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The Disneyfication of a University

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Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#131

Post by nkrisc »

tdons wrote: post #6

Well written piece. I've been subjected to these kinds of 'workshops', and, like the author I too resent them. What's interesting is that many people (a majority?) in my organisation hated it too. Why do sessions like this keep getting organised? Why don't employees unite and speak up? What's in it for management? Deep down they must know that for most people attending, it doesn't add any value (it detracts).

> Why don't employees unite and speak up?

Why? What's to gain? These workshops wouldn't be happening if the highest levels of leadership didn't want them to. So it's my opinion on the matter against theirs. Maybe they will value my opinion and consider, or maybe they won't. I don't know for sure. If they want to pay me to daydream through silly horoscope or culture training, fine. I'll pick my battles and that's just not one I care about enough to fight. We'll do the training for a few days and then we'll never think about it again and continue doing our jobs as usual.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#132

Post by nabla9 »

riyadparvez wrote: post #48

As someone who is not from North America, this positive/good vibe culture really baffles me. You are a human being. Negative emotions are part of life. World is full of pain and sufferings. You are supposed to feel empathy for other people and feel bad for their misfortune even if you have the good luck of not going through suffering. I just don't understand this obsession of feeling good all the time. I don't know h…

In Finland being little grumpy is a sign that you are currently doing something important.

"Leave me alone. I know what I'm doing." :)

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#133

Post by [deleted] »

riyadparvez wrote: post #48

As someone who is not from North America, this positive/good vibe culture really baffles me. You are a human being. Negative emotions are part of life. World is full of pain and sufferings. You are supposed to feel empathy for other people and feel bad for their misfortune even if you have the good luck of not going through suffering. I just don't understand this obsession of feeling good all the time. I don't know h…

[deleted]

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#134

Post by inviromentalist »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #65

The most common reason people leave companies is not compensation. It's usually about relationships, primarily with the boss but also coworkers. I'm on the spectrum, so I function a bit like an automaton which places little value on the social aspects of work, but most people aren't like that. This is how "on the spectrum" I am. One time I was on a team that did a team building exercise where we went to a local chari…

I used to have this mentality until I tried hiring minimum wage workers.

Minimum wage workers are extremely low quality. They have 0 skills and require education on everything. Sure Engineers need to learn too, but there's a gigantic difference.

Minimum wage workers are hard to find. Most people won't work for that little, so turnover is high.

Minimum wage workers don't care. They know they can find another job easily.

I was forced into paying 15$/hr for data collection as a result.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#136

Post by bumby »

alasdair_ wrote: post #125
Consultant32452 wrote: post #65

The most common reason people leave companies is not compensation. It's usually about relationships, primarily with the boss but also coworkers. I'm on the spectrum, so I function a bit like an automaton which places little value on the social aspects of work, but most people aren't like that. This is how "on the spectrum" I am. One time I was on a team that did a team building exercise where we went to a local chari…

Your story reminds me of an anecdote in The Economist where an econ professor wondered why it was socially unacceptable to hire someone to help his friends move house rather than helping directly himself, when he didn't want to.

This made me genuinely chuckle. I love economic theories applied to real life when they border on absurd because they assume everything is about maximizing utility.

I'll be sure to farm out all my spousal duties if I have better things to do and I'll report back on how that went.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#137

Post by jkaptur »

riyadparvez wrote: post #48

As someone who is not from North America, this positive/good vibe culture really baffles me. You are a human being. Negative emotions are part of life. World is full of pain and sufferings. You are supposed to feel empathy for other people and feel bad for their misfortune even if you have the good luck of not going through suffering. I just don't understand this obsession of feeling good all the time. I don't know h…

You'd love the work of Barbara Ehrenreich, who has erudite, anthropological, book-length rants about this sort of thing (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Bright-sided-Relentless-Promotion-Pos...)

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#138

Post by nabla9 »

Seenso wrote: post #25

Several years ago, I had to attend a full day "culture training" session given by Senn Delaney (a division of Heidrick & Struggles) [1]. It was also a massive waste of time. Our company actually has a really great culture, and what I remember of the training amounted to a somewhat subtle attempt to indoctrinate employees to be more blindly obedient to management change initiatives. There was some other stuff, but I h…

When Japanese companies came to the West some of them tried to push the Japanese company culture into their subsidiaries without any modifications.

Starting workday with everyone standing in attention outside and singing company song when company flag was hoisted did not go well.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#139

Post by techopoly »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #65

The most common reason people leave companies is not compensation. It's usually about relationships, primarily with the boss but also coworkers. I'm on the spectrum, so I function a bit like an automaton which places little value on the social aspects of work, but most people aren't like that. This is how "on the spectrum" I am. One time I was on a team that did a team building exercise where we went to a local chari…

That is a really clever alternative to the volunteerism that is becoming very popular in companies -- hire others to do it. Then you're helping two groups of people.

Of course that doesn't do much good for the company's employees that don't wind up volunteering / doing the work, perhaps even increasing the separation the employees may feel toward the less-privileged. Service projects, mission trips, etc. can do a lot toward increasing humility, gratitude, and a spirit of giving in a more-privileged person. One could argue this is partly why companies want to do this sort of thing, so their employees grow (among other good / less-than-good reasons).

Perhaps a company could split the difference. Hire others to do the manual labor that day, but take half the company's team to the jobsite do the work with them. Then on another day you do the same with the other half. That way, all parties involved receive some benefit, and everybody is getting to meet a human being behind the statistics. Just a thought.

P.S. It's a certain level of irony when a party steps in to "help," when in reality they're taking away opportunity from parties more prepared for that sort of work, and are probably doing a worse job, aka building shoddily-constructed houses for the poor. This is especially a problem in developing countries, when an organization or church flies a bunch of inexperienced people into the country, brings in supplies, etc., and virtually takes over the available construction projects in an area because they're doing it for free. All of a sudden the local tradespeople have their businesses dry up, and they may not be able to recover -- and they're the ones that the area needs to continue the work afterwards! A far better method, in my opinion, is to get the locals involved and ask how you can help. Volunteerism is fantastic, but we should do it wisely.

Re: The Disneyfication of a University

#140

Post by downerending »

Loughla wrote: post #118
downerending wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far. Perhaps it's my imagination, but I'm detecting a noticeable decline in the quality of recent graduates, as compared to ten or twenty years ago. You can't water down the booze indefinitely without people noticing.

It is your imagination. And now I'm going to make a wild claim with no citations because I'm on mobile, but. . . Graduate quality and skill has increased since 1990 [citation here] for each school individually. What you're seeing is an increase in the variety of institutions you are seeing graduates from. Not everywhere is created equal. Universities and graduates are all mostly getting better, but they're not all as…

Well, there's two wild claims--one of 'em must be wrong. :-)

For context, I'm comparing graduates from a local name-ish school with my no-name school back in the day. Back then, there was a lot of theory, math, proofs, etc. These days it seems more like websites, apps, etc. Some ML, though more because it's trendy, I suspect, and I don't think linear algebra is required.

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