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How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

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Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#161

Post by pdimitar »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #156
pdimitar wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, of course this is not asking too much, and my family has been doing it diligently ever since the regulations started. But I can't help but wonder if there wasn't another way, like making only that most vulnerable part of society go in lock-down -- and nobody else. Most of the elder people aren't exactly spending hours outside every day anyway (by my observations at least which can of course be wrong). And many of…

You might be surprised how many people have underlying conditions putting them at increased risk: obesity, poor sleep habits, immune system disorders. And we've yet to see the long term effects of this flavor of SARS for those who survive. Hindsight will be 20/20, so hopefully we can learn and prepare better next time. Thankfully it appears the vaccines will be effective if enough people get them for life to return t…

Same can be said about any illness you go through life though. The SARS virus isn't special in this instance. It got exorbitant amounts of attention and I can bet my life that there are much worse things out there to look out for.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#162

Post by karmakaze »

> Their main experiment was pretty simple: they randomly gave a group of workers a large portion of their compensation earlier in their work period rather than at the very end.

> The authors conclude that giving workers cash upfront helped alleviate the mental burden of their financial problems and freed them to be more productive.

Hmm. I'd be interested in how a third group who are simply given a single amount equal to the upfront payment would fare. They wouldn't be told it's related to their employment or work. How much of their improvement is merely from having current debts paid vs the concept of getting paid first then being trusted to deliver?

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#163

Post by zepto »

ehsankia wrote: post #46
nabla9 wrote: post #26

This is just once piece of growing evidence that poverty damages health, cognition, and productivity. * Being poor reduces raw cognitive capability including memory and decision making. * Being poor increases stress, leads to bad decisions and short term thinking. * Even relative poverty can have this effect. It may be because social status is so important factor in human well-being. It used to be a joke that you can…

So much of conservative policy just seems very shortsighted to me. Cutting the pandemic team, cutting the cybersecurity team; homelessness, prisons and so on costing orders of magnitude more than it would cost to eliminate or reduce them. It's just that people can't stomach less well off people getting a hand, or prisoners being treated nicely. But now we're left with the largest pandemic in a century, one of the lar…

“we're left with the largest pandemic in a century“

Sure, but not actually doing any worse than Western Europe.

Also, those same conservatives actually did invest billions in vaccine development and production capacity in the US.

Literally twice as much as the EU did, and the result is a vaccine rollout that at 5x the rate.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#164

Post by tharkun__ »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #93
foogazi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shit happens, why are you still there?

When you are working for a good company that values you, and embedded in a good team that also values you, there is a bonding that occurs that goes deeper than your average commercial exchange. If you have never been in this position, you may not understand the emotional difficulties involved in watching such a place slowly burn to the ground. Old timers usually still feel loyalty to those of their coworkers who are…

I've also seen the opposite. People leaving way too early. Younger people usually who were jumping ship way too fast. Then they were miserable at their new job and jumped ship again. Not good on their resume at all.

I think they didn't realize that they had actually found a truly awesome company by chance and were witnessing its conversion to 'normal company'. Nothing more, nothing less. But if you ask me it was still totally bearable. The devil you know type of situation and hey, I'll let them pay me f they keep wanting to. I can still jump ship if they turn from normal company to actual evil (like introducing the kinds of perks that try and bait you into working 80 hour weeks and thinking it's fun and worth it and normal) company. I can still jump ship then.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#165

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #50
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that these people Who? I’ve never met anyone who believes that.

>Poor people vote against their own best interests because they don't see themselves as poor, they see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. You'll see the above quote very frequently in any discussion about class and wealth in the US. It's a glib strawman that makes those writing it feel intellectually superior to and condescending to their targets at the same time. Until those on the various sides of…

That has nothing to do with the Invisible Hand as far as I can tell.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#166

Post by wikibob »

diob wrote: post #30
esotericn wrote: post #10

This is going to sound egotistical, but it's not intended that way, just the experience of your average prole. The times that I have been the most successful, most motivated, most driven, most productive, and most useful, in study, career, relationships, and life, have tracked exactly with periods in which I've gotten out what I've put in. When I started my career and a company took a chance on me - we absolutely kil…

I'm still early in my career (around 32, 8 years in), and I can heavily relate to what you said at the beginning. The company I work for recently got acquired and the entire culture changed to one of "fuck the engineers, only contracts matter, engineers are just butts in seats, the more the better (quality not required)". My boss is constantly turned down when he tries to advocate for me, or say that I deserve a slig…

Why aren’t you interviewing to go somewhere better?

