7 ms·

> My take on work is that it's getting more exploitive, more administrative, less fun and less satisfying. Between politics and policies and management, work is

> My take on work is that it's getting more exploitive, more administrative, less fun and less satisfying. Between politics and policies and management, work is asking much more, not physically but in terms of behaviors and beliefs. It's a new kind of exploitation we haven't really faced before. Maybe I’m showing my age, but I have to disagree hard with this idea that working conditions are worse in 2021 than they were in the past. Modern jobs are quite comfortable and flexible relative to what was expected a few decades ago. Companies today bend over backwards to retain employees. I’m not exactly old, but I’m old enough to have experienced a significant shift toward better treatment of workers. At the upper end (e.g. us engineers earning above-average wages), the level of employee pampering we get at modern tech companies feels unreal, even outside of the stereotypical FAANG offices. The amount of flexibility, respect, and attention showered on us (meaning tech workers) now is miles ahead of working conditions decades ago. Just ask anyone who worked through past recessions what it’s like to work in a crowded job market with far more workers than jobs and where everyone is trying to outperform each other to avoid the next round of layoffs. It’s nothing like our job market today where you can walk out of one company and into another in a matter of weeks or days.

bsder 5y ago
> Modern jobs are quite comfortable and flexible relative to what was expected a few decades ago. Companies today bend over backwards to retain employees. Some modern jobs. On the other end of the spectrum you have Amazon drivers pissing in bottles--something that a steel mill laborer would never have had to do.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > On the other end of the spectrum you have Amazon drivers pissing in bottles--something that a steel mill laborer would never have had to do. Are you really suggesting that laboring at a steel mill decades ago was a more comfortable job than being an Amazon worker? That's incredibly out of touch. Even modern steel mills, with all of our technology and safety regulations, are difficult jobs. That's why they pay more than being an Amazon warehouse employees or drivers. Older steel mill jobs were absolutely hellish. The struggles at modern Amazon jobs have been greatly exaggerated or cherry-picked in the news. There's no comparison between the two.
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    I'd take driving a truck and having to piss in a bottle over working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of 100.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      Pssh, I'd take working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of a 100 compared to being a slave. Race to the bottom mentality.
      - Supermancho 5y ago
        That's an unnecessary (inflammatory) diversion from the comparison, which is the core of the thread. I understand you want to elevate the conversation to what YOU feel strongly about, but posting it on impulse is not constructive.
        Clubber 5y ago
        The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. I applied the argument to his example to show how silly it was to dismiss current working conditions like that. What he was doing is the same arguments used for the last 40 years to make our work lives worse and worse. Like I said, it's a race to the bottom mentality. I mean what point do you think he was trying to make? That he respects the hard work steel workers endured? Sure, I guess, but I suspect the overriding narrative he was trying to convey was that Amazon workers ain't got it so tough. They should suck it up. That's how I read it. Remember how Chinese workers were killing themselves in factories and the first counter argument was along the lines of, "their lives were much worse before, they should be thankful for those jobs." Guess who's propaganda that was. Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud.
        Supermancho 5y ago
        > The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. You're personalizing a fairly dry back and forth discussion about subjective experience and then deciding that it's constructive to minimize their attempt at coming to a common ground in service of some moral recognition of a higher level wrong. > Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud. I tried to explain why you're not being constructive. Good luck with whatever.
- prostoalex 5y ago
