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Comment by miroljub | Hacker News Reader

Why?

Would my salary be higher if I become more productive? No. My salary is fixed. I get my bonus even with a minimal effort.

Will I work less if I become more productive? No. I still have to spend 8 hours par day at work.

Will I get more work to do if I become more productive? Yes. As soon as I report something as finished, I get more work. And expectations grow.

Being more productive doesn't benefit me, my coworkers, even my company or the society as a whole. It only leads to more stress and strain.

Then why would I want to be more productive? I'm fine spending my 35-40 hours "working" and making "work" for me and my coworkers as comfortable as possible.

And when I go home, I'm not tired, but refreshed and ready to go on with my life.

EDIT: I'm saying this as actually one of the top performers at my company. It's politics and bullshitting that gets you more money and promotions, not hard work. But that's the game I refuse to play. Instead, I focus on doing the least amount of work I can get away with. Say "Wally" from Dilbert, but without being an asshole.

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Even in a corporate job, this is immensely useful. Maximizing my own productivity for the things I have to do frees up time for the things want to do at work. I'm talking about personal growth, not leisure (time needs to be allocated to that too).

Personal growth then leads to taking on more responsibilities. Sometimes that leads to a promotion, other times it leads to better job opportunities. Either way, this contributes to salary increases.

at the end of the day, you're still selling your time and labor for the same or more hours per week.

as they say "time is money", except that while you can certainly earn more money, there's no earning ownership of your time as a wage worker until you're able to eject yourself entirely from it (whether through retirement, death, or taking your turn as the owner for workers).

> taking your turn as the owner

I agree with your sentiment but this part is false. Everyone has a boss, even business owners; the boss just becomes the customer instead of a manager. Becoming an owner doesn’t release you.

To some degree you can choose your customers as the owner. My manager can tell me "stop coding and scrub toilets or you're fired" if they want, and fire me if I refuse. Owners may not have complete freedom, but they at least have more.

You only have that freedom if you don’t want your company to be paid. Saying you can choose customers is no different than saying you can choose to scrub (or not) those toilets.

Yes, you always have choices. Consequences are not very different.

I'd say the difference between "get paid less" and "go to zero immediately" is pretty large.

Owners can turn down customers and employees can turn down companies. The trade-offs are different but that doesn't mean you are a slave. Changing jobs is extremely easy, the only hard part is wearing the pros and cons of different jobs.

Changing jobs is extremely easy? Maybe if you're single and can throw everything you own in a Uhaul, or you live in an area with plentiful jobs in your field of expertise.

Moving a family of four from one 1700 sq ft house to another is not easy nor cheap, no matter how it's done. Turning down a customer, assuming your business can afford it, is far easier.

Nice job comparing worst-possible job changing scenario vs „assuming your business can afford it“ turning down a customer. Changing job is easy too assuming you can easily do it ;)

You don't have a great imagination do you if you think the above is the worst scenario. Hint - it's playing out for visa workers right now, 60 days or leave the country.

Changing job on your own accord is not the same as getting fired. And worst-timing-to-get-fired olympics is a great sport :)

On a different topic, people working abroad on crappy visa schemes made their own bed. I'm pretty happy I refused an offer to come to US on some crappy visa many years ago. Fuck that. The sooner system fails, the better.

> at the end of the day, you're still selling your time and labor

But for more money.

Yep that’s what I said

This is only true if you never expect to ever get promoted and your job has no performance based incentives. Especially in the US, engineering promotions come with huge raises and bonuses. Compounded over say a decade, extra productivity can land you in a very nice spot financially.

E.g if being more productive got you a $100k/yr more raise, or a $100k larger bonus, then it’s definitely not selling your time for the same money. If this compounds, like it does nicely in many industries (tech, finance, general “business” of really any kind), then your productivity now is worth real money in the future.

It also feels nice to, ya know, get things done. You don’t have to be an extreme pessimist about the good things you bring to the world because you don’t get 100% of the profit.

Yep I said that you can earn more money

As an aside, this reminds me of the sad decline of contract Consulting in the US and California especially. It used to be a great opportunity to dodge office politics and be compensated based on performance for many people. If you can do 2x the job, you can make a scope of work with 2x the responsibility in charge that.

I always wanted to be a contract engineer but over time it became clear that the legal requirements and state incentives were stacked against it. There were a few legal rulings that substantially increased the legal risk of employing contract labor directly and now most companies prefer to work through middlemen who capture a huge chunk of contractors salary. These Middle Men add basically no value to either party aside from legal deniability. Most attractive companies have stringent requirements on independent contractors in my field requiring that they have multiple sources of income.

