This is a hot take. People have definitely wanted to work. The problem is now we don’t need to. There was a point that humans needed to work or we would not evolve as a species. There are many that took pride in being a part of that. Now that need has shifted into we could feasibly feed and shelter every soul on the planet and a few greedy fucks don’t know how to coordinate it with all their riches.
Depends what you mean by work. People always want to do things and create things and help others. They don’t want to spend 8 hours a day doing menial, meaningless crap just to be able live.
My point is that they did. Back when there was a sense of accomplishment that added to the human existence. There was a sense of pride to a lot of workers in the 50s for many reasons. I do agree that it has changed. And a lot of it has to do with the rewards given. But they still exist.
I don’t think they have. I think they were made to labor under the whip or under a promise for something. You’re like that other guy thinking the guy cracking the whip or promoting the latest video game are “working”.
Working in a textile mill in 120 degree heat is work. It’s work no one wants to do. No one comes in and argues pedantically about “well I find sweating my ass off for minimum wage fulfilling”. That’s work.
Going into your temperature controlled office where you’re a CPA and get paid wonderfully and enjoy numbers isn’t the same thing at all.
The work I’m referencing is the bottom tier shit that without it the economy would crumble. Not your SEO manager bullshit job that you think you love cause you’re making 6 figures in a 5 figure town.
Buddy, working in a textile mill in 48 °C is a safety hazard and modern slavery. You have a weird warped pedantic perspective on what work means. And somejow the rest of us should take the dictionary definition and throw it out of the window and instead adopt your made up definition that seems to only work in your head? 😬 No thanks.
The first is modern slavery. The second is work. Hope it helps! Cheers.
Ps: SEO manager? Clearly it was a mistake to engage you at all because you didn’t read squat shit of what I wrote. Note to the future: do not engage people who haven’t even read your own text, and don’t bother reading their text to the end. They are upset at a phantom in their heads, not you.
Wow what a sweeping statement with no legs to stand on.
I love work. I worked (yes) quite hard to get a degree and become a developer and ML engineer. One day, I’d like to work in computational neuroscience. I hate so many things about work culture, but the work itself? Naaah, it’s awesome. I’d rather spend every day in this life working on something I love and have interested in, instead of going around making sweeping statements about the entire globe on the internet, incapable of accepting that not everyone is like me.
Oh my oh my sorry for taking people in the internet at face value. Next time I’ll just guess what their thought process was and live my life based on that.
Here’s another one: I’m so sorry your life must really suck with work and all to the point that you can’t see other people enjoying it and where you feel the need to say they aren’t really “working” just because they found something they love and succeeded in navigating the shitty system (out or merit or luck or privilege, whatever) and you didn’t /:
We can all be on the same side. I hate modern work culture and I actively try to improve it and myself day after day. I’m sure you do too.
You need to consider that most jobs out there are simply things that need to be done, not things that people are passionate about. Getting a higher eductation and a complex job is something for which I consider myself very lucky. I was born with all the opportunities to do so. Despite these privileges, I acknowledge that the people doing the fundamental, low level jobs deserve adequate compensation to lead a happy life
You need to consider that most jobs out there are simply things that need to be done
This was always my view. I don’t think I said anything at all that implies otherwise. So we already agree. My original comment was in response to someone saying no one ever in existence wanted to work. Surely you’ve met idiots on the internet and had to explain things to them before, no? Hard for me to assume they were using a literary device. I’d rather take them at face value.
Then get ready for lots of downvotes because apparently pointing out that someone made a sweeping generalization then telling the world you’re one of those few who enjoy their jobs means you deserve being downvoted to hell 😁
Soft disagree. I want to do meaningful work and interesting work. It’s boring bullshit getting 10 managers to approve a change when none of them know what I even do. I love working on my projects in my garage, or in my kitchen on baking something.
