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'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.
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.
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'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?
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!”
*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.
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!
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.
I managed an auto parts warehouse with a small fleet of delivery drivers, I was the one with the code to the alarm and they keys to everything. Sometimes if I had trouble sleeping or was a bit hungover from imbibing too much I’d sleep in and roll up to the shop around 9-10 instead of 7. Not a single one of my employees ever had an issue with starting the day later and I didn’t care about them leaving early to pick up kids or whatever. Long as you show up and shit gets done I’m putting the same hours on all your paychecks anyways
We work a lot of hard, long hours in my field. Occasionally I get a fuck off easy job but that's only when business is slow. I'm the lead tech on every job. I also have a bad problem waking up in the morning. Despite being fully sober and getting at least 7 hours of sleep, I sleep through my alarms which are incredibly loud and annoying, and they're set 5 minutes apart for two hours. Guys who know me know that they can go in, do their work, and if I'm late I let them go early by the amount of time I am late. I'm often finishing the job by myself at night.
That's ok though. That's the way the world should work. I'm not a morning person. Waking up is literally the worst thing that happens to me every day barring tragedies or serious injuries. It's so much worse in the winter too.
I would rather sustain the injuries than to wake up half the time, regardless of how much or little sleep I've gotten. I feel your pain. Genetic night watchmen unite! Whichever morning person decided the world should exist 9-5 should be dragged into the street and shot.
I once took a programming / analyst job specifically because it was at least partially a night shift. I had to be free to work alongside a team on the other side of the planet for a few hours a day. Best job I ever had, I'd still be doing it if they hadn't run out of projects for us to do.
I can stay up all night if you need me to, but fuck waking up early.
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).
I have a work ethic. My work ethic is to be paid fairly for my labor.
Gus Catlson: US based company consultant who writes for right based Canadian newspaper Globe & Mail. Also was a director at that newspaper. Was in charge of communications for the Thompson Reuters merger. Has a Pulitzer from 1992, but beyond that its all business reporting and opinion pieces.
Everything in his background tells me he hasn't had to work insane hours in decades. He hasn't had a boss ask him to work 10 - 20 extra hours just to have a 2% increase at the end of the year. He was in charge of a Canadian major newspaper, which aren't known for paying a proper wage. So he knows he's lying, he's just annoyed people want to have lives.
Bill Carroll from CFRA (talk radio) is constantly going on about how we need to get people back to the office 5 days a week to save downtown businesses.
He broadcasts from his home well outside the city.
Canada's rightoids and libs have a long history of being incredibly hypocritical.
Yeah, its troll shit so managers repeat it and then we all suffer. I wish someone would force them to go through it, but they'd probably learn nothing in the end.
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.
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..
Plus if you're the last one out, you can steal all the office supplies and sell them on eBay.
Company Objective: Pay minimum, Gain maximum work
My Objective: Gain maximum pay, work minimum
You know how a country has their country prioritized? (eg: "America First") Well I have a similar idea: "Me First". Fuck the company. They are maximizing their profits, I'm gonna maximize my profits.
Sounds like someone who's really, really bad at managing their time 🤷♂️
earn more money with one weird trick! your family will hate you!
That's a year old article by a bootlicker
This is a ticket to being seen as insufferable.
So if the same person is opening and closing, what is everyone else doing? If you're going to saddle one employee with an important duty, you better have adequate compensation and opportunities.
There should be one person doing those tasks for most companies - the owner- who retains a lion's share of the surplus value created by their workers.
Employees don't owe the business anything other than their contracted labor. We are just still suffering the inertia of class traitors in the enormous Baby Boomer cohort, who made the work their entire identity, and who frankly love the taste of boot.
I work just hard enough not to get fired
Peter? Yo man, check out channel 9!
I’ve reached a point in my career where I have the same luxury. I have two very impressive roles on my resume that will more or less guarantee that it goes into the pile of callbacks at many companies. The position that I hold now is one where I fuck off a great deal and get away with it because I’m good enough at my job to be able to do so. But I only got here by busting my ass and (nearly) killing myself to build the talent.
It shouldn’t have to be this way.
