Hmm. I had a recent example of why this is not as crazy a notion as corporates may want you to think. Guy in our team got burnt out, because he was ridden pretty hard by successive bosses, who did not understand why he is taking so long doing what he did.
He didn't quit, but he kinda broke and took some long term time off ( forget the exact legal framework ). So now the group as a whole has to recreate his processes that, while documented, did not account for constantly neglected changes imposed by other incoming timebombs ( all known and reported to management, mind ). So I spent hours in meeting yesterday trying to explain why things are thus to a new guy ( who appropriately was horrified -- and a little angry ) and his boss ( also new, just to spice things up ).
As it turns out, the guy was doing a lot, but was not good at making others notice that lack of him may make things difficult. Who knew? Well, I did. Did it help? No.
Bottom line. Be your best advocate. Don't kill yourself. None of this is real and, unless you really work as first responder, no one is going to die.
And I am saying this as a good corporate drone #9739843 not that many years ago.
I agree, but to add: visibility goes waaaay beyond self-marketing.
I saw a situation just like the one you mention recently: guy burned out, broken inside, working way too much, but not being noticed at all.
Execs were basically claiming he didn't do a certain long-term task and that "nothing was delivered".
The problem is, there was a public Slack group for visibility with evidence of the task, artifacts of the task, plus relentless requests by a certain person that he deletes the data in there. This person is the same one who went around claiming he didn't deliver anything, a narrative that was bought by execs.
After presenting the evidence and being shown the artifacts in a meeting, no exec accepted reality, no exec walked back, and just shrugged off with "it's too hard for you to understand".
Half of this business is not really doing much work, and a big chunk of those are psychopaths that depend on throwing people under the bus to survive.
Earlier in my career, I was at a sporting event and realized that tens of thousands of people all around me had a device in their pocket that I helped make, that my team made. Seeing it made it real.
Never underestimate your potential impact. Each of us makes decisions that change the world, that write a new future, every single day. Make the best of those opportunities.
Phoning it in at work is bad for you in the long term. That’s not balance, it’s wasted years. Either find a way you can do meaningful work at work, leave to do your own thing, or leave to find more meaningful work. Just my opinion.
My default mode is to phone it in at work. Been doing this for years, and I've been at my most happy when I have phoned it in. This is usually after some holiday or other personal life moment that gave me perspective on how little value my work really has to me. Occasionally I slip, get serious, 10X it, and get burnout. Somehow I don't seem to learn from this.
Also consider the insecurity that our system creates for people. Losing a job can snowball into something much larger. There goes your healthcare, mortgage payment, retirement contributions, ability to find another job (depending on the current state of the market), etc.
If your mortgage payment and overall living expenses are so high that you can only get by with a high paying job then you've shackled yourself to your org and should fear being fired
If you live well below your means you'll have a large savings buffer and won't care so much
> The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils."
> Said Diogenes, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king."
Personally I am lucky and privileged enough to be on a FIRE path, but not everyone is able to do so. And not everyone is shackled to high paying jobs. Some people are working 3 jobs and very much need each one of them.
The audience here largely aren't working 3 minimum wage jobs struggling to get by. I wouldn't leave the same comment on a forum for people in heavy debt
That's all true, but the average comment might cut the opposite way. New construction is skewed towards larger expensive homes, which does tell us a bit about the supply issues of smaller starter homes in general.
Most of the issue preference. There are foreclosed homes that are <$100k, but they are in areas people don't want to live, or can't due to lack of job options.
You're not automatically a "parasitic drain" by not constantly going above and beyond. It's okay to pace yourself in order to give a consistent, reliable output. If it avoids catastrophic burnout, that's better for the company because they get to keep you, and don't have to hire and train your replacement.
Exactly! One's worth is a direct function of how much they contribute to the organization's productivity. The same goes for civil rights - the more aligned you are to the success of the state, the more rights and liberties one should have. /s
Because you become what you do. Actions and habits are shaping one’s mind in the long run. This has little to do with work ethics, it’s about spending one’s life doing things that are meaningful to oneself.
