Modern professionalism and work ethic - Am I getting old or??

[Rerock]

Holy shit does this thread resonate.

Yeah, shit's going to shit. Quality is tanking, people are complacent, unmotivated, and 'that's not my job'...

Quiet quitting is a thing. For 10yrs I busted my ass taking on any and everything in the office 'chasing the carrot'. After no compensation, I stopped that crap and only did what's on my job description/swim lane. They ended up hiring 3 FTE's to cover the shit I was doing. My boss is kind of pissed because shit's burning down now, and he know if he's gives me a raise I'll get back to it, but he won't, so here we are.

It's fun being able to sit back and watch people flail in desperation while it burns.

 

[Bacho]

Holy shit does this thread resonate.

Yeah, shit's going to shit. Quality is tanking, people are complacent, unmotivated, and 'that's not my job'...

Quiet quitting is a thing. For 10yrs I busted my ass taking on any and everything in the office 'chasing the carrot'. After no compensation, I stopped that crap and only did what's on my job description/swim lane. They ended up hiring 3 FTE's to cover the shit I was doing. My boss is kind of pissed because shit's burning down now, and he know if he's gives me a raise I'll get back to it, but he won't, so here we are.

It's fun being able to sit back and watch people flail in desperation while it burns.

I used to be convinced that hard work would be appropriately compensated. Working for very small organizations it always was.

I’m joining my first large corporation I was in the union and obviously it doesn’t work that way there. Worked my way up and accepted a promotion to management, assuming things will be back to normal.

I worked hard, always in tune with the operation even on my off days. On all of the extra opportunities that I could, and was next in line for the next promotion. My pay was on the very low end of the scale, but I considered that acceptable given how very little experience I still had.

Years into that job, my coworker started hounding everybody about their salaries, which I preferred not to know or tell. Unfortunately, it came out one of the guys I was training at the time with zero experience was getting 25% more than I was. The coworkers that had been hounding for that information was very upset that he was the lowest paid guy, despite a very poor performer and a general screw up all around. He didn’t know it but he was getting $10,000 more than I was.

That killed it for me.

 

[roundhouse]

I used to be convinced that hard work would be appropriately compensated. Working for very small organizations it always was.

I’m joining my first large corporation I was in the union and obviously it doesn’t work that way there. Worked my way up and accepted a promotion to management, assuming things will be back to normal.

I worked hard, always in tune with the operation even on my off days. On all of the extra opportunities that I could, and was next in line for the next promotion. My pay was on the very low end of the scale, but I considered that acceptable given how very little experience I still had.

Years into that job, my coworker started hounding everybody about their salaries, which I preferred not to know or tell. Unfortunately, it came out one of the guys I was training at the time with zero experience was getting 25% more than I was. The coworkers that had been hounding for that information was very upset that he was the lowest paid guy, despite a very poor performer and a general screw up all around. He didn’t know it but he was getting $10,000 more than I was.

That killed it for me.

Yep

The older folks don’t talk about salaries but the young folks do talk a bit it and share that info amongst themselves

We’ve had several younger people who have been working here several years get super pissed when they learn that a new hire right out of school with zero experience is making a substantial more money .

And I don’t blame them at all

We’ve had a couple people leave to go do basically the same job somewhere else at double the salary .

I could make more moneh somewhere else but I’d have to work a lot harder too .

Very few places pay existing employees what they should be getting in the current market .

 

[Landslide]

🤔

But here you are-

It takes a lot of work to scroll through the threads on here, it takes even more work to post threads to help keep people on here informed too. Speaking of that, I need a pay raise.

 

[det107]

...Speaking of that, I need a pay raise.

I thought the truth was free? If you want pay, go apply for the Village Voice editor gig-

 

[Landslide]

I used to be convinced that hard work would be appropriately compensated. Working for very small organizations it always was.

I’m joining my first large corporation I was in the union and obviously it doesn’t work that way there. Worked my way up and accepted a promotion to management, assuming things will be back to normal.

I worked hard, always in tune with the operation even on my off days. On all of the extra opportunities that I could, and was next in line for the next promotion. My pay was on the very low end of the scale, but I considered that acceptable given how very little experience I still had.

