This has always always been the case. Grow up.
When did you graduate college? In the social media era, the sentiment has been more about "fuck you, pay me" and "H.R. is not your friend" type ideology. This is especially true in recent years, where a lot of college graduates have been exposed to years of /r/antiwork in their daily Reddit browsing before they even get their first jobs.
A lot of juniors want to do good work and produce good results, but it's common for them to believe that corporations are evil, capitalism is a failed ideology, and that it's virtuous to minimize their labor input while maximizing their compensation. It can take a while to convince some of these new hires that as their manager, I'm a person too.
Scandinavia has capitalism too, welfare capitalism, sure, but still capitalism.
I put effort into my work because taking pride in one’s work nourishes the soul.
I try to meet my manager’s expectations because I know him, he’s a good guy, and I know he’s got my back to the extent he is able to.
I also know that my employer as an entity abstracted through a dozen tiers of hierarchy would feed me and my manager both into a woodchipper if it would increase quarterly gains more than the alternative would.
I work to minimise how much of myself I give to my employer, and maximise how much I give to myself and to the relationships I value (which still includes workplace relationships!).
You can say no… I did when my then boss asked me to fire people because he personally didn’t like them.
Good on you for putting in the effort. The corporation cannot be your friend, but a good manager can be.
It's not? That's what capitalism is. More productivity with fewer inputs.
However the company is not a person - RMoney be damned
I agree that the present society cannot generally fulfill these wants/needs.
... that's why our valued Craptech employees should not be surprised if they are subject to abuse, estrangement, abandonment, financial hardship, mistreatment in care homes, abortion or termination of life support, etc., concurrent with our expectation of absolute loyalty at the expense of happiness, health, and sanity. And of course our gender pay policies are modeled on domestic work.
They should grow up too.
I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid the experience of layoffs, but learned the same lesson by pouring too much of myself into a role and burning out.
Until you’ve directly experienced the reasons work isn’t a family, etc. it can be hard to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that it is.
I would also say that most takes on this are a bit too binary, and some of my longest lasting and strongest friendships came from past jobs. I think the key to use work as an opportunity to establish those relationships instead of a ready-made support system, and not extending the personal aspect of those relationships into workplace behavior (e.g. doing more work because it’s “family”).
I'm saying that burnout was my path to thinking differently about my relationship with work.
Burnout is a whole other beast, and recovery from it a whole other topic.
IMO its worth mentioning the reality of the employee<->corporation relationship because MANY companies in both tech and outside of tech have long tried to sell employees (particularly junior ones) on the idea that the company is a big family (without really acting like one beyond a very superficial level, eg. enjoy the free costco snacks, and or catered lunches/dinners when you're here for 12 hour days building value for the family!).
When you're a bit more experienced its easy to be more realistic about this relationship due to seeing that lie revealed a couple of times on a personal level, but that doesn't mean its not worth pointing out and talking about the lie.
I have worked at multiple companies than have disingenously referred to themselves as "family," always talking about "supporting your growth here," etc. It's just outright dishonest and for whatever reason it's the industry standard. Can't blame people for taking it at face value for a few years.
And honestly, one generation ago (and in certain fields like police), your work is a permanent group of supporters. It's not like such a thing is impossible.
On paper these are extremely well educated people from top institutions that boast about producing well rounded individuals.
What happened?
Not everyone is in a situation where the only option is to harden their shell and submit to a corporation. Some will find a family or great friends at work. It might mean limiting your career choices, but it is not a character flaw.
I burned out and crashed and burned, but it was more about me finding my self worth in work and the need to be superman and get that recognition and then later to keep funding a lifestyle that I again has substituted as my value and self worth.
It is a sad attempt at compensating for a missing social safety net.
Blue collar workers, union or no union, always understood this. It's white collar workers who feel blindsided because they believed the company propaganda. The propaganda is not itself a bad thing but workers need to understand the use of propaganda and why it's used.
If you've ever worked with blue collar workers you know they never believe in any of the sunshine management talk and instead deride it with contempt. White collar workers would be well advised to learn from their blue collar brethren.
There is a reason I get along better with blue collar folks than, especially the more inexperienced, white collar ones. Usually, blue collar folks have less problems following "orders" as well. This professional discipline makes a lot of things a lot easier.
This is ridiculous. I’m sure such sociopaths exist but there’s literally 30MM+ companies in the US. If only 1MM have an executive team this proposes there are millions of near murderers about. Pretty sure there’d be more murders.
It’s stupidly hyperbolic and actually implicitly assumes that which it purports to reject. Namely, it conflates job loss with death, giving companies more agency over your life than they actually have; the phrasing ignores its own first statement, in pursuit of clickbait nonsense.