7 ms·

The hero tax: Why 'selfless' workers are professionally exploited

116 points by peutetre 3y ago

tocs3 3y ago
Nothing new really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_Vineyard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_...
- mistrial9 3y ago
  this is not the right analogy IMHO
- graemep 3y ago
  That is entirely different - neither of the interpretations suggested in the wikipedia is similar phenomenon. What we are talking about here is why people who do things that make a particularly important contribution to society get paid less than people doing otherwise similar (e.g. in terms of skill required etc.) jobs. Very few things like this are new, but I think it has probably become worse in recent times.
  - pjerem 3y ago
    To me it’s simply because those people have no negotiation leverage over their employers. Take nurses, doctors or firefighters, what are they going to do if they don’t get better working conditions ? Refuse to work ? A strike ? That’s impossible because they know the consequences (or depending the country because they aren’t even allowed to). Even in France with our culture of strikes, people working in healthcare have poor working conditions because they basically can’t stop working even if they’re unionized. Same for teachers : for them it’s pretty different, they do strikes frequently to ask for better conditions but it’s basically never effective because governments know they’ll eventually get back to work. And ultimately the only ones to suffer from those strikes are the teachers themselves and the children they strive for. Job market just isn’t working for people who want their work to be meaningful or important to the society.
    - graemep 3y ago
      I think you are right and it is part of the explanation. What this explains is why the public are OK with that and these people do not get more widespread support for higher pay. I really do not understand why people think it is fair that teachers in the UK get paid about half of what train drivers do. The fact that they do is because train drivers strikes have more immediate impact than those of teachers, but the fact that the public do to realise the problems this causes (e.g. a shortage of teachers, overworked teachers meaning they do their jobs less well, etc) might be explained by the perception that they are adequately rewarded by knowing their work matters.
      - TylerE 3y ago
        When trains crash people die. A teacher? It takes 20-30 years to know if they’ve done anything.
- commandlinefan 3y ago
  That's... not at all what that story was about. You're not even supposed to interpret that literally, he was talking about converting to Christianity and getting into heaven.
- tocs3 3y ago
  I got down voted. How do you down vote (not upset just don't know). In the parable workers work all day and are paid the same as workers that work for a very short time. As a parable it does not work very well without the content of the disciples questions but it is still a very old story about not valuing those that work more.
carbine 3y ago
I'm definitely not comparing people working on a SaaS app to emergency docs and nurses, but this dynamic happens a lot in startups and it's something to watch as a manager. People go to the most effective people with their problems and high-stakes projects. The reward for good work is more work.
- listenallyall 3y ago
  Happens in companies of every size and industry. Colleagues quickly figure out who the competent person is on some obscure task and repeatedly direct requests specifically to that person. And after weeks/months of overwork or overdelivering, when they finally say no to something, people get offended, call the person rude or a jerk, it sometimes even leads to their dismissal.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    On a small team I was doing ~65% of the total number of tickets and not just the easy ones. Then one of the other people on the team, one of the lowest performers, got promoted over me and I lost it. Apparently the CIO wasn't looking at the metrics. He made sure I got a raise and got slotted in for the next available promotion, which was only a few months away. Then the company that was contracting us early termed their contract, and they only asked me to stay to build a new team, based on the CIO's recommendation. Metrics are a pain but they can also be a life saver.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- htrp 3y ago
  Shouldn't you as the manager be directing traffic here. Product shouldn't be going directly to engineers to try and campaign / dump workload on people?
  - delecti 3y ago
    This is occasionally a problem that the specific engineer enables. It's normal for an engineer to work directly with product, and if they develop a rapport they'll start side-stepping management with additional requests. Over-eager engineers will then sometimes train PMs that they're a good place to make those requests, even if they're big enough that they should be prioritized in the normal flow.
adam_arthur 3y ago
Isn't it in the nature of being 'selfless' to allow yourself to be exploited? Otherwise it's not selfless at all
- xcv123 3y ago
  Hence "selfless" in quotes, meaning they are not really selfless. They are paid employees doing hard work and they deserve fair treatment.
- exe34 3y ago
  They're not really selfless though. They're the work version of "nice guys".
- itishappy 3y ago
  "Selfless" is society's perception, not their own self-image. Nursesare humans who eat and pay bills like the rest of us. > Stanley's findings chime with the opinions of Nicki Credland, a reader in critical care nursing at the University of Hull, UK. She argues that the hero narrative can undermine the skill and education of her colleagues. "[It suggests] we do our jobs because we have a calling and an innate desire to help people – but that's no more true of nursing than it is of many other professions," she says. "And it has a negative impact when we want to be appropriately remunerated for the skills and expertise that we have." A related effect is the US' tendency to pay lip service to "support our troops!" while our VA is in shambles.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    A segment of the population pays lip service to "support our troops," while another segment is (wrongly) convinced that the only people who join are stupid, untalented, and have no other options in life, and treat them accordingly.
