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The Sharp Dropoff In Worker Happiness

147 points by philk10 15y ago

dclowd9901 15y ago
In an abusive relationship, there are two people. The reason companies have the power to put their thumb into their employees is because workers have let their dignity and pride go, just to get a paycheck. Proverbially speaking, you get what you pay for. In essence, if you take a job that is below a threshold of tolerance that you would like, that's exactly what you're going to get. I realize it's easy to espouse this kind of view. I don't have a wife or children who rely on me to have a constant job. I'm in an industry whose companies are essentially in a full-court press hiring mode. But I think from this position, I gain perspective. When you're at a job you hate, you lose passion. Passion for everything from hobbies, to friends, to (most tragically) family. Your partner sees a frail person who has given up. Your kids see a failure. Someone who never reached for and got what they wanted. They not only pity you, but they have contempt for you. Be the person they want you to be, which, incidentally, tends to be the person you want to be. Don't say "Yes" to 2 weeks vacation and 10k under market. That's ridiculous. Stand your ground. You're worth something. Companies have effectively gotten prospects to race to the bottom in terms of compensation, either because the prospects are too stupid or too scared to ask for more. If more people took a little pride in themselves and asked for what they deserved, we wouldn't all be so paralyzed under the slave traders. At the end of the day, no one can leave the abuser behind but you.
- el_presidente 15y ago
  > The reason companies have the power to put their thumb into their employees is because workers have let their dignity and pride go, just to get a paycheck. Another reason they have more power is because of the steady decline of unions.
- cageface 15y ago
  But I think from this position, I gain perspective. I think if you had any experience of being the powerless one in an employee-employer relationship you'd gain far more perspective.
  - michaelochurch 15y ago
    My problem with what he's saying is that it seems to me that he's extrapolating the job markets for technology in a small number of geographical areas, between 2009 and 2012, to the world in general.
  - dclowd9901 15y ago
    While I've spoken my peace, I do want to say that I definitely have come from that place. As someone who's moved from two dying industries, I can assure you, I've spent most of my professional life under duress. And I'll never go back, even if it means switching careers again.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    You are never powerless, until you believe that you are. You may not be able to change your current company. But you may be able to find something else. It will properly pay less, but there are ways around that (/r/frugal, say). You may be able to get enough self-respect that you dare to stand up to your boss. My grandparents were as close as you can get to poverty without actually starving -- better not drop this piece of meat, because that is all I have and there isn't enough potatoes to make up for it -- poor. Grandpa worked his ass of getting crazy overtime to make a bit of money. Yet once when his boss became really mean he told to stop doing that shit or he would quit. He didn't exactly have much of cushion at home, but he knew that he wouldn't stand for abuse either.
    - eli_gottlieb 15y ago
      Your grandfather also had a union movement, in his day.
      - tomjen3 15y ago
        Yeah, but that doesn't mean much. He could not have keept his house (which he got so cheap he had to rebuild most of it over the years) and he would still be out of a job.
- otoburb 15y ago
  When you're at a job you hate, you lose passion. Passion for everything from hobbies, to friends, to (most tragically) family. Your partner sees a frail person who has given up. Your kids see a failure. Someone who never reached for and got what they wanted. They not only pity you, but they have contempt for you. If people invoked a definitive reaction like 'hate' when referring to their job they would reach the same conclusion as you and quit more quickly. However, most people in this type of situation are probably earning good money (e.g. at/above market rate) with decent benefits, which in turn cause one to be ambivalent to their job. The situation you describe is one of certainty: job hate, withering joi de vivre, loss of family respect and increasing resultant psychological pressures. The situation most people may be in is of great uncertainty: job tolerance, decent joi de vivre (fun hobbies, supportive friends), happy family, less psychological pressure outside of work. The second situation is more conducive to stability in one's life, which is no laughing matter when you have a family. I appreciate your perspective, and hope that you can apply it to the second situation. EDIT: I'm not condoning the more ambiguous situation, merely explaining that this is probably what happened to the long-time bank manager in the article. The general malaise from work slowly spread until he couldn't take it any longer.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    When I look back at the jobs that have been the worst experiences for me it's hard for me to avoid thinking that, in abstract, they weren't really so bad. Good pay, decent hours, not too difficult work, etc. It's hard to tally the cost of workplaces and managers that take a heavy emotional and psychological toll.
- gcheong 15y ago
  "Your partner sees a frail person who has given up. Your kids see a failure. Someone who never reached for and got what they wanted. They not only pity you, but they have contempt for you." Well, I sure hope that if/when you may face a time where your passion has worn thin that your loved ones may find in themselves some compassion for you rather than pity or contempt. I think this actually is the default in most families than pity or contempt. Otherwise, what would be the point of having them?
  - carguy1983 15y ago
    LOL yeah, in a perfect world. Here in reality, people are contemptuous.
    - bitserf 15y ago
      You've got a pretty negative view of people/life overall. I think your perception may be a self fulfilling prophecy. Going to go out on a limb and recommend reading Learned Optimism, by Martin Seligman. I have a predisposition to seeing the negative side of things myself, but I actively work on trying to minimise that. Life really is too short.
      - carguy1983 15y ago
        And how exactly does reading self-help books affect how other people behave?
        LogicHoleFlaw 15y ago
        The implication is that it is more important to adjust one's perception of the actions of others than it is to alter the actions of others.
  - r00fus 15y ago
    You sound as if you aren't living it. There is compassion, but in a large part, when everyone is stressed (including the kids) by schedule or performance there isn't enough time to really gain rapport, and contempt sets in for the ones who "can't handle it". This is the logical conclusion of not spending enough time together, or time spent together while one or more of an organizational unit are under serious duress. The way to alleviate is to enjoy "quality" time together - guess what folks don't have time to do when their stress levels are up?
- herval 15y ago
  I'm not sure things are as simple as that, in most cases. Not everyone can switch jobs in a blink - most people can't even afford risking their jobs, for whatever reason (mortgages, families, lifestyles, parent pressure, etc). It's easy to lose sight on that when you're in the "top 10%" of the pyramid. Most people aren't...