Imagine if you made no progress, day in and day out. None whatsoever

This is the prelude to burnout for lots of people. It’s almost always circumstantial and likely to be a result of decisions made by others, but the point is that making no progress sucks

So from there you can conclude that sometimes people want to make more progress. They want to be a bit more productive sometimes, just to fill our needs for self actualisation a bit.

I agree with your sentiment in the abstract, that it’s not up to workers to just maximize productivity for (really) no gain. Bosses want more output? That’s their problem.

But sometimes just being a bit more productive is good for the mood! And some people have trouble for process reasons rather than external reasons.

I'm answering the question because it's a simple one. Some people like and feel better when they are productive. Other people have jobs where they are rewarded. Neither of these points should be a surprise. If you are happy, you do you.

If this is a passive aggressive post about how you wish you were compensated more based on productivity, that is an entirely different challenge for you to sort out

Seriously. If the idea of being more productive is totally unmotivating to miroljub because it won't pay more when there's clearly more output, then maybe they'd be happier working somewhere that a 2x multiplier to productivity does result in a doubling of pay.

I am already very close to the ceiling available to a tech person. On the continent I'm on, 2x reward die 2x productivity doesn't exist, and I'm not ready to move to another.

Instead, I chose to optimize other things that make my life actually more enjoyable instead of spending my energy to be more productive at work for the marginal reward to me and benefit to abstract stakeholders.

Imagine how much more you could do with 2x the income though. Break that ceiling!

You are right, productivity only matters if one's aims are meaningful and one wants to accomplish them.

Most people have that in at least some aspect of their work and life.

They are working on their own thing (as the person in the post does), their compensation is directly (sales) or indirectly (almost everyone) is tied to it, because they want to see some impact or they simply have pride in their profession and work.

It seems odd to live a life with nothing you want to accomplish with more speed and certainty.

I'm confused why this is the top comment - how exactly can you be "one of the top performers" at your company while also "focusing on doing the least amount of work you can get away with"?? Surely 90% of the company isn't doing less work than you OR that much less intelligent than you that their moderate effort is worse than your smallest effort. You either are working harder than you give yourself credit for, or over emphasizing your contributions.

Or the OP is very efficient at doing useful work and everyone else isn't or is wasting a lot of their time not on work or not on useful work.

0% efficiency is not the floor. What's the efficiency of someone working the wrong direction on a feature? What's the efficiency of someone working off bad requirements that they don't know enough to question?

Do you have experience working in a big company? From my own, it's not too hard to be a (top) performer while doing very few actual work.

> I'm confused why this is the top comment - how exactly can you be "one of the top performers" at your company while also "focusing on doing the least amount of work you can get away with"??

I've been at a few companies where the "top performers" were doing the least amount of work they could get away with. It was a combination of two things:

1) Extreme politicking. They were charismatic, charming, and connected within the company. They were in all the right meetings to take credit for successes and shift blame for failures. They may have connections, like being long-time friends of the CEO, that made them untouchable and targets for flattery/praise from people hoping to climb the ladder. They always insisted that they didn't participate in politics, but then they'd go on to describe something like manipulating the system so they could get the easy, high-profile work and sticking others with the grunt work. Nobody likes to think that they play politics themselves, but that's what it is.

2) Gaming the system. They knew, or even created, the hidden metrics that were used to evaluate employee productivity. For example, one person was busy chatting in Slack every day with short one-line messages. He created a dashboard of Slack activity that ranked employees (where he was always on top by a wide margin) and encouraged his team to be very active in Slack, while the rest of us had no idea. At another company we were secretly evaluated by lines of code committed, so of course the "top performer" was always committing a lot of generated code and constantly "refactoring" other people's code by moving it around to increase their Git activity.

It's a massive red flag when you're at a company and can visibly see that the "top performers" are avoiding work and playing games. It means you can never get ahead by working. This creates a cynical worldview (much like the parent comment) that work isn't about work, it's about gaming the system and extracting cash from the company while minimizing your work. It's really cynical cycle that puts people in a bad position when they leave for well-run companies where good work is actually rewarded.

Don't get stuck in that mindset, because it's tough for some people to escape. If you're at a company where the rewards go to people who game the system while those who work are languishing, you should start searching for a new job.