    - Spooky23 3y ago
      That’s not two columns. There’s a lot of the latter in the former. Louder the cheerleader is, often the more they are compensating. The largest cohort are people who are unaware of what the sacrifices of service members are, even in peaceful times, more out of ignorance than anything else.
ore0s 3y ago
I think I found myself in this situation believing it was "generally good." Both for me to learn more things, and for the company to succeed. Then I would be rewarded with promotions in the future. Although I had fun and felt some purpose, the fast career growth did not follow. I was in the mindset to follow Sheryl Sandberg's advice “If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat.” But what ended up happening was the people who knew how to ask for better seats actually got them.
erikerikson 3y ago
The people that are willing to actually act a bit increase would be the most likely to maximize available excess wealth. Yet we suppress their access to resources. Seems like the expected outcome but reduces expected total prosperity nonetheless. Not selfish enough to be self interested.
resource_waste 3y ago
Weird to see a country talk about their healthcare workers not being absurdly overpaid. In the US, our nurses buy half million dollar homes. The physicians have their own little city in the suburbs composed of multimillion dollar homes. (Artificially) high wages are bad for the customer, and we sure see the effects.
- imzadi 3y ago
  RNs and MDs might be paid well, but the frontline staff often is not. Medical assistants, nursing assistants, paramedics, pharmacy technicians, etc. They often have low wages and no benefits.
- fallingfrog 3y ago
  Well if it’s so overpaid why aren’t you doing it? Have you ever talked to a nurse? The stress they go through is absurd.
  - resource_waste 3y ago
    There are regulations in-place to limit the supply. If I did it, someone else would lose their license. And yes, I'm considering bumping someone out of med-school and residency. I am a 1%er, I'll get in.
    - BizarroLand 3y ago
      Your worldview seems to be very small. I would not count your personal experiences with any gravity.
    - fallingfrog 3y ago
      The lack of self awareness from a 1%er who thinks it would be easy to work overnight shifts inserting catheters and dealing with emergencies is quite amusing. My sister is a nurse; a respiratory specialist. One of her job duties is to be the person who has to turn off the ventilator when someone can no longer be saved. Try doing that over and over again with the family watching.
astro- 3y ago
In healthcare, the workers are in high-stakes situations with personal liability for the care they provide. When you make a mistake, your license can be taken away. Licensing is important to prevent malpractice, but it does enable a form of worker exploitation. When you’re on a severely understaffed ward, you have to get the work done whatever it takes. If the next shift fails to turn up, you can’t just go home. People’s lives are at risk. You’re responsible until you can hand the care over to someone else. Like this, things can be stretched to unhealthy or even dangerous levels for a long time before there’s any accountability for the management. The front line staff have to get the work done, often at great personal expense. Honestly, I don’t know how people do it.
- kimixa 3y ago
  I also get somewhat scared when I hear about things like shift lengths or "on call" times from my doctor friends, even on "well staffed" shifts. If you're on your feet and working for 14 hours straight with no rest, you will make more mistakes. It's just being human. Pretending that isn't the case and punishing those mistakes won't reduce them.
  - interactivecode 3y ago
    Staffing enough people for regular 8 hour work days with regular breaks should be the norm. At the lowest bar, any mistakes that happen on shifts longer than that should be held accountable to any management of the hospital or government agencies making policy, not the nurses and doctors. These are preventable situations, so the people creating the situation in which this occurs should be liable.
    - kimixa 3y ago
      Plus good time overlap to hand over ongoing issues - there's a reason why there's an uptick in deaths at shift change time...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
renewedrebecca 3y ago
blinding flash of the obvious: In "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" series, Sam struggles with not being able to get financing for a loan as well as not really getting paid for being an Avenger. In hindsight, I wonder if the writers were using that as an allegory for "the hero tax".
tivert 3y ago
This "hero tax" probably dovetails with the effects of "passion" professions, where people pursue them for reasons other than traditional employment considerations like pay and working conditions. One area where I think that probably overlaps are teachers: my stereotype of one is someone who really cares about educating kids, so they put up with the low pay and other bullshit. And just to illustrate the difference, I think a "passion" profession that's not considered heroic is video game developer. My vague impression is the pay and working conditions for them are much worse than for other kinds of software development work, because there a lot of people who are so passionate about video games they'll sacrifice a lot to work on them (until they burn out, at least).
- mistrial9 3y ago
  insightful! unfortunately, obsession and addictive behavior also factor into a spectrum of committed responses.. loyalty, higher vision, deep connection with the activity might extend into other directions.. lots of all of this in the world of fine arts, performance and literate arts
- VS1999 3y ago
  That's interesting. I have the opposite experience with teachers where they wanted to do a real job in their field but were stuck babysitting children as a backup plan. What's the opposite of passion?
