Interesting that (at least for me) the same article is shown in the "related" column beside the article. That's "quiet quitting" (doing your job without being bothered by small details such as this) at work right there...
The Age of the Crisis of Work
21–30 of 115 posts
Re: The Age of the Crisis of Work
#22Explain to me why as an employee, I should care whether my employer greatly succeeds, just slides along, or slowly crumbles? As far as I can tell, except over the very long term, I end up in the same place. Or for a more specific example, I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job hopping wh…
Your point about this reminds me of this scene in Office Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_1lIFRdnhA
This movie really spoke to me during the pandemic and I'm guessing it has for many others as well.
That being said... I do think it's more about who you work with that makes work more enjoyable. I find extra motivation at work for mundane things like working on tech debt if it means making my colleague's job easier and such.
Re: The Age of the Crisis of Work
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're missing any mention of alignment and as a result I think you're leaving out a very key situation where someone can be in your group (A) but actually working against the overall company goals. If you hire someone to solve problem X but they get sidetracked and spend all their time on problem Z instead... they can be excelling at driving solutions and still be doing the wrong thing in the eyes of the company. Ca…
That’s just bad management. High quality work that doesn’t actually move the business needle is almost the same as if people didn’t even come in at all. That said managing a large organization is extremely hard. I don’t think most companies have the overall business dynamics to sustain a large company where teams can do things that don’t matter. Usually those companies, which there are a lot in the tech world, have s…
> That’s just bad management. High quality work that doesn’t actually move the business needle is almost the same as if people didn’t even come in at all.
I mean, it's worse, IME, it usually slows down the rest of the org.
But it is worth mentioning in the discussion of "why should I care if my employer does great or not when there's no direct reward in it for me" - otherwise you could just wave that whole question away with "that's just bad management" more generally. Yet it's mathematically implausible to suggest that everyone can escape bad management; some number of managers are going to be subpar, so the situation remains relevant to people.
Re: The Age of the Crisis of Work
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not disagreeing with your perspective but as an exec here is my perspective A) The most valuable people can notice problems, find solutions and get it done (either themselves or by articulating a pragmatic plan). B) People that show up and dependably are very important until someone cheaper makes more sense. The rat race at any job you have is evaluating where between A and B you want to achieve your career goals.
> A) The most valuable people can notice problems, find solutions and get it done (either themselves or by articulating a pragmatic plan). And what is the company doing in exchange for these people? Extra Compensation? Extra promos? Extra Vacation time? Or is the company just subjugating people with bullshit performance reviews, PIPs, canceled bonuses, dangling promos?
Companies only want people that are in he A bucket. That’s what market rate is.
If you aren’t actually and truly in the A group then your company is thinking about how to pay you less, replace you eventually, or invest in other people who likely will become part of the A group.
Re: The Age of the Crisis of Work
#25Explain to me why as an employee, I should care whether my employer greatly succeeds, just slides along, or slowly crumbles? As far as I can tell, except over the very long term, I end up in the same place. Or for a more specific example, I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job hopping wh…
Because for the next job hop you can put on the resume "saved 50k a month in cloud waste" and it'll make for an interesting discussion.
Re: The Age of the Crisis of Work
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The most valuable people can notice problems, find solutions and get it done (either themselves or by articulating a pragmatic plan). Do you compensate these people? Why should I be this person if you don't pay me for it?
As an SVP of Eng: Market dynamics and pay equity mostly force me to pay everyone the same. Not everyone gets paid the same but little disparity between people of high impact and low. Ie most companies total annual comp between people is a lot smaller than you’d think. So the job of management is to weed out people who aren’t having as high as possible impact when convenient. I don’t like it, but it’s often what’s goi…
yeah, its sort of the unintended down side of pay equity / transparency movements. Very little room for discretion anymore, gotta be "in band". For better or for worse. I think its mostly for the better, but yeah thats the way it is.
Re: The Age of the Crisis of Work
#27Explain to me why as an employee, I should care whether my employer greatly succeeds, just slides along, or slowly crumbles? As far as I can tell, except over the very long term, I end up in the same place. Or for a more specific example, I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job hopping wh…
Because for the next job hop you can put on the resume "saved 50k a month in cloud waste" and it'll make for an interesting discussion.
You can put it on the resume anyways and as long as you are able to describe how you would do it and field questions about the idea, no one really will fact check too hard.
Re: The Age of the Crisis of Work
#28Explain to me why as an employee, I should care whether my employer greatly succeeds, just slides along, or slowly crumbles? As far as I can tell, except over the very long term, I end up in the same place. Or for a more specific example, I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job hopping wh…
From a pure selfish point of view (not judging), by reporting it, you'll be able to add a bullet to your resume/LinkedIn saying you helped the company save $50 thousand dollars a year, which in turn increases your odds of landing a better-paying job in the future.
Re: The Age of the Crisis of Work
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A) The most valuable people can notice problems, find solutions and get it done (either themselves or by articulating a pragmatic plan). And what is the company doing in exchange for these people? Extra Compensation? Extra promos? Extra Vacation time? Or is the company just subjugating people with bullshit performance reviews, PIPs, canceled bonuses, dangling promos?
Companies only want people that are in he A bucket. That’s what market rate is. If you aren’t actually and truly in the A group then your company is thinking about how to pay you less, replace you eventually, or invest in other people who likely will become part of the A group.
Right. I'm still not hearing what the company will do for A workers.
How can management guarantee that an A player is evaluated and rewarded correctly? What controls does the company have to prevent B-level management from hurting A-level workers?
Re: The Age of the Crisis of Work
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s just bad management. High quality work that doesn’t actually move the business needle is almost the same as if people didn’t even come in at all. That said managing a large organization is extremely hard. I don’t think most companies have the overall business dynamics to sustain a large company where teams can do things that don’t matter. Usually those companies, which there are a lot in the tech world, have s…
> That’s just bad management. High quality work that doesn’t actually move the business needle is almost the same as if people didn’t even come in at all. I mean, it's worse , IME, it usually slows down the rest of the org. But it is worth mentioning in the discussion of "why should I care if my employer does great or not when there's no direct reward in it for me" - otherwise you could just wave that whole question…
I agree that it’s worse in like 99% of cases that 1% though overly influenced my word choice :)
To your other point, I wasn’t trying to be as hand wavy as that came across.
There will always be people who make mistakes or are not good fits for their job (engineers, management, execs, investors, etc).
Maybe a better way to say it is that low impact work happens at the tail end of bad management. It’s usually a luxury problem (pet projects from a company that makes too much money but has too little maturity) or a symptom of terrible management (no clue what is valuable or worse unable to actually get team to work on what is valuable)