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Quiet Quitting

ombuds.web.cern.ch

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Re: Quiet Quitting

#141

Post by matmatmatmat »

workerthrow632 wrote: post #76
matmatmatmat wrote: post #26

It's interesting to see this from CERN, which is essentially an institution that enables young people to work unlimited hours for next to no pay and virtually no chance of ever attaining significant recognition of their work. In my brief time there, it was not uncommon to hear stories of people who had moved there and not even unpacked all of their belongings after a year or more. On the plus side, if you love partic…

> not even unpacked all of their belongings after a year or more. I stopped having any personal effects at work. Purely mercenary. It makes it easier when I get walked out when the C-Suite decides they need higher bonuses.

Maybe I should've been clearer, but I didn't mean personal effects at work. The people I knew had not even unpacked their things in the apartments they were renting because they were too busy working, particularly professors.

And this applied to both tenured and untenured professors. Don't want to name names but one of the high up profs I chatted with there worked roughly 60 hours a week, 6 10-hour days. I mean, he loved it, and he had a lot of responsibility, but I think it's fair to say it's pretty much all he did. His wife mostly traveled and his daughter was already in undergrad by then.

It is genuinely unclear to me how a new prof could hope to compete with that or make a meaningful contribution when even the "old guard" have given up everything to just work.

Re: Quiet Quitting

#142

Post by matmatmatmat »

falcolas wrote: post #140
matmatmatmat wrote: post #26

It's interesting to see this from CERN, which is essentially an institution that enables young people to work unlimited hours for next to no pay and virtually no chance of ever attaining significant recognition of their work. In my brief time there, it was not uncommon to hear stories of people who had moved there and not even unpacked all of their belongings after a year or more. On the plus side, if you love partic…

My company hired 2 Doctorate in Physics graduates who both did their doctoral work at CERN... as SREs. Let that percolate for a bit.

Yeah, you got a great deal. I've been hearing this story at least since I worked there, about 15 years ago.

Re: Quiet Quitting

#143

Post by datavirtue »

phpisthebest wrote: post #131
shadowgovt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, the relationship between employer and employee has never been balanced. One thing that induced balance in the middle of the 20th century was the power of unions in the middle of high-demand industries; after World War II, manufacturing and transportation were massively valuable to rebuild tracts of the world bombed to bedrock, and this put bargaining power in the hands of labor because labor in e.g. heavy…

You have massively over estimated the power of Unions, and completely overlooked what I believe is the real reason for the shift. The institutional investor. 401K's, Pension funds, and other funds of funds that since WWII have pushed the business cycle from being a 5 year + picture to being a Quarterly Earnings report That more than anything has had the biggest impact on what the parent comment is talking about

Agreed. You can still see the five year planning thing at GE. I thought it was cute. We couldn't predict our business environment next month let alone five years from now.

Re: Quiet Quitting

#144

Post by hamburglar »

gsibble wrote: post #31

I worked 200% for over 15 years in Silicon Valley. You know how many raises I got without changing jobs? Zero. You know how many promotions I got? Zero. You know how many bonuses I got? Zero. You know how much more work I got assigned? A TON. Hard work only begets hard work these days and not further compensation. The old paths to higher compensation and career growth are dead, and employers killed them. There's no r…

> I worked 200% for over 15 years in Silicon Valley. You know how many raises I got without changing jobs? Zero. You know how many promotions I got? Zero. You know how many bonuses I got? Zero. You know how much more work I got assigned? A TON

I’m baffled by this based on my 33 years in tech in Silicon Valley and Seattle. I worked at a bigcorp where my salary doubled in 2 years based on recognition from me busting my ass. I worked at another bigcorp where it doubled again. My promo history has been like clockwork (with the exception of 8 years I spent in startup land, where titles and roles were almost nonexistent), and I’ve never once set my goal on getting a promotion. I just work hard. I have spent a lot of my career going above and beyond, and been pleasantly surprised that it gets noticed and rewarded. Am I just the luckiest gen x tech dork alive? (No, I am not, because I passed up an opportunity to interview at google in the late 90’s because I was happy where I was. But I’m still pretty lucky.)

