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Comment by omscs99 | Hacker News Reader

> It's good for society, the individual, and the employer when people have room to grow/work harder/contribute more and be rewarded for it.

Rewards are distributed based off of seniority. If you do more than what’s “expected”, there’s no guarantee it will lead to promotion. It’s more likely that you’ll just be given more work

I agree with you when you say that hard work is good for people, but doing this for your employer (as opposed to for FOSS or personal learning) will just screw you over in the long run

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There's no "guarantee" but there's an increased probability, coupled with a good employee's ability to move to an employer that values someone like them.

In the union mindset, there's no chance to do better - it's all been traded away for the chance to do "no worse than" which by definition benefits the less good/productive and hurts the best people.

> There's no "guarantee" but there's an increased probability

This is part of the problem. If you work hard but don’t benefit, you’ve essentially fucked yourself because then you’ll get assigned more, you’ll be stuck carrying a bunch of people. Even if you factor in comp increases, how do you know there’s a net benefit to working hard? (specifically for your employer, on your own time is a different story)

It isn’t blind “probability”, it essentially turns into this little psychological game where management dangles promotions in front of people to manipulate them into doing more than is needed

> coupled with a good employee's ability to move to an employer that values someone like them.

Hasn’t aged well in the current job market

// then you’ll get assigned more, you’ll be stuck carrying a bunch of people.

Ok so on a personal level, if this happened to me, my sequence of response would be (1) talk to my management to fix the situation (2) failing that, look for another place to work (3) failing that, dial down my level of engagement.

Right now, #3 is the worst case. With a union, #3 is the default case since the system is designed to prevent you from being rewarded.

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