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money is often food.
money is often water.
money is often shelter.
money is often never dreamed of hobbies.
work often leads to money.
people work to fill their needs.
some people like to over work while missing out on the rest of life. they are fools.
some people over work because of necessity to provide for others, or long term. they are noble, cautious, or being used.
some people don't give a ****. they are interesting or working the system.
the value of work is related to your value of money and personal needs.
the rest is balancing and your ability to walk the line.
money is often freedom, but it isn't always. money is not satisfaction, but it can satisfy.
true love is stronger than money.
friendship doesn't need dollar signs.
enjoyment need not be coarse by dollar amounts, but that's only if you've got enough to balance your needs.
I forget what point I wanted to make...
Haha, many good points made already, however small
Simply attending meetings, doing low value activities and avoiding more difficult activities, answering emails with uncompleted answers, not fully understanding things, and generally bluffing it and being inefficient, playing the system and doing activities just because your boss wants it done. Spending hours on data input, etc that could be automated - all highly inefficient to eat up lots of hours - Cloaking fairly simple activities in Jargon
Think about if you were truly a workaholic, and the work you did had a huge value, employers would be falling over themselves to offer you money - why choose you to work for a run of the mill salary, why not run your business
Amen. I used to be a workaholic, obsessed with making money, being 'successful', having a prestigious career. Then I realized I had to give up everything I loved to chase it. Had no time for my hobbies of hiking and mountain climbing. Having to move away from family and friends. My career became my master. But as my career progressed, I felt less and less satisfied. I got tired of spending so much time and energy on work, and so little on myself and those I love. I had to give up more and more, it was a never ending game. Finally I said screw it!
It was scary but I walked away from it. Wife and I moved back to friends and family. Took up all my hobbies, my passions once more. I have much more free time. My health improved, I'm happier, and content. I don't feel like I'm 'chasing' something anymore. We downsized, eliminated most of our debt, and live within our means. We aren't out to impress anyone anymore. None of that superficial crap adds to life, it detracts from it. We finally got our priorities straight after buying the American consumerism lie of 'more is better!' Buy buy buy!' for far too long.
I believe I responded to another thread almost like yours. A career is a career; it's not the whole of a person. As I wrote on the other thread, if you define yourself by your career irregardless of whether you work for someone else or for yourself or any combination of the two, that is a death sentence as far as I'm concerned. Here, if your career dissolves, spiritually you will too. That's happened to many people. Someone may graduate from college and get on the fast track in whatever field - engineering/science/business/etc - and they rise up the ranks over the next couple of years. Their job becomes their life, and they step on a few people to get there. Of course, many companies will expect more and more of your life from them as you move up the 'ladder'. Then, the company lets them go either due to a layoff or because someone higher in the company didn't like them or some other corporate political game gets them the boot. All of their sense of self-worth was tied up in that job. Often times they either hope like hell that they can find something similar elsewhere. The alternative is dissappearing into a liquor bottle or hoping the wife/husband/whatever can hold them both up until things get better. Meanwhile, the corporate world continues with its spin on 'diversity' and 'leadership' and the usual psycho-babble cooked up by people who may end up in the pink slip parade with so many who were let go earlier.
To me, it seems like a scam. I've seen too many people in my life get thrown under the bus like this and their life goes to hell because their career was their life. Personally, I think one could interpret it as treason to your faith for those of you who are religious; I will not bow before any company or institution in reverence.
American Dream? As far as I'm concerned, you have to be asleep to believe in it...
A good work ethic has nothing to do with a person's character as a whole. Someone may work 60 or 70 hours a week and not get anything done...seems pointless to me. Or, you may have someone who does the work of 2 - 3 people and does it well, but they screw over people all the time. I've worked with management that worked very long hours and did all sorts of crazy tasks and put out all sorts of stupid fires on the job but were very crooked people to be around. I've dealt with salespeople who were top sellers who ****ed over customers all the time. A good work ethic is no protection from a diabolical boss or coworkers.