Anecdote regarding #2:

When I was a little boy and just joined another back office unit, my first assignment from boss was to create a spreadsheet, that basically served as a log of performed work. The boss went out of his way to tell me to hide anything that would give other employees an idea of what is being tracked ( in that case, average cases resolved ). I did with objections that it is not a great metric to begin with and that people are not idiots. I was overruled, but we didn't have to wait long for results. People starting skipping 'hard cases' to up their averages and grabbing 'easy cases'( cuz you know.. during one on ones boss discussed averages without officially disclosing it ). People are not idiots and they quickly figure our what is being rewarded ( or at least not punished ).

It was my first time learning that boss can make stupid decisions too.

I totally agree, but OOP said that they refuse to play the politic games. I don't see how you can be 1) a top performer, 2) refuse to politic, and 3) not work hard. I think that's a "pick two of these three" situation.

You work on the right problems at the right time. Everything is a system, companies are no different. Within 6 months at any job you should have mostly everything figured out. In larger companies this can be limited to a certain level.

You figure out what people don't want to do but needs to be done and you become efficient at it. Through that process you see how other things are tied together and make associations that others have not. You then see what can be linked together which may also join resources. Automate where you can and all that compounds such that you understand where new things can be fully utilized and articulate good / bad changes. This is essentially working smart not hard.

All this puts you in a good spot to make meaningful contributions and changes which makes yourself and everyone else look good. This makes you a team player and "viewed" as essential, for whatever thats worth. You learn the rhythm of the system which then allows you to operate meaningfully. You can take this skill/process anywhere and become a top performer.

> Will I work less if I become more productive? No. I still have to spend 8 hours par day at work.

Are you remote? IMO once you hit a given bar - for some that's enough to not get fired, and others it's maxing out their bonus - you're done. Some days I work 10 hours. Some days I work 3. I'm always available during working hours but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm actively chugging through JIRA tickets or even thinking about work.

I agree with the general thrust of your entire comment but I don't really accept the premise of "I can't be more productive because I have to be here for 8h regardless." Why wouldn't you want to work 5x6 days instead of 5x8 if you could?

> Why wouldn't you want to work 5x6 days instead of 5x8 if you could?

I'm 100% with you and that's how I operate as well. However that's not the situation GP seems to be in unfortunately.

> Will I work less if I become more productive? No. I still have to spend 8 hours par day at work.

I am the same. The problem I'm facing is that, as you say, I still have to be _available_ for at least 8 hours. That means you can't structure the day according to your needs. The corpo always has priority.

So in the end, one commonly ends up underutilized, instead of being well rested and happy about how little work they get by with. In my experience, underutilization leads to burnout.

"I focus on doing the least amount of work I can get away with" is one reasonable strategy. If you've got continued employment it's probably working for your employer and may be working for you too (and this can make a lot of sense given that a certain amount of tolerance / "slack" in a system can make it more robust).

It also seems to me that while increased productivity decreases the time you spend on a task, it doesn't necessarily require you to notify people immediately when you're done or dictate what you do with the time saved. It might be more slack. It might be something else you can do to make your job easier. It might examining the art of productive politics and bullshitting. It might be learning something work relevant you find more fun...

That said, far be it from me to alter any balance you're already content with. If productivity is for anything at all, it should include satisfaction.

Because in our field, when you work, you learn., when you learn, it compounds.

I spent my 20s with your attitude and now regret it as I see my peers at a level or two above me.

Perhaps they were more strategic about what they spent their time on and worked on things that would propel their career.

Eh, anecdotally I spent about three years thinking the same and figured I'd use my spare time to become a writer. But you can't really take out the time you put in your day career (8x5) out of your private life unless you don't have much going on in your private life.

If I'd gunned in my 40hrs and spent my private time chilling instead of slacking in my 40 and then trying to squeeze out 10-15/wk to focus on writing, I'd have been better off in retrospect.

This is highly personal obv, YMMV. But I think your day job should be the one you want to compound your skills in.

You ain’t learning anything from doing the same old CRUD app for years on end.

Some people work in areas where their results are directly tied to their rewards.

And those environments are usually rapidly developing, so same results one year later returns smaller rewards.

Therefore, in some areas, one needs to constantly improve in order to deliver better results over time.

A layman's example: you cannot stagnate as an NBA player because the game constantly evolves and one must be to date with the latest tactics and techniques.

Assuming that the same results will give same rewards over an entire career is waiting to be made redundant by advances in the field.

> Assuming that the same results will give same rewards over an entire career is waiting to be made redundant by advances in the field.

