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How come in your mind there's an onus on the employee to work as hard as they can but not on the company to pay that effort what it's actually worth? Unless the

How come in your mind there's an onus on the employee to work as hard as they can but not on the company to pay that effort what it's actually worth? Unless there's a genuine emotional reason that transcends your salary (such as in community/nonprofit work) the relationship between an employer and company should be transactional in my opinion.

simonh 5y ago
Sure that’s fair, but I’ve been very fortunate to have worked reasonably or very well paid jobs most of my career. Those jobs also enabled me to develop valuable skills. I think it’s only fair I put in a good effort in return. Yes if business priorities change I could end up out the door, and that happened once, but no hard feelings. I quit all my other jobs anyway and there was nothing malicious either way. The clothes on my back, and those if my children, the house we live in, the car we drive all were paid for by my employers. Yes it was a transaction, but a beneficial one on both sides. It’s all good.
- pnutjam 5y ago
  What if my low effort is better then the other guys on my teams "good effort"? You're also selling yourself short. You paid for all that stuff. Your employer paid for the work you did, and probably took more whenever they could; through on-call, off hours work, etc... I try to comp my time, but I know I put in more then I'm compensated for, even when I was technically "hourly". I'm fine with that, but I expect to take back when I need it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - BackBlast 5y ago
    Putting in low effort during your billable hours is a personal character weakness that you are cultivating. You should avoid it because it's bad for you, not just being unfair to your employer. Regardless of your relative effectiveness.
    - salt-thrower 5y ago
      > Putting in low effort during your billable hours is a personal character weakness that you are cultivating. You should avoid it because it's bad for you Why is it a character weakness? Why is it bad for you? By putting in low to average effort and switching jobs often, I doubled my salary in 5 years. All the while, I've had tons of time for vacations, hobbies, and having a life outside of work. And I've never gotten a single negative performance review. All my 1 on 1 feedback from managers has been glowing. If a company could use half the labor to get twice the profit, they'd do it in a heartbeat. That's the purest essence of capitalism. Why should I behave differently? The guy on my team who works nights and weekends to get assignments done gets paid the same as I do. He's just more miserable for it.
      - BackBlast 5y ago
        I didn't say anything about working extra hours, I specifically said low effort during your billable hours. Sounds like you're talking about the extra time that some places seem to expect. If that's what we're talking about - I totally agree that it's not worth it.
        salt-thrower 5y ago
        Ignore my last sentence then. All I mean is, I get paid the same whether I put in half effort or full effort. Full effort, which can lead to burnout and stress, is a cost to me. Why would I increase personal cost with no monetary compensation for doing so? They're already paying me for half effort and I keep being told that I'm doing a great job. So I'm not going to go out of my way to do more. Edit: if I could double my output and know that my salary would double too, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I've never found a company with a comp structure that can actually achieve that. It's far more effective to just go on autopilot for a year or two, then get a 30% raise at a new job. Rinse and repeat.
        BackBlast 5y ago
        Burn out is a symptom that you are out of balance, if that's your path you need to make a change. Full effort should allow for a balanced life, there is stress, sure, but there is also reward and fulfillment. I don't think the formula is particularly linear. Double value produced means double the salary is likely the wrong equation, but it is right in principle. If you work hard you will be developing a lot more relevant skills than floating along. This makes you more valuable. Not everyone recognizes, or is willing to pay for that extra value in salary or promotions. But some people will, and some people are. In the event you strike out on your own as a freelancer or your own business, working in that manner becomes your lifeblood that will make or break you.
- salt-thrower 5y ago
  I disagree. What's fair is that they pay you for your work. Anything beyond that is just in your head. If they could still get your productive output and pay you half as much, they would. You should look at them through the same lens.
jollybean 5y ago
"How come in your mind there's an onus on the employee to work as hard as they can but not on the company to pay that effort what it's actually worth? " I didn't say that. I said they should 'do a good job'. As should the other company staffers, execs and the company as a whole.
- akiselev 5y ago
  In an "at will" employment state - which I presume covers the vast majority of US based readers here - the final arbiter of whether someone is doing a "good job" or not is their employer. If they're still paying the employee, they must be doing a good job according to the employer's standards even if by the employee's standard they are doing nothing.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    This doesn't quite work because employee productivity assessment is very grey, and there's a lot of goodwill assumed in the equation. It's difficult to measure employee productivity. Sometimes, managers don't care. Sometimes employees make every effort to hide their lack of productivity. Despite that we might think of companies as 'evil' - most of them are not. We're all human, none of us like laying people off or firing them. It also comes with negative political consequences i.e. the person you fired may never be a good reference in the future. The manager may have negative incentive to let people go, as their 'worth' is founded on headcount. And truly the vast majority of employers just don't want to layoff or fire if that don't have to. What this means is that there is quite a lot of 'grey' in the system, and there's a lot of goodwill assumed by all parties. Everybody is saying that they want to do 'remote work' and at the same time signalling that they may 'want to do the least, because technically, I'm getting paid for that?' - in a situation wherein there is quite a lot of 'trust' expected? How do we expect employers to 'trust' workers in a 'very noisy productivity assessment channel' with this kind of approach? It just won't work. There isn't enough time in the world to be looking over each other's shoulders like that (I particularly don't like Amazon's approach for example). So the onus is on us to 'do a good job'. It doesn't mean 'break your back' - it means try to do what is expected, keep your chin up, grind through it. I feel that if people could see the big picture, and see that mountains are climbed one step at a time, that morale across the board would be higher. 'Passion and inspiration' are nice, but fleeting, whereas 'grinding' through the issues is how most things ultimately get done. In this way, they might be more personally incented to 'fix that bug' or 'get that build out'.

