131–140 of 207 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why did you think being a hard worker regardless of reward is an honorable trait? I don't mean any disrespect but when i read sentences like that all that pops into my head is "sucker"
This is like a cornerstone of American culture, the belief that hard work will be rewarded is ingrained in us. I think it's a great attitude, but hard to keep up when you realize it's often not true
Most people don't have "fulfilling" jobs. They have a paycheck. A very small percentage of Americans, let alone those around the world, have the privilege of analyzing how their job makes them feel. I get paid great money to play with computers. My father was an elementary school janitor.
Big part of the problem is arguably alienation. A janitorial job can be rewarding because you can see that you are making a difference in the world. You get to meet the people whose lives are improved by what you do, every day. Filling out spreadsheets, it can be hard to tell what the purpose of what you are doing, whom it benefits, and how the world would be worse off if you simply didn't show up.
Most people don't have "fulfilling" jobs. They have a paycheck. A very small percentage of Americans, let alone those around the world, have the privilege of analyzing how their job makes them feel. I get paid great money to play with computers. My father was an elementary school janitor.
I think Office Space summed up the problem nicely: "Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Bob Porter: Don't... don't care? Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now. Bob…
On a good day, on an unimportant project, I still have three bosses. I have my team lead, my PM, and my actual manager. Currently I'm on a cross-team project of critical importance, so you can add on my manager's manager, his manager, the other team's manager, and his manager. I've got seven goddamn people breathing down my neck on this.
I used to work at a place where I had one manager, even for critically important projects. He was the only one breathing down my neck (and that wasn't often). No PM constantly hassling me to groom my backlog[0], the managers above my immediate manager all had enough trust to not directly meddle. Most productive I've ever been in my career. Ended up leaving because I just didn't give a shit about the project, but sometimes I dream of going back...
[0] I need to rant about this. How am I supposed to be agile if I have to have my backlog completely planned out for the whole project? And I can't just estimate it or backlog the big chunks, because when we start making progress and I update the backlog to reflect things we've learned, I have to justify every single change to my PM who will grumble that we are going off plan. If I don't update the backlog, I get grilled about how accurate it is at the next too many cooks/status update meeting.
We can either do agile or try to plan out the next six months of work at the start. Stop trying to make me do both.
I stated my own consulting company a few years ago. Right now, it's just me. But I plan on hiring employees at some point. Consulting has prevented me from burnout. I almost never have to deal with bullshit corporate politics and if I hate a project, I find a new client.
There are other aspects that contribute heavily to burnout and employee morale, the elephant in the room is the massive layoffs and the lack of promotions[0]. Consulting firms are affected by this a lot.
If you cut down most of your workforce, or give no “rewards” for the ones who worked their ass off your revenue, of course there will be burn out, depression, and all other things that would make one stop working.
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/8c3679c4-b34a-41d0-93c9-af96ea6f9... (I couldn't get this archived).
I used to be an employee that would kill themselves for even minimum wage. I think being a hard worker regardless of reward is an honorable trait, but keeping that up for decades is difficult. Naturally I am very loyal and agreeable. I like to solve raw engineering problems, but also social ones. I find a way to adapt to pretty much anything and anyone. This almost always ends with my employer exploiting me. Recently…
Why did you think being a hard worker regardless of reward is an honorable trait? I don't mean any disrespect but when i read sentences like that all that pops into my head is "sucker"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why did you think being a hard worker regardless of reward is an honorable trait? I don't mean any disrespect but when i read sentences like that all that pops into my head is "sucker"
US Protestant culture. Work is tied up with morals and faith.
It’s hard to know what to make of this when you also read that job satisfaction is at historic highs[1]. One reading is being highly engaged in your job is related to burnout, because you’re more likely to be unhappy when your job doesn’t go the way you want. Whereas just punching a clock you take it less seriously. 1 - https://www.conference-board.org/press/job-satisfaction-hits...
I worked at a place with a particularly grouchy director. Employee survey- many people expressed dissatisfaction with him and the company. He called a meeting of all his underlings effectively saying as confrontationally as possible, “Why aren’t you idiots happy? I am so good to you!” To enormous surprise, the next survey results were significantly higher. Without apparent change in director behavior.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Office Space summed up the problem nicely: "Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Bob Porter: Don't... don't care? Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now. Bob…
The lack of "another dime" when you work extra is also something that prevents most people from going above and beyond. If there's nothing else out there, why would you care? Working with my wife now to get her to start a business so we can keep my salary to pay the bills but focus on the business so our effort can have a meaningful impact on the bottom line.
If you, however, had any unaccounted for blocks (i.e. not 8h per day), it'd be brought up in your appraisal, and on one occasion when we were told we had to work overtime one evening (about 4 hours) but wouldn't be paid for it, that's when my feelings towards their policy really shifted. From that point on, even if I'd worked late to get the work done for the customer, I made sure that the timesheet only listed the 8 hours so that the company wasn't going to profit from my misfortune. They picked up on that too, and weren't happy, but there was nothing they could do about it.
That culture was truly toxic as an employee. If you were a couple of minutes late for the start of the day, you were hauled into your manager's office for a 10 minute shouting at about the importance of time keeping. There was an unofficial "flexitime" working policy - "you can start any time you like before 9 and end any time you like after 5:30". Obviously, anyone who'd been there more than a year grew tired of this, and at 5:30 every day there was a stampede to leave the office. Nobody left even a minute early because we had timestamped entry/exit logs and we knew the consequences, but equally almost nobody was prepared to stay a minute longer than they had to.
Most people don't have "fulfilling" jobs. They have a paycheck. A very small percentage of Americans, let alone those around the world, have the privilege of analyzing how their job makes them feel. I get paid great money to play with computers. My father was an elementary school janitor.
I'm not sure that I think that burnout is directly related to a job being fulfilling. It seems to me that it is more related to having a lot of responsibility but very little power. Or somewhat equivalently, being in a position where other people can make your work much more difficult without you having much control over it. In software at least, I think it could also be related to the pace of modern development. Agi…