Who here goes to work everyday and tries to do the least amt of work with least amt of effort? (employed, degrees)
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I am proud of it, I am no longer an easy mark for the corporate con artists that take advantage of good people. What it got me was the ability to walk away from bad jobs without any regret. I am loyal only to myself and will tailor my work habits to the way I am treated by an employer.
You act like I am supposed to feel guilty. Do you think an employer feels even a twinge of guilt when they downsize, layoff or push out employees? You are playing a one sided game that is rigged against you. Do you feel proud to be a corporate suck up and sycophant in exchange for a few crumbs from the master's table?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ktoni
That is the whole point, use the system to your advantage. I work as hard as I want, if the demands become too great or the pay too low, I bounce. I am not bitter, just pragmatic and realistic about how the world really works.
If you want bitter, talk to some of the lifer types that put in 30 years at a company and watched as management elininated the benefits they waited there entire lives to receive. Or speak to someone that was downsized out of a job and a pension a few months before they planned to retire.
Imo, you can control your own destiny or be one of the naive fools that still expects employer to do the right thing.
A lot of good advice on these posts. People need to realize that your employment is at will. You could be the Captain America of your job but you can get canned just like anyone else.
In a job, people need to develop life and career goals and ensure that you are meeting those goals. You need to be advancing in salary and title in your career. If not, then you need to figure out what is going wrong. Also, like Ktoni stated don't put your career in the hands of your boss or company since the majority of the time you will be disappointed with the results.
Keep improving yourself and always keep advancing in life.
Economic wisdom is that one should get the most money for the least cost. Substitute effort for cost. Why shouldn’t this wisdom apply as much to those who sell labor as to those who sell other things?
Since employers want whoever does the most work for the least amount of money (and that attitude is supported by most on this board), doesn't it makes sense for the employee to want to earn the most amount of money for the least amount of work? Shouldn't it work both ways?
I was in IT for a computer illiterate company. I would go weeks with nothing go do. They were happy as long as the network was up and running. That is not even the good part. I worked 2-3 days a week for a six figure salary and 25% of the net profits.
I did do work but it was stuff like designing software and hiring the software developer to code it. Once the was done I had no work other than monitoring our network until the next project which may be in two more years. I automated a lot of my work and moved all of our software to the cloud using leased servers who were maintained by the server farm. Our email was handled by a company on the internet an any work that needed to be done that required a physical presence, since I lived far away from our computer room, was subcontracted. In fact I ha subcontracted out all of my duties and all I had to do is arrange for things to get done when and if they needed to get done.
It was not always like that, just the last 8 months. I worked my butt off before that. Did I mention that I came across emails between the company owner and our COO, both whom are married with children? A subtle note to both of them telling them that they may want to delete some of their email before it was backed up and saved for 7 years did the trick. I also knew where all the skeletons were hidden because so many people forget that email is not private and we monitored it and all internet access due to security programs we were pay too. Information truly is power.
P.S. I never threatened or would blackmail anyone. I just trusted that my discretion should be rewarded, not bought.
I guess it was just too much work and effort to even spell out "amount" in the thread title. That's just how hardcore slacker they are!
But seriously, yes most workplaces are very much political. Yes, you have to figure out how to survive and then ultimately "win" the game if you want to get anywhere, but that's a microcosm of life, isn't it? Most jobs are 40 hours per week. It's really not that much more effort to at least SEEM like to give a crap and impress the right people. Heck, it's not even THAT much more effort to actually DO a good job if you are smart enough and can come up with processes to make your job easier. Heck, it's even kind of FUN to be good at what you do. Give it a try. You might even enjoy it and I promise you will go much further in life. Then when you go home and enjoy your time off you'll not only have more money to play with most likely, but you'll also have the self assurance of knowing you're the one winning the game. And if there is someone else in your workplace who tries to be an a** and make life miserable for others, realize that with your actual competence that you can say screw it and find another job that will be even better.
It has to be on a case-by-case basis.
