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> To engage workers, managers must fulfill the 12 essential elements of engagement Hm. There are few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. And with

> To engage workers, managers must fulfill the 12 essential elements of engagement Hm. There are few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. And with a years long pandemic and uncertain future, to work or not to work? Work for what purpose? No level of engaging is enough if people can see through the ruse. If anything i d expect more people to go solo

netr0ute 5y ago
> There are few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. That's because the big tech megacorps raised the bar in order to attract the best workers available so they could grow to have the "eliteness" that you see today. The problem is, there are only so many Apples or Netflixes with this kind of strategy so everything else looks boring in comparison.
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  I wouldn’t expect a job at Netflix or Apple to be much more exciting than most other jobs. I thought they were attractive workplaces because of pay, perks, and because it looks good on your CV.
  - netr0ute 5y ago
    > because of pay, perks, and because it looks good on your CV. That's what makes them exciting.
    - ShroudedNight 5y ago
      The pay and the perks can definitely make it more pleasant, but the thing that stands out is all those companies are operating at global scale. Working there, you will likely be routinely confronted with the awe-inducing scale and impact your work has on the daily life of almost everybody. In my case, for the people I already knew and cared for, I felt a sense of stewardship, and for new acquaintances, because they had already interacted with my work, they already provided me with a baseline of appreciation / professional credibility.
cratermoon 5y ago
That quote sounds so formulaic I can almost hear the cash registers ringing up the fees for the consultants hired to implement them. Surely this new corporate initiative, which we sent senior management to workshop about at a golf resort in Hawaii (the same week the team was doing 18-hour days to ship the product for the customer deadline), will bring happiness and good things to our essential human resources.
bscvbscv 5y ago
> few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. Humans have been doing "boring" work their whole lives for millions of years, it has never been a problem. The problem is that people are working for organizations that are DOING HARM to them and their people. Not only is their work not productive, it is destructive. Not only is their work meaningless, but it endeavors to undermine meaning itself.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- handrous 5y ago
  I'd say boring isn't the same thing as (perceived) meaninglessness. I kinda like lots of work that's considered boring, personally—but pointless, wasteful, meaningless, or unappreciated? Let alone harmful? I won't become disengaged, because I'll never be engaged to begin with.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  yeah thats what i mean, people will do boring work if they feel the other rewards of life make it worthwhile. right now in an uncertain lonely period one questions whether the juice is worth the squeeze
- Jetrel 5y ago
  Yeah. This right here. The problem with corporate america isn't that the work is boring; it's that for most jobs it's actually evil at some point in the pipeline. (To use a metaphor - you're still morally culpable if you're carrying boxes of bullets to the soldiers doing the actual killing). Almost no matter what industry you're in, whether it's shoes, or batteries, or electronics, you know that somewhere on the other side of the world, actual slavery is providing materials and labor for what you're selling, and you really wonder why we can't all mutually agree to make that illegal. There are very few professions (often stuff like medicine, teaching, etc) where someone can sit back and think "yeah, my day job is a net positive for humanity". It's hard enough to cope with when something is a decent "material good" on its own - like if you're selling shoes (virtually all of which get made in sweatshops), at least you have the pride in the fact that shoes are a necessity. It sucks that slavery was involved in making them, but at least you know people are getting genuinely good clothing out of it. But when you don't have that - when you are, say, working in market analysis or advertising, and you realize your job isn't actually making anything or filling any material need - or even just bringing people joy, yeah, it's a bit worse than being meaningless. You're flushing the best years of your life down the toilet to make a little more money for some private equity firm. Great.
Jeff_Brown 5y ago
I feel like if you sacrifice enough in wages you can always have a fascinating job. And moving to a developing country can leave you with a roughly equivalent salary after adjusting for purchasing powe parity. I don't have hard data but that's what I've been doing for the last four years.
- bjornsing 5y ago
  Interesting. So you do freelance/consulting work and are really picky about the projects you take on, or what?
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    No, I'm CTO at a small NGO in Bogotá that models the effects of government policy. Which I got because a friend started the NGO. So I guess I'm not evidence that such opportunities are rife. But they do seem to be. Native English speakers are quite valuable in their own right here. And there's a strong big-fish-small-pond effect if you're an expert in something. Research tends to be written in English, as does documentation.
  - dkn775 5y ago
    Work for gov particularly police or some kind of job where you have to deal w social stuff. City gov is the best for this as you get a lot of flexibility

netr0ute 5y ago

> There are few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. That's because the big tech megacorps raised the bar in order to attract the best workers available so they could grow to have the "eliteness" that you see today. The problem is, there are only so many Apples or Netflixes with this kind of strategy so everything else looks boring in comparison.

