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Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

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Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#171

Post by ccmonnett »

xtracto wrote: post #131
corty wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty commmon in departments such as sales, trading or marketing as incentive to e.g. invite $singer upon hitting the years sales target. Or organize a short holiday, visit to a sports event, fancy dinner, something. Seems to spill over to engineering or the whole company in some places.

As a previous engineer manager this sucks . While sales people get all kinds of bonuses for doing their job. The Engineering team gets a pat in the back because nothing broke down.

On the other hand, sales people are quickly dismissed if they don't meet their goals; it's a double-edged sword.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#172

Post by floren »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #111
AussieWog93 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think middle class society in the West has already reached this stage. I was talking about this the other day with my wife, after stewing about it bitterly for hours into the night. The most common form of interpersonal interaction has changed from genuine offers of assistance to displays of status and evaluations of said displays. It's unthinkable to do something as basic as ask your neighbour to "borrow" an egg o…

> The most common form of interpersonal interaction has changed from genuine offers of assistance to displays of status and evaluations of said displays. I don't actually mind the lack of cake. There's never going to be "too much cake", even if the communists got what they think they want. I'm not much of a gift-giving person, so if a neighbor brought me cake, I'd feel like I owe them something in return, which is a…

> I'm not much of a gift-giving person, so if a neighbor brought me cake, I'd feel like I owe them something in return, which is a weird feeling I don't want.

> And I don't feel any status pressure, because I never even talk to my neighbors. My lawn looks like shit, my neighbors probably know, who cares.

> Most of my neighbors are not people who I really want to be friends with. They're mostly older than me, mostly parents, probably with no shared hobbies or interests.

Lot of assumptions in this post, and they all seem to be coming from you.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#173

Post by anonymoushn »

danpalmer wrote: post #66
craig_asp wrote: post #5

Every time someone (usually someone from HR) tries to point out how great a company is because of its great perks like awesome couching sessions (not actual training), great team-building events, the best coffee machine ever, table tennis, etc. and how these somehow compensate for a subpar salary offer, I tell them: you just pay me well, give me more time off, and I'll handle all that myself.

This is true, but I'd rather have an office with tea/coffee, a drinks fridge, etc, than the extra salary that the company is spending on providing that. In part I'm paying 40% in tax so if I'm going to buy coffees it's actually more effective to have them provided by the company. But in general, that sort of convenience and benefit is often worth more than the monetary value. Tea/coffee in the office is very differen…

I've never even worked at a company that could afford walls

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#174

Post by banannaise »

hnarn wrote: post #128
jp555 wrote: post #26

"one of the biggest causes of stress in the workplace is a lack of decision-making power among workers." You know what's also more stressful? Having to make more decisions in domains outside my circle of competence. Give me total autonomy in my area, while also not burdening me with having to contribute to EVERY decision.

Or the in-between variant: constant meetings and initiatives to create the illusion of worker influence on major decisions when there is in reality none at all. A complete waste of time to check a box somewhere about "horizontal hierarchy", and at the end of the day the decisions are being made "in the sauna" as it were anyway.

One of the best things for my mental health at work was learning to say (and believe) "I recommend we do X. If the VP decides to do Y instead, that will make the delivery date later, but that's his decision and ultimately his problem, not mine."

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#175

Post by rightbyte »

afpx wrote: post #63
JackPoach wrote: post #7

Did working conditions really got much worse over the past 20 years? Or are people just becoming more entitled? I agree with the premise that workplace wellbeing is a bunch of BS (and just a small part of much large corporate BS universe), but is 2021 much different from 2001? I understand blue collar complaints and unfortunate situation workers found themselves in after union busting or outsourcing. But what's gotte…

The biggest negative change that I've seen since the 90s has been the adoption of agile methodologies. We used to have decent cadence in releasing software - maybe every couple of months, or even six. Now, everyday seems like a fire drill or a race to nowhere in particular. Managers generally seem to have lost the ability to plan or predict out over periods longer than a month. I thought this was just my bad luck, bu…

Agile gives management the illusion of insight into what the developer does without having to look into the code or understanding the technicalities. Talking about features and problems with your boss is so much more appropriate compared to processing Jira tickets at constant full speed grind without after-thought or planning.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#176

