Posted on 08/24/2022 8:27:24 AM PDT by Brookhaven
You said it and I took longer to say it in my contribution to this thread. If interested, read my post 112.
What a thread this is. Worth reading the comments if only to see how not alone you are.
It may not be this way in every company but I can tell you that the one I last worked for includes things akin to gang initiation to enter the top club. I was asked to do but refused and so was cashiered when it was next convenient. I have never done anything I considered immoral, unethical, illegal or against my principles and never will. That is no cop out to not rising in the ranks in some places, I once thought it was, just an excuse for failure. I can assure you not, that is not true, it is no cop out. It has taken me years to come to terms with all this but I have seen it many times and still do.
History may not repeat completely, but it rhymes. My kids, now in their 40s are experiencing the very same things I did. My Dad once told me that hard work and smarts will only carry you so far. They will get your foot in the door to the corner offices or board room but after that it takes something else. Maybe not everywhere but everywhere I have seen it takes something else.
If they want people to ‘go the extra mile’ then they need to be coming up with raises, bonuses, and promotions.
All ‘going the extra mile’ does, at a lot of places, is mark you out as a fool.
That’s more and more rare, most big companies are basically “up or out”, and once you’re over 40, they can just bring somebody in to do your job at half the salary.
As an employee, I always had an idea of what I wanted out of the job. Sometimes it was just a steady paycheck so I could pursue other interests. Other times, I wanted to acquire certain skills, experience or knowledge, which sometimes required that I find a way to advance to a position in which those skills would be put to use, and experience accumulated. The trick was always having clarity of what you are after, and positioning oneself to attain whatever goal that might have been.
As an employer, it's a different problem. In our line of work there's certainly a need for young professionals to develop the experience and what we call "deep competence" . Everyone says that's what they want, but often what they mean is that they want the pay, but not necessarily the stress and responsibility that goes along with that.
The other analogy that has clarified these discussions over the years was coined so long ago that I forget the author's name. In essence, the idea is that if you're one of those career track types, at the start of your career, you're going to be paid more than you're worth, because, basically, all you have is academic understanding, no experience, and you're basically not really worth anything. The company's paying for the potential at this stage. Then, for a few years, you'll be paid less than you're worth, sometimes significantly less. This comes when you've finally developed some competence, but you don't actually have the wherewithal or reputation to take your skills elsewhere, or hang out your own shingle. Finally, comes the time when you've clawed your way sufficiently high in the organization that you're paid more than you're worth again, but this time significantly more.
The Gen Z cohort currently entering the labor market has one significant Achilles heel that none of them understand. They've never seen a down market. The 2022 college graduate was 7 years old during the 2007 financial collapse, and have just spent the past two years pretending to study from home. They would like to continue that, and pretend to work from home, as Elon Musk said, and they might be able to get some sort of employment for a while that allows that. Unfortunately, there is always a cycle, always a down to counter the up, and that's coming. Gravity always reasserts itself, and it looks like that's coming sooner rather than later.
Not everyone is like that. Some of us are more efficient and more productive when working from home rather than working in an office.
I learned decades ago that the work hard and you will get ahead talk was a bunch of crap...
Those in management will do whatever and burn whoever they have to to keep their own jobs.
The harder you work, the more extra effort you put in, is rewarded with additional jobs and duties, while you watch others coast, go home, and get the same compensation you do.
Everything I learned about the workplace was taught to me by Basketball Belly Don.
One of his favorite sayings was:
Never put off til tomorrow, what you can put off til the day AFTER tomorrow just as well
Not everyone is like that. Some of us are more efficient and more productive when working from home rather than working in an office.
I think that is highly dependent on both the industry and type of work within the industry that an individual performs. I think that some of the big software companies are finding that to be true of some jobs, but even they are trying to get people back to the office for a variety of reasons.
In the case of my company, I've heard that from multiple people. The argument often sounds something like this "I can spend the two hours a day I would be commuting on my project, and it's so much more efficient". To which I've been forced to reply "Yeah, it takes you at least as long to produce the first draft, and then a senior staff member has to spend extra time marking up your work to correct it (rather than just sitting down and telling you what to do), and that cycle happens multiple times. I actually have the numbers: it takes, roughly 20-30% more man-hours (including supervisor time, staff time, correction etc.) to get a product that is almost as good as what we had before."
I've heard the same thing from other industries in the professional service sector, all have the same problem. Extends to law, accounting, A+E, construction managment (even office based).
