Our family (employee + spouse + child(ren)) PPO + vision + dental is roughly $265 every pay period (2 weeks), so about $133 per week or $532 per month.
Mine is $300/ month for me, wife and kid (with my employer chipping in $1430/month), for premium on a high deductible plan with an HSA.
Employer also chips in $450/month to the HSA - I put in $140/ month in addition to max it out.
So it's costing them a fricking fortune in addition to my not-insubstantial costs.
If my wife worked and had employer provided insurance, I believe I would be required to go on hers and ditch the marketplace coverage I currently have.
If I was single, the insurance is $130 a week, married is around $300, family is $550. I was a bit surprised at the initial cost. My wife checked deductibles and prescription prices, since I have trouble translating insurance dollars, and she pretty much said the prices for everything was absurdly high.
Don't forget, if you're stuck with high drug prices, check out Mark Cuban's Pharmacy.
It's currently one of the 2 times per year when I have to write a big report to my manager full of evidence proving that I had (at least) the expected amount of impact in my role over the past 6 months 
I took better notes this half but I still hate this so much.
It's currently one of the 2 times per year when I have to write a big report to my manager full of evidence proving that I had (at least) the expected amount of impact in my role over the past 6 months
This doesn't help you now, but a good practice for the future.
I keep a todo list in excel formatted as a table with a Completed column. When I finish something, I put the date in that column or OBE if it doesn't apply but might come back or I spent some effort on it. Every few tasks I hide all the rows except for blank Completed fields.
At the end of a performance period, I filter the Completed column based on the dates in the period, so July 2022 to July 2023 or whatever. I skim the list for important tasks or themes I want to highlight.
pandasuit wrote:It's currently one of the 2 times per year when I have to write a big report to my manager full of evidence proving that I had (at least) the expected amount of impact in my role over the past 6 months
This doesn't help you now, but a good practice for the future.
I keep a todo list in excel formatted as a table with a Completed column. When I finish something, I put the date in that column or OBE if it doesn't apply but might come back or I spent some effort on it. Every few tasks I hide all the rows except for blank Completed fields.At the end of a performance period, I filter the Completed column based on the dates in the period, so July 2022 to July 2023 or whatever. I skim the list for important tasks or themes I want to highlight.
Yeah I’ve got a process like that.
I’m pretty good at keeping track of what I do. I have a daily log. Every week I review the logs for highlights I want to add to my notes for the half. I have to write shorter weekly reports so I use that as an opportunity to make incremental progress towards the big report. That process includes merging related notes into a larger narrative for the half. That is all fit under the core priorities I’ve agreed with my manager that I’ll focus on for the half plus the other sections of the report.
So by the end of the half I have a lot of notes to reference that are already organized relative to sections of my report.
I try to request colleague feedback when important things happen instead of waiting until the end to get feedback. Ideally by the time I write the report I have lots of this to pull from as well.
Because the report is about the impact I had and not the work I did I’m always trying to keep track of evidence of impact when I can.
It still took me days to turn all that into the first draft of my report. That’s just the looking backwards part of the report. I’m working on the looking forward parts now.
I write a weekly report and send it to my manager. He does the rest. I can remind him of stuff, or add things in if I want to emphasize them.
I joined Microsoft 2 years ago when they acquired the company I’d been working at for nearly a decade (from startup roots to market leader).
I was the longest running employee of that company other than the founder.
The founder just resigned from Microsoft. I’m not surprised (because he loves the startup life) but it’s still really weird to have the main person I’ve been working with for over a decade through all the good and bad times suddenly gone.
We’ve been reorged 4 times since we joined Microsoft so we aren’t the same team we used to be but it still feels like this is the change that makes all the difference.
I wonder if anyone can relate to this. Might be more of a relationship issue than a work issue I guess.
I hate my job. I dread going to work when I wake up. I'm wiped out at the end of the day. I'd far rather just relax at home. Based on my knowledge of myself and past experience with other types of jobs (granted the last time I did something different was well over 20 years ago), I'm certain it's not my specific job that I dislike so much as aspects inherent to work itself. In other words, I'd feel much the same way no matter what I was doing. I'm never going to be one of these people that takes pleasure in his career. It's always going to be a source of stress- a chore that I just have to do.
It's not that I want to quit though. Financial demands aside, I know sitting around at home playing video games all day would be bad for my mental health and sense of self worth.
But here's the problem. When I get home, I complain to my wife about all the stressful, annoying things that happened at work. What else do I have to talk about after 10 hours on the job? I need to gripe and unload for a bit then move on. Understandably, she has come to the conclusion that I'd be much happier with a new career and has been pushing me to apply for something different. She doesn't believe me when I say I'd be no happier and would rather avoid the added stress of applications, interviews, rejections and learning something new if I somehow got one of these positions she's found online. It's actually resulted in some mild arguments.
So, now I'm just keeping things to myself and I really don't have much to talk about at the end of the day. It's kind of a bummer when we just look at our phones independently.
Yeah, your wife is probably onto something.
I say that because I was in that situation last year - dreaded going to work, was emotionally wiped out by hating it. I too am a "work to live", not "live to work" person. I tried to white knuckle it for years before eventually throwing in the towel.