Sure, I sounded like I was ranted on my OP. But how many people share a similar opinion? Probably millions if you ask me. Am I going to do something about it? I already did; I don't make my job/career my life. It scares a lot of people since many people are socialized and programmed to think that a job is their life. I let go of this fantasy long before City Data was formed; no one will hurt my feelings by telling me I have a 'poor' work ethic. I don't look for trouble or cause it, but I will leave if trouble tries to come to me. Sure, I'll still have my opinions about the working world. Isn't that the point of freedom of speech? Supposely we have or had that in the USA.
I believe I responded to another thread almost like yours. A career is a career; it's not the whole of a person. As I wrote on the other thread, if you define yourself by your career irregardless of whether you work for someone else or for yourself or any combination of the two, that is a death sentence as far as I'm concerned. Here, if your career dissolves, spiritually you will too. That's happened to many people. Someone may graduate from college and get on the fast track in whatever field - engineering/science/business/etc - and they rise up the ranks over the next couple of years. Their job becomes their life, and they step on a few people to get there. Of course, many companies will expect more and more of your life from them as you move up the 'ladder'. Then, the company lets them go either due to a layoff or because someone higher in the company didn't like them or some other corporate political game gets them the boot. All of their sense of self-worth was tied up in that job. Often times they either hope like hell that they can find something similar elsewhere. The alternative is dissappearing into a liquor bottle or hoping the wife/husband/whatever can hold them both up until things get better. Meanwhile, the corporate world continues with its spin on 'diversity' and 'leadership' and the usual psycho-babble cooked up by people who may end up in the pink slip parade with so many who were let go earlier.
To me, it seems like a scam. I've seen too many people in my life get thrown under the bus like this and their life goes to hell because their career was their life. Personally, I think one could interpret it as treason to your faith for those of you who are religious; I will not bow before any company or institution in reverence.
American Dream? As far as I'm concerned, you have to be asleep to believe in it...
A good work ethic has nothing to do with a person's character as a whole. Someone may work 60 or 70 hours a week and not get anything done...seems pointless to me. Or, you may have someone who does the work of 2 - 3 people and does it well, but they screw over people all the time. I've worked with management that worked very long hours and did all sorts of crazy tasks and put out all sorts of stupid fires on the job but were very crooked people to be around. I've dealt with salespeople who were top sellers who ****ed over customers all the time. A good work ethic is no protection from a diabolical boss or coworkers.
Sure, I sounded like I was ranted on my OP. But how many people share a similar opinion? Probably millions if you ask me. Am I going to do something about it? I already did; I don't make my job/career my life. It scares a lot of people since many people are socialized and programmed to think that a job is their life. I let go of this fantasy long before City Data was formed; no one will hurt my feelings by telling me I have a 'poor' work ethic. I don't look for trouble or cause it, but I will leave if trouble tries to come to me. Sure, I'll still have my opinions about the working world. Isn't that the point of freedom of speech? Supposely we have or had that in the USA.
Simply attending meetings, doing low value activities and avoiding more difficult activities, answering emails with uncompleted answers, not fully understanding things, and generally bluffing it and being inefficient, playing the system and doing activities just because your boss wants it done. Spending hours on data input, etc that could be automated - all highly inefficient to eat up lots of hours - Cloaking fairly simple activities in Jargon
This sounds like the plight of your typical sales/HR/PR/communications/assistant/non-technical worker. The type of people that companies pay just to show up, fill a seat, and spend 5 hours/week being productive.
Quote:
Think about if you were truly a workaholic, and the work you did had a huge value, employers would be falling over themselves to offer you money
I'm an engineer and therefore extremely biased, but there are many many companies that don't subscribe to this philosophy (between me and my other engineering friends I can think of 4 different companies off the top of my head...). Anyway, what tends to happen is engineers and other technical people, ESPECIALLY the highly-skilled technicians, put out loads and loads of extremely valuable work at 50-60 hours per week and they're paid salary. Their productivity metrics rise because their compensation is a fixed cost but they're outputting way more work than they really should be. Guess who gets the bonus as a result? The business manager in charge. He/she is rewarded for their excellent idea of the "make our technical people work more hours for the same price and hold them accountable for the extra work" policy In no way is the company falling over itself to offer the technical people more money. When the job market improves I think there is going to be a lot of highly skilled labor leaving companies for greener pastures. That's likely to be a painful process.
