5 ms·

> You begin with that premise: A large fraction–some estimates are 75 percent–of the disease burden in the U.S. is from chronic diseases. > Second, there is a

by bko 8y ago

> You begin with that premise: A large fraction–some estimates are 75 percent–of the disease burden in the U.S. is from chronic diseases. > Second, there is a tremendous amount of epidemiological literature that suggests that diabetes, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome—and many health-relevant individual behaviors such as overeating and underexercising and drug and alcohol abuse–come from stress. > And third, there is a large amount of data that suggests the biggest source of stress is the workplace. So that’s how Chapman can stand up and make the statement that CEOs are the cause of the health care crisis: You are the source of stress, stress causes chronic disease, and chronic disease is the biggest component of our ongoing and enormous health care costs. This only makes sense if overall stress, specifically workplace stress, is going up over time. My general impression is that workplaces today are more pleasant than they have ever been. Managers realized non-monetary benefits are cheaper and often times more effective than purely monetary benefits. This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment. > Job engagement, according to Gallup, is low. Distrust in management, according to the Edelman trust index, is high. Job satisfaction, according to the Conference Board, is low and has been in continual decline. The gig economy is growing, economic insecurity is growing, and wage growth overall has stagnated. The evidence is just polls rather than more substantial evidence. Even if they serve as an accurate representation, it may be interpreted in many ways. For instance, my job satisfaction can be low because its a tight labor market and I know I can get more money elsewhere, or my standards evolved. To say that this is evidence that the workplace is "killing people" is a stretch. > I look out at the workplace and I see stress, layoffs, longer hours, work-family conflict, enormous amounts of economic insecurity This is just objectively false as layoffs are historically low [0] in the US and working hours are shorter over the last ten years [1] or so. It seems to me the author is being dishonest and trying to reach a preordained conclusion [0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/layoffs-in-us-could-soon-drop-below-200000-a-week-for-first-time-since-1969-2018-08-17 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/layoffs-in-us-could-soon-d... [1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