  Amazon attributed this to COVID-19 lockdowns https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recent-response-to-representative-pocan https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recen... Anecdotally, at the very start of the pandemic I had read a similar complaint from someone whose relative worked in delivery - with offices (and retail) on the lockdown there were fewer potential pit stops along the route.
- wahern 5y ago
  I never understood the outrage regarding pee bottles. AFAIU urinating in a bottle is common at both UPS and USPS, both of which have very good unions. See discussions like https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.360713/ https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.36... and https://forum.federalsoup.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=31642#post333951 https://forum.federalsoup.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=31642#p... The real issue isn't whether people have to pee in a bottle sometimes--it's the nature of the business--but how prevalent it is. That is, do the drivers on routes with available facilities have the time to make use of them? But that's a far more nuanced question that doesn't make for good sound bites.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - swader999 5y ago
    They are called piss jugs.
- edouard-harris 5y ago
  Once can be very sympathetic to the experiences of Amazon drivers — and to be clear, the peeing-in-a-bottle story does appear to refer to a real incident — while still recognizing the enormous improvements in the working conditions of the average blue collar laborer. It's sometimes a bit too easy to look at the past through sepia-colored lenses, and assume that the present must be worse. As an antidote to that tendency, it's worth reading this description of the actual reality of working in one of Andrew Carnegie's steel mills at the turn of the 20th century: > Indeed, flames, noise, and danger ruled the Carnegie mills. "Protective gear" consisted only of two layers of wool long-johns; horrible injuries were common. Wives and children came to dread the sound of factory whistles that meant an accident had occurred. > "They wipe a man out here every little while," a worker said in 1893. "Sometimes a chain breaks, and a ladle tips over, and the iron explodes.... Sometimes the slag falls on the workmen.... Of course, if everything is working all smooth and a man watches out, why, all right! But you take it after they've been on duty twelve hours without sleep, and running like hell, everybody tired and loggy, and it's a different story." (Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegie-steel-business/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegi...) I've worked blue collar jobs and I've worked white collar jobs, and I'd take Bezos over Carnegie any day. And the very fact that sounds like such faint praise highlights how far we've come.
  - retrac 5y ago
    True. I certainly agree with your example of 1890. And for 1940 and maybe 1970. But it does seems at least conceivable that workers may have been more safe in say 1985 than today. Also, aside from risk in objective terms, which was surely a consequence of technology and level of material wealth available to some degree -- how seriously did the society and culture generally take the issue?
    - jonas21 5y ago
      Luckily, we don't have to guess based on what is conceivable. The US government keeps statistics on this. Even since 1985, the rate of both workplace injuries [1] and fatalities [2] have fallen significantly. (the fatality graph doesn't go all the way back to 1985, but if you look at the source data they cite, the trend continues) [1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborforcedata/chart1.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborfo... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborforcedata/Chart16.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborfo...
travisgriggs 5y ago
Maybe I’m showing my age too (51 is around the corner), but I actually agree with the OP that things are getting worse. It would be interesting to delve into why you and I are having different experiences as we age. Is it the industries? Or other aspects?
- thrav 5y ago
