4 ms·

Don't worry about me. I work very hard, made it through difficult programs at top schools, made (and continue to make) significant contributions at leading comp

Don't worry about me. I work very hard, made it through difficult programs at top schools, made (and continue to make) significant contributions at leading companies and my compensation is probably top 0.01% in the world. I'm familiar with hard work and struggle, having come from nothing. In fact the only thing that was handed to me was values around education and how important it is - I still believe in that deeply. I still disagree with your framing. Let's take this example: > As for jobs, they’re hiring you to do work, not to be entertained. Don’t like it? Move along to something else then. You don't see the problem here? Losing talent is not a winning strategy. If I'm a company leader, I take it as MY responsibility to create a place where people want to work and work hard towards goals they see as meaningful. If people don't see personal growth and a path to bettering their life or others' through work - what is the purpose of sacrifice and hard work? There is none. Having employees that are working purely from a place of fear and not being able to pay bills is scraping the bottom of the barrel. In short - I will bet against your version of leadership any day. I think it's anti-leadership and I would love to have you as a competitor company. > The people who feed you an endless stream of engaging content that keeps you mindlessly consuming are not doing it with your best interests at heart. I don't disagree with you here. We're in complete agreement. I just think this point gets over-emphasized and my original point doesn't get talked about enough - which is why I originally commented. > Ultimately, it’s not the school’s problem if you don’t learn, it’s yours. You’re the one who’s going to have to go through life not understanding math and whatnot. Also want to respond to this. I agree with you here as well. However I think there is a distinction between school and education. It is the environment of school that I'm talking about in particular and the way some subjects are taught (History is a pet peeve of mine. As an adult, I LOVE history and learning about history - I do it in my free time. In school, history education is fundamentally broken IMO).

imgabe 4y ago
> create a place where people want to work and work hard towards goals they see as meaningful. If people don't see personal growth and a path to bettering their life or others' through work - what is the purpose of sacrifice and hard work? Working towards goals that are meaningful doesn't mean that you will be entertained and engaged with fun things to do all the time. Often quite the opposite. Personal growth and bettering your life also entails doing things that may not be very engaging. If you focus on attracting people who want to be engaged and spoon fed and will refuse to do any work that they don't find immediately rewarding, sure, I'll be happy to compete with you.
- askafriend 4y ago
  I don't know where you got the words "entertained", "fun things to do all the time", or "spoon fed" from. I didn't use any of those words and I think we actually agree that meaningful things doesn't equate to parties all the time. When I say engaged and meaningful - I mean it in the purest sense of the words, whereas you seem to equate it to "unserious". Back to concrete questions: Are business leaders and educators presenting problems in a way that people connect with and see the value of? Are they providing an environment that makes people want to work hard and makes them feel empowered to take on difficult challenges? Take History education for example. I'd say the answer to the above questions are "no". * Most students who take a History class in a typical American school don't see how memorizing dates for tests connects to anything meaningful in their life or understanding of the world. * I'd say educators don't or can't spend much time or effort connecting the dots or presenting information in a way that inspires people to ask deeper questions. Instead, the focus is on rote memorization in preparation for flawed standardized state tests which themselves serve as the basis for obtaining federal funding to run the school itself. Not to mention teachers themselves are underpaid and under-resourced while the students are forced to wake up at 6am (often not getting enough sleep) to catch the bus, sit in uncomfortable chairs for 8hrs a day with no agency, and then we're surprised that they're not excited by people talking at them all day? Put another way, let's say you show up to a restaurant that serves shitty food, has a shitty environment, and the server get your order all wrong - you pay for this with your time and money. Do you think it's reasonable for the head chef to complain that customers are ungrateful and should be happy they got food at all? If the restaurant down the street takes the care to get all these things right, are customers entitled for choosing that restaurant every time instead?
  - imgabe 4y ago
    Yes, it would be really nice if every teacher could be Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society or Joe Clark from Lean On Me but that just isn't the case and it isn't ever going to be the case. Work is work and you can choose to engage yourself with it or not. Obviously, employers should not mistreat their employees, but ultimately they're all there to do whatever it is the business does and the point is to all succeed together as a business, not to nurture the personal growth of the employees. If a server can't be bothered to make sure an order is correct the customer doesn't care whether the environment was sufficiently engaging or not, they only care about their order being right. It's not that long ago that most people's "job" was growing enough food to survive. Nature didn't care if you found this fulfilling or engaging, you either did it or you starved. I can guarantee that if your life and your family's lives depended on growing enough potatoes to last through the winter, you'd be very interested and engaged in how to grow potatoes. It is an incredible luxury that we can even consider things like whether we feel engaged or meaning in our work. There's meaning to be had in all honest work that serves a purpose. It's up to you to find it. If people are going to sit around and passively wait for someone to "inspire" them, they're either going to be very unsatisfied with their lives or fall prey to the first charismatic huckster that comes along. Nobody else can tell you how to find meaning in your life, you have to make it for yourself.

