Nah the trick is to find something you can stand doing for 40 years to fund what you actually want to do with your time
What I want to do with my time doesn’t involve whoring my best years out to some asshole I’ll probably never even meet.
So better to just sit and let someone whore his life so you can just be? Indeed a shallow way to look at existence.
Do you not realize people can work for themselves?
I mean, yes, you can, at which point you’re just whoring your life out to a hundred people instead of 2 or 3. What’s your point?
I do. That’s not what you were implying though.
It literally was. That was the entire point of the words “to some asshole I’ll never even meet.”
The post doesn’t talk about working for someone else though, it talks about a job.
You can have a job being self employed.
Sigh … can you people tell me what is your “idea of life”? Like what do you think a persons’ life should look like?
I mean for a moment lets imagine that you’re the only one on earth, everyone just disapeared. Your life will be pretty hard do you realize that? It’ll be a constant survival, gathering food, clean water, being warm, preparing for weather catastrophes, animal attacks, insects, diseases, etc. You’ll be constantly on edge whether you survive to the next day, week, year. The reason you don’t have to deal with shit like that is that we have sort of functioning society where everyone takes a part, everyone specializes at something and together we achieve more and make your life super easy.
So with this in mind, back to the original question - how do you imagine your existence? Sitting down on your ass? Travel? How? Having a family? How do you feed them? Do you want them to be in constant survival mode?
Or if you like this then go. Really. Go to the woods and enjoy your life.
Or is this somehow supposed to be criticism of 9-5 office job for some billionaire? If yes then this is laughably shallow view of jobs and a society as a whole. Whith shit like this you literally shit on eneryone who does our society a better place.
4 days of work, 3 days off would be a great start.
I did 3 on 4 off. The 3rd 12hr shift was rough, but otherwise it was pretty great.
Such a rigid view of life man
Here’s a crazy idea: decouple work from personal survival. People will work just as much, and live easier.
But it isn’t decoupled.
There are people whose work directly enables your survival, and that of everyone else’s around you, as well as their own.
Food production, mining, logging, maintenance of infrastructure, just to stay basic.
These people need to be compensated too, and they can’t just opt out. Cause if enough of them do, or if the ones who don’t are just not performing well enough, everyone is fucked.
This fixation that we don’t need to work to live is moronic, just because your job is not essential doesn’t mean no job is.
At its most basic level work is about portioning scarcity. You work to be assigned a smaller amount of the hardship pie on your society. Thankfully western society has a very small pie to dole out, comparatively.
But it isn’t decoupled.
Uhh… I know? I literally just said we need to decouple it. This isn’t an argument, dude. This is like me saying “we need to abolish slavery” and you saying “but… we have slavery”.
There are people whose work directly enables your survival, and that of everyone else’s around you, as well as their own.
Okay? No one wants critical work to stop, especially those doing it.
Food production, mining, logging, maintenance of infrastructure, just to stay basic.
Yep.
These people need to be compensated too
This is what I’m talking about. Everyone deservers a good standard of living regardless of the work they do. Stop thinking “work = living”. Stop operating under the principle of “no work, no food”.
and they can’t just opt out
??
Cause if enough of them do, or if the ones who don’t are just not performing well enough, everyone is fucked.
This is a needless concern. There will always be people who want to do the “dirty” work. You truly underestimate peoples’ ability to find satisfaction in necessary work.
This fixation that we don’t need to work to live is moronic
Ha. I have a quote for exactly this sentiment:
“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
― Buckminster Fuller
just because your job is not essential doesn’t mean no job is.
Excuse me? Truly, honestly, what? Who is saying any job is not essential? Did you really think I was saying “we need to stop working”, or that “work is not necessary”? Surely, surely not?? What I’m saying is we need to remove the requirement of work for a good life. Work should enhance your life, not enable it.
At its most basic level work is about portioning scarcity.
No, no it’s not. Work is doing stuff that needs to be done. Work is producing and reproducing what is necessary for society. Portioning scarcity? Some say money does that, but even that isn’t true; at least, it doesn’t do it well. And, depending on the goods, scarcity is barely a concern: housing and food exists far in excess of what we need.