I've worked at various tech jobs and have not really gotten meaning out of them. Coding, committing, pushing, and deploying gave some dopamine hits, but not long term meaningfulness. And now AI agents are doing those things anyway.
If people have found meaning while pushing bits around, I'd love to hear about it. I think working to improve other's lives directly (healthcare, charity work, community involvement, etc.) can provide the most meaning to people.
People certainly differ in what they find meaningful. I chose my profession based on what is meaningful to me, and was lucky in that it also pays reasonably well.
Perhaps shocking to most of Silicon Valley, but you can do things outside of work, which have nothing to do with work, with no social connections to people at work.
It takes years to build the habit of being able to be present at work and give it your best, no matter how much you “care” about the actual work. People are relying on you either way, and those habits and mindsets carry into other areas of your life. You may as well give it an honest effort, and be proud knowing you’re someone who shows up and can be relied on.
It kills any and all potential career progression, will annoy your coworkers if it’s bad enough they have to carry you (which will make the 40 hours a week you show up at the office less pleasant for you) and will put you at the top of the list to go if and when your company eventually hits a rough spot.
"Bad" is subjective, but as I stated, it's my opinion. It's not about work ethic at all; it's about your own values.
To simplify:
1. Reinforced behaviors become stronger, while others get weaker. Ultimately, I'm a behaviorist (ACT).
2. Work is a big part of your waking life.
3. If you spend that much of your life going through the motions, you're strengthening behaviors that may not be constructive.
4. When your situation changes, and you need those more constructive skills and behaviors, you may find them much more difficult to access.
That's a very functional lens. However, there's a deeper lens you can apply. I believe people feel most fulfilled when they're routinely acting in alignment with their core values (what they truly care about).
Phoning it in at work may actually be "workable" from an ACT standpoint if your personal life lights up all your values, and you are feeling completely fulfilled by friends, family, hobbies, etc.
However, I would venture that most people also want to feel that their work is giving them some feeling of intrinsic satisfaction, not just a paycheck. You can call it Purpose, Mission, Self-Efficacy, whatever you want. In my framing, people don't want to live in conflict with their values 8 hours/day.
But there's an even more basic argument that I would make: Life is incredibly short. You are hurtling toward death. If you're phoning it in, you're giving away your most precious resource for a small amount of financial security (and you still might get fired). You may find that when you hit 45 (or 65) you look back and weep for the decades you poured into something that you didn't care about, or even held in contempt.
You have to do what's right for you, but it's never too late. As someone who has admittedly phoned it in previously, I'm violently on the other side now. Regardless of how you feel about your job, I strongly recommend finding a way to give a shit, or getting out by any means necessary.
Same reason stealing is bad, dingus. When you steal, it is bad, _and_ it is bad for you. Do you know why? The culture right now is so unaware and precious and douchey!
Corporate is 100% forked tongue snakes. Loyalty to _a machine_ is foolish. I am happy when team members move on by-choice and improve their situation.
But, _I_ am not corporate, and you make my life shittier and devalue my work and demoralize me when you whine like a baby about the work and then quiet quit. Just quit quit if you are going to be a dirtbag to the rest of us.
It closes future doors for you. Who gets assigned to the interesting new project? Not the guy who's phoning it in. Who gets first crack at the limited pool of raises? Not the guy who's phoning it in. So, even if all you want out of work is money, phoning it in is bad for you. If you want more, if you want interesting, fulfilling work, it's bad for you there, too.
More than that, phoning it in is bad for your character. That assumes you share a certain moral framework or outlook, though. If you're a moral nihilist, then it's really hard to make such an argument make sense to you. But let me at least try to make it make sense.
I want to be part of something, part of a team, not just a cog in a machine. I want relationships, not just for all of life to be transactional. But, see, wherever I go, I take me. The "me" that I take to my marriage or to hanging out with my buddies is the same "me" that goes to work. When I make one part of my life purely transactional, it's hard to keep that from leaking out into other areas that definitely should not be transactional.