Promise of what? I think the major change with millennials and gen z is that we see through the dogmatism that is corporate culture. Even if the promise was that of the “American dream” 50 years ago it’s quite clearly not worth it to sacrifice your youth and 1/3 of your life (another third being sleep) to afford to sit around in a house and squeeze in stagnant social obligations for the rest of your life.
Life is what you make of it, and familial loyalty to a company that doesn’t care about me just doesn’t cut it.
You can order pizza according to the cartoons I grew up watching. It didn’t ever cover how the teenage turtles and their rat mentor made money. Try to find a reporter in a jumpsuit she might be able to help.
In my experience, small businesses can be even worse, because they’re run by the kind of middle management that everybody hates in a big company. Except now they’re the boss and have final say over everything that happens in the company.
My brother works for a small business. They got him in the door by being his buddy, just fun-loving fellow millennials who love to have a great time at work while having plenty of opportunities to move up within the company!
…he hasn’t gotten a raise in three years, and has had myriad issues unfairly pinned on him (legitimately) so he can’t move up in the ranks.
They’re just young boomers doing the same boomer shit, but they’re a little younger and cooler, bro!
Yep, worked for a small business as a teen. My experience was that the boss was decent at giving us raises every year, but got pissed when people gave us tips, never had enough people on hand to account for kids going on vacation or getting sick, and, as my buddy would say, “he’s the first person to tell you that there’s more than one way to skin a cat - but his way is the right way.” Dude couldn’t understand why kids on their summer vacation wouldn’t want to work 45 hours a week.
i remember reading similar headlines about millenials… this bullshit is always targeted at young adults, and its always the same superficial “analysis”
A guy from my wife’s age group is a federal government advisor regarding future of work. He has never worked a day in a proper job at a company. Only academics and politics.
“Many of us built, whether it’s bought homes or whatever, based on this promise of stability,” Jesuthasan said. “There was this expectation that the tail was bigger. And we took on liabilities and obligations early on because of that tail. I think this generation has seen that tail dissipate.”
In other words, when millennials did what their parents did and assumed if they worked hard they’d get to live a decent life. Then they got fucked by companies whose priorities became getting as much out of their employees as possible while investing in those employees as little as possible.
As a millennial, I hated the idea of debt. As a result, I’ve had no debt beyond college loans despite being able to afford a lower middle class lifestyle. It took me never living alone (roommates, SOs) but I did it. The education was bullshit and the loans were obscene but I got a piece of paper that helped me keep my job. After working in the public sector for 20+ years I actually had my loans forgiven… and now rent is going through the roof to compensate. Still, I might actually own a home before I’m 50, assuming current and future landlords don’t decide to take me for all I’m worth.
When I finally own a home, I’m sure it’ll get washed away by the thirteenth “century flood” that year or some other bullshit thanks to climate change. So fucking glad I decided not to have kids. Fuck this world.
That sounds like a horrible Kafkaesque nightmare. I fear my country is heading in the same direction. I’m saddened that it got so bad in the US, and that the “obvious steps in the right direction” were simply voted against. I’m reminded of the Community episode where they explore the alternative realities. We’re in the “Bernie lost to HIllary” one. Before that happened, I told a friend “Well… if Bernie loses, it’s all going to shit”. Sucks to have been right, although it started some time ago with Reagan gutting the middle class.
We either figure out how to redistribute wealth in the society in the next 30 years, or… “going to shit” will be the least of our problems.
If it makes you feel any better, the rent was going to skyrocket regardless of the loan forgiveness. That’s just the generations before us people trying to make sure they get to the top so they can pull the ladder up behind them.
We have no loan forgiveness here in Canada and rent is still going up faster than anyone can afford. It doesn’t help that all of the politicians are landlords.
I just saw the other month that only like 46% of Millennials own a house, compared to the 65% average of other generations. And of those who don’t, 52% of them aren’t saving for a down payment, often because of how shitty wages and even finding a job are. On top of that, only 20% of houses are currently affordable for the average American worker, down from 60% in 2016. And people wonder why we have no faith in the system.