- Androsynth 15y ago
  What youre espousing only works on the individual level, not on the societal level. ie when you turn down a crappy job, there will always be someone who will take it.
  - cynicalkane 15y ago
    No there won't. Workers are not an infinite resource. Each worker that turns down a crappy job is one less worker qualified for that job. If worker preferences meant nothing, programming would be mostly abused minimum wage workers, which is obviously not the case.
    - Androsynth 15y ago
      Don't convolve abuse with wage. There are a lot of programmers who are paid very well but are unhappy with their jobs. Being a corporate wage slave is a fast path to unhappiness. The problem is that so few people are as introspective as the GP to your post. Most will take the bad job because work > no work in most peoples minds. This is a problem that cannot be fixed at the leaf nodes, it must be fixed at the root. But the root is currently doing very well for themselves and won't see it as a problem (because there are always more workers) The solution that factory workers came up with to solve this problem was to organize. But that caused more problems in the long term than it solved (it's economically unfeasible)
  - jeremyarussell 15y ago
    You also must keep in mind that a society is simply a group of individuals, things would inherently have to work on an individual level before they turned into a society level movements. Keeping in mind that the first person to quit will pave the way for others to do it without feeling awkward. It's kind of an inertia thing, an object in motion stays in motion, and it takes more energy for an object that is stationary to begin moving. Same overlying principal applies to people and movements in societies.
- eli_gottlieb 15y ago
  The reason companies have the power to put their thumb into their employees is because workers have let their dignity and pride go, just to get a paycheck. Proverbially speaking, you get what you pay for. In essence, if you take a job that is below a threshold of tolerance that you would like, that's exactly what you're going to get. This ignores the directed and deliberate efforts to suppress workers' rights to organize and workers' ability to leave for a better job. Noncompete agreements, union-busting, high costs of health-care outside of BigCorp jobs, labor arbitrage, labor monopsonies... it all adds up.
roc 15y ago
Personally, I've noticed people vacillate between hating their jobs and liking their jobs just fine, despite no real change in day-to-day management, policy, recognition, etc. What I've seen as the big parts of the puzzle are stagnant wages, longer hours and whether people perceive themselves as trapped. (higher overall unemployment ~= less chance of switching ~= less happy)
- Florin_Andrei 15y ago
  Keeping up with the Joneses is the real poison.
  - roc 15y ago
    The Joneses are a remote concern if you're working harder and longer hours just to keep up with your year-ago self. (or, given the length of this recession, perhaps "several-years-ago self")
- davidcuddeback 15y ago
  > Personally, I've noticed people vacillate between hating their jobs and liking their jobs just fine, despite no real change in day-to-day management, policy, recognition, etc. I find the scale you chose to be interesting. At the low end of the scale, you chose the word "hate," which is a fairly strong negative. At the high end of the scale, you chose the phrase "like ... just fine," which is somewhere between neutral and luke-warm. It's a shame that people never "love" their job. Considering how much of our lives we spend at work, liking my job "just fine" isn't good enough for me. I've noticed the same vacillating. In my experience, there is usually a catalyst that makes someone hate their job---usually a decision by someone higher up that the person strongly disagrees with. Over a period of time (one to two weeks), the person gets over it and grudgingly accepts the new norm (returning to liking their job just fine). In a way there is no real day-to-day change, because the source of the catalyst events is the same, but the event itself can be a change.
  - roc 15y ago
    > "I find the scale you chose to be interesting" To be fair, part of that is just American society. It's acceptable to complain about crap work and low pay. Whereas celebrating your awesome job and high pay is seen as uncouth. [1] So whenever you tally up public statements about jobs, you should expect it to be tilted toward the negative. In this case, I was trying to restrict it to people I've known whose attitudes changed while doing essentially the same job at the same place. But you know how anecdotes go... [1] The same goes for many aspects of American life. When things go well you're expected to keep quiet in deference to those who haven't had such good fortune. Hence "Fuck my life" and "white people problems" are memes. But there are no comparable analogues. Amusingly, the only time Americans generally acknowledge that there's lots of complaining and little celebrating, is in the context of complaining about the complaining. (e.g. "Everything is Great and No-one is Happy")
michaelochurch 15y ago
This "dropoff" coincides with a change in management philosophy in favor of "lean" organizations where a manager might have 12 to 20 reports instead of 3 to 5. No one can manage 20 people decently. This "lean" model has a number of results, but chief among them is that managerial accountability is only upward. With this model, even a terrible manager will have 2 or 3 loyal reports who do good work, clean up the messes, and pick up the slack. Usually, these are the 2-3 who are established enough to know the ropes and be effective, and who are holding on because they hope to outlive the bad manager. Fundamentally, the problem is a system where decent managers are overburdened, bad managers aren't caught out, and almost all companies are poorly managed in general. The smart people figure this out and jump ship as soon as they figure out they're not going anywhere.
- adrianhoward 15y ago
  This "dropoff" coincides with a change in management philosophy in favor of "lean" organizations Can you describe what you mean by "lean" here? I'm a little confused since the organisations I understand as following lean practices don't have the attributes that you talk about. Possibly this is a US/EU thing though...
  - CodeCube 15y ago
    I don't think he means lean as in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing) ... but lean as in the literal definition: thin - meagre - meager - skinny - spare - gaunt - scraggy
  - mcantelon 15y ago
    Basically cost-cutting, if I understand correctly. Mass layoffs were a management fad at one point and aggressive cost-cutting has been a staple of US corporate philosophy ever since.
  - michaelochurch 15y ago
    "Lean" has a lot of meanings, but usually, it means "low in fat". The idea is that a company with a lower management ratio (say, 3-5) is flabby. The 1980s change in corporate structure was to "trim the fat". People are still debating whether this was good or bad, and certainly there were companies that had (and still do have) useless people in management, but the long-term verdict has been negative on the new structure. Managing people properly is too time-intensive for one person to have 20 reports.
rpwilcox 15y ago