Now, you're going to say that companies take advantage of that, and you'll be right. They do. They try to sell you on "we're all a big team!" and such. But the fact is that some places do actually try to live that out, and some places purely use it to try to extract the maximum effort from suckers. And the second group tends to be corrosive to your character, too, even if you don't phone it in, partly because such places tend to have lots of people who are phoning it in, but more because the company is phoning it in in how they relate to you. But the answer is not to phone it in in return. The answer is to start looking for somewhere better.
It's only wasted years if work is an important part of your character. For most of us, it's an obligation we reluctantly do so we can pay bills and actually live our life.
Sure, if you consider "work" to be the end-all-be-all. I "phoned it in at work" for a while and it was one of the best things I did for myself. But the reason was mostly that my evenings were spent working on learning data analysis and working on bunches of civics-oriented projects and FOIA litigation. I did eventually leave to find more meaningful work in a different career. But "phoning it in" is what enabled me to eventually leave.
I'm not going to get too much into the discussion of it being directly bad for you, but nothing builds resentment like a coworker making your life harder by not actually doing their own.
If you start phoning it in, don't be surprised if you start becoming isolated. And that can definitely be bad for you in the long term.
Yeah. The myth of meaningful work does more harm than good.
Plenty of people find meaning in work. They enjoy it and would do it even if they won the lottery. If that's you, then that's great.
But that will never be the cade for me. I serve organizations with missions I am proud to support. I work with reasonably smart, dedicated people. I am paid a decent amount. The work is sometimes challenging and fun. I am a consultant, so I can set my own hours.
But on any given day, I would rather do anything other than work. Go for a walk. Watch TV. Read a book. See friends.
The meaning is not in the work—it's in you. You can always find ways to connect more to things you value while at work. That makes it personally meaningful. If "creativity" is a core value for you, but your job is not "creative" on paper, there are countless ways to pivot toward creativity. You can draw illustrations for a presentation. You can redesign a document template with good typography. You can split a complex spreadsheet into clear tabs. Whatever you do, there's a way to do more of what matters to you.
This. You can have pride in doing things right, but it still won't make it any more meaningful. It will be just you deluding yourself. Some things needs to be done, but I don't think anyone would be surprised how little of it is actually needed.
Spend your time on things that matter to you, and especially with people that you like and people that you love. All we really have is our memories anyway.
Some people find hard work intrinsically rewarding and would be unhappy phoning it in, perhaps even more disgruntled, and perhaps spending the same number of hours. This is highly personal and dependent on the job.
I believe part of the message is correct though. Remember that you are an employee doing a job, and nothing more, to any corporation.
It has been “basecamp” for a long time. Also they had a pretty big blowup where 1/3 of their employees took a walkout offer.
David went on stage last year and told people he would fire an employee who used their commit signoff process incorrectly. A process entirely designed around reducing CI costs by putting burden on the individual through increased process.
Which is to say that even companies that make a brand out of how well they treat their employees are still companies at the end of the day, and sometimes marketing and PR doesn't align with reality.
If you want to follow your dream, do that, but don't defraud others by taking money and not fulfilling your obligations. It doesn't mean you owe anyone your life but in most cases it means filling in the cracks, not letting things drop because 'it's not in your job description'. Nobody should suggest you owe them your life or unwavering loyalty. You are mowing a lawn - just make sure the grass is cut responsibly, and the home owner is something near satisfied.
Yes - there is a lot of variation in what 'obligation' means - and there are definitely questions about the nature of power in society and how surpluses are distributed, but at the end of the day, beyond very low paying work / unskilled labour, the system is fair by and large, to the extent that reality allows for that.
It's also understandable that people have a hard time finding their place in this system. Sometimes companies demand too much. Sometimes rewards are not commensurate. Sometimes we care too much. Sometimes we are compelled to care (medical services) which takes it's toll.
Some people have a natural affinity for a job, task or team, some want the burden of responsibility. Paradoxically, some don't stress about it.
And no system is ever perfect, not even close, and it will always be thus.
Let this sink in: "The Zen Buddhist way of "being" is an active, non-dual state of presence where ordinary actions—such as sitting, walking, eating, or working—are experienced directly without the barrier of ego, judgment, or conceptual overthinking". Powerful stuff.
About the 'systemic issues' - that's why you stay politically aware, and vote. That's your other 'job'.
