Comment by Noaidi
5 hours ago
> for some, it's just a paycheck.
What is wrong with just wanting to work for money?
> I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.
Maybe if wages kept up with inflation people would still care. You know, when I was young, I was able to rent an apartment while being a cashier in a grocery store.
>> for some, it's just a paycheck.
> What is wrong with just wanting to work for money?
Imagine a society where your work was an opportunity for you to provide products/services for your community, where you could earn a reputation for craftsmanship and caring, and where the real value was in the social ties and sense of social worth-- your community cares for you just as you care for it, and selfish assholery has high costs leading to poverty.
Now imagine a society where the only measure of social worth is a fiat currency, and it doesn't matter how you get it, only matters how much you have. Selfish assholery is rewarded and actually caring leads to poverty.
Which society would you rather live in? Which society is more emotionally healthy?
So the question is, is our current society the one we want to live in? If not, how do we move it closer to what we want?
Our current society can and does have room for both, which is great since some people want to live to work, and some just want to work to live. I don't see a problem with either, as long as it makes one happy.
And there's another group, grifters, who are neither living to work nor working to live. They are the parasites, and our current society rewards grifters by not putting them in check. Probably because so many want a piece of the grifting pie, in the same way many people see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
1 reply →
> If not, how do we move it closer to what we want?
By going all Ted Kaczynski on the elite and abandon sensationism and most of technology.
Ethically? Nothing.
Socially and emotionally? It's brutal. For both the employee and society in general.
Spending almost half their waking hours not caring is not good for people.
There's a difference between caring about your personal work product (and reputation), your colleagues on a personal and professional level, and your employer as an entity.
I expect my employees to show up to work and put forth a solid effort on a regular basis. Note that this doesn't mean a constant death march towards some unreasonable objective, or anything even close to it. Just apply yourself using the skills we agree you have for the pay we also agreed upon for 8 hours a day on average. In my field, this means you have pay that is well above the norm for an average software developer, and the working conditions are good or better.
A shocking number of people are incapable of this, and generally are also the same people who would claim that "they didn't start this".
So is it not good for people to care and yet be blocked from being able to do good work.
Then pay people so they have a reason to care their work. This is like a wife beating husband wondering why his wife to care more about him.
every company in the united states could become a co-op and nothing would change for the business and everything would change for the workers. And everyone would be much happier at work and you would have the caring people you want.
It is the system that is the problem, not the people.
Frankly, people for whom the work is "just a paycheck" I know in real life are simultaneously happy and simultaneously frequently produce actually good reliable work.
Work being "just a paycheck" does not mean you hate it or half ass it. But, it means you do go home to get rest, you do socialize outside of work instead of irrationally pushing it and then using meetings for socialization. It means you do not have ego tied to it so much you throw temper tantrum when things are imperfect (which is not the same as being able to change things for the better).
Give us a reason to care. It's that simple.
I believe that seeking external validation, inspiration and/or reason is not robust and a path to unhappiness. IMO, it's better if the reasons for you to care come from within.
1 reply →
The reasons to care are personal pride in the quality of your work, understanding that your lack of effort has a negative impact on your colleagues, and your continued employment.
And if you hate your job, but are completely unable to find alternative employment (which is what you should do if you hate your job), you probably should reconsider how much you hate your job.
11 replies →
So I believe it actually worse that the article makes it out to be.
Currently AI "solutions" being implemented in places like call centers are often technical solutions attempting to pave over organizational problems. Many IT solutions are like that. We refuse to fix the underlying problems, so we layer software on top, so we won't notice the stupidity below.
IT companies will happily take the money and write the code, broken as it might be, because the real problems aren't actually resolved. That to me is a problem. Companies needs to be way better at saying no, and offer help address the underlying issues instead, even if they aren't technical in nature.
> What is wrong with just wanting to work for money?
Nothing. In fact, I envy people who can and wish I could. Consider it one of my largest flaws.
> You know, when I was young, I was able to rent an apartment while being a cashier in a grocery store.
You still can almost everywhere outside of places like SF? I just spot-checked some data, and in Minneapolis for example currently available apartments are comparable to what they were when I was looking 10 years ago, cashier wages have gone up 45%, and that often comes with healthcare benefits now. It's not an especially wealthy life, but a single person should be very comfortable (that's a comparable hourly wage and apartment cost to what I had delivering pizza at some other part of my life, and I lived comfortably and was able to save up to splurge on a nicer used Miata and the down payment for a small house).