Working Hard: a bad thing?

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=An Arky]
Working hard can also be an indicator of incompetence. I accomplish my tasks with aplomb, for I am competent. Those numbnuts who run around all stressed and stay till 9:00 are incompetent as often as not.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. There’s nothing admirable about hard work in and of itself. My problems with American’s valuation of “hard work” is that they tend to value it over good work, and value it as a thing in itself. There’s a disturbing masochistic undertone that makes me think of flagellants beating themselves; one of valuing the hardness of the work over the worth of what is accomplished by that work.

As I see it, one should accomplish your goals quickly, well, and with the minimum amount of effort needed - it’s called “efficiency”.

22

[QUOTE=Baldwin]
Hard work isn’t the same as productivity. For that matter, productivity doesn’t necessarily get one ahead in the corporate world; I’ve seen incompetent ass-kissers promoted.

[/QUOTE]

But I bet they work hard at kissing ass. Not an easy job, you know.

23

[QUOTE=Voyager]
There is a fascinating paper which shows that for engineers or others doing jobs that require decisions, a 50 hour work week is about the same as a 40 hour week in terms of productivity. You spend an extra five hours making mistakes, then five more correcting them. But your management thinks you’re really dedicated, and then can’t understand why the project is still late despite all the overtime.
[/QUOTE]
You bastard! You just summarized my entire career! Ga–fu–shi–da–sigh. I give up.

I’ve known plenty of “hard workers” with no good character whatsoever. Of course, I can’t say much for genuine slackers, either. But a quick thinking and creative person who can do their job in half the time it would take the average person and then spends the rest goofing off has my respect more than the salaryman who punches in early and leaves late to impress the boss.

Stranger

24

[QUOTE=Gozu]
Hard work seems to be expected from anyone who is able to perform it in this country
[/QUOTE]

and the rest of the world for that matter because it is needed to survive and better ones life. The harder one works the more betterment that one receives and the more likely that ones children will survive. It is all about surviving a hard world.

Basically the freedoms protected by the US Constitution exists so that individuals can increase their standard of living in perpetuity. The citizens have to do this at their own risk without fear and by hard work, however. If one cannot accept the risks and hard work then what is the point of protecting freedoms. Just because someone has an inordinate fear and does not want to work hard it does not follow that the others must accept a reduction in their standard of living. Inordinate fear requires therapy and abstaining from work requires starvation.

Hard work is required of all living things else they die and their progeny die.

Hard work is virtue and no redefinition is required. All of those that do not work hard will be eliminated from the gene pool eventually. Thank God!

25

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
You bastard! You just summarized my entire career! Ga–fu–shi–da–sigh. I give up.

I’ve known plenty of “hard workers” with no good character whatsoever. Of course, I can’t say much for genuine slackers, either. But a quick thinking and creative person who can do their job in half the time it would take the average person and then spends the rest goofing off has my respect more than the salaryman who punches in early and leaves late to impress the boss.

Stranger
[/QUOTE]

Heh. The paper is “The $2,000 Hour: How Managers Influence Project Performance Through the Reword Cycle” by K. G. Cooper. It was originally published in the Project Management Journal, I saw it in IEEE Engineering Management Review, Winter 1994, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 12-23.

When I wrote a column based on this article, I was working on a project where absolutely everything in this paper was happening. I got out after a year and a quarter, and the project is a world-famous disaster, producing a product that is still not selling very well, and which is still on the market so the very big and famous company I worked for doesn’t have to admit it is a loser.

One example - we had quarterly goals. People worked really hard to meet one, even though the lack of success of another on which that goal depended meant that their work was basically going to be thrown away. But it looked good on the progress charts.

26

Hard work benefits those who extoll its virtues more than those who are actually working hard.

27

[QUOTE=focusonz]
and the rest of the world for that matter because it is needed to survive and better ones life. The harder one works the more betterment that one receives and the more likely that ones children will survive. It is all about surviving a hard world.
[/quote]

But the most productive people are people who are passionate about their work. Whether scientists or engineers or inventors or writers or cooks, etc.

Shouldn’t the goal be to associate work with something people crave instead of a cross to bear?

That’s what I’m arguing for, not the quantity or quality of work done.

In the grand scheme of things, yes. But when the kid is raised by a tribe, the progenitors can be lazy and not endanger its survival. We are heading towards the global trible as we become more connected and efficient.

Umm, how and why?

28

A theory about the idea that hard work is always a Good Thing:

In the past, a greater proportion of livelihoods were based on physical labor. With most jobs involving physical labor, there is a direct correlation between effort (either physical exertion or time spent on the job or both) and results. A farmer who plows longer and harder than his neighbor will end up with a greater number of acres plowed. A mason or carpenter will get more masonry or carpentry done if they work longer hours.

