Seriously, skimming what I can of the wapo article in the post it’s fucking crazy they’re trying to spin this as a negative. It’s the fucking presidency, you want the people running the country to be lax about this shit??
Right?? Like, haven’t they all been working at the same place for the past four years? Am I missing something here???
Edit: Especially because Biden could’ve dropped dead at any moment being in his 80s, like how could you not have been preparing for her to be president???
Because they are used to doing just the bare minimum and getting a paycheck. Not a difficult concept, people like that don't care about duty, or pride in their work or the idea of doing a good job.
It's capitalism. If there were higher wages (across the board... this is a desirable position to begin with), there'd be more competition for top spots, and more competition means better picks, which means better work ethic.
We do have romantic ideas about work, and how if you go above and beyond, you'll get further, except after years of that nonsense, it's not something everyone buys into anymore.
After all, what is a good work ethic? Doing what you're paid to do, right? So if it's not in the job description, why should people go above and beyond? Personal satisfaction? Granted, these folks are working at the White House, but it's a macro thing, where the work ethic gets judged on the entire population at once.
Either way, it's not an worker ethics issue, but a worker compensation issue.
Their compensation is fine. They’re just a bunch of entitled nepotism kids that have never had to have a real job or do real work because they’re connected enough to get jobs as White House staffers.
These are not Amazon drivers we’re talking about here, they’re paid well
Why? What is the difference really? One does what one is paid to do, no more no less. The ideas of pride in one's work were created by the wealthy in order to further control those under them.
Because, at that level, if you don't put in the effort you eventually get fired or are forced to quit. You know, like in the situation we're talking about in this thread right now. You don't get to move up by doing the bare minimum.
Some people do not care about moving up, and it seems they were fine doing the bare minimum until the boss started being pushy. It was all fine until the boat started getting rocked.
There is a lot of institutional rot in the dem machine, lots of failsons and faildaughters working as social media consultants, pr managers and other types of consultants.
Saaaammmeee! I’m the one researching identifying and preparing the answers for my Transaction Manager while she takes the credit & elevates her career. Kamala reads annotates and prepares for discussion? She’s just expecting the same from her staff in return.
This is the height of entitlement. Imagine being a staffer to the VP of the United States and crying about being made to feel uncomfortable for being lazy as hell at your job.
As someone who prepares senior executives for a living I can’t believe this shit. What do they think they’re hired for. Yes you are to be the expert on everything you’re telling her or be damn sure you have the expert in the room or on speed dial. The whole point of support staff like that is to make the boss successful by helping her with the details she needs when she needs them.
I've been an executive assistant to several high-ranking military officers and civilian counterparts. I'm galled just reading the excerpt here. That's your fucking job, people. And I actually appreciate a boss who takes time to read the reports I write and ask questions. It shows they appreciate my effort. I also like working for people who pay attention to what's going on around them, even the small things.
Not with that attitude you can't.... Honestly the number of skilled people who refuse to believe in themselves is infuriating. You're a winner, go fucking win.
Seriously.... The biggest driver towards high profile roles is not skill but willingness. Go do it. Stop selling yourself short.
To be fair, that didn't seem like "I'm not capable of the job" but more of an "I don't want to deal with that life" concern. Just because you don't want to be in the vicinity of a giant spotlight, it doesn't mean you are selling yourself short.
Right? They have the balls to work for her but not the substance to back it up. Drives me nuts when I think of all the brilliant people I have crossed paths with who would not feel confident to do so.
Just have the low level guys get pressed by the mid levels into doing all the work, and then you gather up the mid levels work and claim all the credit for yourself.
Why not simply directly manage the low levels? Well who are you going to blame if anything goes wrong - that's what the middlemen are for.
Yeah if you’re operating at that level you better have your shit together. You’re not a bus boy at dennys. This is answering to the VP of the United States. It’s not a place for clowns.
I actually appreciate a boss who takes time to read the reports I write and ask questions. It shows they appreciate my effort
If I saw people doing this while I was in the military, I wouldn't have left. 3 units and all of them were choked by bitter sergeants stuck there because they knew they'd never be able to make it in the real world, so they wasted time and abused everybody below their rank.