I quit, found a new job that isn't that much different in terms of what I'm doing, and by god it's been a breath of fresh air.
When you say "I'd feel much the same way no matter what I was doing", my knee-jerk response is "you're most likely wrong. Starkly wrong." I felt that same way, and I was starkly wrong about it too.
The fact that you haven't done a different job in 20 years is giant flashing red flag.
You are burned out and need a change. Go find a different job.
Caveat - I don't know you and my experience doesn't map 100% onto yours. But if I was a betting man, I would put a lot of money on you being much, much happier in a new job.
A new job can change everything; I'm in IT (Business Analyst), and I had a job I loved for years working for the American Red Cross. I wound up spending 14+ years there, the last 8.5 or so working from home full-time. When that ended due to a system retirement, I wound up working at a USPS IT/accounting facility maybe 10 minutes from my house, and I LOATHED it. Awful people, resistance to getting anything done, just a toxic, unpleasant shithole of a job that caused me to constantly be in a bad mood and vent all the time. In mid-2016 I took a consulting job with the State of Minnesota just to get the hell away from that job, and I didn't want another government gig; I just wanted anything else, so I accepted the position expecting it to suck.
It's amazing. The people are phenomenal, the work is engaging, they supported me during a really tough stretch where my wife wound up having open-heart surgery and were patient with me even though as a consultant they could have cut me loose without issue, and I took a "real" state job (exact same role) right as the pandemic started. MN IT was great about getting us set up from home, and it went so well that we're all working remotely for likely ever, as they just gave our desks away to other people due to building consolidations. My management is fabulous, I've gotten reclassified to a higher position not because I asked but because they thought I deserved it, and it's engaging, rewarding, and I care enough about what I do that I frequently haul my laptop downstairs at night to do a few bits of work while watching YouTube or something else just because it's important to me.
I'm doing the same job I did before, but I could not look at it differently enough. When I left that godawful USPS job after 2.5 years, I never wanted to see anyone from that job ever again. In my current job, there are people I would run into a burning building to save, because that's how great they are.
Get a new job. Maybe it's just the work itself, but being surrounded by better people who make the job itself can absolutely change how you see things.
Y'know those days at work when you totally need to do a thing, but then everything that allows you to do that thing breaks?
Those days are best when the thing that broke is someone else's responsibility, so you're getting paid to sit there and be like "Welp. Nothing I can do about it."
gewy, that sounds familiar to me, too. I'd gotten seriously burned out at my last job, and found myself spending a whole lot of energy hating and complaining about it, while also dreading the stress of job hunting so much that I felt stuck. And then I managed to get unstuck, and now I'm doing a different job in a different industry working with people I like a lot better.
I've only been there for a couple of months so I'm not saying my life is permanently improved, but I am feeling a lot better about myself and work in general right now than I have in a long time.
Gewy, FWIW, I'll add my voice to those urging you to consider a change.
This is a timely topic for me: tomorrow will be my last day at a job I've done for 11 years. This place has ground down my mental health, and I should have left years ago, but I always talked myself out of it. Oh, I'd probably be stressed and unhappy anywhere I go... and the benefits here are pretty good... and do I really want to learn a whole new job?
These "reasons" were all BS - rationales I was telling myself because it was easier to remain somewhere familiar than take a risk with something different. Obviously, I have no idea if my new job will pan out, but I feel so much relief about leaving. I know it's the right decision.
Not everyone is the same, of course. But I don't think it hurts to at least have an open mind about what else might be out there.
Also a voice for changing your job BUT having more been out of work for 5 months, I'm totally feeling like you do; I really don't want to work again, mostly because of how pointless it feels.
Oh, I should clarify my earlier advice. NOT working is the f*cking dream, man.
I had 3 months off between quitting and starting a new job, and it f*cking rocked. But, life under capitalism has other ideas for me. Paying the mortgage and putting food on the table isn't pointless, even if it is soul-crushing and depressing to have to do that.
Oh, I should clarify my earlier advice. NOT working is the f*cking dream, man.
I had 3 months off between quitting and starting a new job, and it f*cking rocked. But, life under capitalism has other ideas for me. Paying the mortgage and putting food on the table isn't pointless, even if it is soul-crushing and depressing to have to do that.
for sure. It's more the feeling that I felt no particular joy when I had income and since not having as much (wife still works but makes far less) I've felt way less inclined to want stuff, which is freeing. Also that climate change is probably going to kill us faster than we think, so I'd rather spend the time with my kids--but I did really enjoy the people I worked with and it might be nice to work with good people again.
Sync up.
I was on pto this week and my employer performed a reorg and my position was terminated. Lovely thing to find out while on vacation, 650 miles from home. Getting 2.5 extra weeks of pay, plus insurance till end of year and severance - 6 months, but now its even more necessary for me to look for something new. Wonderful thing to find out before the holidays. Here is my LinkedIn if anyone wouldn't mind taking a look, helping me clean it up. Made some changes this morning.
My mental state has taken a huge downturn but things are no longer getting worse. There is light ahead.