Plus we find that we can't properly train and advance junior professionals. Mentoring over Zoom doesn't appear to work nearly as well as in-person. Relationships critical for a career wither.
Some jobs, sure, maybe it works. But it's not a one-size fits all solution, and gen Z is the least able to make the claim that they are "more productive" from home.
Our country was founded by men who were told to work harder to pay more taxes for Britain and also explicitly told they'd never have representation for it.
Many of these korporations have aligned with government to subjugate the citizenry. Just look at korporate mandates to take the Jim Jones Jab.
I'm a sysadmin. WFH works better.
I just get perturbed when people lump everyone into the same bucket of laziness who need to be in an office so the useless managers can justify their jobs.
How's that for an ironic statement?
I don’t know. I worked hard and I did get ahead, and I never cared too much about whether the coasters got the same as I did. Everybody knows who’s worth a damn and who’s not, whether or not they’ll admit it.
Oh, don’t get me wrong...
I started working hard, and did get slightly ahead, but I also watched the “losers” as they are called on this thread, come out farther ahead than I...
Different scenarios I guess
Different Scenarios,,,
I busted Azz but didn’t kiss any.
Same as You, possibly.
.
Cheers
I busted ass until my early ‘50’s...
Then I saw and had experienced the frivolity of it all...
Vanity,,
All is Vanity.
.
Agreed,
I waited till Full retirement last year and now it’s finding my way to
The Streets of Gold !
Excellent point. Companies have zero loyalty. They see long term employees as expensive. The young now know they are expendable, so why bother with returning any loyalty. Heck, why work hard. Most employees already do the least necessary to keep their job, but this goes well past even that. F’em, is the attitude.
Seruzawa, when I go to a mechanic to get a tire fixed, I expect them to fix the tire. I don't expect them to rotate and balance all the tires for free. They might recommend to me that I need a rotation and I'll consider it and expect to pay more.
I don't expect the mechanic to go 'above and beyond'.
Same thing with a dentist or doctor. (though I'd rather have a mechanic balance my tires - joke!). I go to them, they diagnose my issue and offer solutions, and I decide what I will pay them to do, and I will pay accordingly.
If I need a lawyer or accountant, mechanic, or plumber, I know that I'll have to pay for their experience. If I need a really good lawyer, I know I'll need to pay through the nose.
Employers must also recognize these facts. If they want experienced go-getters, they need to pay for and reward those services. If they want a 'woke' workforce that rewards diversity to extremes of incompetence, then they can have that at the cost of losing their core, solid, knowledgeable employees.
"You always do the best job you can. F*** a bunch of slackers."
I agree to a point. I think that's your military mentality breaking through. If Chief or Sarge told you to fill 50 sandbags for your position, but you needed 80, you'd go ahead and fill the other thirty, right?
In the corporate world, when the boss says your quota is 50 bags, but we really need 80 and I need you to skip lunch and work late...? Different entirely.
Add to that your required diversity training that you have to do online (unpaid) over your weekend because you're too busy at work...
Add a transgender dude with boobs who thinks he's a woman and is a "lawsuit lieutenant colonel" who lives to file IG complaints and more lawsuits.
I quit. Not quietly, but having worked 80-100 hour weeks for a period of years with no benefit, I pared it back to 50-60 hours a week. That was my "quiet quitting". In the end, about a month ago, I quit. Tired of wokeness in DOD, tired of no upward mobility because Boomers clogging up the 'corporate ladder' until they die at their desks (happened twice to me).
I'll live off savings for another 13 years or so until I can tap my IRAs. I'm early Gen-X and I 'retired' really early.
Thank you for your service in VN, brother!
Kit
PS: my great curiosity is which bathroom this sick colonel with boobs uses for piss testing? Awkward either way for the examiner!
PPS: more for you on FReepmail
Sounds all too familiar.
Quiet quitting is nothing new. We used to have a term for it when I entered the workforce in the 1970s - “skating.”
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I first heard the term “sand bagging”, in the service in 1963.
This is the same HR Management mumbojumbo they have said for decades! HR and Managers still do not 'get it.' Quiet quitting is the same thing happening in China with the "lay flat."
Younger generations have no hope for a better life. And as long as that hope is not re-ignited by the culture and society the country will not continue to proper. I believe the proper term here is 'failure to thrive.' This problem goes much deeper than the workplace.
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