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Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#171

Post by csense »

stego-tech wrote: post #128

Excellent article, and better than I could do at generalizing the larger problem of outsourcing. From the IT perspective, companies pay far more to outsource than they would by keeping permanent employees on staff and decently compensated (as in, enough for a modest home, a car every decade, a vacation every year, and all necessary medical/dental/vision care, plus some retirement compensation of some form). Outsourci…

If so many companies are such a disaster, why isn't someone founding a startup that says "We won't do any of that crap here" and eats said companies' lunch?

Might be such startups are unstable, because once the lunch starts getting eaten, the founders are instantly offered "F-you money" to sell their company, at which point it gets rolled into a disaster company. Or it loses its incentives past a certain size.

Rare indeed is a company whose founder(s) both (a) refuses to sell for a generous valuation and (b) actively put the brakes on aggressive growth out of wariness it will destroy the company yet (c) still sees the company to success.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#172

Post by majormajor »

xg15 wrote: post #113
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this miserable state of affairs works at scale. Yes, on problems that exist at the scale of one or intelligent, educated, experienced, and dedicated human (or maybe up to 3-5), an individual or small team will run circles around a business. You can have a top-notch CEO and COO and HR manager and six program managers (each with zero domain experience other than running a Jira board) and four dozen…

The question is if the Kingdom would then still be worth surviving if life for everyone there ends up being miserable.

What if it doesn't survive and 70% of the people who were in the Kingdom end up in worse, arbitrarily-ruled, small despotic fiefdoms instead? And only 10% end up being better off by being lucky enough to have landed in the high-trust+high-competence small group?

Or, switching to consumer products vs company revenue/profit or kingdoms, and grounding in a specific example: people love to hate Windows, but how many of them would actually be better off if the options were just Mac (still expensive, still niche) or Linux? And "well they could just learn how to [code or configure text files or whatever]" for these purposes counts as worse off, IMO - more time spent on something that used to kinda-sorta-at-least-work-predictably for them.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#173

Post by majormajor »

bumby wrote: post #126
Spooky23 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That generation had it more together as citizens, and they held on to power for a long time. Postwar all of the institutions in the US grew quickly, and the WW2 generation moved up quickly as a result. The boomer types sat in the shadows and learned how to be toxic turds, and inflicted that on everyone.

Why do you think that is? I’m wondering if the shared sacrifice of WW2 has something to do with it.

Labor also has more power when a ton of young newcomers to the working force were just killed before they could ever make it there.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#174

Post by yoyohello13 »

groby_b wrote: post #70
dartos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I long for the day when someone can give advice based on their own personal experience without someone else being like “well that won’t work for literally everyone” Yeah obviously. It’s a personal anecdote.

What's the _point_ of the anecdote, though? You're taking up everybody's time to tell a story, do us a favor to have a relevant point. "Have no fear" doesn't apply to the article, at all. You might as well write "what I learned was to not stick legos up my nostril". Also good advice. Also not applicable. It's fine if it doesn't work for everyone, it's annoying if it isn't relevant to anyone.

You are reading Hacker News. You are literally here to waste time.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#175

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

luhsprwhk wrote: post #51
dartos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit cynical, no?

Giving generic feel-good advice is a decent strategy to farm likes from the naive. Some people have no shame.

Don't be afraid is excellent advice, sorry but you're coming off as very cynical.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#176

Post by pests »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #133
potato3732842 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now I hire local professionals, even if they cost more. Their experience and trustworthiness save me time and frustration. I've found the exact opposite. The deeper the moat the bigger the jerks. I can pick up a guy at home depot who'll bust ass as hard as I will at a very reasonable price. Can't say that (especially the first part) about most professionals. Anything with a license or high capital investment keeping…

> > Now I hire local professionals, even if they cost more. Their experience and trustworthiness save me time and frustration. > I've found the exact opposite. ... My local upholsterer is a pleasure to work with compared to any tire and alignment shop. I'm confused, isn't your local upholsterer exactly an example of a local professional?

Yes but its not one with "with a license or high capital investment" needed.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#177

Post by pests »

dyauspitr wrote: post #153
Uzmanali wrote: post #9

I’ve had similar frustrations with gig economy services. A while ago, i hired someone from TaskRabbit to set up a standing desk. i thought it would be an easy process, but the assembler showed up late. then he had a hard time following basic instructions, and he also left halfway through, saying he had another job to go to. I finished the assembly myself at the end. then i realize these platforms don’t support skille…

Disagree. Just the other day I needed someone to replace my chimney cap. The quotes from the big companies ranged from $3k-10k. Utterly ridiculous. I got some guy from an app who bought the stainless steel cap for $300 and installed it for $300 more for a total of $600 and the work is fine.

Were the quotes from the big companies also for a metal cap and not a poured cap?

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#178

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

decimalenough wrote: post #95
rib3ye wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A low stress, easy job like that could totally be done out of choice. A big concern of seniors in my life is fearing cognitive atrophy from lack of social connections.

Retail is not "low stress". I guarantee you that senior bagger is getting chewed out every single day both by his customers and his management for being too slow hurry up already, packing the eggs at the bottom of the bag omg what are you doing you fucking idiot, etc.

Probably not true at all.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#179

Post by angmarsbane »

ryandrake wrote: post #85
potato3732842 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now I hire local professionals, even if they cost more. Their experience and trustworthiness save me time and frustration. I've found the exact opposite. The deeper the moat the bigger the jerks. I can pick up a guy at home depot who'll bust ass as hard as I will at a very reasonable price. Can't say that (especially the first part) about most professionals. Anything with a license or high capital investment keeping…

We have to learn how to DIY more things. I pretty much don't hire anyone to do anything anymore, because I always end up having to supervise them, they do the work incorrectly, and I have to double check the quality and insist they come back to do it right. So, I'm not really saving any time. At some point, you might as well just do the work yourself because you know it will be done correctly.

Bringing back woodshop, metalshop etc to schools could help with that.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#180

Post by stego-tech »

csense wrote: post #171
stego-tech wrote: post #128

Excellent article, and better than I could do at generalizing the larger problem of outsourcing. From the IT perspective, companies pay far more to outsource than they would by keeping permanent employees on staff and decently compensated (as in, enough for a modest home, a car every decade, a vacation every year, and all necessary medical/dental/vision care, plus some retirement compensation of some form). Outsourci…

If so many companies are such a disaster, why isn't someone founding a startup that says "We won't do any of that crap here" and eats said companies' lunch? Might be such startups are unstable, because once the lunch starts getting eaten, the founders are instantly offered "F-you money" to sell their company, at which point it gets rolled into a disaster company. Or it loses its incentives past a certain size. Rare i…

You just answered your own incendiary question: because the systems incentivize bad behaviors for individual success over the health, longevity, or success of the organization and its members.

It takes hard work to ignore the easy exits in favor of building a healthy organization designed to withstand the temptations of the modern business cycle. You're not building a mere startup or business, you're building an institution, and that's an infinitely harder job that doesn't pay nearly as well - though it often has far more substantial impacts.

So many people are obsessed with striking it rich via individual success, that they're blind to the reality that we already have the resources and technologies to ensure everyone can enjoy modest success, if we discipline exploitation for personal gain. It's why part of founding a startup nowadays is literally developing an exit strategy, rather than a successor plan: the goal is for the founders to succeed, not the business, and definitely not its customers.

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