Years into that job, my coworker started hounding everybody about their salaries, which I preferred not to know or tell. Unfortunately, it came out one of the guys I was training at the time with zero experience was getting 25% more than I was. The coworkers that had been hounding for that information was very upset that he was the lowest paid guy, despite a very poor performer and a general screw up all around. He didn’t know it but he was getting $10,000 more than I was.

That killed it for me.

Whatcha do about it then?

 

[Landslide]

I thought the truth was free? If you want pay, go apply for the Village Voice editor gig-

I should be on par with with the pay scale same as the hall way monitors on here

 

[FleshEater]

All I can say to the OP is your in government/contract work what do you expect? It’s been a mess for over a decade.

I’ve been a contractor for 20 years. I’ve been a contractor for DOD for the past 4 years or so and it’s a mess. Because of government.

I’m the type of contractor that I don’t care about what hurdles they tell me I should jump through, I just get the work done and bypass the 4 other people they want included for no reason at all. Many DOD managers have told me we just get stuff done and they appreciate it.

But the majority of contractors use those hurdles and roadblocks to keep kicking the can down the road instead of just getting it done. Anyone who works for government on either side and thinks more government is the answer is freaking retarded.

 

[Bacho]

Whatcha do about it then?

I left for another job that more than doubled my salary.

I work hard and strive to do a good job. But even with the increased compensation I have lost all appetite for going above and beyond. The value I place on time away from work has gone up dramatically.

Edit, well I haven’t shared my salary with anybody at work at the new place. One of my peers did tell me his trying to bait mine. Currently, he’s the guy bending over backwards and giving up all family life for work. He has four years with the company on me. I started around 10% more than his current. I’m well aware that cycle will continue.

 

[Landslide]

All I do pretty much is work anymore. I work at work, I work at home and I work at the farm. I have some fishing trips planned in Louisiana the next few months but that’s about it.

I do think the work ethic in our society sucks today, however; I blame companies for a lot of it also. The way they treat their employees causes people to not give a fawk. I know I lost my “I care about and brag about the company I’m working for” attitude around 15 plus years ago. It hasn’t effected my work ethic as I’m self driven and self rewarding on my accomplishments, not pushed to do my work.

Being a manager now, it’s a new ball game dealing with people working below me. I’m lucky for now that I have a group of good guys to work with I can count on getting their jobs down and done right. I make sure they know that as well. It’s not hard to show people you appreciate the work they do and I think it helps with motivation and morale.

Anyway, keep it pointed in the wind.

 

[Landslide]

I left for another job that more than doubled my salary.

I work hard and strive to do a good job. But even with the increased compensation I have lost all appetite for going above and beyond. The value I place on time away from work has gone up dramatically.

Edit, well I haven’t shared my salary with anybody at work at the new place. One of my peers did tell me his trying to bait mine. Currently, he’s the guy bending over backwards and giving up all family life for work. He has four years with the company on me. I started around 10% more than his current. I’m well aware that cycle will continue.

I’m very tight lipped about things at work to other employees that quite honestly, don’t need to know. It makes things a lot easier and less drama. I play dumb or refuse to answer questions when some employees try to bait me into a conversation where they try to fish for information. After a couple times of that they give up knowing they’re not going to get anything.

I don’t really care what other employees earn where I work and don’t want to know. I only care about my compensation package for me to live on. It’s a touchy subject for a lot of employees and a rabbit hole to avoid at all cost.

 

[grumpy356]

The hustle left when wages never kept up with inflation. If I was making the equivalent of the 80s or 90s I'd be working like aknate eating cold cans of soup one bite at a time at the tool box grabbing tools.

On top of that the jobs want me to output the same amount of work of 3 people and guess what happens when I meet that amount of work? I get the work of 4 or 5 people as a reward with no increase in pay and nobody gets hired to help out.

Why would they spend the money to hire someone else they got some dumbass doing the work of x amount of people for 1 persons wage.

At this point burnout has set in, and money and vacation won’t fix it. You may pull it together for a week or a month, then it’s back to the same apathy as before

 

[Ebs]

Yep

The older folks don’t talk about salaries but the young folks do talk a bit it and share that info amongst themselves

We’ve had several younger people who have been working here several years get super pissed when they learn that a new hire right out of school with zero experience is making a substantial more money .