True advancements are rare and unevenly distributed. Most workplaces are not following the latest trends, but picking the right tools for the job. Contrary to what many believe, software is only becoming more specialized and complex and it makes perfect sense that it would.

Unfortunately the demand for those jobs relative to supply is astronomical. So usually competition can be brutal and the pay suboptimal at the top labs.

> Will I work less if I become more productive? No.

Why not?

Yeah, I'm confused by this one, as salaried employeees. Unless your salaried job is making you clock in, why not work the 3-4 hours it takes to do your normal job, take whatever meetings, and go do literally anything else with the rest of your now paid-for free time?

I mean, I don't subscribe to the mentality (I usually have side projects for my work that have tangibly lead to promotions in the past), but if I were, I'd just use it for more free time.

Yeah, if I manage to find a way to do something really efficiently, or alternatively if I force myself to power through something more quickly than usual, then I'm happy that I helped out my boss and my company. But I'm also sure as hell going to take a nice relaxing lunch, go for a walk and enjoy my day just a bit extra too, or just stop for the day earlier.

Half for them, half for me and we're both better off than if I was slower at my work.

Because the people above you don't typically have that attitude about your work - somehow you're not being paid to do the work (as salaried implies), you're being paid to sit in your seat for at least 40 hours AND do the work (just in case that's going to take more than 40 hours).

So use your now-free hours to look for a different job ?

I mean it's hackernews after all, we are talking FAANG or startup kind of things not Walmart bag-boy

Do you know of FAANG or startups that let you leave work if you're done early for the day, every day?

The key is that you don't ask permission, you just leave.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforc...

Industrial Revolution and automation lead to better profit margin returns for owners, not less work for workers

At least where I work we have to record our hours down to 1/10th of an hour, and charge specific numbers for specific contracts. There's some reasonable flexibility/tolerance, but if I get all my work done in half a day and spend the rest of the day on youtube, but charge a full day, that's called mischarging and is one of the few quick ways to be fired.

I think most folks here would file this under the "terrible job" category and move on. Most jobs don't require this sort of micromanagement, and none of the really great ones do.

Haha, the hours are extremely flexible, so it's not so bad. Can blame some contract fraud my fortune 500 employer committed back in the 80s. It's been a requirement ever since.

When your employer is contracting people out against hourly rate you generally have to be accurate with the hours. When customers pay by the hour I find it quite reasonable. Also in some countries keeping track of hours worked is required by law for the employees benefit.

How does one measure "knowledge work" with such fine granularity? Isn't output/deliverable over total time spent a better metric?

Well, the real question is what you want to do with your life. The real resource I'm spending is time, so I want to maximize the total outcome over my life. That means really doing everything: really working when I use my working time, really playing when I play, really spending time with my friends and family when I do that.

The point is to get more life per life :)

But everyone has their way to live life and their own preference coefficients. I don't weight comfort very much, for instance, but you do so highly. And we're all different: when I get more accomplished in the day, I feel more energized and eager to get on my Peloton and (also) hang out with people. When you do more in the day, you are tired.

So, the best I can say is that sometimes people of one type are talking to others of their own type and the answer to your "why?" is "No reason. That's how I choose to live my life. You don't have to do this if you're not this type".

It's no different from someone posting "If you want to jump start your battery, connect these leads to those terminals" and someone responding "Why? I would just call Geico and get them to send someone out". The answer to that "why?" is "You're not the audience. Skip it and go read something else".

If you have a good EM, they should ask, when can you get this finished by?

If it doesn’t align with the deadline, the EM can then add other teammates to help balance the work or assign the entire project to someone else.

It’s a myth that these companies push you to burn out, it’s just we’re bad at estimating our own commitments. So a good EM will also take your deadline and add buffers to it when delivering their own schedule upwards.

The benefit to being more productive isn’t always about packing more work into a day. It’s also a skill to improve the amount of time you’re not working by giving you more free time.

> EDIT: I'm saying this as actually one of the top performers at my company. It's politics and bullshitting that gets you more money and promotions, not hard work. But that's the game I refuse to play. Instead, I focus on doing the least amount of work I can get away with. Say "Wally" from Dilbert, but without being an asshole.

You need to work somewhere else. Politics is everywhere, but it is not the only thing that matters at many companies. Competence and productivity matter too.

<< Say "Wally" from Dilbert, but without being an asshole.

Can you invoke Dilbert these days without incurring wrath of people he, apparently, offended? Sadly, I agree and most people seem misunderstand what his strip offered to the office-bound population ( which is the part you mentioned: politics and related bshittery).

