There is a reason unions use "work to rule": it shuts the company down. So when they say
> Turn up on time. Do your job. Do it right. Do whatever is asked of you provided it's lawful, reasonable. [...] Do not one thing more than that.
they are essentially saying do nothing that is not asked of you; that is to say, do nothing that requires agency on your part. That's not something that organizationally companies are able to afford.
As an individual worker, that strategy probably will work in keeping your job, at least in good times. That's not to say it'd be a fulfilling job--I need some sense of personal agency at work for happiness, but plenty of people don't--but it satisfies the goal of maximizing income while minimizing stress.
But if that attitude becomes more widespread than it already is, companies will then create or prioritize jobs categories that assume no agency on the part of employees. These jobs are both more depressing, more subject to automation, and lower paying than the ones that expect personal agency.
>But if that attitude becomes more widespread than it already is, companies will then create or prioritize jobs categories that assume no agency on the part of employees. These jobs are both more depressing, more subject to automation, and lower paying than the ones that expect personal agency.
Companies have a strong preference for this kind of job. They need no additional encouragement to create them and havent since the beginning of the 19th century.
Ironically, I think they tend to be a lot less subject to automation even if the companies clearly want it more. Amazon automates the hell out of its warehouses and for the remaining tasks it tries to robotize humans.
Not sure I can fully agree; it will just create a downward cycle. The approach doesn’t allow for excellence or gaining satisfaction through doing quality work. However, many jobs are joyless and I think it’s vicious cycle and something has to be done to address these empty of value businesses that are the typical culprits of crappy, overworked jobs.
The problem is the seemingly ubiquitous paucity of quality management - there is literally no one appreciating your effort. Many managers, right up to a CX level are so detached from the purpose of the business they manage they can’t determine whether work done good or not.
My belief is this general lack of appreciation of excellence and intrinsic disinterest in excellence is the creation of the Friedman/Welch school of business - that the purpose of a business is to maximise value to shareholders. I see this as abstract and empty. It removes any value placed on, “we create great products that out customers love,” and replaces it with the dollar reward for shareholders. Make great products everyone wants? Why bother when you can create crap products with misused staff that are cheaply produced that returns more dividends for our shareholders. If you have talent and can produce quality go somewhere where you are appreciated. If you don’t, maybe go with the Homer Simpson approach and sink those companies who equally can’t deliver.
I’m guessing a lot of the people in here bashing this attitude towards work are employed in tech jobs with good salaries, high levels of autonomy, and company stock options.
I don’t think this article is geared towards people who have it that good.
We used to call this “doing the least amount you have to do to get by”. And it is what I did in high school - kinda before I learned that having pride in what you do - no matter what that is - is essential to your success and happiness.
I wish these folks the best in figuring that out that hard way.
The problem is that having pride in your work no longer gets you as far as it used to. Many jobs have no room for advancement, and many people are stuck in cog-like retail roles in which rising through the ranks yields an extra few dollars an hour.
The people on HN are more likely to be in well-paying roles that have lots of room for advancement.
>They’re disillusioned and it’s because they are better acquainted with today’s labour market than their critics. It’s not the Eighties anymore. You can’t graft your way to an ex-council house, uPVC windows, a Ford Escort and two weeks on the Costa Brava. You can’t go in at the bottom and work your way to the top. Men born in the late 1980s were at least twice as likely to begin their careers in low-paid jobs than those born in the 1970s. They have also climbed the ladder more slowly. Women born in the late Eighties started their careers at the same level of the labour market as those born in the Sixties.
I do think this is bad for society, and it is bad for people; but, it's also the reality for a lot of people.
Reminds me of Billing’s character quote on The Shield:
Steve Billings : I'll be back, all right - putting in my required hours, mandatory paper work. But as far as effort goes, I don't know what's between zero and the city mandate minimum, but from now on, let's call that "the Billings".
I go hard and let off the gas or “quiet quit” at different times throughout the year. I have work and non work goals that get varying priority. I suspect those that don’t would benefit from a hobby. But also if they are grinding for a work goal who are you to stop them?
Is it possible to have hobbies as a tech worker, if you're a programmer and your hobby is programming? Don't most employment contracts say that anything you build as a hobby belongs to the company? In that case it's not a hobby.
Doing the expected well ('quality work') is fairly safe. But, once you start putting out more product/effort than is required by the job description,
1. That level becomes the new norm - and is expected of you regardless of your pay. (Expect to be treated better? Probably not.)
