Party's over.
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2nd big benefit cut, on a mid week holiday when no-one was expecting it.
The 1st was the temporary loss of 401k in 2020. They're now dropping all health coverage for dependents, which is a big hit for the ones with kids & the breadwinners, not so much for the rejected lions. Generally, employees in the top tier companies have to pay for part of their health insurance premium. We've been 100% covered so far. In tiny startups, lions have been 100% covered since 2007, last paying in big companies before 2007. However, the dependent hit is worse than what the top tier companies charge.
The hardest workers were pissed & they really worked hard, outright believing in the promises. Never hire anyone over 15. Probably going to lose more key animals with no backfill because they can't afford current salaries & more won't to be able to afford the cost of living. Lost one in 2021 over the lack of benefits but backfilled then.
Same old story, another day job on the dying end of a cycle, lots of promises thrown around but lions know what's coming. There's always the 1 contract just around the corner & the big 24/7 push that's going to end all their problems. The last place sent their next big contract to the parent company instead of keeping the place going, but they didn't go to a 24/7 schedule. The place before that went 24/7. The lion playbook has always been to take anything they can get & quietly walk away.
You always think this one is going to transpire differently, but they're all the same. Startups are born, they live, & they die. OKTA, IGN, Splunk were the only 3 neighbors on 2nd St which took off. All the hundreds of others dissolved.
IGN (Imagine Games Network) actually sounds like the living embodiment of Imagicorp from Tropic Thunder.
All the classmates who did better academically eventually hit pay dirt. Lions got in through back doors & never saw any more than the pit of despair. Normal animals switch to plumbing after a cycle instead of hustling in the software industry forever.
The next job hunt is going to be brutal, if there is one. Not going to get any severance again. As for the stonk options, lions would probably do better putting the exercise cost anywhere else. They always charge the exercise price the moment you're laid off.
Funny how all the democrat analysts who were peak bears for the last 2 years suddenly turned bullish after last week's election & stonk market selloff. After 2 years of saying the stonk market was doomed & watching it go up, now he's optimistic about the stonk market's chances. Basically nothing more than a democrat.
He did the same thing after the 2008 election. A broken clock is right once a day.
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The lion kingdom did really well since September, for some reason. The trick seemed to be just making a god awful lot of money wherever possible, not buying anything, getting old, getting lucky. That built enough reserve to have a god awful amount in the stonk market without anxiety.
The old man would have none of it. He wanted to spend spend spend on formal education, new cars, houses, paying dues. Don't stop spending until landing the perfect forever job & hitting all the traditional milestones. Never get laid off. Always change jobs before getting laid off. Don't invest in stonks or take chances. Hustling doesn't work.
In the last 3 months, lions hit what they once considered the bare minimum for an emergency retirement after a fizzled out career. It didn't feel so minimal in the end. Take away the original goal of owning a house & it feels a lot richer. As a land owner, younger lion had grander dreams but also faced a cliff.
As a lifetime renter, the full amount stays invested. Plausible that a house would never have been as financially prudent as a tiny apartment. Started feeling long ago that lions could retire a lot sooner by not building a house on the land. Before that feeling, lions always thought building on the land was the only sustainable way. "If we lose our land, we lose our freedom" was Angelina Jolie's famous generation X quote. Lions can rent in better locations than they can own, though it is less glamorous.
The hard part is manely the final talk, the final job hunt, the formalities of claiming the final unemployment checks, watching the cash balance plummet.
Returning to an office commute in a new job wouldn't be as bad as returning to commuting in the old job. It's a return to the way the world always worked, instead of a regression.
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Solid 8m15s pace for 3.75 miles & then a right heel spur ended the party. Then the left metatarsals blew up. 3 hard efforts in 6 days no longer work after 50. Might be nearing the end of the era of sandals. Padded shoes have a different set of challenges.
Tried more squat stretching to mobilize the posterior tibialises earlier.
https://www.youtube.com/@Marathon50Stu
Not encouraging that a connoisseur of padded shoes has serious tendon issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m72NsP_x2r0
8:56, 6:43: 50% cross section tear & a delamination tear at age 69, from the sunshine coast marathon in August. Notes permanent tendon damage being common in runners over a certain age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmgrOl9b9d0
He finished that marathon in 3:31. Guess exceeding a certain speed isn't good for longevity.
Noted a definite upselling by practitioners of cures, training plans, physical therapy, special shoes promising to keep him running forever. It reminds lions of the instant retirement promises on gootube. Lions aren't calling the born to run movement a conspiracy to keep animals injured for profit but there are definitely aspects of it & some animals are getting ripped off.
The older the 1st generation of run tubers gets, the more the born to run movement goes the way of the 100% stonk movement.
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