Pay me as little as you can get away with and I will work as little as I can get away with.
So, become the office janitor?
Actually, guys, boots are super tasty and licking them is very cool.
This gives big "Brian Johnson is a working class hero" vibes.
Even if you work at one of the rare unicorns where hard work is rewarded with raises and promotions, hard work has nothing to do with working extra hours. Fuck off with this "You need to be the first one in and last one out" shit.
Not just on the Americas side of the pond, apparently.
I'm applying for dozens and dozens of jobs right now in the UK, so I expect to get plenty of rejection emails, but today, Monday, two days before Christmas, 11 rejection emails so far, which is a record (I'm not upset, I am aware I will get far more rejections than interviews). Obviously people are working like crazy to get everything done right before Christmas, but I thought at least the UK was more relaxed on this stuff. You really couldn't wait until January to send out rejection emails? Gotta grind right up to Christmas?
Good luck, job searching is the worst. Last time I was in that boat, I jumped overboard and started my own. There came a point where I wasn't going to fill out the same fucking form again for another job I had no interest in doing.
It is and I hate it. In this case, though, I am both desperate and willing to live anywhere in the UK, which makes things a bit easier. I'm still supposed to have an interview today though.
Also, thank you.
Many might be automated emails. Some algorithm somewhere has decided that no human needs to see your resume.
You would think, but just before I checked my replies here, I got a text from a recruiter asking me if I was still interested in a job and I had an interview a couple of hours ago. 🤷
When you have nothing in you life but your job, are you even living at all? At the very least not a life that is worth living IMHO
If you want to play it that way: let me count my 2 hour commute through standstill traffic as paid hours.
As it should be. Both directions.
Yes! Pretend that you feel like this but do your own thing man. Show up to work excited but only do what you’re paid for or what they deserve.
It wants you to be a janitor?
You know thw thing is all the tales of really successful people arent about going to the office early and grinding down some stupid task a superior gave you but about following your dreams and putting effort into those. Quitting your job and taking out a loan to build a racecar or start helping people with pc repair or whatever your dream is, is better advice than putting any effort into something you hate. Its not work ethic but being a mindless slave.
Side tangent: I hate the term 'nuggets of wisdom. Seriously, only Tenders of Wisdom are much tastier.
Boneless Thighs of Wisdom
That's my thighdeology.
I have work ethic.
If work pays me the bare minimum then i will match them in-kind. It's only fair.
If by 'wisdom' you mean 'cancer'.
Lol what a brown noser
I have a work ethic. I guess some people wouldn't like mine, but I have one.
Everytime I see somebody systemically overworking and being proud of it, I think to myself: "how incompetent should he/she be to need to compensate that hard"
This article was published more than six months ago. Some information may no longer be accurate
Hehe.
Tryhard was only in fashion for a couple of days before it burnt out. Slacker reigns supreme by default!
"Work extra hours so that your boss is sure to notice how ready you are to give head."
Good luck to those wageslaves. I just do the bare minimum, I don't earn extra for going "above and beyond", nor doing so would increase my likelihood of being promoted.
if the most interesting aspect of a mf is their role at work there's probably zero percent chance I give a fuck about any aspect of their life anyway, opinions certainly included
I would take that awesome advice...
...if I was on a compressed hours working pattern, and I would absolutely be turning the lights on and locking the doors in the first half of the week, and fucking off early on Thursday. No dramas whatsoever. My 37 and a half hours will boxed off as early as sensibly possible.
Pulling a sixty hour week and getting paid for 37/40/42 though? Yeah nah fuck that.
As long as my boss is happy and satisfied, I don't give a shit. I usually work 8 hours on Monday, pretend I'm working the entire week and chill from Tuesday to Friday
Idk what's more upsetting: the fact that I was called out as a slacker. Or this slacker waited 6 months to post this... Either way, where both in the same boat... I feel called out.
Yeah djuwanowat, figure it out.
— Wayne
lol
Alternative title: How to be the best Tool, and still be completely disposable!
Everybody is down to work. They just aren't little bitches who say thank you when you abuse them.
Stop trying to make fetch happen
hope you choke on that nugget