2. You may set yourself up for resentment from your fellow workers (a lesson I was once taught in hard and multiple ways in an industrial setting.)
In my nonprofit public policy advocacy (lobbying, really) job out of grad school (I was 33 when I got my MSW), I worked my butt off. Went in early, stayed late, worked most weekends. I LOVED the work. This continued until I got married at 40. And then I wanted to spend time with my husband and his kids. Guess what. . . The weekend work stopped, at least the bulk of it. My board chair said something to me one day about my productivity tapering off. I took it as an observation, not complaint or criticism. And then I explained I got married blah blah blah. She totally understood.
I have to say, though, that the hard work and commitment was worth it. Not long after I was married, my husband had a cancer scare. The board and executive director gave me all the time off I needed to help him recover and none of the time was charged to PTO. A colleague was given the day off of work to hang with me while he had surgery. I took a month off and then left work early for probably another month. Work sent food the day we got home from the hospital. Sure, I worked when my husband was sleeping, but I was not anywhere near 100%.
Big question is: with GDP still growing at an (averagely) healthy per-capita rate, where does the difference go if whole generation - and in 40 years, real per capita GDP doubled in the U.S. - is worse off than the one before? Is it the inequality that sucked in all difference - that is, that money is all taken by top 1-10%?
This is a really important question; the answer is yes. Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the 21st century is a thesis on this topic and I would highly recommend it if you are interested in hard data on wealth inequality.
In my experience, this mentality or approach ends up being terrible for a few (i.e. the ones that end up having to do the work) and a net-negative for all. It breeds a culture of deception that feeds on itself and creates widespread insecurity. Not an enjoyable way to spend a big chunk of your life.
It ends up being terrible for people doing the work temporarily until they get promoted. Correlation between actually doing the work and career progression is pretty strong until you get into middle management/sr IC levels.
If quoting Marx didn't convey the ridiculousness of this article, I'll state it clearly: this is a sure way to depression and no-one will start a revolution while they're busy scrolling Twitter on their leased iPhones.
You shouldn't do more than you're contracted to do, don't work overtime, work smart.
Within the hours you're working and within the amount of stress you can tolerate, give your best, take responsibility and take the best decisions. Sure, if your employer win you're not guaranteed a win (hence why you're not overworking, and why people with equity tend to overwork more) but there is a higher chance of personal fortune if your employer doesn't go broke.
When you have a quiet quitter on your team, it's obvious to the rest of the team that they're carrying that person, and they resent it.
They'll claim they're doing acceptable work, but only in their own eyes. They invariably have a bad attitude and make work more of a drudgery just by being around. Team morale suffers because of their insufferable selfishness.
Everyone has to be a hero in their own narrative, and the quiet quitter is a hero in their own mind by sticking it to the man. What they don't see or care about is the rest of the team.
> When you have a quiet quitter on your team, it's obvious to the rest of the team that they're carrying that person, and they resent it.
I have no problem with quiet coworkers. Their salary does not go out of my pocket. In contrast to them, I can appear even more competent. If the team does not meet some arbitrary deadline, it's not my problem -- I can show you the list of Jira tickets that I completed, and it's not my fault that the company decided not to hire more people for the project.
I am not in the business of persecuting my fellow human beings. Not because I am an angel, but simply because I literally have no incentive to do so.
Hypothetically, suppose that I get super resentful towards a quiet colleague, and I expose his behavior, and I get him fired. Congratulations! What happens next? Most likely, instead of hiring a replacement, the company will simply split that little amount of work he used to do among the remaining team members. Without increasing our salaries, of course. So now I have successfully harmed all team members, including myself. Why would I do that?
Also, you often do not know what is happening in your coworkers' private lives. Maybe their parents or their kids are dying of cancer, and they just can't find in themselves the energy for enthusiastic unpaid overtime. Or maybe not, and they are merely exhausted. It's not my business to investigate.
Doing the minimum or being lazy is pretty bad advice. The smart move is to educate yourself on how to organize a union and put together a game plan. This is what corporations are really afraid of and that is because it's the one thing that gives you power. Get bent with the Bolshevik revolution crap. The goal isn't to end up in a worse place.
