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> I calculated how much that cost the company and made a presentation to my boss about how much more we could have done by hiring minimum wage workers to perform the same manual labor for the same $ they paid us.

This is funny and very self-aware of you, but you bring up a good point.

Would people feel worse/better/the same if the company said "you can take a day off today and we're going to give your day's salary to a bunch of minimum wage labor to perform charity work."

Or maybe give people the option to show up to the event or allow their salary that day to be use to pay a few people to show up in their place.

If it was a team building exercise, the altruism was not the point, but a vehicle for social cohesion.

Sending people home defeats the purpose.

If team building, then yes. But charity work doesn't really sound like team building. It sounds more like "look how good our company is we do charity work on company time" culture building.

In which case the goal is to make people feel good about the company.

2 birds, 1 stone

(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kill_two_birds_with_one_stone)

> Most people were more interested in how it made them feel to do something nice for sick kids. I didn't understand that, I thought the goal was to perform the maximum amount of good for the kids.

I recommend two books:

1. Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062339355/against-empathy/ Summary: people should be more compassionate, not more empathetic.

2. The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life http://elephantinthebrain.com/ Summary: 80% of what people do is signalling for others and themselves.

You were not wrong. It's just that these company exercises are all about social signalling. Instead of sitting in a circle and everyone telling everyone else about their values and empathy and personal development they did some task that achieved the same.

I used to have this mentality until I tried hiring minimum wage workers.

Minimum wage workers are extremely low quality. They have 0 skills and require education on everything. Sure Engineers need to learn too, but there's a gigantic difference.

Minimum wage workers are hard to find. Most people won't work for that little, so turnover is high.

Minimum wage workers don't care. They know they can find another job easily.

I was forced into paying 15$/hr for data collection as a result.

You have to pay for quality work. If you pay the minimum you get the minimum quality of work.

Yeah, that actually makes perfect sense. I suppose you could say that when a state sets a minimum wage, it creates a new 'zero' level for productivity, and then companies need to pay 'x' above that to compete for productive employees. If it indeed works that way, then that's policy as intended, right?

Is there a chance it's not just "about the feels" but also about team building that may pay dividends later when it comes to "normal work"?

I'm not saying the method used was effective in that regard, but it's possible the aim went beyond what was immediately in front of you. Strongly bonded teams (whether built socially or through adversity) tend to be better teams.

I know HN probably skews towards an industrious/utilitarian/pragmatist point of view, but many of us probably work in teams where not everyone holds the same perspective. Understanding how those people work and are motivated is important.

This. Feelings became such a driving force lately, no matter where you look. Politics, business, it's all about how people "feel". And not even really how the feel, but more about the pretending of how they feel.

Your example trends a little bit on the extreme end of the spectrum (I totally get your point, so), but the truth is that for a lot of people that is a truly good experience. IMHO companies are abusing this for cheap employee motivation and PR.

Is it really abuse, though? Asking employees to volunteer their time to charity has got to be pretty low on the list of scummy ways to boost motivation and PR.

When the pay is lousy feelings become important.

When the pay is good, feelings are important too. Consider, if you're well paid, your skill set is (probably) in high demand in the industry and getting a similarly high pay at other places is (relatively) easy.

At that point, feelings play a pretty important role in getting you to stay.

> When the pay is good, feelings are important too.

When the pay is market then the feelings are important. When the pay higher then market, the feelings are not important. That's how finance keeps the talent. That's how Uber got away with what it got away with until it became clear that its employees were not going to become insta-rich after the IPO.

These examples are everywhere.

I have found the opposite for me. I'm not the feelings guy, but these days I seek more of the kinds of compensation that generally are not tracked and taxed by the state. So I care more about flexible schedules, vacation time, etc. I need to make a certain amount of $ to maintain my lifestyle, but otherwise I'm trying to maximize those other things. I can imagine for many people, their feelings is another kind of compensation that doesn't get tracked and taxed by the state.

> So I care more about flexible schedules, vacation time, etc.

Would you still care about it if you were paid 3x or would you work for a couple of years and peace out?