You work to be assigned a smaller amount of the hardship pie on your society
Yikes. Big oof, my dude.
Thankfully western society has a very small pie to dole out, comparatively.
Depends what you’re comparing it to. Maybe the poverty stricken third world, but that’s a very low standard to have. Compared to what we are capable of, though, with our level of technology and infrastructure, we’re doing pretty poorly.
I literally just said we need to decouple it.
And my point is that you can’t make it decoupled any more that you can make breathing decoupled from survival.
Stop operating under the principle of “no work, no food”.
What the fuck are you talking about? Where the fuck does food come from in your mind? The fucking aether? Food is a product of people working. Arguably, the most important product that all other products stem from.
Until we figure out full automation that will always be the case, and even with full automation there will be a need of human supervision to an extent.
There will always be people who want to do the “dirty” work. You truly underestimate peoples’ ability to find satisfaction in necessary work.
Sure buddy, that’s why the soviet union had work camps, because people were volounteering to move to Siberia to do dirty work.
But jokes aside, that’s only demonstrably true if the alternative is not an option.
We have absolutely no idea what the world would look like if people didn’t need to work, because some people have always needed to work, namely farmers, and thus everyone else had to work in turn to earn the cost of the farmers’ labour.
The reality is that your thesis that “people would still perform backbreaking thankless labour on a scale sufficient for all of society for free” is not only ridiculous on its face, but conveniently unfalsifiable, because until non-people exist to do that, that will literally never happen.
Though we did have times where slaves, people who were not considered people, were forced to perform this necessary labour, and you didn’t see a lot of slave owners working the fields for free or otherwise so, again, no dice.
You truly underestimate peoples’ ability to find satisfaction in necessary work.
You truly underestimate the amount of labour necessary for the scale of production we need as a society to maintain this standard of living, and given your later comments about hardship I don’t assume you want to go back to medieval standards of diet variety and such.
Work should enhance your life, not enable it.
What should be is not a factor, what is is what matters.
Some people’s work enables your life. Without their work, you don’t eat. Not some amorphous “people don’t eat”, you. You don’t. And neither does everyone else.
Did you really think I was saying “we need to stop working”, or that “work is not necessary”? Surely, surely not?
Oh, but you are saying that. The fact that you don’t understand that is the fundamental issue with your argument.
Tell me, how much food does one person produce if they "go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”?
That’s not your problem, though, is it? You get to go back to school, someone else will work so you can faff about studying underwater basket weaving or some other world shatteringly important topic.
And who’s gonna fix the roads, so the trucks that move the food can deliver it? Someone else who is not going to school, and instead is inhaling toxic fumes so you, your majesty, can “think about whatever it was [you] were thinking about” which, I am sure, was tremendously important, which is why you are currently developing it into some revolutionary solution to one of mankind’s greatest problems.
Work is doing stuff that needs to be done. Work is producing and reproducing what is necessary for society.
No, work is using personal energies and resources to do that.
There are people doing this and not using their time sitting with their thumb jammed up their asses, who very often would rather be doing anything else. I know because my father happens to have done sto for 40 fucking years before he got to retire, and he was doing a relatively cushy job in the essential production fields.
These are people whose lives are shortened and made harder by their work even after they retire, and who literally only do it because it’s the best value for money they can achieve.
In some cases that is still woefully little, which is an extra level of travesty when it’s confronted with some spoiled asshole like you acting like anyone would be or should be doing those jobs for free, no less.
Portioning scarcity? Some say money does that, but even that isn’t true; at least, it doesn’t do it well.
Money is literally a proxy for work, at its most basic.
The fact that 500 years ago the Dutch invented finance to gamble on economies doesn’t change this basic point that, for the vast majority of humanity, money is a “work done well enough token” you can exchange for food and comforts.
Yikes. Big oof, my dude.
Heckin chonker pupperino, etc.
Compared to what we are capable of, though, with our level of technology and infrastructure, we’re doing pretty poorly.