I'm done busting my ass, doing top tier work as the expectation, for shit pay. Pay me the bare minimum you can, don't expect me to work more or harder than then minimum _I_ can. Especially after years of nothing but stellar reviews, and a token 3% raise yearly. The goal isn't to end up in a worse place, but you also shouldn't let yourself be taken advantage of out of fear of the unknown.
I agree and identify strongly with this article.
> Turn up on time. Do your job. Do it right. Do whatever is asked of you provided it's lawful, reasonable. [...] Do not one thing more than that.
You're hurting the people who will be fired if they don't pick up your slack.
I left an employer without notice not long ago where the prevailing attitude was more or less to do the minimum you could without being terminated and let the on-calls pick up the slack, after being "accidentally" placed on-call for roughly 7 weeks.
It literally destroyed my life in every possible way.
I'm not even open to working in that industry anymore.
The buck has to stop somewhere or the checks stop coming.
This is essentially open advocation for sociopathy.
You’re blaming your previous colleagues for management apathy/incompetency and your own choice to not have left sooner. I have sympathy as someone previously in on call rotations, but I’m also sufficiently experienced to know to get out at the first sign of boundaries violations (7 weeks!?).
Take better care of yourself going forward, no one else will. That is what the message is, self care over a nebulous business.
I'm sorry that happened to you, I was stuck in a place with a similarly unstructured on-call schedule and it equally made my life hell. It felt like the sword of Damocles hanging over my head, unfortunately there was no support structure or understanding of the fact that on-call is not a substitute for architecture.
I left. The colleagues I left behind could handle the situation better than me and still work there. And I don't fault them either, the on-call schedule as well as how it was run was defined by management. Down the line that experience made me violently advocate for my current team not to be on-call, and with a bit of luck and support I was able to pull it off. The result was demonstrably more stable services and a team that can spend more time on high value work. Which is to say: change is possible. Sometimes.
Buddy you had every ability to half ass that on-call and no one would have faulted you for it and it would have resulted in the corporation realizing they needed to harden that duty better.
I’m very sympathetic to how you were impacted, and have also suffered fairly severely (multiple years of physically painful burnout symptoms) from prolonged overwork. In my case it was about 6 months.
I can’t say I’m sympathetic to your analysis at all. I don’t blame any of my coworkers who were able to work according to their actual express duties and not beyond, not one bit. I find it appalling that anyone would describe that as “sociopathy”, even in colloquial terms. With few exceptions, people are employed by organizations explicitly designed to extract as much value from every resource—human or otherwise—for as little expense as possible. And they’re employed or managed by people who either benefit from that or reinforce it. Speaking of colloquial (albeit wrong) use of the term “sociopathy”, that sure sounds like a perfect fit to me.
Even if someone extends their effort just a little bit and it’s not traumatic in the way you and I have experienced, they’re generally trading part of the most precious thing they’ll ever have, time, to enrich someone else at their expense.
The point of fulfilling your duties, and doing no more, isn’t to “hurt the corporation”, it’s to protect yourself from being harmed by it as you and I have. This is, curiously, where I find myself more philosophically at odds with the article than I think you are. The article advocates for quietly acquiescing to the fact of exploitative work expectations by quietly sneaking some semblance of not being exploited. You advocate for more people sharing the burden of being exploited, more evenly. Maybe Homer Simpson and America are wrong, and a healthy organized labor movement which prioritizes solidarity between workers, at the expense of employers and management where their priorities are harmful is a better compromise with reality than either “hope I don’t get caught doing my job and only my job” or “I’m destroying my life because my peers aren’t willing to destroy theirs along with me”.
The buck does have to stop somewhere. Why does it have to stop with the people who will likely suffer as we've suffered? Why are they the focus of ire and not the expectation that they sacrifice themselves too?
[+] [-] scarmig|3 years ago|reply
> Turn up on time. Do your job. Do it right. Do whatever is asked of you provided it's lawful, reasonable. [...] Do not one thing more than that.
they are essentially saying do nothing that is not asked of you; that is to say, do nothing that requires agency on your part. That's not something that organizationally companies are able to afford.
As an individual worker, that strategy probably will work in keeping your job, at least in good times. That's not to say it'd be a fulfilling job--I need some sense of personal agency at work for happiness, but plenty of people don't--but it satisfies the goal of maximizing income while minimizing stress.
But if that attitude becomes more widespread than it already is, companies will then create or prioritize jobs categories that assume no agency on the part of employees. These jobs are both more depressing, more subject to automation, and lower paying than the ones that expect personal agency.
