Against making all employees happy in the name of culture | Hacker News Reader

Against making all employees happy in the name of culture

journal.hexmos.com

2 pointsatomicnature5 comments

So is this post saying anything?

Any troubles with reading comprehension?

I’m guessing you are probably the author, so I will engage with you here in the outdated comments incase you look at them from time to time.

In this post I felt that you held back what you are really trying to say to the extent that it rendered the piece meaningless. You just spilled 800 words worth of ink on the same vacuous platitudes you seem to accuse companies of.

So I am curious what the real message here is. What change do you want?

Companies didn’t arrive at the culture of giving workers more perks, independence, respect, etc. for no reason. CEOs don’t wake up and think “You know we should be nicer”. No it was through competition. Companies spent recent years fighting for talent and talent could make choices so they chose companies that best fit their lifestyle, represented them, actualized them, and so on. We get paid very well so salary is not the chief concern, other things are.

Maybe as we enter more austere times we’ll see a shift. Certainly Elon’s behavior hasn’t gone unnoticed. But I think your advocacy for _whatever_ should be clarified so it can be properly critiqued.

That would lead to a more interesting article.

> In this post I felt that you held back what you are really trying to say to the extent that it rendered the piece meaningless. You just spilled 800 words worth of ink on the same vacuous platitudes you seem to accuse companies of.

For some things to make sense, you must have learned enough about the field. It may be that your understanding is lacking in the area, particular concepts/ideas/sources maybe unfamiliar to you. If you don't understand something, it is sufficient to say: "What did you mean by this sentence or paragraph?" I re-read the whole article again, and I don't see any major grammatical or syntactical or conceptual errors.

PS: If you want more details on sources & definitions of terms, and where I am coming from, there's a whole research-driven book here: https://turnoverbook.com/html/book.html I cite 80+ empirical (mostly longitudinal) sources, trying to make my points clear. It's free to read on the web.

Some specific paras of relevance here:

> One longitudinal study found that organizational commitment is a better predictor of whether some employees will stay or leave than job satisfaction. Hence, organizational commitment better predicts voluntary resignation (Hom, Katerberg, and Hulin 1979). Moreover, in most studies, the correlations between job satisfaction and turnover tend to be weak, rarely exceeding .40.

> Overall, organizational commitment has been significantly and consistently related to turnover.

> For some things to make sense, you must have learned enough about the field

Well there’s your mistake. If there is extra context the reader needs in order to be sufficiently relieved of their ignorance to fully appreciate your post perhaps you should consider adding it.

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