What's wrong with today's market and why there's a shortage of employees: Intel: Pat Gelsinger gets a 45% raise from 11 million yearly salary to 16 million. Also Intel: Sorry guys, this is really hard to do to our "family", but we're going to have to fire 15% of all of you (thousands of employees). Don't give your life to the company you work for, you'll be discarded like garbage once you're no longer needed, you only have 1 life, do what is necessary for work, but then save your energy for your life and your REAL FAMILY; your loved ones. I've reached the point in life where I'd rather work a minimum wage job, where I can just do my 9 to 5 and go home for a no-nonsense company no "DEI" (AKA forced racism, sexism and token hiring). Why for an entire month do I need to feel sorry for being white, or an entire month for being straight and am I forced to respect someone else's beliefs but they don't have to respect mine? Companies that adhere to this stuff ARE what cause toxicity in the workplace. The happiest times in my life were when I had jobs that were minimum wage or small companies, when I worked for Fossil as a retail associate but was able to go home on time with my girlfriend picking me up and we both going home together, no emails or calls after closing the shop. Another was when I worked for ClusterVision, a small company, which therefor didn't deal with all the nonsense politics, they just wanted to make the company work, no time for 20 useless meetings per week, just use the 8 hours a day you have to get work done. Something similar happend with Packet, which then became, Equinix Metal and now we're just a service offering in Equinix's list, at first I felt truly blessed, it was a small company on it's way to success, everyone had their part to do, entrusted with responsibility and only judged by their performance and reliability, which made me give my everything (besides my gratitude for being hired during corona). Things started to change when we got acquired by Equinix and then even more so once the acquisition + integration was completed, at that point everyone was just another cog in the wheel, the original leaders of packet bailed and I can see now why and I see this being repeated, because the same happend at SoftLayer which was acquired by IBM, the people who started and loved the company left when it was purchased by a soulless mega-corporation. There was a time when I wanted to work for the megacorps like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, but those days are gone. My original dream was to build a mom and pop computer store on the corner of the street or something, but then the world digitalized and my dream died as physical shops couldn't compete with webshops anymore, let alone mega webshops, this is also why Fossil shut down the store I worked in as part of a plan to cut their losses, because physical stores were becoming less and less profitable.
Angelo J.
3mo
I wanted to add: it became more apparent that perhaps the datacenter world wasn't for me, all the big companies do the same thing; they run skeleton crews but make a fuss out of it if you want to use your time off, which they knew you'd have when you position with them, but they don't want to pay for manpower overlap so it's your problem, I remember this very vividly about my short time time with Digital Realty and the IBX teams at Equinix; If you wanted time off, you'd have to check it and arrange it with your teammates, the managers wouldn't even do their job, it was a "your problem" mentality, I'm sorry but you employed me in a country where I have the right to take time off, making sure there is manpower to cover for me is the company and management's responsibility as is labour law, not mine, that was one of the motivators to get the hell out of there. A similar issue at my current position, whereas before I had a manager who trusted me to do my job and that my requests were fair and understandable, now I have a manager that micromanages everything, scrutinizes everything yet also claims credit for everything "My team this, my team that" while saying things such as "I'm here for you", nice words, without actions.
Marjo Hopman
3mo
Goede mening!
Data Center Operations Engineer, Equinix Metal at Equinix EMEA
3moAddition #2: I burned out and I feel the above experiences plus the ones detailed in the original post definitely contributed to that happening. The business world is a disgusting, gruesome place and I can see now why people say "Let kids play, this is the best time of their life", sure adult life gives you freedom of choice and money to buy things, but the amount of sh*t you have to put up with sometimes makes it hard to do enjoy it. In past centuries people worked to grow and maintain their communities, during wartimes people worked to contribute to the war effort and died for what they stood for. Now we work to grow the stock value of companies we couldn't care less about, to earn an income which is 40% taxed and then you still gotta pay for everything else for things that get increasingly more expensive and unobtainable for the lower and middle class, life as a "blue collar" worker is becoming an absolute joke. I truly feel sorry for our current kids and future generations, their lives are going to be even rougher, I do think the best day of humanity are behind us and from hereon out it's only getting darker unless there's an extreme calamity which forces humanity to work together again for the greater good.