The Age of the Crisis of Work

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/05/the-age-of-the-crisis-of-work-quiet-quitting-great-resignation/

by vishnumenon • 3 years ago

70 108 3 years ago

Explain to me why as an employee, I should care whether my employer greatly succeeds, just slides along, or slowly crumbles? As far as I can tell, except over the very long term, I end up in the same place.

Or for a more specific example, I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job hopping where I am) and I won't see a penny of that waste reduction as a bonus, so it is not worth it to even write a ticket for it.

I invite you to convince me otherwise.

People are finally coming to realize that as an employee, 95% of the pay is had from showing up and not getting fired.

throwawaysleep2• 3 years ago

I have asked people to try and convince me of this on several occasions, and the best argument so far has been about climate change and how preventing that is in my interest.

jamilton• 3 years ago

That's pretty good for the specific case, but fails in the general case. You could maybe generalize it out to altruism, if you believe your company being more efficient will be net good for other people, but that's not a given.

a_bonobo• 3 years ago

Before globalization, you company's funds would stay in your local community. Success of the company would mean more funds in your community, which would mean a safer or better living environment for you.

Nowadays, of course, most of that money disappears overseas so you're right.

over_bridge2• 3 years ago

Plus that company would look after you if you committed to them and they might employ your kids and grandkids too if you could help keep them around.

Now... Doesn't matter if your employer succeeds or fails. You just go somewhere else and do the same thing for a similar salary, and some numbers go up or down in wealthy people's portfolios. Not sure if that's freeing or depressing.

steve19774• 3 years ago

At least where I‘m living (Switzerland), the company‘s funds would stay with the very rich local company owners and make them even richer. Technically the funds stayed in the local community of course, but without benefit for the commoners.

I don‘t see a fundamental difference here.

tehnub• 3 years ago

Maybe if you have shares of your company stock there’s some motivation?

mydogcanpurr2• 3 years ago

I believe that only works if you believe you'll benefit from moving the stock up and are in a position in which you actually can. Both seem doubtful to me for many workers. This is also why commission is a great motivator for sales people; they directly benefit from putting in the extra mile, so of course they want to work hard. Meanwhile a tech worker centering a div has no way of connecting their work with the company's bottom line unless they work in ads or similar. Even then they're more likely to be tangibly rewarded with a bonus or promotion.

Edit: Here's a simple math calculation that illustrates my point. Let's say you increase your company's stock price by 10% which is enormous for an established company, and 60% of your TC is stock. Congratulations, you got yourself a 6% pay raise, which is checks notes an inflation adjusted raise.

0zemp1c3• 3 years ago

bonuses have become almost algorithmic

at least where I work in BigTech, your bonuses are more or less pre-baked based on:

- company prospects (they do well, you do well)

- seniority (your "level")

- tenure

I've not seen anyone get outsized bonuses based on individual merit

mathgladiator• 3 years ago

I don't like being an employee as I like to do my own thing. I'd appreciate your thoughts on https://www.adama-platform.com/2023/04/15/going-hard.html

kyleyeats2• 3 years ago

It's easy: You're pre-selected. You've been trained for decades in one way or another to unquestioningly chase the mission. You went through five interviews and putting mission-over-self was the #1 selection criterion in each.

You call it imposter syndrome or cPTSD or ADHD but the truth is you've just had people screaming expectations in your ear your whole life. It's not a question of you vs. your employer but of you vs. not-you. And you always pick not-you because that's all you know how to do.

anotherhue• 3 years ago

I always enjoyed this song along these lines

https://genius.com/Lcd-soundsystem-other-voices-lyrics

tester457• 3 years ago

So what does it mean to pick you in this situation?

greenyouse• 3 years ago

Part of it probably comes down to company culture. Working at a place full of people that are engaged and fixing/reporting/debating things is healthy. It's a good environment for people to learn and grow so you can move ahead in your career long-term. Being stuck somewhere where everyone is coasting is demoralizing. You'll most likely plateau in skill since you won't take on hard problems and need to constantly learn new things. You can learn stuff outside of work but it's also nice to have a life and not feel like you're working the mines.

Work is supposed to be fun too. Some people get a rush from working on hard problems. There's at least some joy when you debug a heisenbug for a day or two and finally solve it or take on an impossible project and succeed. Having a team that you gel with where everyone is high flow state makes you look forward to doing work things too.

When you look at it economically as a 8 hours in $$$ out, you're looking at the short-term and discounting your long-term personal growth. If you aren't growing in your job, leave and find a place where you can build your skills and work on things that you find enjoyable.