Re: Quiet Quitting

#145

Post by datavirtue »

hinkley wrote: post #105
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also argue that this correlates with the weakening of pro-labor political blocs. This includes but doesn't necessarily only include labor unions. I'm also talking news reporting (muck-raking) and labor watchdog orgs. Companies stopped feeling like they are obligated to society (including their workers) and are now mandated to operate only to make more money for the select few owner class.

Most of the anti-labor sentiment I’ve heard from non managers has been about systemic quiet quitting by union members. Some of those examples are 30 years old.

That's perfectly fine. Equitable trade.

Re: Quiet Quitting

#146

Post by falcolas »

matmatmatmat wrote: post #142
falcolas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company hired 2 Doctorate in Physics graduates who both did their doctoral work at CERN... as SREs. Let that percolate for a bit.

Yeah, you got a great deal. I've been hearing this story at least since I worked there, about 15 years ago.

We absolutely did. I’d pity CERN for the loss of some amazing, hardworking talent, but they had their chance.

Re: Quiet Quitting

#147

Post by red_admiral »

Looking at one very narrow slice of the UK labour market, it seems to me that what's changed is this: in the old days, contracts said that employees would do "reasonable" unpaid overtime, and on a 100% job you ended up doing perhaps effectively 120% or something like that. You knew periods in the year that would always be busy, and periods in the year where no-one cared if you went home a bit earlier except if there was an unplanned crisis (which happened, but was rare). Everyone knew the actual deal, and it mostly worked.

Now, it seems like there's always a crisis, the definition of "reasonable" somehow went above 150%, and you're constantly being pushed to get more done with less. Also pay rises have been below inflation since around the early 2000s, and are definitely not keeping up with the current cost of living crisis.

I don't blame employees for going, if the employer's definition of "reasonable" overtime is anything but, what about if I work the number of hours I'm contracted for and no more? Because the unofficial actual deal worked as long as both sides were ok with it.

Re: Quiet Quitting

#148

Post by NeverFade »

falcolas wrote: post #138
NeverFade wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your value to the company has increased from experience and institutional knowledge It's my understanding that regular raises used to be the standard practice in the private sector of the US employment market for this exact reason. Every year, you'd have your performance review, and assuming it wasn't bad, you'd get some sort of a raise. I'm not sure where this nonsensical "no-raise mentality" comes from, when clea…

> Every year, you'd have your performance review, and assuming it wasn't bad, you'd get some sort of a raise. Even when they do have this, those raises usually max out around 5%. Maybe 10% if you're utterly amazing. Problem is, you can get 20% just by moving, so unless the company is astonishingly employee friendly, you're always losing out.

I agree completely. Everyone who worked in the big tech hubs knows you typically get the best raises by job-hopping. Still, 5-10% raises are at least trying to prevent that. I cannot fathom a company doing zero, as implied by the "no-raise mentality" comment.

Re: Quiet Quitting

#149

Post by matmatmatmat »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #109
matmatmatmat wrote: post #26

It's interesting to see this from CERN, which is essentially an institution that enables young people to work unlimited hours for next to no pay and virtually no chance of ever attaining significant recognition of their work. In my brief time there, it was not uncommon to hear stories of people who had moved there and not even unpacked all of their belongings after a year or more. On the plus side, if you love partic…

Here's my anecdote to balance your anecdote: I was getting paid very well in a junior position at CERN, rarely working more than 7.5 hours a day, doing interesting things, and with a hefty bonus when I took a three day long weekend business trip.

I'm not sure this is much of a counterbalance? I think you can generally expect junior positions to have less responsibility and stress, at the expense of virtually no chance of moving up unless you really, really grind, and even then, there's not a lot of space at CERN. I think you really have to love it to the exclusion of all else and be smarter than your already smart peers to succeed there.

Re: Quiet Quitting

#150

Post by gsibble »

phpisthebest wrote: post #136
gsibble wrote: post #31

I worked 200% for over 15 years in Silicon Valley. You know how many raises I got without changing jobs? Zero. You know how many promotions I got? Zero. You know how many bonuses I got? Zero. You know how much more work I got assigned? A TON. Hard work only begets hard work these days and not further compensation. The old paths to higher compensation and career growth are dead, and employers killed them. There's no r…

I work 200% for over 20 years outside of Silicon Valley, You know how many raises I got... Lots, you know how many promotions I got, Lots Maybe it is time to get out of the cesspool that is California

I did. And I got my first two raises in 20 years.
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