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People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

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Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#91

Post by onemoresoop »

LanceH wrote: post #75
onemoresoop wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hate your job you're automatically paying yourself less in stress offset. IMO stress and meaninglessness at work is not worth any $ at all

The parent comment to mine was facetiously showing how the employer is always taking advantage of the employee. I'm showing that it's "clearly" the other way around. It's almost like it is an exchange of services and goods negotiated along a variety of criteria.

Depending on how you look at it, the employer is and isn't taking advantage of the employee, or the reverse, the employee taking advantage of the employer. But thinking too much about this is not healthy, it's good to just be aware of it. Thinking too much may make you jump ship and move around to other companies and potentially make more money but in the long run, i don't think this necessarily translates into happiness, productivity, etc.. The trick is to find the balance.

Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#92

Post by Arubis »

mc32 wrote: post #74
kstenerud wrote: post #37

Since nobody is actually reading the article, let me sum it up: In a survey of regular people (not EvilCorp CEOs), "people consider it more legitimate to make passionate employees leave family to work on a weekend, work unpaid, and handle unrelated tasks that were not in the job description." "This finding extended to asking for work far beyond the job description, including leaving a day at the park with family and…

So that’s why companies want “passionate” workers, so the non passionate ones have someone to offload problems to... I rue this era when HR mimics the tactics of marketing... we want passionate “ninjas,” (whatever the term of the day is) who “share our vision” “to make a better world”. You know what. Hire people to do the job description you post. All the other frills are just image marketing.

There's some nuance and complication there, of course--putting aside the marketspeak for "ninjas" (which has been bullshit since it was first termed; I think that, and similar terms, are at last dead and buried, no?), if you're a mission- or social impact-oriented organization, a fair number of your potential hires are actively seeing a source of fulfillment in their work, and providing them with an outlet for that can benefit everybody involved. I don't say that as justification for taking advantage of people's passions to load them up unfairly; more to acknowledge that there's sometimes more to it than a straight exchange of skills * time for cash.

Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#93

Post by ryanmonroe »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #88
ryanmonroe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" In one study, participants who read that an artist was strongly passionate about his job said it was more legitimate for the boss to exploit the artist than those who read the artist wasn’t as passionate." If you know someone who loves painting and a mural needs to be painted on Saturday, is it really crazy to think it's less bad to ask them to paint the mural than it would be to ask someone who has no passion for…

> Isn't that true though? Not in the real world. 1. Like in any organization, the boss exploits the workers he doesn't like more than those he likes. Who he likes might be based a random factor like sense of humor/gender than ability. 2. People rarely drop out of phd programs (single digit percentage at most in my experience) because they don't want to fail. So, in actuality, the drop out rate difference exploitative…

That makes sense[1]. The point I was trying to make is that even if they think [x] is a bad thing, people may still answer that [x] is an accurate summary of reality. They may be wrong, but even so they’re still not making any normative judgement. The questions just aren't designed to give us insight into any of the things the article and my parent comment seem to think they do. They're asking about how reality is and then making assumptions about what the respondents think reality should be.

[1] Except #2. A large percentage of people drop out of PhD programs in America.

Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#94

Post by p1necone »

kstenerud wrote: post #37

Since nobody is actually reading the article, let me sum it up: In a survey of regular people (not EvilCorp CEOs), "people consider it more legitimate to make passionate employees leave family to work on a weekend, work unpaid, and handle unrelated tasks that were not in the job description." "This finding extended to asking for work far beyond the job description, including leaving a day at the park with family and…

If I was given that question as worded in your comment I would say the student is likely to be more passionate too. That doesn't mean I am endorsing the exploitation, but the question isn't asking that.

Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#95

Post by opportune »

bcheung wrote: post #77
BrainInAJar wrote: post #17

Labor is the source of value. The managerial and owner class is paid and gets rich through the surplus of your labor. If your boss stops working, value is still created. If you stop working, everything grinds to a halt. You are being taken advantage of.