And I don’t blame them at all

We’ve had a couple people leave to go do basically the same job somewhere else at double the salary .

I could make more moneh somewhere else but I’d have to work a lot harder too .

Very few places pay existing employees what they should be getting in the current market .

They say to maximize your income potential you should be job hopping every 2-3 years. That seems pretty hectic and most people probably choose comfort, familiarity, etc over income and career progression.

 

[NakedJeep]

Yep

The older folks don’t talk about salaries but the young folks do talk a bit it and share that info amongst themselves

We’ve had several younger people who have been working here several years get super pissed when they learn that a new hire right out of school with zero experience is making a substantial more money .

And I don’t blame them at all

We’ve had a couple people leave to go do basically the same job somewhere else at double the salary .

I could make more moneh somewhere else but I’d have to work a lot harder too .

Very few places pay existing employees what they should be getting in the current market .

Amateur. We're not just driving employees to other companies; we're driving them right out of the IT industry. They'd rather work at a bank or sell shoes after a year with us.

 

[78bronco460]

The attitude from some of the crew tells me which ones still have their participation trophies from junior soccer or whatever. Entitlement is their malfunction. Their feelings are more important than your rights. Respect their identity and pronouns or there are consequences. All this crap comes with the package to the workplace, and woke businesses approve.

 

[DRTDEVL]

They say to maximize your income potential you should be job hopping every 2-3 years. That seems pretty hectic and most people probably choose comfort, familiarity, etc over income and career progression.

That only works to an extent. When you are in a small market, you have to understand when the hopping needs to come to a close and negotiate from within.

I'm pretty sure I am the fourth highest paid salaried employee in the company right now. I negotiated my way here in less than 3 years... of course, I had the work ethic and results to back up my negotiations. The only salaries paid higher than mine are the CEO, COO/President, and the VP.

It's funny, though, when you look in the parking lot. The CEO drives a brand new Lincoln Navigator. The COO drives a brand new Nissan Armada. The VP drives a 2-year-old F-350 SuperCrew. Meanwhile, below me, the head of accounting drives a brand new F-150 Platinum, the accounts payable clerk drives a nearly new Suburban, one of the dispatchers drives a relatively new Lincoln MKZ... and I pull up into that same parking lot every morning driving a 12-year-old Prius.. Can't buy common sense.

 

[IowaOffRoad]

There are, of course, several problems with this entire discussion.

1. Everyone responding here is the best and brightest. Statistically that is not true. This may be why you think you are undervalued.
2. If some of you who aren't as good as you think you are evaluate what you are getting paid vs. what that similar work would get paid if you walked into another company today doing the same thing at the employer you complain about, how would that compare?
3. The general divide seems to be big corp vs small company, though there are certainly small companies that do the same.

IF you are as good as you think you are, go somewhere your talents are rewarded. If you are unwilling to do that, STFU. You want free markets, this is what free markets do. They aren't immoral, they are amoral. The morality comes from those who participate in it.
How many of you are not doing your complete job but claim you are doing it, but refuse to go "above and beyond"? While bitching about others who are doing the same?

The best analogy for working for someone is this:
The guy who hires you is in charge of shoveling a large mound of shit. If you grab a shovel and take some of the shovels of shit away from him, you will be rewarded. If you take all the shit away from him, you will be greatly rewarded. If you shovel shit but it ends up in the wrong place, you will be less rewarded and coached up. If you are untrainable in this respect you will receive no reward. If you stand around complaining of the smell, the heat, the flies, or come up with 1000 reasons why you can't shovel shit today, don't expect a reward.
IF you are actually shoveling shit and you don't receive a reward, why would you continue to shovel shit for the guy who doesn't understand the value of shoveling shit?
If you are going to rail on about how you aren't getting paid enough, then you'd better start quantifying the value of your work in real dollars to your employer. I left the last one because I was able to do this and it fell on deaf ears. Go calculate how much money you make per day for the company, subtract your wage. You now know your value. Yes, those of you in HR/safety/accounts have a tougher time with this, but all you have to do is look at the cost of doing your job wrong and using that as a benchmark. If you as safety director keep all the paperwork and training up-to-date and save 300k in OSHA violations/year, then you have a real easy cost/benefit for your 125k/year salary.
I'm sure y'all will take many issues with this, but you should really examine your own life and work regardless. I used to think 'the man' was keeping me down. That's loser talk. I make way more money now that I did when I thought that way. All while knowing that I can do better, and should be.