There’s a roughly linear correlation between effort and results, at least up to a point.

With jobs that are farther removed from physical labor the correlation isn’t as strong. A lawyer who spends twice as long at the office as a colleague does not necessarily win twice as many cases. A doctor who runs twice as many tests does not necessarily cure twice as many patients. Physical exertion and time spent don’t have nearly as much to do with results.

Like the difference between mass and weight the difference between hard work and results was largely academic for most people in most situations. As our economy has become more based on information and services the distinction becomes important. But the idea of hard work being inherently a Good Thing holds over to a large extent.

Hard work, even in a very non-physical job, can still increase results. It’s just less direct and less likely to be significant. A doctor who spends more time at work can see more patients, all else being equal. But how well she treats those patients has (relatively) little to do with how much time she spends on each case.

29

[QUOTE=Gozu]
In the grand scheme of things, yes. But when the kid is raised by a tribe, the progenitors can be lazy and not endanger its survival. We are heading towards the global tribe as we become more connected and efficient.
[/QUOTE]

The global tribe utopia which you think we are headed for is Marxism and socialism and is what you and many others speak. It fails for the reasons that you assume Marxism and socialism gives you, support for lazy progenitors.

The grand scheme of things cannot be escaped.

And this may be too much for you to get your arms around. Not my fault! There exist the 2nd law of thermodynamics which states that The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. entropy is a measure of the unavailability of a system’s energy to do work.

Even thought Marx and Gibbs thoughts are from the same era the conjoined relationship of a social law and scientific law was not understood and it took the failure of the Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin experiment to reveal the truth.

Basically, ‘profit’ is the ‘hard’ part of hard work just as excess energy is the ‘hard’ part of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Whether it be humans or isolated systems, both run down. Marx argued that the excess of work beyond the needs of the social human was unnecessary and was called capital. The concept of capital was removed from his social equation. Without this factor in the equation there was no way to measure the energy available to do work. And without this measure there is no way for the human to measure the benefit returned to him during that time when he runs down.

In a capitalism profits of a company are returned to its stockholders whether it is measured by stock dividends or savings account balances.. Taxing profits removes the incentives to work ‘hard’ in preparation for that time to be lazy! You expect too much of children to be enthused to support ‘lazy progenitors’ and that is why the USSR failed in one human generation

A socialism convinces the human to work but not to work ‘hard’ and a systems entropy must always be compensated for by excess energy. Only until such time that the human society has amassed enormous excess capital and more specifically individuals have amassed enough profit to allow them to be lazy in their dotage, society and the individuals survival is endangered.

Your whole OP and der trihs post to this thread, is delusional Marxist crap!

This is my last post to this thread but I reserve the right to start another thread!

30

What?

31

[QUOTE=Gozu]
But the most productive people are people who are passionate about their work. Whether scientists or engineers or inventors or writers or cooks, etc. Shouldn’t the goal be to associate work with something people crave instead of a cross to bear? That’s what I’m arguing for, not the quantity or quality of work done.
[/QUOTE]
Still, wouldn’t the words “hard work” have intrinsic value to describe work that is hard? Adjectives don’t have goals, they describe. Rabid dogs is a bad thing, and I’d much prefer it all dogs were cuddly. If I were to remove rabid from our vocabulary and insist on calling all dogs cuddly what would that change?

Not all work is inspiring, but we need truck drivers and garbage people for the world to go round. The majority of the population is made up of such people with shitty but necessary (hard) jobs–can you blame the politicians for sucking up to them every chance they get? Sure cleverer people can do more with less effort, good for them–but there will always be people who need to work hard to amount to anything, and for them, working hard is a virtue.

32

Hard work is not necessarily productive work. Take a 1930’s carpenter-sawing the wood with a hand saw-a modern carpenter can to 10X the work in the same time. And office work? Most government “workers” shuffle paper all day, with very low productivity.
I wonder how much productive work that a clerk (Bob Crachit?) did in Victorian days? Just writing a letter in those days was a massive task.

33

I work very hard and it pees me off that I’m paying a fair wack of my wages to support the able bodied permamently unemployed.

But as to whether hard work is a good thing in itself then no it isn’t otherwise we wouldn’t be constantly using developing technology to make work easier.
Do we really want to take hours to handwash our laundry in tubs and then mangle the excess water out it?
Or spend ages brushing dust out of carpets rather then use a hoover

Cant say that I agree with **Gozu **on all counts,we have been very productive in my industry (UK construction) but that has been almost entirely because we made lots of money out of it,haven’t ever met a builder passionate about the job except maybe the odd architect.

That said the prognosis for our business in the near future has more to do with people jumping off of balconies then stashing money away in Swiss bank accounts.

