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> I'd rather make my work enjoyable than having to suffer 8 hours a day. And you're making an irrational decision because it makes you feel better. Nothing wro

• zahllos 2y ago
  I agree with the parent poster, the author sounds very bitter. Might not be true, they might be trying at humour and I haven't got it. But I think doing the minimum you can get away with is playing with fire. Your colleagues will resent you. You're also sending a signal to everyone that will be remembered. Maybe a colleague will start a business or move to another place one day. Are they going to employ the minimum effort person they used to work with? No.
  • wnolens 2y ago
    Even just viewing a job purely as an economic transaction is short-sighted. You are at least making social transactions, and likely also meaning transactions. Hell, even a commute to work where you're spending time, gas, and risk on the road can serve as a quiet time to process and integrate life's experiences.
  • usrnm 2y ago
    > Your colleagues will resent you Why would they? We're all adults and all more or less understand the rules of the game. And in rare cases in my career when the company culture was all about working long hours and living at work, I just tend not to stick in such places for long
    • throaway812 2y ago
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    • throaway812 2y ago
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    • zahllos 2y ago
      It depends where you draw the line of "enough to get by". There are two cases: case A is where the expectations exceed what you're really being paid for, i.e. those cases you mention where the company culture is long hours. This isn't what I'm on about, but for completeness, these places are awful to work at and I definitely agree escaping them is the most rational thing to do. Case B is different. Case B is where you work somewhere with reasonable work-life balance, but where you have a colleague who persistently under-performs. They won't do the essential documentation, follow the process correctly and they will quite happily sit through meetings and not volunteer a solution they know the answer to unless explicitly asked in just the right way and they happen to feel like it that day. This can take a few different forms - my list is not exclusive but it boils down to "quiet quitting" - but, as you say we are all adults, and we know who these people are.
• The_Colonel 2y ago
  > And you're making an irrational decision because it makes you feel better. By the same approach, it's irrational to provide anything more than the bare minimum to my kids to not get social services on my back. Doing any volunteering is irrational, contributing to charities is irrational. In all of these examples, you will also find other parties (financially) benefitting from my "stupidity". If your worldview is constrained to a cynical Homo Oeconomicus, that is. Let's make a model example: I work in a dead-end job. Prospects of advancement or significant pay raise is small, no matter the performance. I have two options: * checked-out loser - do the bare minimum to not get fired. I'm not producing a lot of value to the executives. I don't see meaning in the job, no fulfillment, I need to slog through the 8-hour days. * over-performing loser - I try to find meaning and enjoyment in the work I do. My productivity grows (for the same pay), but you know, doing things well is actually kinda enjoyable, and I become to like my work, even see some fulfillment. Sometimes I even identify a bit with my job, and I'm willing to work some overtime to e.g. finish a project on time. The crazy thing is to say that the former is more "rational" than the "latter". Your first instinct is to look for places where I might accidentally create too much value for some other parties and cut that out even if I'm hurt (subjectively, not financially) in the process. My first instinct is to ask - which one is better for me and the people I like? If someone else benefits too, that's very secondary for me.