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.”
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.
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.
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 🤡
“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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
Every damn job where I tried to do this did not end well for me. I got treated like absolute shit and the people who abused me were praised for their actions even when they got fired after I was for trying to do the same shit to other people. It brought only harm to me and did not even benefit my employers all that much.
This advice makes you an exploitable schmuck and they will do that simply because they can.
I have a work ethic. My work ethic is to be paid fairly for my labor.
If you pride yourself on being a hard worker just know that everyone else is in a group chat without you.
Fuck you. Pay me.
the only people who want to put in longer hours at the office have absolutely nothing to go home to.
they should be pitied instead of being vilified. drop them a “get well soon” message in social media should you encounter them.
And if they have someone they should be getting home to, my experience is they won’t for long (cause and effect can sometimes flip, but outcome is the same).
No, no, this is good advice, actually. I mean, it is a pain to go to the office twice, but flipping a switch only takes seconds, and you have the rest of the day to fuck around.
I used to get paid four hours showup time to drive fourty five minuets in to the plant to push a reset button on a motor control station. Usually at two in the morning. Shift operators were not allowed to do this task as there may be a reason the the reset tripped. Drive back home, catch more sleep. Then show up for the regular shift at seven thirty…
So get woken at 2am, leave home at 2.30, arrive back home at 4.15 (15 mins to get to the button and check things) , fall asleep if you’re lucky by 5am, get woken by your alarm at 6 in the middle of REM sleep, shower, dress, leave at 6.45 for 7.30 arrival at work
I would be coming in late that day.
Often I did. 24/7 oncall made me a lot of cash. Sometimes I was the only one on the maintenance crew that was sober…
Plus if you’re the last one out, you can steal all the office supplies and sell them on eBay.