  - abdela 3y ago
    Necessity?
- nickff 3y ago
  I agree with you, but view the 'passion' effect as one of 'passion pay', i.e. holding a position that you 'love' or is seen to be high-status is a form of non-monetary remuneration (or benefit), which is a substitute for wages. Being treated well is another form of non-monetary remuneration (whereas being treated poorly is the opposite).
DoreenMichele 3y ago
It's always a bad thing when people want to give you praise rather than pay and benefits for your work. If you value their work, you should pay them adequately rather than act like they are in it for the good feels. Also, covid was a huge missed opportunity for creating standards for distributing health info and instructions via internet in a sensible fashion to prevent the ERs and hospitals from being so overwhelmed and thereby actively spreading the infection. Also a missed opportunity for developing a healthier set of social expectations and best practices for how to have reasonable and productive discussions of health topics in the face of uncertainty and possible death. We really seem to have screwed that pooch globally, or at least in English-speaking spaces.
- colechristensen 3y ago
  >It's always a bad thing when people want to give you praise rather than pay and benefits for your work. Sure, but even if you pay me a lot you're still expected to be nice to me. >Also, covid was a huge missed opportunity for creating standards for distributing health info and instructions via internet in a sensible fashion to prevent the ERs and hospitals from being so overwhelmed and thereby actively spreading the infection. Was it? Tele-health boomed during the pandemic to the point where I've sometimes had trouble getting in-person appointments when I felt it was necessary. >Also a missed opportunity for developing a healthier set of social expectations and best practices for how to have reasonable and productive discussions of health topics in the face of uncertainty and possible death. We really seem to have screwed that pooch globally, or at least in English-speaking spaces. Also, did it really? I feel like we've made a lot of progress against the "go to work even if you're sick" idea being a virtue and enabled a lot of people to work from home while a little sick and made people considerably more willing to just stay home when they were sick. The CDC and related government entities really fucked up when they sent out messaging that cared more about results of the message than the truth of the message. They started out by discouraging masks and then changed tack. They exaggerated advice and never clearly represented uncertainty. The headline message was never about the best that was known at the time and the confidence in that message to try to empower people to make their own decisions. Instead they pretended to certainty that was impossible and encouraged pro/anti message moralization so that your health choices were supposed to be collective instead of individual and aligned with your political affiliation instead of your own situation and appetite for risk.
linuxftw 3y ago
Healthcare workers have noone to blame but themselves. Apparently every facility is understaffed in the US, so it should be simple to form a union: there's nobody to scab for you. People need to organize. One link early in the article points to another article about a shortage of volunteer firefighters. How can the richest country on the planet rely on volunteer firefighters?
- shawn_w 3y ago
  Most hospitals are unionized; at least on the West Coast. Volunteer firefighters: some areas are full of people who don't want their taxes to go up to pay for a career department. Many areas are so sparsely populated they can't afford one even if willing. The amount of training and education required keeps going up, and not everyone has a job they can just walk off from to respond to calls on no notice. It's harder to effectively volunteer as a FF than it was even a few decades ago. Sometimes it's addressed by having formerly all volunteer or smaller combination career/volley departments be absorbed into a neighboring career department that can spread the cost out to a larger area. Sometimes egos win out and the ability to do the job suffers.
phendrenad2 3y ago
> People largely assume, for instance, that heroes simply don't care so much about things like fair compensation for the work that they do. And that assumption is true to some extent. People don't just slip and fall into a set of scrubs and become a nurse or medic. They choose that path based on an analysis (yes, the average person is capable of making reasoned decisions, although that's shocking to many). People have other options besides becoming "heroes" and yet, they choose it. Why? > "This is a clear fallacy in inferential reasoning and logic" This is that thing people do when they want to sound smart. Actually two things: (1) Don't address the claim, just call it wrong (2) overcomplicate your sentence with obscure words
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
crisply5706 3y ago
At work, I'm a hero. I run by myself what should be two departments of at least three people. Couple of weeks ago, my boss gave me a "promotion". Went on about how he had to clear it with the board, etc. It's a title change and 0.5% equity on a brand new 45 month vesting schedule with a new 12 month cliff. No cash money, I'm still making junior dev salary. CEO tried to talk to me about it, it was the verbal equivalent of a pizza party. I just didn't engage at all, and the planned announcement to the whole team silently never happened. Coincidentally, this happened a couple of days after I had updated my indeed resume with the same title they later "promoted" me to. Job was fun at first, but the CEO is extremely confidently driving the company straight into the ground. Fake monopoly money isn't going to keep me on this sinking ship, my guy.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
No Javascript required: https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20240409-heroic-jobs-earn-less-money https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20240409-heroic-jobs-...
derelicta 3y ago
Thats why I only try to do the bare minimum lol