Gen Z saw what happened to Gen X and to us Millennials, and don’t expect it to get any better for them either.
Millennial here. I was talking to my mom about this recently. We worked out the math of what I earn vs my dad at my age. Then we looked at what I laid for my house vs what they paid for theirs. For context, my parents still live in the same house I grew up in, and my house is in the same neighborhood and roughly the same size.
Their house in 1983 dollars would be about $165k today. My house was $275k in 2019, and that was well below most reasonable comps at the time. Now it’s supposedly worth $400k. At least that’s what my taxes and insurance are based on.
My dad had a solid white collar job. Not c suite, but firmly middle class at the time. I’m finally in a similar position after the 2008 and 2020 bullshit.
His salary when he was about 40 would be $140k in today dollars. I earn nowhere near that and have way more house debt.
Putting it in those terms was really eye opening for both of us. Most of my friends don’t have kids and don’t own a house. Shit, some still even live at home with their parents. We’re definitely not doing better than our baby boomer parents. The American dream died a generation or two before mine.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the price of the average home was $11,000.00. Of course people wanted to work hard and save, because they could see that it paid off almost instantly.
BTW, in 1960 $1 million would buy a mansion, a few nice cars, and a couple of businesses. Today, it’s what a rich guy pays for a party.
I wanted to see a graph, and couldn’t find one online.
It looks like, at least in the middle of Canada, being born between 1960 and 1980 was the ideal time if you wanted to buy a home.
This doesn’t take into account mortgage rates, tax rates, average household income, unemployment rates, or other cost of living expenses.
I just wanted a little chart, not to lose my whole day
You missed a word. It says “prioritizing living over working”. The promise was to work hard and a lot to get a good lifestyle (house, a nice car or two, vacations). Now it’s work hard but without those rewards in sight. So we cut back on working to a point where we can still have an okay lifestyle.
I realize I’m privileged as my situation is a lot better than having to live paycheck to paycheck. However, if I wanted to get a nice house, decent car, vacations, etc. I’d have to put in a lot more work than the usual 40 hours. Instead of doing that though I looked at my finances and decided, I could reduce my hours to 35 without decreasing my quality of life too much so I did that instead.
I do understand though that people in precarious and less-compensated jobs cannot afford this luxury.
Yeah, if you’ve got a high-paying job then you have the means to not have to prioritize work. Hopefully, that remains constant over the next several decades.
But how many Gen Z’ers are in that position?
We keep seeing articles about Gen Z’ers not being able to afford rent, let alone food and other basic comforts. They are, or will be, forced to put work first. Not just working harder to get the luxuries of their grandparents or parents, but working harder to scrape by.
And I don’t even see and end to this. Corporations will eventually abolish retirement, because very few will be able to retire the way things keep going.
I think the idea is that a lot of people prioritize only their work. The whole hustle grindset thing, working obscene hours to try to get rich. Instead of doing that, seeing that whole rat race for what it is, doing enough work to get by, and then actually enjoying your time elsewhere seems to be what this is advocating for.
I think the idea is that a lot of people prioritize only their work.
Is this really a thing? Has it ever been for the masses?
Sure, people might prioritize work over anything else when they are young, but that’s often necessary to secure a future.
Other people live to work, but that’s pretty rare.
Instead of doing that, seeing that whole rat race for what it is, doing enough work to get by, and then actually enjoying your time elsewhere seems to be what this is advocating for.
I thought that what most people do. Does anyone actually believe that working hard at their low-paying job is going to make them rich? I thought that idea was dead decades ago.
Just look at the hustle grindset, or sigma grind, or whatever you want to call it. No, most people aren’t working 120 hours a week at a McDonald’s, but a lot more are getting multiple jobs, side hustles, etc to get to “get ahead” in the game.
To get ahead or to get by? Nobody who’s grinding two or three jobs is wealthy, and I think they’re only doing it to pay the bills because a single job doesn’t cut it anymore.