I wish the "recommendations" part would have included, "Give your people a raise" (or "send them home at 5"). In the middle of recession style "your raise this year is the fact that you still have a job", a 5% raise would earn you a lot of loyalty... and a 10% raise is stuff of legend. A 10% raise for a department is cheap: say the business laid off 10 people in the department over the last 4 years, and 3 people remain to run a formerly (about) dozen person department. So you're spending 1/3rd of an average salary to keep those people on. Compared to the 20% a headhunter would take + the productivity loss of replacing workers... sounds like a deal to me.
- maigret 15y ago
  Many studies show that actually, money is not that important. So I'm wondering what would happen if say, those 5% were invested in team events, office improvements, better food or hardware. Or, even, how would employee feel if they'd be paid 5% under market value, and this difference would be invested in work environment.
  - herval 15y ago
    I always find that study very funny. A great deal of people DO consider money a very good incentive (and an ever-increasing number consider "team events" an annoyance and would trade it all for more time for themselves/their families)... What would you rather have given to you as an incentive: a raise, more free time or a weekly barbecue with the blokes from the office?
    - true_religion 15y ago
      The answer is not to ask workers what they want, but rather examine how workers actually behave under the different circumstances.
      - herval 15y ago
        How do you measure it? Both giving different incentives to different members of the team and giving random incentives every time will probably DEMOTIVATE people for obvious reasons (it will feel "unfair", "unpredictable", "random")
Androsynth 15y ago
Personally I feel this is a result of the Results-Oriented style of business that originated when MBA's started becoming ubiquitous in businesses (a fairly recent phenomenon, starting in the 1970's). The problem is that even for a talented hard working passionate person who Gets Shit Done, it feels like you are Conan pushing the wheel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVI9MULtv8g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVI9MULtv8g). When you falter, you get the whip, which means you always have to be on your game. When you go above expectations, you get a pat on the back and a thumbs up. After a while you realize that the rewards are simply not worth it. This leads to unhappiness. I want to be a part of an organization that feels like its a family; like its us vs the world; like everyone has a role to play and that role is vital, meaningful and important. I think this is partially the reason why going to work for a startup is becoming more popular. (I left my old company to start my own business)
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
  This is why I chose to freelance. Traditional megacorp jobs want nothing less than to own your soul. I am not exaggerating. It isn't enough to require 50 hours a week with a measly 2 weeks of vacation. No, you need to constantly prove you are committed by working harder than all your coworkers. Otherwise, you're not a team player. You're expected to be loyal with your time, your energy, and give 110%. But they don't have to be quite as loyal, because, you know, those shareholders are so Very Important. (Never mind the employee is the one that is actively generating value.) Every little metric is latched onto because business is still pissed that productivity is not this neat, quantified number that can be put into an excel spreadsheet. So they seek to optimize everything that can be quantified, even if it hampers productivity. I value myself too much to be put into that position again. My freelancing gig's purpose is actually me interviewing companies to find one that will respect me.
fuzzylizard 15y ago
I think one of the best things employers can do to show that they respect their employees is to invert the decision making and control structure in the organization. Similarly to what Agile/XP did for the software development sector. Instead of having managers and CxOs make all the decisions, allow the people closest to the situation, with all the facts, make the decision and be responsible for that decision. Create small teams that are self organizing and imbue those teams with the power to truly own and produce the solution to the problems that they face and are trying to solve. I personally feel that the main problem with organizations and employee happiness and retention is the current system of command and control where all employees are assumed to be idiots that need to be micro-managed. How is anyone suppose to be happy in that kind of environment? Work should not be an extension of school where we store and manage people in order to keep them out of trouble until they are old enough to retire. No, work should be a place where people want to go because they know that they own a little bit of that business and are really responsible for its success and/or failure.
- plasticsyntax 15y ago
  You basically described Lean Manufacturing, one of the direct inspirations for Agile software development practices... so I guess we're going full circle now.
- aNoob7000 15y ago
  Good luck with your suggestion. We're almost two years into switching over from waterfall to Agile/XP and I can tell you that it can be painful. Wait until your first meeting, when you are asked why are your story points are down for this sprint? or, why didn't your finish your task that you put up on the board yesterday? I think a good work environment has more to do with the way management executes on priorities, how the information is communicated to those involved, trust between the business unit and information technology group, and the level of respect/trust between the managers and their employees. Agile doesn't solve problems with management and or managers, it's just a different way of getting work done.
johnhartigun 15y ago
Below is excerpt from 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism. Summary: Since 1980s, the decision power in US corporations started to move to the hands of shareholders. They care about short term profits, not about the employees. > And then, in the 1980s, the holy grail was found. It was called the principle of shareholder value maximization. It was argued that professional managers should be rewarded according to the amount they can give to shareholders. In order to achieve this, it was argued, first profits need to be maximized by ruthlessly cutting costs – wage bills, investments, inventories, middle-level managers, and so on. Second, the highest possible share of these profits needs tobe distributed to the shareholders – through dividends and share buybacks. In order to encourage managers to behave in this way, the proportion of their compensation packages that stock options account for needs to be increased, so that they identify more with the interests of the shareholders. The idea was advocated not just by shareholders, but also by many professional managers, most famously by Jack Welch, the long-time chairman of General Electric (GE), who is often credited with coining the term ‘shareholder value’ in aspeech in 1981. > Soon after Welch’s speech, shareholder value maximization became the zeitgeist of the American corporate world. In the beginning, it seemed to work really well for both the managers and the shareholders. The shareof profits in national income, which had shown a downward trend since the 1960s, sharply rose in the mid 1980s and has shown an upward trend since then. And the shareholders got a higher share of that profit as dividends, while seeing the value of their shares rise. Distributed profits as a share of total US corporate profit stood at 35–45 per cent between the 1950s and the 1970s, but it has been onan upward trend since the late 70s and now stands at around 60 per cent. The managers saw