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The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

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Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#81

Post by nine_zeros »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #73
nine_zeros wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are not hungry anymore. The best engineers I've ever worked with were consistently asking for more and leveling up the team at the same time. Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers, just do the bare minimum to scrape by, and they seem totally unbothered by it. Because they see management not pulling their weight for the pay they get. Why s…

What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in order for them to contribute at the capacity they're expected to? Our fresh college grads are paid a total compensation higher than $200K. Is that not enough to expect working, at minimum , 8 hours a day?

> What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in order for them to contribute at the capacity they're expected to? Our fresh college grads are paid a total compensation higher than $200K. Is that not enough to expect working, at minimum, 8 hours a day?

I consider fair pay = $200k + a management that makes $600k pulling their weight by solving cross-team problems instead of pushing everything down to engineers.

Juniors want "leadership" to act like leaders and take responsibility. Get laid off first for your own poor decision-making.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#82

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

This reminds me of the romanticism of the Medieval Peasant I’ve sometimes seen online. The thinking is yes they worked hard, but at least they got guaranteed housing and a wife, etc.

America really is the land of opportunity, but if you don’t end up in a higher bracket, life is really really difficult.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#83

Post by taneq »

miltondts wrote: post #56
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "Ancient Time"? Is that capitalization intentional? Edit: Oh, maybe you meant "Ancient Rome"?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history "Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BC – AD 500."

Wait, you mean 'ancient history' doesn't cover all time between the invention of pottery and the invention of node.js?

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#84

Post by IMSAI8080 »

goda90 wrote: post #47
justin_oaks wrote: post #6

To be honest, people generally don't want to work. In what way is this surprising?

I think people do want to work when they can enjoy and feel pride for the fruits of their labor. But often the fruits of labor in our economic system either don't pay the bills, aren't worthy of pride, or are almost entirely enjoyed by someone else in exchange for a small wage.

I think the spirit of the original comment is people don't want to do enforced work at someone else's behest in order to live. I agree a lot of people would choose to do some kind of work voluntarily even if they didn't have to. Many people on here are probably coders. They may grudgingly drag themselves out of bed to go and code whatever their boss says in their day job, but then go home and code whatever they want to code purely for the joy of building something. It's not that people don't want to do work, they just don't want to do work someone else prescribes. Sometimes prescribed work and work you want to do intersect, then great, but often that is not the case.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#85

Post by arp242 »

dsr_ wrote: post #54
arp242 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is of course the famous quote from Socrates, and I absolutely hate this "argument". "Socrates was wrong in 400BC and it's wrong today" is one possible scenario, but it's also entirely possible that: - Socrates was right in 400BC. - at multiple points in 2,400 years there was a problem with "kids these days". - Socrates was wrong in 400BC, but it's fair today or at other points in history. It's just a complete no…

You missed the big one: If you can find reliable evidence across time, space and cultures that humans have complained about the same X, then complaining about X is part of human nature in, at least, cultures that leave durable evidence.

Two datapoints is hardly enough for that, and out of the billions of people who have lived in the last 2,500 years an infinitesimal small percentage have complained about roughly the same thing, so "any and all arguments that touch on this must be invalid" seems just as much of an invalid non-argument to me.

You can pick almost any topic and find people unfairly whinging about it "across time, space, and cultures" because if there is something that's part of human nature then it's that some people will unfairly whinge about stuff. That on its own says exactly nothing about any specific argument that's presented: it's just vague heuristic pattern matching at best, and bad faith dismissal at worst.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#86

Post by taneq »

arp242 wrote: post #42
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

Similarly … The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. 400BC

This is of course the famous quote from Socrates, and I absolutely hate this "argument". "Socrates was wrong in 400BC and it's wrong today" is one possible scenario, but it's also entirely possible that: - Socrates was right in 400BC. - at multiple points in 2,400 years there was a problem with "kids these days". - Socrates was wrong in 400BC, but it's fair today or at other points in history. It's just a complete no…

"No, it's always been the children that are wrong." - Skinnecrates.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#87

Post by almost_usual »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #58

As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are not hungry anymore. The best engineers I've ever worked with were consistently asking for more and leveling up the team at the same time. Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers, just do the bare minimum to scrape by, and they seem totally unbothered by it. One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day "walking her dog." I eve…

> One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all. (Work-from-home abuse is another component of this observation.)

Good for her, it takes confidence to do this.

Overworking engineers into burnout isn’t a healthy career path.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#88

Post by m0rissette »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #73
nine_zeros wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are not hungry anymore. The best engineers I've ever worked with were consistently asking for more and leveling up the team at the same time. Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers, just do the bare minimum to scrape by, and they seem totally unbothered by it. Because they see management not pulling their weight for the pay they get. Why s…

What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in order for them to contribute at the capacity they're expected to? Our fresh college grads are paid a total compensation higher than $200K. Is that not enough to expect working, at minimum , 8 hours a day?

Well then I guess you should offer me a 400k salary bc I can run circles around your junior engineers, and get paid less than 200k

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#89

Post by jasonlotito »

gambiting wrote: post #60
swayvil wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally told the worker that his misery is his own fault for having chosen the wrong job.

I said if there is no satisfaction then you need to find a different job. The misery part was added by you.

Assuming good faith, we can easily determine that OP was suggesting the working a job that provides no satisfaction would be misery. Considering satisfaction and misery are subjective, quibbling over the word choice is pedantic at best.

If you're incapable of seeing how someone might describe working in a job that provides no satisfaction as misery, I suggest taking time to understand how that can be the case, as your ignorance in this area does you harm.

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