On this note, I have a personal belief that pandemic made people in general snap and go down the dark alley.
Pre-pandemic, it was kinda expected even from juniors and interns to be proactive and proactively get stuff done, fix things if they see it broken and such.
Now we have 2024 and no matter how high up you are on a corporate ladder, any attempt to just get something done and fix it for a better tomorrow is looked down upon at best, or would bring a massive backlash on you at worst. It’s no longer advisable to go the extra mile or step out of line in any way.
Is it healthy? I think not. Is it going to stay that way? I hope it won’t, though so far this trend is kinda snowballing in my personal bubble.
I don’t think it’s specifically the pandemic. I think it’s economic downturns in general, During good times, you come out of school, and you think “I can do things better, I will work hard for this company that gave me a job”. Then, when you hit your first bad times, and your company is laying off people who are, if not you personally, then could very well be you.
You suddenly realize that all the extra effort you put in, all the fighting you did to do the right things sometimes against the directions of managers and VPs, all the extra care and attention and hours that you put in aren’t going to be rewarded in the long run.
To the people who run the company, you’re just a bunch of dollar signs in a replaceable role.
So you stop working harder, and start working smarter. You realize that the hours you put in are worth something, and stop doing extra work for free. You start to realize that professionalism doesn’t mean putting in 60 hour-weeks in a never ending crunch. Professionalism is being able to do a job in the hours allocated.
It is healthy, it’s the only way for those of us in the trenches to keep ourselves sane.
Agreed. Having been in this industry for multiple decades (and listened to the stories of those who came before me), the pandemic hasn’t really changed anything. Employees loyalty lasts only as long as they believe employers are loyal to them. When it isn’t, that is the end of going “above and beyond”.
Nay, I would expect economic downturns to be the exact time when people find ways to be more productive within these 40hrs a week.
What I find instead is people who do the opposite of working smarter - going an extra mile to make the lives of their future selves miserable, even if that future self is just weeks ahead. Then missed deadlines come, angry managers follow suit, and 60hrs work weeks and crunches thereafter.
Nay, I would expect economic downturns to be the exact time when people find ways to be more productive within these 40hrs a week.
In an ideal world, that would be true. In a true meritocracy where people trust that their employers value employees by their real worth, that would likely be true. In a world where most people understand that layoffs during economic downturns are capricious and driven by extremely short-term thinking among the executives, people are disincentivized to do or say anything beyond what they think the executives want. (And that’s before you take into the dynamic that the OP documents in many other prior blog posts, where she and others were actively punished for same.)
Both in terms of what executives do, and what normal people (not as robotic as I am) are capable of. And what wild reasons for punishing people they can find, while praising underperformers and bullies.
Can you read about the well-documented dynamics at NASA that led to not one but two Space Shuttles literally exploding, and still find it hard to believe that executives in a company where the stakes are just “money” might behave similarly? Referring to people as “robotic” shows, I fear, a lack of understanding of the bigger picture. When people are forced to work in a system that rewards short-sighted decision-making, they will find themselves punished for thinking long-term.
I referred to myself as robotic, not others. What I meant is that there are people who are all into social dynamics and other stuff I happen to miss entirely.
And my statement I am robotic is kinda in line with your statement:
lack of understanding of the bigger picture
All the big picture stuff indeed goes over my head. Cannot argue with that. Cannot change that. Cannot see why people do certain things because I do not even think the same way a typical person does. It’s a mystery I find harder to comprehend than, say, quantum physics.
Most people learn social dynamics naturally, and most people have fully functional brain areas responsible for processing plenty of non-verbal information. Some of this development begins in infancy and it’s not even conscious learning.
That being said, not everyone does, and there is a small percentage of humans who don’t. And who have all sorts of glitches and hardware bugs in their brains preventing them from learning this kind of stuff, even consciously and with a clear goal of learning e.g. how people cope with corporate environments, high pressure etc.
I happen to be in that small percentage who has brain malfunctions. Quantum physics make sense to me, computer science makes sense, human behaviours - unfathomable.
You may dislike it, you may disagree, you can do whatever you want - it is what it is. Humans aren’t robots, I am - practically speaking. People learn what to do to please their managers and avoid layoffs, I don’t. I keep going and blurting out output 40hrs a week, regardless of the weather outside. If someone gets very unhappy with the fact I keep blurting out output, they can hit a killswitch and fire me, or use their connections to have me fired for them.