There are probably some software jobs that would be fun to do. Why not go for a fun job doing something you love if you're currently stuck?

whiskytango1115• 3 years ago

Not disagreeing with your perspective but as an exec here is my perspective

A) The most valuable people can notice problems, find solutions and get it done (either themselves or by articulating a pragmatic plan).

B) People that show up and dependably are very important until someone cheaper makes more sense.

The rat race at any job you have is evaluating where between A and B you want to achieve your career goals.

bobsmooth2• 3 years ago

The most valuable people can notice problems, find solutions and get it done (either themselves or by articulating a pragmatic plan).

Do you compensate these people? Why should I be this person if you don't pay me for it?

majormajor3• 3 years ago

You're missing any mention of alignment and as a result I think you're leaving out a very key situation where someone can be in your group (A) but actually working against the overall company goals.

If you hire someone to solve problem X but they get sidetracked and spend all their time on problem Z instead... they can be excelling at driving solutions and still be doing the wrong thing in the eyes of the company.

Caring about completely different things than your boss can get you in trouble even if you excel at everything you do.

nine_zeros3• 3 years ago

A) The most valuable people can notice problems, find solutions and get it done (either themselves or by articulating a pragmatic plan).

And what is the company doing in exchange for these people? Extra Compensation? Extra promos? Extra Vacation time?

Or is the company just subjugating people with bullshit performance reviews, PIPs, canceled bonuses, dangling promos?

majormajor3• 3 years ago

I've found nothing more frustrating in jobs than when I can't help but care about things the company doesn't care about.

If your company doesn't care about 50K I don't think there's a need for me to convince you to care about it. If they have no mechanism for either raising those savings opportunities to leadership and prioritizing fixes, or rewarding someone for saving them 50k on their own, they pretty clearly don't care.

So if you're in a company where nothing that you could do from your own initiative would matter to the company (maybe you can save them 50k but they are spending 400 million a year so it's a drop in the bucket), you can still care about success for job security, any sort of bonus or stock compensation, etc. But how much you should care maybe should be proportional to how much you can influence.

Maybe the company is being irrational to not care, maybe they aren't, but you also choosing not to care about the things they don't care about seems healthy to me.

(It's good to remember that while "Quiet Quitting" is the buzzword of the day, this is also literally the premise of a 25 year old movie, Office Space. Literally down to the level of "it's not that I'm lazy, it's just that I don't care" and "Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? ")

sam_lowry_• 3 years ago

"I've found nothing more frustrating in jobs than when I can't help but care about things the company doesn't care about."

Gotta put it in my fortune file.

0zemp1c3• 3 years ago

replace "saving 50k" with "eliminating tech debt" for many

we all know we could rebuild or refactor systems to improve them, but all we would be doing is spending time and money to earn no more money, because the "improved" product/service wouldn't appear different to the outside world

my new attitude is to not even both with tech debt unless the product will be enhanced or improved in some user-obvious way

pknomad• 3 years ago

Your point about this reminds me of this scene in Office Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_1lIFRdnhA

This movie really spoke to me during the pandemic and I'm guessing it has for many others as well.

That being said... I do think it's more about who you work with that makes work more enjoyable. I find extra motivation at work for mundane things like working on tech debt if it means making my colleague's job easier and such.

the_only_law• 3 years ago

Yeah I rewatched it a couple times after getting laid off. It’s always uncanny how “real” many of Mike Judge’s characters are.

avereveard• 3 years ago

Because for the next job hop you can put on the resume "saved 50k a month in cloud waste" and it'll make for an interesting discussion.

bluefirebrand4• 3 years ago

You can put it on the resume anyways and as long as you are able to describe how you would do it and field questions about the idea, no one really will fact check too hard.

leonidasv• 3 years ago

From a pure selfish point of view (not judging), by reporting it, you'll be able to add a bullet to your resume/LinkedIn saying you helped the company save $50 thousand dollars a year, which in turn increases your odds of landing a better-paying job in the future.

rokhayakebe• 3 years ago

Accepted.

You are an employee, but if you would like to explore consultancy and possibly earn 2X or more, then fix this, document it, and start a side hustle doing ONLY this. I suspect if you can do it for one, you can do it for hundreds. If you do not fix it, it will be harder to sell. If you do, you have proof.

tayo42• 3 years ago

Why aren't your job hopping then and getting more money?

epups3• 3 years ago

Doing your job properly can lead to unexpected rewards. I found great contacts that helped me job hop after I performed some tasks with excellence. Mediocrity or active sabotage as you suggest also do not motivate me at all.

