I Have Seen the Light: Realigning The Average Joe's Work Ethic

Great Debates
1

Over the years I have become increasingly cynical about the companies I work for.

The perspective I’ve first adopted was that, at a job, it is my life versus their money, my need versus their want, and I can always be sold just a little down the river because I need this job, but they can pretty much hire anyone to replace me. I felt outbid before bidding even began. This was before I ever actually had work. I considered myself a socialist.

My solution to this was to make myself irreplaceable by being the best damn worker I could be. I wasn’t a yes-man, but I was a diligent worker. I performed well, was eager to learn new tasks, and wanted my big toe in as many projects as I could handle. I wanted to be one with the company so that as long as the company was around, so too would I be around. This is after I actually started work and saw the folly of socialism. I was rapidly approaching the cult of Rand.

Lately (maybe the last 3-5 years) I’ve been leaving the capitalist’s paradise by becoming more of a capitalist. How so?

Let’s look at the situation. Right now, popular pro-capitalism rhetoric says you should work as hard as you can to make everything you can. However, business models wish to sell as much as they can by putting as little effort/cost into it as they can in order to maximize profits.

I sense a disconnect here. Am I not in a Business of One[sup]†[/sup]? Am I not selling my product—labor—for the most I can get for it? In that case, shouldn’t I follow businesses’ lead and seek to minimize the cost of the product while maximizing what I get for it? In plain English: shouldn’t I just do as much work as is necessary to secure a job, and no more? Shouldn’t I raise my price for a better product, rather than putting forth the effort and hoping my customer will just volunteer to pay more for it?

Why the difference in expectations in the market? Businesses seek to maximize profit, yet expect employees to minimize it by doing the most work for the least. Well, I seek to understand the wisdom behind capitalism, and so conduct myself now as any business selling a product would: as little as I can for the most I can.

So next time you’re at a department store and some employee is being lazy and you wonder how they have their job, just think: they’re actually doing what they’re supposed to as sellers of a product under capitalism!

Thoughts?
†Without apologies to the ridiculous US Army ad campaign.

2

I believe the disconnect you see relates to the separation of the educated, skilled people versus the uneducated, unskilled people.

The more adept you are at a marketable skill, and the more unique the skillset you possess, and the more demand exists for that skill, the higher a price you can command for others’ use of it.

The trend in business is to use advancing technology to create jobs that require less and less skill, so that workers are more replaceable. Increased levels of education throughout the world have contributed to an environment in which advanced skillsets are less and less unique.

Your department store worker is lazy because they are not paid enough to do their job better. However, this low pay enables the employer to charge the customer less money. If the bad service does not hurt business, the situation remains stable. Occasionally, an employee’s behavior may reach unacceptably low levels, and they are fired, at which point they are replaced, as their job does not require a high skill level. If no one can be found to fill the job at that pay rate, the employer may have to consider raising the offer.

As long as their is someone willing and able to do your job for less, your job is in danger.

In the end, it comes down to the values of the consumer. If knowledge of poor working conditions or receipt of bad service does not move the department store customer to shop elsewhere despite a higher price, there is no reason for the employer to change their practices. Only when their lbad treatment of all involved begins to hurt their pocketbook noticeably will business change the environment in which they function.

Very large companies can take a lot of damage before they feel a need for a change, and companies that hold a monopoly on a high-demand product or service may never change. That is why governments are often asked to step in and make declarations to certain businesses or fields in order to maintain a tolerable society.

3

So all this time I thought I was being lazy, I’m actually being a savvy and productive entrepreneur?

Word…

I’m putting that on my resume’! :smiley:

4

Depends on your situation. The question is twofold:

  1. Assume minimum work “m” will deliver expected salary “s.” The qusetion is, will marginal additional work M deliver additional salary S (in the way of bonuses, raises, etc.) such that the utility of S is greater than M? In other words, if you work another 10 hours a week, will the financial reward be worth it?

See, your post seems to assume that the RATIO of m to s is what matters. However, I would argue it’s the delta between the two that matters. For instance, let us suppose m=$50,000 and s=$20,000 (e.g. you suffer $20,000 worth of boredom, misery, and pain from having to do the basic amount of work needed to not get shitcanned.) We see that your Work Benefit Quotient, hereinafter Q, is 2.5. If you now do extra work S to get raise/bonus M such that S=$5000 and M=$10,000, that raises m to $60,000 and s to $25000. Q is now a bit worse, - 2.4. So are you worse off?

