Let's not forget that work is a vector quantity: direction is as important (or more important) than magnitude. Also, it's important to understand the relationship between work and productivity. I knew a wannabe programmer who once bragged about how much "hard work" he put into an 8-hour day of manually tweaking data, when he could have written a program to do it in a half hour.
Yes. There are also the superstars that just put in 8 hour days but manage to get more meaningful work done than anybody else in the office.
As a millennial who actually works his ass off I always feel somewhat compelled to respond to these. Many of my friends who just graduated, especially non-developers, actually want nothing more than to put in hard work and get stuff done. Unfortunately the few jobs that are out there for young people rarely actually involve working hard if it is building towards a career. Sure, you can go off and work your ass of as…
I also have to wonder how much of this perceived lack of hard work is because of changes in the social contract between workers and employees. As late as the '70s, there was an implicit contract between employers and employees. Employees work hard, and in return, employers take care of them. Starting with the '80s and continuing through today, that contract (outside of a select few firms) has been thoroughly eroded.…
Here, here! I've worked at large, enterprise organizations for 15+ years and always resented the concept of Human Resources. At the enterprise level, there is little to no payoff for loyalty other than possible redundancy, when HR found someone who could do your job for half the pay. I suspect this is all a symptom of business school education trends over the last 40 years or so. I don't think there is any fault or blame to lay, but rather we as a society have to step back and begin doing what's right socially instead of economically. Do that, and economics will likely take care of itself.
I think the problem here is that not all employers will challenge you. In my mind, the key to finding enjoyment in your work if it's not challenging is to challenge yourself. Unless your job is oppressive to self direction there is nothing stopping you or anyone else from creating or doing something that is positive for the business and challenging for you. As a few examples you could find ways to optimize a system t…
I agree completely. I work at a company that is small about 25 people, but I engage in this quite often. The company is rather open about everything. I have access to just about everything I need except for the company bank accounts, which I do not want. This provides with a lot access to do a lot of this flow analysis. However the two greatest challenges I still have to overcome are 1)Buy-In from the higher ups to a…
I also agree with the grandparent post. There's always something to do, and something more that could be done to make a project interesting.
However, I've often been frustrated by the effort required to get buy-in or recognition from higher-ups. I often found myself wanting to contribute more, but sometimes it seemed like a sisyphean task and not worth the effort (especially once you start balancing compensation and effort).