BTW fuck all of you who think this is boomer thinking. People who wanted to get ahead have thought this way forever. The asian cultures, the jewish culture, the nigerians, they've all had this relationship to work. Whenever you place them in a land that is relatively free of prejudice and government interference they kick the ass of the natives.
I have every reason to think like a loser considering my upbringing, and the politics swimming around my house growing up, and my first job working for a large corp. that was a good example of what some of you talk about. This is all designed to get you to give up.
A bunch of you bitch about the .gov creating a welfare state. Well, you're inability to go above and beyond, and then be adaptable enough to leave for a better job if you've earned compensation that you aren't getting... you are participating in the welfare state too. You are giving up on the free market and now expecting a company to care about your well-being while you underperform.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is something you probably agree with too.

Now, from another angle, those of you who compare standards of living cross-generationally, what did they have that you don't? What do you have that they don't?
What all of you forget who say the boomers had it easy is that they still didn't "own" their house until the kids were mostly gone. They also didn't pay for cable, they didn't have a smartphone, a computer. Many of the household appliances that you take for granted were not available at the time, and if they had some of them they didn't have all of them. When you don't have a bunch of consumer goods to spend money on, you can pour more of it into a house. BTW this was the norm pre-boomer as well, but post-WW2 did push the age when much of this was available down a decade.
2 things depressed the wage growth in this country: The boomers because of the size of their generation driving down wages for everyone, and the emptying out of the homes when all the women went to work. Both happened around the same time. A lot of this was because the boomer men, once they were in their 20s-30s, didn't realize that much of the quality of life they got off of dad's income growning up was due to the post-WW2 boom. Instead of adjusting their expectations they asked their wives to work. Because the culture was also pushing women's lib the women felt it was their duty to contribute. This depressed wages even further. We didn't really swallow these changes until the 90's as a society, as can be seen if you look at when real wages started to climb again.
So, it was the boomer's fault for handling their living standard poorly, but their parents fault for not preparing them properly, and our fault for not recognizing what happened and demanding unreasonable things from life without earning them.

 

[Slander]

That's a lot of words, I'll read that during a bullshit zoom meeting tomorrow

 

[IowaOffRoad]

Everytime I see "thats a lot of words" I know that the right people have read it, don't have a good response, and fall back to "uh, you write too much".

 

[Ebs]

You know someone really knows their shit when they can take a complicated subject or complex thought and break it down it into two or three sentences.

 

[IowaOffRoad]

To add more words that slander and others "won't read"...

That's not to say that the last few generations haven't been fed a bill of goods. Everyone is told that if you do the right thing success 'will' follow. That's not how it works. Sometimes you are just going to suffer. The thing that everyone used to know is this: Do the right thing and you are more likely to have success. And you may have to start over a few times. There are plenty of examples from history of people who did it long before the boomers and our desire to give every generation a name because we all became naval-gazing narcissists and lump everyone together into a collective "us" or "them". There are knuckleheads in every generation. Arse and others who insist it's the boomers fault aren't right, they just have had an outsize impact due to their size. The millenials are the next bubble, they will be blamed for everything by arse's grand-nephews as he's to selfish and undesirable to breed
Its not like going about life right is a guarantee of anything. Shit happens. But family, community, education, and a go-get-'em work ethic will win out... eventually. That why I mentioned the communities I did in the last post, they disproportionately beat average American. Their communities are what we should all aspire to, not want to marginalize or hate.
People eventually get what they deserve. Sometimes people get what they don't deserve. Good and bad things. That's life. But living it as well as you can will at least limit the damage of fate.

 

[IowaOffRoad]

You know someone really knows their shit when they can take a complicated subject or complex thought and break it down it into two or three sentences.

