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>Somehow in North America we have convinced ourselves that some jobs are "beneath us" (and I'm not just talking about taxi driving here). It's puzzling to me an
by learc83 12y ago
>Somehow in North America we have convinced ourselves that some jobs are "beneath us" (and I'm not just talking about taxi driving here). It's puzzling to me and it doesn't have to be that way.
Some jobs are beneath humans. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to take pride in your work, but when your company does their best to make you function like a robot, taking pride in your work is difficult. Think about it this way:
I run my own burger shop I get up every day and think: "Today I'm going to make the best hamburger that every was!"
I proceed to make the best hamburger I can, and I take pride in my work.
Now imagine I work at McDonald's/Wendy's/Burger King. I wake up thinking the same thing but then I remember: "Oh yeah my job isn't to make the best damn hamburger that every was. My job is to make the exact same hamburger as every other employee at every other store in the country with no creative input whatsoever."
The problem is that in many modern jobs the goal is for the employee to function like a robot. No creativity or autonomy allowed. These kind of jobs are inherently unfulfilling. Humans need creative outlets and autonomy to be happy.
- EdwardDiego 12y agoYou're spot on. Work is so much more meaningful when you are allowed to influence your workplace. I work in online advertising, hardly the most glamorous market, I'm not exactly sequencing genomes to cure diseases - but my work is meaningful to me because we have so much control over how we work, and how we treat our employees.
- noname123 12y agoSequencing genome like AdTech can be just as mindless and soul-sucking. The internal politics of a pharma/academia is brutal because the average timeline of a drug from inception to market is about 15 years, lack of feedback leads people bickering over the least important things. Once you get past the initial rush of using the tools and understanding the theory of Bioinformatics, the work is eerily similar to data mining for marketing profiles and writing copies for unnecessary consumer products. People and work environment trumps what you actually do.
- EdwardDiego 12y ago> People and work environment trumps what you actually do. I definitely agree, and you raise a good point - I'm idealizing a given task merely because it sounds more socially minded.