The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#201

Post by hollerith » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:48 PM UTC

vsareto wrote: post #200

momirlan wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 housing market is probably permanently ruined for individual family buyers as long as they are competing with businesses/individuals buying multiple residential properties as investments. Subsidies or government backed contributions won't be the answer. Universities have a societal function and could conceivable operate without profit in mind, but they still chose to be greedy and act like for-profit businesses o…

It wouldn't be Hacker News without the constant stream economically-illiterate ideas for "improving" our lives in the comments!

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#202

Post by influx » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:48 PM UTC

shove wrote: post #32

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #22

I found 2011 to be the most enlightening quote: > Man, what a weird week. Unless it's on their own terms, it seems nobody wants to work anymore. It's the only one with any acknowledgement that agreeable terms may actually be needed in order to attract people to work. It doesn't take a PhD to figure this out! Utah Phillips, one of my favorite storytellers and all-around anarchist and hobo has a line I was reminded of:…

In a similar vein, this poem by Pedro Pietri: Telephone Booth (number 905 1/2) woke up this morning feeling excellent, picked up the telephone dialed the number of my equal opportunity employer to inform him I will not be into work today Are you feeling sick? the boss asked me No Sir I replied: I am feeling too good to report to work today, if I feel sick tomorrow I will come in early

I read that in Mitch Hedberg‘s voice.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#203

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:48 PM UTC

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.

> 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.

Likely luck then; would you be in the same place if you didn't happen to be interested in a field that makes big money with no formal education needed?

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#204

Post by treis » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:49 PM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #186

SoftTalker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's not worse than their predecessors. That belief is a combination of looking at the past with rose colored glasses and extrapolating the issues of a handful of cities to the entire country.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#205

Post by alisonatwork » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:49 PM UTC

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 think it's important to note that the good old days of a working man being able to support a family of five was only true for a brief period of history in a handful of elite countries. In most of the world, and for most of human history, it hasn't been the case that any single person working 40 hours a week could provide a luxurious lifestyle for a large family. While some lament the loss of this golden age their grandparents experienced, a much greater number of people around the world have seen their living conditions improve markedly since the time of their grandparents.

That doesn't take away from the point that ideally no one should have to work themselves to the bone just to afford a humble lifestyle, but if middle class people in developed countries are really asking for perspective, I think it's worth bearing their relative privilege in mind.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#206

Post by cool_dude85 » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:49 PM UTC

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…

>plus save enough to retire comfortably

Individual saving for retirement was cooked up in the 80s. You used to get your pension and be set.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#207

Post by adrianN » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:50 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #193

lokar wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think piketty would disagree. Productivity per worker has gone up but the share of profits going to workers has gone down. This is not some kind of inflation driven by scarcity.

The ultra wealthy hired the best to win a game of financial manipulation that the rest of us didn’t even know was being played. The median salary would be six figure if the share of productivity gains was distributed like it was in 1970.

Is the average salary six figures?

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#208

Post by cognivore » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:50 PM UTC

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 see this too, and not just post-COVID. 10+ years ago we used to have "Let's Learn This Now!" where the developers would agree on particular subject and then learn and discuss it on our own time, and occasionally it would lead to improvements in our development. We went through Ruby (on Rails), Angular (nope, not even) to React (meh), queuing (ZeroMQ mostly), Asp.NET MVC, Redis, Docker, Octo, NoSQL dbs - the list goes on (even custom mechanical keyboard building). It was a lot of fun, and it was nice to have all the perspectives and interesting ideas shared.

Now there is only a few of us that still attempt this, as the rest are not interested in anything beyond their job description. Honestly in the last 10 years the phrase "That's not my job" has entered the company's phraseology when previously it was perceived as an opportunity for growth or even just cross training. Hell, that's 90% of how I advanced up the ranks - taking on new responsibilities.

A dev manager we had a while back, who has been managing developers for 20 years, told me that a lot of the problem is passion vs money. Many recent developers are in the industry because they heard that software development is good money, so they got a CS degree. But they're not as interested in the continuing education that is a necessity for the career, and only those with a passion for it thrive. He sees them dev'ing a few years, realizing it's not for them, and then trying management, and then dropping out of industry because they're not interested in the effort to excel.

But if you have a passion for software development, love tech, and the whole 9 yards, work is just doing what you like, and you enjoy it (well, when your company isn't screwing it up - that's a different problem).

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#209

Post by vsareto » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:50 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #148

bbarn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard the argument that a negative effect of the post WW2 "feminist" movement (by that I mean women in the work force) has had the long term effect of causing prices to simply adjust to the dual income household, to the point that now it is a necessity. It is a privileged family today that can afford to live comfortably on only one salary.

Theres another level to this going on in certain places too. Its not enough to have both partners working. Now in places like the bay area if you want to be competitive in the housing market, both partners have to be working high income jobs not just working at all. Even if you have a great title, if your partner doesnt, you will be lapped by people who have vastly more buying power than either of you can ever muster…

People have been choosing partners for money since forever, that's certainly not a new thing

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#210

Post by DropInIn » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 3:50 PM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #186

SoftTalker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They robbed Peter to pay Paul and now they complain that they're facing the penalties....

The ones who get to complain are the "Peters" whose futures were stolen so their parents could live high on the hog, no?