jackpirate 8y ago
> This only makes sense if overall stress, specifically workplace stress, is going up over time. My general impression is that workplaces today are more pleasant than they have ever been. Managers realized non-monetary benefits are cheaper and often times more effective than purely monetary benefits. This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment. This comment strikes me as possibly true in the tech/startup world, but definitely not true in the vast majority of jobs that people work at like retail/restaurants/other service. While these jobs have existed for forever, I could see them being more stressful these days as competition has forced managers to be more cutthroat with hours and benefits offered, and especially in the bay area where workers can't even afford to live near where they work and must commute an hour to wait tables.
- bko 8y ago
  I disagree although I have no evidence. But the fixed cost of actually finding an employee and training them is very large compared to the hourly rate of a low paid employee. There isn't an endless stream of workers ready to seamlessly fill a role. How much does it cost to take out an ad or pay a recruiter, spend time interviewing, background check and onboard?
  - jriot 8y ago
    You would be wrong in your assumption. A project I worked on for a client (data scientist working on labor market issues) wanted to know when he would run out of candidates in the labor pool as he had a high turnover in 120 zip-codes. Out of them only 30 would have a dried up labor pool in 15 years. The rest could go on forever. Why? You forget to count the people aging, the 15 year old who isn't in the labor pool now, will be in a few years.
skh 8y ago
Your stat from source [1] shows a big decline from 2008 to 2009. This suggests to me that the calculation of average hours is skewed by those who are part-time but don't want to be part-time. The source doesn't indicate how the calculation is made. Does the fact that the there are a lot of people who are out of work but don't want to be out of work skew things? I don't know. I haven't studied the issue but apparently professor Jeffrey Pfeffer has. You bring up some seemingly valid points and I'm guessing you haven't extensively studied the issue either. It seems reasonable to me to believe that the professor has accounted for these possible objections since they are so obvious. It also appears to me that you are implicitly assuming your work experience is normative. I say this because of your sentence: This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment. Most people don't have the ability to work remotely or have flexible working hours. I don't have reasons to assume the author is being dishonest. Instead of assuming the author is being dishonest it is a more reasonable conclusion that you don't know enough about the issue. Unless the professor is incompetent then the possible objections you've raised are probably easily debunked. When I encounter a conclusion such as this by an expert and can think of a number of possible objections to the conclusion after a few moments of thought about the issue then I assume I'm the one without the facts.
- bko 8y ago
  > Most people don't have the ability to work remotely or have flexible working hours. Last year, 43 percent of employed Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely, according to the survey of more than 15,000 adults.[0] Not most but I imagine some have the option but choose not to. I don't know but it seems to me that the professor is bias, as I am, as everyone else is. I don't think "experts" are any more less immune to bias. And the claims he made are demonstrably false, so I'm inclined to believe he's cherry-picking at best and being deliberately dishonest at worst [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/remote-workers-work-from-home.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/remote-workers-work-fr...
  - skh 8y ago
    Bias and deliberate dishonesty are entirely different things. One can have a bias and still produce a relatively objective study. The Gallup study referenced in the NYT article you cited says: State of the American Workplace delivers unprecedented analytics and advice on the changing workplace, using data collected from more than 195,600 U.S. employees, more than 31 million respondents, and insight from advising leading Fortune 1000 companies. What it doesn’t say is that this is a random sample of all employees. Indeed one of the stated purposes of the study is enable people to work successfully from locations besides the office I don’t know the percentage of all workers that work in an office but I’m guessing farm laborers, miners, cleaning staff, delivery drivers, retail workers, etc. make up a significant portion of the working population and I gather from Gallup’s writing about its study is that it is focused on big companies with large numbers of office workers. One must also take into account the Murray-Gellmann Amnesia Effect. A NYT article is not on par with a study by an expert. Regardless of all this you miss the point of my original response. You’ve come up with possible objections to a study by an expert. Rather than assume you are the one missing information you assume the expert is being deliberately misleading. A reasonable person would not assume this. A reasonable person would assume that the professor, while possibly wrong, still knows more about the issue and use the opportunity to learn more. The most natural question by you is, “Why does the professor make the conclusion he makes despite these objections?” One answer is bias. Another is because the objections are easily debunked. Which one do you think is more likely?
jiveturkey 8y ago
> My general impression is that workplaces today are more pleasant than they have ever been. I believe that statement is highly biased, unless you are some kind of occupational researcher. We know that the "gig economy" is growing three times faster than the overall US workforce[1]. Besides the gig economy, at least in the US, median incomes are falling (wrt PPP). Homelessness is on the rise. 65% of americans save nothing. > This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment. I don't care to do any quick research, but I very, very much doubt that this is true for the median. Everywhere I go, outside of my tech bubble of drab cubicle office workers with free snacks, work environments appear pretty dismal to me. [1] https://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-america-2017/1 https://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-america-201... (and apologies for a slideshare link, can't even tell you how much i detest slideshare)
Latteland 8y ago
I have to disagree with your view of the labor market. This might be true of tech but the vast majority of workers don't have the opportunities we have to work in environments that cater to us. Amazon warehouse type jobs are often the only opportunity to non-special-category (ie programmers) people.

by bko 8y ago

jackpirate 8y ago

> This only makes sense if overall stress, specifically workplace stress, is going up over time. My general impression is that workplaces today are more pleasant than they have ever been. Managers realized non-monetary benefits are cheaper and often times more effective than purely monetary benefits. This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment. This comment strikes me as possibly true in the tech/startup world, but definitely not true in the vast majority of jobs that people work at like retail/restaurants/other service. While these jobs have existed for forever, I could see them being more stressful these days as competition has forced managers to be more cutthroat with hours and benefits offered, and especially in the bay area where workers can't even afford to live near where they work and must commute an hour to wait tables.

bko 8y ago
I disagree although I have no evidence. But the fixed cost of actually finding an employee and training them is very large compared to the hourly rate of a low paid employee. There isn't an endless stream of workers ready to seamlessly fill a role. How much does it cost to take out an ad or pay a recruiter, spend time interviewing, background check and onboard?
- jriot 8y ago
  You would be wrong in your assumption. A project I worked on for a client (data scientist working on labor market issues) wanted to know when he would run out of candidates in the labor pool as he had a high turnover in 120 zip-codes. Out of them only 30 would have a dried up labor pool in 15 years. The rest could go on forever. Why? You forget to count the people aging, the 15 year old who isn't in the labor pool now, will be in a few years.