I would say no; what matters is not Q, but m-s. So while Q is worse in the above scenario, m-s has increased from $30,000 to $35,000. You’re better off.

However, it’s also true that extra work will often not get you more money. I would submit that like a truly clever business you need to minimize your investment of time and effort, and simply make sure what effort you DO put in maximizes your chances for more money. I have found some strategies work really well for me:

  1. Do something unusual and really good every now and then, and slack off in between. Working hard at your basic duties on a daily basis never impressed anybody. Nobody notices your blood, sweat and tears doing your regular job. They don’t care less. However, people DO remember unusual special project.

In my case, if I pump out a really awesome, well-written and formatted report or special project or something every three months or so, people seem to remember it forever. People sing my praises long after it is over, even if afterwards I spent months surfing the Net and doing nothing productive. It’s amazing.

Just this year, I wrote a scathing report on our horrible new IT system. It wasn’t mean, but it was critical, well-written, and supported by objective evidence. It took me about three hours to write and was easy as pie, but the level of writing and presentation was above the usual standards here, and it was unusually frank. It did not have any direct relationship to my job and had been only casually requested by a mid-level manager. Months later I was still getting commendations.

Later, I was assigned a special two-week project by the same director to lead a few people in reviewing some boring crap. It was ridiculously easy. The people assigned were capable and required only the sketchiest supervision. It was done early. I wrote a shiny report. I was hailed for what I thought was a minor accomplishment at best. For a month afterwards I applied only the barest minimum effort to my regular duties. Nobody noticed.

Recently I was promoted into a prize assignment by the director who assigned me those projects.

I am always sure to write a report like that every three or four months. People remember it forever, even if you screw up the other 95% of the time.

  1. Be nice to everyone. I am truly amazed at the number of people who get into territorial pissing matches and interdepartmental rivalries, and then act surprised later when they don’t advance. There are people in my company who - this is literally true - have never even walked into sales, or finance, or operations, and you have to understand this is an office of just 100 people. Unsurprisingly, these people then have difficulty getting other departments to help them.

I am geniunely friendly to everyone. I go out of my way to visit all departments. When I need to talk to someone I get my fat ass up and walk over to talk to them rather than sending E-mails. I am jovial and funny at work, self-depreciating, and go to great lengths to be seen as a funny, enjoyable guy to be around. People remember this. Remember Jones’s Fourth Law: People will forgive a nice guy for being incompetent more than they will forgive a competent person for being an asshole. (It helps if you are legitimately a friendly guy, as I am. Some people have to work at doing this without looking phony.)

Consequently, everyone in the company is happy to help me. If I require assistance from finance, HR, sales, marketing, ops or whatever, assistance is gladly given, because it’s invariably true that I have always been friendly to the person I have to ask for assistance.

  1. Get in your boss’s face only when you absolutely have to. S/He should see you only when:
  • You have something impressive and fancy to give them
  • You deliver something they asked for
  • You can solve a problem for them

It always works for me.

  1. Change job descriptions a lot. Try to change jobs every 18 months. 24 is the absolute max. The cool thing about changing job descriptions a lot is that all the stuff you didn’t do in your last job is lost to the annals of time. Also, you get insight into matters of business and politics if you serve in many different roles.

Also do not be limited by your job description. As long as you meet the bare minimum on paper, do unrelated stuff that looks good on a resume. For instance, I often volunteer to go on sales calls. This is not in my job description and isn’t even in my department (I’m in operations) but I do it anyway. There are a truly astrounding number of benefits from doing this:

  • I get out of the office with a business-related excuse
  • I ingratiate myself to sales
  • By choosing the right sales calls I can get the plum customer assignments when Ops gets the work
  • I can honestly put sales experience on my resume
  • I learn what’s going on in sales
  • By choosing the right customers I can pick ones likely to send happy letters to my bosses about how great I am
  • I often get to go home early
  1. Make it very visible that you work long hours. You do not actually have to work long hours to do this. If you can access work E-mail from home, knock a few routine E-mails off to your boss and other people at work every night around 9 PM. I find I can often leave work early as long as I send late E-mails now and then.