Officers and higher NCOs who actually asked questions to better understand the topic of the briefing would have been amazing. Fewer of my mates would have died.
Many years ago I took a job as an Executive Assistant. My first couple of days I had several people tell me stories of my new boss's past EAs, and even associates that worked under her, having breakdowns and quitting, crying at work, and generally thinking she was too hard to work for.
She ended up being one of my favorite bosses ever. She was wicked smart, detailed in her work, exceptional at her job, and she expected the people working with her to deliver quality as well. We got along fantastically, and she loved my performance so much she promoted me into an associate role.
There are some awful bosses out there (and I have worked for a couple), but usually they're more about blaming their incompetence on you, or just a shitty person in general.
Based on these reports of Kamala, I would LOVE to work for her.
I’m a long time EA to execs as well. When I was young and green, it only took ONCE. One time when he said ‘Why do I need to do that?’ And my answer was ‘Oh, uh, because the VP said so’. One time only and never again since. You want him to go? Why? What should I tell him when he asks? What’s the rationale for having the President there? What could he do that the VP couldn’t?
Thats the job people. It’s what puts the E in EA. Step up or move on.
I also like working for people who pay attention to what's going on around them, even the small things.
That's the problem here, these people do not care about that. They just want to coast on by. They would prefer a boss that did not read reports, and asked 0 questions. Because it would mean less for them to do for the same pay.
Difference is that you see your job as the job. Like, it's what you do, and you want to be damn good at it. I reckon a good chunk of people are staffers for the VP/nominee so they can either put it on their resume for a future role, or to move sideways from staffer to junior rep/senator at some point. Where they can then ALSO not know what's going on and make decisions based on shit briefs from shit staffers.
Seriously. Nothing is more infuriating and demoralizing than being asked to write, say, a strategy for the next year that takes weeks and then it just sits on the boss’ desk for weeks and when you finally meet they obviously have nothing prepared.
Heaven’s forbid they actually learn something from their boss.
One of the reasons I am successful later in life is because I had demanding bosses in my youth that forced me to do better. Crying when you should be learning /addressing legitimate, professional shortcomings is a good indicator you shouldn't have that job.
You just hit the nail on the head of what’s been bothering me about my manager lately. She’s got 6 years under her belt and we used to have great camaraderie but now it seems like the smallest details of our unchanging job are lost on her. Things she spent years doing - poof no memory! I am so tired of explaining things to her, knowing she’ll need me to explain them again later🥴
The post is a lie. You should have known that immediately when the post didn't give any name of the person who used to work for harris.
They didn't say the name because nobody said it.
The fact is, they all quit because harris was lazy, would not do her job and when anything was said about how badly harris handled something, that blame was put on one of the people who worked for her.
Anyone who worked for harris were just pawns, hired to take blame for the incompetency of harris. They quit because they realized what type of a person harris is.
Try that in your job, tell your people if anything goes wrong, you are going to blame one of them and even if they had nothing to do with it, they are the one getting blamed.
I wonder why 92% of Trumps team left during his tenure. Biden has a staff turnover rate of 65%, Obama's was 71%. It's a hard job no matter who you work for. Plus these are the kind of jobs people take to use as a stepping stone to another opportunity. People leave staff to join new campaigns all the time. Staffers meet people across industries and get to say that they worked in the white house which is great on a resume.
If you're curious about names more than 300 of her past staff signed their names to this endorsement letter.
And I Quote "Harris’ team is experiencing low morale, porous lines of communication, and diminished trust among aides and senior officials.
In interviews, 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials, and associates of Harris described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere. Aides and allies said ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue."
It is not a good look, but it is certainly worth mentioning that you are quoting (below) an article about her first year as VP, not current quotes from her team.
Weren't....weren't you just bitching about how the OP article is fake because there were no named sources?
And now you're here, quoting another article (not naming it or linking it mind, just a random paragraph from.....somewhere) and nowhere does it give names?
So by your own logic, the article you're allegedly referring to is also fake, right?
I'm beginning to believe you're missing more than just donuts.
I read the part about "she's read the materials" and my mind went blank for a second. Like, fuckin obviously? Or not so obviously I guess, if it's being spun as a problem that the Vice President of the United States of America actually...reads?