I’ve spoken with uber drivers who already have a “good job” but they need money to support their parents who are living with them, perhaps multiple kids, etc. It really sucks to be in that situation because work is all you do.
Do the minimum to put the food you like on the table, to afford a place to live, and then fuck off for the rest of the time. No OT, no projects outside of work hrs, no checking email overnight. Do your job, to the level that is strictly required, and reprioritize yourself any other time.
I never said you’d be able to comfortably retire. That’s another part of it. The younger generations know they won’t retire at all, or at a reasonable time, so just do your 40, get enough to live, and go do something actually fulfilling.
So because the generations before them made the wrong choice, they have as well?
I’m not punishing younger generations, I’m saying that they’re even more screwed than previous generations, so they’ll still need to work hard… it just won’t get them any luxuries.
If my kids live with my my whole life I am A-OK with that.
You might be, but not everyone wants that, especially in homes where there is no separation (like no basement apartment). That could be a nightmare for both parents and the adult child.
This just isn’t true in the US. There’s absolutely a culture among older generations here of people working their ass off for nothing. And those people look down on younger folks who aren’t as stupid as they are, and don’t give away their labor for free.
“I just can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to work!” --my grandma, who’s been supported by my grandpa’s money for as long as I can remember.
Yeah, the people who were brainwashed into thinking that ‘working just to work is great,’ are undeniably unconcerned with the rest of us, and far too many people think that way.
While it’s true that I would want to do something productive with my downtime, and not be wasting it on video games or whatever, I definitely don’t want to do it for some CEO or other higher power who cares as much about me, as I do about the ants in my yard.
You’re falling for that propaganda too, a little bit; as are we all. We don’t need to be productive every moment of the day - hell, studies have shown that humans are only really productive about 4 hours out of the day. If you work a 9-5 style job, 4 hours of every day is spent doing things other than being productive. So don’t feel guilty for doing things just because they make you happy. Play video games, make Warhammer models, do silly little drawings that only you will ever see, whatever makes you happy, simply because that’s what life is about: doing things that make us happy. Time spent doing that is never time wasted, and screw the people that tried to convince entire generations that we only have worth as a person if we’re being “productive.”
You get what you pay for, pay your employees shit and get shit. Completely remove all rewards for hard work and no ones going to be incentivized to do more than the bare minnimum.
It’s shocking how much bare minimum work happens, or how much tossing over the fence and “yeah we’re aware we’ll fix it later” style approaches happen at my job. We can’t hire the right level of expertise because we won’t pay for it. I’ve got a foot out the door and it really doesn’t matter where I go because it will be a raise for the same stupid kind of environment, but at least it’ll be a raise.
At the last big boy firm I worked at, they set the metrics for getting a bonus so unrealistically high that it disincentived staff from even trying. It had a negative effect where everybody purposely did just enough to not get fired rather than killing themselves to come up short and get nothing.
They wanted something stupid like 2,500 billable hours which do not include meetings, continuing education, mandatory volunteer time, etc etc etc.
The biggest rock stars in the industry struggle to hit 2,000.
So we all dropped down to the 1,500 range because fuck that shit.
Double down. I’m not sure what happened after. I left about six months later.
The few people who stuck it out have since ascended to great heights. At the time, our regional had been absorbed by a national. I think the regional guys were trying to play tough to show off to their new overlords.
I don’t know, but I suspect that the national was the lesser of those soul crushing forces.
Regardless, you’ve got to be a ruthless sociopath to make it big in that industry. Step on your mother’s grave in Jack boots to get one rung higher type of stuff.
I’ve been playing down in the minors for five years now for about one third the money I could’ve had by now if I had stayed. I regret nothing.
I’m currently a manager but I’m sending in a proposal this week to take a pay cut and work remotely in a non-manager role so I can move way north and get an acreage. Less responsibility, less money but better life. I like the company but I want a life not a career.
What you’re seeing is the result of decades of Reaganomics coming home to roost.
