Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

gsb.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 448 posts

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#421

Post by CalRobert »

Trundle wrote: post #163
DeusExMachina wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricit…

Equivalent animals certainly don't spend all day toiling. We aren't ants. I don't see any reason to believe that was the case for us.

Of course, most of them die.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37775622

Though if we weren't so damn focused on having so much crap maybe a few of those animals would still be around.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#422

Post by terryf »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #418
terryf wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work my ass off. Lot more hours than would be technically necessary. High tech as well. I've also gone hiking in the mountains in California. Been on the beach in Italy. Walked around in the center of Munich. As a 14th century peasant I probably never even knew those places existed. I can also get pain medication if I have a headache. I can go to a doctor to fix my broken bones if I happen to get one. Oh, and the l…

I am not sure how the two are related. Are you implying that your view of quality of life (“work hard / travel the world”) is universal? Or, that everyone who works hard reaps the rewards, ignoring the ever-increasing disparity in compensation?

Certainly, I've been very lucky. No argument there.

But the only thing I'm saying is to not over romanticise the past. The life of a 14 century peasant was not good compared to mine.

I also realise that a lot of the comforts I enjoy are because lots of people spent time in boring offices before me. The article sounds quite dismissive of that.

I'm forever grateful and do my part to help. Nobody owes me a good life.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#423

Post by mathgladiator »

ghettoimp wrote: post #397
dancek wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. If raising a child were to cost $1M in 20 years, that would average $50k/year. I earn about as much and have two kids, so I imagine I would have noticed if it was that expensive.

Maybe it's counting college costs or something.

it's everything over 50 years. It makes a difference having a kid at 25 vs 35.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#424

Post by mathgladiator »

amyjess wrote: post #373
dancek wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment elegantly displays what's wrong with modern society. Yes, kids require a lot of things that cost money and a lot of time from the parents. Yes, they make you significantly less productive at work when something is wrong. Yes, life is much easier without kids. But having and raising children is literally one of the most natural things to want to do with your life. A culture that views children mostly as i…

> But having and raising children is literally one of the most natural things to want to do with your life. "Natural" is not good. Life in nature is nasty, brutish, and short. Some other things that aren't natural include eyeglasses, prosthetic limbs, vaccines, antibiotics, air conditioning, cooked food, and electronics. I worship artifice, and I find the idea that natural things are laudable to be repugnant in every…

One could argue that many of the artificial things are there just to counter the negatives of other artificial things just to keep the whole thing going.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#425

Post by zrobotics »

jdtang13 wrote: post #86
DeusExMachina wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricit…

Yes, that's a very good point. Work has always been part of the human condition, and middle class people in the first world are enjoying much, much more comfortable working conditions than their ancestors did. I think we should all be very grateful for that. But it's also a very modern thing for people to suffer from alienating, despair-inducing work. I think this alienation, which Marx speaks of in much detail, is t…

I think you may be over-romanticizing the value of outdoor work here. Let's take agriculture as an example of doing manual work outdoors. How is it more alienating to have a project held up by corporate inefficiency than by freak variances of weather? How is it not just as stressful to see a crop ruined by a hailstorm, or a chance summer shower at the wrong time destroy the value of hay that is ready to bale? Speaking as someone who grew up with this, and has also worked an assembly-line job in the past, it was actually easier to get into a meditative 'in the zone' state doing that than tilling a field or constructing a fence. And isn't having to milk the same cows twice a day, every single day the embodiment of the "species of work that never ends"?

This isn't strictly due to modern agriculture, either. Poor timing/freak weather events in the past wouldn't just cause farmers to lose their livelihood, it would also mean there was a very real risk of starvation. While losing your job and comfortable livelihood can certainly be stressful, there seem to be quite a few people who believe that work in the past wasn't just as, if not more, stressful.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#426

Post by Futurebot »

crystalmeph wrote: post #209

I wonder if part of this is due to the ever-increasing push towards creating metrics for every aspect of human behavior. It’s not uncommon when applying for a job that you take a “personality test” that measures not just technical knowledge, but also scores you on traditionally “soft” traits like assertiveness vs. agreeableness, with the hiring manager getting a readout of where you fall relative to the “ideal” range…

"Market forces are also intensified by intensifying assessment, a development especially visible on the labour market. Even within a contract period, an employee will be subject to continuous assessment. The use of specialised software in call centres has provided some extreme examples: the time employees spend at the toilet is measured in seconds: this information is used to pressure the employee to spend less time away from the terminal. Firms with contracts are also increasingly subject to continuous assessment procedures, made possible by information technology. For instance, courier services use tracking software and GPS technology, to allow customers to locate their packages in transit. This is a typical example of the new hyper-provision of business information, in neoliberal economies."

From "Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition"

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.htm...

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#427

Post by astura »

dancek wrote: post #350
mathgladiator wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chose not to have kids. Was a great call becauses kids are like 1,000,000 each (when you factor in investment returns).

This comment elegantly displays what's wrong with modern society. Yes, kids require a lot of things that cost money and a lot of time from the parents. Yes, they make you significantly less productive at work when something is wrong. Yes, life is much easier without kids. But having and raising children is literally one of the most natural things to want to do with your life. A culture that views children mostly as i…

The Shakers were a sick culture?

Modern society literally worships children, so you don't have to worry.

Or, as George Carlin puts it, "bunch of diaper sniffers."

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#428

Post by ILikeConemowk »

osrec wrote: post #409
ILikeConemowk wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The job was torture, quitting was scary and bumpy, but looking back it was an excellent decision. Can you share your story? How did you make it?

Sure. I always wanted my own business as I saw it as a route to mental and financial freedom. I was under no false impressions of the difficulty involved as I've seen my family struggle (and prosper) while running their own businesses. Anyway, I started by building a little product on the side whilst working. I sold the product to a few hedge funds and investment bank divisions that I could get into via my contacts (…

Thank you!

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#429

Post by andrei_says_ »

terryf wrote: post #422
andrei_says_ wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure how the two are related. Are you implying that your view of quality of life (“work hard / travel the world”) is universal? Or, that everyone who works hard reaps the rewards, ignoring the ever-increasing disparity in compensation?

Certainly, I've been very lucky. No argument there. But the only thing I'm saying is to not over romanticise the past. The life of a 14 century peasant was not good compared to mine. I also realise that a lot of the comforts I enjoy are because lots of people spent time in boring offices before me. The article sounds quite dismissive of that. I'm forever grateful and do my part to help. Nobody owes me a good life.

I hear you and I think the comparison was quantifying the time spent in labor more than anything else.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#430

Post by SerLava »

Bartweiss wrote: post #382
terryf wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work my ass off. Lot more hours than would be technically necessary. High tech as well. I've also gone hiking in the mountains in California. Been on the beach in Italy. Walked around in the center of Munich. As a 14th century peasant I probably never even knew those places existed. I can also get pain medication if I have a headache. I can go to a doctor to fix my broken bones if I happen to get one. Oh, and the l…

One thing that's always suspicious about those "peasants had more time off" claims is that they imply medieval peasants had a bright line between work and recreation in a way that's just not true. Talking about the day with your family while you spin wool or sharpen a sickle is... work? play? all of the above? For all that we have issues with a culture where people check work emails at home and are otherwise on-call,…

>Talking about the day with your family while you spin wool or sharpen a sickle is...

Sounding pretty attractive to me right now.

Post reply on HN