[sp0rk]

> There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal?

I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees. It's difficult to take pride in work done for an employee that you aren't proud of, or actively dislike.

[palmotea]

>> There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal?

> I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees. It's difficult to take pride in work done for an employee that you aren't proud of, or actively dislike.

Also don't discount the pressure exerted by employers to explicitly encourage mediocrity. So often, there's a huge amount of pressure to implement a half-working kludge and never pursue a more appropriate/complete fix. IMHO, it's all due to the focus on short-term financial results and ever present budget pressures that encourage kicking the can down the road.

If your employer is explicitly discouraging you from doing a good job, what are you supposed to do? Some people will resist, but they're definitely swimming against the current.

[const_cast]

Most workers have learned that going above and beyond almost always backfires. Employers don't value long-term employment relationships, so working hard just results in you raising the bar for yourself, with no benefit.

A lot of these people were once starry-eyed highschoolers and college students who got burned too many times. They put in the time, the effort, the blood, sweat and tears, and what did they get? No thank you, just more work. Eventually they can't live up to the standard they themselves set, and they're let go. Meanwhile, bozos show up late and half-ass everything and then that becomes their expectation.

Nobody wants to be Atlas.

[WalterBright]

> it's all due to the focus on short-term financial results

I've heard that my whole life. If that were generally true, company stocks would be going steadily downwards.

[sahilagarwal]

This perfectly illustrates why I've always preferred working at startups over major corps including FAANG / MANGA.

There is a top down culture of not embracing mediocrity that genuinely makes me thrive at work. My current company has a good work life balance and if I make a point that some part of the system needs improvement, my voice actually gets heard. Only place I've seen where sprint retros actually made impact. Most of my friends have no work life balance and also don't have a voice when they see half-assed work.

The numbers showcase the effect of this as well. The startup has thrived even when VC's have tightened their purses.

[deadbabe]

Unfortunately it’s becoming more obvious that “short-term” is all we really have in this world. There is no long term.

So why plan for long term? Life is a series of short-term wins until you finally die. Same with companies. Things change so fast now that you could be crushing it one year and going out of business the next. It’s not like old days where you could setup a blacksmithing shop and have business for generations.

Results now are way better than results later.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

“ I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees.”

Exactly. Companies and wealthy people have cancelled the social contract a long time ago and have decided to go for profit at any cost. It’s hard to be excited about work when you know that you get raises below inflation rate while the company makes record profits. And the CEO may do a town hall claiming how great business is and then lay off people two weeks later. Or DOGE. In theory this is a good idea but instead of improving processes so government workers can do a good job they just laid off people and let the people who are left deal with the mess.

No wonder people become cynical.

[jauntywundrkind]

I'd also say we are lost in scale.

The supermassive corporate structures that have accreted together in the modern world are beyond the scale of imagining. We are familiar with a vastly smaller % of the org chart, as the size of that chart balloons.

I tend to think there used to be a connection within and across the corporate entity, more shared purposes, shared cause/alignment, and perhaps sometimes at successful places ability for the good ideas to rise. Large companies sometimes love to preach "intrapreneurial" spirit, encourage the individual will & ownership, all while refusing to acknowledge the constraints & impositions of corporate hierarchy, the lack of freedom, that the large organizational structure imposes.

I think there's a real muting of the human will at most large companies, and that caring and trying is only permitted in very narrow scopes. That only some folks are able to maintain will and drive, while fitting themselves into the particular shapes demanded by the org chart around them. At the smaller scale we are not individually abutted by so many others to whom a concern may be charged.

(The impacts of what behaviors we see around us are also bounded by these forces, dimish our spirit collectively too. We grow up & adult in a world where everyone is buried deep in an org chart.)

[nyarlathotep_]

In software specifically, we're now at year two+ where the entirety of investment and innovation is in literally replacing people.

We have CEOs and prominent figureheads making openly hostile statements about replacing their software workforce with LLMs, and coming out with bold proclamations about whatever models are going to be better than whatever title of developer in $TIME.

How there can be any loyalty or long-term thinking from employees at all in such circumstances is beyond me.

I can't even think of an analogous scenario at any time in my life. Open worker hostility.

[try_the_bass]

Personally, I find it harder and harder to take pride in the work that I do, and in the effort I put in, when others who have no understanding of the quality of my work or amount of effort I put in are empowered to handwave it away with bullshit excuses and are applauded for doing so.

I don't think you're wrong that hard work is also no longer rewarded the way it used to be, but I think there are a lot more factors in play here.

Hard work is also a bit of a commons problem. If you're the only hard worker in a group, it's easy to be taken advantage of. If everyone's a hard worker, they probably all understand the value of hard work, and are more likely to reward it accordingly.

I think another social issue affecting this is people's measure of what makes hard work "hard". Social media shows is a parade of very talented people doing impressive things, while rarely giving us insight into the amount of effort that goes into those accomplishments. To anyone who hasn't put in the level of effort required to be "really good" at something, it's very easy to underestimate how much effort is truly involved. And when someone consistently underestimates how much effort is involved in doing "hard" things, they'll also consistently overestimate the amount of effort they're putting in relative to the results they're achieving. This will lead them to believe they're doing "hard work", when in reality their level of effort is closer to "mediocre".

[saubeidl]

The solution to this is worker's self-management, an economic model that was pioneered by Yugoslavia, but has mostly disappeared with its dismantlement.

Any company with more than five employees had to be run as a worker-run coop. The board and execs were elected by the workers. Companies still competed on the market.