  I think it’s a bit of a choice, but also a result of tech workers definitionally being higher leverage employees. I worked at a giant employer in SF with a tall tower, and I had plenty of periods where I had to grind 12+ hours a day to perform at a high level, because my managers knew I’d do it if they dangled things in front of me, and if I didn’t, it was going to be visible enough to be very problematic for my career there. Then I had periods where I’d crushed the before time, and could get away with walking the street shooting photography for 4 hours, as long as I didn’t have meetings. My attainment wasn’t that different in either case, I just got put on easier stuff, because I’d made it. The shitty part is how easily the wrong manager can throw you back into that first place and effectively squeeze you, if you’re not an unequivocal top performer. In the past, I don’t get the sense that companies were as ruthlessly efficient and eager to cut out people who were good enough, but not excellent. It seems like it was easier to hang around, whereas now you have to grind and be the best for a nontrivial period of time to earn the right to relax a bit.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  I'm 58 and it definitely seems worse. It could be that we're experiencing some level of ageism so that comparing with when we were younger it feels worse. I find it really depends on the workplace & people, though. Mostly it seems like I've had good experiences working in smaller companies than large corporations over the last decade. The two large corporations I worked for in during that period were not great experiences mostly due to managers not being good at managing people - stuff like micromanaging their whole team because they were very insecure and didn't trust any of their direct reports. I don't recall running into this level of distrust 20+ years ago.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
silisili 5y ago
I agree and disagree. For the white collar, everything has gotten better. For the blue and especially pink collar, worse. I understand your perspective as it's one that I shared, nearly 20 years ago. I was a minimum wage laborer for a few years, and when getting my first desk job, I couldn't believe how easy it was, and yet how so many complained. And it's only gotten more surreal since. When your back hurts from shoveling all day, it's really hard to sympathize with someone in an office who complains they didn't get a perfect review. The one thing it did teach me is that people just like to grieve, whether it's from black lung or a small monitor. It definitely gave me humility, and perspective. Service workers are treated as disposable trash, to this day, by both their employer and customers. I'm beyond excited they're quitting.
- parineum 5y ago
  I used to do electrical work when I was younger for my dad's company. The innovations in the blue color field might seem trivial but they are absolutely real. Just the transition to modern romex with push in receptacles saves tons of time and effort in the part of the job you spend 90% of the time doing. It's still manual labor but it's much less strenuous than it used to be and it's also much more efficient.
  - silisili 5y ago
    Good rebuttal. I forget at times skilled trades are blue collar. Those people in this time are making a killing. My cousins are pipefitters, and make twice what I do as a 'Software Engineer', and I have no complaints, they deserve it. I guess I was thinking of the lower tier blue collar laborers, where I had worked (landscaping, auto parts, etc) and especially 'pink collar', which I did not know existed until I googled it.
  - antattack 5y ago
    Now-days many plumbers don't even solder copper pipes opting out quick and easy push or press fitting and/or PEX tubing.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
xwdv 5y ago
Remote working is the peak of this. My company has pretty much resigned itself to the idea that they cannot create a better work environment than the one I create for myself. If I’m not happy I could easily be poached away by another other company anywhere on the planet, and the only switching cost on my end would be getting to know some new team members and logging into a different workspace. It is not a good position to be in if you wanted to treat an employee like shit. There is far less leverage.
ithkuil 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
mech422 5y ago
Hell - ask the old timers about singing the EDS song in the morning... Or having to bring your wife to job interviews... Or having to wear a suit and tie :-P or ... or ... It really does seem better then I remember it 'last century' :-D
- sgerenser 5y ago
  Bringing spouses to job interviews? Was that really once a common thing!?
  - mech422 5y ago
    For some places it was... EDS (Ross Perots company) did it. I want to say IBM did it as well ? Though - to give Perot his due, when his employees got trapped in Iran...EDS planned and executed a military style raid on a foreign country to get them back. You don't see that kind of loyalty from employers any more.

