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The bottom line is that the workplace has become increasingly hostile to the worker as many posters have pointed out here. Employers are squeezing more and more out their employees. They just want to make more money. Is that greed or a sound business decision? We all have our point of view. The gig economy is going to make it worse with increased temp positions, no benefits, and more pressure to produce in the hope of getting repeat gigs. Some will say you have to get with it, suck it up, and don't complain. Others will remember the working environment in their parents and grandparents day and will note the differences.
Last edited by BusinessManIT; 09-13-2018 at 10:30 PM..
The days of showing up everyday, working hard and marching up the ladder are over.
I don't know anyone in the last 10 years who has gotten a promotion at the same company. All have had to jump ship and find another job to move forward.
When I first started working I knew several people who literally started on the shop floor at the lowest of jobs and 20-25 years later where in executive management roles at the same company. And these aren't small companies, I am talking big areospace companies. Also, most general managers I knew came up through the shop floor.
I wonder how many employees picking orders on the floor of an Amazon distribution center are going to make it to an Amazon executive position? I doubt any.
Those amazon employees probably won’t even nab a middle management job. They will be picking orders until they are kicked to the curb or they get fed up and leave. I’m in a similar business to amazon and haven’t seen one person move up from picking orders in 7 years
I don't have a very good feeling for most jobs in general because most white collar corporate jobs is just a game. Majority of people are there to prop up the egos of the higher ups, most workers don't make stuff or produce anything of value. When someone ask you what do you do for a living and you can tell them that writing emails and complaining about other depts is the typical thing you do on a day to day basis yet there are folks who are really busting their butts everyday to save people and not getting paid as much as some secretary that just answers a phone or order supplies for the boss when all of this stuff will be automated or already automated at many companies.
Majority of jobs today are just corporate welfare jobs and many people feel they are worthless because the job they perform gives them no personal satisfaction. You're not saving people or helping people's lives better in fact many people that work in finance probably are doing more damage to society.
Quite a bit of truth in this post. There's really little or no sense of accomplishment in many such positions, and thus little satisfaction. It becomes more of an endurance contest than anything else. There should be a feeling of pride in a job well-done, and in doing something that has value ( and not just value to a company), but many jobs just don't instill any sense of societal worth whatsoever..
As was I ... for roughly half of the sixteen years I worked for megacorp. And then they RIF'ed me. The idea that we are "stuck" is ridiculous. We're plugged into a socket. And there may not be other plugs just like us, but there are other sockets that megacorp can use instead.
Is it because employers seem to be more corrupt than usual (though I don't see how they could be as bad as they were in the pre-union era.)? Is it because of the everyone gets a trophy mentality and everyone doesn't feel they are getting what they deserve? Is it because people, especially men, are finding a lot of their value and personal worth (and others rate them this way too) from their jobs whereas, in the past, they got it from many things? Has there always been some level of annoyance, but, with the rise of the Internet, it's just more spoken now than it was in the pre-web days, especially as, unlike in the past, it's easier to post anonymously?
Eh. There are many reasons for this.
1. The American Dream has vanished. For many, being able to buy that single family home with a white picket fence is out of reach. They might be lucky to be able to buy an apartment condo. Then high property taxes make the home owner feel that they never really own their home, they are just renting the privilege of living there by the city or town they are living in.
2. Education got stupidly expensive. College debts are crazy high.
3. Having a college degree is now no guarantee for getting a successful and lucrative career.
4. Find that lucrative career, but it's located in an extremely high COL area. So long commutes are normal. Most of the week is spent sitting in rush hour traffic.
5. Our roads are getting more congested and crowded every day and filled with bad drivers.
6. Companies that are publicly traded are held hostage by Wall Street and their stockholders and need to show on paper amazing profit numbers to keep their stocks valuable and providing dividends. And the employees suffer.
7. Demanded diversity. Honestly, an extremely diverse workplace means less common bonding and more cultural cliques forming. For instance, Spanish speaking people will cluster together and speak Spanish all day long and make the English speaking workers feel shut out. And the Haitians will speak their Creole French. Urban blacks tend to cluster together and talk of their exploits in the nightclubs. Management is afraid to ask the recent immigrants to only speak English at work. I think that it's one of the reasons that certain jobs aren't attractive to Americans anymore.
