The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent' • Hacker News Board

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#111

Post by zoolily » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

newfriend wrote: post #88

srswtf123 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, but what's the alternative exactly? How about not exploiting people? > Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? Seems to work for the very wealthy , celebrities , and so on. Why, precisely, isn't this acceptable for everyone? I'm not against people working. I'm against the wealthy callously exploiting people for grins while they, I dunno, race into space?

Care to explain how I'm paying for the "very wealthy, celebrities, and so on"? Who says they're being callously exploited? Because some company's founder now has hundreds of billions, that entitles random warehouse workers to share profits?

The warehouse workers worked for it, just like the founder. The distribution of profits between the two isn't a natural law. It's the outcome of a particular regulatory environment that the very wealthy have created over the last half century.

As for how you're paying for the wealthy, there are many ways. You're paying for the US government to negotiate with other countries to change their local laws either directly or via treaties to create a similar regulatory environment globally. You're also paying for externalities, like what happens with a fly ash lake or manure lagoon overflows, or the consequences of air pollution.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#112

Post by JJMcJ » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

JJMcJ wrote: post #109

iammisc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you being downvoted? You're absolutely right. There's fewer and fewer ways to be self-employed these days. Even traditional avenues of wealth creation (real estate rentals, for example) have been closed to everyone except those with the most capital. Whereas you used to commonly see apartments rented by some older widow who had acquired a few properties or inherited them. Today, more and more seem to be owned…

The days when a house might cost one year or at most two years income are long gone. Back then a common scenario was buy a house, fix it up a bit, save, use first house's equity and the savings as down payments on a second house. Next thing you know (if nothing goes wrong) you own a bunch of houses and have a semi-passive income stream to live on. There are very few places in the USA where that is even remotely possi…

ADDITION: Of course the houses were rented out for the income.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#113

Post by kodah » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

oxymoran wrote: post #37

Interesting tidbit regarding Gallup: the Fortune 500 company I work for manipulates our surveys by asking general questions about the company and then holding the supervisors accountable for the results even if all of the questions are way out of their control. So they leverage the the employee-supervisor relationship to make it seem like there is more happiness and less discontent. That being said, I find it hard to…

I've seen our internal surveys go like this as well. They'll be critical on themselves with easy-to-solve issues but if it's something substantive then the polling will be very obtuse.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#114

Post by jollybean » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

srswtf123 wrote: post #64

newfriend wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but what's the alternative exactly? Force people who do actually work, produce, create, etc to pay for people who think working is beneath them? Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? If you don't want to work for someone else, then start a business. If you don't want to work at all, then figure out how you're going to live. No one is forcing you to do anything.

> Sorry, but what's the alternative exactly? How about not exploiting people? > Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? Seems to work for the very wealthy , celebrities , and so on. Why, precisely, isn't this acceptable for everyone? I'm not against people working. I'm against the wealthy callously exploiting people for grins while they, I dunno, race into space?

"How about not exploiting people?"

? If there is exploitation at large, it's the people reading this that are doing the exploitation by leveraging against workers paid 'barely survival wages' in developing countries will crying about 'not being engaged at work' while earning 10x the global income average doing work that is actually intellectual, whilst the global average worker toils at something generally menial and more classically work.

The modern world is an utter utopia relative to the life of almost any person living at any point in history, if you're reading this, you're living at a higher standard of living that most Kings and Emperors. Probably higher than even the richest people in the world just two generations ago.

Our civilization and high standard of living requires 'work', which fall upon us to do, and whether it is 'engaging' or not is mostly besides the point.

Most companies are made up of regular people doing regular work even at the upper layers, most companies are small or mid-sized and execs. are definitely not rolling in cash, there's actually a very thin slice of people earning truly outsized incomes.

It's ok to vent and be frustrated ... but it's also little bit disturbing to read some of the commentary here.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#115

Post by myWindoonn » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

agent327 wrote: post #103

claudiulodro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? Yes? > Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. > No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. > Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organizati…

>> Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? >Yes? Surely you understand the logistical problem this brings: if you get given free shit, there must also be a party who is giving free shit. Let's say you live on an island with just one other person. You are both entitled to free shit, but somebody has to put in the work to get the shit. Should the other person work to get his own shit and your shit, or s…

Sure. Let's ask for something easier, then; let's only have free stuff which is already in abundance. We aren't living on a remote island; we are living in a society which already has lots of extra stuff which could be given away for free.

