I maintain - we did this thing in March 2020 where we said "obviously you need money to stay alive; obviously we need you to stay home in order to stay alive, so here's money." And once we did that thing? We revealed to EVERYONE that underpaying and overworking is a choice, not an outcome of the system. And the minute you show someone you are choosing to fuck them over, they choose not to get fucked anymore.
- A group of first-year analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. complained to bank leaders last year that they were working an average of 95 hours a week and that job stress had harmed their physical and mental health.
- “When I was an associate, if someone called me on vacation, I was just happy people were continuing to call me,” says Stephen Zubiago, chief executive and managing partner of Nixon Peabody. “I don’t know if that was the right mind-set.”
Stephen graduated Brown in 1988, Marquette in 1991. A Motorola StarTac was probably his third or fourth cell phone.
- For time-sensitive work, like researching case law or reviewing documents by a deadline, that can create a “huge staffing problem,” he says.
- For much of her career, Mary Waisanen, a 43-year-old structural engineering technician in Virginia Beach, Va., would say yes when asked to work overtime to meet deadlines. The extra hours brought her a pay bump. But after watching TikToks about how to reach a healthy work-life balance, she says, she realized that she shouldn’t need to work extra hours to make ends meet.
They got us to forget the social contract
- She recently asked her manager to review her salary and see if she was due a raise, as well as for a performance review—which would be her first in three years.
And when we woke up...
- “Until then,” she says, “I will make more of an effort to ‘act my wage,’ ” referencing a phrase that’s gone viral on social media and encourages workers to do solely what they are compensated for. Ms. Waisanen says she has since received a letter stating she will receive a 12.5% raise in 2023.
Negotiating like a real shark there, Mary. Cost-of-living is up 15% over the time you didn't get a raise, but by putting your foot down you managed to not quite close the gap.
- What could prompt a widespread return of professional ambition? A severe economic downturn that sends unemployment soaring might make workers feel they need to work harder to show their value.
- Now, so many people want to take time off in the summer and around the winter holidays that Ms. Dockendorf says she is considering shutting down the entire office for a week twice a year. That would require telling clients far in advance to expect dark weeks, she says.
Just for the record, there is an eight week period during which I cannot buy motorcycle parts... because while the parent company is Chinese, the factory is Italian.
- These days, many workers are content doing the same job they’ve done, Mr. Diamantaras says. The pay is comfortable, the company is stable and many workers want to make time for friends and activities: “That’s OK, but you have to have people—we constantly look for people—who have drive, that we feel like we can promote to higher-paying jobs in the organization.”
Can I put on my pointy-haired-boss hat for a minute? We basically see two types of workers - those who want to do more, and those who don't. Don't care what your professional skills are, don't care what your level of ambition is - your job is not your life and you may have grand ambitions outside of work but when I'm paying you? You wanna show up, sit down, and plow through the tedium I stack in front of you. And if I demand more than you're willing to give up, I'm the asshole. On the other hand, if you're someone who wants to do more, it behooves me to recognize that your time with me will be limited to that which fulfills your ambition and the best thing I can do is send you off into the world better than you came in because we'll meet again, guaranteed.
This shit is fundamental, but American-style capitalism presupposes that if you aren't willing to be ground to dust you don't deserve a paycheck and it's fucking hilarious to me whenever the WSJ runs one of these "beatings will continue until morale improves" thinkpieces.
- In a recent job listing for a property-and-casualty insurance agent, TGS laid out those expectations: “If you’re just OK with getting by, or are a ‘quiet quitter,’ this will be too fast paced for you. We’re looking for people that want a new Mercedes.”
- U.S. labor productivity, as measured by how much the typical worker gets done in an hour, fell at a 5.9% annual rate in the first quarter of 2022—its steepest decline in more than a decade. It fell 4.1% in the second, before rising at a 0.8% pace in the third. Some economists believe worker disengagement is one factor in recent declines. Productivity can also be affected by hiring trends and the state of the economy.
- Many workers say they see little connection between working hard and being rewarded. About half of the 1,071 respondents to a May survey by The Wall Street Journal and NORC at the University of Chicago said they don’t have a good chance of improving their standard of living, compared with 27% who said they do. The 27% figure was a 20 percentage-point drop from a year earlier. About 60% said they were pessimistic about most people’s ability to achieve the American dream.
We call that "burying the lede"
- Growing up, Austin Wiggins saw his father work long hours as a manager at a regional grocery chain, without ascending to the store-director level. Doing so, his father, Daniel Wiggins, says, would have meant possibly moving to a store location further from family, which he didn’t want.
In May, just before he started a new accounting job, the younger Mr. Wiggins asked his dad to cosign a loan to buy a 2020 Toyota Camry. Mr. Wiggins says he was taken aback when he saw his dad’s salary, required for the loan. It was under six figures, and not far above what he was going to make as a 23-year-old recent graduate, he says. “I know how many hours he’s put in, how much he’s given to this company,” Mr. Wiggins says. “There’s not compelling enough correlation to make me become the person that’s going well above and beyond what I need to do.”