> the system is fair by and large, to the extent that reality allows for that.
This point is doing a lot of heavy lifting without evidence. Perhaps, if you are a white middle class European or North American it could be argued to be somewhat fair. "The system" as a whole is grossly unfair if you are born elsewhere, or into a poorer or marginalised family. That's without going into the gender and race pay gaps, the lack of employee protections, rising cost of living etc. etc. that even affect those luckier groups.
I've got a fair number of recently-laid-off friends who are amazingly talented. I don't think the system is "by and large fair." You've just been lucky.
Nobody is entitled to a job because they are 'good at software'.
The implication is that someone else should have to give you money for some kind of performative activity.
That's not how it works, it's a misunderstanding of the 'civil contract'.
If we wanted to Socialize All The Means of Everything, we could definitely have guaranteed work for everyone - it would be extremely inefficient - and you would almost never get to do the work you aspire to do.
You'd have to do the work the inefficient system required you to do.
But really nobody wants that, or almost nobody. Most people prefer some kind of economic dynamism that balances those things.
Being laid off is a bummer, and it 'feels unfair', and those chosen for furlough may not hav been chosen fairly, bit layoffs are not inherently unfair.
Probably in most US states, there could be a few inches more and better social systems to support people, but in some places, it's debatable if those systems are helpful.
I think your definition of fair is just different than mine. If you are making an amazing product and do incredible work, you can still get laid off if (say) Microsoft/Sony arbitrarily shuffles the VP deck chairs and the new leader decides to pivot to GaaS, invest in chatbots instead, etc. Is it economic-efficient? Maybe?--honestly I doubt that too. But it's not _fair_.
I think if you're saying it's good for one group and no others, "fair" is just categorically the wrong word to use
The system advantages wealthy people, full stop. White people tend to be more wealthy on average, and white men tend to be more wealthy than white women, but let's not confuse things. Wealth is really the biggest dividing line here
For instance, given the choice, would you be have 10 million dollars and be a nonwhite woman, or be an average-wealth white man or even above average wealth white man?
Wealth changes the equation more than other factors
But maybe I'm wrong, I am after all, a pretty thoroughly average white guy
> Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.
This is not only offensive, but dehumanizing, reductive, and the co-opting of trauma in a hyperbolic way.
No one reading this is a fucking slave to their company. They may very well be in a third world country or a repressive regime; but, let’s be honest: those folks are not the intended audience here.
This is more of the, “quiet quitting trope,” rephrased in an objectively horrendous way.
Roman Empire slavery is not the slavery of the Americas, your traumas are not everyone’s traumas
if your day isn’t at your discretion you are a slave in that older system, the popularity and normalization of that in our culture doesn’t change this. chattel slavery occurring in your country’s history doesn’t change this. there are many people at all socioeconomic brackets that have addressed it for themselves, based on the starkness of the observation.
Are you? You are most likely not a slave to that specific company, but you are definitely slave to the system, you can’t leave your current job without securing another, or in few months you will be literally homeless, and if you have a family, they will leave you too aka your life is over. Even if you have your own business, you are slave to the investors or the ones pay your contracts. Go a little higher in this “food chain” and you are slave to banks, get debanked or sanctioned, and no matter what, most likely you will end up homeless. Hell, even having low credit score “real life good boy score” is enough to prevent from accessing many basic needs from buying/renting houses to new jobs or others.
You are truly free if you are not afraid to lose your basic human needs (shelter, food, security, etc.) if you stop working either voluntarily or lose your job.
Is there really such a fine-line between slave or not?
What if the economy gets so bad you have to work 16 hours a day just to afford food? What if you can't afford to have kids? Pets? What if your apartment is 150 square feet?
After a certain point a free person under capitalism has less than certain historical slaves, and has a worse life.
> remote-first, asynchronous AND allowing you to set up your work schedule
The asynchronous part is a major distinction, I have met many companies who claim to be “remote”, but when you look closer, they are basically not. One company wanted to have a certain hours a day with cameras on.. another wanted to lock you in your house during work hours (yes, you can’t do your job say in the library), some other companies say remote within xyz country (or an indirect way by having a specific time zone), list goes on.
