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Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

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Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#81

Post by wonderwonder »

beat wrote: post #60
aantix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will people be compensated relative to their work value?

Why do we need to work? edit: I am 100% serious about this. It is already economically viable, if society chooses to do it , to simply guarantee food, decent housing, and health care to everyone, whether they work or not. At that point, what we do with our time becomes a choice, more than the choice of "work or go homeless and starve". People could still choose to exchange their time and skills for money, and most wo…

If everyone stopped working, who would grow the food, build the houses or go to medical school? I do absolutely agree with the concept of a UBI but there has to always be people that work otherwise everything collapses.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#82

Post by yabadabadoes »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #51
yabadabadoes wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that chauffeuring is driving and we were driving before Uber existed, it seems strange that people expect compensation when driving for Uber and count it as part of their labor time?

Try to make the correspondences in your supposed analogy explicit. I'll wait. My parent comment is not complaining about excessive labor time. He's complaining about being on call. Is it strange that people expect compensation for being on call? That depends on what you're willing to consider "compensation". No one is clocked in at an hourly rate while on call because the labor laws prohibit that, but that's an artif…

We all have personal lives where we do things employers would pay for. It doesn't follow from that that employers demanding constant availability is nothing new, we still have those personal lives, so this isn't a swap of fungible work. Even if it were, we aren't required to deal with professional bullshit in personal driving or family emergencies.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#83

Post by spking »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #61

What's interesting to me is -- for every "burnt out" coworker I see another one with similar pay and title who isn't burnt out. I think a lot of people think they are unable to say "no" nor "pushback." In my experience, saying no actually gets you more respect than saying yes.

A lot of people feel that way because they are deathly afraid of losing their job, not gaining or losing respect.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#84

Post by lukey_q »

GiorgioG wrote: post #3

Sprints? I love sprints...I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel day in, day out. Seriously, screw scrum and 'agile'

I always thought it was very strange to call them "sprints" since in my experience you start one immediately after finishing another. In real life following sprinting with more sprinting would be a good way to make yourself pass out (or worse) before too long

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#85

Post by tombert »

esotericn wrote: post #70

As a European (for now, oho) this doesn't surprise me at all. American working patterns are bonkers. You guys have this concept of 'vacation' which well, isn't. 15 days or whatever per year pretty much all just must either get banked for emergencies, admin, or maybe that one Mega Holiday where you fly across the world and spend a week or whatever trying to forget your life. I don't get it at all. It might make sense…

I'm genuinely curious; how many days do Europeans typically get?

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#86

Post by benplumley »

mercutio2 wrote: post #65
Ididntdothis wrote: post #5

Americans really need more vacation time. For a while I worked with only 15 days a year. This never gives you the opportunity to ever really relax. Life becomes just one endless meaningless time of working year after year that kills any kind of creativity . I can see this in a lot of workaholics. They just go through the motions of working hard but don’t get much done. And once you have been in that machine for a whi…

“Only” 15 vacation days? I’m not sure if you’re in the US, or if you’re including paid holidays, but 15 days is the average number of vacation days for people with 25 years of tenure in full time jobs in the US. Most people with less tenure get much less. So that wouldn’t be an “only” in the US. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm

Something can be both average (relative to a population) and low (in an absolute sense). 15 days of holiday per year seems like a great example of this.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#87

Post by notfromhere »

spking wrote: post #75
rhcom2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the Democratic primary candidates.

It's probably time to stop expecting politicians to solve these problems for us, regardless of what they claim on the campaign trail.

medical insurance is a political problem, so the only solution is also political.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#88

Post by radcon »

mcv wrote: post #44
radcon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please take some time off for a vacation and return to a normal 40 hour work week. You might as well say "Please win the lottery". Seriously though, please tell me you're not so out of touch with reality that you actually believe the sentence you wrote is meaningful advice. People can't just snap their fingers and create a better job out of thin air.

People should and people have. A century ago, unions declared massive strikes for these and other issues. A normal, sane job is not as rare as winning the lottery. Entire countries have people working very normal, sane hours. Americans need to stop tolerating these ridiculously long hours. Do 8 hours of good work for 5 days a week, then relax, sleep well, so you start your next day well-rested and ready to deliver an…

> Sacrificing your health and your life for your employer is idiocy.

What would you suggest they do, work less so they can be homeless, starving and uninsured?

You really need to open your eyes and see the world outside your little bubble.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#89

Post by mcv »

mmsimanga wrote: post #46
mcv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with scrum and agile. Or if it does, then they are part of the solution, because one of the rules is that you don't do overtime. If there's too much work to include all features before the deadline, you drop some of the features. Scrum is meant to help estimate based on real work by developers, rather than on overly optimistic planning by managers. They empower the developer and give them the a…

I like some of the principles of agile but like the problem is the ceremonies chew up so much time. I have an none technical project manager who is absolutely in love with everything agile. I am in a project where basically 3 of us are going to do the work. I sit next to one of the people but we still have to have daily stand ups. I am one of those people who works in longish chunks, I can sit for two solid hours or…

In Scrum, and doubly so in Agile, meetings should not be taking up much time. Meetings are to make clear what needs to be done, because otherwise you end up wasting time on things that don't need to be done. Dailies should take a maximum of 15 minutes. Sprint review, retrospective and planning take more time, but that's only once per sprint, and they're still meant to be productive meetings. If the process isn't working for you, the retrospective is the time to bring that up, and together you can decide how to change your process so that it works better for you.

If your concerns are being overridden by management, your process is neither Agile nor Scrum.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#90

Post by radcon »

jniedrauer wrote: post #33
radcon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please take some time off for a vacation and return to a normal 40 hour work week. You might as well say "Please win the lottery". Seriously though, please tell me you're not so out of touch with reality that you actually believe the sentence you wrote is meaningful advice. People can't just snap their fingers and create a better job out of thin air.

For technically inclined people in the United States, it can be. It's just a matter of whether or not you want to maximize your income or maximize your quality of life. It is definitely possible to get a tech job at a large company where work-life balance is taken seriously.

> It is definitely possible to get a tech job at a large company where work-life balance is taken seriously.

For a few, not for the majority.

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