Unlikely. I'm a single parent. No amount of money can purchase my kid's childhood back for them, or me. I've already declined offers to double my salary, because I'd have had to travel for work regularly. That being said, there is surely some threshold of income past which I would be willing to change at least some things up.

Your story reminds me of an anecdote in The Economist where an econ professor wondered why it was socially unacceptable to hire someone to help his friends move house rather than helping directly himself, when he didn't want to.

As an economist, I've often wondered what would happen if i came to an agreement to split household chores in a certain way with my wife.

Then if I could automate or outsource all my chores, I would only have free time to spend around the house while still doing my share!

Surely marital bliss and mutual appreciation would follow! :p

This made me genuinely chuckle. I love economic theories applied to real life when they border on absurd because they assume everything is about maximizing utility.

I'll be sure to farm out all my spousal duties if I have better things to do and I'll report back on how that went.

One time my wife explained to me that she didn't feel like I appreciated her doing my laundry. I responded that she should stop doing my laundry. I didn't feel like it was her "job" to do the laundry and if it was the source of some emotional problem, it could easily be avoided. I thought I had solved the problem. She's my ex-wife now.

This reminds me of some web article I read a while ago complaining about how women suffer more "emotional labor" in relationships. It was of course written by a women, but to me, it really seemed like a lot of whining, which amounted to "I think all this stuff is necessary, so if my husband doesn't pitch in and do half of it, it's unfair." So, for instance, if the wife insists on having an immaculately clean house, and the husband doesn't do his share on keeping the house up to her level of perfection, then he's a slacker. But from his perspective, he doesn't care about the house being that spic-and-span, so why should he be responsible for that much work? There was more to it than that; I think another big example was keeping up with social engagements. Again, something where the woman somehow thought these things were absolutely necessary, volunteered to do them, and then complained that she was having to do all this unpaid labor, while the man really didn't care about doing these things at all.

I saw the same: https://twitter.com/thebettinaarndt/status/12256288137003212...

It might show, though, that those two people aren't very compatible and maybe not a good match for marriage.

I believe that's absolutely true, however the people whining about "emotional labor" never seem to see this, they just blame the husband.

Honestly, I'm starting to think that very few married couples are really all that compatible in the first place, and that the institution isn't a very good deal for most people involved. Considering just how many marriages end in divorce, plus how many people simple stay single these days, it seems like marriage really isn't workable. It only worked in "the old days" because women were 2nd-class citizens who rarely could get good jobs, and social pressures just forced people to get married, and stay married, even if they were miserable together.

I'm learning standup comedy. That is a great joke.

"I'll be sure to farm out all my spousal duties..."

Careful that your spouse doesn't prefer the performance of those duties by the contractor to how you perform them.

I don't think it's socially unacceptable to hire someone or purchase something for the benefit of a friend in general, especially if you are in a better position to do so than the friend (e.g. you run a service company in that field or are much wealthier than the friend).

However, in the particular case of moving, a friend might not want an untrusted stranger handling their belongings, so you would need their consent and they might not give it.

> The most common reason people leave companies is not compensation. It's usually about relationships, primarily with the boss but also coworkers

I can fully agree with that. I have only left one job to pursue "better" opportunities (a move abroad). I also regretted it later, as I left a great team. All the other exits were caused by me being tired of arrogant/ignorant managers.

Two out of three times it was about terrible working conditions and lack of a will to do anything to improve the situation.

"...a company is not cause driven because they sponsor walkathons, donate to charity or give employees paid time off to volunteer[...]Service is not an ornament. It is a touchstone. And no amount of corporate social responsibility is enough to offset or balance the finite focus that may consume the rest of the corporate culture"

- Simon Sinek, "The Infinite Game"

An excellent book that I'm recommending more and more.

That is a really clever alternative to the volunteerism that is becoming very popular in companies -- hire others to do it. Then you're helping two groups of people.

Of course that doesn't do much good for the company's employees that don't wind up volunteering / doing the work, perhaps even increasing the separation the employees may feel toward the less-privileged. Service projects, mission trips, etc. can do a lot toward increasing humility, gratitude, and a spirit of giving in a more-privileged person. One could argue this is partly why companies want to do this sort of thing, so their employees grow (among other good / less-than-good reasons).