116 points by peutetre 3y ago

Nothing new really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_Vineyard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_...

mistrial9 3y ago
this is not the right analogy IMHO
graemep 3y ago
That is entirely different - neither of the interpretations suggested in the wikipedia is similar phenomenon. What we are talking about here is why people who do things that make a particularly important contribution to society get paid less than people doing otherwise similar (e.g. in terms of skill required etc.) jobs. Very few things like this are new, but I think it has probably become worse in recent times.
- pjerem 3y ago
  To me it’s simply because those people have no negotiation leverage over their employers. Take nurses, doctors or firefighters, what are they going to do if they don’t get better working conditions ? Refuse to work ? A strike ? That’s impossible because they know the consequences (or depending the country because they aren’t even allowed to). Even in France with our culture of strikes, people working in healthcare have poor working conditions because they basically can’t stop working even if they’re unionized. Same for teachers : for them it’s pretty different, they do strikes frequently to ask for better conditions but it’s basically never effective because governments know they’ll eventually get back to work. And ultimately the only ones to suffer from those strikes are the teachers themselves and the children they strive for. Job market just isn’t working for people who want their work to be meaningful or important to the society.
  - graemep 3y ago
    I think you are right and it is part of the explanation. What this explains is why the public are OK with that and these people do not get more widespread support for higher pay. I really do not understand why people think it is fair that teachers in the UK get paid about half of what train drivers do. The fact that they do is because train drivers strikes have more immediate impact than those of teachers, but the fact that the public do to realise the problems this causes (e.g. a shortage of teachers, overworked teachers meaning they do their jobs less well, etc) might be explained by the perception that they are adequately rewarded by knowing their work matters.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      When trains crash people die. A teacher? It takes 20-30 years to know if they’ve done anything.
commandlinefan 3y ago
That's... not at all what that story was about. You're not even supposed to interpret that literally, he was talking about converting to Christianity and getting into heaven.
tocs3 3y ago
I got down voted. How do you down vote (not upset just don't know). In the parable workers work all day and are paid the same as workers that work for a very short time. As a parable it does not work very well without the content of the disciples questions but it is still a very old story about not valuing those that work more.