A couple disclaimers:
1) I'm not saying the businessmen/women in charge don't offer valuable contributions to the company, I'm merely saying it can be common in certain industries for them to undervalue the technical resources that power their projects.
2) I realize that there are many companies out there that do value their technical people. Not enough in my opinion.
This sounds like the plight of your typical sales/HR/PR/communications/assistant/non-technical worker. The type of people that companies pay just to show up, fill a seat, and spend 5 hours/week being productive.
I'm an engineer and therefore extremely biased, but there are many many companies that don't subscribe to this philosophy (between me and my other engineering friends I can think of 4 different companies off the top of my head...). Anyway, what tends to happen is engineers and other technical people, ESPECIALLY the highly-skilled technicians, put out loads and loads of extremely valuable work at 50-60 hours per week and they're paid salary. Their productivity metrics rise because their compensation is a fixed cost but they're outputting way more work than they really should be. Guess who gets the bonus as a result? The business manager in charge. He/she is rewarded for their excellent idea of the "make our technical people work more hours for the same price and hold them accountable for the extra work" policy In no way is the company falling over itself to offer the technical people more money. When the job market improves I think there is going to be a lot of highly skilled labor leaving companies for greener pastures. That's likely to be a painful process.
A couple disclaimers:
1) I'm not saying the businessmen/women in charge don't offer valuable contributions to the company, I'm merely saying it can be common in certain industries for them to undervalue the technical resources that power their projects.
2) I realize that there are many companies out there that do value their technical people. Not enough in my opinion.
Bingo. What's worse is when those highly productive workers are the first targets when it comes time to trim the workforce. It's absolutely repulsing. The brunt of the burden is often placed on a select few, yet they are not compensated according to what they produce. I think a lot of companies have been changing in some regards. They are trying to eliminate a lot of those fluff jobs that don't directly produce/contribute, and a lot of white collar workers are being targeted as a result.
Regarding the whole contribution vs reward.... I see the compensation skewed big time in manufacturing. The office workers are paid based on the "market rates", not based on what they directly produce or contribute. Working in some plants in the past, those office workers were the ones driving the nice cars. The floor workers??? Haha, most of them spoke Spanish and many couldn't afford cars. Unfair labor practices. They have been doing it with engineers over this past decade as well with H1B visas, or simply having the engineering work done out of the country. Honest work simply isn't honestly compensated these days.
Best move I made??? I work at a place that doesn't have any "office" staff. It's owner, and worker. That's the way it should be Owner doesn't have to get his hands dirty anymore and collects a reward based on his investment. Not a bad system at all. And since he doesn't have any fluff jobs to pay 50K a year for, he can afford to pay a wage that attracts the best and brightest in the field. No salesman required. The quality of the product does all the talking and saleswork for the company.
Aside from that, it has never been easier to sell your services without the use of high paid salesman. Once a company explorers modern avenues, they learn how they can do this efficiently, cheaply, and effectively, without dealing with middlemen, commissions, etc. It's a changing world. The savings can get passed on to the customer, used for investment for the company, or to hire more "productive" staff. More than ever, white collar workers are having to adapt and evolve themselves and their skillsets to stay competitive. The way business is done today can either work for you, or work to eliminate your usefulness.
Bingo. What's worse is when those highly productive workers are the first targets when it comes time to trim the workforce. It's absolutely repulsing. The brunt of the burden is often placed on a select few, yet they are not compensated according to what they produce. I think a lot of companies have been changing in some regards. They are trying to eliminate a lot of those fluff jobs that don't directly produce/contribute, and a lot of white collar workers are being targeted as a result.