This would solve for the problem of alienation while still having an environment of competition.

[WalterBright]

Was Yugoslavia an economic powerhouse?

[nec4b]

That is such a big lie. There was no worker self-management in practice. All the companies had leadership structure like most companies have today. Those leading them, were loyal members of the communist party and were politically appointed. They were the betters, the avant-garde and had access to things a normal worker couldn't dream of, like special stores which had western goods. No worker had any say how a company will work and had no share of the profits besides a paycheck.

[thewebguyd]

> I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees. It's difficult to take pride in work done for an employee that you aren't proud of, or actively dislike.

I agree that I think this is a big chunk of it. There's no loyalty on either side, and it's not rewarded if there is. Doing good work is only rewarded with more work without the extra pay or benefits.

A ton of large employers have removed any and all incentive to do anything but the absolute bare minimum to not get fired.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

“ There's no loyalty on either side, and it's not rewarded if there is”

Loyalty actually gets punished. The only way to get a decent raise is to change companies. Your car insurance will keep going up until you change companies. With cable the best deals are available only for new customers and existing customers see their cost go up.

It seems companies hate their employees and customers

[adamc]

Agree that part of it is the increasingly toxic work circumstances. Many people get no health care, poor wages, and zero job security, so... they are pretty demoralized much of the time. And many work multiple gigs, so they are also tired all the time.

[tomslick]

> And many work multiple gigs

I don’t think this is much different now than in the past, arguably less so. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620

[simonsarris]

Blaming employers seems incomplete at best, since many of the worst abuses are employees practically bilking the very cosy employee-employer relationship, eg the MTA in NYC. Huge budgets, lots of dysfunction, very little done. Even the grandparent mentions a city worker.

[II2II]

I'm not trying to absolve employers here, since they are almost certainly the ones who initiated this trend, but there are very few incentives to care about employees when employees take advantage of it. The end result is they make life more difficult not just for the employer, but for their fellow employees.

[thewebguyd]

It's kind of a self-fulfilling cycle in that way. Employers have taken away any and all incentives to do anything but the absolute bare minimum to not get fired, so now that's what they get.

Because that's now employees behave, now employers won't offer anything else - but without offering anything else, employee attitudes aren't going to change.

I think strong unions are the only way forward

[reaperducer]

I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees.

A lot of companies, including mine, played this game for a long time. They were forever going on about how we're all a big family, and we all have to watch out for one another, and how's your mental health today? Do you need a hug? Here, have some free burritos.

Then COVID hit, and all that ended. They fired half of the staff in 10 hours, and since then have showed their real faces, because it's too soon for them to go back the other way. Everyone will know it's just a show.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

On the gripping hand, if you do put in the hard work, you are likely to be exploited. I can think of several examples of excellent workers: they come in, do great work, do not play politics, are known for being dependable, etc. Management ignores them and promotes the mouth breather who does nothing but cheerlead themselves at every opportunity for accomplishing the most basic of tasks.

[JKCalhoun]

Be careful that's not selective memory kicking in. I've thought that too but have had to point out to myself that some very deserving people were in fact promoted.

Your point more generally, that squeaky wheels get the grease, does seem to be typical.

[munificent]

I think you're right, but it's not just work. It's all organizations and social institutions.

We have relationships with other individuals, but we also have relationships with groups as a whole. And the way we tend to those relationships depends on how we believe the other party tends to us.

If you have a relationship with someone who treats you with trust, kindness, conscientiousness, and care, you will naturally reciprocate and feel good about doing so. But if the partner is thoughtless, callous, or cruel, only a fool would put effort into that relationship.

So it is with our relationships with all of the various organizations that make up society. If the company I work for is giving me the fewest possible benefits and is happy to fire me if they get the chance, why should I do anything but the bare minimum? If my government is being used as a tool for enrichment by cronies and oligarchs, why shouldn't I do everything I can to skirt paying taxes? If the giant store chain I buy my groceries from keeps jacking up prices and shrinkflating products, why shouldn't I slip a few extra apples in the bag without paying?

[navane]

"It's difficult to take pride in work done for an employee that you aren't proud of, or actively dislike."

I feel that doing my job well just leads to more externalities, more twigs on the fire that consumes the earth.

[toomuchtodo]

Acting their wage is reasonable. Can't ask for a smile and pride in work from those forced to participate in the torment nexus. 60 percent of Americans can't afford to meet their basic needs, for example.

If we want better outcomes, employers must provide the necessary comp, benefits, and work life balance to arrive at those outcomes. Otherwise, we get slop because that's what is paid for.

[ryandrake]

Yea, I was also going to trot out the "act your wage" phrase. As a worker, you can't buy groceries with "pride". And as an employer, you're not going to get a craftsman who cares by paying them bottom of the barrel wages. The labor market is completely broken.

[XorNot]

Which is of course an argument for the idea that workers rights, civil liberties and welfare might just have outsized effects on productivity and economic growth compared to their sticker price.

[eyesofgod]

Can't be asked to take pride in my work when I'm not allowed do, because we just need to ship ship ship without any thought or coordination.

[WalterBright]

> because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees

There's nothing new about that. It's always been true.

[JKCalhoun]

That may be, but it's possible it has become more employer-adversarial; that the employer/employee "contract" has become increasingly one-sided.

[paulddraper]

When do you think large employers were pretending to care? And when did people stop caring?

Last 5 years? 10 years? Longer?