Work ethic never went out of fashion. Many, many people work very hard everyday. Always have. Work is a part of life, always has been, always will be. It’s the incentives that are the problem. Paying people just enough (or not enough, in many cases) to just keep their heads above water, for taking on more and more work, so that owners, investors, and executives can make ever increasing profits, just doesn’t motivate people to work very hard. Much of the hard work in the current system is motivated by fear. That is not positive or sustainable.
Hard work feels great when it benefits you, your community, folks you care about, or even just real people.
It feels fucking awful to work hard when the only people who will benefit are some rich assholes who exploit you.
Nice and succinct and 💯
a great round up of the difference between work versus toil.
Super well said!
First, don’t get stuck in the mindset that hard work is only worthwhile when making money. You can work on things that directly enhance your life and those of the people around you and skip the medium of exchange entirely.
Then, upgrade to the understanding that hard work to only benefit others can be the most rewarding yet.
It probably won’t make you feel any better, but if you work for a corporation the profits don’t just go to rich assholes. People’s pension plans and retirement funds buy and sell stocks, and so do mutual funds anybody with money can buy. You don’t have to be rich to own stock, just not poor.
FFS dude. Have some empathy for the second yacht-less. Work harder, expect less! For 'Murrikkka! /s
I agree with you, but this is an “anti work” community, and there’s a substantial part of the movement that is techno-utopian and is actively arguing for the dissolution of work in general.
I understand, but until the technology necessary for a transcendentalist, post-scarcity, post-work society is developed (assuming said technology is even possible), work will remain absolutely necessary.
Gosh, I hate to disagree with you, but it seems like multi-generation inheritance might affect the necessity of work for some. Currently.
I’m fairly tech-utopian myself, but it’s is more of an aspirational goal that won’t help anybody for the foreseeable future. Automation will become capable of performing all human labor, but having it actually do that will take a lot longer because it will require reshaping our whole society. It will essentially mean the end of money, and therefore the end of some people being hugely wealthy compared to everybody else, which those people won’t want to let go of.
There is a real chance that a great change is coming. If most of the problems with AI can be overcome (though that’s far from certain) there will be a change in the job market of dimensions never seen before. A gigantic loss of jobs and a booming market at the same time.
If that happens and the politicians drop the ball this can be a time of great human suffering and a divide between the rich and the poor worse than ever before.
On the other hand an implementation of general basic income and social redistribution of wealth could lead to a golden age where working is a choice not a necessity.
I know which one I would be betting on. I’m not sure if changes to the current system will be even possible without a violent revolution.
“Should we promote Bob?”
“Hell no, he’s the only one here who does any work! We need him right where he is!”
This is not satire.
It’s called being pigeon holed and that shit is real depending on your company. Some hard workers get promoted some just get more work.
Indeed it is not.
I once worked at the new office of a company that just opened in the state, one of the first who was doing the job while the construction workers were still terminating wires and tacking up drywall. When a new supervisory position was created, all of my coworkers assumed I’d be the first one picked but I was told my experience and wisdom would be better served on the job and teaching new hires the ropes.
Didn’t take long before I stopped giving a shit about promotions and left for a different company soon after. Telling someone their hard work has been rewarded with more work and not more money for rent is a good way to drain the motivation right out of people you manage.
Before I go on, your comment is valid and I fully agree with you. I am not saying this is the case with you, but presenting the other side of the coin. Just because you’re the highest performer at a position does not mean you’re necessarily the best fit for a promotion. I work with plenty of people who were promoted for being the hardest workers. They are now managers who flounder because they cannot work hard to impress. They need to lead a team of hard workers, which requires a different set of traits than being a hard worker yourself. My manager when I started was promoted for being the hardest worker. That was all she knew how to do. She could not lead people. Couldn’t give constructive criticism, could not take constructive criticism. Any idea that was not her idea was not a good idea. Wanted to rule with an iron fist and feel important, but could not do anything that would actually get her there. Extremely hard worker though, and the work she did do was on point. Just could not lead a team. It’s shitty, but it’s the truth.
It may also be that someone does not WANT to be promoted. I get high praise from higher ups, everyone iny group comes to me for suggestions and advice.
I am, pretty low on the totem pole. I have no desire to move up to a position where Inspend more time making spreadsheets into lies tomplease upper management than doing actual tangible work. Plus the company seems like its always fucking over managers randomly the higher you go. Feels more secure down here.
Don’t hate on yourself for not wanting to move up. Your job is valuable, or people wouldn’t give you money to do it. If you’re asking me, there’s a certain respect you have to give people who prioritize their happiness over money or status. It’s the opposite of greed, which I find commendable. What’s the point of money if you’re not happy enough to enjoy it?
You may one day find yourself in a company or position where you do want to move up. But for now there’s no shame in being content.
Hall of fame tier athletes often struggle as coaches after their playing careers are over, in large part because they don’t necessarily know how to coach people who don’t have the same level of talent/skill/physical gifts/hustle they do.
making yourself irreplaceable cuts both ways, sadly enough.
Totally worth it. You get the real raises from new jobs. If you were so irreplaceable, then they’d pay you for it.