Look up Hunter’ Thompson’s book about the “Hell’s Angels.” There’s a chapter on the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist circa 1970.
A biker could work six months as a Union stevedore and earn enough to live on the road for two years, and a part time waitress could support herself and a musician boyfriend.
X’er here. Been doing this my entire life. Fuck the corporate overlords. Everyone should prioritize life over work. Unfortunately for most the world is against them in this regard.
It means only working as hard as you’re paid to. If the multi-billion dollar megacorp you’re working for is only paying you $18/hr, you only put in an $18/hr effort; i.e. Work just barely hard enough to not get fired.
The only exception I think is worth thinking about is “Don’t minimum-ass it in a way that makes it suck for your peers.” Like, don’t work nights and weekends to hit unrealistic goals, agreed. But like I won’t push up half-assed untested code that you’re going to have to maintain. I’m having trouble coming up with good examples off the top of my head.
That’s the style I generally strive for. I take pride in doing my job well, living up to standards that I set for myself. I also don’t do anything extra and will leave a job site if a job is designed in a way that has me sitting around waiting on other people. I say no to employers/clients all the time and will happily/tactfully explain why, if asked. My employers/clients know that it’s a two way street with me, and I will not be exploited or let anyone on my team (on a given day) be exploited. Unfortunately, I had to spend over a decade being exploited to get to the point in my career were I’m valuable enough to be able to put my foot down. So there’s that…
The Corp is giving you the bare minimum they are legally required to give you, so you should do the same. This means clocking out at 5 sharp, and not picking up extra responsibilities without a pay increase.
But it also means you still have to put in the minimum required, show up on time, do all of the work. But keep in mind the Corp is the enemy here, not your coworkers. Don’t leave them waiting on you for a deadline if you can bust it out in a few minutes
That’s a great point and actually a perfect example of how I really feel when I say “work hard enough to not get fired”. Should also add, “so long as it’s not at the expense of your coworkers” to that saying.
For one of my friends, who I respect greatly, it means coming to terms with the fact that it’s not plausible for them to get a job that they’re passionate, in their field of study. They have less identity based attachment to the job they do have, and whilst they do generally like their job, they see it as a means to an end.
They know they probably could find a better job, perhaps even one in their field, but they’re happy with the balance of priorities they have now because it’s mostly working.
The old way was to convince people to devote their lives to the company, only to be laid off when convenient. The new way is to treat a job like a job and live your own life.
For me, it’s shutting out work correspondence right at 5pm. Working from home most of the time. If some life circumstance vaguely demands my time in a way that conflicts with work, the life circumstance will win.
It’s not horribly absolute. I did connect when I got a request to help some customers in Ukraine, figuring the very least I could do was help them out. Another customer that generally represents 30-40 million a year of revenue needed help off hours in December, and I obliged. In the event of a genuine emergency I’ll be flexible (but in a hurry to get it over with, even if it means “slap flex tape on it and it should hold things over” sort of approach).
Keep in mind this is grading on a curve. A close colleague works in person at the office 6 or 7 days a week, generally for 9 or 10 hours, and on top of that spends much of his home time remotely working on things too. He complains that if not everyone matches his work ethic that we won’t hit “the schedule”, and I respond if that’s the case, then there’s a problem with “the schedule”, not with people failing to work enough. Eternally poor planning with arbitrarily declared deadlines are not a legitimate source of emergency, and I won’t play along with that.
I’m 50 now. I’ve never held a job more than 5-6 years my entire life and I have changed professions many many times. I never bought into that work till you die life. I only worked to be able to afford the things I actually wanted and I prioritized adventure over stability. I moved all around the country (Canada) and travelled internationally by holding a job long enough to get to the next place and so on. I’ve recently learned I probably have ADHD which could account for some of my lifestyle choices.
