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Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

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191–200 of 207 posts

Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But would you (or anyone) mind listing the ways that you think that the modern workplace is "actively hostile to creating meaningful interpersonal bonds"?

1. Telling people about their shortcomings will result in them retaliating, instead of improving or explaining why this isn't possible. So you just secretly hate them for being stupid instead of creating dialogue 2. The HR officially encourages people to escalate all and any issues, instead of having people deal with things between themselves. This makes me distrustful because people can be smiling towards me while g…

> Think of all the people who got a promotion by throwing their coworker under a bus because technically speaking they didn't break any rules. This is selective breeding of shitty people

It creates an org chart where everyone "above you" is shitty, and those people, by virtue of being above you, are the role models that you look to for hints on how to behave. So if you're not shitty, you start to conclude that you need to either at least act shitty to get promoted, or leave. Eventually, the company is entirely full of either shitty people or good people cosplaying as shitty people.

Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

#192
post #92

The humanity has been taken out of jobs. It's all about making an optimised monkey making machine. I think MBAs are destroying everything. See how Google is being destroyed from the inside. Boeing has pretty much been destroyed from the inside.

> The humanity has been taken out of jobs. Absolutely, but... The humanity was taken out of jobs before, too. An assembly-line job wasn't like being a craftsman. There was "alienation" (to use the Marxist term) there too. The factory workers were just biological components of a big machine. The difference between then and now was that much of the rest of life still had the humanity in it. You knew people in your neig…

> The difference between then and now was that much of the rest of life still had the humanity in it. You knew people in your neighborhood, at your church, at the bar, at the barbershop, at the grocery store. Now... not so much. There's no humanity anywhere. So people feel alienated, not just at work, but everywhere.

We are expected to be well-behaved little worker-consumer automatons.

Go to work. Behave. Don't get out of line. Don't rock the boat. Produce value to enrich the tree of people above you and shareholders. Don't talk too much to co-workers--they're competing with you for promotion. Leave (or get tossed out) when you're used up.

Go to stores. Behave. Buy things. Don't protest. Don't talk too much to people around you--they're competing with you for what you want. Grow the economy by spending your money. Believe in God so you die happily when you are no longer economically viable.

We're lines in someone's spreadsheet.

Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

#193
post #92

The humanity has been taken out of jobs. It's all about making an optimised monkey making machine. I think MBAs are destroying everything. See how Google is being destroyed from the inside. Boeing has pretty much been destroyed from the inside.

I'm convinced this is caused by monetary policy.

Inflation through monetary expansion leads to cheap substitutes for EVERYTHING.

Whether it's food, labor, housing or education you get junk swapped out for the real thing.

Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

#194

I did some volunteer mentoring for a while. Burnout was the most common complaint. However, once you dug into each complaint of burnout you discovered that “burnout” has become a catch-all term for a very wide range of feelings. Before that experience I assumed everyone defined burnout as a severe state of deep distress and lack of energy following extended periods of intense stress, frustration, overwork, and/or lac…

Best take here. I like the BCG selling related services call out. Always question the motives of the author. There is a clear conflict of interest, which ties into the survey results. The validity of the survey and methodology should also be scrutinized.

Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

#195
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had the same experience. I actually took a 40% pay cut to work somewhere where I had to actually do something, because of exhausting and depressing doing nothing was

This is the reason I think its crazy how some people claim that UBI would cause everyone to become lazy and do nothing Nobody likes doing nothing

I have never heard that being brought up in a (serious) conversation about UBI tbh. I've had quite a few discussions about this, the most common things people were happy about would be

- Having a financial safety net and removing some degree of existential fear (note, this is in a country with an existing social safety net)

- Switching into a career with less pay but better interest alignment. Interestingly, most of the women I've talked to would strongly prefer a switch into more social careers while basically all men I've talked to (claim) they'd switch into trades.

- Having the option to obtain educational credentials one couldn't get earlier in life for a plethora of reasons, without too much financial concerns (that is in a country with publicly funded free universities)

Certainly there are people who would see not doing anything as a godsend, but I think we generally over estimate our intrinsic desire to do something by working and tend to assume this desire doesn't exist in other people.

Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the "regardless of reward" thing is supposed to be temporary until a decent human being above you realizes that you should be rewarded. If we all just did the absolute minimum then society and humanity would never get anywhere because you'd never know who a good worker is.

> temporary until a decent human being above you realizes that you should be rewarded In my 25 year career, I have never, ever, ever seen this happen. Nobody is just going to wake up and decide that you should be making more money and reward you. You have to fight for it, schmooze for it, document all that good work you are doing, make a case, fight again for it, beg for it, plead for it, threaten to quit over it, an…

yes maybe but then you still had to work hard without appropiate reward for a while. So what difference does it make? Either way you'll be working to prove yourself first and then you make a decision whether you want to keep working hard for no additional reward. Also let's remember that this is all based on somebody's own perception of their value. I have seen it where somebody thinks that they did enough work for today and they take it upon themselves to stop working now because they felt that in relation to others, they already did an equal amount. But they were wrong and then they just look like terrible workers with a massive ego.

Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

#198

> it’s far higher for certain subgroups. ... and deskless workers I'm still happily doing a fully remote job, but I've noticed that a number of my friends have been forced to return back to the office 2 or 3 days a week. The irony is that many of their companies have scaled back office space due to decreased natural demand when people had the choice of full-time WFH, but now there isn't space for everyone to come bac…

> carry around a heavy laptop ...

By car or by public transportation?

Can you elaborate what the fancy pens and the heavy laptop are for? :o Seems like a very special job/position.

Hot desking sucks ass, because spatial routine is very helpful for many people, and starting the day with this bullshit destroys routine.

Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have one that's even worse than that. The company I worked at once insisted on you keeping a timesheet for work done and which clients should be billed for each 15 minute block. They charged the clients according to that. They even went as far as charging other internal teams for your time if you had a chat with a colleague in another team! If you, however, had any unaccounted for blocks (i.e. not 8h per day), it'd…

There’s a great Dilbert about that… he turns in his timesheet to Carol the secretary and then she says why are you still standing there and he says I still have 14 minutes scheduled for this.

Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout

#200
post #21
post #2

I mean, it's hard to not feel burned out when your day consists of process, navigating politics, and implementing ideas that are clearly doomed to fail. It's a lot better than homelessness though.

This sentiment seems a lot like the “you have it great, there are starving kids in X who have it much worse” meme I often heard growing up. It encourages minimizing one’s problems, which can lead to all sorts of mental health issues. Thinking like this causes me to ignore real issues for too long, because someone else has it worse. It’s like gratitude’s evil twin of an emotion. But we should respect ourselves and str…

Sure, but it’s all the same in large corporations. I might be happier in a smaller company, but they pay correspondingly less. I need to pay for a house and education. It’s depressing, but not depressing enough to throw away my children’s future.
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