Post by telmo »

granshaw wrote: post #67
barrkel wrote: post #57

Wellbeing, even when it's sincere, is a top-down effort - as in way up the tree-tops - and usually raining down diagonally from a different org. Meanwhile, down on the leaves of the org tree, you have delivery pressure from users, peers, and so on. If the pressure is high, no amount of messaging about wellbeing will make any difference. Taking time off, whether it's some kind of leave or for some wellbeing meetings o…

Let me tell you, delivery pressure exists even right at the very top. You think there’s no pressure as a CEO/COO beholden to 30% top line growth this quarter? I sometimes think about being in that position and it seems pretty scary too

Yes, but the typical CEO/COO does not have to worry about their family becoming homeless if they lose their job. Let us not be disingenuous about the stakes here.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#177

Post by rightbyte »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #81
JackPoach wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. If compensation was a function of productivity, farmers would be the richest people in the world, because their productivity is something like 50-100 times than it was pre-mechanization and pre-green revolution.

You're not wrong about farmers, but it's in a tons of different professions. I mean, think how much more productive software devs are right now than the age of punch cards.

It was probably some efficiency involved in having computer clerks running mainframes for calculations and card deck (database) processing.

Nowadays people are supposed to do their own Excel sheets and use complex internal systems, instead of letting specialists do it.

So devs are way more efficient but are too fine dining to do every day Excel.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#178

Post by patrickk »

shoto_io wrote: post #137
ganzuul wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shareholder liability is much too limited.

Liability for what? Burn-outs? They are liable. When the company goes bust they lose their money.

If the case of CD Projekt Red with the recent Cyberpunk 2077 game is anything to go by, the shareholders will get large bonuses while the cannon fodder get mandatory crunch time, stress, overwork, are forced to ship out shoddy work etc. Of course the bonuses are due to the companies prior good reputation so it remains to be seen whether or not that continues. But this situation is quite typical in the games industry and most likely others too

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#179

Post by Viliam1234 »

mtberatwork wrote: post #50
kumarvvr wrote: post #23

Workplace wellbeing Wholesome workplace Workplace is a family and a myriad of other touchy-feely terms are just plain bullshit. Whole industries have cropped up to support the efforts of managements to keep workforces in control and deflect resentment (people don't leave companies, they leave managers ! and other crap) The ground reality is when the company feels you are not needed, all that touch-feely stuff goes do…

> Workplace is a family This one is the biggest eye roll for me. Family and friends don't give performance reviews and push other such metrics down your throat.

Seems like people have different families and different workplaces, so for some of them the slogan may actually be true. Others are horrified to hear it.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#180

Post by ncphil »

JackPoach wrote: post #33
minipci1321 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over here, yes, it has gotten worse since 2001 -- asian shops press much harder now, cheap remote labor really easily available ... competition vent through the roof. Longer hours, guilt feels stronger, sloppier work, inter-team communication destroyed (all-email in some language foreign to everyone), and -- still more lost deals. This is for everyone, workers and management. True, people maybe feel more entitled. Bu…

Yeah, but how much of that is your current employer fault? Let's take housing costs. Absolutely insane in California, Canada and some other places. Education/student loans - modern day slavery for many. Healthcare costs - seem to grow much faster than inflation or wage increase. The end result - destruction of the middle class as we know it. Or 'shrinking middle class' to put it less dramatically. So, I take it you l…

It's your company's fault because their leadership (you know, the one percent) got on the neoliberal, supply-side, tax cutting, privatization train ahead of the rest of the population and then worked like hell to condition everyone below them to believe it was going to be all unicorns and rainbows. Now that the experiment is failing (as evidenced by a renewed interest in Keynes -- at least for the FIRE sector), they're all going around saying, "Not me! Work-life balance! Inclusion! Human capital!" Except that they've spent four decades wasting and destroying the value of that human capital the way they did the rainforests, coral reefs, rivers and lakes, and the climate. Just dealing with all the piles of spent nuclear fuel is going to be a massively expensive, ten millenia project, but these people can't reliably plan out further than a few quarters.
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