their compensation rising through the roof, but shareholders stopped questioning their pay packages, as they were happy with ever-rising share prices and dividends. The practice soon spread to other countries – more easily to countries like Britain, which had a corporate power structure and managerial culture similar to those of the US, and less easily to other countries, as we shall see below > Now, this unholy alliance between the professional managers and the shareholders was all financed by squeezing the other stakeholders in the company (which is why it has spread much more slowly to other rich countries where the other stakeholders have greater relative strength). Jobs were ruthlessly cut, many workers were fired and re-hired as non-unionized labour with lower wages and fewer benefits, and wage increases were suppressed (often by relocating to or outsourcing from low-wage countries, suchas China and India – or the threat to do so). The suppliers, and their workers, were also squeezed by continued cuts in procurement prices, while the government was pressured into lowering corporate tax rates and/or providing more subsidies, with the help of the threat of relocating to countries with lower corporate tax rates and/or higher business subsidies. As a result, income inequality soared and in a seemingly endless corporate boom (ending, of course, in 2008), the vast majority of the American and the British populations could share in the (apparent) prosperity only through borrowing atunprecedented rates.
OzzyB 15y ago
One thing that upsets me when such topics arise is the non-mention of how Health Insurance plays a huge part in all this. This might be something that UK/EU folks might not be able to empathise with, but for US workers, the need for health insurance is a crucial factor in how they choose to stay/leave/accept any job. To say folks should just "up and leave" if they feel they're under appreciated is not so clear-cut when your medications, nay your family/spouse/child's health is on-the-line while you try to run off in search of "greener pastures". In my mind, one very real reason healthcare reform has failed in the US is that companies[1] are very aware that being the main/sole provider of their workforce's healthcare provides very strong leverage over them. Now having said that, it is true that healthcare costs companies alot of money, and it may be something that a large percentage of them would like to avoid -- a possible factor in their preferrence for a younger workforce perhaps -- but to ignore healthcare and its effects psycologically on our society and workforce as a whole is doing us a disservice. [1] I guess I'm really thinking of "big" companies with a need for a large dependable workforce, not your mum & pop/start-up/entrepreneurial kind...
- benmccann 15y ago
  You can continue your employer-provided healthcare for 18 months via COBRA.
  - rpwilcox 15y ago
    and pay out the nose for it, from what I've heard...
    - joezydeco 15y ago
      Absolutely. Go ask your HR rep what your plan actually costs per month. For my small company, the family plan is nearly $3,000/mo.
      - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
        As a healthy 30 year old, I'm paying 500/mo for a PPO on COBRA.
sawyer 15y ago
This article suggests that the problem of worker dissatisfaction is a whole lot of hand holding and head patting from managers; which begs the question, why have managers at all? The growing popularity of entrepreneurship in the US is evidence that people want more autonomy. Phil Libin (Evernote) is right: you shouldn't start a startup for money or more spare time, but he's wrong that the only reason to do it is to "change the world." The most compelling reason to found a startup for those of us who've worked for a big-co is autonomy. There is a middle ground though - Valve is a perfect example of a growing organization giving workers the autonomy they desire. It requires a rabid dedication to hiring the right people, but if you can pull it off this may just be the winning model of our age.
pasbesoin 15y ago
In my personal experience, it has never been the work that bothered me. (In fact, I enjoy a challenge.) It has always been the environment. Again, in my personal experience, pack people in like veal, and the misery rises. It certainly does, for me. P.S. I will include in my definition of environment *sshole employees (of whatever level). Differing opinions, I can deal with. True manipulators have one solution: Get rid of them, either by their leaving or by your leaving.
eli_gottlieb 15y ago
New York’s Conference Board, a century-old research firm, began studying employee satisfaction and engagement 25 years ago. Their work shows that worker happiness has fallen every year since--in good economic times and bad. Today, over half of American workers effectively hate their jobs. Well of course. The American economy was reengineered, from being driven by invention, innovation and productivity increases to being driven by just making everyone work harder. When you deliberately hurt working conditions and cheapen wages as an ideological crusade on behalf of the Protestant Work Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, of course people will hate their jobs!
aidenn0 15y ago
As far as I can tell the most unhappy place to develop software is at a bank. I had a friend who was a test-engineer and worked under contract for a bank, with the intention of becoming a salaried worker at the end of the contract; as it was he barely made it through the contract period without going insane. Others I have known who have worked for banks have had similar issues. I have yet to talk to one person who is part of software development at a bank and have them say a single good thing about their job.
davidcuddeback 15y ago
> Your employees will stay if you tell them directly you need them, care about them, and sincerely plan to support them. s/tell/show/ I absolutely hate it when a manager tells me, "We really value your contributions," and then asks me to work 60-hour weeks. Words are cheap. Don't tell me that you value me. Show me. Edited to add: To be fair, the article does allude to the fact that you have to back your words with action, but I want to make this distinction explicit. From the article: "To be successful, all your future behavior must demonstrate to your employees that their best career move is to remain working for you" (emphasis mine).
- excuse-me 15y ago
  I don't see the confusion. They really do value your contribution, at $x, and if they can get you to do more contributing for the same $x then they will be much happier. If they didn't value your contribution they wouldn't want you to do more of it!
VeejayRampay 15y ago
Worker Happiness decreasing in times of economic downturn? Color me surprised.
- tsotha 15y ago
  That's what I was thinking. During the bubble unhappy people would quit and find another job (usually in the reverse order). Now they're stuck, because they can't find anything else. So you'd expect the average level of worker happiness to go down even before you factor in companies trying to take advantage.
cnbeuiwx 15y ago
Actually, why would people be happy in this society? What is the higher meaning of working for low to medium wages all their lives just to be able to pay the bills every month? Who becomes happy from that? Mankind is not doing anything worthwhile on this planet right now. We are in the dark ages.
robatsu 15y ago
Is anyone surprised that the 25 year war on corporate paternalism and 2 way loyalty in favor of a quite openly stated reductionist policy of "extract maximum value from employees for the bare minimum that they will accept" has left a lot of unhappy workers?