bsder 5y ago

> Modern jobs are quite comfortable and flexible relative to what was expected a few decades ago. Companies today bend over backwards to retain employees. Some modern jobs. On the other end of the spectrum you have Amazon drivers pissing in bottles--something that a steel mill laborer would never have had to do.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> On the other end of the spectrum you have Amazon drivers pissing in bottles--something that a steel mill laborer would never have had to do. Are you really suggesting that laboring at a steel mill decades ago was a more comfortable job than being an Amazon worker? That's incredibly out of touch. Even modern steel mills, with all of our technology and safety regulations, are difficult jobs. That's why they pay more than being an Amazon warehouse employees or drivers. Older steel mill jobs were absolutely hellish. The struggles at modern Amazon jobs have been greatly exaggerated or cherry-picked in the news. There's no comparison between the two.
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  I'd take driving a truck and having to piss in a bottle over working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of 100.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Pssh, I'd take working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of a 100 compared to being a slave. Race to the bottom mentality.
    - Supermancho 5y ago
      That's an unnecessary (inflammatory) diversion from the comparison, which is the core of the thread. I understand you want to elevate the conversation to what YOU feel strongly about, but posting it on impulse is not constructive.
      - Clubber 5y ago
        The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. I applied the argument to his example to show how silly it was to dismiss current working conditions like that. What he was doing is the same arguments used for the last 40 years to make our work lives worse and worse. Like I said, it's a race to the bottom mentality. I mean what point do you think he was trying to make? That he respects the hard work steel workers endured? Sure, I guess, but I suspect the overriding narrative he was trying to convey was that Amazon workers ain't got it so tough. They should suck it up. That's how I read it. Remember how Chinese workers were killing themselves in factories and the first counter argument was along the lines of, "their lives were much worse before, they should be thankful for those jobs." Guess who's propaganda that was. Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud.
        Supermancho 5y ago
        > The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. You're personalizing a fairly dry back and forth discussion about subjective experience and then deciding that it's constructive to minimize their attempt at coming to a common ground in service of some moral recognition of a higher level wrong. > Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud. I tried to explain why you're not being constructive. Good luck with whatever.
prostoalex 5y ago
Amazon attributed this to COVID-19 lockdowns https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recent-response-to-representative-pocan https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recen... Anecdotally, at the very start of the pandemic I had read a similar complaint from someone whose relative worked in delivery - with offices (and retail) on the lockdown there were fewer potential pit stops along the route.
wahern 5y ago
I never understood the outrage regarding pee bottles. AFAIU urinating in a bottle is common at both UPS and USPS, both of which have very good unions. See discussions like https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.360713/ https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.36... and https://forum.federalsoup.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=31642#post333951 https://forum.federalsoup.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=31642#p... The real issue isn't whether people have to pee in a bottle sometimes--it's the nature of the business--but how prevalent it is. That is, do the drivers on routes with available facilities have the time to make use of them? But that's a far more nuanced question that doesn't make for good sound bites.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- swader999 5y ago
  They are called piss jugs.
edouard-harris 5y ago
Once can be very sympathetic to the experiences of Amazon drivers — and to be clear, the peeing-in-a-bottle story does appear to refer to a real incident — while still recognizing the enormous improvements in the working conditions of the average blue collar laborer. It's sometimes a bit too easy to look at the past through sepia-colored lenses, and assume that the present must be worse. As an antidote to that tendency, it's worth reading this description of the actual reality of working in one of Andrew Carnegie's steel mills at the turn of the 20th century: > Indeed, flames, noise, and danger ruled the Carnegie mills. "Protective gear" consisted only of two layers of wool long-johns; horrible injuries were common. Wives and children came to dread the sound of factory whistles that meant an accident had occurred. > "They wipe a man out here every little while," a worker said in 1893. "Sometimes a chain breaks, and a ladle tips over, and the iron explodes.... Sometimes the slag falls on the workmen.... Of course, if everything is working all smooth and a man watches out, why, all right! But you take it after they've been on duty twelve hours without sleep, and running like hell, everybody tired and loggy, and it's a different story." (Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegie-steel-business/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegi...) I've worked blue collar jobs and I've worked white collar jobs, and I'd take Bezos over Carnegie any day. And the very fact that sounds like such faint praise highlights how far we've come.
- retrac 5y ago
  True. I certainly agree with your example of 1890. And for 1940 and maybe 1970. But it does seems at least conceivable that workers may have been more safe in say 1985 than today. Also, aside from risk in objective terms, which was surely a consequence of technology and level of material wealth available to some degree -- how seriously did the society and culture generally take the issue?
  - jonas21 5y ago
    Luckily, we don't have to guess based on what is conceivable. The US government keeps statistics on this. Even since 1985, the rate of both workplace injuries [1] and fatalities [2] have fallen significantly. (the fatality graph doesn't go all the way back to 1985, but if you look at the source data they cite, the trend continues) [1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborforcedata/chart1.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborfo... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborforcedata/Chart16.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborfo...

travisgriggs 5y ago

Maybe I’m showing my age too (51 is around the corner), but I actually agree with the OP that things are getting worse. It would be interesting to delve into why you and I are having different experiences as we age. Is it the industries? Or other aspects?