Ma8ee 5y ago
I wouldn’t expect a job at Netflix or Apple to be much more exciting than most other jobs. I thought they were attractive workplaces because of pay, perks, and because it looks good on your CV.
- netr0ute 5y ago
  > because of pay, perks, and because it looks good on your CV. That's what makes them exciting.
  - ShroudedNight 5y ago
    The pay and the perks can definitely make it more pleasant, but the thing that stands out is all those companies are operating at global scale. Working there, you will likely be routinely confronted with the awe-inducing scale and impact your work has on the daily life of almost everybody. In my case, for the people I already knew and cared for, I felt a sense of stewardship, and for new acquaintances, because they had already interacted with my work, they already provided me with a baseline of appreciation / professional credibility.

cratermoon 5y ago

That quote sounds so formulaic I can almost hear the cash registers ringing up the fees for the consultants hired to implement them. Surely this new corporate initiative, which we sent senior management to workshop about at a golf resort in Hawaii (the same week the team was doing 18-hour days to ship the product for the customer deadline), will bring happiness and good things to our essential human resources.

bscvbscv 5y ago

> few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. Humans have been doing "boring" work their whole lives for millions of years, it has never been a problem. The problem is that people are working for organizations that are DOING HARM to them and their people. Not only is their work not productive, it is destructive. Not only is their work meaningless, but it endeavors to undermine meaning itself.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
handrous 5y ago
I'd say boring isn't the same thing as (perceived) meaninglessness. I kinda like lots of work that's considered boring, personally—but pointless, wasteful, meaningless, or unappreciated? Let alone harmful? I won't become disengaged, because I'll never be engaged to begin with.
cblconfederate 5y ago
yeah thats what i mean, people will do boring work if they feel the other rewards of life make it worthwhile. right now in an uncertain lonely period one questions whether the juice is worth the squeeze
Jetrel 5y ago
Yeah. This right here. The problem with corporate america isn't that the work is boring; it's that for most jobs it's actually evil at some point in the pipeline. (To use a metaphor - you're still morally culpable if you're carrying boxes of bullets to the soldiers doing the actual killing). Almost no matter what industry you're in, whether it's shoes, or batteries, or electronics, you know that somewhere on the other side of the world, actual slavery is providing materials and labor for what you're selling, and you really wonder why we can't all mutually agree to make that illegal. There are very few professions (often stuff like medicine, teaching, etc) where someone can sit back and think "yeah, my day job is a net positive for humanity". It's hard enough to cope with when something is a decent "material good" on its own - like if you're selling shoes (virtually all of which get made in sweatshops), at least you have the pride in the fact that shoes are a necessity. It sucks that slavery was involved in making them, but at least you know people are getting genuinely good clothing out of it. But when you don't have that - when you are, say, working in market analysis or advertising, and you realize your job isn't actually making anything or filling any material need - or even just bringing people joy, yeah, it's a bit worse than being meaningless. You're flushing the best years of your life down the toilet to make a little more money for some private equity firm. Great.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago

I feel like if you sacrifice enough in wages you can always have a fascinating job. And moving to a developing country can leave you with a roughly equivalent salary after adjusting for purchasing powe parity. I don't have hard data but that's what I've been doing for the last four years.

bjornsing 5y ago
Interesting. So you do freelance/consulting work and are really picky about the projects you take on, or what?
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  No, I'm CTO at a small NGO in Bogotá that models the effects of government policy. Which I got because a friend started the NGO. So I guess I'm not evidence that such opportunities are rife. But they do seem to be. Native English speakers are quite valuable in their own right here. And there's a strong big-fish-small-pond effect if you're an expert in something. Research tends to be written in English, as does documentation.
- dkn775 5y ago
  Work for gov particularly police or some kind of job where you have to deal w social stuff. City gov is the best for this as you get a lot of flexibility