Ultimately society is the result of our collective effort. If I'm employed and assigned to a task, I do my best to finish it well, within reason - no overtime, not working on weekends, etc. I think this attitude leads to much better outcomes personally and socially than the one you describe.

charlie0• 3 years ago

This is understated a lot. Sometimes you work hard, not for the company, not for your boss, but for your coworkers sitting in the trenches with you. It pays off in terms of the relationships built. I would not recommend/refer mediocre devs to new companies. I'm sure lots of other people feel the same way to. Don't be a lazy dev. Work hard at the current job and find another one.

di456• 3 years ago

But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it

Are you empowered to fix it instead of just reporting it? How much effort to fix it? Sometimes the effort to do the fix is smaller than the work of selling the problem and jockeying for priority in the issue reporting process. Especially if going through those processes won't lead to anything meaningful getting done besides extra bureaucratic work.

Or if you have skip-level meetings with your manager's manager, get their opinion. Or even finance's opinion. It may be unclear how to reallocate that savings to other projects or budgets. Or if people are penalized for unplanned savings by having to over-explain it, there may be misaligned incentives that someone higher up might want to improve. For example if 10, 100, or however many other employees each find 50k savings that turns into real money quickly.

to11mtm2• 3 years ago

Are you empowered to fix it instead of just reporting it? How much effort to fix it? Sometimes the effort to do the fix is smaller than the work of selling the problem and jockeying for priority in the issue reporting process. Especially if going through those processes won't lead to anything meaningful getting done besides extra bureaucratic work.

This has always been a warning sign for me; I've had cases where I was admonished for spotting a 1-line, very obvious bug (that either -would- happen, or was an as-yet-unfiled/unprioritized support request/ticket.) Never mind I'm already in that part of the code base and fixing/testing it would be trivial; The bug -must- be tracked separately, which means it must be prioritized and wait for proper resources to again be allocated before work can be done. These work places tend to be pretty toxic in other ways FWIW.

Saigonautica2• 3 years ago

Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need -- this is [hu]man.

0zemp1c3• 3 years ago

this type of malaise will be fixed as 80% of the people and companies in tech disappear over the next ten years

the remaining 20% will replace all of their workers with fresh blood from college and for a time, everyone will feel vital

bobsmooth2• 3 years ago

Wages haven't kept up with inflation. That's it.

rob74• 3 years ago

Interesting that (at least for me) the same article is shown in the "related" column beside the article. That's "quiet quitting" (doing your job without being bothered by small details such as this) at work right there...

spyckie2• 3 years ago

This article has a point but takes about 6x the words to get to it, and the writing is not enjoyable enough to make up the extra time spent. ChatGPT to the rescue!

https://smmry.com/https://harpers.org/archive/2023/05/the-ag...

My own digestion:

Capitalism as a paradigm worked because wage corresponded both to economic value and identity.

It is failing because wage is still attached to economic value, but less so identity. So people feel "what's the point of work" more and more.

This trend has always been the case since the 1920s. To counteract the trend, an "entrepreneurial ethic" mindset came in the 1970s, which did bandaid it for a bit, but ultimately failed because most employees aren't doing entrepreneurial work.

The current social debate to fix it has two sides. One brings us back to the idea of meaningful work, the other envisions what a post-work society looks like. But in the meantime, we're stuck getting used to a life where "work has no meaning" and this is shaping our discourse, attitude, and outlook, ultimately our art and culture as well.

And a bit of analysis:

Whether you fall into the 1) "entrepreneurial ethic" bucket (work is meaningful if you do what you are passionate about), the 2) "restore meaning to work" bucket (make america great again, bring back our ability to create, get reconnected to what we consume and use), or the 3) "post-working world" bucket (automation will make work obsolete, let's setup UBI), the frustrating thing IMO is not current situation BUT how poorly positioned our infrastructure (government, legal and political systems) are at facing the current situation.

They seem to get in the way of solving the problem instead of solving it, which is what most people are expecting their taxes to go to (we pay good money for this!).

mnd999• 3 years ago

So now I have to read the article and summary to see if it’s a reasonable summery. Thanks.

But seriously, these low effort ChatGPT posts add very little.

denkmoon2• 3 years ago

Why the fuck would I ever put in more effort than absolutely necessary when I will not be rewarded proportionately for the increased effort? It probably won't even be noticed. and even if I were, where does that get me? Still sucking eggs in a housing market that is now more than ever before for business rather than for fulfilling a human need, still suffering through the bureaucratic uncaring nightmare that is the systems we have created.

