Why so many workers have lost interest in their jobs | Hacker News Reader

Why so many workers have lost interest in their jobs

bbc.com

36 pointsDrNuke25 comments

It occurred to me that you probably need an healthy amount of "carelessness" at work. You need to be interested enough to be happy and efficient, but disinterested enough so you don't care too much about decisions you don't like. And scratch your own itches during your leisure time if needed. And that last thing means you need to have enough time for you.

My work should be something as meaningful as possible to me and in accordance to my values. If I work on something meaningless to me or goes against my value, I'll probably burn out fast.

And yes, I work where I work because I need money. Otherwise I'd work on something that is even closer to what I want to do / solve.

I think that might come with experience, or age. When I was starting out I was unreasonably concerned with design and implementation decisions. This led to a lot of pointless arguments and hostility.

Now I can’t even imagine summoning up that kind of energy over a work thing. I used to think “old guys” were lazy and apathetic… and well, here I am ;P

Are you me? I used to stress so much and get very emotionally invested in decisions, then I'd get angry when I felt the wrong decision was being made. My last company finally broke me of that habit (but not in a good way). Now I get worked up way less. I'm still just as opinionated but once the decision is made I don't care anymore. I'll advocate for what I feel is the best path forward but I'm not going to lose sleep over bad decisions or pretend that the future of the company rests on my shoulders.

Honestly I was scared to make this change, for the longest time I thought my emotional investment was what made me a good developer, "I actually cared". While that might have helped the companies I worked for, it did not help me nor my general wellbeing. I'm much more laid back and I'm quick to say "I'll implement it however you decide" and not really care about the outcome. I'll aways warn about side effects or how a decision might affect us down the road but I don't get angry anymore.

If you find yourself getting angry at work about decisions or you get into heated discussions how to implement things (like I did) I recommend you consider taking a step back and realizing that it doesn't really matter and it's not worth getting worked up about.

They were never interested in the first place, for most people work is the means to an end.

I agree entirely, the narrative that people should be entirely interested/dedicated to their work has been promoted by businesses for a long time, despite being entirely detached by the reality of those who work full time

Is work important? I'd sure retire if I had a reasonable savings. And probably start a vegetable garden, and reading fiction which I have been putting off for long.

I have retired several times. It is great to have lots of time for reading and exercise. That said, I have repeatedly gone back to work for several year sprints because I wanted to work on a team and do useful work.

The larger issue is workers accepting Covid-19 payouts and losing interest in work or at least in their current career.

Several things have to come together here, and I optimistically hope for: more automation and AI removing drudgery work, people are encouraged to do more meaningful (to them) work that is good for themselves/community, and we reach a compromise that rewards super performers like Elon Musk while at the same time provides adequate food banks, free training, and inexpensive communal housing for the people at the very bottom.

Most of my friends think I am a little nuts with my high degree of optimism but I think things will work out OK.

I used to love work. But, the death of several family members while on lockdown has really realigned my perceptions.

I was diagnosed with cancer recently while looking for software work in a new field and studying obsessively. I'll probably live, but the prospect that my life could be snuffed out without warning at any time made me ask myself whether I really want to spend my last days writing code at all. Now I'm now spending loads of time outdoors and fantasizing about cabins in the woods and changing careers.

If work is stopping you from having a veggie garden or reading a book, it might be time to consider new work.

Can someone explain to me why the pandemic has had an effect on peoples attitudes to work? (Ive been AWOL).

I get the impression people were allowed to work from home, and now they dont want to return. Not because they never realised it would be better, but simply because they have been allowed to, and dont want to lose the perk?

Inflation was like 30%, wages were not yet adjusted accordingly.

Covid has in many ways changed the world, and in most of those ways not for the better.

First, with shutdowns of non essential things it disturbed distribution and manufacturing channels, causing shortages and rises in shipping costs.

Also due to shutdowns or from people just not going out (the data shows people did a pseudo self quarantine before the shutdowns happened) lots of small businesses closed or have heavily scaled down, causing a lot of economic loss and reducing the flow of money. There were also a lot of layoffs of hospitality workers, after being laid off and treated poorly a lot don't want to go back to that, some took this time to learn how to code or take classes, so they are even less likely to go back.

Then with the distinction between essential and non-essential workers, most of the essential workers were treated poorly, for little increase of benefit, and often with a risk to themselves. This is especially true when considering how the mask mandates has blatantly shown who is enough of an asshole to not wear a mask, and said assholes now feel entitled enough to be more vocal. Retail(and most what are considered essential jobs) already sucked dealing with the public, it's been a shitshow the last year and a half.

Second, due to all of this economic loss inflation has gotten weird, where a TV costs about the same, but food, rent, school and other essentials are like 30-40% more. But due to the weirdness some experts will claim there isn't inflation, while the majority of people, especially poor people will explain how they get less for their money now.

Third, work from home workers (who are mostly middle to upper class workers) don't want to lose that, especially those who are still worried about Covid and have taken their kids out of school (schools have done a poor job of adapting as well, but that was maybe unavoidable). Until school gets worked out, childcare isn't functioning properly and so workers don't want to return to working in the office.

Fourth, people that actually followed the shutdown got used to doing more homebody kinds of entertainment, they don't go out to eat as much, they don't go to the theater, a lot of them ended up saving money by chilling out or changing hobbies(keep in mind Covid is still a problem, in fact it's likely worse than it's been so many of these are still doing this). This was especially true of those who were going through unemployment, they stretched their dollar, some double income households had one parent become a stay at home parent instead of paying for childcare which ended up being a similar income once it was balanced out.

But on the whole, people felt mistreated by working conditions but it was normal, not that the normal has been broken people are less willing to be treated that way, because a pittance of an income (like working fast food) isn't actually enough to live off of anymore (if it ever was, but it's worth less now due to inflation). People are unwilling to work for what isn't enough to survive, especially when treated poorly while doing that, especially while they are being told that they are essential but treated as disposable. Of course they wouldn't want to do that kind of work.

Thank you for taking the time to reply and explain the situation to me I had no idea. I was very surprised to hear there had been manifested inflation , I had heard about money printing occurring but not that it had had any real effect on anything.

Thanks again for your time.

For me, it is ironic that this article is on the BBC, my company is contracted to provide the playout of the bbc linear tv channels and their expectations have been higher than ever during the pandemic. I enjoy carrying out the work and like the BBC (honestly not criticising them at all), however it’s an interesting point about large corporations being a sum of lots of different people and ideas rather than a single ‘clean’ entity.

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