I’m sure when everyone works for free you’ll see a great deal of work being done in the expensive drudgery of repairing and maintaining infrastructure for this hypothetical ceiling you still have only asserted exists with no evidence.
But, then again, by having a cursory look at your comment history you’re an anarchist, so you’re no stranger to believing hilariously stupid shit with no evidence.
It’s ok, kid. We’ve all been there, I was an AnCom in highschool, too.
See you in 10-15 years once you work for a living and have figured out why people have to pay for you to do it.
Or not, and not, up to you.
I think you’re vastly misunderstanding what I’m saying.
I’m not saying everyone should stop working! I’ve said that a dozen times now.
Stop. Take a breath. And try again, kid.
Once you realise I didn’t say food can pop into existence without work, we can talk.
I’ll try and explain it one more time for your feeble mind to understand:
People should not need to find employment to be deemed deserving of basic necessities. They should not be allowed to starve simply because they can’t or won’t stack shelves or flip burgers. They should be offered basic necessities regardless of their employment.
If you disagree, go ahead and tell me why. But I’m not entertaining your delusions that I’m saying everyone should stop working. Studied have already been done in this area proving it is entirely feasible. Stop fighting your own liberation.
I’m not saying everyone should stop working! I’ve said that a dozen times now.
It’s not a matter of what you say, it’s a matter of the inevitable consequences of the arrangement you propose.
People should not need to find employment to be deemed deserving of basic necessities.
In most western countries, the ones wealthy and well run enough to have such a system, that’s already the case. You need to look for employment, strive to be useful to society, not actually succeed.
They should not be allowed to starve simply because they can’t stack shelves or flip burgers.
can’t
Yeah, that’s not what you’ve been arguing for, and you know it. Nowhere in your prior post does it mention being unable to work.
You’ve done nothing but arguing that people should not need to work to live regardless of ability.
They should be offered basic necessities regardless of their employment.
But not regardless of their willingness to be employed.
You can’t find a job? Cool. If the state comes around and tells you there’s roads to tar, you’ll tar roads. That would be a fair arrangement.
If there’s literally no work left to do for you there shouldn’t be a gun to your head, I agree.
However that isn’t, wasn’t, and likely will never be the case.
But I’m not entertaining your delusions that I’m saying everuone should stop working.
No, what you’re saying is everyone should have the option not to work (which they already do, if they can afford it) with no drawbacks whatsoever, making work completely optional for the individual, which it de facto isn’t for the collective as a whole.
Since, as you already conceded, food does not manifest out of thin air decoupling individual survival from labour, when collective survival is very much not decoupled from labour, creates a tragedy of the commons of catastrophic proporions.
Which means that unless some people decide to work for no reason other than funzies, or worse an understanding that they must take responsibility for no reason other than altruism, a lot of essential work just won’t get done.
I know for a fact i’m not getting up at 4-5 AM to tend to a farm and, for that matter, neither will you, mr “think about whatever it was”, but if society is not to collapse after this systemic change, someone will, and you are not entitled to their labour any more than your boss in real life is entitled to yours.
Salaries and tying able-bodied people’s quality of life to labour are ways to ensure not only that the work that needs doing gets done, they’re there to ensure it gets done consistently and to the required scale.
What the baseline quality of life should be is a matter of debate but if live in the west with the possible exceptions of US and maybe the UK, you’re absolutely fucking fine at the baseline. I should fucking know, I was there for years.
Work must happen so someone must do the work. Saying no individual person must, doesn’t mean someone won’t have to at some point, and the reality is that this work needs to be consistent and reliable enough to be essentially taken for granted for society to function (something we’ve clearly achieved given your worldview), which means it fundamentally can’t be done on a volunteer basis.
It’s a responsibility that must be dealt with at all times.
So if some people must work, who gets not to, in your world? Who gets to opt out of the must clause?
How do you divide those who must work and those who can just exist?
We used to have that distinction once upon a time, it was called slavery, or indenture, or serfdom.
If you are to be delivered your beets and vodka ration every month, someone has to make them.
If someone makes them they are expending their labour, paying for at least part of your existence.
And you know what?
Not only would it not work.
