How to tell your boss to F*off and not get fired | Hacker News Reader

How to tell your boss to F*off and not get fired

blog.teachstreet.com

If you're spending energy to really have to refrain yourself from telling your boss to fuck off, you should really try focusing that energy on looking for a better place to work at.

I think it's a unfortunate that the Hacker News solution to experiencing even a little bit of annoyance at one's job seems to just be "find a better place to work".

Not really trying to fight, you just touched a nerve. I've noticed lately that any story about coping with unpleasantness like this leads to the inevitable comments, "get a new job" "find a new place to live" "don't waste your time on problems that are boring".

Edit: And please don't take my comment seriously in the context of this silly joke article (which I flagged for being not really HN material). It's just an offtopic rant that's been percolating for a while now.

I think people that say that might have a ton of potential offers, and work at startups that, thanks to the "talent shortage", are forced to be awesome places to work.

I can vouch that Justin.TV and Castfire, both places which are SF based, are amazing working environments.

Given that slant, it might color why people who have virtually unlimited awesome choices choose to put up with less crap.

But sometimes crap is just part of the job (yes, even your dream job). If the choice is between spending effort to avoid it, and spending effort to improve it, I choose improvement.

One of the top mainstream news stories today is about a teacher who may be getting fired for blogging mean things about her job and students. It's easy to stand on the sidelines and say "get a better job if you don't like it". But was that job different from what she expected going into it? Or has something about the world changed, that we expect 5 star experiences all the time, and feel the need to sound off on anything that makes us unhappy?

I think about it every time I see a post like "Ask HN: Where should I go to college, What should I major in, Where should I work?". Maybe technology has made us much more willing to ask for directions, and much less willing to get lost along the journey.

I've noticed that, too. There's a strong strain of saying either "find a new job" or "work for yourself."

The funny thing is that one could turn this attitude around quite easily-- "If you care so little about your work that a small bit of unpleasantness would make you quit, then maybe you should quit, and go find something you really believe in."

One could even argue that this mythical work environment where nobody ever gets annoyed, must be populated entirely by people who don't really care about what they're doing. Personality conflicts can easily result when a group of driven people, with strong views, are negotiating among themselves to reach a goal.

It's something that bugs me, too. The US currently has 10% unemployment (by rather conservative measures), and I really doubt that many of the people making that suggestion can easily walk out the door and quickly find a decent position with no major effort, much less the people it's directed to as a veiled "shut up".

this would have been very useful earlier today

If I felt like telling my boss to fuck off then I'd probably rather get fired.

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