The Persistent Myth That Most Americans Are Miserable at Work

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/great-resignation-myth-polls/676189/

by andsoitis • 3 years ago

38 97 3 years ago

Miserable is not the right word. I think most Americans feel unfulfilled at their jobs. They don't feel accomplished, just another brick in the wall.

baal80spam• 3 years ago

While it may be true, I'd assume this is the case for 99% of the working people.

taeric2• 3 years ago

I agree. My gut would be that we are able to hear of more folks that are not "fulfilled" by their job. But it is really hard to hold some thoughts in my head about how this is really new.

Worse, I think, is that it sells to tell people how bad off things are. Which seems to be driving even worse moods and outlooks along the way.

FirmwareBurner8• 3 years ago

Yeah, it's like 99% of people didn't grow up dreaming to file TPS reports or do landscaping for 8 hours a day, but rent has to be paid somehow and landlords don't accept payment in unrealistic hopes and dreams. It would be much cooler for al of us to be writers, musicians, painters, astronauts and F1 drivers.

I remember talking to my grandad who went from WW2 trenches, to famine, to working on the farm for 16+ hours/day and raising 10 kids, about purpose and fulfilment through work, whether all that hard work made him depressed, and he said that thought never occurred to him, that he never had any time to feel depressed or unfulfilled, he just did whatever had to be done to survive without thinking about fulfillment or purpose, but that he never really felt unhappy from any kind of work.

IMHO, looking at what's happening globally and what my grandad went through, it's a sign of incredible prosperity to have the luxury to think about fulfillment needing to come from work.

GuB-42• 3 years ago

I think what is specifically American is that people are not content with that situation.

In many countries, people don't really expect fulfillment from their jobs, they just expect to get paid so that they can find fulfillment elsewhere.

michaelt• 3 years ago

The real story, to the extent that these surveys are accurate, is that American workers are astonishingly happy and engaged

I've always suspected journalists can get a biased impression from sources like social media, because normal people don't go on social media to brag about how good they have it or say how much they love their employers (except perhaps on linkedin).

If my waiter buddy posts about how he's had a shitty day with rude customers and his boss cancelling his holiday because they're short-staffed? I might say "oh man that sucks - work, amiright?"

I'm sure as hell not going to chime in and tell him I'm highly paid with interesting work and great conditions.

I can easily see how a journalist, viewing Twitter or Reddit or Facebook, could come to the conclusion that everyone hates their jobs.

lawlessone• 3 years ago

because normal people don't go on social media to brag about how good they have it

Have you seen LinkedIn? people get sacked without warning and still praise their former bosses/companies.

Not because they necessarily liked either (maybe they did) but because there is a fear of being seen as negative when trying to find another job.

rco8786• 3 years ago

I’m curious how you are able to know the inner motivations of the people making those posts

whaleofatw2022• 3 years ago

The way some employers do silently abuse employees indeed is very difficult to talk about without risking future employment.

Clubber• 3 years ago

Unfortunately with journalism, particularly with filler articles like this, the outcome of the article is probably predetermined. I would imagine it's something like, "write an article about how employees are more satisfied with their jobs." It's not unlike, "write a paper about how Stalin's policies benefited the Soviet Union."

onlyrealcuzzo3• 3 years ago

I've always suspected journalists can get a biased impression from sources like social media, because normal people don't go on social media to brag about how good they have it
I'm highly paid with interesting work and great conditions

Isn't bragging the main thing people do on Social Media?

Even when we don't set out to brag, we still end up doing it often...

turmeric_root• 3 years ago

Isn't bragging the main thing people do on Social Media?

start following more interesting people

taeric2• 3 years ago

But this same tendency can explain the escalations of misery being professed on social media. It is, itself, a point of bragging to show that you had a worse thing.