True, but that requires an audience of similar education and good intentions. Pithy statements just lead to arguments over everything left out that everyone is supposed to already know.
I broke down a century of economics into less than 10000 characters. There's been many books written that just cover the 80's. Fuck off

 

[[486]]

Everytime I see "thats a lot of words" I know that the right people have read it, don't have a good response, and fall back to "uh, you write too much".

or I just can't be asked to read all that shit

 

[scooter2374]

I was on my phone at work and also skipped the 19 paragraphs of verbal diarrhea

 

[[486]]

okay skimmed it a little bit and the bit about a growing labor force decreasing wages just sounds like communist unionista talk

 

[IowaOffRoad]

okay skimmed it a little bit and the bit about a growing labor force decreasing wages just sounds like communist unionista talk

That’s why you shouldn’t cherry-pick. Just because that’s the best explanation of the facts doesn’t mean that one should advocate for government intervention.

I was on my phone at work and also skipped the 19 paragraphs of verbal diarrhea

Go to tictoc if you’re attention span is that short

 

[spork]

I'm working the Linux admin side of things (dabble in AIX and Solaris but they are on the way out). My struggle the last 2 weeks is getting a big data cluster talking on network and the OS installed. Just backing up I'm not involved in any way before a ticket shows up in my queue that there are 18 boxes sitting in Vegas that need an OS installed. Push for more details and finally get a they need to be RHEL 8 because they can't figure out 9. So I get to upgrade them in 5 years , I have access to ILO on all of them take a few days and every one of them show link down. Ask around and find out the network team just sent the switch out and these are going to have a public and private network both set up with LACP. A week of sitting on my hands and the only guy in Vegas at the data center says he has them plugged in. Attempt to connect and half the odd numbered servers will let me connect, all even numbered I can't hit. Finally get some relief that they weren't plugged in right and I can finally connect to everything, run all the ansible config stuff and I think I'm close to done. Except... Now I've got 8 NVME disks that the hardware can't mirror because the controller either doesn't support it or they were too cheap to buy a controller to support it. So software raid time, and now I'm in the middle of the RAID level discussions where they all have opinions, all want to do it differently, so I've done 3 different configs and they are going to test it out and I'm going to wind up blowing the config away and doing whatever they want when they figure it out.

I'm sure someone's probably getting close to complaining at this point about how long it has taken, I still wonder if they know what they are doing.

 

[Poriggity]

I manage a bunch of younger people and I am amazed at their lack of caring and their general entitlement attitudes. My boss hasn't been giving anyone any written disciplinary forms for attendance, and since I was sick of it, I started handing out write ups like candy. I have multiple people on their final writeups for attendance. I had one guy ,who's on a final for attendance, literally ask me, "what happens if I'm late again? because I know it's going to happen." I looked him dead in the eye and told him if he wakes up late again and knows he can't make it to work on time, he might as well stay home, because I'm terminating his employment. People still aren't getting it. They all feel like it's ok to just show up late every day, and no consequences will happen. I'm sick of it, and I'm ready to start firing people for it. This generation of younger workers is lazy AF, and I have no idea how most of them are surviving on less than 40 hrs a week.

 

[jpmassey]

Try hiring somebody in the construction industry. They have to absolute worst work ethic, but still want to be paid $300/hr. That's literally what plumbers want around here, and still won't answer their phone.

 

[Gtrplyr78]

I manage a bunch of younger people and I am amazed at their lack of caring and their general entitlement attitudes. My boss hasn't been giving anyone any written disciplinary forms for attendance, and since I was sick of it, I started handing out write ups like candy. I have multiple people on their final writeups for attendance. I had one guy ,who's on a final for attendance, literally ask me, "what happens if I'm late again? because I know it's going to happen." I looked him dead in the eye and told him if he wakes up late again and knows he can't make it to work on time, he might as well stay home, because I'm terminating his employment. People still aren't getting it. They all feel like it's ok to just show up late every day, and no consequences will happen. I'm sick of it, and I'm ready to start firing people for it. This generation of younger workers is lazy AF, and I have no idea how most of them are surviving on less than 40 hrs a week.

You manage at a truck stop correct?
Typically wages and hours scheduled are not up to par (this goes for techs as well).

Sheer amount of work put on a small group of workers is crazy (basically work for three people/keep quiet/make crap pay for it).

Not excusing their tardiness, but if you were making peanuts you would be better off looking for a better gig/investing into yourself versus being a cheerleader for a place that could care less for you.

Having driven all over the US, and having my work truck serviced at Speedco/Southern Tire Mart etc. while on the road these were my impressions.