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There is a tremendous advantage in bringing a good attitude into your workplace no matter what your other disadvantages are. Everyone enjoys a person who makes the best of what he's got and shares a good spirit with others. Nine times out of ten he'll be promoted over someone no one want to be around because of negativity. You have to be pretty darned accomplished to get ahead when you are an unpleasant person.
It's difficult to maintain a good attitude thinking in terms of "bootlicking." Seems a person's already written themselves out of the competition with that mindset. It isn't just about what you know or what you can do. It's also about what kind of person you are. Are you open to others, willing to learn, to go the extra mile to prove yourself, to hang in there when things aren't so good?
People can't assume that until you show them. Taking the attitude of "You show me first and then I'll show you" might be a losing deal for new employees.
There is a tremendous advantage in bringing a good attitude into your workplace no matter what your other disadvantages are. Everyone enjoys a person who makes the best of what he's got and shares a good spirit with others. Nine times out of ten he'll be promoted over someone no one want to be around because of negativity. You have to be pretty darned accomplished to get ahead when you are an unpleasant person.
It's difficult to maintain a good attitude thinking in terms of "bootlicking." Seems a person's already written themselves out of the competition with that mindset. It isn't just about what you know or what you can do. It's also about what kind of person you are. Are you open to others, willing to learn, to go the extra mile to prove yourself, to hang in there when things aren't so good?
People can't assume that until you show them. Taking the attitude of "You show me first and then I'll show you" might be a losing deal for new employees.
How someone describes something online is not necessarily indicative of how they behave in real life.
Also, speaking of context, this isn't about people "at work". It's about some of the people online, who use this forum.
Your post is another example of gaslighting at worst, or a poor misunderstanding at best. The "this sounds like a poor attitude on your part" needs to stop. This thread topic has nothing to do with how I conduct myself at work.
You believing how anyone could possibly be taken advantage of at work is a tragic observation into the mindset of this forum's psyche. This is a literal portrayal of Mike's point upthread, where people attempt to justify outcomes due to behaviors or choices. You're trying so hard, that you missed the entire point of the OP (assuming you read and comprehended it at all).
Last edited by digitalUID; 07-31-2023 at 07:29 PM..
There's no doubt that many people start from humble beginnings and succeed, some dramatically so. But those success stories are not automatic and cannot be expected to hold true for the majority of people. Education goes a long way to helping people succeed, which is clearly demonstrated in the short video I listed in post#2. In the same video, the lack of a good education is demonstrated to be an anvil around one's neck, is worse for people of color, and is a key factor holding people down in a global economy that requires a good education or the blue collar trades that value hard skills.
If one is blessed with having good native intelligence, good education, good mentors and a strong determination to overcome barriers then one may achieve a good degree of success, but the sheer mass of people who start on the bottom will mostly stay on the bottom as the myth of bootstrapping just doesn't work for them.
Just because it doesn't work for everyone doesn't mean it's a myth.
It's worked for many people I know whose parents were laborers and may or may not have been graduated from high school. None were college graduates. But their children were determined.
Not everyone will succeed. Not everyone is equally qualified or makes good decisions. Wanting to succeed does not mean you will succeed. But for many, it does work.
Just because it doesn't work for everyone doesn't mean it's a myth.
It's worked for many people I know whose parents were laborers and may or may not have been graduated from high school. None were college graduates. But their children were determined.
Not everyone will succeed. Not everyone is equally qualified or makes good decisions. Wanting to succeed does not mean you will succeed. But for many, it does work.
True, not everyone will succeed. There are some amazing success stories of those who worked extremely hard for many years and succeeded in spite of the forces at work to hold people down. Because hard work over many years allowed many to succeed doesn't prove the myth is real, it only proves that some people overcome the barriers in their way while the majority are not able to make it very far.
The issue is that the myth is thrown in the face of all struggling persons; bandied around haphazardly as if everyone is equally blessed with the intelligence, education, work ethic, connections, and good fortune to be in the right place at the right time that some people are able to bring to bear on their situation and make it up the ladder.
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True, not everyone will succeed. There are some amazing success stories of those who worked extremely hard for many years and succeeded in spite of the forces at work to hold people down. Because hard work over many years allowed many to succeed doesn't prove the myth is real, it only proves that some people overcome the barriers in their way while the majority are not able to make it very far.
The issue is that the myth is thrown in the face of all struggling persons; bandied around haphazardly as if everyone is equally blessed with the intelligence, education, work ethic, connections, and good fortune to be in the right place at the right time that some people are able to bring to bear on their situation and make it up the ladder.
From Psychology Today:
Quote:
It refers to people overestimating their likelihood of succeeding by focusing on a few lucky overachievers or “survivors,” who managed to beat the odds. Sure, a handful of outstanding athletes like Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, and Mo Farah fulfill their dreams of winning multiple Olympic medals. However, these athletes are the exception, not the rule. They represent rare outliers on the normal distribution curve of athletic achievement.