34

A lot of hard work is purposefully made hard.

I believe that a lot of what passes for “character building” in the workplace really amounts to hoop-jumping. Many came up being given crap and run around by their superiors, and they’ll be damned if the next generation doesn’t have to undergo the same. The ability to take said crap, passed down unexamined over generations, has become what is called “character.”

35

Working hard unnecessarily and without producing added benefits isn’t a good thing. It’s wasteful. For instance, I can use software to run statistics (easy work) or I can do it by hand (hard work). Why should I be praised for being inefficient? Why should someone who never bothers to learn the technology at his disposable be considered a more virtuous person?

36

American Puritans did not burn anyone accused of witchcraft.

They hanged them.

MUCH better!

:smiley:

(Actually, it is. Which would you rather happen to you?)

37

[QUOTE=focusonz]
And this may be too much for you to get your arms around. Not my fault! There exist the 2nd law of thermodynamics which states that The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. entropy is a measure of the unavailability of a system’s energy to do work.

Even thought Marx and Gibbs thoughts are from the same era the conjoined relationship of a social law and scientific law was not understood and it took the failure of the Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin experiment to reveal the truth.

Basically, ‘profit’ is the ‘hard’ part of hard work just as excess energy is the ‘hard’ part of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Whether it be humans or isolated systems, both run down. Marx argued that the excess of work beyond the needs of the social human was unnecessary and was called capital. The concept of capital was removed from his social equation. Without this factor in the equation there was no way to measure the energy available to do work. And without this measure there is no way for the human to measure the benefit returned to him during that time when he runs down.

In a capitalism profits of a company are returned to its stockholders whether it is measured by stock dividends or savings account balances.. Taxing profits removes the incentives to work ‘hard’ in preparation for that time to be lazy! You expect too much of children to be enthused to support ‘lazy progenitors’ and that is why the USSR failed in one human generation

A socialism convinces the human to work but not to work ‘hard’ and a systems entropy must always be compensated for by excess energy. Only until such time that the human society has amassed enormous excess capital and more specifically individuals have amassed enough profit to allow them to be lazy in their dotage, society and the individuals survival is endangered.
[/QUOTE]

Unless you are arguing that it’s hard to have kids for lazy people nowadays and that the world is NOT getting more interconnected and more efficient in goods and labor trade (globalisation, oursourcing, etc.) , then your whole spiel about marxism is somewhat offtopic.

If you want to talk about the distant future, Yes, I understand entropy and its implications but perhaps we have reached a point where we’re better off educating and feeding the children of crack whores than letting them fall to the bottom, kicking and screaming and maybe dragging others with them. Violent crime is best deterred by prosperity and integration.

38

[QUOTE=FriarTed]
American Puritans did not burn anyone accused of witchcraft.

They hanged them.

MUCH better!
[/QUOTE]

What?? That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard! Witches can’t be killed by a mere hanging! No wonder there were so many hangings. There was probably only one witch that kept rising from the dead and shifting appearance before getting hung again.

Clearly a very incompetent witch.

39

Hard Work should be defined doing the work the “right” way, whatever that entails for that specific job. Taking no detrimental shortcuts, but at the same time, being efficient. If there are tools that help the worker to do the job faster, more efficiently, more safely, or with less effort, with the end result being the same or better than doing the work without the tool, then that tool should be implemented and become part of procedure. If it results in a poorer end result, or becomes prohibitively expensive to employ (whether that translates to money, time or maintenance), then the tool is counter-productive and should be nixed.

Do it “right” the first time, really means to work “hard”. That’s good advice, and something that should be extolled.

40

I call it "Factory Mentality"if theres no real work to do give them make work or keep them looking busy doing nothing.
Whether this is because the employer thinks that they aren’t getting their moneys worth if there isn’t constant movement or that the employees wont startwork again that day if they stop outside of a break I just dont know though I suspect a lack of imagination on behalf of management.

Years ago I was amongst other things a supervisor in an IBM warehouse,the system went down so that in effect we could’nt process anything and so couldn’t do any real work.

I sent my troops over the pub with the strict instructions not to get drunk and I would go over and fetch them when the system was up and running again.

My counterpart in the next department decided to get HIS troops moving several hundred boxed computer monitors from their location so that he could get them to do a cursory sweep of the already spotless floor(He actually admitted that he got a kick out of being in charge of people)with the result that his people were in an amazingly disgruntled frame of mind because they knew that their activity was pointless,they became very fatigued with a profound lack of interest when the system came back up plus there still quite a few monitors still out of their location when real work was resumed so they fell behind on their days work load.

Whereas my lads were quite chirpy and energetic.

I dont think that I’ll ever be cut out for that sort of work,thank god.