I would also add to that sentence: AND objective based, so whatever approach you do as long as you deliver it won’t matter.
sad you talk about work. I thought the article would talk about life in general. even worst if you were at a job where you don’t have any of those fancy things that make you “happier”.
I was recently complaining to a friend of mine about the stupid stuff going on at work. I’m a corporate executive, he is a factory plant manager.
After letting me vent he took out his phone and showed me pictures of tarps and buckets collecting rain water from the holes in the ceiling the company is too cheap to fix. These are safety issues that literally could hurt someone just doing their job.
It’s helpful to remind ourselves every once in a while that we are a privileged few right now and in the grand scheme of history and there are many who have or had it way way worse. It doesn’t mean we’re not miserable, stuck in our own stress or inequality doesn’t exist. It’s important to understand what makes you fulfilled in life but also getting a reality check every once in a while is helpful too.
Yes, it always has been a forum primarily for SV tech workers. As a tech worker outside of that locale, it's interesting to see the perspectives of people within it.
I think most corporate unhappiness comes from the company’s board pressing down on the execs who in turn press down on the management (A good manager will keep you away from that bs). I have been at least two companies where the board decided to get involved in the day to day and it ends up where every decision must be approved by the board. For example, hiring a designer to design something and then the execs take the design all the way up to the board where they discuss how it should look before passing it back to the designer to change. Just fire your execs if you want to their job of running the company.
I’ve never had a rewarding experience going “above and beyond” at work, its the opposite honestly. If I’m working after hours or pulling teams together that should have already been, its over
I’m a software engineer so the above and beyond tasks involve trying new things out that I want to do for personal fulfillment, experience and learning. I would recommend it always being for those reasons. Don’t worry about or believe the performance goals
You can get thrown money and accolades by simply being visible, and you can synthesize visibility by helping other people even at the expense of your own tasks
I’m fulfilled by my work, I like getting paid to do things I would do anyway, but I don’t tell people about my occupation, I don’t tell people what I do for capitalism only what I do for fun. Yes, even though I’m fulfilled by the work.
Hmm. I had a recent example of why this is not as crazy a notion as corporates may want you to think. Guy in our team got burnt out, because he was ridden pretty hard by successive bosses, who did not understand why he is taking so long doing what he did.
He didn't quit, but he kinda broke and took some long term time off ( forget the exact legal framework ). So now the group as a whole has to recreate his processes that, while documented, did not account for constantly neglected changes imposed by other incoming timebombs ( all known and reported to management, mind ). So I spent hours in meeting yesterday trying to explain why things are thus to a new guy ( who appropriately was horrified -- and a little angry ) and his boss ( also new, just to spice things up ).
As it turns out, the guy was doing a lot, but was not good at making others notice that lack of him may make things difficult. Who knew? Well, I did. Did it help? No.
Bottom line. Be your best advocate. Don't kill yourself. None of this is real and, unless you really work as first responder, no one is going to die.
And I am saying this as a good corporate drone #9739843 not that many years ago.
I agree, but to add: visibility goes waaaay beyond self-marketing.
I saw a situation just like the one you mention recently: guy burned out, broken inside, working way too much, but not being noticed at all.
Execs were basically claiming he didn't do a certain long-term task and that "nothing was delivered".
The problem is, there was a public Slack group for visibility with evidence of the task, artifacts of the task, plus relentless requests by a certain person that he deletes the data in there. This person is the same one who went around claiming he didn't deliver anything, a narrative that was bought by execs.
After presenting the evidence and being shown the artifacts in a meeting, no exec accepted reality, no exec walked back, and just shrugged off with "it's too hard for you to understand".
Half of this business is not really doing much work, and a big chunk of those are psychopaths that depend on throwing people under the bus to survive.
> None of this is real
Earlier in my career, I was at a sporting event and realized that tens of thousands of people all around me had a device in their pocket that I helped make, that my team made. Seeing it made it real.
Never underestimate your potential impact. Each of us makes decisions that change the world, that write a new future, every single day. Make the best of those opportunities.
