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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

#181

Post by Vespasian »

m0rissette wrote: post #76
usrbinbash wrote: post #53

It's pretty simple really. If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets. And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have mad…

I mean maybe I have work ethic or am lucky. But I don’t struggle to pay mortgage, buy cars, or go on vacations and I am the sole breadwinner for my family… but I also started programming in 3rd grade in the 90s, didn’t go to college so have no debt, and live a pretty non materialistic punk rock life.

And you happen to be in a field that boomed (several times) during your career and was (and to some degree still is) a quite dynamic environment.

I'm glad it worked out for you (and me) but we must acknowledge that luck is indeed a significant contributor.

Let's imagine that instead of getting into programming you began working odd jobs in a field that is generally low income. Some would make it to the top but most will not move forward despite working hard.

From a personal anecdote I have a close relative who is an incredible hard worker in a job adjecant to elder care. As far as I can tell their work ethic is higher than my own (no time for water cooler talks or "code is compiling") but unless things change drastically they will never make more than minimum wage.

It's fair to say that natural skill plays a big role. Despite best effort they wouldn't be abel to get a programming or othe office job because just finishing their apprenticeship took increadible effort and diligence.

In their mid twenties their parents still support them (a little bit) and being anything close to a sole bread winner is highly unrealistic.

There are economic reasons why some people are paid better but I'd say "pure luck" is a larger portion then most of us would like to admit.

Some people get a yacht and a nice holiday home for their 12 hours shifts and some get to pay their rent.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#182

Post by zmgsabst »

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…

How do you connect the available rewards to extra effort made? — do your team members trust that you’ll follow through?

In my experience, that behavior happens when rewards aren’t clear and/or don’t happen: when you fail to reward or even punish an animal for putting in effort, they stop. If being “hungry” is exploited by businesses but doesn’t result in rewards, why would sane people continue? — there’s productive areas of their life they could invest that same effort.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#183

Post by jader201 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #171
Borg3 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude really? The cost of working from home is absolutly minimal. You gain much more than you loss. You do NOT waste time and money commuting. You can eat healtier food. You can take break when you really need it. People who say that they need to get compesation for WFH cant do basic math...

Work from home is literally an employee subsidized office. Who pays for the internet? You do. Who pays for the electicity? You do. Who pays for water? You do. Who pays for the ac during the heat of the day? You do. Who pays for square footage dedicated to a desk? You do. Who fixes networking it related issues? You do. Who is the custodian and building maintainer? Also you. Companies save money hand over fist by shove…

Yes, this was my point, but not articulated as well.

I think it would be hard to expect compensation for the expenses when coming to the office, when the savings (for them) by working from home aren’t also passed onto us.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#184

Post by quasarsunnix »

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…

I walk my dog two hours a day.

I just work around my meetings (sometimes can take the meeting whilst walking) and ensure I still work 5-8hrs on tasks.

Is your gripe that you think she should be glued to her desk 9-5?

I don’t know what her role is, but as a software engineer I can’t say I’d ever be interested in a job where someone wanted to micromanage me like that. As long as the work gets done why care?

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#185

Post by welshwelsh »

usrbinbash wrote: post #53

It's pretty simple really. If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets. And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have mad…

A working man can still support a family of five, buy a house, a car and a vacation once or twice a year. He just needs to be realistic.

House: you can still find houses with plenty of room for ~$100k. It just needs to be in an affordable area: think McKeesport, not San Francisco.

Car: for $5k you can get a 2005 Ford Focus or Honda Civic. They're reliable cars that will get you from A to B perfectly fine, easy to repair and fuel efficient.

Education: a Computer Science degree from WGU costs $18k for the average student, and can be as low as $4k if you accelerate.

Career: plenty of remote software jobs paying above $100k, which can fund a good life in most of the US.

I get it though, the average person wants a nice house in a wealthy area with good schools and low crime and two new cars and gets a degree from a school they can't afford in a field without high paying jobs, and they cannot even code. That's completely their fault, no sympathy from me.

For those people, there's an easy solution: just don't have kids. Kids are crazy expensive, and not required for a good life.

I hope what you say is true- mass retirements followed by a plummeting birthrate. We surely do not need so many people, when the overwhelming majority are useless. Robots will be here soon anyway to replace most of the workforce

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#186

Post by usrbinbash »

SoftTalker wrote: post #164
usrbinbash wrote: post #53

It's pretty simple really. If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets. And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have mad…

> In the past, a working man could support a family of five, buy a house, a car and afford vacation once or twice a year, plus save enough to retire comfortably. I think this is a bit of a rose-colored rear-view mirror, and to the extent it's true it's a pretty brief period of time historically. Most people in most times had to work pretty hard. If you were a farmer, you worked pretty much all the daylight hours ever…

> and to the extent it's true it's a pretty brief period of time historically.

That is true, but understandably, people are not thrilled about the prospect of their conditions being worse than those their predecessors experienced.

Especially not if, at the same time, they experience an uninterrupted period of economic growth and ever growing profit margins for the corporations they work for.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#187

Post by randomdata »

supertrope wrote: post #151
qaq wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is that gross revenue before paying for diesel, the loan on the truck, the employer side of Social Security tax, health insurance? If it’s as simple as you say to earn $160K-$180K why isn’t everyone doing it? In an efficient market arbitrage opportunities usually close quickly.

> why isn’t everyone doing it?

Assuming the figures are accurate, perhaps because most everyone doesn't want to? Some love it, but sitting in a truck day in, day out, far from civilization while only infrequently coming back home to see your family is not for most.

You could say the same about programming. Any five year old can program, but most people have absolutely no desire to do it, thus it takes a whole whack load of money to convince the general population into the industry. The HN crowd who see it as a fun hobby, who like to spend their evenings writing open source code for free, are outliers.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#188

Post by lifeisstillgood »

momirlan wrote: post #106
usrbinbash wrote: post #53

It's pretty simple really. If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets. And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have mad…

i agree 100% , but what is the solution to that ? just raising wages en masse erodes the power of money and leads to inflation.

Inflation can be combatted by taxing it out of the economy - the issue is who do we tax. One should always tax the rich first - like robbing banks that's where the money is

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#189

Post by gambiting »

jasonlotito wrote: post #89
gambiting wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you…

All of that is reaching some conclusions and arguments that I didn't make and didn't use. All I said is that if your job doesn't bring you satisfaction then find another one. Everything beyond that is your own interpretation - I can of course see how you reached that interpretation, but I don't agree with it. There can be a job without satisfaction that isn't "misery". But that's not really relevant to my original point.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#190

Post by usrbinbash »

momirlan wrote: post #106
usrbinbash wrote: post #53

It's pretty simple really. If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets. And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have mad…

i agree 100% , but what is the solution to that ? just raising wages en masse erodes the power of money and leads to inflation.

The economic system seem to be more than capable of plunging itself into an inflation with stagnating wages already...and still rake in money left right and center.
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