skh 8y ago

Your stat from source [1] shows a big decline from 2008 to 2009. This suggests to me that the calculation of average hours is skewed by those who are part-time but don't want to be part-time. The source doesn't indicate how the calculation is made. Does the fact that the there are a lot of people who are out of work but don't want to be out of work skew things? I don't know. I haven't studied the issue but apparently professor Jeffrey Pfeffer has. You bring up some seemingly valid points and I'm guessing you haven't extensively studied the issue either. It seems reasonable to me to believe that the professor has accounted for these possible objections since they are so obvious. It also appears to me that you are implicitly assuming your work experience is normative. I say this because of your sentence: This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment. Most people don't have the ability to work remotely or have flexible working hours. I don't have reasons to assume the author is being dishonest. Instead of assuming the author is being dishonest it is a more reasonable conclusion that you don't know enough about the issue. Unless the professor is incompetent then the possible objections you've raised are probably easily debunked. When I encounter a conclusion such as this by an expert and can think of a number of possible objections to the conclusion after a few moments of thought about the issue then I assume I'm the one without the facts.

bko 8y ago
> Most people don't have the ability to work remotely or have flexible working hours. Last year, 43 percent of employed Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely, according to the survey of more than 15,000 adults.[0] Not most but I imagine some have the option but choose not to. I don't know but it seems to me that the professor is bias, as I am, as everyone else is. I don't think "experts" are any more less immune to bias. And the claims he made are demonstrably false, so I'm inclined to believe he's cherry-picking at best and being deliberately dishonest at worst [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/remote-workers-work-from-home.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/remote-workers-work-fr...
- skh 8y ago
  Bias and deliberate dishonesty are entirely different things. One can have a bias and still produce a relatively objective study. The Gallup study referenced in the NYT article you cited says: State of the American Workplace delivers unprecedented analytics and advice on the changing workplace, using data collected from more than 195,600 U.S. employees, more than 31 million respondents, and insight from advising leading Fortune 1000 companies. What it doesn’t say is that this is a random sample of all employees. Indeed one of the stated purposes of the study is enable people to work successfully from locations besides the office I don’t know the percentage of all workers that work in an office but I’m guessing farm laborers, miners, cleaning staff, delivery drivers, retail workers, etc. make up a significant portion of the working population and I gather from Gallup’s writing about its study is that it is focused on big companies with large numbers of office workers. One must also take into account the Murray-Gellmann Amnesia Effect. A NYT article is not on par with a study by an expert. Regardless of all this you miss the point of my original response. You’ve come up with possible objections to a study by an expert. Rather than assume you are the one missing information you assume the expert is being deliberately misleading. A reasonable person would not assume this. A reasonable person would assume that the professor, while possibly wrong, still knows more about the issue and use the opportunity to learn more. The most natural question by you is, “Why does the professor make the conclusion he makes despite these objections?” One answer is bias. Another is because the objections are easily debunked. Which one do you think is more likely?

jiveturkey 8y ago

> My general impression is that workplaces today are more pleasant than they have ever been. I believe that statement is highly biased, unless you are some kind of occupational researcher. We know that the "gig economy" is growing three times faster than the overall US workforce[1]. Besides the gig economy, at least in the US, median incomes are falling (wrt PPP). Homelessness is on the rise. 65% of americans save nothing. > This means flexible working hours, ability to work remotely and overall workplace environment. I don't care to do any quick research, but I very, very much doubt that this is true for the median. Everywhere I go, outside of my tech bubble of drab cubicle office workers with free snacks, work environments appear pretty dismal to me. [1] https://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-america-2017/1 https://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-america-201... (and apologies for a slideshare link, can't even tell you how much i detest slideshare)

Latteland 8y ago

I have to disagree with your view of the labor market. This might be true of tech but the vast majority of workers don't have the opportunities we have to work in environments that cater to us. Amazon warehouse type jobs are often the only opportunity to non-special-category (ie programmers) people.