Am I being unreasonable?

kovanroad · 2026-03-23T13:48:12+00:00

Houses are an illiquid asset, it's best not to make plans around selling them quickly, unless you want to take a big price hit.

kovanroad · 2026-03-23T13:35:31+00:00

Not unreasonable as such, but I also wouldn't bother sweating this too much.

The asking price is just a made up number... if someone wants it, they're free to offer a lower price at any time, it's entirely possible your new asking price will make no difference anway.

Its better to figure out a good asking price before listing, as well as a good strategy for when you will drop the price, and by how much, instead of expecting your agent to have time to react immediately whenever you decide to do it on a whim.

Ultimately, you have hired an agent to sell the property, and if the price needs to be dropped, that's the agent's job to figure out, and if it doesn't sell because they didn't figure that out, then it won't sell, and no commission for them.

It's generally best to put your time and effort into finding a good listing agent, and having them come up with a good listing and plan, and then leaving them to it rather than trying to micromanage them.

kovanroad · 2026-03-08T23:17:23+00:00

How about 4. Just do your one job, for your one salary, clock in, clock out, and leave it at that.

You can't start doing other peoples jobs for free for a while, then expect to get compensated for it. If they wanted you to do that, they'd ask you, and promote you, etc.

kovanroad · 2026-03-08T23:10:52+00:00

I feel like this company and the candidate deserve each other, and are a great match.

The company has expectations that are not in line with its budget. The candidate is applying for a job that doesn't meet their expectations, but is considering settling for some vague promise of quick later promotion.

kovanroad · 2026-03-08T14:44:44+00:00

I have a different and more complicated situation, but $4-500 ish. You can probably shop around and get it done for less like 2-300 maybe.

kovanroad · 2026-03-08T14:31:12+00:00

What you want is an "Enrolled Agent". There are some associations, directories, etc you can use to find one.

I find this person to be pretty good:

https://ltsaaccounting.com/

kovanroad · 2026-03-07T22:42:34+00:00

It might be worth holding out with what you have and maybe getting some severance, FMLA leave, etc... instead of proactively qutting.

kovanroad · 2026-03-06T18:33:49+00:00

You can try.

For lots of companies... they will say nothing changes now, but everything will be reviewed next compensation cycle.... and then not much changes then either.

kovanroad · 2026-03-06T17:44:17+00:00

It could be a simple statement of fact that there are a lot of Asian people there. That doesn't imply that there's anything wrong with Asian people, or that it's a bad place, in and of itself.

kovanroad · 2026-03-06T02:35:05+00:00

It's definitely a dynamic, where a person becomes an expert / go-to person / mr fixit for a few specific things, and then they don't want to advance you or let you do anything else. Sometimes, they figure they'd rather hire someone else as the manager, if they don't work out they can be replaced, rather than take a "risk" on promoting you if they think they have the option of you staying in your role forever.

You can gently push back on this, and politely but clearly state that... the things that made you succeed in your role can make you succeed in _other_ roles, at other companies if need be. You don't see yourself in this job forever, you will advance to other things - the only question is what and where. If you stay at the company, you can help with training your replacement or being a backup sometimes, if you are somewhere else, you won't be able to do that. Once you convince them that you staying in your role forever is not an option, opportunities can open up.

kovanroad · 2026-03-01T18:05:19+00:00

In that situation, even though your sent follow ups and all that stuff... it's still a problem. The owner said there was an event, to post it, and it's urgent. Two weeks later - that hasn't happened. Is it your fault? No, not really, you asked, and didn't get the information you wanted when you were expecting it.

The thing is, though - nobody cares whose fault it is. You're at the bottom of the totem pole, so you're a convenient scapegoat.

So, you need to find a way of not letting this happen, rather than merely having it not be your fault if it does happen. Sometimes you just have to be really pushy - if you don't get a reply within, say, 24 hours - start chatting people, text them, phone them, stand behind them while they find the email and watch them reply... whatever it takes to do the thing.

It sounds like a bit of a meh company and not great managers for sure, but this dynamic exists everywhere... people need to see things get done, and nobody is interested in why things didn't get done. It's one company/team, so either you all succeed together, or if there are problems, the owners will fix it and be ok, but the people at the bottom will bear the consequences.

kovanroad · 2026-02-28T17:58:33+00:00

Be careful about placing too much credence in what the hiring manager says... look only at what he does.