HTTPS://Levels.FYI/2020

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#167

Post by tharkun__ »

diob wrote: post #111
foogazi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shit happens, why are you still there?

Honestly, I was lucky enough to negotiate my total compensation around 3 years ago before the acquisition using an offer I had. So while I'll never see another raise again, I have very decent overall total compensation, especially for the cost of living where I'm at. The other side of it, is that I have about 3 months of vacation built up. The TLDR on that though is they tried to take it from me about a month ago (ca…

I obviously don't know what company you are at or what 110% means in that context. However unless you're Ar a FAANG type company I would venture that 110% is waaaay more than your regular coworkers put in. Probably at 50% levels if you are lucky. Personally I am lucky to work with lots of bright people that put in their 100%. But even there we have 50%ers.

So my advice: put in your 110% for 90% of the time (or something like that :)) I do this periodically. When required I'm there 110%. Done with something at 2pm Friday? Yeah well today I'll just call it a day instead of fixing yet another bug from the backlog that wasn't even in the sprint.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#168

Post by paulryanrogers »

pdimitar wrote: post #161
paulryanrogers wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised how many people have underlying conditions putting them at increased risk: obesity, poor sleep habits, immune system disorders. And we've yet to see the long term effects of this flavor of SARS for those who survive. Hindsight will be 20/20, so hopefully we can learn and prepare better next time. Thankfully it appears the vaccines will be effective if enough people get them for life to return t…

Same can be said about any illness you go through life though. The SARS virus isn't special in this instance. It got exorbitant amounts of attention and I can bet my life that there are much worse things out there to look out for.

How many illnesses are as novel and contagious as COVID appeared to be during its ascent?

Careless reasoning risks under reacting just as much as over reacting.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#169

Post by lostcolony »

pgsimp wrote: post #47
lostcolony wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not. But you mention causation. You have to treat your employees well if you want to be successful. It is necessary, but not sufficient.

It just seems too simplistic to me. Sometimes there is struggle. Taking an extreme example, soldiers at war. Are they generally being treated well? I'm not sure they are, and I don't necessarily mean deliberately. I don't think generals want their soldiers to be killed, in general. It just happens that situations arise where there is struggle and soldiers get killed. I remember complaints about CD Projekt Red (makers…

CD Projekt Red also has a profit sharing arrangement with its employees, that not only means they're getting compensated better than they likely could with most other game developers (certainly other Polish ones), but also created the pressure for a death march. The further the game was delayed, the less time for sales within the year (including missing Christmas rush and the like), which would reduce profit for the year, and directly impact employee compensation.

So the pressure to deliver sooner rather than later also directly benefited the employees financially, even if it negatively affected their time and work/life balance.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#170

Post by nojvek »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #112
gregd wrote: post #88

As someone who grew up in extreme poverty (eating ketchup soup made with ketchup packets and hot water, extreme), there are so many ways that poverty affected me, outside of this simple article. The best way I can describe it is that poverty makes you start out life in a giant hole and you're given nothing to help you dig out of that hole to reach the surface where you can then start thriving. I honestly feel that at…

I feel you so much. My parents died or bailed on me as a kid. I spent many years living in a van as an adult. Now that I have a house, just having a shower every day is like the greatest luxury to me. Forget the 4 seasons, Porsches, Rolexes. I lay in the shower for hours sometimes.

Didn’t have a hard life as you, but hundo percent, a warm shower really feels like luxury.

I’ve never seen the appeal of porches and rolexes other than signifiers. I’ve rented luxury cars but they didn’t feel worth it to me. May be just me. I love affordable, highly reliable things that just work with very little upkeep. I love my Toyota. I love my small town home. I love having low burn rate. It makes me legit happy.

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