JohnFen12• 3 years ago

(except perhaps on linkedin)

Where there's a strong incentive to lie so as not to endanger employment prospects.

nonethewiser2• 3 years ago

There are lots of factors, and every work situation is different, but from my perspective in tech I think misery with work is largely a symptom of people's attitudes. Pay and working conditions are better than 90% (or more) of other jobs out there and you often don't even need a bachelors degree. If people outside big tech hubs knew the details of tech workers situations they might lose their mind.

onlyrealcuzzo3• 3 years ago

"Be thankful for what you have; You'll end up having more. If you focus on what you don't have, you'll never have enough." - Oprah.

IME, >50% focus on what they don't have - which is why they complain so much.

hotpotamus5• 3 years ago

I actually agree with those words, but they rankle when coming from a billionaire. I felt the same way when Munger's quote about not feeling like a victim was posted here, particularly after someone mentioned that apparently his family connections were able to overturn his denial to enter Harvard.

Maybe we should find some spiritual leaders or other to hear from. At least Oprah might at least have some distant memory of what it was like to be poor I suppose.

JohnFen12• 3 years ago

Pay and working conditions are better than 90% of other jobs out there

Pay, sure, but pay doesn't make happiness. Working conditions? I doubt that. But that's a subjective thing, so it's hard to really measure.

voisin• 3 years ago

Working conditions may not make happiness but they can certainly make unhappiness.

nonethewiser2• 3 years ago

Pay, sure, but pay doesn't make happiness

Yet pay is the point of work, wouldn't you say?

Working conditions? I doubt that.

As I noted, work conditions vary. But non-physical labor, remote possible, pushing the upper boundaries on vacation (unlimited vacation which isnt a scam), family leave, health insurace, etc. I think you really have to cherry pick to beat tech.

nonameiguess• 3 years ago

Why do you doubt working conditions are better? What other jobs have you held? I try to compare this to other jobs I've done. Right now, I'm in a lull due to waiting on hardware I can use for a customer engagement to connect to their systems, so not a whole lot to do, and I'm here sitting on my couch with a warm cat in my lap, reading Hacker News, getting paid. I've got no specific hour-by-hour requirements. As long as I get done what needs to be done in a particular week, I can nap half the day for all anyone cares.

Previous job I was an Army officer in a tank unit. It's certainly not a bad job. National surveys consistently showed military officer as the second most respected profession behind medical doctors by the general American public. Camaderie is great. Sense of purpose is there. But the material work conditions? I regularly worked 100 hour weeks, got an hour or two of sleep a night, sometimes outdoors when it was -14 degrees, sometimes outdoors when it was 130 degrees (both Fahrenheit). Inhaling diesel fumes all the time. Doing ridiculous nonsense like carrying telephone poles up and down a bunch of hills at 1 AM for 20 km to earn the right to wear silver spurs on my boots on Fridays. Couldn't see my family for months at a time. Ended up with ten screws in my spine from all the bodily damage. You think stack ranking is bad in the tech industry? In the military, you have a hard deadline that puts you in a cohort where you're up for promotion, and depending on personnel requirements at the time, you either get one chance or two to get promoted, and you're out of a career otherwise. There is no other military you can apply to if you get laid off. People are fired if they get fat. Your boss is not only allowed to verbally abuse and publicly humiliate you, it's basically expected and normal as a motivational tactic.

It's very hard for me to imagine considering what I'm going through now to be bad working conditions.

addicted• 3 years ago

Pay very much brings happiness. Even the research that shows that happiness does not grow with your income/wealth shows that it grows up to a certain income level after which it levels off.

quantified• 3 years ago

I'll take being desk-bound over being a nurse, police officer, teacher or any other essential employee any day. Those jobs can suck super-hard. For a nurse: 16+ -hour shifts on low salary, for example, COVID all over still to this day.

asynchronous2• 3 years ago

Gonna push back on the bachelor degree note: According to data just released from LinkedIn, 88% of tech jobs require a 4 year degree, which is higher than almost any other job category in the US. Overwhelmingly you need one.

giraffe_lady• 3 years ago

I think the time when you could get a programming job without a degree quietly just ended, during the massive layoffs.