Not only is that fundamentally parasitic (which makes me realise you’re probably not a communist, as those guys are very not in favour of leeches usually).
But, frankly? You don’t deserve that.
I’d rather the person making your food get to take an extra day off than you living for free for no reason other than leaving your mother’s cunt because, ultimately, it doesn’t take all that much not to be a useless sack of shit, and you’re not even doing that, in this scenario.
Studied have already been done in this area proving it is entirely feasible.
UBI pilot studies are fundamentally flawed because they inject wealth into a specific subset of the population (the people in the test group) instead of absolutely everyone up to and including the primary and secondary sector.
If a handful of farmers happens to slow production down because they are in that one pilot progam, that won’t impact worldwide or even nation-wide production, if every farmer, trucker, etc. in the world were to do that at the same time without improving per-hour productivity, there’s absolutely no guarantee you wouldn’t see food scarcity rise.
As it is now, testing UBI is the same as a few people winning the lottery. Not a valuable test of a systemic change.
Meanwhile every country that has tried giving universal basic necessities without means testing or other counterbalances has failed horrendously unless they were autocracies with command economies, in which cases they were just dystopic hellholes, instead of starving dystopic hellholes.
Stop fighting your own liberation.
It’s my turn to post a quote this time:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
~C. S. Lewis.
You’re literally just spouting neoliberal, bourgeois ideology. Try looking through human history sometime. You’ll see this way of thinking only emerged a few hundred years ago. People work because they want to, they don’t have to be forced.
Good luck in life, though, my naive child. Maybe someone will reward your desire to serve masters :)
I love writing software. I write a fair amount of it, and upload it for free. And my experience is that the best way I’ve found of turning something you love into something you hate is to tie it to being something you have to do, and do by other people’s rules. I only started liking writing code again when I moved into management and didn’t have to write code for other people anymore. I was able to go back to doing it for pleasure.
So, yeah. In an ideal world, I’d be free to write and publish software, on my time. When I burned myself out, I’d switch to something else; home projects, setting up selfhost servers, maybe build a table. You can’t do that when you’re doing it for a living. Fuck if I know how we make that happen; I’m not an economist. And I think it’s probably another couple of generations away before we could possibly get to a post-scarcity society - even assuming that we don’t extinct ourselves, and that the people who could make it happen actually let it rather than greedily using it to enrich themselves.
Automation, clean energy; I think we’re close to having the tech for post scarcity. I do believe this: if we freed people from defacto indentured servitude, they might turn into unproductive fat slobs like on Wall•E. Or they might become artists and artisans ushering in a new Renaissance. But I’m optimistic: we won’t know until we try, and not trying because we have a low opinion of our fellow man is just callow.
Thanks for sharing this! I’m at a point in my career where I could move up to management, or I could stay on a pure tech path and start to have limited opportunities for advancement. I’ve also been feeling less satisfaction for my technical work lately. I’ve thought about looking around at other jobs, but I’ve been coming to the conclusion that it would be the same anywhere, because it is ultimately for someone else and most of the time either the goal of the project or the method required to get there don’t align with my own goals or interests. From the bottom looking up, there’s a lot about management that doesn’t excite me either, but I’ve been wondering if it would free me up a bit to keep hobby work fun.
I’m glad to hear you were able to feel an increase in your passion about coding after moving to management and I’m hoping it can do the same for me. I’m a little weary of becoming just another cog in the system though. I’m just hoping that I can keep my current perspective in focus so I can use that to bring compassion for my reports and keep them from being burned out as long as I can.
It’d be nice to just to screw off and make my own things, but I have bills to pay. None of my hobby project ideas are money producers and even if some of them could be, I don’t know that I want to pervert them by making that a goal. I feel like that would suck out the fun of them for me and put me back in the same trap I’m already in.
I feel you, and it’s exciting that you’re at this point!
My one caution is that you make certain that you like management before stepping into that track. It may not be what you imagine. Things I learned the hard way:
- Line management is very deceptive. You still get to be hands-on with the tech. You still get to work with the people doing work. A lot of your value is in translating tech to non-tech peers and higher-ups. The importance of soft skills is minimized.
