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that scene from Office Space where he talks about "I do just enough not to get fired" may be relevant here. There is something to be said for 'if you're going

that scene from Office Space where he talks about "I do just enough not to get fired" may be relevant here. There is something to be said for 'if you're going to be a rational economic actor and you have a salaried job, the optimal strategy is finish your job's tasks as fast as possible and work on a personal project which you control the upside to with all your extra energy'. From a purely economic point of view, spending any effort beyond the minimum at a salaried job is a waste of effort - the expected value of that extra effort is nil, unless you own significant stock. This may be why many tech companies offer equity as part of their compensation.

js8 2y ago
I call it (doing the bare minimum required) "organizational laziness" and I hate it. It might be rational, but it leads to mediocrity.
- aydyn 2y ago
  whats mediocre is willingly being a cog, in my opinion. Cogs dont get any credit.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  OK, hire me, and if I over-perform and help you achieve a business target, I want a triple salary next month. Or better still, 20% of the extra profit. No? Then you'll keep seeing what you call "mediocrity". I am a pretty good programmer and have literally saved businesses, several times over the course of my career. Never again though. A pat on the back is not enough of a reward.
  - js8 2y ago
    Sorry to disappoint, but.. I don't want to hire you. I am a socialist, I find labor markets morally objectionable. The above is one reason, putting pursuit of profit above human excellence leads to mediocrity.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      I too strive to be humanly excellent. I don't strive to make my boss' bonus bigger. Start your thought process by making the extremely obvious distinction between these two.
    - rustcleaner 2y ago
      What benefit does excellence derive for the excellent then, other than feel-good bubbly feelings? If labor cannot differentiate itself then collectively it will do the minimum acceptable and everybody will be mediocre (unless autism).
      - js8 2y ago
        > What benefit does excellence derive for the excellent then, other than feel-good bubbly feelings? Ultimately anything can only give you feelings. I don't understand what else would you expect from (pursuing) being excellent (just to clarify, I define "being excellent" here as being extremely skilled at some ex ante selected task or creative process; both individuals and organizations can have that property). But I get what you're saying. You feel like being excellent should give you money, fame and ladies. But you can get these things without being excellent. At some point, being excellent is a burden, and it's irrational to pursue it if you have those goals (of money, fame, etc.). (Someone else said in this thread that they want "a credit" for the excellence. Well if you want that, you don't need to be excellent, you just need to be good at pretending that you're, in front of people who you ask for the credit.) Now, corporations (and private companies in general) are setup to pursuit profit, not excellency. If excellency gets in the way of profit, and mediocrity is sufficient, they won't pursue excellency, regardless what the individuals in those companies want. That's organizational laziness. Note that organizational laziness is rational (and we teach it to MBAs), because rationality only ever makes sense with respect to your goals (which here is pursuit of profit, not of excellency). But that also means, rationality is never gonna tell you which goals you should pursue. Therefore, to decide to want excellency will always be an inherently irrational act (therefore, you only do it for good feelings). The point of the second comment I made was that yes, some people choose to build mediocre (capitalist) organizations (based on profit maximization and labor market) in pursuit of organizational excellency. To me as a socialist, this is a foolish mistake. If you're interested in excellency, you should build organizations of peers (like cooperatives) who intrinsically share that goal, not subordinates who have to be motivated extrinsically. I should also note, every organization will get parasites who have different goals, like work for less effort. Unless these people are somehow a burden on the goal of excellency, they are less problematic in organizations that pursue excellency than in capitalist organizations that pursue profit. Therefore, the organizations where the excellency maximization is a goal may seem to be collectively less efficient (more wasteful) than those where profit maximization is a goal. Again, this comes from the fact that being excellent is not necessarily the optimal way to pursue an extrinsic goal, such as profit.
  - deaverpamela 2y ago
    [dead]
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Starts at the top. Lazy pay, lazy perks -> lazy workers.
  - weweweoo 2y ago
    This. From worker's point of view it's irrational to work hard if the pay sucks. Good management should realize that, and demand less from underpaid workers. Embrace the culture of laziness, or pay a fair wage.
  - js8 2y ago
    Not just at the top, you have to go higher than that. It starts with the idea that the market success always leads to excellency.
b112 2y ago
No, Office Space depicted a horrible office environment, most are not such. And minimalist work ethic is a poor one, regardless of hand wavy, trumped up, rationalizations.
- piva00 2y ago
  > And minimalist work ethic is a poor one, regardless of hand wavy, trumped up, rationalizations. That's a very protestant work ethic worldview. Doing what is expected from what you're being paid in the best way possible is not a poor work ethic, it's a pretty rational one. The other side of it where one always strive to do more, to go above and beyond what you're being compensated for, and so forth can also be a quite poor one. God is not going to give you extra points, for some people doing their best work at current expectations is good enough, no need to spend more energy than required on a job, there's more to life than working and accumulating.
  - b112 2y ago
    Trying to bring religion into this is beyond amusing. I guess the Japanese are all protestants? Hardly. And rationalizing poor behaviour by saying it's rational is another good one. Lastly, you're trying to shift the discussion by claiming "best way possible" as opposed to others saying "do the bare minimum". These are very often not the same. The problem is, people don't "get it". There are people in this thread protesting about "doing poor quality work", eg, "racking up tech debt". Why? Because it eats at them. Because they are in this to build, and build that which holds, which has value. They have pride in their work! Yet the response some have here is simply don't do the best you can do. These two things are counter to one another! I am advocating that yes, do the best you can do. Take joy, deep internal joy in doing your job correctly, because of what you build. This indeed does not mean doing the bare minimum, by some broken, made up rationalized excuse. As I said, a good work ethic is not a protestant thing, it is a human thing. We can expand this to everything. What are you being compensated for? Are your ethics formed around what's profitable?! Madness!
    - achenet 2y ago
evilduck 2y ago
If you're going to sandbag you should aim for slightly below average. Minimum leaves you no room for error.