Never accept a counter offer. They’ll just keep you on long enough to find any replacement. The counter offer is just so they lose less money over the next few months.
Cries in Bob.
That said I’m a Bob who loves what I do and gets paid handsomely for it so que sera sera.
Experienced employees often make bad managers because they want to step in and do the work for other people, rather than handling all the status updated and workload balancing and reporting and new hiring that supervisors deal with.
If you’re a skilled specialist and you’re doing a challenging task there’s little reason to believe you shouldn’t be paid more than your direct reports.
In a good organization (and this includes nonprofits and government agencies), there should be two paths to climb: a managerial track where you get responsibility for larger and larger units, and a technical/specialist track where you get entrusted with more and more difficult technical work.
For some roles, it’s even common for specialized workers to make more money than the people who manage/supervise them.
Shit when im the first one in, i leave the lights off. Then i get mad at the person who eventually turns them on. If i have to be in that early, i dont also want to be miserable from the bright lights
“Why are you sitting here in the dark?”
Uhh, my computer is lit up and I can hear the damn fluorescent lights when I’m sitting there alone, piss off and let me drink my coffee in peace.
I knew a guy who kept his office dark except for a little desk lamp. He said he preferred cold and darkness. One time when we all walked to a group lunch in below freezing weather, I was shivering in my down jacket and he had shorts and an aloha shirt. Freaking reptile!
was it a UV desk light?
His chair is just a boulder.
And he didn’t really go out for lunch with them, he just rubbed his skin against some moss.
I’ve learned to be the one to turn the lights off. It pisses the boss off but ensures everyone knows the shift is over
If I turned the office lights off at the end of my workday, it’ll just annoy the people who are still working. 🤷🏻♂️
That’s why I do it. They should be working smarter, not longer anyway.
Having a work ethic is a fine thing. Just don’t let sleazy employers take advantage of it, because you’ll get nothing in return.
Providing labour for free is a clown exercise
Can confirm
“In this company we’re like family.”
If you pride yourself on being a hard worker just know that everyone else is in a group chat without you.
Repeatedly devalue workers through layoffs and never promoting
Workers give up trying to climb the corporate ladder and do the bare minimum
surprised pikachu
They taught me this shit as a kid when my dad got laid off. “This quarter” thinking can have very long-term consequences.
Nobody wants to work 🤡
Fuck you. Pay me.
So you turn on the lights, get your coffee and read your newspaper/browse your phone until someone else is actually there.
Then you do the same thing once you are the only person left.
Congratulations. Flipping on and off lightswitches is the shittiest metric a company can seek and is evidence of bad management.
It’s stock-in-trade Boomerism. As though the social contract hadn’t already been obliterated by parasitical corporations and rampant nepotism and Peter-Principled middle management.
To say nothing of the capability trap that most large corps are in, after a decade plus of finance junkying themselves into a hole, because free debt was more profitable than their actual business ventures.
Fuck these zombies. Let them implode- the way an actual free market demands.
Boomers know this ain’t sustainable but they only got 20 years left so they need this bitch to feed their retirement… Fuck every one else
Hence, why owners will cater to boomers needs some but mostly to fears in practice
Congratulations. Flipping on and off lightswitches is the shittiest metric a company can seek and is evidence of bad management.
There’s an economic i enjoy reading names Richard Wolfe who bemoans the capitalist mentality of counting towards on productivity.
You clock in and you count up the hours. You get on the factory floor and you count up the widgets you’ve made that day. You check your portfolio and count up all the money you’ve made.
There’s no concept of an upper bound. No idea how much you actually need or benefit from. One more is always desirable.
But what if, instead of counting up, we counted down? Know we need 10 widgets every day, so we count down until they’re finished. Know we need 10 tasks done so we count down until they’re completed. Know we need $100 to pay our bills, so we count down until we’ve earned it. Then we go home and enjoy our lives, rather than grinding endlessly at the millstone to build a surplus nobody asked for.
Even if you are productive from the minute you walk in to the minute you leave… who does that even benefit? Are you doing anything genuinely useful or just doing bullshit jobs to look busy? Are you reducing the workload of your peers or creating extra work for other people?
Because in the latter case, you’re not a hard worker. You’re a ballooning expense. Everyone behaving like you would be a disaster for your employer and your community at large.
Look, a company makes money by not giving you, the worker, the surplus the company made.
There’s no concept of an upper bound. No idea how much you actually need or benefit from. One more is always desirable.
They expect infinite growth.
In biology they call that “cancer” and if not stopped it destroys the host system.
Isn’t this how Japan’s work ethic started?
If I saw one of my employees being the first one in the office turning on the lights as well as the last one turning them off, I’d see that as a problem.
I’d talk to that worker and first ask why they were doing this as I’d be concerned that they may be having trouble at home (and were using work as an escape). I’d want to find out if there was anything they needed to help their home situation. When you manage people, their home problems become your problems. The corollary to this is that a solution for a personal home problem can become a solution to a workplace problem. I had one worker that had difficulty at work because they didn’t have working laundry facilities which affected them wearing presentable clothing at work. I bought them a new laundry appliance for $500 and had it delivered. After that they were always dressed presentably at work. This was a very good worker otherwise, and this fixed the work problem as well as helped them at home in their personal life.