- As you climb, things shift rapidly. The value you provide is based almost entirely on your ability to network - the relationships. Your job becomes predominantly soft skills related: building and maintaining relationships, understanding your peer’s jobs, what they needs, who they are, knowing them personally and them knowing who you are.
- The above point means you spend a lot of time in meetings and socializing, in and out of work. It’s not just that you have to work to seek others out and spend time with them, but others are doing this with you. And the higher you go, the more people you have under you that you have to spend at least some time with.
- So, maintaining relationships takes a lot of time, and you probably still have more hard-skill duties: approving expense reports, dealing with personality conflicts, vendor management, objective setting, performance evaluation. So the soft stuff (which often isn’t a measurable objective) eats into your time, and you’ll find it impacting outside-of-office-hours time
- You’ll find that the kinds of things you thought climbing would give you control over - the stuff you want to make decisions about, the technical stuff - you don’t really have. The fun decisions are a game of selling to other people - “building consensus” - and you spend a lot of time doing this and often failing to get your desired outcome. If you’re really unlucky, and this will happen to you at least once in your career, someone higher up will read about some technology in a magazine and you’ll find yourself being strong-armed into pursuing it. Even more likely, big vendors will wine and dine your upper management, and pursued with glossy literature, and you’ll find yourself using a vendor just vecause they’re were able to bribe their way into the Gartner Magic Quadrent, which is biased against small companies.
My TL;DR is: before you take the management track, make certain you’re either an extrovert, or that you’re comfortable in that space. You’ll have to act like an extrovert to be successful, and to be of value to your team and your company. Be sure you’re willing to have your career consume more of your personal time; on-call and having your manager call you at random times of hours is nothing compared to what a mid-level managent position demands. You may trade having your passion debased for finding yourself doing things you hate all day, nearly every day, for the rest of your career.
Lest you feel as if I’m rowing the biggest bitter boat: I loved the Manager-1. It still felt like being involved in production, and I could easily identify and explain the value I provided. But in most companies, at some point, it’s either up or out. If you’re doing well, you may be offered a promotion, and it can be hard to resist an offer that’s going to bump your salary by 20-50%. And if you’re not, well, that raises other issues when the budget shrinks.
this reads like a capitalist propaganda leaflet that falls out of the sky for you to read in the 1940s. what if I told you that you can have a functioning society that isn’t predicted on exploitation of labor and doesn’t require you to live like a hermit in the forest. you should read some Adam Smith or some shit if you’re going to talk about labour division and specialization as if it’s a good thing. you can laud it all you want, but Smith is very clear this is a system of masters and labourers where society is built on your masters giving you just enough rent so you can afford to pay another (or even the same) master back while you and the other laborers compete against each other in a labor market while the masters watch. he even warns if you divide too much, you end up with a pile of shit. we’re there now. we’re a pile of shit. nobody wants to work their meaningless job that was sold to them on this capitalist American dream thought up by a bunch of anglos from 1790.
It does seem like a much better way could exist. So, why doesn’t it? Is nearly the whole world just constantly being outsmarted by a few super clever assholes?
not outsmarted because the people on top are complete idiots, but essentially yes. the people on top will always have the power to revolutionize(not in a good way) the instruments of production to suit their needs and the common working people of the world will be the ones living in the consequences of their actions.
Humans are social creatures and people of all strokes in the anti work movement wish to return to a less structured, communal version of labor and survival. Starting on the premise of “you’re the last person in earth” is a non-starter. It’s coming from the perspective of this toxic individualism that denies people’s innate desire for community and connection to others.
I’m generalizing and opinions vary widely but I think this would be a fair summary. Most want to decouple labor from survival. It is inherently coercive to be denied food and shelter on the basis of being unwilling/unable to work. Most want to divide essential labor (farming, housing, transportation, sanitation, etc.) as evenly as possible among a given population to ensure everyone is fed, sheltered and healthy. I’d type more but I’m at work and don’t have the time to go into further detail.