On this note, I have a personal belief that pandemic made people in general snap and go down the dark alley.
Pre-pandemic, it was kinda expected even from juniors and interns to be proactive and proactively get stuff done, fix things if they see it broken and such.
Now we have 2024 and no matter how high up you are on a corporate ladder, any attempt to just get something done and fix it for a better tomorrow is looked down upon at best, or would bring a massive backlash on you at worst. It’s no longer advisable to go the extra mile or step out of line in any way.
Is it healthy? I think not. Is it going to stay that way? I hope it won’t, though so far this trend is kinda snowballing in my personal bubble.
I don’t think it’s specifically the pandemic. I think it’s economic downturns in general, During good times, you come out of school, and you think “I can do things better, I will work hard for this company that gave me a job”. Then, when you hit your first bad times, and your company is laying off people who are, if not you personally, then could very well be you.
You suddenly realize that all the extra effort you put in, all the fighting you did to do the right things sometimes against the directions of managers and VPs, all the extra care and attention and hours that you put in aren’t going to be rewarded in the long run.
To the people who run the company, you’re just a bunch of dollar signs in a replaceable role.
So you stop working harder, and start working smarter. You realize that the hours you put in are worth something, and stop doing extra work for free. You start to realize that professionalism doesn’t mean putting in 60 hour-weeks in a never ending crunch. Professionalism is being able to do a job in the hours allocated.
It is healthy, it’s the only way for those of us in the trenches to keep ourselves sane.
Agreed. Having been in this industry for multiple decades (and listened to the stories of those who came before me), the pandemic hasn’t really changed anything. Employees loyalty lasts only as long as they believe employers are loyal to them. When it isn’t, that is the end of going “above and beyond”.
Nay, I would expect economic downturns to be the exact time when people find ways to be more productive within these 40hrs a week.
What I find instead is people who do the opposite of working smarter - going an extra mile to make the lives of their future selves miserable, even if that future self is just weeks ahead. Then missed deadlines come, angry managers follow suit, and 60hrs work weeks and crunches thereafter.
In an ideal world, that would be true. In a true meritocracy where people trust that their employers value employees by their real worth, that would likely be true. In a world where most people understand that layoffs during economic downturns are capricious and driven by extremely short-term thinking among the executives, people are disincentivized to do or say anything beyond what they think the executives want. (And that’s before you take into the dynamic that the OP documents in many other prior blog posts, where she and others were actively punished for same.)
It’s something I cannot wrap my head around.
Both in terms of what executives do, and what normal people (not as robotic as I am) are capable of. And what wild reasons for punishing people they can find, while praising underperformers and bullies.
Can you read about the well-documented dynamics at NASA that led to not one but two Space Shuttles literally exploding, and still find it hard to believe that executives in a company where the stakes are just “money” might behave similarly? Referring to people as “robotic” shows, I fear, a lack of understanding of the bigger picture. When people are forced to work in a system that rewards short-sighted decision-making, they will find themselves punished for thinking long-term.
I referred to myself as robotic, not others. What I meant is that there are people who are all into social dynamics and other stuff I happen to miss entirely.
And my statement I am robotic is kinda in line with your statement:
All the big picture stuff indeed goes over my head. Cannot argue with that. Cannot change that. Cannot see why people do certain things because I do not even think the same way a typical person does. It’s a mystery I find harder to comprehend than, say, quantum physics.
Like quantum physics, nobody is born understanding this stuff. They learn it if and when they have a reason to.
Most people learn social dynamics naturally, and most people have fully functional brain areas responsible for processing plenty of non-verbal information. Some of this development begins in infancy and it’s not even conscious learning.
That being said, not everyone does, and there is a small percentage of humans who don’t. And who have all sorts of glitches and hardware bugs in their brains preventing them from learning this kind of stuff, even consciously and with a clear goal of learning e.g. how people cope with corporate environments, high pressure etc.
I happen to be in that small percentage who has brain malfunctions. Quantum physics make sense to me, computer science makes sense, human behaviours - unfathomable.
You may dislike it, you may disagree, you can do whatever you want - it is what it is. Humans aren’t robots, I am - practically speaking. People learn what to do to please their managers and avoid layoffs, I don’t. I keep going and blurting out output 40hrs a week, regardless of the weather outside. If someone gets very unhappy with the fact I keep blurting out output, they can hit a killswitch and fire me, or use their connections to have me fired for them.