Of the dozen people I know affected by the layoffs, only the ones without degrees are still without work. In fact two of them have not had a single interview beyond HR phone screen in months of looking, even with 7-10 years experience.

Note also that most of these people don't have CS or other relevant degrees, just degrees at all. Programming now seems to fall under the same rules as other white collar professions.

civilitty• 3 years ago

"Or equivalent experience" are the magic words found on almost every job posting. Outside of a few corps like Google, the degree requirements are rarely a dealbreaker.

tennisflyi2• 3 years ago

Yes and y’all are none the wiser (like you said), i.e., y’all think everyone has it like you.

happytoexplain3• 3 years ago

Subtitle: "One could make the argument that, actually, American workers are happier than they’ve been in decades."

So the writer chooses to start out right away with the obvious fallacy that people can't be both happier than in decades and also miserable.

A. They may be gate-keeping the word "miserable" to omit the mundane misery of working for a living at something you don't love (or at least don't 40-hours-a-week love).

B. It's very hard to empirically measure "how happy are US workers". Surveys are useless (people have all sorts of reasons for responding in a way that doesn't communicate their true feelings), and second-order indicators are fuzzy. This ambiguity also makes it very easy to get the answer you want.

C. Many people right now are obviously miserable because they don't feel they are getting the same rewards per effort as what they feel previous generations got (which is probably a mix of truth and bias).

D. Even if we ignore the variability of C, the universal constant will always be there: The availability of types of work will never match the availability people who enjoy each type, and even when the universe could pair a person with a position they would like, a lot of luck is involved. It's a fundamental problem of work that will probably not be solved until the far sci-fi future (if that ever comes). This is an uncomfortable truth. Most people who are happy at work are not happy because of the work, but simply because they get to socialize with people they enjoy socializing with. Employers of course prefer to push the message of this article's thesis instead.

As an aside: In addition to socializing, there is now a second source of non-work-related happiness: Working from home. This increases happiness for both introverted people, and also extroverted people who happen to be in a work environment where they don't really click with their coworkers personality-wise, which is a lot of people - maybe most people in a 21st cen. culture with so many diverse personality types. Luckily you can make both groups happy by allowing both modes of work, since the latter group were mostly not contributing to the social happiness of the former group anyway.

Edit: As pointed out, extroverts can also be fulfilled by in-person socializing at home. Also, both extroverts and introverts can fulfill or supplement their happy dose of socializing virtually (usually via text, which counter-intuitively is a better vector for socializing than video calls).

galangalalgol• 3 years ago

To your aside, I am one of the only people on my very social block that doesnt work from home. The block is its own social structure and people find it kind of odd I have regular contact with people in other parts of the city and go into work every day. So extroverts in dense areas can still thrive in wfh.

Until we eliminate scarcity or come close, not everyone can be at the self actualization section of the hierarchy of needs. And fighting automation doesn't get there faster. We need to take care of people independently from employment. We also need people who were in those jobs to at least try to pitch in on the stuff we haven't automated yet including automating things. If that isn't possible due to ability mismatch, then idelness is a mental health issue, so some help engaing on tasks that are in the self actualization realm would be great. This is all a naive pipe dream with human nature being what it is, but a nice one.

jhbadger• 3 years ago

So the writer chooses to start out right away with the obvious fallacy that people can't be both happier than in decades and also miserable.

You are making the (unfounded) assertion that there is some absolute scale of misery and so someone could be less miserable than they've been in decades and yet still be "miserable" because they haven't hit "happiness" on the absolute scale. But there is no such absolute scale. If someone is happier than they've been in decades they can't be miserable because that's just a term describing their personal low.

JohnFen12• 3 years ago

Most people I personally know are miserable at work, anyway.

derbOac• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what to make of articles like this because, on the one hand, I appreciate someone trying to stay close to the data, but on the other hand, I don't trust the data they use, and feel like it could all be spun in different ways.