Here’s more of the “why”. As for how, I don’t have a handy resource right this second but I’d be happy to talk more when I can. For further reading I’d recommend that you look into degrowth, solar punk, anti-work, anarchism/ libertarian socialism, mutual aid, UBI, and social ecology. They’re all pieces of the puzzle
I’d type more but I’m at work and don’t have the time to go into further detail.
enough said
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That’s why ancient civilcations had slaves and we have bots. Yes, we are only half there. But we need to find a way, so the other half has to eat and a place to live until then.
Btw, if not for 2% possessing 90% of world wealth, average work week would be much shorter.
Holy shit did you set some people off with this.
Yeah, people generally don’t like bullshit.
Yet primitivist delusions seem to get a full pass around here.
Really? I haven’t seen any primitivism. Those guys are truly misguided.
Nothing is fun 8 hours a day
I’m a programmer and would happily spend 8 hours doing it in my free time haha
It’s nice to get paid to do something you enjoy. But it’s still not as enjoyable as doing it for fun.
Plus, when you get to a certain point in some careers, especially IT ones, you don’t have to work a full 8 hours straight. I can pretty much keep whatever hours I want as long as the job gets done.
Sometimes that includes overtime, but most of the time it doesn’t.
I am a systems architect. I love my job, and work is the only place I can do this stuff. I don’t have a million $ for hardware here.
Also, I’m paid well and the environment is great. For me, it is true, I don’t “work”, I do what I like. And as a german, I benefit from all the holidays, and general employee rights and protection.
Good for you! I studied computer science and afterwards I had no joy in programming anymore. I’m a data manager right now, doing data stuff and little programming which is ok. Maybe I will do a full time programming job again one day.
Yeah I actually studied games tech. So it was more focused on video games. It was a lot of fun.
We had one module that was just playing board games and then finally making one.
Computer science level stuff isn’t needed for like 90% of jobs. Although I’m sure it helps.
Yes programming is the way. Truly the closest thing to this dream
Yeah I code in my free time anyways so idk I think there’s at least a perfect job for me.
<’ laughs in therapist '>
You don’t like sleeping? :o /j
If your hobby can pay you a salary, then quickly you’ll have to pervert it to continue to earn enough I stead of doing it “your way”.
Dunno, I’ve managed just fine 👀
Of course there are exceptions. I also like doing what I do, both as a hobby and in my job. But the point is that this can be really dangerous as it can take the fun out of a hobby for a lot of people if you have to do it.
Would I have been less ambitious I might have become a cook. I like cooking. But imagining that I would have to do it 8 hours a day, 40 a week for years and years, possibly with overtime, and – depending on where I am – in a hectic environment due to time pressure doesn’t sound so appealing to me. Nah, the casual cooking at home where no one really expects a certain degree of quality / a certain product or where I can be as creative or as lazy as I want and can take all the time I need is much better.
Whther we use a monetary system, or live like or ancestor tribal groups. We need to work all our lives. The difference is that right now, most of us work longer and harder for less and lezs. The market forces argument need rebalancing
The sad thing is that I DO want to work. I WANT to go study and become a biologist and hopefully teach it someday. But, because of this fucked up system, have to do what can afford to pay rent instead of what I have been dreaming of since I was a kid.
That’s the lie of capitalism: “you can be anything you want! Just as long as what you want can be easily monetized and turned into a product, otherwise you’re welcome to die in a ditch you leech.”
Socialism requires production just as much as capitalism, and absolutely requires people to work to their ability.
Well no duh, but it’s not like the context in which that production happens – so eg. the status of the workers in relation to the “organization” doing the producing, or let alone how unemployement is dealt with – is the same.
Yes but you can imagine the exact same situation of someone wanting work a different job but due to need in their area they can’t.
I agree with the old man. You clearly haven’t truely done something you love.
I’ve done jobs I loved. I’ve been harassed, degraded, and threatened by bosses at each such job such that I suffered psychologically and eventually had to leave each job.
Bosses have gotten really bad for some reason. A manager used to mentor people and deal with communicating issues upwards. Now it seems to be entirely abusive supervision.