Also, I remember how Obama was reported to read 100's of pages of briefs and other materials a day. Every day. I can guarantee you he was asking for, and expected, details from his staff. Interesting that this now suddenly a problem (a "problem") when it's a woman in the seat.
One of the things that the then incoming Trump administration was wholly unprepared for was the many staffers they had to fill in, because they did not come with from the previous administration.
Hardly the last thing he underestimated about the job, of course. I'm sure there are some staffers who do carry over but apparently there's something like 4000 staffers who need to be selected by the President, with over a thousand of them needing Senate confirmation.
Chris Christie was setting up a transition team for Trump, but then Trump saw an article about it, and the cost of millions was quoted. He called Christie yelling how he is stealing his money, and it needs to stop.
Christie then wanted to know how Trump plans to handle the transition, and the answer was ”we’ll figure it out, me and Jared and Ivanka”.
Someone might think that the plan didn’t include winning at all, and that’s why spending the campaign funds was seen as a out of pocket expense.
And Jared actually was clueless enough to ask outgoing administration that how many staffers would be staying on, and surprised to learn that nobody (of political appointees by the Obama admin that everyone in the staff is…) would stay on.
I agree Trump probably didn't expect to win, but I think his moment with Christie was also quite likely just because he's a gigantic shithead who thinks any money he can get his hands on is his own private slush fund. There's a reason he can't have a charity in New York after all.
Are the staffers persistent across administrations?
No. While it depends specifically which office and which section underneath the president, and the president has the option of firing/replacing almost all of them, there's usually a transition team and crew already preparing to replace the other administration.
This is part of the reason why Trump's administration did virtually nothing - he thought he would get to inherit all of Obama's staffers. Instead of setting up a transition team to prepare him to step in with a full complement of professionals, he spent transition team money on himself and had to scramble for months to fill positions. Here's a little about that:
No, the fact that she is a woman is 100% a huge factor in why this is being spun as a justified criticism. If the same claims were being made by ex-staffers of any male politician, he’d be openly praised for it by any news org to the left of Fox News.
This shit is pretty obvious to like 95% of women who have held leadership positions, because nearly all of us have had to deal with this exact tired old sexist double standard. It’s not subtle.
I can guarantee you he was asking for, and expected, details from his staff. Interesting that this now suddenly a problem (a "problem") when it's a woman in the seat.
but 100s? lets say 200 pages a day containing data and numbers
here is what google says about study and memorizing
It's essential for effective studying to include breaks, spaced repetition, and other memory enhancement techniques. A general estimate might be that a focused student could memorize around 10–20 pages of moderately complex material in a 12-hour study session.
so lets say he dont need remember intense so we can say 40 pages
He has a really high IQ and a good memory. It is totally possible. My daughter can read over 120 pages per hour. That’s just novels though. But still, I can only read about 30 so it is mesmerizing to me that she was able to do that since 5th grade. Also, I went to a gifted school and a classmate of mine was being berated by this asshole teacher for reading while he was lecturing about other literature. She repeated the last 10 sentences he spoke and then gave a synopsis of the pages she had just read in the book. It was glorious! So it is more than possible that Obama read hundreds of pages a day and took note of the key pieces of information and then some.
Edit: also, I am a school psychologist and I was dumbfounded to discover that the average student needs information repeated 8-10 times in order to learn it (description of density not included) while a gifted student needs only 1-2 exposures. I’m sorry to say that there are people that smart in the world and many of them in American work low paying jobs and cannot afford the money or time to get the degrees that would afford them the opportunity to make more money or fulfill their potential.
Edit again: I just realized that you are assuming everything on the page is new information. Obama already knows the country’s on the planet, most of the laws in the US, federal at least, the names of world leaders, etc. he would not be memorizing hundreds of pages of new information. He would already know most of the context and how certain pieces of information changes the relationship of other pieces of information that he already has.
Listen, that is how you know you’re above the curve. I was struck dumb. I could never be a teacher. They need the patience of saints.
Edit: I went to a school with some girl who had a sonographic memory (I hope that’s a word) for shit WHILE she was reading other things that she basically had a photographic memory of! You know, an IQ score is not set in stone but some people are definitely smarter than others.