thrav 5y ago
I think it’s a bit of a choice, but also a result of tech workers definitionally being higher leverage employees. I worked at a giant employer in SF with a tall tower, and I had plenty of periods where I had to grind 12+ hours a day to perform at a high level, because my managers knew I’d do it if they dangled things in front of me, and if I didn’t, it was going to be visible enough to be very problematic for my career there. Then I had periods where I’d crushed the before time, and could get away with walking the street shooting photography for 4 hours, as long as I didn’t have meetings. My attainment wasn’t that different in either case, I just got put on easier stuff, because I’d made it. The shitty part is how easily the wrong manager can throw you back into that first place and effectively squeeze you, if you’re not an unequivocal top performer. In the past, I don’t get the sense that companies were as ruthlessly efficient and eager to cut out people who were good enough, but not excellent. It seems like it was easier to hang around, whereas now you have to grind and be the best for a nontrivial period of time to earn the right to relax a bit.
UncleOxidant 5y ago
I'm 58 and it definitely seems worse. It could be that we're experiencing some level of ageism so that comparing with when we were younger it feels worse. I find it really depends on the workplace & people, though. Mostly it seems like I've had good experiences working in smaller companies than large corporations over the last decade. The two large corporations I worked for in during that period were not great experiences mostly due to managers not being good at managing people - stuff like micromanaging their whole team because they were very insecure and didn't trust any of their direct reports. I don't recall running into this level of distrust 20+ years ago.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

silisili 5y ago

I agree and disagree. For the white collar, everything has gotten better. For the blue and especially pink collar, worse. I understand your perspective as it's one that I shared, nearly 20 years ago. I was a minimum wage laborer for a few years, and when getting my first desk job, I couldn't believe how easy it was, and yet how so many complained. And it's only gotten more surreal since. When your back hurts from shoveling all day, it's really hard to sympathize with someone in an office who complains they didn't get a perfect review. The one thing it did teach me is that people just like to grieve, whether it's from black lung or a small monitor. It definitely gave me humility, and perspective. Service workers are treated as disposable trash, to this day, by both their employer and customers. I'm beyond excited they're quitting.

parineum 5y ago
I used to do electrical work when I was younger for my dad's company. The innovations in the blue color field might seem trivial but they are absolutely real. Just the transition to modern romex with push in receptacles saves tons of time and effort in the part of the job you spend 90% of the time doing. It's still manual labor but it's much less strenuous than it used to be and it's also much more efficient.
- silisili 5y ago
  Good rebuttal. I forget at times skilled trades are blue collar. Those people in this time are making a killing. My cousins are pipefitters, and make twice what I do as a 'Software Engineer', and I have no complaints, they deserve it. I guess I was thinking of the lower tier blue collar laborers, where I had worked (landscaping, auto parts, etc) and especially 'pink collar', which I did not know existed until I googled it.
- antattack 5y ago
  Now-days many plumbers don't even solder copper pipes opting out quick and easy push or press fitting and/or PEX tubing.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago

xwdv 5y ago

Remote working is the peak of this. My company has pretty much resigned itself to the idea that they cannot create a better work environment than the one I create for myself. If I’m not happy I could easily be poached away by another other company anywhere on the planet, and the only switching cost on my end would be getting to know some new team members and logging into a different workspace. It is not a good position to be in if you wanted to treat an employee like shit. There is far less leverage.

ithkuil 5y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

mech422 5y ago

Hell - ask the old timers about singing the EDS song in the morning... Or having to bring your wife to job interviews... Or having to wear a suit and tie :-P or ... or ... It really does seem better then I remember it 'last century' :-D

sgerenser 5y ago
Bringing spouses to job interviews? Was that really once a common thing!?
- mech422 5y ago
  For some places it was... EDS (Ross Perots company) did it. I want to say IBM did it as well ? Though - to give Perot his due, when his employees got trapped in Iran...EDS planned and executed a military style raid on a foreign country to get them back. You don't see that kind of loyalty from employers any more.