I always wondered how bragging about how long you worked was considered by some as a good thing. The "higher ups" must have used some fancy tricks to get people to think that way. It never worked on me though :)

[–] MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.ml 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I always wondered how bragging about how long you worked was considered by some as a good thing.

Somebody invented "Employee of the Month" and our competitive habits took over.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

I never thought about this before, but if I worked somewhere and they gave me an 'employee of the month' award, it would piss me off because it would make me feel like I was being a kissass somehow.

[–] bus_factor@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Management was handing out bullshit busywork recently, and some people were complaining. Then some guy was like "they pay my salary, so I do whatever they want!"

What kind of bullshit wage slave mentality is that? I am the vendor in this scenario, my employer is paying for the privilege of using my services. There can be terms and conditions from both parties of that deal, and if they're incompatible the deal is off.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ah I have the attitude of “you’re free to pay me engineer money to do this, but I’m leaving at 4 whether I was productive or doing weird bullshit you decided on.“

[–] bus_factor@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sure, if there's a business need for cleaning the office toilets I'll stop coding and do it for a day.

In this case it's "everyone needs to spend a few weeks getting points in the training portal, we don't care what you do in there as long as you get points". This clearly doesn't fulfill any business need, people just do whatever BS is the least effort per point. And as you might expect from an internal training portal, spending 20 minutes in that thing makes me want to stab myself.

Again, if there's a business need for it that's a different story, but useless mandates just to jerk people around are a deal breaker.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ok that’s fair. I’m an engineer and I’ve told my line workers consistently that I’ll never ask them to do something I wouldn’t be willing to do, and at times I do have to help out because shit happens when you’ve got a skeleton crew. Hell I spend some days fabricating my designs.

And yeah I’d love good training. Teaching me actionable skills. Or just send me to grad school or give me a subscription to my professional organization and let me read their magazine on the job. Hell, throw IEEE in there, they’ve always got something to say. But no I’ve spent days doing the training portal bullshit on everything from “here’s how to deal with the fact that technically you’re an arms trafficker, don’t do treason and don’t think about how you’re a legitimate military target” to “watch a too damn long video about workplace sexual harassment that was clearly not written by anyone who’s ever seen a factory floor” and it just made me want to bash my brain in.

[–] bus_factor@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

See, those are needed for compliance/CYA. That has business value, so I can work with that. What I'm referring to here is just training on useless stuff for the sake of racking up points.

[–] soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz 8 points 11 months ago

Modern day life is a competition, people always want to "1 up" the previous person. This is prevalent in society, don't overthink it

[–] PunnyName@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

Guessing you weren't desperate to please someone. Gotta kiss ass to move up!

[–] HuntressHimbo@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think people believe it is a sign you are striving to excel or that you care about the work you are doing.

In my case I think I talk about how much overtime I work because I got insecurities about my productivity drilled into me as a child with undiagnosed ADHD. Constantly being told you don't work hard enough regardless of the effort you put in will give you some weird hangups. I think subconsciously its about needing external validation that the time you put in was adequate, or insecurity around 'work ethic'

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

I can relate to that. I’m extremely glad I broke that habit. They told me when they needed me. I did what needed to be done within reasonable expectations. My failure past that point is on workload