Phoning it in at work is bad for you in the long term. That’s not balance, it’s wasted years. Either find a way you can do meaningful work at work, leave to do your own thing, or leave to find more meaningful work. Just my opinion.
My default mode is to phone it in at work. Been doing this for years, and I've been at my most happy when I have phoned it in. This is usually after some holiday or other personal life moment that gave me perspective on how little value my work really has to me. Occasionally I slip, get serious, 10X it, and get burnout. Somehow I don't seem to learn from this.
No! You need to become a team lead - 50% more work for 10% more pay!
"That’s not balance, it’s wasted years."
It's only wasted if there were better (realistic) options. For many people, they don't.
Also consider the insecurity that our system creates for people. Losing a job can snowball into something much larger. There goes your healthcare, mortgage payment, retirement contributions, ability to find another job (depending on the current state of the market), etc.
Some of that insecurity is self-inflicted
If your mortgage payment and overall living expenses are so high that you can only get by with a high paying job then you've shackled yourself to your org and should fear being fired
If you live well below your means you'll have a large savings buffer and won't care so much
> The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils."
> Said Diogenes, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king."
Personally I am lucky and privileged enough to be on a FIRE path, but not everyone is able to do so. And not everyone is shackled to high paying jobs. Some people are working 3 jobs and very much need each one of them.
The audience here largely aren't working 3 minimum wage jobs struggling to get by. I wouldn't leave the same comment on a forum for people in heavy debt
> Let them eat lentils
Average home price in the US is 400k and mortgage rates are over 7%.
Home prices differ a huge amount by the income of the people in the area
This is a meaningless statistic with zero nuance. Average is also the wrong thing to look at
That's all true, but the average comment might cut the opposite way. New construction is skewed towards larger expensive homes, which does tell us a bit about the supply issues of smaller starter homes in general.
Most of the issue preference. There are foreclosed homes that are <$100k, but they are in areas people don't want to live, or can't due to lack of job options.
That's assuming your full-time job is secure. I think many of us have lived through rounds of layoffs.
They should be forced out then. Your inability to improve doesn't justify being a parasitic drain on the org's productivity.
Yeah I'm sure you'll be well rewarded for being a good little worker and fighting for your org's productivity over people's happiness
Highly recommend freewill alternatives to workplace terrorism.
Not devoting your entire life to optimizing for your org's productivity is workplace terrorism?
You're not automatically a "parasitic drain" by not constantly going above and beyond. It's okay to pace yourself in order to give a consistent, reliable output. If it avoids catastrophic burnout, that's better for the company because they get to keep you, and don't have to hire and train your replacement.
That's not phoning it in. That's just doing your job. Think more of the people who send prs that dont compile or even do what they say they do.
does the article really advocate for this? I didn't read it that way
Exactly! One's worth is a direct function of how much they contribute to the organization's productivity. The same goes for civil rights - the more aligned you are to the success of the state, the more rights and liberties one should have. /s
Effectually true.
Welcome to fascism
That's a scary word! Should I be scared?
Depends, are you part of the in-group or out-group?
Depends, I guess
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Ngmi.
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>Phoning it in at work is bad for you in the long term.
How is it "bad" for you? Make an argument that doesn’t simply devolve into vacuous platitudes and protestant work ethic nonsense.
Because you become what you do. Actions and habits are shaping one’s mind in the long run. This has little to do with work ethics, it’s about spending one’s life doing things that are meaningful to oneself.
I've worked at various tech jobs and have not really gotten meaning out of them. Coding, committing, pushing, and deploying gave some dopamine hits, but not long term meaningfulness. And now AI agents are doing those things anyway.
If people have found meaning while pushing bits around, I'd love to hear about it. I think working to improve other's lives directly (healthcare, charity work, community involvement, etc.) can provide the most meaning to people.
People certainly differ in what they find meaningful. I chose my profession based on what is meaningful to me, and was lucky in that it also pays reasonably well.
Perhaps shocking to most of Silicon Valley, but you can do things outside of work, which have nothing to do with work, with no social connections to people at work.
But why would you waste the significant portion of your waking life that you spend with work on activities that you don’t find meaningful?