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If a company is going to reward you for your hard work, then definitely go "above and beyond". I've known folks who get solid double digit raises, multiple promotions, and bonuses alone that have exceeded my pay raise.
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OTOH, there are cases where hard work is not rewarded accordingly. Why should you bust your ass when the people next to you aren't? FWIW, some of the people I know who see this behavior will just jump ship. Better pay, working conditions, perks, and/or commutes. A few do stay behind and slack off, but you get what you pay for... the company can't afford a better employee, so they're also stuck with them, and those employees know that too. If they get fired? They'll just find new jobs. They weren't losing as much as their employers ironically enough.
Also, "least amount of work with least amount of effort" is relative. It took me 10 minutes to write a simple Excel macro that adds double quotes to each row so that our tracking system will properly accept that file as valid input. Saved my manager from having to hand jam that in for several hundred row's worth.
And that's just child's play. I hear some folks can script stuff that reduces what used to take months down to mere days.
Again, working smarter and finding better processes also counts for a lot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ktoni
That is the whole point, use the system to your advantage. I work as hard as I want, if the demands become too great or the pay too low, I bounce. I am not bitter, just pragmatic and realistic about how the world really works.
If you want bitter, talk to some of the lifer types that put in 30 years at a company and watched as management elininated the benefits they waited there entire lives to receive. Or speak to someone that was downsized out of a job and a pension a few months before they planned to retire.
Imo, you can control your own destiny or be one of the naive fools that still expects employer to do the right thing.
Reminds me of..
TL;DR
Excellent performance reviews, but the manager didn't want to pay her more, so the management couple decided to eliminate her position, and offer a new position, doing the same work, at a 15% pay cut. The lady quit. Then her boss accused her of "abandoning ship".... http://qr.ae/TUIH1x
... and yes, it may be a foreign concept here on C-D, but there are employers and management who are also very entitled. You have hard workers, high earners, but they don't get the pay raises, amenities, and benefits as promised. You can take the chance that they'll stay due to "loyalty", but don't come cryin' and whining when they decide to jump ship because they found a better deal.
Economic wisdom is that one should get the most money for the least cost. Substitute effort for cost. Why shouldn’t this wisdom apply as much to those who sell labor as to those who sell other things?
Agreed. For some reason, when an employer exploits a worker, it's "business as usual". When the worker has the upper hand, then it's some sort of crime against nature.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MongooseHugger
When I worked, I neither did the least nor the most. I did quite a bit more than the minimum but it is my policy to not do so much that for the 8 hours or so that I'm at home after work before I have to go to bed to not be so wiped from work that I cannot have any time to myself, so I'm not going to work to exhaustion either (not unless it was my dream job, and likely self-employed too).
Now, if I had a bad night's sleep (perhaps yelling people in the house, idiots outside with fireworks, or something) and only got 4 or so hours of sleep, yes, I might be more likely to do the minimum to get by, only because it would be easier to mess up if I tried too too far beyond that.
(BTW, not saying I wouldn't do such that I was so exhausted afterword that I was able to only use 5 or so minutes for myself, on a busy day, but if it "busy day" becomes defined as "pretty much everyday", then I'd slack off and do enough but not go all out so that I didn't get burnout.)
One thing I've noticed is that if a company respects YOUR time, they're worth putting in "extra credit" for. I've heard from others where for one company, people typically get off at 5pm. If it's 6pm and you're still discussing stuff with the team, management will call for a quick resolution and continue with the rest tomorrow morning so that people can get home. There aren't any cases of being "voluntold". You're welcome to work after hours if you'd like, but management and the company know that people have commitments after work. They can be to family, friends, or recreational stuff like events planned ahead of time. These companies also respect employees who are punctual and meet obligations outside the workplace, and they put their money where their mouths are by not forcing overtime that shouldn't have happened anyways.
I'd never heard that word before until a couple of days ago. And now here it is again.
I like it and will have to use it in the future.
"Volun-told" that's cute.
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