Life isn't fair, it never will be fair and it never was fair. But the degree of unfairness has changed, for the worse, and it means for most of us, there is no point in trying.

frje1400• 3 years ago

Because even if don't get more money you get to do more fun work with more autonomy if you are good at what you do.

MattPalmer10862• 3 years ago

This has some truth to it. I've seen colleagues do the bare minimum , and they may not get paid a lot less than me, but they also don't get the interesting projects.

UtopiaPunk2• 3 years ago

The more fun work in my life are raising my kids and creating art.

gnulinux• 3 years ago

In my experience this is completely wrong. In my experience, the more work you do, you're awarded with more work. Companies require you to continuously grow, and chase for promotion. If you're better, then you need to grow better too. If you're average, but cut the minimum, then you're asked to grow averagely too. In my experience, there is such a thing as being too good at your job such that your employer keeps asking exponentially more and more from you.

Thorrez3• 3 years ago

I enjoy my job. I enjoy getting stuff done.

sledgehammers• 3 years ago

Good for you. How about the people you love? How about the rest of the humanity?

UtopiaPunk2• 3 years ago

Your boss enjoys the money you make for him with so little fuss.

eli_gottlieb2• 3 years ago

I enjoy my job too, but it took easily five or six years after finishing school before I got a job I actually enjoyed and felt valued in for the first time. Ultimately, work is what pays the bills.

gdulli3• 3 years ago

Why the fuck would I ever put in more effort than absolutely necessary when I will not be rewarded proportionately for the increased effort?

Because it's unpredictable how and when you'll be rewarded, so why not put yourself in a position to capitalize when you can?

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF2• 3 years ago

Putting in effort, especially when it's perceived that the effort goes unrewarded, is stressful. If it's unpredictable how and when I'll be rewarded and it's predictable that I'll be stressed from effort, the calculus is to not be effortful for my own mental health.

One might put effort into learning how to do their job better but I would argue that it's folly to put effort into doing everything one's employer tells them to. I will challenge myself to do a job "right" but if it's a lot of effort (read: anything akin to "staying late") then I'm not afraid to say "it will be done eventually" or "here are the steps we'll need to take".

denkmoon2• 3 years ago

If I'm a good dog they sometimes throw me a bone.

epups3• 3 years ago

The article is a quite interesting read, but it paints everything strongly with intellectual doomerism colors.

But today it is hard not to feel that if we have been, in fact, changing the world, we have been changing it for the worse.

Really? By what metric? Similar statements are made about the tech sector, which the author equates to social media and Tesla apparently, ignoring the immense value the Internet alone has provided worldwide in the last decades.

adrienthebo• 3 years ago

    - Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels
    - Oceanic temperatures and pH
    - Quantities in PFAS in the environment
    - Opiate deaths (and other deaths of despair) per capita
    - Percentage of children and teenagers with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation or have attempted suicide
    - Per-capita income in Africa and South America over the last two decades
    - School shootings per capita and firearms related deaths in children within America

The Internet is pretty rad, we've improved a number of health outcomes for a number of communities, and we're closing to making humanity a truly space-faring species; but for every statistic we can provide indicating progress there's usually a handful of related numbers that paint a grimmer picture.

epups3• 3 years ago

Climate change is an interesting example, because we are obviously making things worse for climate overall for centuries. However, our rate of improvement is dramatically increasing.

The other examples you provide are local. I don't think that everything is improving everywhere obviously, that would be ludicrous. But if you broaden your metrics a bit more fairly - gdp per capita globally, child mortality and life expectancy - our improvement is significant.

papito• 3 years ago

Is quiet quitting a US thing, or is this happening elsewhere?

US is unique in this sense because when we lose our job, we lose our health insurance, risking financial ruin. This forces us to go above and beyond so to not end up in that bottom 10% that gets regularly laid off. We overcompensate not to have a great life, but to not be completely broke.

This makes us easy marks for work abuse, this is why we respond to emails and Slack messages at 9PM, this is why we are afraid to leave at 5PM to be with our loved ones, even though we are totally spent to do any effective work (or do shit work at that point).

What we call quiet quitting may be just snapping back to what work should be, after the COVID lockdowns made people realize they were wage slaves.

Saigonautica2• 3 years ago

I can't say I've seen any evidence for it here (Vietnam) or with my Chinese colleagues. The slack channels are still active very late at night sometimes (e.g. midnight), and I'd classify most people in the workforce as 'hungry for opportunity' rather than 'looking to coast by'.