147 points by philk10 15y ago

In an abusive relationship, there are two people. The reason companies have the power to put their thumb into their employees is because workers have let their dignity and pride go, just to get a paycheck. Proverbially speaking, you get what you pay for. In essence, if you take a job that is below a threshold of tolerance that you would like, that's exactly what you're going to get. I realize it's easy to espouse this kind of view. I don't have a wife or children who rely on me to have a constant job. I'm in an industry whose companies are essentially in a full-court press hiring mode. But I think from this position, I gain perspective. When you're at a job you hate, you lose passion. Passion for everything from hobbies, to friends, to (most tragically) family. Your partner sees a frail person who has given up. Your kids see a failure. Someone who never reached for and got what they wanted. They not only pity you, but they have contempt for you. Be the person they want you to be, which, incidentally, tends to be the person you want to be. Don't say "Yes" to 2 weeks vacation and 10k under market. That's ridiculous. Stand your ground. You're worth something. Companies have effectively gotten prospects to race to the bottom in terms of compensation, either because the prospects are too stupid or too scared to ask for more. If more people took a little pride in themselves and asked for what they deserved, we wouldn't all be so paralyzed under the slave traders. At the end of the day, no one can leave the abuser behind but you.

el_presidente 15y ago
> The reason companies have the power to put their thumb into their employees is because workers have let their dignity and pride go, just to get a paycheck. Another reason they have more power is because of the steady decline of unions.
cageface 15y ago
But I think from this position, I gain perspective. I think if you had any experience of being the powerless one in an employee-employer relationship you'd gain far more perspective.
- michaelochurch 15y ago
  My problem with what he's saying is that it seems to me that he's extrapolating the job markets for technology in a small number of geographical areas, between 2009 and 2012, to the world in general.
- dclowd9901 15y ago
  While I've spoken my peace, I do want to say that I definitely have come from that place. As someone who's moved from two dying industries, I can assure you, I've spent most of my professional life under duress. And I'll never go back, even if it means switching careers again.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  You are never powerless, until you believe that you are. You may not be able to change your current company. But you may be able to find something else. It will properly pay less, but there are ways around that (/r/frugal, say). You may be able to get enough self-respect that you dare to stand up to your boss. My grandparents were as close as you can get to poverty without actually starving -- better not drop this piece of meat, because that is all I have and there isn't enough potatoes to make up for it -- poor. Grandpa worked his ass of getting crazy overtime to make a bit of money. Yet once when his boss became really mean he told to stop doing that shit or he would quit. He didn't exactly have much of cushion at home, but he knew that he wouldn't stand for abuse either.
  - eli_gottlieb 15y ago
    Your grandfather also had a union movement, in his day.
    - tomjen3 15y ago
      Yeah, but that doesn't mean much. He could not have keept his house (which he got so cheap he had to rebuild most of it over the years) and he would still be out of a job.
otoburb 15y ago
When you're at a job you hate, you lose passion. Passion for everything from hobbies, to friends, to (most tragically) family. Your partner sees a frail person who has given up. Your kids see a failure. Someone who never reached for and got what they wanted. They not only pity you, but they have contempt for you. If people invoked a definitive reaction like 'hate' when referring to their job they would reach the same conclusion as you and quit more quickly. However, most people in this type of situation are probably earning good money (e.g. at/above market rate) with decent benefits, which in turn cause one to be ambivalent to their job. The situation you describe is one of certainty: job hate, withering joi de vivre, loss of family respect and increasing resultant psychological pressures. The situation most people may be in is of great uncertainty: job tolerance, decent joi de vivre (fun hobbies, supportive friends), happy family, less psychological pressure outside of work. The second situation is more conducive to stability in one's life, which is no laughing matter when you have a family. I appreciate your perspective, and hope that you can apply it to the second situation. EDIT: I'm not condoning the more ambiguous situation, merely explaining that this is probably what happened to the long-time bank manager in the article. The general malaise from work slowly spread until he couldn't take it any longer.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  When I look back at the jobs that have been the worst experiences for me it's hard for me to avoid thinking that, in abstract, they weren't really so bad. Good pay, decent hours, not too difficult work, etc. It's hard to tally the cost of workplaces and managers that take a heavy emotional and psychological toll.
gcheong 15y ago
"Your partner sees a frail person who has given up. Your kids see a failure. Someone who never reached for and got what they wanted. They not only pity you, but they have contempt for you." Well, I sure hope that if/when you may face a time where your passion has worn thin that your loved ones may find in themselves some compassion for you rather than pity or contempt. I think this actually is the default in most families than pity or contempt. Otherwise, what would be the point of having them?
- carguy1983 15y ago
  LOL yeah, in a perfect world. Here in reality, people are contemptuous.
  - bitserf 15y ago
    You've got a pretty negative view of people/life overall. I think your perception may be a self fulfilling prophecy. Going to go out on a limb and recommend reading Learned Optimism, by Martin Seligman. I have a predisposition to seeing the negative side of things myself, but I actively work on trying to minimise that. Life really is too short.
    - carguy1983 15y ago
      And how exactly does reading self-help books affect how other people behave?
      - LogicHoleFlaw 15y ago
        The implication is that it is more important to adjust one's perception of the actions of others than it is to alter the actions of others.
- r00fus 15y ago
  You sound as if you aren't living it. There is compassion, but in a large part, when everyone is stressed (including the kids) by schedule or performance there isn't enough time to really gain rapport, and contempt sets in for the ones who "can't handle it". This is the logical conclusion of not spending enough time together, or time spent together while one or more of an organizational unit are under serious duress. The way to alleviate is to enjoy "quality" time together - guess what folks don't have time to do when their stress levels are up?
herval 15y ago
I'm not sure things are as simple as that, in most cases. Not everyone can switch jobs in a blink - most people can't even afford risking their jobs, for whatever reason (mortgages, families, lifestyles, parent pressure, etc). It's easy to lose sight on that when you're in the "top 10%" of the pyramid. Most people aren't...
Androsynth 15y ago
What youre espousing only works on the individual level, not on the societal level. ie when you turn down a crappy job, there will always be someone who will take it.
- cynicalkane 15y ago
  No there won't. Workers are not an infinite resource. Each worker that turns down a crappy job is one less worker qualified for that job. If worker preferences meant nothing, programming would be mostly abused minimum wage workers, which is obviously not the case.
  - Androsynth 15y ago
    Don't convolve abuse with wage. There are a lot of programmers who are paid very well but are unhappy with their jobs. Being a corporate wage slave is a fast path to unhappiness. The problem is that so few people are as introspective as the GP to your post. Most will take the bad job because work > no work in most peoples minds. This is a problem that cannot be fixed at the leaf nodes, it must be fixed at the root. But the root is currently doing very well for themselves and won't see it as a problem (because there are always more workers) The solution that factory workers came up with to solve this problem was to organize. But that caused more problems in the long term than it solved (it's economically unfeasible)
- jeremyarussell 15y ago
  You also must keep in mind that a society is simply a group of individuals, things would inherently have to work on an individual level before they turned into a society level movements. Keeping in mind that the first person to quit will pave the way for others to do it without feeling awkward. It's kind of an inertia thing, an object in motion stays in motion, and it takes more energy for an object that is stationary to begin moving. Same overlying principal applies to people and movements in societies.
eli_gottlieb 15y ago
The reason companies have the power to put their thumb into their employees is because workers have let their dignity and pride go, just to get a paycheck. Proverbially speaking, you get what you pay for. In essence, if you take a job that is below a threshold of tolerance that you would like, that's exactly what you're going to get. This ignores the directed and deliberate efforts to suppress workers' rights to organize and workers' ability to leave for a better job. Noncompete agreements, union-busting, high costs of health-care outside of BigCorp jobs, labor arbitrage, labor monopsonies... it all adds up.