Regarding the whole contribution vs reward.... I see the compensation skewed big time in manufacturing. The office workers are paid based on the "market rates", not based on what they directly produce or contribute. Working in some plants in the past, those office workers were the ones driving the nice cars. The floor workers??? Haha, most of them spoke Spanish and many couldn't afford cars. Unfair labor practices. They have been doing it with engineers over this past decade as well with H1B visas, or simply having the engineering work done out of the country. Honest work simply isn't honestly compensated these days.
Best move I made??? I work at a place that doesn't have any "office" staff. It's owner, and worker. That's the way it should be Owner doesn't have to get his hands dirty anymore and collects a reward based on his investment. Not a bad system at all. And since he doesn't have any fluff jobs to pay 50K a year for, he can afford to pay a wage that attracts the best and brightest in the field. No salesman required. The quality of the product does all the talking and saleswork for the company.
Aside from that, it has never been easier to sell your services without the use of high paid salesman. Once a company explorers modern avenues, they learn how they can do this efficiently, cheaply, and effectively, without dealing with middlemen, commissions, etc. It's a changing world. The savings can get passed on to the customer, used for investment for the company, or to hire more "productive" staff. More than ever, white collar workers are having to adapt and evolve themselves and their skillsets to stay competitive. The way business is done today can either work for you, or work to eliminate your usefulness.
Office staff and salesman are two very different things. Salesman are normally heavily commission based and your company has to keep some sort of books/etc in regards to office staff.
Bingo. What's worse is when those highly productive workers are the first targets when it comes time to trim the workforce. It's absolutely repulsing. The brunt of the burden is often placed on a select few, yet they are not compensated according to what they produce. I think a lot of companies have been changing in some regards. They are trying to eliminate a lot of those fluff jobs that don't directly produce/contribute, and a lot of white collar workers are being targeted as a result.
Regarding the whole contribution vs reward.... I see the compensation skewed big time in manufacturing. The office workers are paid based on the "market rates", not based on what they directly produce or contribute. Working in some plants in the past, those office workers were the ones driving the nice cars. The floor workers??? Haha, most of them spoke Spanish and many couldn't afford cars. Unfair labor practices. They have been doing it with engineers over this past decade as well with H1B visas, or simply having the engineering work done out of the country. Honest work simply isn't honestly compensated these days.
Best move I made??? I work at a place that doesn't have any "office" staff. It's owner, and worker. That's the way it should be Owner doesn't have to get his hands dirty anymore and collects a reward based on his investment. Not a bad system at all. And since he doesn't have any fluff jobs to pay 50K a year for, he can afford to pay a wage that attracts the best and brightest in the field. No salesman required. The quality of the product does all the talking and saleswork for the company.
Aside from that, it has never been easier to sell your services without the use of high paid salesman. Once a company explorers modern avenues, they learn how they can do this efficiently, cheaply, and effectively, without dealing with middlemen, commissions, etc. It's a changing world. The savings can get passed on to the customer, used for investment for the company, or to hire more "productive" staff. More than ever, white collar workers are having to adapt and evolve themselves and their skillsets to stay competitive. The way business is done today can either work for you, or work to eliminate your usefulness.
That's what I'm thinking as well. That's one good thing about some small businesses is that the owner doesn't want the corporate bloat. I've seen a lot of small businesses that have a lot of managers and bloat, and these are businesses that employ no more than 50 people at the most. They have a manager for this and a supervisor for that and the front line people typically are the ones doing all the work for peanuts. Oddly enough, engineering firms do this corporate bloat crap a lot. I'm amazed that half of the engineering firms overall haven't sunk like a leaky boat. Granted, I'm not in the engineering field but have considered going back to school for something in engineering. Now, I'm probably leaning more towards a natural science vs. engineering.
That's one good thing about some small businesses is that the owner doesn't want the corporate bloat.
But how they supposed to improve synergy and roadmap strategery for emerging market profitability with innovative metrics for sustained business ventures without the corporate bloat???
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In no way is the company falling over itself to offer the technical people more money. When the job market improves I think there is going to be a lot of highly skilled labor leaving companies for greener pastures. That's likely to be a painful process.