[+] [-] pydry|3 years ago|reply
Companies have a strong preference for this kind of job. They need no additional encouragement to create them and havent since the beginning of the 19th century.
Ironically, I think they tend to be a lot less subject to automation even if the companies clearly want it more. Amazon automates the hell out of its warehouses and for the remaining tasks it tries to robotize humans.
[+] [-] Ycombigatorz|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] avastmick|3 years ago|reply
The problem is the seemingly ubiquitous paucity of quality management - there is literally no one appreciating your effort. Many managers, right up to a CX level are so detached from the purpose of the business they manage they can’t determine whether work done good or not.
My belief is this general lack of appreciation of excellence and intrinsic disinterest in excellence is the creation of the Friedman/Welch school of business - that the purpose of a business is to maximise value to shareholders. I see this as abstract and empty. It removes any value placed on, “we create great products that out customers love,” and replaces it with the dollar reward for shareholders. Make great products everyone wants? Why bother when you can create crap products with misused staff that are cheaply produced that returns more dividends for our shareholders. If you have talent and can produce quality go somewhere where you are appreciated. If you don’t, maybe go with the Homer Simpson approach and sink those companies who equally can’t deliver.
[+] [-] plantwallshoe|3 years ago|reply
I don’t think this article is geared towards people who have it that good.
[+] [-] suprjami|3 years ago|reply
Like the work I already have.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] listless|3 years ago|reply
I wish these folks the best in figuring that out that hard way.
[+] [-] charles_kaw|3 years ago|reply
The people on HN are more likely to be in well-paying roles that have lots of room for advancement.
>They’re disillusioned and it’s because they are better acquainted with today’s labour market than their critics. It’s not the Eighties anymore. You can’t graft your way to an ex-council house, uPVC windows, a Ford Escort and two weeks on the Costa Brava. You can’t go in at the bottom and work your way to the top. Men born in the late 1980s were at least twice as likely to begin their careers in low-paid jobs than those born in the 1970s. They have also climbed the ladder more slowly. Women born in the late Eighties started their careers at the same level of the labour market as those born in the Sixties.
I do think this is bad for society, and it is bad for people; but, it's also the reality for a lot of people.
[+] [-] pelagicAustral|3 years ago|reply
Steve Billings : I'll be back, all right - putting in my required hours, mandatory paper work. But as far as effort goes, I don't know what's between zero and the city mandate minimum, but from now on, let's call that "the Billings".
[+] [-] blinded|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jart|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|3 years ago|reply
1. That level becomes the new norm - and is expected of you regardless of your pay. (Expect to be treated better? Probably not.) 2. You may set yourself up for resentment from your fellow workers (a lesson I was once taught in hard and multiple ways in an industrial setting.)
[+] [-] susiecambria|3 years ago|reply
In my nonprofit public policy advocacy (lobbying, really) job out of grad school (I was 33 when I got my MSW), I worked my butt off. Went in early, stayed late, worked most weekends. I LOVED the work. This continued until I got married at 40. And then I wanted to spend time with my husband and his kids. Guess what. . . The weekend work stopped, at least the bulk of it. My board chair said something to me one day about my productivity tapering off. I took it as an observation, not complaint or criticism. And then I explained I got married blah blah blah. She totally understood.
I have to say, though, that the hard work and commitment was worth it. Not long after I was married, my husband had a cancer scare. The board and executive director gave me all the time off I needed to help him recover and none of the time was charged to PTO. A colleague was given the day off of work to hang with me while he had surgery. I took a month off and then left work early for probably another month. Work sent food the day we got home from the hospital. Sure, I worked when my husband was sleeping, but I was not anywhere near 100%.
[+] [-] anovikov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mouzogu|3 years ago|reply
100% agree. upper management does almost zero real work and gets paid 5-50x more than you.
relationship with employer is purely business transaction, if not from you, then 110% from them.
[+] [-] anovikov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliotto|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RalfWausE|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] euroderf|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w3gv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfadsadsf|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokethrowaway|3 years ago|reply
You shouldn't do more than you're contracted to do, don't work overtime, work smart. Within the hours you're working and within the amount of stress you can tolerate, give your best, take responsibility and take the best decisions. Sure, if your employer win you're not guaranteed a win (hence why you're not overworking, and why people with equity tend to overwork more) but there is a higher chance of personal fortune if your employer doesn't go broke.