roc 15y ago

Personally, I've noticed people vacillate between hating their jobs and liking their jobs just fine, despite no real change in day-to-day management, policy, recognition, etc. What I've seen as the big parts of the puzzle are stagnant wages, longer hours and whether people perceive themselves as trapped. (higher overall unemployment ~= less chance of switching ~= less happy)

Florin_Andrei 15y ago
Keeping up with the Joneses is the real poison.
- roc 15y ago
  The Joneses are a remote concern if you're working harder and longer hours just to keep up with your year-ago self. (or, given the length of this recession, perhaps "several-years-ago self")
davidcuddeback 15y ago
> Personally, I've noticed people vacillate between hating their jobs and liking their jobs just fine, despite no real change in day-to-day management, policy, recognition, etc. I find the scale you chose to be interesting. At the low end of the scale, you chose the word "hate," which is a fairly strong negative. At the high end of the scale, you chose the phrase "like ... just fine," which is somewhere between neutral and luke-warm. It's a shame that people never "love" their job. Considering how much of our lives we spend at work, liking my job "just fine" isn't good enough for me. I've noticed the same vacillating. In my experience, there is usually a catalyst that makes someone hate their job---usually a decision by someone higher up that the person strongly disagrees with. Over a period of time (one to two weeks), the person gets over it and grudgingly accepts the new norm (returning to liking their job just fine). In a way there is no real day-to-day change, because the source of the catalyst events is the same, but the event itself can be a change.
- roc 15y ago
  > "I find the scale you chose to be interesting" To be fair, part of that is just American society. It's acceptable to complain about crap work and low pay. Whereas celebrating your awesome job and high pay is seen as uncouth. [1] So whenever you tally up public statements about jobs, you should expect it to be tilted toward the negative. In this case, I was trying to restrict it to people I've known whose attitudes changed while doing essentially the same job at the same place. But you know how anecdotes go... [1] The same goes for many aspects of American life. When things go well you're expected to keep quiet in deference to those who haven't had such good fortune. Hence "Fuck my life" and "white people problems" are memes. But there are no comparable analogues. Amusingly, the only time Americans generally acknowledge that there's lots of complaining and little celebrating, is in the context of complaining about the complaining. (e.g. "Everything is Great and No-one is Happy")

michaelochurch 15y ago

This "dropoff" coincides with a change in management philosophy in favor of "lean" organizations where a manager might have 12 to 20 reports instead of 3 to 5. No one can manage 20 people decently. This "lean" model has a number of results, but chief among them is that managerial accountability is only upward. With this model, even a terrible manager will have 2 or 3 loyal reports who do good work, clean up the messes, and pick up the slack. Usually, these are the 2-3 who are established enough to know the ropes and be effective, and who are holding on because they hope to outlive the bad manager. Fundamentally, the problem is a system where decent managers are overburdened, bad managers aren't caught out, and almost all companies are poorly managed in general. The smart people figure this out and jump ship as soon as they figure out they're not going anywhere.

adrianhoward 15y ago
This "dropoff" coincides with a change in management philosophy in favor of "lean" organizations Can you describe what you mean by "lean" here? I'm a little confused since the organisations I understand as following lean practices don't have the attributes that you talk about. Possibly this is a US/EU thing though...
- CodeCube 15y ago
  I don't think he means lean as in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing) ... but lean as in the literal definition: thin - meagre - meager - skinny - spare - gaunt - scraggy
- mcantelon 15y ago
  Basically cost-cutting, if I understand correctly. Mass layoffs were a management fad at one point and aggressive cost-cutting has been a staple of US corporate philosophy ever since.
- michaelochurch 15y ago
  "Lean" has a lot of meanings, but usually, it means "low in fat". The idea is that a company with a lower management ratio (say, 3-5) is flabby. The 1980s change in corporate structure was to "trim the fat". People are still debating whether this was good or bad, and certainly there were companies that had (and still do have) useless people in management, but the long-term verdict has been negative on the new structure. Managing people properly is too time-intensive for one person to have 20 reports.