If this is not an option, show up earlier than anyone else at least once or twice a week and make sure they notice you were in first. Say you arrived an hour earlier than you did (this doesn’t work if you have to punch in I guess.) People will notice that.

Another excellent tactic is to show up early and then leave periodically to do other stuff. Get your car serviced, do some shopping, go home for lunch, maybe see a movie if there’s a cinema nearby. If you follow my other ideas, people will simply assume you are off being busy.

  1. When writing E-mails, reports or what have you, ensure your English is impeccable, intelligent, well-written, easy to read, and generally looks incredibly smart and professional. (Of course, erislover, your stuff is first-rate.) This is important because it makes you look intelligent. Nothing can make a person look smarter than good writing, and nothing makes a person look dumber than bad writing. If your English is really outstanding, brilliant without being impenetrable, people are really impressed. They will think you are smart and productive. Remember the Three Ways To Look Smarter Than You Are:

i) Be funny,
ii) Write really well,
iii) Know a lot of trivia and assorted random info.

  1. Look better than other people. If you are short, improve your posture and wear thick-heeled shoes to look a little taller; this is especially important for men, as height may well be the thing you’re most judged by.

You should also dress well. They key to dressing better is good color coordination and good fitting clothes. Expensive clothes are not necessary, because most people can’t tell a $500 Savile Row original from a $15 Target bargain buy as long as the Target shirt is not actually falling apart at the moment they are looking at you. Spend if you need to but don’t spend just to spend. However, many people wear poorly fit clothes; I bet half the people in my workplace wear clothes that are obviously too big for them. Don’t worry about your body size; good, well-fit clothes always look sharp. Some people will argue with me here and say looks should not matter. Yeah, well, they DO matter.

If you have a bad haircut, get a better one. Go into a reputable salon and tell them to do whatever it takes to make your hair look professional. Use those exact words. Do not argue with their recommendations.

If you aren’t good with clothes or hair, find someone who is and go shopping with them and do exactly what they tell you.

That’s all I can think of for now.

5

RickJay, I am grinning from ear to ear. We should work together, I think. I’m wondering about #4, though, with the job titles. Now, I work for a very small company. Essentially, as far as I know, my title is whatever I say it is. So should I be keeping my resume up to date by writing that I switched positions, and just get new business cards? Honestly, unless titles are actually meaningful in some way I’m not aware of, as long as I don’t outright lie about my work I could go from “Service Technician” to “Service Manager” or “Head of Service Department” in a blink of an eye. I am all those things. I do everything. Hell, I do design work, too. The possibilities!

I think the new year is going to see a new erl at work. Intuitively I’m already well on the path you outline there. I have dropped many suggestions about expanding my work without actually expanding my work (sales, primarily). But drafting proposals is something I hadn’t quite considered. Very nice.

Lots to chew on.

6

RickJay,

My God man are you a clone of me. Seriously, it was like reading my own writing. You have it nailed man.

To add to it – work in a position that many people do not understand well but think is complicated. My brother works as a Statistician. When he started the job, the previous people working the job worked long hours. He, however, also had programming experience. He has reduced the job from taking 60+hours a week to 20.

He has not notified anyone of this. He defends his actions much like RickJay – what is in it for him if he does report his accomplishments? Will he get a big raise? He is convinced he would not and that they would add more to his workload or cut his salary because his workload is now light.

From Erislover’s post he is being capitalistic in doing this. He is giving them what the initial negotiation asked for. Why should he inform them? This way, he has time to do other things like work on side projects for extra income.

7

erislover:

I dig this totally, I believe in economics parlance its called “satisficing” - doing just whats needed to get by and no more. From what little I remember of economics, its supposed to be the actual way that small and medium sized firms behave as opposed to maximising capital / investment or whatever.

My philosophy:
Truly “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile”. Do your job less well than you could - this blends perfectly with the overall behaviour of the firm. However show them that you have huge reserves of untapped potential - you’re useful, but bad management prevents you from shining fully. As long as they see little flashes of brilliance, you’re free to satisfice to the extreme. :slight_smile:

I’ll let you know how far this gets me!