In September I was promoted and our department had a big re-org that resulted in my manager and I moving up a level so we are now leading an ENG team with 3 times as many people and projects as we used to. I also now have 2 other principal architects on my team. They are slightly lower level compared to me (levels are important in Microsoft) and (due to a lot of things I don't need to get into specifics about here) I am acting a bit like the lead of the architects group despite the fact that we are ICs who all report to the same manager. My response to the promotion and reorg was "oh crap now I have to know and do even more things". So I started to immerse myself in all the new projects and I was absolutely doing more things and working more hours as there was a lot to learn.
It took a bit but I eventually broke down to my manager about how I felt like I was spiraling and headed towards failure. It's a massive understatement to say that is hard for me to admit. My role is very independently driven and I have a very good track record. We act a lot like partners and he never micro-manages me ever. He's been very busy post reorg himself (reorgs often have a lot of negative side effects to deal with). So he hadn't noticed how I was feeling because I was still very much succeeding in all the visible ways that matter to the business.
My manager immediately asked why I hadn't spread the work across the new principal architects I work with. My brain has some clear blind spots. It honestly never occurred to me to spread the work. My brain immediately jumps to just doing more myself. I am often my own worst enemy when it comes to my mental health. Looking back it's now obvious I've been spiraling for a while but only noticed when things got really bad. Now I'm pissed off at myself because of course I also have a brain that blames itself for this stuff. My anxiety has been high and my sleep has massively suffered. Other side effects. Etc. My manager helped me figure out how to work towards delegating some of the work to others.
It's been a couple weeks since that conversation with my manager. Things aren't better yet but they are no longer getting worse. The architects I work with are doing great but it's not looking like a fast transition. Some of the things I need to hand off are things I've been a primary SME of for a decade and are completely new to the other architects so I'm gradually disengaging. Accountabilities can't be split by old/new projects so we're all learning new things now.
I can see the light now but it's still a ways away.
Delegation is both hugely important and incredibly difficult as you move up in an organization. “Doing” less is super hard, especially when you’re used to doing everything.
You gotta remember that you have a great manager and support structure, Panda. Use them! They can teach you just like you can teach others.
I'm so happy that your manager's first reaction was to help you, not just hang you out to dry. 
You gotta remember that you have a great manager and support structure, Panda. Use them! They can teach you just like you can teach others.
I'm so happy that your manager's first reaction was to help you, not just hang you out to dry. :-)
Absolutely. My manager is awesome. We’ve been working together for years. Initially as colleagues when he ran a different parallel department. Later he took over the ENG team I was on and was my skip manager. Eventually after we were acquired by Microsoft I moved up to report directly to him. It’s always been a partnership. We’ve been moving up as a team together (along with another guy) for years in the previous startup and now in Microsoft. Supporting each other with our very different skillsets. The 3 of us together are far more effective than separate. They were both promoted at the same time I was and we were all moved up to bigger roles during the latest reorg.
This latest shift upwards has been distracting my manager a ton as he has to wrangle 3 times as many people and now multiple levels of management. It will eventually result in a better ENG department but it’s not going to be easy or fast to get there. Lots of frustration ahead. He’s had less time for direct one on ones. I’ve been a leader in tech companies for over a decade but, other than a few years as a CTO over a decade ago, I’ve almost always been a lead IC. My new arch team isn't direct reports but it’s a big change for me regardless.
A lot of this is probably growing pains. Before joining Microsoft I was quite comfortably handling my role with a ton of success. Dominating our market segment. My growth rate and pace was limited by my environment (and market cap). After joining Microsoft my environment is no longer limiting me. I’m still figuring out how big I can go and clearly setting a faster pace than I should. My brain isn’t good at moving slow or being patient. I need to find a better balance.
Learn how to say "no". Literally. This ain't Mythic Quest.
Also: when people bring you problems, it's ok to ask them how they will resolve. Don't rescue.
Oh! Good one, I need to remember that.
So after 3+ years of "we are 100% dedicated to remote work", the dreaded we want to do a "hybrid 3 day a week return to office, we are expecting most folks Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays".
First of all none of the Cincinnati buildings have enough seats in them for everyone to come in the same three days. So that whole MTW thing is a pipe dream. I know this and other exciting seating facts since I admin the space management/inventory system.
This was announced on Tuesday. The amount of push back I have seen in various communication channels has both been amazing and most of us suspect this is going to be walked back or abandoned. Apparently they made a try at this right before I was hired and it failed but who knows this time.
What I really need my boss to figure out is if this impacts me at all. We have an office in Charlotte but I don't live in Charlotte or any of its 'burbs so I'm not sure how they can even ask me to come in. 3 days of back and forth to that office would be 9 hours of commuting(presuming no issues on the freeway or rain) to drive to a place where no one I work with offices. It seems so pointless.
I just want to do my job and not deal with this kind of crap.
First of all none of the Cincinnati buildings have enough seats in them for everyone to come in the same three days. So that whole MTW thing is a pipe dream. I know this and other exciting seating facts since I admin the space management/inventory system.
My workplace is the same.
They say they are considering 100% return to the office, but given, for my department, the number of available chairs has gone from 500 to about 40(ish), it is a physical impossibility for them to do it.
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