carbine 3y ago

I'm definitely not comparing people working on a SaaS app to emergency docs and nurses, but this dynamic happens a lot in startups and it's something to watch as a manager. People go to the most effective people with their problems and high-stakes projects. The reward for good work is more work.

listenallyall 3y ago
Happens in companies of every size and industry. Colleagues quickly figure out who the competent person is on some obscure task and repeatedly direct requests specifically to that person. And after weeks/months of overwork or overdelivering, when they finally say no to something, people get offended, call the person rude or a jerk, it sometimes even leads to their dismissal.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  On a small team I was doing ~65% of the total number of tickets and not just the easy ones. Then one of the other people on the team, one of the lowest performers, got promoted over me and I lost it. Apparently the CIO wasn't looking at the metrics. He made sure I got a raise and got slotted in for the next available promotion, which was only a few months away. Then the company that was contracting us early termed their contract, and they only asked me to stay to build a new team, based on the CIO's recommendation. Metrics are a pain but they can also be a life saver.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
htrp 3y ago
Shouldn't you as the manager be directing traffic here. Product shouldn't be going directly to engineers to try and campaign / dump workload on people?
- delecti 3y ago
  This is occasionally a problem that the specific engineer enables. It's normal for an engineer to work directly with product, and if they develop a rapport they'll start side-stepping management with additional requests. Over-eager engineers will then sometimes train PMs that they're a good place to make those requests, even if they're big enough that they should be prioritized in the normal flow.

adam_arthur 3y ago

Isn't it in the nature of being 'selfless' to allow yourself to be exploited? Otherwise it's not selfless at all

xcv123 3y ago
Hence "selfless" in quotes, meaning they are not really selfless. They are paid employees doing hard work and they deserve fair treatment.
exe34 3y ago
They're not really selfless though. They're the work version of "nice guys".
itishappy 3y ago
"Selfless" is society's perception, not their own self-image. Nursesare humans who eat and pay bills like the rest of us. > Stanley's findings chime with the opinions of Nicki Credland, a reader in critical care nursing at the University of Hull, UK. She argues that the hero narrative can undermine the skill and education of her colleagues. "[It suggests] we do our jobs because we have a calling and an innate desire to help people – but that's no more true of nursing than it is of many other professions," she says. "And it has a negative impact when we want to be appropriately remunerated for the skills and expertise that we have." A related effect is the US' tendency to pay lip service to "support our troops!" while our VA is in shambles.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  A segment of the population pays lip service to "support our troops," while another segment is (wrongly) convinced that the only people who join are stupid, untalented, and have no other options in life, and treat them accordingly.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    That’s not two columns. There’s a lot of the latter in the former. Louder the cheerleader is, often the more they are compensating. The largest cohort are people who are unaware of what the sacrifices of service members are, even in peaceful times, more out of ignorance than anything else.

ore0s 3y ago

I think I found myself in this situation believing it was "generally good." Both for me to learn more things, and for the company to succeed. Then I would be rewarded with promotions in the future. Although I had fun and felt some purpose, the fast career growth did not follow. I was in the mindset to follow Sheryl Sandberg's advice “If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat.” But what ended up happening was the people who knew how to ask for better seats actually got them.

erikerikson 3y ago

The people that are willing to actually act a bit increase would be the most likely to maximize available excess wealth. Yet we suppress their access to resources. Seems like the expected outcome but reduces expected total prosperity nonetheless. Not selfish enough to be self interested.

resource_waste 3y ago

Weird to see a country talk about their healthcare workers not being absurdly overpaid. In the US, our nurses buy half million dollar homes. The physicians have their own little city in the suburbs composed of multimillion dollar homes. (Artificially) high wages are bad for the customer, and we sure see the effects.