8

That is why i don’t go into business. It rewards incompetency as long as you are ‘nice’. But demonstrate unsurpassed excellence and work ethic while showing a negative attitude, and you are out the door.

To hell with corporate image. I rather blind them with brillance, and the devil may care, because I don’t.

9

I used to think the pissing match between academia and industry (especially in engineering) was nothing but a dick-waving contest. As I interact more with industry, I am beginning to think most of the academics aren’t that far off from the truth. The truth: A much larger percentage of academia are brighter and more importantly, have to utilize their intelligence.

Lest anyone comes in here speaking of broad brushes etc, I carefully used the phrase “a much larger percentage”. I am talking signal/noise ratio here.

Let me add this:

It is nigh impossible to work in an area like inventory management and publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal without knowing and fully grasping fundamental concepts involving uncertainty and fully understanding the toy models like the newsboy model etc. I have spoken to more than a few industrial folks working in high positions at operations research divisions at prestigious organizations who don’t understand the elementary difference between deterministic and stochastic problems nor have a clue about some fundamental insights that have been established in the fields they work in. How they got to where they are and how they continue to make money for the company: I don’t know. May be they have an intuitive grasp for things. But, IMHO, intuition often can be misleading, especially when dealing with subtle concepts.

Anyway, the excellent post by RickJay on being nice and dressing up good and writing good reports etc reminded me that there are important non-work related metrics that influence success in the corporate world.

10

litost, I think a lot of what you see is the “promote people into incompetence” phenomena. I’ve seen it everywhere I’ve worked.

11

That sounds a line straight out of Dilbert. Can you explain the rationale behind it?

12

erislover:
You are absolutely correct. Business owners want you to work as hard as possible (ie, produce as much as possible) and pay you as little as possible. You want to work as little as possible and get paid as much as possible. As a business of one in this environment, though, you’ve got some competition-- your fellow workers. You seem to be forgetting about them. And of course your boss has some competition, too-- other companies. If they work you too hard, you’ll bolt.

It’s a pretty simple game, as long as you understand the whole environment. If you don’t understand that environment, though, you lose. Let us know how you do.:slight_smile:

13

litost
PDF Google cache.

Basic gist is that some hierarchial structures use current overperformance as an indicator of expected performance at a higher level of work. It is not unheard of, but there are several ways to address it.

14

Promoting to incompetence is very easy to understand. If you have a pool of people to promot into a higher (possibly harder) position, you are going to pick the best one if possible. This person will then be compared to others at his level. When time comes to promote one of these, he may no longer be the best choice. That is, he may not be promoted again averter he reaches a level where he is not outstanding.

I would like to suggest that your disconnect may be due to some things you forgot about your job description. You have to seek promotions, bonuses, and raises. If your current employer is hostile to them you may need to seek them elsewhere.

Outstanding post RickJay I’d only like to add:

It helps a whole lot if you get paid for something you really enjoy doing. :stuck_out_tongue:

15

Other reasons for promoting to incompetence is that it is often difficult for bosses to distinguish effort from ability. If a worker knows in advance, or suspects with a comfortable degree of certainty, the amount of money he will make after a promotion he may work very hard and bust his hump to get the promotion: extended hours, independent research, and so on. None of these will continue after the promotion for practical reasons if nothing else.

We might also consider the case where there are two or more people competing for the same position, of which only one can win. This enters into an auction scenario, only without anyone having to follow through on the payment (that is, without having to maintain the level of work they used to get the position).

The effect could also simply be psychological: at a lower level, the person is performing exceptionally well. At a higher level, they might perform normally, but the perception will be that the quality of their work has declined.

All interesting stuff.

John Mace

Heck no, that’s why I made this post! :smiley: Gotta get the word out. The idea of “work hard and you’ll be rewarded” isn’t strictly true and instead of people falling for it only to have their dreams crushed, they can now understand that their business model was intrinsically flawed.

And the point isn’t strictly to not get work done, but to ensure that you don’t give your company free money by being an exceptionally “good” employee with the thought that you’ll be rewarded for it. Maybe in some fantasy world everyone is rewarded for their effort proportionately, but most of the interaction I’ve seen in companies big and small indicate that showing an eagerness to expand responsibility results in the distinct privilege of more responsibility. And the occaisional pat on the back, of course, good show and all that.