Labor is only one of many sources of value. Some other sources are technology, machinery, relationships, capital, education, experience, reputation, and efficient organization of resources. A business, by necessity, brings much more to table than the mere sum of the labor. The managerial class is paid to efficiently organize human resources (hiring, motivating, growing, conflict resolution, scheduling, removing obsta…

>technology, machinery, relationships, capital, education, experience, reputation, and efficient organization of resources

Literally all of these are a result of labor. Maybe not relationships per se but in a business context, yes. The rest of your comment also seems very ignorant of basic Marx

Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#96

Post by sokoloff »

rexpop wrote: post #59
LanceH wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you love your job, you could be getting paid less. Clearly you are taking advantage of your employer. If you hate your job, clearly you've stayed because they are offering more than any place that is better and you're taking advantage of your employer.

If you love your job, but hate your politicians, and your company's investors are laundering their profits through PACs to purchase said politicians, then your employer is—perhaps not so clearly—taking advantage of you. And you should be paid more. Have you ever counted out how much political money comes out of your paycheck before it reaches your house?

Taxes, FICA, health insurance and other benefits paid on my behalf come out of my paycheck.

What any investors or executives do with money that was never mine (aka “their profits”) is not “coming out of my paycheck.”

Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#97

Post by bena »

duxup wrote: post #71
rexpop wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sitting in your cube and convincing yourself you're being taken advantage of doesn't mean you are. This is a condescending attitude verging on gaslighting. "Just because you believe it, doesn't make it true." A low-power truism used to dismiss real pain.

I don't think I understand what you mean. I've known plenty of people who imagine they're being taken advantage of, but aren't working with their employer on it, and don't know the lay of the land. I'm not convinced many people really know their value in the market / what their employer really thinks / is doing, but you'd have to know those things to really know if you're being taken advantage of.

The situation is vastly more complicated than people appreciate. Because you can have people who:

Know their value and are being taken advantage of. Don't know their value and are being taken advantage of. Know their value and aren't being taken advantage of. Don't know their value and aren't being taken advantage of.

Not to mention the cases where the employer isn't aware of the value their employee is providing and would adjust their compensation if they were aware. Or the employee is taking advantage of the employer. Or many other things I haven't thought of.

I don't understand the mindset that the simple existence of a disparity means that someone is being taken for a ride.

Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#98

Post by chongli »

Taniwha wrote: post #87
chongli wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who supplies the capital for worker co-ops? That's the problem, as I see it. Yeah, workers lose out on the surplus in typical company. However, workers aren't risking their own capital. If the company goes bankrupt, the worker only loses their job, not their investment (unless they took equity as part of a compensation package).

The workers of course - most small to medium sized law firms are worker co-ops where new members 'buy a seat', effectively adding their share of the working capital

That works well for law firms because law firms are built on human capital. How do you accomplish this with capital-intensive heavy industry such as automobile manufacturing?

If your plant is worth a billion dollars and you have 1000 employees, do you charge a new worker ~$1 million to "buy their seat?" And if so, how do you prevent an outside investor from "sponsoring" the million-dollar buy-in for multiple employees, in exchange for a cut of their wages (in effect, duplicating the capitalism we have right now)?

The above model situation is more-or-less identical to what you see with taxicab medallions in big cities like New York. There are taxicab companies who buy multiple medallions (at great cost) and rent them to drivers, contradicting our usual expectation that taxicab drivers are self-capitalized entrepreneurs.

Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#99

Post by bena »

opportune wrote: post #95
bcheung wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor is only one of many sources of value. Some other sources are technology, machinery, relationships, capital, education, experience, reputation, and efficient organization of resources. A business, by necessity, brings much more to table than the mere sum of the labor. The managerial class is paid to efficiently organize human resources (hiring, motivating, growing, conflict resolution, scheduling, removing obsta…

>technology, machinery, relationships, capital, education, experience, reputation, and efficient organization of resources Literally all of these are a result of labor. Maybe not relationships per se but in a business context, yes. The rest of your comment also seems very ignorant of basic Marx

Consider the idea that he thinks Marx is wrong and that basic Marx is more basic than Marx.

Re: People see it as more acceptable to make passionate employees do extra: study

#100

Post by opportune »

bena wrote: post #99
opportune wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>technology, machinery, relationships, capital, education, experience, reputation, and efficient organization of resources Literally all of these are a result of labor. Maybe not relationships per se but in a business context, yes. The rest of your comment also seems very ignorant of basic Marx

Consider the idea that he thinks Marx is wrong and that basic Marx is more basic than Marx.

Can you dispute the idea that technology, machinery, capital, education, experience, reputation, and efficient organization of resources are not all direct outcomes of labor?
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