js8 2y ago

I call it (doing the bare minimum required) "organizational laziness" and I hate it. It might be rational, but it leads to mediocrity.

aydyn 2y ago
whats mediocre is willingly being a cog, in my opinion. Cogs dont get any credit.
pdimitar 2y ago
OK, hire me, and if I over-perform and help you achieve a business target, I want a triple salary next month. Or better still, 20% of the extra profit. No? Then you'll keep seeing what you call "mediocrity". I am a pretty good programmer and have literally saved businesses, several times over the course of my career. Never again though. A pat on the back is not enough of a reward.
- js8 2y ago
  Sorry to disappoint, but.. I don't want to hire you. I am a socialist, I find labor markets morally objectionable. The above is one reason, putting pursuit of profit above human excellence leads to mediocrity.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    I too strive to be humanly excellent. I don't strive to make my boss' bonus bigger. Start your thought process by making the extremely obvious distinction between these two.
  - rustcleaner 2y ago
    What benefit does excellence derive for the excellent then, other than feel-good bubbly feelings? If labor cannot differentiate itself then collectively it will do the minimum acceptable and everybody will be mediocre (unless autism).
    - js8 2y ago
      > What benefit does excellence derive for the excellent then, other than feel-good bubbly feelings? Ultimately anything can only give you feelings. I don't understand what else would you expect from (pursuing) being excellent (just to clarify, I define "being excellent" here as being extremely skilled at some ex ante selected task or creative process; both individuals and organizations can have that property). But I get what you're saying. You feel like being excellent should give you money, fame and ladies. But you can get these things without being excellent. At some point, being excellent is a burden, and it's irrational to pursue it if you have those goals (of money, fame, etc.). (Someone else said in this thread that they want "a credit" for the excellence. Well if you want that, you don't need to be excellent, you just need to be good at pretending that you're, in front of people who you ask for the credit.) Now, corporations (and private companies in general) are setup to pursuit profit, not excellency. If excellency gets in the way of profit, and mediocrity is sufficient, they won't pursue excellency, regardless what the individuals in those companies want. That's organizational laziness. Note that organizational laziness is rational (and we teach it to MBAs), because rationality only ever makes sense with respect to your goals (which here is pursuit of profit, not of excellency). But that also means, rationality is never gonna tell you which goals you should pursue. Therefore, to decide to want excellency will always be an inherently irrational act (therefore, you only do it for good feelings). The point of the second comment I made was that yes, some people choose to build mediocre (capitalist) organizations (based on profit maximization and labor market) in pursuit of organizational excellency. To me as a socialist, this is a foolish mistake. If you're interested in excellency, you should build organizations of peers (like cooperatives) who intrinsically share that goal, not subordinates who have to be motivated extrinsically. I should also note, every organization will get parasites who have different goals, like work for less effort. Unless these people are somehow a burden on the goal of excellency, they are less problematic in organizations that pursue excellency than in capitalist organizations that pursue profit. Therefore, the organizations where the excellency maximization is a goal may seem to be collectively less efficient (more wasteful) than those where profit maximization is a goal. Again, this comes from the fact that being excellent is not necessarily the optimal way to pursue an extrinsic goal, such as profit.
- deaverpamela 2y ago
  [dead]
rustcleaner 2y ago
Starts at the top. Lazy pay, lazy perks -> lazy workers.
- weweweoo 2y ago
  This. From worker's point of view it's irrational to work hard if the pay sucks. Good management should realize that, and demand less from underpaid workers. Embrace the culture of laziness, or pay a fair wage.
- js8 2y ago
  Not just at the top, you have to go higher than that. It starts with the idea that the market success always leads to excellency.

b112 2y ago

No, Office Space depicted a horrible office environment, most are not such. And minimalist work ethic is a poor one, regardless of hand wavy, trumped up, rationalizations.

piva00 2y ago
> And minimalist work ethic is a poor one, regardless of hand wavy, trumped up, rationalizations. That's a very protestant work ethic worldview. Doing what is expected from what you're being paid in the best way possible is not a poor work ethic, it's a pretty rational one. The other side of it where one always strive to do more, to go above and beyond what you're being compensated for, and so forth can also be a quite poor one. God is not going to give you extra points, for some people doing their best work at current expectations is good enough, no need to spend more energy than required on a job, there's more to life than working and accumulating.
- b112 2y ago
  Trying to bring religion into this is beyond amusing. I guess the Japanese are all protestants? Hardly. And rationalizing poor behaviour by saying it's rational is another good one. Lastly, you're trying to shift the discussion by claiming "best way possible" as opposed to others saying "do the bare minimum". These are very often not the same. The problem is, people don't "get it". There are people in this thread protesting about "doing poor quality work", eg, "racking up tech debt". Why? Because it eats at them. Because they are in this to build, and build that which holds, which has value. They have pride in their work! Yet the response some have here is simply don't do the best you can do. These two things are counter to one another! I am advocating that yes, do the best you can do. Take joy, deep internal joy in doing your job correctly, because of what you build. This indeed does not mean doing the bare minimum, by some broken, made up rationalized excuse. As I said, a good work ethic is not a protestant thing, it is a human thing. We can expand this to everything. What are you being compensated for? Are your ethics formed around what's profitable?! Madness!
  - achenet 2y ago

evilduck 2y ago

If you're going to sandbag you should aim for slightly below average. Minimum leaves you no room for error.