rpwilcox 15y ago

I wish the "recommendations" part would have included, "Give your people a raise" (or "send them home at 5"). In the middle of recession style "your raise this year is the fact that you still have a job", a 5% raise would earn you a lot of loyalty... and a 10% raise is stuff of legend. A 10% raise for a department is cheap: say the business laid off 10 people in the department over the last 4 years, and 3 people remain to run a formerly (about) dozen person department. So you're spending 1/3rd of an average salary to keep those people on. Compared to the 20% a headhunter would take + the productivity loss of replacing workers... sounds like a deal to me.

maigret 15y ago
Many studies show that actually, money is not that important. So I'm wondering what would happen if say, those 5% were invested in team events, office improvements, better food or hardware. Or, even, how would employee feel if they'd be paid 5% under market value, and this difference would be invested in work environment.
- herval 15y ago
  I always find that study very funny. A great deal of people DO consider money a very good incentive (and an ever-increasing number consider "team events" an annoyance and would trade it all for more time for themselves/their families)... What would you rather have given to you as an incentive: a raise, more free time or a weekly barbecue with the blokes from the office?
  - true_religion 15y ago
    The answer is not to ask workers what they want, but rather examine how workers actually behave under the different circumstances.
    - herval 15y ago
      How do you measure it? Both giving different incentives to different members of the team and giving random incentives every time will probably DEMOTIVATE people for obvious reasons (it will feel "unfair", "unpredictable", "random")

Androsynth 15y ago

Personally I feel this is a result of the Results-Oriented style of business that originated when MBA's started becoming ubiquitous in businesses (a fairly recent phenomenon, starting in the 1970's). The problem is that even for a talented hard working passionate person who Gets Shit Done, it feels like you are Conan pushing the wheel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVI9MULtv8g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVI9MULtv8g). When you falter, you get the whip, which means you always have to be on your game. When you go above expectations, you get a pat on the back and a thumbs up. After a while you realize that the rewards are simply not worth it. This leads to unhappiness. I want to be a part of an organization that feels like its a family; like its us vs the world; like everyone has a role to play and that role is vital, meaningful and important. I think this is partially the reason why going to work for a startup is becoming more popular. (I left my old company to start my own business)

mattgreenrocks 15y ago
This is why I chose to freelance. Traditional megacorp jobs want nothing less than to own your soul. I am not exaggerating. It isn't enough to require 50 hours a week with a measly 2 weeks of vacation. No, you need to constantly prove you are committed by working harder than all your coworkers. Otherwise, you're not a team player. You're expected to be loyal with your time, your energy, and give 110%. But they don't have to be quite as loyal, because, you know, those shareholders are so Very Important. (Never mind the employee is the one that is actively generating value.) Every little metric is latched onto because business is still pissed that productivity is not this neat, quantified number that can be put into an excel spreadsheet. So they seek to optimize everything that can be quantified, even if it hampers productivity. I value myself too much to be put into that position again. My freelancing gig's purpose is actually me interviewing companies to find one that will respect me.

fuzzylizard 15y ago

I think one of the best things employers can do to show that they respect their employees is to invert the decision making and control structure in the organization. Similarly to what Agile/XP did for the software development sector. Instead of having managers and CxOs make all the decisions, allow the people closest to the situation, with all the facts, make the decision and be responsible for that decision. Create small teams that are self organizing and imbue those teams with the power to truly own and produce the solution to the problems that they face and are trying to solve. I personally feel that the main problem with organizations and employee happiness and retention is the current system of command and control where all employees are assumed to be idiots that need to be micro-managed. How is anyone suppose to be happy in that kind of environment? Work should not be an extension of school where we store and manage people in order to keep them out of trouble until they are old enough to retire. No, work should be a place where people want to go because they know that they own a little bit of that business and are really responsible for its success and/or failure.

plasticsyntax 15y ago
You basically described Lean Manufacturing, one of the direct inspirations for Agile software development practices... so I guess we're going full circle now.
aNoob7000 15y ago
Good luck with your suggestion. We're almost two years into switching over from waterfall to Agile/XP and I can tell you that it can be painful. Wait until your first meeting, when you are asked why are your story points are down for this sprint? or, why didn't your finish your task that you put up on the board yesterday? I think a good work environment has more to do with the way management executes on priorities, how the information is communicated to those involved, trust between the business unit and information technology group, and the level of respect/trust between the managers and their employees. Agile doesn't solve problems with management and or managers, it's just a different way of getting work done.

johnhartigun 15y ago

Below is excerpt from 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism. Summary: Since 1980s, the decision power in US corporations started to move to the hands of shareholders. They care about short term profits, not about the employees. > And then, in the 1980s, the holy grail was found. It was called the principle of shareholder value maximization. It was argued that professional managers should be rewarded according to the amount they can give to shareholders. In order to achieve this, it was argued, first profits need to be maximized by ruthlessly cutting costs – wage bills, investments, inventories, middle-level managers, and so on. Second, the highest possible share of these profits needs tobe distributed to the shareholders – through dividends and share buybacks. In order to encourage managers to behave in this way, the proportion of their compensation packages that stock options account for needs to be increased, so that they identify more with the interests of the shareholders. The idea was advocated not just by shareholders, but also by many professional managers, most famously by Jack Welch, the long-time chairman of General Electric (GE), who is often credited with coining the term ‘shareholder value’ in aspeech in 1981. > Soon after Welch’s speech, shareholder value maximization became the zeitgeist of the American corporate world. In the beginning, it seemed to work really well for both the managers and the shareholders. The shareof profits in national income, which had shown a downward trend since the 1960s, sharply rose in the mid 1980s and has shown an upward trend since then. And the shareholders got a higher share of that profit as dividends, while seeing the value of their shares rise. Distributed profits as a share of total US corporate profit stood at 35–45 per cent between the 1950s and the 1970s, but it has been onan upward trend since the late 70s and now stands at around 60 per cent. The managers saw their compensation rising through the roof, but shareholders stopped questioning their pay packages, as they were happy with ever-rising share prices and dividends. The practice soon spread to other countries – more easily to countries like Britain, which had a corporate power structure and managerial culture similar to those of the US, and less easily to other countries, as we shall see below > Now, this unholy alliance between the professional managers and the shareholders was all financed by squeezing the other stakeholders in the company (which is why it has spread much more slowly to other rich countries where the other stakeholders have greater relative strength). Jobs were ruthlessly cut, many workers were fired and re-hired as non-unionized labour with lower wages and fewer benefits, and wage increases were suppressed (often by relocating to or outsourcing from low-wage countries, suchas China and India – or the threat to do so). The suppliers, and their workers, were also squeezed by continued cuts in procurement prices, while the government was pressured into lowering corporate tax rates and/or providing more subsidies, with the help of the threat of relocating to countries with lower corporate tax rates and/or higher business subsidies. As a result, income inequality soared and in a seemingly endless corporate boom (ending, of course, in 2008), the vast majority of the American and the British populations could share in the (apparent) prosperity only through borrowing atunprecedented rates.