Bosses have gotten bad because the c-suite has metricized everything. Thirty years ago there was none of this constant NPS feedback or strongly agree/disagree surveys. You remember when the cashiers at fast food places started asking you to fill out those surveys and earn a free double whatever on your next visit? That was an executive making up one more number to justify their bloated salary at the expense of every employee beneath them in the hierarchy. These days it is all about the numbers, and the people who are best at making the numbers higher are fucking sociopaths who bring those numbers up by crushing the humanity out of people, so they float to the top like the megalomaniacal turds they are.
Ask yourself when the last time you had honest feedback directly from your boss, that wasn’t veiled in three layers of web forms and paper trails designed to make it impossible for you to get a raise for the good work you were doing. For me, it was five years ago, before the pandemic, when my boss advocated for me directly to her supervisor, cut right through the shit and told them, “if you do not pay him what he’s worth, we will lose him and this department will be underwater.” She didn’t need a meeting to tell me what my peers thought of my work and how it could be improved, like so many MBA managers who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to my skillset, we worked together and when I fucked up, she let me know and showed me how to fix it, because she knew how to do the job she was asking me to do.
She left because she got tired of dealing with the CEO, son of former CEO, who thought he could charisma his way through massive failures to our partners and clients because of his incompetent leadership. He decided that the reason it didn’t work was because the crew didn’t read enough Patrick Lencioni new age management books, so we all got to read about the fucking Fantasyland workplace where everyone who aligns to the metrics he pulled out of his ass gets to go to corporate blowjob heaven, and also every hug between two men has to be underscored “100% NOT GAY.”
I think you are correct. My first bad boss was a contractor for Comcast. Layers and layers of metrics and KPIs. My best CEO was a “my door is always open, come in and talk” guy.
I fucking detest “data driven business”. I’ve written a few rants on it on Lemmy, having been at one point called in to fix egregiously idiotic examples of how eg. KPIs can be defined so badly and calculated so wrong that they don’t mean anything, like literally reading goat guts to determine how the service was doing would have given results exactly as close to reality as those KPIs (if not more.)
The vast majority of “data driven business” and “business intelligence” (the practitioners of which are somehow never fucking intelligent) stuff is just numerology but for MBAs.
I’m sorry to hear that. I guess I just need to remember to be thankful
Doing the thing I love as a job, just destroyed my hobby for me
Yeah was going to say… if you equate what you do with slavery, you prrrooobably aren’t doing something you love.
Yeah, I was lucky to get the crazy ass unemployment during covid like week one. And I was applying to jobs but not hearing shit back. I had essentially four months of making more money than I had at that point. ($900 a week is pretty goddamn good) and wanted a job super bad lol. Like I was definitely picky but a good fulfilling job can’t be beat. You can only do hobbies so long before you’re doing them to fill time and they loose luster.
Ended up learning programming in that time and started that as a career and am doing incredibly well. So I do love my job and know I’d rather do that than nothing
If you do something you love you’ll have one less thing that you love.
Sometimes this is referred to as “grad school.”
Shrug. I race cars, have a wonderful family, own a home. Could retire today. I choose not too because I do like my job AND I like money.
There is very much a way to not hate your job.
Sounds like the way to not hate your job is to be rich?
Little of column a, little of column b.
A) be rich
B) don’t be poor
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Don’t you still have to work under communism?
Yea but if you read into the fanfic you’ll learn they all want to be cookie bakers and dogwalkers among other essential work
I have no problem doing work that directly benefits me like farming/hunting/building
I only have a problem doing work when it only benefits someone else who gives me a pittance of the outcome
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It shouldn’t be expected to pay bills; the bills should be paid by some form of UBI, until they become redundant, allowing people to work on what they want
OK, but where does the UBI come from?
Where all government spending comes from.
I’ve found work that I love. Only problem being is it’s freakin voluntary.
I dunno, most cops love beating the shit out of homeless and shooting black people… and they keep on doing it
Sounds like a jolly old time out with the lads
If you love what you do you never work a day in your life!
This is a picture of the happiest man on earth so wholsum 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
Grandpa never said he did what he loved.