Perhaps a company could split the difference. Hire others to do the manual labor that day, but take half the company's team to the jobsite do the work with them. Then on another day you do the same with the other half. That way, all parties involved receive some benefit, and everybody is getting to meet a human being behind the statistics. Just a thought.

P.S. It's a certain level of irony when a party steps in to "help," when in reality they're taking away opportunity from parties more prepared for that sort of work, and are probably doing a worse job, aka building shoddily-constructed houses for the poor. This is especially a problem in developing countries, when an organization or church flies a bunch of inexperienced people into the country, brings in supplies, etc., and virtually takes over the available construction projects in an area because they're doing it for free. All of a sudden the local tradespeople have their businesses dry up, and they may not be able to recover -- and they're the ones that the area needs to continue the work afterwards! A far better method, in my opinion, is to get the locals involved and ask how you can help. Volunteerism is fantastic, but we should do it wisely. </soapbox>

>One could argue this is partly why companies want to do this sort of thing, so their employees grow (among other good / less-than-good reasons).

I really wonder how much of it is this, and how much of it is virtue-signaling at the corporate level: "look at how great our company is! We have our employees spend work hours on charity work!"

While it wouldn't do much for "team building", it seems like society would be better off if these companies simply contributed to a fund to pay minimum-wage workers to do this charity work. This would get more charity work done, and also provide jobs for some underprivileged people.

As for your soapbox, I completely agree.

These sorts of corporate charity events happen because people want to know they are good people, that they're moral people who are making the world better. Our society, reasonably, emphasises the importance of these things very strongly to everyone from birth.

It used to be that religion provided these answers. Believe in God, have faith, go through these rituals, help the poor and you're a good person who has successfully discharged moral responsibility.

Religion has faded away, so we're left with "a good person helps the poor" which everyone agrees is a pretty moral thing to do. But the more indirect it gets the less moral value is assigned to it.

People assign moral value to hours of time invested because time is what we all have equally. Time is not money when it comes to judging character. It must be this way because otherwise it'd be that very high earning people help the poor to a vastly greater extent than the average person does, just by turning up to work every day and paying their taxes. If that automatically made them morally superior to everyone else, it'd create a lot of resentment. No matter how hard you worked you would never be as "good" as the rich guy who just turns up and does some lucky stock trading or whatever.

I think sometimes programmers don't feel this way to quite the same extent as other sorts of office workers because we sometimes get more meaning from our work than someone in e.g. sales. The Silicon Valley stereotype of "Join our startup because we're changing the world for good!" has a basis in real self-perceptions. If you believe you're making the world a better place by actually doing your work, of course doing extra charity stuff will seem silly and a poor allocation of time/money relative to other ways of achieving the same ends.

>It must be this way because otherwise it'd be that very high earning people help the poor to a vastly greater extent than the average person does, just by turning up to work every day and paying their taxes.

This would only make sense if paying taxes actually helped the poor. In America, it doesn't really follow. There's not much of a social safety net here. For proof, all you have to do is walk around various large cities' downtowns and see all the homeless people. There's thousands of them within a very short walking distance of the White House and Capitol buildings in DC.

The USA spends about 25% of the entire federal budget on social security, or nearly a trillion dollars.

Sure, America is very large. It may not be 'much' of a social safety net relative to other countries. But it's still the case that the rich subsidise the poor to a very large degree, in any western country.

This is disingenuous. Social security has multiple components, but the main one people think of is called "OASDI", and is a government-run retirement program, not a social safety net. It's paid for by individuals over their working careers through a separate tax (called FICA), and then when retired, they draw out of it, based on what they contributed. Someone who contributes nothing to SS gets nothing out of it, while someone with a high income gets a relatively large pension check. It's not helping the poor much at all. It's just a guaranteed but generally poor-return investment that's mandatory for all working adults.

There are some other components administered by the same agency, including TANF, SCHIP, and Medicare, so yes there is some safety net there, but relative to other western countries it's rather poor. If it weren't, we wouldn't have so many homeless people. America is NOT like western European nations.

The rich will bail out state pensions when they go bankrupt, and effectively already do via implicitly backing state debts.