OzzyB 15y ago

One thing that upsets me when such topics arise is the non-mention of how Health Insurance plays a huge part in all this. This might be something that UK/EU folks might not be able to empathise with, but for US workers, the need for health insurance is a crucial factor in how they choose to stay/leave/accept any job. To say folks should just "up and leave" if they feel they're under appreciated is not so clear-cut when your medications, nay your family/spouse/child's health is on-the-line while you try to run off in search of "greener pastures". In my mind, one very real reason healthcare reform has failed in the US is that companies[1] are very aware that being the main/sole provider of their workforce's healthcare provides very strong leverage over them. Now having said that, it is true that healthcare costs companies alot of money, and it may be something that a large percentage of them would like to avoid -- a possible factor in their preferrence for a younger workforce perhaps -- but to ignore healthcare and its effects psycologically on our society and workforce as a whole is doing us a disservice. [1] I guess I'm really thinking of "big" companies with a need for a large dependable workforce, not your mum & pop/start-up/entrepreneurial kind...

benmccann 15y ago
You can continue your employer-provided healthcare for 18 months via COBRA.
- rpwilcox 15y ago
  and pay out the nose for it, from what I've heard...
  - joezydeco 15y ago
    Absolutely. Go ask your HR rep what your plan actually costs per month. For my small company, the family plan is nearly $3,000/mo.
    - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
      As a healthy 30 year old, I'm paying 500/mo for a PPO on COBRA.

sawyer 15y ago

This article suggests that the problem of worker dissatisfaction is a whole lot of hand holding and head patting from managers; which begs the question, why have managers at all? The growing popularity of entrepreneurship in the US is evidence that people want more autonomy. Phil Libin (Evernote) is right: you shouldn't start a startup for money or more spare time, but he's wrong that the only reason to do it is to "change the world." The most compelling reason to found a startup for those of us who've worked for a big-co is autonomy. There is a middle ground though - Valve is a perfect example of a growing organization giving workers the autonomy they desire. It requires a rabid dedication to hiring the right people, but if you can pull it off this may just be the winning model of our age.

pasbesoin 15y ago

In my personal experience, it has never been the work that bothered me. (In fact, I enjoy a challenge.) It has always been the environment. Again, in my personal experience, pack people in like veal, and the misery rises. It certainly does, for me. P.S. I will include in my definition of environment *sshole employees (of whatever level). Differing opinions, I can deal with. True manipulators have one solution: Get rid of them, either by their leaving or by your leaving.

eli_gottlieb 15y ago

New York’s Conference Board, a century-old research firm, began studying employee satisfaction and engagement 25 years ago. Their work shows that worker happiness has fallen every year since--in good economic times and bad. Today, over half of American workers effectively hate their jobs. Well of course. The American economy was reengineered, from being driven by invention, innovation and productivity increases to being driven by just making everyone work harder. When you deliberately hurt working conditions and cheapen wages as an ideological crusade on behalf of the Protestant Work Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, of course people will hate their jobs!

aidenn0 15y ago

As far as I can tell the most unhappy place to develop software is at a bank. I had a friend who was a test-engineer and worked under contract for a bank, with the intention of becoming a salaried worker at the end of the contract; as it was he barely made it through the contract period without going insane. Others I have known who have worked for banks have had similar issues. I have yet to talk to one person who is part of software development at a bank and have them say a single good thing about their job.

davidcuddeback 15y ago

> Your employees will stay if you tell them directly you need them, care about them, and sincerely plan to support them. s/tell/show/ I absolutely hate it when a manager tells me, "We really value your contributions," and then asks me to work 60-hour weeks. Words are cheap. Don't tell me that you value me. Show me. Edited to add: To be fair, the article does allude to the fact that you have to back your words with action, but I want to make this distinction explicit. From the article: "To be successful, all your future behavior must demonstrate to your employees that their best career move is to remain working for you" (emphasis mine).

excuse-me 15y ago
I don't see the confusion. They really do value your contribution, at $x, and if they can get you to do more contributing for the same $x then they will be much happier. If they didn't value your contribution they wouldn't want you to do more of it!

VeejayRampay 15y ago

Worker Happiness decreasing in times of economic downturn? Color me surprised.

tsotha 15y ago
That's what I was thinking. During the bubble unhappy people would quit and find another job (usually in the reverse order). Now they're stuck, because they can't find anything else. So you'd expect the average level of worker happiness to go down even before you factor in companies trying to take advantage.

cnbeuiwx 15y ago

Actually, why would people be happy in this society? What is the higher meaning of working for low to medium wages all their lives just to be able to pay the bills every month? Who becomes happy from that? Mankind is not doing anything worthwhile on this planet right now. We are in the dark ages.

robatsu 15y ago

Is anyone surprised that the 25 year war on corporate paternalism and 2 way loyalty in favor of a quite openly stated reductionist policy of "extract maximum value from employees for the bare minimum that they will accept" has left a lot of unhappy workers?