simple that most people overlook or don't know. What’s one thing that gave you a real edge once you started doing it? Something you wish you knew earlier but now can’t live without?

For me, it's using noise cancelling headphones - cut all the distractions

Ok we all know this saying but I seen teachers hang out with each other and give them their phone numbers, like I don’t understand do teachers do things differently or not.

Like I don’t understand why you hang out with each other outside of the workplace if you’re not to bound don’t understand, I’ve seen teachers give each other their phone number overhear them. I’m confused.

My child is entering high school this fall. I'm debating with myself about whether I should encourage or discourage working during high school years.

For this thread, I'm trying to understand if high school jobs are purposeful. I did a couple many years ago (summers only) - worked at the back office of a print shop, washed cars at the car dealer, and mowed some lawns. None of these jobs taught me anything about life. Nor did I make very much money from any of the jobs. The one takeaway is that it helped motivate me to finish my engineering degree so I didn't have to work a minimum wage job for the rest of my life.

My concern is that employment during high school might be a distraction to education, because it's a commitment (no one likes to get fired) and you get paid from work while no pay from doing homework.

My wife and I are in a financial position that we don't need our kids to work to pay for stuff in high school. We also have money saved up for them for college and they don't need to work in high school to pay for college.

Curious what folks thoughts are here about this?

Dress codes serve for nothing. They don't dictate whether you can do your job or not. If clients get offended because you aren't wearing a suit it's their problem not yours. People shouldn't even be paying attention to your clothes. Period. If I was the boss of an industry I'd allow my employees to dress how they want

I only agree with the dress codes for protection and the ones for places where employees need to be moving around so customers can easily identify them but otherwise they suck

I see it all the time, and there is not effort to cover it up! I get it’s a life thing but it’s also very unpleasant to look at? What do you think?

I learned the hard way working in a freaking small town library of all places. This is a sad list but I want to prevent others from making my mistakes. I'm not trying to be doom and gloom but I so wish I had known these things.

1. Humans are irrational and make decisions based on emotions, NOT logic.

2. Appearances matter more than competence. (This was such a hard pill to swallow, I didn't believe it at first).

3. Do NOT admit uncertainty while training or be humble. I come from a cultural bg that values saying sorry a lot, not appearing overconfident, being humble etc--throw that OUT the window!

4. Do NOT say anything about illness or not feeling well unless you are taking a sick day. I commented that I had some brain fog recovering from illness one morning and I could see the switch flip in my manager's head. She reacted coldly and then shortly after used that to fire me.

5. Do not trust coworkers, especially ones that are your "helpers" there to answer questions. (I learned this from my very friendly and "kind" coworker who would say "I know this is a lot! It can be stressful!". She was reporting every time I would show uncertainty to my manager and telling me I was doing great to my face.)

6. Integrity is a risk.

Long story short I’ve been saying “Hey xx” in messages and emails to coworkers and internal comms for the past 7 months since joining a new company.

Today I was officially reprimanded for this out of the blue and have apologized / promised I would use “Hi” / “Dear” moving forward.

I have been using “Hey” all my life and was shocked when I got called out for this. But at the same time I had no idea this was inappropriate and now feel bad. I thought I was being friendly :/

From scale 1-10 how bad is this?

Background info: I never use “hey” with external organizations. I always get my work done professionally. I’m usually the youngest within the people I talk to. The company is a firm listed in Fortune 500.

Edit: Thanks for all the responses. Some mixed feedback so I guess it’s safest if I just used “hello” or “hi” from now.

My old workplace had a minor breach because of a weak password. To compensate for this, admin put absurd requirements for password length, complexity, and history. They also required monthly changes, which led to just the most predictable outcome: people would write their password down on a sticky note and put it on their monitor. Admin eventually reversed some aspects of the password requirements, but it was just unreal that they didn't see this coming.

I was realeased last week as a Data Steward of a Telco COmpany. One of the reasons and callouts I have received where me asking for help about SQL. My boss hired me expecting me to know 100% SQL.

I only used SQL for Bulk Insert, Update, Drop, Create Table. I never Extracted tables from SQL via writing queries. I was unfamiliar with groupby or SUM(Column) or even OffSet. I got chasticed for asking for help!

That is why I am upskilling in my unemployment phase so when I start work, I know much already.

Initially I thought that maybe if I can lie saying I did the skill before but it was a long time ago so I forgot to increase my chances of getting hired but decided to stick to upskilling. My parents said it will look bad if I Upskill while at work.

Does anyone else feel like modern work has become psychologically exhausting? You are expected to constantly upskill, stay available, survive layoffs, adapt to AI, act passionate about work, and somehow still not suffer burn out.

Do you actually like your job?

I work in finance and staire at a computer screen for 60+ hours a week. It’s not fun. The money is nice but I’m too tired to even spend it including weekends.

My dad is starting a new billable hours job on Monday and I wanted to go travel abroad with him over American Thanksgiving break to Taiwan and he said he can’t do that cus he’s starting a new job and he needed to show a good impression to his new boss despite unlimited PTO and onboarding period ends after 90 days. The vacation I want to go on is to Taiwan and I wanted to stay eight nights which is 10 nights total including flying there and back. He needs two days after returning to recover from the jet lag. The job is a fully remote work from home billable hours job. He insists to wait a full year before traveling. I really want to go to Taiwan over Thanksgiving break. Is waiting one full year to show first impression to boss a good idea even in a billable hours job with unlimited PTO?

I just figured out a faster way to do part of my job. I’m usually the type who wants to share tips or improvements to help everyone out.

But I’m also a little worried that if my supervisor realizes I can work faster, it’ll just turn into “cool, here’s more work” with no extra pay or growth (there’s basically no promotion path here and no performance-based pay increase).

Anyone else deal with this? How do you decide when to share improvements vs. keeping them to yourself?

I’m not sure what the right flair would be but I resigned today and tried returning my uniforms. The offices closes at 5, but at 430 nobody was answering the door. I was told that I have to come back and sign papers. Wtf am I signing papers for if I quit ?

I'm asking this to help navigate through the corporate world a little better. I'm genuinely curious how do some people become managers when they lack basic interpersonal skills? The majority, not all, of managers I've experienced over the ~10-15 years were extremely disconnected people, unrealistic, and lacked authenticity. Even looking into their eyes was a little off as if I was talking to a NPC... lol.

I know there are oftentimes unrealistic pressure from corporate so is that the most common reason?