After I was married my wife and I decided to start working toward a zero bill goal. We paid off all of our bills and eliminated wherever we could. We prioritized getting in nature and our own form of travel over keeping up with the Jones’. We saved everything else and invested what seemed a meager $500 into canadian cannabis just prior to legalization. Mostly on a whim. I personally learned to trade and moved that until it was enough to buy a house and some land where no one else wanted to live. We put some minor infrastructure in to help us grow food and invested in our land. All other investments, savings and any so called retirement went towards being mortgage free with enough space and the infrastructure to grow our own food. We have zero savings and less need for even a bank account than most. We recognise we were and are fortunate to get to where we are now. There was a lot of luck along the way.
Now we have a family. Our house bills include yearly taxes, internet and unfortunately power. Our truck is 16 years old and paid for. We forage, fish and hunt and grow pretty much all our own veg. I don’t work due to serious illnesses (yay Canada that I’m not way in debt there) and my spouse works about 5 months out of the year at a seasonal job so I don’t drive her crazy. We make less than $35,000/ Canadian a year and that’s enough. Our three kids wear second hand clothes except for outerwear because being dry and warm is important, they know how to pirate and adblock and they can grow food and cook. Our wants are few which makes our needs even less.
Yeah I mean mad magazine was talking about gen x like this back in the 90s. But the media needs to pretend everything today is new or they’d have nothing to print.
Also, if you see some of the articles and movies from the 60s/70s, they were saying all this stuff about baby boomers too.
I saw somewhere where they gathered examples of “people in their 20s don’t want to work the same way the folks in their 40s did at their age” dating back to at least the mid nineteenth century.
I’ve also seen the point made that a lot of the assumptions about the boomers having it nice and easy comes from media products that strategically wanted to frame things as doing great, as they thought that’s what drove media consumption, folks wanting to feel good about the world. Now the general understanding is keeping people in an eternal state of panic and dread will keep those eyeballs glued to the product. Bad stuff happened back then too, and plenty of it should have been a more prominent source of dread by today’s standards.
Further, to the extent it was true, it was mostly a USA thing coming from a couple of phenomenon: -Every other major industrial economy had been severely impacted by World Wars I && II, with USA barely having a scratch. So for a good while, most of the economic activity favored the USA across the globe. -Factors like racism where huge swaths of the USA population ‘didn’t count’ when people were thinking how good things were going.
Also genX, I went hard in corporate life for a long time, survived many rounds of layoffs and watched good friends go for reasons that are bad ones- until one fine day I was laid off with 18,000 others. Meanwhile they kept hiring H1B workers and doing stock buybacks and doing mass-layoffs every 2 years to keep the regional labor market full of competition and wages depressed. Knowing that they’re not interested in keeping their promises of stability and prosperity goes a long ways towards me never going above and beyond
Agreed, , basically what the article here is saying that the kids were watching us and they don’t trust anybody. Hell, I never heard my Grand dad yell louder about what I am making. He worked union construction in the 80’s in the city I live in now and though I make more than a lot of construction guys I know on a similar docket I’m only making about 3$ more than what he did back then. He ranted for an hour when I told him what the standard rents and apartment sizes in my area. There is nothing so satisfying as having an stenetorian 86 year old positively enraged on behalf of the kids about their pay, working conditions and quality of life.
It’s been my personal mental balm to the placid incuriousity and damn near sociopathic lack of empathy I catch off some of the boomers and the elder millenials who picked up trades work immediately after highschool.
Also GenX. Not being able to afford treatment for mental illness robbed me of 20 years of living. I had better insurance in the 90s than I do now. Never thought I would miss my HMO from then.
I agree. But also: nobody should expect others to carry them. You have to balance these two things in your life.
Since many people here are American, I feel like I need to clarify a bit. I live in a country where almost nobody works over 7,5h per day. And when they do, every hour is compensated for, sometimes with 150%/200% surcharge. I find it extremely weird that some people in a 1st world country work overtime for free, or generally speaking “work” over 8 hours per day in intellectual work on a regular basis.
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