I try to be more productive, but it is mostly, because I seem to be stuck on menial and boring stuff so I am forced to be clever and automated.

The wrath is less about the comic strip and more about the cartoonist being a bigot

Bigot is a fascinating word for me, because it is defined as:

"a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group."

With that language you easily describe a vast majority of US population ( including people who attack that author ) and I am not joking. And that is before we get to the part about whether what he said was 'worthy' of cancellation ( I read his comments and their portrayal in the media seemed, at best, biased ) and why it is so hard for people to separate the artist from their art ( same story with wossname from Harry Potter and ruckus surrounding that game ).

You sure this is the right way going about it? I am asking specifically because the pendulum is starting to swing the other way.

He’s not cancelled. He’s rich as heck. He’s never going to be homeless or starving. He’s not a victim. Rowling is a billionaire and a bigot too. She’s still doing whatever she wants. Even has fans like you at her beckon ready to ruin any one on Twitter. Yet somehow these people are the victims of cancel culture. Lack of self awareness is a bit much. blinding.

> Can you invoke Dilbert these days without incurring wrath of people he, apparently, offended?

Sure, you can. Just bring it up, and take the risk of people's opinions about you, just like you already do with just about any other thing.

Would you talk about how amazing shark fin soup or foie gras is? Perhaps, but then you might offend people who know and care about how those foods are made. Does that stop you from talking about it? Maybe! Or maybe not! You draw your own lines.

Honestly, it seems to me that the vast majority of people bringing this up are people who implicitly support what Scott Adams says, who are then trying to make sure that no one expresses negative opinions about their hero.

Which is not gonna happen. I like Dilbert, but Scott Adams has gone off the deep end and is saying crap that I strongly disagree with. I'm not going to run around defending him for free, and have made a choice to not read any new content by him. I might make a choice to stop reading and referring to his content in the future. The guy should think carefully before talking, just like the rest of us do.

<< Which is not gonna happen. I like Dilbert, but Scott Adams has gone off the deep end and is saying crap that I strongly disagree with.

Can you elaborate on what, exactly, you strongly disagree with? I believe you, but I am curious as to which part, specifically, made you say.. "um, I am not touching that with a 10 foot pole".

<< I'm not going to run around defending him for free, and have made a choice to not read any new content by him. I might make a choice to stop reading and referring to his content in the future.

That is fair and absolutely your right to do as you see fit. Still, what did he do, exactly, to deserve such a treatment?

<< The guy should think carefully before talking, just like the rest of us do.

You accept it as if it was a given. I think it is a ridiculous way to live life. As always, all progress depends on the unreasonable.

> Can you elaborate on what, exactly, you strongly disagree with? I believe you, but I am curious as to which part, specifically, made you say.. "um, I am not touching that with a 10 foot pole".

No, there is no reason for me to tell you if you don't have an idea already. Maybe he Tweeted about how foie gras is so amazing, and I am an animal lover.

It doesn't really matter; and leads to a ton of unnecessary small arguments which I'd rather avoid being drawn into.

<<No, there is no reason for me to tell you if you don't have an idea already.

Am I expected to keep track of the entire internet and its comings and goings? While I am aware of the story, clearly my interpretation is different from yours. Is it not a worthwhile endeavor to seek how other people perceive the same even? If not, why not? Or am I already labelled for having dared to defend a person deemed 'bad' by Twitter squad.

There is a reason. One is that I am unable to visit people's minds and hearts, but it is telling that you can't seem to be able to articulate the exact reason you acted this way.

<<Maybe he Tweeted about how foie gras is so amazing, and I am an animal lover.

Maybe. Was that the reason?

<< It doesn't really matter; and leads to a ton of unnecessary small arguments which I'd rather avoid.

edit: removed last paragraph. did not fit what i was trying to say

> Or am I already labelled for having dared to defend a person deemed 'bad' by Twitter squad.

Not at all! I am inviting you to believe that there is no Twitter "squad". No one is out to get you. You do not need to be afraid of being "labeled", or "canceled", or whatever the latest term is! And you don't need to know what my specific viewpoint on your favorite subject is -- there are tons of people writing about it on the Internet if you are curious!

> it is telling that you can't seem to be able to articulate the exact reason you acted this way.

It isn't, really. In fact, Adams's column here [1] makes my point better than I could! I disagree with his view point on certain matters, and that's just it. That doesn't mean I'm afraid, or ignorant, or that I otherwise want to mark everyone who shares his viewpoints as evil. I'd rather just not talk about it, which is an explicit, and I believe, reasonable choice.