imzadi 3y ago
RNs and MDs might be paid well, but the frontline staff often is not. Medical assistants, nursing assistants, paramedics, pharmacy technicians, etc. They often have low wages and no benefits.
fallingfrog 3y ago
Well if it’s so overpaid why aren’t you doing it? Have you ever talked to a nurse? The stress they go through is absurd.
- resource_waste 3y ago
  There are regulations in-place to limit the supply. If I did it, someone else would lose their license. And yes, I'm considering bumping someone out of med-school and residency. I am a 1%er, I'll get in.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    Your worldview seems to be very small. I would not count your personal experiences with any gravity.
  - fallingfrog 3y ago
    The lack of self awareness from a 1%er who thinks it would be easy to work overnight shifts inserting catheters and dealing with emergencies is quite amusing. My sister is a nurse; a respiratory specialist. One of her job duties is to be the person who has to turn off the ventilator when someone can no longer be saved. Try doing that over and over again with the family watching.

astro- 3y ago

In healthcare, the workers are in high-stakes situations with personal liability for the care they provide. When you make a mistake, your license can be taken away. Licensing is important to prevent malpractice, but it does enable a form of worker exploitation. When you’re on a severely understaffed ward, you have to get the work done whatever it takes. If the next shift fails to turn up, you can’t just go home. People’s lives are at risk. You’re responsible until you can hand the care over to someone else. Like this, things can be stretched to unhealthy or even dangerous levels for a long time before there’s any accountability for the management. The front line staff have to get the work done, often at great personal expense. Honestly, I don’t know how people do it.

kimixa 3y ago
I also get somewhat scared when I hear about things like shift lengths or "on call" times from my doctor friends, even on "well staffed" shifts. If you're on your feet and working for 14 hours straight with no rest, you will make more mistakes. It's just being human. Pretending that isn't the case and punishing those mistakes won't reduce them.
- interactivecode 3y ago
  Staffing enough people for regular 8 hour work days with regular breaks should be the norm. At the lowest bar, any mistakes that happen on shifts longer than that should be held accountable to any management of the hospital or government agencies making policy, not the nurses and doctors. These are preventable situations, so the people creating the situation in which this occurs should be liable.
  - kimixa 3y ago
    Plus good time overlap to hand over ongoing issues - there's a reason why there's an uptick in deaths at shift change time...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

renewedrebecca 3y ago

blinding flash of the obvious: In "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" series, Sam struggles with not being able to get financing for a loan as well as not really getting paid for being an Avenger. In hindsight, I wonder if the writers were using that as an allegory for "the hero tax".

tivert 3y ago

This "hero tax" probably dovetails with the effects of "passion" professions, where people pursue them for reasons other than traditional employment considerations like pay and working conditions. One area where I think that probably overlaps are teachers: my stereotype of one is someone who really cares about educating kids, so they put up with the low pay and other bullshit. And just to illustrate the difference, I think a "passion" profession that's not considered heroic is video game developer. My vague impression is the pay and working conditions for them are much worse than for other kinds of software development work, because there a lot of people who are so passionate about video games they'll sacrifice a lot to work on them (until they burn out, at least).

mistrial9 3y ago
insightful! unfortunately, obsession and addictive behavior also factor into a spectrum of committed responses.. loyalty, higher vision, deep connection with the activity might extend into other directions.. lots of all of this in the world of fine arts, performance and literate arts
VS1999 3y ago
That's interesting. I have the opposite experience with teachers where they wanted to do a real job in their field but were stuck babysitting children as a backup plan. What's the opposite of passion?
- abdela 3y ago
  Necessity?
nickff 3y ago
I agree with you, but view the 'passion' effect as one of 'passion pay', i.e. holding a position that you 'love' or is seen to be high-status is a form of non-monetary remuneration (or benefit), which is a substitute for wages. Being treated well is another form of non-monetary remuneration (whereas being treated poorly is the opposite).