[+] [-] tomohawk|3 years ago|reply
They'll claim they're doing acceptable work, but only in their own eyes. They invariably have a bad attitude and make work more of a drudgery just by being around. Team morale suffers because of their insufferable selfishness.
Everyone has to be a hero in their own narrative, and the quiet quitter is a hero in their own mind by sticking it to the man. What they don't see or care about is the rest of the team.
[+] [-] Viliam1234|3 years ago|reply
I have no problem with quiet coworkers. Their salary does not go out of my pocket. In contrast to them, I can appear even more competent. If the team does not meet some arbitrary deadline, it's not my problem -- I can show you the list of Jira tickets that I completed, and it's not my fault that the company decided not to hire more people for the project.
I am not in the business of persecuting my fellow human beings. Not because I am an angel, but simply because I literally have no incentive to do so.
Hypothetically, suppose that I get super resentful towards a quiet colleague, and I expose his behavior, and I get him fired. Congratulations! What happens next? Most likely, instead of hiring a replacement, the company will simply split that little amount of work he used to do among the remaining team members. Without increasing our salaries, of course. So now I have successfully harmed all team members, including myself. Why would I do that?
Also, you often do not know what is happening in your coworkers' private lives. Maybe their parents or their kids are dying of cancer, and they just can't find in themselves the energy for enthusiastic unpaid overtime. Or maybe not, and they are merely exhausted. It's not my business to investigate.
[+] [-] Flankk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PenguinCoder|3 years ago|reply
I agree and identify strongly with this article.
> Turn up on time. Do your job. Do it right. Do whatever is asked of you provided it's lawful, reasonable. [...] Do not one thing more than that.
[+] [-] gu0xeibaiBiequo|3 years ago|reply
You're hurting the people who will be fired if they don't pick up your slack.
I left an employer without notice not long ago where the prevailing attitude was more or less to do the minimum you could without being terminated and let the on-calls pick up the slack, after being "accidentally" placed on-call for roughly 7 weeks.
It literally destroyed my life in every possible way.
I'm not even open to working in that industry anymore.
The buck has to stop somewhere or the checks stop coming.
This is essentially open advocation for sociopathy.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|3 years ago|reply
Take better care of yourself going forward, no one else will. That is what the message is, self care over a nebulous business.
[+] [-] dotgov|3 years ago|reply
I left. The colleagues I left behind could handle the situation better than me and still work there. And I don't fault them either, the on-call schedule as well as how it was run was defined by management. Down the line that experience made me violently advocate for my current team not to be on-call, and with a bit of luck and support I was able to pull it off. The result was demonstrably more stable services and a team that can spend more time on high value work. Which is to say: change is possible. Sometimes.
[+] [-] kinos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eyelidlessness|3 years ago|reply
I can’t say I’m sympathetic to your analysis at all. I don’t blame any of my coworkers who were able to work according to their actual express duties and not beyond, not one bit. I find it appalling that anyone would describe that as “sociopathy”, even in colloquial terms. With few exceptions, people are employed by organizations explicitly designed to extract as much value from every resource—human or otherwise—for as little expense as possible. And they’re employed or managed by people who either benefit from that or reinforce it. Speaking of colloquial (albeit wrong) use of the term “sociopathy”, that sure sounds like a perfect fit to me.
Even if someone extends their effort just a little bit and it’s not traumatic in the way you and I have experienced, they’re generally trading part of the most precious thing they’ll ever have, time, to enrich someone else at their expense.
The point of fulfilling your duties, and doing no more, isn’t to “hurt the corporation”, it’s to protect yourself from being harmed by it as you and I have. This is, curiously, where I find myself more philosophically at odds with the article than I think you are. The article advocates for quietly acquiescing to the fact of exploitative work expectations by quietly sneaking some semblance of not being exploited. You advocate for more people sharing the burden of being exploited, more evenly. Maybe Homer Simpson and America are wrong, and a healthy organized labor movement which prioritizes solidarity between workers, at the expense of employers and management where their priorities are harmful is a better compromise with reality than either “hope I don’t get caught doing my job and only my job” or “I’m destroying my life because my peers aren’t willing to destroy theirs along with me”.
The buck does have to stop somewhere. Why does it have to stop with the people who will likely suffer as we've suffered? Why are they the focus of ire and not the expectation that they sacrifice themselves too?
[+] [-] anm89|3 years ago|reply