imgabe 4y ago

> create a place where people want to work and work hard towards goals they see as meaningful. If people don't see personal growth and a path to bettering their life or others' through work - what is the purpose of sacrifice and hard work? Working towards goals that are meaningful doesn't mean that you will be entertained and engaged with fun things to do all the time. Often quite the opposite. Personal growth and bettering your life also entails doing things that may not be very engaging. If you focus on attracting people who want to be engaged and spoon fed and will refuse to do any work that they don't find immediately rewarding, sure, I'll be happy to compete with you.

askafriend 4y ago
I don't know where you got the words "entertained", "fun things to do all the time", or "spoon fed" from. I didn't use any of those words and I think we actually agree that meaningful things doesn't equate to parties all the time. When I say engaged and meaningful - I mean it in the purest sense of the words, whereas you seem to equate it to "unserious". Back to concrete questions: Are business leaders and educators presenting problems in a way that people connect with and see the value of? Are they providing an environment that makes people want to work hard and makes them feel empowered to take on difficult challenges? Take History education for example. I'd say the answer to the above questions are "no". * Most students who take a History class in a typical American school don't see how memorizing dates for tests connects to anything meaningful in their life or understanding of the world. * I'd say educators don't or can't spend much time or effort connecting the dots or presenting information in a way that inspires people to ask deeper questions. Instead, the focus is on rote memorization in preparation for flawed standardized state tests which themselves serve as the basis for obtaining federal funding to run the school itself. Not to mention teachers themselves are underpaid and under-resourced while the students are forced to wake up at 6am (often not getting enough sleep) to catch the bus, sit in uncomfortable chairs for 8hrs a day with no agency, and then we're surprised that they're not excited by people talking at them all day? Put another way, let's say you show up to a restaurant that serves shitty food, has a shitty environment, and the server get your order all wrong - you pay for this with your time and money. Do you think it's reasonable for the head chef to complain that customers are ungrateful and should be happy they got food at all? If the restaurant down the street takes the care to get all these things right, are customers entitled for choosing that restaurant every time instead?
- imgabe 4y ago
  Yes, it would be really nice if every teacher could be Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society or Joe Clark from Lean On Me but that just isn't the case and it isn't ever going to be the case. Work is work and you can choose to engage yourself with it or not. Obviously, employers should not mistreat their employees, but ultimately they're all there to do whatever it is the business does and the point is to all succeed together as a business, not to nurture the personal growth of the employees. If a server can't be bothered to make sure an order is correct the customer doesn't care whether the environment was sufficiently engaging or not, they only care about their order being right. It's not that long ago that most people's "job" was growing enough food to survive. Nature didn't care if you found this fulfilling or engaging, you either did it or you starved. I can guarantee that if your life and your family's lives depended on growing enough potatoes to last through the winter, you'd be very interested and engaged in how to grow potatoes. It is an incredible luxury that we can even consider things like whether we feel engaged or meaning in our work. There's meaning to be had in all honest work that serves a purpose. It's up to you to find it. If people are going to sit around and passively wait for someone to "inspire" them, they're either going to be very unsatisfied with their lives or fall prey to the first charismatic huckster that comes along. Nobody else can tell you how to find meaning in your life, you have to make it for yourself.