If they communicated they believed the “first in, last out” was their understanding of the work expectation, I’d correct them on that immediately. One of my favorite phrases to use at work are “There are days I might have to ask you to stay later. This is not that day. There’s nothing urgent that can’t wait for tomorrow. Go home early.” (these are salary folks, so they’re not losing money by leaving early).
If they communicated they were overworked, I’d work with them on the tasks to make sure they were only getting assigned a reasonable workload. This may mean hiring another worker, or eliminating tasks that don’t produce a meaningful result to the company to make sure the workload would be reasonable.
Requiring your workers to be “butts in seats” (mine are WFH anyway) simply to be tick a box is the fastest way to lose your best people as it is disrespectful of their skills and their effort. Further, well rested workers (mentally and physically) perform far better than exhausted and stressed ones.
This is a manager ethic that probably gets you too much loyalty and effective people. Bleugh. Who needs that? ;-)
Sorry but this 9 hour comment could have been a paragraph. Your one of those bosses who believes their words are more important than everyone else’s arent ya
Sorry but this 9 hour comment could have been a paragraph.
19 sentences is 9 hours of reading for you?
Your one of those bosses who believes their words are more important than everyone else’s arent ya
Sorry friend, I just care about the people that work for me. Many times that means gaining understanding of their needs and situations, in other words: empathy. I’m not going to make assumptions and then cast judgment on them based on my bad my assumptions. I’m going to ask them so we communicate with one another and each gain an understanding so we can work together on it.
Until we somehow develop telepathy, communications require words. People communicate differently and sometimes that requires more words. However, if you’ve got that telepathy thing figured out, let me know! I’d be interested!
End of year performance review.
“We think your performance this year has been ok. Not great, not bad, just ok. We can’t justify a bonus for you this year with senior management.”
“But I am always the last one out every night and have been nearly all year.”
“Really, I wouldn’t know. I never stick around that late. Now that reminds me, there were those two days last month where you were seen leaving early. We don’t appreciate that lack of work ethic at this company.”
“It was because I had stayed back late the previous days!”
They were never going to justify a bonus anyway. They just want you to feel like it’s your fault.
deleted by creator
*writing on notepad*
struggles… with… time… management.
I’ve had a version of this scenario happen twice. The last time, when I literally closed double the tickets of the next person down, I was only just doing what was expected of me.
Absolute truth! Your boss will forget the dozen days you stayed after hours, the first time you come in late.
Happened to me, didn’t matter to him that 75% of the time I worked through my lunch, didnt matter that 3-4 times per month I either came in early or stayed late to finish up a task.
One day, I came in 20 minutes late, got called in later that week by my manager to, “talk about my tardiness issue.”
I volunteered to take on work at the office while everyone else went to WFH during the lockdowns. I was buying, repairing, and otherwise issuing equipment to people and shipping it to them. Thousands of pieces of gear for thousands of employees. I’m IT so naturally if it used electricity it was our business (and sometimes even if it didn’t), and that meant I was handling everything from monitor stands to standing desks to computers. I handled all of it, repaired tons of equipment, saved us 10s of thousands (likely more than my own salary)…
Performance review: satisfactory.
And with that I switched to WFH. Fuck em.
This made me far more angry than your frying pan, just gotta say.
Aww I’m glad I stir your emotions sweet friend.
I could even recycle my comment from there:
https://lemmy.world/comment/14109469Sometimes you have to use some pot as meat tenderizer…
Lemme put my work ethic in the dishwasher first
Hahahaha talk about corporate propaganda. I feel sorry for the poor schlub that reads this and is like “yeah, I’m gonna do that”.
Capitalism promises everybody can be above average. In reality, a big majority of people is putting in an above average effort, but earning and owning way below it. Because some slobs in top positions vacuum up the doe while mostly stalling.
It is, unironically, good advice for new hires because it signals enthusiasm and work ethic. Getting in early let’s you talk to people before they’re swamped. Coffee room chatter is a good way to meet people and build relationships. Beating the traffic means less stress through your day.
But once you start having a real life, this doesn’t work. Dogs need walks. Kids come first. You’re not a 20 year old with lots of free time anymore, so you can’t indulge your boss with the fantasy that you exist exclusively for the benefit of the firm.
I turn the lights on in the morning and make coffee. Because I’m the only one that knows how to make coffee that doesn’t taste like dirty water. Has nothing to do with work ethic and everything to do with coffee.
I turn the lights on in the morning because “lmao I’m off at 3 to beat the traffic, suckers”.
Fresh filter, water, and more than 3 kernels of coffee grounds?
Look, I appreciate op’s point and your point, but let’s not pretend that coffee is anything other than dirt water. In my experience, you’ve got the correct recipe. Easy.
But if you cook the dirt water for too long, the dirt gets a bad flavor.
Thank thee for thy works, thou serv’st our Dark Lord well.