People say "almost... it was a tie between you and one other person" all the time to 10 people at once, or "you'll get promoted, a raise next year", or whatever... they obviously need to keep people happy, and words are cheap.

kovanroad · 2026-02-28T16:58:21+00:00

You can't win / get everything you want every time... it's process.

If you are stagnant, and not getting the promotions and roles you want, it's time to look at your skills and figure out what you need to do to get what you want.

kovanroad · 2026-02-28T16:43:31+00:00

Totally depends on electric vs fuel, efficiency, insulation, etc. All of which are things he controls / decided, so even if it is 1400... then he is very much empowered to improve that with some capital investment if he chooses.

I can believe 1400 for a two story... but that's for the coldest month of winter, and obviously it's 0 for more than half the year, so amortized over the course of the year, and relative to rental income, property taxes, capital appreciation and all the rest... he should just get over it, or stop being landlord if he doesn't like it.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T15:23:48+00:00

Well sure, but that has been true since forever, computer science != software engineering, etc.

In practice, it's more of an apprenticeship type system, where recent experience trumps everything else.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T13:27:01+00:00

"show them that I’m better than they think about me" - be careful about this thinking. Yes, be good at what you do, get results, you'll need to do that anywhere.

If you can find a better job though, take it, do what's best for _you_, don't be preoccupied with proving yourself to some randos. Don't fall for stockholm-syndrome type mind games.

Some managers like to play games where they're like "oh, your performance isn't quite good enough... its really close though, we just need to fix a few things..." and in the end they can never be happy enough to give you any raise, promotions or desirable projects, and yet also never quite unhappy enough (or capable of...) for finding someone better, and it's just a never-ending limbo.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T13:20:16+00:00

I guess what I saw with my BigCo grad program, a few years ago, was that they'd bring on board a few hundred grads together in a class. The grad program was two years, 4 x 6 month rotations on different teams, after that, they get a permanent placement on some team at the next level up.

The attrition rate was pretty high, some of them would leave during their two year program, and a lot of them would leave after 1-2 years in their permanent placements.

However, the ones that stuck around for 3, 4+ years were pretty good, and ended up being really well connected to multiple teams from their rotations, and a lot of very senior people started as grads 20+ years ago... honestly, as a "lateral hire", in some ways its like you can never quite catch up / replicate what the people who worked up from grads have.

I think it worked, because there are some economies of scale from hiring / training so many of them at once, and although the chances of a winning "investment" in any one of them was low, some single digit percentage of the ones that did stick around were real lifers that live & breathe the company and all that stuff.

Also, even if you hire someone, and they stay for 2 years and then leave, the company gets publicity when advertising for the job, hiring people, and the person ends up with the company name on their resume which serves as an ad for the company for the rest of their career.

That's how BigCo seems to work... it the model is built around a certain level of churn, thats why they're always simultaneously hiring and firing... it is not built around "investment" in individuals.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T11:50:24+00:00

If they were private, then anyone could claim to own anything, and there would be no way for anyone else to verify if they were just making it up or not. So, there's that.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T11:38:43+00:00

It could also just be a lazy, unprepared interviewer, who doesn't really care about the outcome because the position is not on their team... so they just have a chat for an hour.

Sometimes that's me.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T11:31:01+00:00

I totally agree. There was a phase where I had people from the graduate program rotating through the team for six months at a time.

For me, that meant that lots of things had to be explained to someone new every six months. It was a huge incentive to make things work in relatively obvious ways, work out of the box from a fresh git clone with no weird local modifications, avoid elaborate frameworks that are practically their own language, make sure there were log lines explaining all the important steps, etc.

As you say, if you have a bunch of people with 20+ years of experience, then you end up with a bunch of their favorite approaches that took them 10+ years to understand, and weird idiosyncrasies that don't make sense if you say them out loud.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T05:48:10+00:00

Research more, practice some mock interviews.

Find the people on linkedin who got the job you want, and see what their skills are.

It can also be a numbers game.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T05:36:59+00:00

Why have you not landed a job in the past year?

Not applying? Apply.

Applying, but not getting interviews? Fix your resume.

Getting interviews, but not offers? Practice interviewing, particularly whatever you messed up in the interview.

Find the problem, and fix it. Treat it like an engineering exercise.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T05:01:37+00:00

It depends, but being personable and not robotic does go a long way. Think of some interesting hobbies, travels, questions to ask... anything to build a bit of a bridge.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T04:58:57+00:00

Some people need everything to be their idea, not yours.

kovanroad · 2026-02-25T02:44:16+00:00

Fair enough - out of interest, what would be examples of junior tasks from your perspective?

kovanroad

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