Ok to touch on the point raised by the OP about the hypocrisy.
It's a conceit, but let's break this down into a two by two matrix to help organize what's going on here. And no, I'm not a management consultant.
Along one dimension you have who should be rewarded. The two parts would be "the individual" or "the community".
Along the other dimension would be what I'll call "the secret of my success". The two parts here are "effort" or "luck".
Individual reward, success from effort: Movement conservatism
Individual reward, success from luck: Social darwinism
Community reward, success from effort: Socialism
Community reward, success from luck: Redistributive liberalism
Obviously you can dispute this framework, but at least take it as a starting point.
The various positions all have some hypocritical aspect to them, which usually boils down to an error about the attribution of success (effort vs luck) while holding one's (probably normative) position about reward constant.
For example, a movement conservative has a strong prior that individuals should be rewarded, even if you can demonstrate that luck or the community were a source of success. I think this is what the OP is complaining about.
Personally I think you should be flexible and evaluate questions of desert on a case by case basis, and be open to revision, since it can be devilishly difficult to attribute success correctly. So moving around the board is preferable to locking oneself into a certain position.
Ok to touch on the point raised by the OP about the hypocrisy.
It's a conceit, but let's break this down into a two by two matrix to help organize what's going on here. And no, I'm not a management consultant.
Along one dimension you have who should be rewarded. The two parts would be "the individual" or "the community".
Along the other dimension would be what I'll call "the secret of my success". The two parts here are "effort" or "luck".
Individual reward, success from effort: Movement conservatism
Individual reward, success from luck: Social darwinism
Community reward, success from effort: Socialism
Community reward, success from luck: Redistributive liberalism
Obviously you can dispute this framework, but at least take it as a starting point.
The various positions all have some hypocritical aspect to them, which usually boils down to an error about the attribution of success (effort vs luck) while holding one's (probably normative) position about reward constant.
For example, a movement conservative has a strong prior that individuals should be rewarded, even if you can demonstrate that luck or the community were a source of success. I think this is what the OP is complaining about.
Personally I think you should be flexible and evaluate questions of desert on a case by case basis, and be open to revision, since it can be devilishly difficult to attribute success correctly. So moving around the board is preferable to locking oneself into a certain position.
Thank you for getting back to the OP. This is an interesting perspective. I don't know that I completely follow.
The issue I take is from people who believe people are inherently responsible for earning their keep. However, contradictory to this is the promotion of ideas that employees should be exploited, ergo not paid their true market value by the company that is reaping the rewards of their services. Or that employees should be grateful to have any paying job at all--the gaslighting approach (the "nobody's gonna love you as good as me, baby" approach).
If you believe that people should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then you should also promote the idea that people be valued fairly and not be exploited at the expense of the employee's welfare (mentally, emotionally, or financially). I see people wanting both the bootstraps approach and the exploitation of employees approach, and these ideals are simply incongruent with one another.
IMO, "Individual reward, success from effort" is simplistic and often claimed by people who had a whole village in their corner.
Behind many of these success stories are the trappings of our "liberal" society that provides educational opportunities, various infrastructures (such as taxpayers who paid for the roads that the taxi cab or truck driver used to "pull him/herself up"), libraries to do research, bankers who loan them money to start a business, and many more. The 'individual' had a lot of help along the way and it should be recognized as such and not claimed solely by a person who claims they did it all alone though there are cases where that may be largely true. We have a fairly supportive society and I hope to keep it that way but to do so we have to end the mindless "cut my taxes" and "every man for himself" kind of thinking that wants to stop it all.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 08-01-2023 at 07:42 AM..
It's easy to lose sight of just how hard it is to get ahead for the average person.
While it isn't easy to get ahead, millions of folks somehow manage to do it in their lifetime. The skills needed to get ahead take personal effort to perform. It isn't a state secret some of the skills needed to succeed.
Many folks that I see than fall short do all sorts of things in their personal lives that prevent their success.
People take that way out of context, for lack of a better understanding. Poor, working class people who moved up in society are some of the worst culprits of thinking "I did this all by myself". They neglect to realize all the social welfare and safety net programs that were there that helped them subsist in the first place. Affordable public education, free reduced lunches, public libraries, public clinics, WIC, Medicaid, public roadways, etc., are all programs that serve the underprivileged and allow them to propel themselves forward, if they so choose. Even someone who starts a business from scratch benefits from infrastructure, public services, and tax incentives that are subsidized by tax payers that incentivize them to start a business.
Last edited by Mike from back east; 08-01-2023 at 07:47 AM..
Reason: Edited out a deleted one-liner.
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