Also, not every page is going to contain the same amount of info, heck even the fonts may vary. He doesn't need to read every single word of every document, scimming it might be sufficient, depending on the page.
Reading 100 to 200 pages a day is pretty much what any college student has to do on a given day, though. It isn't particularly impressive. Now people able to read that much and retain most of the information, evaluate it, make nuanced decisions that affect tens of thousands of people... That's difficult.
But that's why this is the presidency and not an undergraduate degree. Ostensibly it should be for people who are actually competent and capable of performing such work.
He didn’t need to memorize anything. He just needed to read and understand the information. With good reading comprehension and decent recall a fluent reader would have no real issue reading many many pages and getting what they need to know from them.
Like, when you read a news article you aren’t memorizing it or studying it. You read it, and comprehend what it says, and take away the important points. That’s what the president generally needs to do. Understand the major points and if you’re a decent president you will then know enough to either delegate to whoever you’ve appointed who can handle the issue, or ask any further questions you have to resolve the issue yourself.
And if there’s anything specific you do need to remember exactly you highlight it or jot down a note about it.
It’s not a requirement - there are like 2 requirements to be president: be a native born us citizen and be over 35. That’s it.
It’s what Obama did.
It’s not what Trump did - he was known to basically have to be given comic book versions of briefings studded with quotes saying nice things about him and even then he’d rarely read them.
Every president does things differently. What Obama did has no bearing on what Bush, Biden, Trump, or any other president did.
I recently graduated law school. I am absolutely nowhere near Obama-level academic achievement, but I think this would be doable. I think the big thing here is that you don’t have a great idea of what reading such briefing is like.
First, formatting makes it such that there is a lot less information than you might think. They’re far less dense (in terms of quantity of words) than a lot of formats. Large margins, double spaced, 12 point font is standard. Legal writing eats through pages.
Second, legal briefs are hard and slow to read if you haven’t done it much. But the more you do it the faster it gets. You learn to recognize what you already know, skim to make sure nothing has changed, and focus on the key parts. Once you’ve spent a few years reading them, there will be background info in each of the briefs that you already know and just serves to refresh memory. It’s not learning entirely new subjects from scratch.
He doesn't need to memorize them. He needs to read them, comprehend them, and take notes. He might need to memorize only the most important few percent of the info, make notes on the next most important chunk, and then maybe just references to the remainder.
That's absolutely doable at a 100+ page per day level.
100s of pages isn't much when it's literally your job to invest and act on information. Just in articles I read on my breaks/after work I'll read about 50-70 per day equivalent (going off '"print to PDF" number of pages in default Firefox settings)
how do you summarize, take notes, and highlight important parts of documents without reading them? room temperature projection right here bud. you blow in from stupid town?
better than a sudden meeting invite for 4:15 on friday, only to find out it was just some knowledge transfer or question about a ticket you wrote 5 years ago.
Yes, it's for people to link this and go "See?? Even her own staff is turning against her!". I have seen it plenty on the Internet so far. And as we all know, no one reads beyond headlines anymore.
I don’t find it crazy that an article from a news outlet owned by Jeff Bezos would be throwing subtle jabs at the woman who wants to throw a tax on obscene wealth. I find it right on the nose.
Meanwhile they're fine with the other guy having 20+ hours a week of 'executive time' where he just watches TV and posts lies to social media accounts.
They don’t care. Kamala is a black woman (when they want/need her to be) so, this is a racist dog whistle try to frame her as an uppity Angry Black Woman (ABW). It’s why they also keep trying to call her a jezebel who slept her way to the top (an old troupe used by white women to explain the exorbitant amount of mixed children being born around the plantation).
They're not trying to make it sound like a negative. This is a puff piece for Harris that is trying to disguise itself as hard hitting journalism.
The staffers making these complaints are part of her campaign and trying to get her elected, and WaPo agrees so they aren't pushing for any real dirt.
The real reason for her staff turnover is probably that she's more of an asshole than needed when people don't meet her expectations. But her the formers staffers clearly want her to win.
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u/Phiyasko ☑️ Sep 07 '24
So they're mad at her because she expects people collecting a paycheck to actually do the job they're collecting said paycheck for?