For example, how can an all-you-can-eat restaurant stay in business if they let everybody eat as much as they (rationally-economically) want to eat, and labor has to be paid? If food is abundant, then the cost of each individual patron's meal is negligible and it becomes a question of whether enough people come through the door to pay for labor.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#116

Post by jnwatson » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:00 PM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #71

wayoutthere wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just that there is a future where those who don’t want to work a menial job aren’t forced to do so in order to survive. Which may mean accepting a lower level of productivity. But a lot of people get bored without work, and extra money to buy nice things will always motivate people, so there will still be a large labor pool and automation can take care of the rest.

This technocratic vision of the future does not square away with human nature and reality. Much more likely is a Butlerian Jihad to destroy automation and return us to a more pastoral way of life, even with advanced technology. Only socially awkward engineers, business majors (most of whom are incredibly anti-social contrary to common perception), and finance types actually believe in this vision. Normal people are h…

> Humans are not meant to lack meaningful work.

Citation needed.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#117

Post by iammisc » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

JJMcJ wrote: post #109

iammisc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you being downvoted? You're absolutely right. There's fewer and fewer ways to be self-employed these days. Even traditional avenues of wealth creation (real estate rentals, for example) have been closed to everyone except those with the most capital. Whereas you used to commonly see apartments rented by some older widow who had acquired a few properties or inherited them. Today, more and more seem to be owned…

The days when a house might cost one year or at most two years income are long gone. Back then a common scenario was buy a house, fix it up a bit, save, use first house's equity and the savings as down payments on a second house. Next thing you know (if nothing goes wrong) you own a bunch of houses and have a semi-passive income stream to live on. There are very few places in the USA where that is even remotely possi…

Median home value in FL is $226.6k

Median income in FL is 58k. That's 3-4 years of income. Not much different.

the only places where housing prices have gone nuts are the coastal cities, which 'everyone'[1] wants to live in for cultural reasons.

[1] everyone is in quotes because it's abundantly clear that there are two classes of people in the us, those that matter to the elite and those that don't, and only those that matter want to live in the coast cities.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#118

Post by slumdev » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

oxymoran wrote: post #37

Interesting tidbit regarding Gallup: the Fortune 500 company I work for manipulates our surveys by asking general questions about the company and then holding the supervisors accountable for the results even if all of the questions are way out of their control. So they leverage the the employee-supervisor relationship to make it seem like there is more happiness and less discontent. That being said, I find it hard to…

My employer administered questions regarding how many days per week the employees wanted to spend in-office versus WFH.

Zero days per week in the office was not presented as an option.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#119

Post by cblconfederate » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

bscvbscv wrote: post #11

cblconfederate wrote: post #3

> To engage workers, managers must fulfill the 12 essential elements of engagement Hm. There are few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. And with a years long pandemic and uncertain future, to work or not to work? Work for what purpose? No level of engaging is enough if people can see through the ruse. If anything i d expect more people to go solo

> few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. Humans have been doing "boring" work their whole lives for millions of years, it has never been a problem. The problem is that people are working for organizations that are DOING HARM to them and their people. Not only is their work not productive, it is destructive. Not only is their work meaningless, but it endeavors to undermine meaning itself.

yeah thats what i mean, people will do boring work if they feel the other rewards of life make it worthwhile. right now in an uncertain lonely period one questions whether the juice is worth the squeeze

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#120

Post by pattyj » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #92

logosmonkey wrote: post #48

Pay me well, provide good benefits, allow a flexible work schedule where I can work when I want to and still get day to day life stuff done and hire enough people so I can consistently work only the 40 hours you are actually paying me for. My current job does that and I love it. When something critical comes up I'm happy to work over a weekend to hit a deadline because I know my manager will comp me back time when I…

> When something critical comes up The problem: everything looks 'critical' to folks with a greedy and selfish streak who rise high in management and have their pay tied to the quarterly stock price. That's how we ended up with 24/7 support and "five nines" availability. I'm old enough to remember that banks opened late and closed early, didn't operate on weekends or holidays, and if you didn't get your paycheck cash…

The greed and selfishness of my managers are significant factors in determining who I want to work for/with. And why I'm so grateful I can work with people I am friends with outside of work.

But I understand this is difficult, even impossible, to know during the interview process.