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I wonder how much counter-signalling there is on the part of the interviewees. They are going to be prone to say things that associate far-mode, positive ideals
by p4wnc6 10y ago
I wonder how much counter-signalling there is on the part of the interviewees. They are going to be prone to say things that associate far-mode, positive ideals with them.
Like, they won't say, "I found a lot of meaning that time my hard work, blood, sweat, and tears were actually meritocratically rewarded with that large bonus" because it makes them sound near-mode, greedy, overly materialistic, etc.
Instead, they'll say something far-mode, about how they related to the human element of an experience or a coworker or a client, or how their family finally appreciated the deeper meaning in their work.
I'm not sure I really believe that people find work meaning mostly in these far-mode, idealistic things. Rather, I think they want to be seen as someone who values these things because then people will associate good stereotypes with them.
This also helps explain why it's more reflective, episodic, and after-the-fact rationalized to be meaningful, rather than being tied to concrete properties of the work itself.
I think for myself, I do have some moral and ethical baselines that I don't want the byproducts of my labor to violate, like harming others, perpetuating government oppression, wasting resources.
But beyond these things, I don't actually get more or less meaning out of any different topical type of work than some other type.
What does make me feel like work is meaningful is to experience lots and lots of autonomy in my workplace decision making and my approach to solving problems. I also like to feel that I have the freedom to pursue whatever quality standards are pragmatic for the problem, and am not constrained by bureaucracy to pursue inelegant solutions when there's no pragmatic reasons why they actually need to be inelegant (this happens all the time).
After that, I feel meaning at work most when I am given adequate quiet and private physical space and can reach a state of psychological flow.
I could be writing code to process ATM transactions or to cure cancer and I'll feel the same amount of meaning if (a) I can mostly do it my own way within some loose context of the broader team's needs, and (b) I am left alone to actually get work done and I am not interrupted or inundated with an unhealthy, oppressively wide open working space.
For me, these resonated more with the comment in the article that good managers are rarely even mentioned in the context of meaningful work, whereas bad managers are often to blame for work that is not meaningful.
Good managers are invisible geniuses who know how to fade into the backdrop, get out of your way, allow you to make decisions, and do not feel fear that they have to micromanage or create empty superficial artifacts to justify that they are working. They are so, so hard to find, and when you find one, you are so happy that you will give so much loyalty to working for that manager, and forgive so much other crap the company might pull.
- cathartes 10y ago> Good managers are invisible geniuses who know how to fade into the backdrop, get out of your way, allow you to make decisions, and do not feel fear that they have to micromanage or create empty superficial artifacts to justify that they are working. I feel like this book discusses exactly the kind of Good Manager you are talking about: https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Ship-Around-Turning-Followers/dp/1591846404/ https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Ship-Around-Turning-Followers/dp...
- p4wnc6 10y agoThank you. I am addicted to good management philosophy books. I think Peopleware also discusses a lot about this rare kind of manager. On a less serious note, I really hope that for Turn the Ship Around! they went on a multi-city lecture tour and got Gloria Estefan to perform "Turn the Beat Around" but with "Ship" inserted, as the book's author ran up and down the aisles wearing chinos and a button down and high-fiving attendees. Then, slightly out of breath, he gets to the stage and the music awkwardly and abruptly cuts out, and he's like "Woo! Hello Peoria!! Are you ready to turn the ship around!!"
- dTal 10y agoI can see how not having those things would be frustrating. But speaking as someone whose last serious job had all those elements (autonomy, freedom to exercise judgement, and quiet privacy) and more besides (interesting work solving diverse engineering problems with tangible results that wow laypeople and impress domain experts), I would not have been happy in the long term had the company not folded anyway, because ultimately it was all in service of marketing and that is not something I feel contributes to the human condition. I would not have been able to look back at the end of my life and say, "That counted. I knew the world was going to hell, and by golly I helped fix it." Unfortunately I don't know if I'm going to be able to get a job that ticks all those boxes - I imagine they're rare...
- p4wnc6 10y agoI understand, but I guess I've just come to believe the only things that get funded, whether by VCs or by governments or by internal approval in an established company, are low-risk incremental variations on consumer bullshit, generally encased in two or three layers of political bullshit. This is true in academia, law, medicine, start-ups, finance, defense research, food innovation, climate science, optimal philanthropy, policy analysis, media, advertising, education, consulting, urban planning, and design. For most humans, they have near zero chance of earning a living in any way in which this isn't true. So even though many of us desire the bulk of our labor (the huge chunk utilized to earn a living via a job) to contribute to "something that matters" the option literally fails to exist. Worse is that some of the areas that are bad on the low-risk, incremental bullshit projects and politics, such as working for NGOs or non-profits that supposedly "have an impact," often rob you of everything. Not only do you end up having the same non-impact as if you had worked at that marketing job, but also you are paid far less, and the other working conditions are worse. I haven't yet heard of anything apart from some rare, niche aspects of things like professional athletics, professional music, professional acting, etc., that offer someone the chance to explore work that they believe is meaningful. And even then you have to usually hoof it doing bullshit and/or low-paying stuff for decades before reaching a point in which you can explore what you find meaningful. I'm not saying anyone else should see it like I do, but my feeling is that in terms of a constructive impact on the world at large, I need to first recognize that I'm just one of 7 billion and pretty much nothing I do will matter. Heck, pretty much nothing Bill Gates does will matter in even just 50-100 years. So then I should look for tiny, marginal ways to explore meaning, and probably if I let my mode of employment just be about gaining capital, then outside of work I might be able to do more that at least feels meaningful to me. That's just how I see it though. I am certain others have found many different approaches that work for different people.