[tucnak]

There's nothing cynical about my position. It's better to be naive and go from one corporate family to another with a caring attitude, attempting to make a difference, committing to hard work, and having your heart broken, than becoming a sorry bastard like you guys.

You don't need to "volunteer" anything, or do unpaid labour—to care. All this attitude of "the world/company/country owes me big-time" is poisoning your soul, man.

[maxbond]

You might be surprised to hear I actually do care deeply about my work and my colleagues, and have spent many a late night firefighting in production, shown up when it wasn't necessarily expected, et cetera.

It's not about entitlement, is about healthy boundaries around working life. There is no virtue in burning yourself out. Your manager who tells you that you're "part of the family" is not being honest with you. When your interests and your employer's interests diverge, it will turn out that it was just a workplace, after all.

Ask your coworkers who "care" what they think.

[tucnak]

Nothing in any of my messages indicates that I'm condoning "burnout", or any other things that you choose to draw lines in the sand around. And yet, you keep lecturing me on values of work-life balance. I care, some of my coworkers do, too. We all know who doesn't.

[maxbond]

> Nothing in any of my messages indicates that I'm condoning "burnout"

Actually you literally advocate for burning yourself out, you just use slightly different terminology.

> It's better to be naive and go from one corporate family to another with a caring attitude, attempting to make a difference, committing to hard work, and having your heart broken, ...

Burnout is the cumulative effect of "having your heart broken" over and over again. It's better to make a commitment you can sustain than to work yourself to the bone. It's not cynical to recognize that your employer will not return the favor.

> [Y]ou keep lecturing me...

Respectfully, you can't call me a "sorry bastard" who's "soul is being poisoned," joke about getting the sibling commenter fired for disagreeing with you, and then complain that I am the one being patronizing.

I was being sincere when I encouraged you to ask your coworkers what they thought. I think we're talking past each other and that you're filtering what I'm saying through a combative lens. I think if you heard it from someone you respected, it would make more sense.

[maxbond]

I'll add, I do see the sibling commenter was being rude and that I wasn't sticking up for you, and I have experienced that myself and understand it's not easy to disentangle those conversations and see that I wasn't calling you childish or condoning it. It's not acceptable, and they shouldn't have done that. I could've said something in your defense, but I didn't, because I felt you had bent the conversation in that direction with your "trembling" comment. But two wrongs don't make a right and I should've said so. My apologies.

[greenthrow]

I didn't call him childish. I told him to stop being childish. Can you really argue his "how cynical! I'm trembling." reply isn't being childish?

Then he responded with an absurd response about how he should get me fired and I said he sounds like a child. Again, not a personal attack but a characterization of his tone. Which I don't see how anyone could take issue with. I'm being far more civil than him.

He gave me nothing substantial to respond to. All i can do is ask him to stop behaving like a child.

[maxbond]

> I didn't call him childish.

I mean, you did though.

> You sound like a child.

There's no daylight between this and calling them childish. But I fully acknowledge they were also at fault, particularly the thing about getting you fired, and the reason I didn't make any defense of or apology to you is that it didn't seem to be getting under your skin.

I would say that response fails to demonstrate maturity, and wasn't an appropriate response to your question. You don't have to take the bait. Two wrongs don't make a right, you shouldn't respond to a bad comment with another bad comment, etc.

If someone isn't giving you something substantial to respond to, you can choose not to respond rather than responding inappropriately.