In the end, all social security is a wealth transfer from rich to poor. Even rich employees become much (money) poorer when they retire. That's not a criticism, just an observation.

>I genuinely did not understand that was a weird/socially unacceptable thing to do.

If it makes you feel any better, I found this line/story absolutely hilarious.

It's all good. I laugh at it too. I have so many more stories like this. Once in college a lady friend who really fancied me got highlights in her hair. She asked me what I thought and I said the stripes reminded me of a zebra. That was uhh, not the kind of thing she was hoping for.

Not being able to read social queues, I once bought a girlfriend a massage at a place that was actually a brothel. My life is a trajecomedy.

> One time I was on a team that did a team building exercise where we went to a local charity for sick kids and performed manual labor all day.

One small company I worked for once did this, but with gathering apples that would otherwise have gone to waste ("gleaning") to give them to homeless shelters or something. Took up two or three hours, total, lots of driving (gas burnt), and so on. Fifteen or twenty people.

We wouldn't even have had to pay minimum wage workers to do what we did to substantially beat our productivity that day. Simply buying apples with ~3x the average worker's hourly wage times the number of workers we had there would have been embarrassingly more effective. I question the entire exercise and charity org behind it, actually. I suspect someone's making money off it one way or another, maybe just by building a "personal brand" as a corporate charity consultant or some such. The market's pretty efficient at getting cheap food to paying customers, and you probably can't beat the efficiency of simply buying food even at minimum wage rates, by manually harvesting from leftovers, however sad it may seem to let that food rot.

It's kinda a dumb idea, if your main goal is improving the world, to such a high degree that I think it'd set of alarm bells for even people who aren't into the effective-altruism thing.

[EDIT] back-of-envelope we could have bought 750-1000 pounds of apples without even getting some kind of bulk price. I think we "gleaned" like 200-300 pounds, tops, and it may have been less. It'd be much higher still if we figured it using company revenue for that span of 3 hours, rather than worker pay, and that's not factoring in all the costs of driving-people-to-the-orchard and all the driving-apples-all-over-the-place that the organization's volunteers did, nor their time. Overall I bet we weren't much more than 10% as effective as just buying apples.

Some years ago, an acquaintance was going to go with a group to Central America to do repair or construction work at a remote town. The acquaintance was an office worker, and I imagine that most of the rest of the group were office workers also. Now, a pretty large percentage of the construction workers in the metropolitan area are natives of Central America; the whole thing seemed curious to me, though I didn't say anything.

But I suppose it might be for the volunteers to get back into the US than it might have been for a randomly selected group of construction workers. A back problem intervened, and the acquaintance didn't go.

The purpose of such a team building exercise is not to help the sick kids, but rather to do something that requires a lot of cooperation and interaction with your coworkers, so that you can get to know better their personality and behavior, and create habits and make emotional changes in the way you interact with them, which can in theory make you more effective at later working with them on problems that the company cares about.

Of course, it's not necessarily an effective use of time.

Whenever I see someone post on Facebook or LinkedIn the meme that "People don't remember what you do for them, they remember how you make them FEEL", I'm always like: hell no, doesn't happen with me. Really get annoyed by that meme.

I think this meme is very true for neurotypical people. Over the years I've practiced some skills around things like voice inflection and body language. Most people do these things naturally, but for me it's 100% a conscious effort. I naturally have an extremely flat affect. Very monotone, no facial expressions, etc. When I remember to "turn those skills on" my life is SO much easier, even though I'm saying the same things and performing the same tasks. How I do them matters more than what I do.

It seems like you remember that meme because of how it made you feel.

Hahahaha, I see your point. But I'd say that I remember that meme because people keep posting it and I disagree with it. There are a lot of other things I remember just as well, even though I've seen those things only once, and those things don't necessarily evoke any emotional response.

I appreciate your good humour. I mostly saw an opportunity to needle.

Self-reflection is often lacking in the profession. Many folks feel threatened by it. I used to be very emotionally invested in how unemotional and rational I was.

Now I accept that emotions are just part of the business of existing and thinking.

I find your anecdote silly (no offense intended), but do agree with the general point. Especially in tech, you can have a drastically higher impact donating some tech time than manual labor time.