Another clickbaity title from The Guardian (this makes n=2 such comments from me on this website over the past two days) but the eventual conclusion gets the point across. (No it's not the end of ambition, it's just a reframing of cultural values which discourage endless toiling for something you probably won't get.)
Ultimately (in my opinion) it all comes down to value systems. You have to figure out what you value / care about most and then try to pursue that. And then you try to resolve any dilemmas based on what upholds your value system best. (Obviously survival and subsistence come first, but people are realizing that putting in so much extra work isn't getting that much more results. So there is an understandable cultural shift.)
Someone on this site made a comment (which I did appreciate) that it's a bit egotistical to assume that everything you do will be consistent within one ethical framework. That's fair. But I think it's still valuable (haha) to think about values (and if that value is something humanistic, then that's pretty cool).
I also dislike the increasing use of you won't believe... type hidden meaning teaser in the Graun, or the hyperbolic headline. All I can say is, it's worse in other media.
I don't see anything wrong with people looking for balance. I think the challenge comes when they try to make it so nobody can be ambitious. There is lots of "have your cake and eat it too" attitude, especially in tech, where people want to maximally successful in their career while working on their own terms, and I've seen it devolve into effectively saying that others shouldn't be allowed (or credited for) working hard. That is when ambition ends.
I think the lesson hard learned for this cohort is that some goals far in the future are now either highly likely to be unobtainable, or unwise to aim for in a world subject to AGW and future conflict (related or unrelated)
I would be amazed if there was not a similar ennui before either of the major european wars of last century.
It's not new: its the impact of seeing things your (grand-parents and) parents could achieve with "hard work" and realising you won't.
Maslow has also shifted a bit (yes, I know at some level it's been disproved or is over-stated) -"winning" at the career has ceased to be a core drive given you can be comfortable as a slacker/slow-quitter.
> its the impact of seeing things your (grand-parents and) parents could achieve with "hard work" and realising you won't.
I would argue that is not even the case. My and many grandparents have been farmers & factory workers which ment very hard and long work and your livelyhood depending heavily on external factors. Sure some would acquire wealth that is unrealistic today with 'simple work'. But my generation grew up hearing them whining about their hard lives.
> "winning" at the career has ceased to be a core drive given you can be comfortable as a slacker/slow-quitter.
Slow-quitter? Do you mean, not giving out your labour for free?
I don’t like that “slow quitting” has become a part of current language trends. It’s a pejorative term for what’s literally just refusing to put in more work than you’re being paid for. Nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, but how do you draw the line? How do you figure out how to be comfortable without being a slow-quitter but also how to be friendly ambitious and creative without overstepping your boundaries at the job? I'm really bad at this. Sometimes I just regurgitate ideas I read online and I don't even realise how stupid they are until I find a counterpoint somewhere else.
When I got into my current job and saw years of spaghetti PHP, all I wanted to do was change everything and even reimplement all the CodeIgniter3 stuff in Laravel so we could have a better system but my coworkers made me realise that such a change would be detrimental to the team's performance because they're comfortable with the current system. Just last week I was reading about Chesterton's fence and it definetly applies.
The highest performer on my team has developed the system in PHP years ago and he's kinda the only one who really groks it. Jonathan Blow talks about highest performers as the one who know how to program better but it's actually those who know the system better and I just don't wanna step on their toes.
>highest performers as the one who know how to program better but it's actually those who know the system better and I just don't wanna step on their toes.
It sounds like you've learned some bad habits/lessons in your career. High performers are able to learn new systems rapidly. If others are slowed by not understanding the code, that's a documentation, architecture, and occasionally tooling problem.
You should absolutely be asking questions of folks with more knowledge of the system and not concerned about "stepping on toes"
There is something going on about people changing their preferences on career decisions, I can't fully elucidate it myself... I have read multiple pieces discussing parts of it, without nailing it down.
given that most people are salaried employees I think the accurate description is, "is this the end of your employers ambitions?" which also explains the sometimes accusatory tone that's implied when these changing attitudes are discussed.
Opting out of the rat race to have a little bit more time for the people you care about is of course not the end of your ambitions but the opposite.
News exists to make us sensitive to trends and waves in wider society, and using individual experiences as emblems of those trends is valid journalistic practice.
17 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 47.6 ms ] threadAnother clickbaity title from The Guardian (this makes n=2 such comments from me on this website over the past two days) but the eventual conclusion gets the point across. (No it's not the end of ambition, it's just a reframing of cultural values which discourage endless toiling for something you probably won't get.)
Ultimately (in my opinion) it all comes down to value systems. You have to figure out what you value / care about most and then try to pursue that. And then you try to resolve any dilemmas based on what upholds your value system best. (Obviously survival and subsistence come first, but people are realizing that putting in so much extra work isn't getting that much more results. So there is an understandable cultural shift.)
Someone on this site made a comment (which I did appreciate) that it's a bit egotistical to assume that everything you do will be consistent within one ethical framework. That's fair. But I think it's still valuable (haha) to think about values (and if that value is something humanistic, then that's pretty cool).
The best raise day in my life was working 8 hours less per week for nearly the same money.
I would be amazed if there was not a similar ennui before either of the major european wars of last century.
It's not new: its the impact of seeing things your (grand-parents and) parents could achieve with "hard work" and realising you won't.
Maslow has also shifted a bit (yes, I know at some level it's been disproved or is over-stated) -"winning" at the career has ceased to be a core drive given you can be comfortable as a slacker/slow-quitter.
I would argue that is not even the case. My and many grandparents have been farmers & factory workers which ment very hard and long work and your livelyhood depending heavily on external factors. Sure some would acquire wealth that is unrealistic today with 'simple work'. But my generation grew up hearing them whining about their hard lives.
Slow-quitter? Do you mean, not giving out your labour for free?
I don’t like that “slow quitting” has become a part of current language trends. It’s a pejorative term for what’s literally just refusing to put in more work than you’re being paid for. Nothing wrong with that.
When I got into my current job and saw years of spaghetti PHP, all I wanted to do was change everything and even reimplement all the CodeIgniter3 stuff in Laravel so we could have a better system but my coworkers made me realise that such a change would be detrimental to the team's performance because they're comfortable with the current system. Just last week I was reading about Chesterton's fence and it definetly applies.
The highest performer on my team has developed the system in PHP years ago and he's kinda the only one who really groks it. Jonathan Blow talks about highest performers as the one who know how to program better but it's actually those who know the system better and I just don't wanna step on their toes.
It sounds like you've learned some bad habits/lessons in your career. High performers are able to learn new systems rapidly. If others are slowed by not understanding the code, that's a documentation, architecture, and occasionally tooling problem.
You should absolutely be asking questions of folks with more knowledge of the system and not concerned about "stepping on toes"
Opting out of the rat race to have a little bit more time for the people you care about is of course not the end of your ambitions but the opposite.
Maybe we can find an example of a single serial killer and ask if murdering people in your basement is the new employment trend.
"How employers are redefining non-disclosure agreements in the modern era"
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot_and_stick