DoreenMichele 3y ago

It's always a bad thing when people want to give you praise rather than pay and benefits for your work. If you value their work, you should pay them adequately rather than act like they are in it for the good feels. Also, covid was a huge missed opportunity for creating standards for distributing health info and instructions via internet in a sensible fashion to prevent the ERs and hospitals from being so overwhelmed and thereby actively spreading the infection. Also a missed opportunity for developing a healthier set of social expectations and best practices for how to have reasonable and productive discussions of health topics in the face of uncertainty and possible death. We really seem to have screwed that pooch globally, or at least in English-speaking spaces.

colechristensen 3y ago
>It's always a bad thing when people want to give you praise rather than pay and benefits for your work. Sure, but even if you pay me a lot you're still expected to be nice to me. >Also, covid was a huge missed opportunity for creating standards for distributing health info and instructions via internet in a sensible fashion to prevent the ERs and hospitals from being so overwhelmed and thereby actively spreading the infection. Was it? Tele-health boomed during the pandemic to the point where I've sometimes had trouble getting in-person appointments when I felt it was necessary. >Also a missed opportunity for developing a healthier set of social expectations and best practices for how to have reasonable and productive discussions of health topics in the face of uncertainty and possible death. We really seem to have screwed that pooch globally, or at least in English-speaking spaces. Also, did it really? I feel like we've made a lot of progress against the "go to work even if you're sick" idea being a virtue and enabled a lot of people to work from home while a little sick and made people considerably more willing to just stay home when they were sick. The CDC and related government entities really fucked up when they sent out messaging that cared more about results of the message than the truth of the message. They started out by discouraging masks and then changed tack. They exaggerated advice and never clearly represented uncertainty. The headline message was never about the best that was known at the time and the confidence in that message to try to empower people to make their own decisions. Instead they pretended to certainty that was impossible and encouraged pro/anti message moralization so that your health choices were supposed to be collective instead of individual and aligned with your political affiliation instead of your own situation and appetite for risk.

linuxftw 3y ago

Healthcare workers have noone to blame but themselves. Apparently every facility is understaffed in the US, so it should be simple to form a union: there's nobody to scab for you. People need to organize. One link early in the article points to another article about a shortage of volunteer firefighters. How can the richest country on the planet rely on volunteer firefighters?

shawn_w 3y ago
Most hospitals are unionized; at least on the West Coast. Volunteer firefighters: some areas are full of people who don't want their taxes to go up to pay for a career department. Many areas are so sparsely populated they can't afford one even if willing. The amount of training and education required keeps going up, and not everyone has a job they can just walk off from to respond to calls on no notice. It's harder to effectively volunteer as a FF than it was even a few decades ago. Sometimes it's addressed by having formerly all volunteer or smaller combination career/volley departments be absorbed into a neighboring career department that can spread the cost out to a larger area. Sometimes egos win out and the ability to do the job suffers.

phendrenad2 3y ago

> People largely assume, for instance, that heroes simply don't care so much about things like fair compensation for the work that they do. And that assumption is true to some extent. People don't just slip and fall into a set of scrubs and become a nurse or medic. They choose that path based on an analysis (yes, the average person is capable of making reasoned decisions, although that's shocking to many). People have other options besides becoming "heroes" and yet, they choose it. Why? > "This is a clear fallacy in inferential reasoning and logic" This is that thing people do when they want to sound smart. Actually two things: (1) Don't address the claim, just call it wrong (2) overcomplicate your sentence with obscure words

aaron695 3y ago

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crisply5706 3y ago

At work, I'm a hero. I run by myself what should be two departments of at least three people. Couple of weeks ago, my boss gave me a "promotion". Went on about how he had to clear it with the board, etc. It's a title change and 0.5% equity on a brand new 45 month vesting schedule with a new 12 month cliff. No cash money, I'm still making junior dev salary. CEO tried to talk to me about it, it was the verbal equivalent of a pizza party. I just didn't engage at all, and the planned announcement to the whole team silently never happened. Coincidentally, this happened a couple of days after I had updated my indeed resume with the same title they later "promoted" me to. Job was fun at first, but the CEO is extremely confidently driving the company straight into the ground. Fake monopoly money isn't going to keep me on this sinking ship, my guy.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

No Javascript required: https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20240409-heroic-jobs-earn-less-money https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20240409-heroic-jobs-...

derelicta 3y ago

Thats why I only try to do the bare minimum lol