A janitorial job can be rewarding because you can see that you are making a difference in the world. You get to meet the people whose lives are improved by what you do, every day.
Filling out spreadsheets, it can be hard to tell what the purpose of what you are doing, whom it benefits, and how the world would be worse off if you simply didn't show up.
While all of those are certainly noble goals, the vast majority of people doesn’t even shoot that high to find any kind of purpose. Most people are already satisfied and feel a sense of accomplishment when their job creates something of value for *someone*.
I had a job with a great paycheck, but spent 40 hours a week doing barely anything. It was fun at first, but it became physically exhausting. I have now a job with similar pay but I build apps that people actually use in their day to day work and quite enjoy, it’s significantly more stressful and demanding than not doing anything, but I don’t feel nearly as exhausted as I did with the previous job.
I’ve felt it myself and have heard others talk about it, but there is an increasing number of jobs that is either objectively useless or perceived as such (by the people employed in that job). Either way, it’s not surprising to me that burnout continues to be on the rise.
Nobody likes doing nothing
- Having a financial safety net and removing some degree of existential fear (note, this is in a country with an existing social safety net)
- Switching into a career with less pay but better interest alignment. Interestingly, most of the women I've talked to would strongly prefer a switch into more social careers while basically all men I've talked to (claim) they'd switch into trades.
- Having the option to obtain educational credentials one couldn't get earlier in life for a plethora of reasons, without too much financial concerns (that is in a country with publicly funded free universities)
Certainly there are people who would see not doing anything as a godsend, but I think we generally over estimate our intrinsic desire to do something by working and tend to assume this desire doesn't exist in other people.
- People do their job to make money to provide for their families. For some, that's all the justification you need.
- If it pays well, donate a portion of your income to a charity that you believe in AND get involved with that charity. There are tons of great options out there like Habitat for Humanity, literacy programs, Shriner's, Boy Scouts or a local church just off the cuff. This turns your job into a way that you are helping your community through a organization with a greater purpose. It can shift your perspective.
Just providing some ideas. To each their own.
Our jobs can be the polar opposite of all of that.
Now come on, give me an argument for why it is patronizing. Stop implying it.
I’ve heard said (don’t recall the specifics) Maslov’s hierarchy is upside down, that with sufficient meaning/purpose, many deprivations of lower elements can be handled.
Not certain if I’d go that far, esp at extremes, but that the pieces of the “hierarchy” are more like eqalish puzzle pieces than a stacked pyramid.
Maybe the issue is more that we earn so much and have no life outside of work so the "earning money to live" is not there anymore.
We try to find meaning in the work itself instead of in the after-work part.
I've been reflecting on this recently and I think in the context of a job, it operates at both a macro and micro level, and ultimately to feel fulfilled in the long term you need to feel like you matter on both levels.
Macro contributions are the stuff upper management sees— the new products and features, the deals closed, the systems you designed and maintained, the technical directions to advocate for and staff you mentor, the conference presentations you give. These are highly visible contributions are are "easy" to recognize you for, but on the other hand they're also relatively easy to succinctly describe, for example, on a job req, which will be necessary if you do indeed stop showing up.
In contrast to this, the micro contributions are what your close colleagues see. They're who recognize your taste, your care and attention to detail, the thoughtfulness with which you lay out code, balance requirements, utilize tools, and maintain hard-to-measure things like interface boundaries and testability. It's these contributions that quietly keep technical debt under control, save time by preventing problems from ever occurring, and push systems toward ever greater reliability and observability. If you disappear tomorrow, none of this stuff will fall apart overnight; it will degrade in more subtle ways that take much longer to manifest as an actual "problems".
I think for me at least, I sometimes feel a disconnect where I have lots of acknowledgment at the macro level, but still feel burnt out and unappreciated due to gaps at the micro level. The Q12 question about having a "best friend at work" [1] I think is also really tied into all of this, since that's likely to be a person who will see you and what you have to offer much more than a busy manager hustling between meetings all week and rubber-stamping your code reviews.
[1]: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/397058/increasing-importanc...
Yes! When I retired I started volunteering at a raptor conservation centre, and got given loads of simple mundane tasks. Some were really tedious (cleaning the birds' water bowls, removing poop, getting rid of nettles that blocked a view, etc etc) but at the end of the day my minder could see that the tasks had been done and that I wasn't a flake. They also demonstrated commitment, which helped me move up to helping with the birds themselves, and now I help fly them in experience days, showing them to paying members of the public, and bringing in funds that resource critical conservation projects (nest boxes, anti-poacher campaigns, etc).
Workers would do well to always keep it in mind.
If not, it looks like a growth industry, and it might be a good idea to monetize the things that burn other people out.
Work is merely a means to an end.
Best case, you remove a commute and gain a whole day back with a 4x8 schedule
But when I was working in medical instruments, and they brought in a doctor who explained how our instrument turned a surgery that had a 50/50 survival rate into one that had better than a 99% survival rate... I was more motivated to work there, and to work well there, and not because I was getting more money. My work had a purpose. It wasn't just a job.
dude have you ever been to high school?
Peoples' lives are improved by what janitors do, even in high school.