----------------------------------------

[1] https://dilbert.com/strip/2023-02-26

<< No one is out to get you.

Funny. Dilbert's creator may feel otherwise.

<< And you don't need to know what my specific viewpoint on your favorite subject is

True, but you decided to enter this conversation. I did not drag you into it and make you an unwilling participant. Your viewpoint helps the conversation along. You are right that is not a requirement. It just helps.

<< It isn't, really. In fact, Adams's column here [1] makes my point better than I could!

Does it though? At best, it is hiding your own views behind those of the author. Worse, I can't seem to tell if I am Bob in this case or not. The selected strip may not be relevant here.

<< I disagree with his view point on certain matters, and that's just it.

You did mention that; you didn't mention one thing you disagree with so far though.

<< That doesn't mean I'm afraid, or ignorant, or that I otherwise want to mark everyone who shares his viewpoints as evil.

It is hard for me categorize your view without knowing what it is. Clever.

You may not be explicitly saying his views are evil, but clearly you don't consider them as neutral given your willingness to distance yourself without stating the reason to distance yourself. I suppose we don't have to label it as anything, but actions tend to speak louder than words.

Why are you believing what a super wealthy out of touch person is saying? Why are you pretending to not know how neoconservative the guy is?

He’s a hardcore right winger and Trumper. We all know what OP disagrees with.

Try working for yourself, you'll get much more self-esteem.

>Being more productive doesn't benefit me, my coworkers, even my company

Why would you doing more work for your company for the same pay not benefit your company?

So that in the situation that you get fired (possible based on the attitude you show here), no one else wants to hire you (unlikely I admit), and you have to work for yourself, you can get more done for each hour of your time, since your livelihood may depend on it. At the same time, honoring the fairly recent trend of increasing human productivity that has allowed us to have SIGNIFICANTLY better quality of life than our distant and not so distant ancestors.

> At the same time, honoring the fairly recent trend of increasing human productivity that has allowed us to have SIGNIFICANTLY better quality of life than our distant and not so distant ancestors.

According to actual data, increased productivity since 1980 didn't result in increasing salaries [1], and since I work for salary, I don't care about increasing my productivity at work if it doesn't directly result in increased compensation.

[1] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

Would you be willing to have your salary reduced if your productivity is lower?

Why is the salary where it is in the first place? Not like any one is getting paid for the value of their labor. So no salary shouldn’t be reduced. It’s already too low.

Increased productivity doesn't always have to mean working harder, usually the opposite, and anyway why should increased productivity imply increased compensation if everything else in the equation has remained the same?

> Would my salary be higher if I become more productive? No

Absolutely yes!

How do you view WFH and freeing time so you can do other stuff?

This comment really rubs me the wrong way.

Striving to maximize productivity should be a core value for anyone that works. We should always be looking to improve and to make things more efficient. This is a core value of capitalism that people seem to forget. We should want to make things continuously better.

Instead there’s this nihilistic take that anything like that is pointless and doesn’t pay off. The accomplishment of something great, the self improvement, should be considered a pay off in and of itself.

Doing the least amount of work to get away just brings everyone down. Why strive for better if mediocre pays the bills?

Rub you wrong or more likely reduces money for the guy up the totem pole. Nihlistic is wanting someone else to work harder for nothing while another makes money of them.

Of course the business owner will potentially benefit more from your increased productivity. And they should match your productivity increase by rewarding merit and compensating you for that.

If you're in a work environment that reward merit and pays for higher productivity, the problem is with the place and you should move if your conditions permit. It's not an excuse to do the bare minimum and not strive to improve.

No place in the US, at least, is valuing you for your work. They will always pay you less than you’re worth. That’s the point of capitalism.

It’s easy to see how there’s an excuse to do the bare minimum when the company is paying you the bare minimum they are able to. The exploitation began with the capital rich employer paying the employee less than their worth.

> We should always be looking to improve and to make things more efficient. This is a core value of capitalism that people seem to forget.

That's really not one of the core values of capitalism. But if we're talking about it, one of the core values of capitalism is self-interest, when people act in pursuit of their own good. Doing the bare minimum is peak capitalism. You need to minimize effort while maximizing gains. This is what companies are doing and it's something both 'the market' and society is totally fine with. But if you're an employee trying to apply the same principles in their context, all of a sudden, it's breaking social norms.

> We should want to make things continuously better.

Better in what way and for whom? A relaxed employee has more time to spend with family and also spend more money (which is a 'core value' of market capitalism).

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