simonh 5y ago

Sure that’s fair, but I’ve been very fortunate to have worked reasonably or very well paid jobs most of my career. Those jobs also enabled me to develop valuable skills. I think it’s only fair I put in a good effort in return. Yes if business priorities change I could end up out the door, and that happened once, but no hard feelings. I quit all my other jobs anyway and there was nothing malicious either way. The clothes on my back, and those if my children, the house we live in, the car we drive all were paid for by my employers. Yes it was a transaction, but a beneficial one on both sides. It’s all good.

pnutjam 5y ago
What if my low effort is better then the other guys on my teams "good effort"? You're also selling yourself short. You paid for all that stuff. Your employer paid for the work you did, and probably took more whenever they could; through on-call, off hours work, etc... I try to comp my time, but I know I put in more then I'm compensated for, even when I was technically "hourly". I'm fine with that, but I expect to take back when I need it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- BackBlast 5y ago
  Putting in low effort during your billable hours is a personal character weakness that you are cultivating. You should avoid it because it's bad for you, not just being unfair to your employer. Regardless of your relative effectiveness.
  - salt-thrower 5y ago
    > Putting in low effort during your billable hours is a personal character weakness that you are cultivating. You should avoid it because it's bad for you Why is it a character weakness? Why is it bad for you? By putting in low to average effort and switching jobs often, I doubled my salary in 5 years. All the while, I've had tons of time for vacations, hobbies, and having a life outside of work. And I've never gotten a single negative performance review. All my 1 on 1 feedback from managers has been glowing. If a company could use half the labor to get twice the profit, they'd do it in a heartbeat. That's the purest essence of capitalism. Why should I behave differently? The guy on my team who works nights and weekends to get assignments done gets paid the same as I do. He's just more miserable for it.
    - BackBlast 5y ago
      I didn't say anything about working extra hours, I specifically said low effort during your billable hours. Sounds like you're talking about the extra time that some places seem to expect. If that's what we're talking about - I totally agree that it's not worth it.
      - salt-thrower 5y ago
        Ignore my last sentence then. All I mean is, I get paid the same whether I put in half effort or full effort. Full effort, which can lead to burnout and stress, is a cost to me. Why would I increase personal cost with no monetary compensation for doing so? They're already paying me for half effort and I keep being told that I'm doing a great job. So I'm not going to go out of my way to do more. Edit: if I could double my output and know that my salary would double too, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I've never found a company with a comp structure that can actually achieve that. It's far more effective to just go on autopilot for a year or two, then get a 30% raise at a new job. Rinse and repeat.
        BackBlast 5y ago
        Burn out is a symptom that you are out of balance, if that's your path you need to make a change. Full effort should allow for a balanced life, there is stress, sure, but there is also reward and fulfillment. I don't think the formula is particularly linear. Double value produced means double the salary is likely the wrong equation, but it is right in principle. If you work hard you will be developing a lot more relevant skills than floating along. This makes you more valuable. Not everyone recognizes, or is willing to pay for that extra value in salary or promotions. But some people will, and some people are. In the event you strike out on your own as a freelancer or your own business, working in that manner becomes your lifeblood that will make or break you.
salt-thrower 5y ago
I disagree. What's fair is that they pay you for your work. Anything beyond that is just in your head. If they could still get your productive output and pay you half as much, they would. You should look at them through the same lens.

jollybean 5y ago

"How come in your mind there's an onus on the employee to work as hard as they can but not on the company to pay that effort what it's actually worth? " I didn't say that. I said they should 'do a good job'. As should the other company staffers, execs and the company as a whole.

akiselev 5y ago
In an "at will" employment state - which I presume covers the vast majority of US based readers here - the final arbiter of whether someone is doing a "good job" or not is their employer. If they're still paying the employee, they must be doing a good job according to the employer's standards even if by the employee's standard they are doing nothing.
- jollybean 5y ago
  This doesn't quite work because employee productivity assessment is very grey, and there's a lot of goodwill assumed in the equation. It's difficult to measure employee productivity. Sometimes, managers don't care. Sometimes employees make every effort to hide their lack of productivity. Despite that we might think of companies as 'evil' - most of them are not. We're all human, none of us like laying people off or firing them. It also comes with negative political consequences i.e. the person you fired may never be a good reference in the future. The manager may have negative incentive to let people go, as their 'worth' is founded on headcount. And truly the vast majority of employers just don't want to layoff or fire if that don't have to. What this means is that there is quite a lot of 'grey' in the system, and there's a lot of goodwill assumed by all parties. Everybody is saying that they want to do 'remote work' and at the same time signalling that they may 'want to do the least, because technically, I'm getting paid for that?' - in a situation wherein there is quite a lot of 'trust' expected? How do we expect employers to 'trust' workers in a 'very noisy productivity assessment channel' with this kind of approach? It just won't work. There isn't enough time in the world to be looking over each other's shoulders like that (I particularly don't like Amazon's approach for example). So the onus is on us to 'do a good job'. It doesn't mean 'break your back' - it means try to do what is expected, keep your chin up, grind through it. I feel that if people could see the big picture, and see that mountains are climbed one step at a time, that morale across the board would be higher. 'Passion and inspiration' are nice, but fleeting, whereas 'grinding' through the issues is how most things ultimately get done. In this way, they might be more personally incented to 'fix that bug' or 'get that build out'.