That being said, there's a surprising segment of the population that is not really part of the workforce. They're not 'rich' in terms of the amount of liquid capital they have onhand, but their family owns the home they live in, and they'd rather do odd jobs from home than go and build a career. They seem happy with their lives and I don't consider them foolish for making this choice! I think as the cost of living in the city slowly rises, this lifestyle will become unsustainable with time, and maybe quiet quitting may become a thing then.

adamwong2462• 3 years ago

A lot of people are realizing it just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you are great or terrible at your job, because you might get fired or laid-off either way. You can spend you whole life squirreling away your retirement, only to watch those savings evaporate at the next "financial crisis". We're told the system is meritocracy but it never seems to pan out that way.

gdulli3• 3 years ago

I really this attitude is too dire. Effort is not always rewarded quickly or transactionally. But over the long run, it does make a difference. Even if there's more bullshit and frustration than there should be along the way.

CodeSgt• 3 years ago

Agreed. It may not be a perfect meritocracy, but over the course of a life a little effort and competence go a long way.

AnimalMuppet• 3 years ago

Over the long run, effort is quite often rewarded more than lack of effort. Not perfectly. But often enough that it's the way to bet.

SL61• 3 years ago

The consequential factor isn't whether it's true, but the fact that a lot of people believe it. It's an attitude I hear from most of my peers, in and out of tech. What happens when a lot of the people who keep society running half-ass their jobs because they believe effort won't be rewarded?

musicale• 3 years ago

Meritocracy was originally a dystopian term, coined in the book "Rise of the Meritocracy" which:

"describes a dystopian society in a future United Kingdom in which intelligence and merit have become the central tenet of society, replacing previous divisions of social class and creating a society stratified between a merited power-holding elite and a disenfranchised underclass of the less merited."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

kelseyfrog• 3 years ago

It's a response to "The firm's responsibility is to its shareholders," a mentality that when taken to its logical conclusion implies that I'm of no worth to a company other than my money making ability. Some people are perfectly fine with this arrangement, while others see themselves as used as a means to an end.

Under that framing, who wants to be seen as a means to an end? The Kantians in the room find the arrangement morally impermissible. Besides, when the pandemic revealed that most of the work we do isn't even under the guise of a common good to the betterment of society, the moral plausible deniability vanishes and leaves us exposed to the harsh reality of being used as a means to an end.

To any critiques, especially those who says, "but that's how things are," I respond in kind with the categorical imperative - that we should act as if they aren't because not doing so only perpetuates the using of people as a means to an end.

seydor• 3 years ago

What does money buy? In most of the west not even a home , and luxuries are demonized. Vacations are alright but become a bit of a chore. Work for work's sake does not cut it anymore.

Not that this was unexpected, considering the huge demographic shift

eli_gottlieb2• 3 years ago

Yeah, that's what I think goes unsaid in the article: the shift in cost structure from affordable basics with unattainable luxuries to unattainable basics with routinely affordable "luxuries". It's easy to buy upscale consumer goods (craft beer, video games, leisure equipment, nice clothes) but most people in the Millennial generation and younger are simply not able to own a home.

to11mtm2• 3 years ago

I think an interesting unspoken problem is the 'Disneyfication' of many modern businesses.

That's anything from overblown 'cult cultures' to 'we are a family!'

In environments, many times a company winds up not properly removing bad/misplaced[0] actors from power roles until a -lot- of damage has been done.

As we are now in some stage of the 'Information age', as some people realize that in fact their families -were- fucked up, it is easier to realize that their company 'family' is in fact, also fucked up. [2]

At that point, folks do the best they can; busting ass on a project/improvement/etc and receiving no recognition (or worse, criticism) is in some ways similar to a family member who wants to borrow your spare car to save money on gas, then returns the car to you 2 months later overdue for an oil change and an empty tank when it was given full. You don't loan a car to that family member again.

[0] - The most frequent example of 'misplaced' is when someone gets promoted to a leadership role when unprepared from either an org or 'Emotional Intelligence'[1] level.

[1] - FWIW I find the term 'Emotional Intelligence' misleading; Sometimes people who seem to lack emotional intelligence in interactions actually have a great deal of it, and are instead weaponizing that against others. Or, someone may have amazing empathy for others but not do well with responding to very specific emotional stimuli.

[2] - Another poster alluded to it, but there is definitely at least an anecdotal correlation between past trauma and tolerance of emotional abuse at the office.

The Age of the Crisis of Work

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