Companies large and small can suffer from this problem of what appears to be mundane, useless work. It’s worth mentioning that instead of striving for 50,000 person companies, we might be better off with much smaller companies, two pizza team companies or smaller.
The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
261–270 of 448 posts
Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
#262Work has become a strange thing. I see people foregoing their best years stuck in an office, in the hope they can enjoy their later years. What utter nonsense. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but society has got something very wrong, as our work culture seems to surgically remove the wonder and enjoyment from our days. Hardly surprising that it drives people to ill health. Glad I broke out of that cycle a long…
If you are so fortunate to only have to work a 9to5, there is no excuse to waste these years. How many musicians do you know that play in clubs? Most are working two restaurant jobs, renting a room, and scraping money together to buy strings, just for the chance to entertain a crowd for little or no pay. It's all perspective, really.
I think this whole "perspective" business is exactly how we got into the situation in the topic...
Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
#263I'm sure work is pretty bad for a lot of people, and sure, something should be done with that.
I personally think the biggest thing we could do is to just add a reasonable safety net. I get treated well because my employer knows I have a choice of jobs; if we gave the people on the bottom some minimal safety net so they wouldn't go homeless or starve without working, then employers would have to treat them well enough that working was better than living off the minimal government benefits. And that's a good thing, though it would need to be balanced with how much wealth we have as a society. Certainly, though, we can afford public housing and food for everyone right now, and we should. "Work or starve" is only morally justifiable when society has so little that someone must starve.
But... on the other hand, I do think that in some ways a lot of us (especially a lot of us on hn who are in the top half of computer technicians and software engineers) have it pretty good. For me? I know I had a lot of negative feelings about management when I was younger. I thought they were stupid and evil. I became a lot happier as an employee after I blew a whole lot of time and money trying to run a business myself.
And it was ramen profitable, but god damn did I work hard for that ramen. I'd be most of the way to retirement if I had lived on what I lived on and worked for someone else, investing the difference in index funds. But I think running that business really helped me be a happier employee; I mean, I am not saying I understand the business bullshit... I don't know what to do about all the moral dilemmas at that level, about negotiation, about hiding information, etc... some of it still does seem kind of stupid and evil. But I understand that business bullshit exists, and that I don't understand it - I ran the experiment, and the data showed that I really had no idea what management and business development was all about.
Because of my time running the company, I'm much more laid back about letting management manage than I was before I ran my own company, because I tried. I gave it my best shot, and I'm just not very good at it. I'm a pretty good technician, though, and I really appreciate that I'm in a world where that means I get a well-paying and comfortable job where all I have to do is be that good technician, and not be too rude to anyone else. I don't have to worry about not saying this or that or the other (well, with some exceptions. As a general rule, I can tell my boss anything with the door closed... if that's not true, I get another job, because clearly they want someone with a different skillset.)
Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are so fortunate to only have to work a 9to5, there is no excuse to waste these years. How many musicians do you know that play in clubs? Most are working two restaurant jobs, renting a room, and scraping money together to buy strings, just for the chance to entertain a crowd for little or no pay. It's all perspective, really.
“Only” work 9 to 5? Don’t forget your commute. And you’ll still need your wife to get the kids to school and pick them up. Hope you earn enough for that and she’s happy st home. And you should help out with dinner and the lunches and homework. And when you get the kids to bed it’s 8 and you’re exhausted. Enjoy your weekend.
Last month I moved back to London for a contract job. Yes it pays well, but because of the hours I basically have no life. I leave at 7:30, get to the office just before 9, work until 7, then head home and arrive around 8:30.
I really wish part time work was more of a thing in this industry...
Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
For many animals, every day is a fight to live. Constantly looking for food.
Cats sleep 16 hours a day for example. Animals in nature are not constantly looking for food, except grass eaters who ear whole day.
This reminds me of a paper on primate stress level increases due to the amount of time they spend foraging (study was focused on deforestation but seems applicable here). It seems to suggest a biological ceiling for well being and reproductive success.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130122102110.h...
Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is actually false. The average American worker today works more hours per year than a 14th century peasant ( http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie... ). Hunter-gatherers only worked 2-3 hours per day. Despite technology allowing us to work less, we work more. Yes we should be grateful of technological advancement, but too many people are unnecessarily depressed and suicidal, and it doesn't…
Indeed, the typical American now spends more hours just to pay for land to sleep on than hunter-gatherers did to live.
This isn't true. Hunter gatherer life is nearly universally harsh and violent. I posted an article on this in the same comment thread. Modern humans are miserable, for sure, but older forms of life were not better.
Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
You captured a core reason that I picked up wood working: projects finish. An annoying aspect of software is that it takes a life of its own. It is never done, but there are feature requests, bugs, and updates. You make a table, and that is it. It's done. Sure, you have to clean it, but mostly it will last a while until it breaks down.
This is why I wish I had gotten into video game development rather than app development. Once the game is finished it is (for the most part) complete.
I read that's a rough industry.
Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
#268Work has become a strange thing. I see people foregoing their best years stuck in an office, in the hope they can enjoy their later years. What utter nonsense. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but society has got something very wrong, as our work culture seems to surgically remove the wonder and enjoyment from our days. Hardly surprising that it drives people to ill health. Glad I broke out of that cycle a long…
I agree wholeheartedly, and just so you know, once you get out of North America (the USA especially), it's often not like this.
There are millions and millions of people out there in their 20s and 30s who work part time and do whatever they want with the other time, because that provides "enough" money for the life they want to live.
I personally work roughly 50% time. I work a few years, then a quit and do whatever I want for a few years. Right now I'm driving around Africa, have not gone to work since mid-2015, it's fantastic.
My brother just built a house and had his first child with his wife. He works 4 days a week, looking to get down to 3. When his wife goes back to work she will work 3, maybe only two. They don't have a lot of money, but they have "enough" for the life they want and they spend a lot of time surfing, walking on the beach etc. They're both early 30s.
Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
#269Work has become a strange thing. I see people foregoing their best years stuck in an office, in the hope they can enjoy their later years. What utter nonsense. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but society has got something very wrong, as our work culture seems to surgically remove the wonder and enjoyment from our days. Hardly surprising that it drives people to ill health. Glad I broke out of that cycle a long…
I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricit…
Work seems to be largely disconnected from actual results or goals, and appears to be straying further into the abstract.
In the past work and exercise were nearly identical, now work looks something like sitting in a desk all day under fluorescent light.
Nutrition was once a result of simply eating what was available, but now has changed to a daily fight, something that requires constant effort and discipline in order to maintain as we are completely bombarded by those that seek to exploit our instinctive responses.
We've traded these and other things for safety, comfort, and reproductive success.
Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
These “idyllic” societies still had rough lives. Nature is not only a paradise. It’s ripe with disease, infections, predators killing you and your cattle, children’s and mothers dying during childbirth, droughts, and famines. And wars exist also, and especially, among tribes. Growing food without modern technologies, fertilizers and pesticides was also an extremely hard job. It’s not like growing tomatoes in your bac…
This is something I have given a lot of thought to. I saw footage of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah. My reflexive thought is -- how unimaginably horrible. Here is an animal which is evolved specifically to hunt you down and kill you. And every moment you spend trying to live is a moment lived in fear of this awful creature. What a life! My horror does not even compare to the horror of this life. But, watching th…
The gazelle is not self-conscious about it's life, and whether it's muscles are beautiful or not. It will never sense the beauty of what you're describing - from it's point of view, it will just feel fear, pain, then die.
Perhaps a higher-dimensional being would also see some beauty in our life that we cannot comprehend currently - like the gazelle can't comprehend it's Olympic flow, a human can't comprehend the long-term beauty of how they toil and work against the odds.
> whose life is better? If by better you mean, which being feels more emotion/happiness/satisfaction, it's an open question. But if better implies more progress and safety/longevity, then humans it is.