Did I mention I was getting cynical these past years? :wink:

But seriously. The idea is to ensure your company is aware of what you expect. I have been living on this “model” (or with this worldview) for two years now, drafted a proposal for a raise, and got it—without even promising extra work, and definitely without doing it hoping I’ll build goodwill rather than just setting up a new expectation for how much labor I’ll perform at the same damn price, you see what I’m saying? Companies always want more out of their employees, but aren’t very willing to shell out the extra dough for it. I’m saying: so should we. Learn from those who do it best, they teach by example.

Only if work exists in the area or time frame I can afford to move or act in. And supposing an economic downturn, there isn’t really anywhere to go, and “Well we’ve had to lay some people off, but much of the same work still needs to be done, and look at these numbers, worker productivity has skyrocketed!” Huh.

As far as their competition goes, yep. See why it is so important to get the idea out that you’ll be rewarded if you put forth the extra effort? Because the companies that push that idea the most yet never follow through with it increase productivity without increasing costs. Neat! Well, neat if you’re the boss or a shareholder, crappy if you’re the guy who gets warm fuzzies for performing extra labor for free.

16

Actually, erislover’s point is the Peter Principle; people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Laurence Peter came up with this idea decades ago. This is logically a sound theory. If you are a really good inside salesman you might be promoted to outside salesman; if you excel at that you might become sales manager, and if you’re good at that they might make you director of sales, at which point you suddenly find you don’t have the skills to do the job. Because you were good at the previous jobs, you were promoted until you reached your level of incompetence. Then you’re stuck, because you’re now incompetent in your job, and cannot be promoted further. That’s the Peter Principle, and I see it, too. It’s common.

The Dilbert Principle is that you are promoted BECAUSE you are incompetent in the first place. This works to explain the pointy-haired boss in the comic strip but has virtually no real life truth to it - in my experience, it’s the Peter Principle that’s correct. The Dilbert Principle is inspired by the denizens of Silican Valley (who Scott Adams lives among and admires, although he himself wasn’t an engineer) who are all convinced that all managers who aren’t gearheads are dummies. Maybe the Dilbert Principle is true in San Jose; it’s not true anywhere else I have seen.

Oh, I forgot Point 8:

  1. Apply for every single opening that comes up one level above your own position. Don’t worry if you’re unqualified; just apply. If they turn you down smile and say you were happy to be considered. People who apply for promotions look aggressive and interested in advancement. People who don’t, don’t, and will be left where they are.
17

This is a good thread; you are certainly validating my experience.

People study for the test, not the topic, as it were. If being a yes-man is rewarded by a certain boss, then that’s who will win.

I have worked for 3 Japanese companies and have lived here for 7 years. Management in Japan is still in the stone age. Add to that fact that is effort that is rewarded here, not results. So long as you at least look like you’re sweating blood for the company, you can have as big a minus value as you like.

(This is of course all subject to certain common sense limitations.)

On the other hand, do your working quickly and efficiently, and it will automatically be doubted for that reason. Make your deliverables precisely what is needed with even maybe a little extra–no dice. They want to see that you put forth all that undeeded to prove that your heart is really into it all.

Very frustrating. Don’t work here if you can avoid it.

Oh, now don’t get me started on American companies. They are even worse in a totally different way. We kid ourselves that we are rugged individuals. Bull. We are far more conformist than even the Japanese. Why so? Because, in Japan, outward conformity is sufficient. In the US, on the other hand, they really want you to believe the BS. Thought-crime is not permitted.

So, business tries and succeeds at smoking out any individual who actually thinks for him/herself. It’s not enough that you go through the motions. You must submit body and soul.effort

18

If you happen to be in retail, let me show you the way.

19

Welcome to the SDMB, Aeschines.

Interesting thread, erislover and RickJay. One of the frequent arguments when my family gets together is about labor unions. One of the claims is that unions don’t provide an incentive for people to work harder than necessary—and I’ve often wondered, what incentive is there anyway.

Hopefully, I didn’t just derail this into pro/anti-union.

20

OT, but this statement really hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve always suspected such was the case.