Just to take one small example: Thompson cites as an example of happier workers a poll question showing that there was a 20% increase in people saying that it's "a good time to find a job.” But what does that mean? That there are lots of openings because people have in fact left their jobs they were unhappy with? Turnover means people are happier with their jobs?

Or take this: 35% of people say "that opportunities abound for them to do 'more of what they do best.'" so the other 65% of people don't matter? Maybe it's unchanged since 2013 but is that a good benchmark? Are people thinking of other opportunities?

Another elephant in the room is whether the happiest are happier, and the unhappy are less happy. This might or might not be the case, but talking about these survey respondents like they're a large homogenous group is problematic. It may be that there are areas of the economy that have in fact gotten much worse for large segments, even as they have gotten better for other segments. Focusing on the happy doesn't talk about the unhappiness of the unhappy, which is in fact what Thompson is trying to rebut.

Finally, I've grown distrustful of these surveys in general. It's not clear to me that what people say in response to a pollster reflects anything meaningful about their actual behavior and emotional state in the way people want them to mean. I do not want to be dismissive because people should pay attention to them, but I'm not sure I've seen convincing evidence that aggregate survey responses track with societal trends in a way that suggests their unbounded validity. Even the figure tracking job satisfaction since 1987 — which I give credit to Thompson for posting — hides a lot. Sure, you can see the Great Recession in that figure, but if you didn't know about it, what would you make of it? What about the drug epidemic and declines in life expectancy? Should we be incorporating birth rate declines into the conversation? Are people unhappy with their jobs, or with some things about society in general?

I bring that up not to say "life sucks for members of society right now" but rather, it's not always clear to me how you should use measures of things like "societal happiness" or what that even means. In some place as heterogeneous as the US, given all the problems we've had as a country, is it insensitive to have these kinds of discussions at all until we're more attentive to the worst off?

InCityDreams• 3 years ago

/ I've grown distrustful of these surveys....

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FLm2X6sFa48

horns4lyfe• 3 years ago

Just one data point, but I love my job now that I can work from home. The work is interesting and challenging, and I don’t have to deal with all of the office bullshit. Pretty simple equation.

menssen• 3 years ago

Off-topic rant: to read this article, I:

1. Clicked on the link.

2. Got pay-walled.

3. Remembered that I had access to the Atlantic through Apple News+.

4. Opened the News App on my phone.

5. Went to Magazines.

6. Found the latest issue of The Atlantic.

7. Found the hidden link to go to the magazine's "channel," since this article was not actually in the magazine.

8. Thankfully, this article was the most recent thing posted.

9. Read the article hunched over my phone while the still-paywalled version was looming over my head on my computer screen.

Somebody has to figure out how to fix this.

nine_zeros• 3 years ago

For me, the times I have felt miserable at work have been the times when the work environment changed from collaborative to backstabby/competitive - often due to punitive management structures.

What I learned from reflecting on 2 such instances is that what makes for a great workplace is not ping-pong tables or lots of cash. It is that I need to feel like I am entering a trustworthy environment day after day. This is also perhaps why vets enjoy talking about their time in service because the environment is not sustained punitive - even if it is a tough job. You can trust everyone (and especially your boss) to have your back.

A sustained entry into an untrustworthy environment (read: talking to your own manager might be dangerous) really takes a toll on me. Ever since this realization, I have started to look for honest and trustworthy environments for my jobs. And it has worked great for my mental health.

johnea• 3 years ago

The Persistent Myth that articles about Persistent Myths are themselves Persistent Myths...

With hundreds of millions of workers in the US, I'm sure every persistent myth is true for someone...

tennisflyi2• 3 years ago

Cap. Unless you’re in a building similar to those by Gensler and similar, you’re not happy.

Let’s compare breakrooms. Anyone?

The Persistent Myth That Most Americans Are Miserable at Work

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