The global economy has hurt Americans. Even before Trump's tariffs, the various tax structures and labour costs caused American and International companies to seek workers elsewhere.
Also traditionally, a "healthy" American economy was based on growth factors. However endless growth can't be sustained forever. And that also goes for our social security system, expecting larger numbers of younger workers to support paying out to retirees. It's just a fake pyramid scheme.
With school teachers and state workers, we need to phase out pensions, because the public can't afford to pay for it. And it's not fair when the rest of the public doesn't get a pension. Plus with school teachers, they need to be ready as the student population numbers fluctuate and even go down. There should be no job guarantees for them. They should only be serving depending on the needs of their community.
Those amazon employees probably won’t even nab a middle management job. They will be picking orders until they are kicked to the curb or they get fed up and leave. I’m in a similar business to amazon and haven’t seen one person move up from picking orders in 7 years
There must be an extremely high level of job satisfaction if people are content staying where they are.
Your company is still in business, so people aren't quitting in droves. I believe you've said you have been there for years, correct?
The days of showing up everyday, working hard and marching up the ladder are over.
I don't know anyone in the last 10 years who has gotten a promotion at the same company. All have had to jump ship and find another job to move forward.
When I first started working I knew several people who literally started on the shop floor at the lowest of jobs and 20-25 years later where in executive management roles at the same company. And these aren't small companies, I am talking big areospace companies. Also, most general managers I knew came up through the shop floor.
I wonder how many employees picking orders on the floor of an Amazon distribution center are going to make it to an Amazon executive position? I doubt any.
I actually got a promotion with my current company! I was absolutely thrilled. Sadly that lasted about a month as the people who promoted me were let go for new regime to come in, lay people off and assign six different jobs to me.
I'll answer this one. It's because U.S. corporations are allowed to do whatever it is they want to employees. No one puts any kind of regulations on companies and you can get fired just for looking at someone the wrong way.
Employees have little recourse unless they can pony up the funds for a lawyer, and even then, that won't stop the corporation from doing it to someone else. Execs are paid even more now than ever and rule the roost by firing those they don't like. Micromanaging is back in full force and seems to be encouraged. Basically, managers are now sent to a-hole school and the more of a micromanaging a-hole they are, the more they are rewarded.
Come in, do hard work, never call in sick - doesn't matter if you are a target of the mean girls club.
During the Great Recession and the few years after it, many American corporations got away with the above since workers often had no choice. Nowadays, with the unemployment rate low, many workers are leaving such companies in droves. Nearly every time LinkedIn signals me that someone in my network got a new job and I go and check out their old company vs their new company in Glassdoor, the new company nearly always receives a substantially higher satisfaction rating.
Many workers produce nothing. Information economy? So what? There is no feeling of "I helped build that." Instead, many sit in a cubicle with a computer, earphones and answer calls of some description. Imagine working for a cellphone provider where you really are not up front with people or you cannot solve their problem or whatever. Imagine working in a nursing home where everyone there is waiting to die and you are dealing with excrement routinely. And all you get is complaints from outsiders about poor care. How about a school teacher where students, or some of them, are out of control and perhaps even threaten you? How about prison employee dealing with society's worst? Perhaps working on an assembly line where day after day you are doing the same task then finding out a robot will be replacing you soon? But who says work is supposed to be fun and fulfilling. Like so many other things in life, psychologist and "great thought thinkers" make more of it than they ought to. It is just work. You get paid. Is it ever enough? No. Never will be. Unions can never solve the problem of boredom. Young people are not advised or warned about their education choices and if they are, do they listen? You work to sustain yourself and perhaps a family. Some jobs are more interesting and challenging. How often have pilots said, " I cannot believe I get paid to do this." So many other jobs the phrase is, "they don't pay me enough to do this." Pick your poison.
Also healthcare costs are through the roof. And most employer health plans have higher and higher deductibles. So the employees feel less and less compensated by their employers.
We need to curb rising healthcare costs. And that is something that Obamacare failed to address.
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