There are no meaningful options to be had? So what then? You still have to eat.
Well, I don’t know, I manage to do work that is meaningful to me and also earns me a living.
It takes years to build the habit of being able to be present at work and give it your best, no matter how much you “care” about the actual work. People are relying on you either way, and those habits and mindsets carry into other areas of your life. You may as well give it an honest effort, and be proud knowing you’re someone who shows up and can be relied on.
That's no habit, that's psychological maladaptation. I recommend reading "To Have or To Be?" from Erich Fromm.
Yeah, I suppose it does take a long time to learn how to live a lie.
It kills any and all potential career progression, will annoy your coworkers if it’s bad enough they have to carry you (which will make the 40 hours a week you show up at the office less pleasant for you) and will put you at the top of the list to go if and when your company eventually hits a rough spot.
"Bad" is subjective, but as I stated, it's my opinion. It's not about work ethic at all; it's about your own values.
To simplify:
1. Reinforced behaviors become stronger, while others get weaker. Ultimately, I'm a behaviorist (ACT).
2. Work is a big part of your waking life.
3. If you spend that much of your life going through the motions, you're strengthening behaviors that may not be constructive.
4. When your situation changes, and you need those more constructive skills and behaviors, you may find them much more difficult to access.
That's a very functional lens. However, there's a deeper lens you can apply. I believe people feel most fulfilled when they're routinely acting in alignment with their core values (what they truly care about).
Phoning it in at work may actually be "workable" from an ACT standpoint if your personal life lights up all your values, and you are feeling completely fulfilled by friends, family, hobbies, etc.
However, I would venture that most people also want to feel that their work is giving them some feeling of intrinsic satisfaction, not just a paycheck. You can call it Purpose, Mission, Self-Efficacy, whatever you want. In my framing, people don't want to live in conflict with their values 8 hours/day.
But there's an even more basic argument that I would make: Life is incredibly short. You are hurtling toward death. If you're phoning it in, you're giving away your most precious resource for a small amount of financial security (and you still might get fired). You may find that when you hit 45 (or 65) you look back and weep for the decades you poured into something that you didn't care about, or even held in contempt.
You have to do what's right for you, but it's never too late. As someone who has admittedly phoned it in previously, I'm violently on the other side now. Regardless of how you feel about your job, I strongly recommend finding a way to give a shit, or getting out by any means necessary.
Same reason stealing is bad, dingus. When you steal, it is bad, _and_ it is bad for you. Do you know why? The culture right now is so unaware and precious and douchey!
Corporate is 100% forked tongue snakes. Loyalty to _a machine_ is foolish. I am happy when team members move on by-choice and improve their situation.
But, _I_ am not corporate, and you make my life shittier and devalue my work and demoralize me when you whine like a baby about the work and then quiet quit. Just quit quit if you are going to be a dirtbag to the rest of us.
It closes future doors for you. Who gets assigned to the interesting new project? Not the guy who's phoning it in. Who gets first crack at the limited pool of raises? Not the guy who's phoning it in. So, even if all you want out of work is money, phoning it in is bad for you. If you want more, if you want interesting, fulfilling work, it's bad for you there, too.
More than that, phoning it in is bad for your character. That assumes you share a certain moral framework or outlook, though. If you're a moral nihilist, then it's really hard to make such an argument make sense to you. But let me at least try to make it make sense.
I want to be part of something, part of a team, not just a cog in a machine. I want relationships, not just for all of life to be transactional. But, see, wherever I go, I take me. The "me" that I take to my marriage or to hanging out with my buddies is the same "me" that goes to work. When I make one part of my life purely transactional, it's hard to keep that from leaking out into other areas that definitely should not be transactional.
Now, you're going to say that companies take advantage of that, and you'll be right. They do. They try to sell you on "we're all a big team!" and such. But the fact is that some places do actually try to live that out, and some places purely use it to try to extract the maximum effort from suckers. And the second group tends to be corrosive to your character, too, even if you don't phone it in, partly because such places tend to have lots of people who are phoning it in, but more because the company is phoning it in in how they relate to you. But the answer is not to phone it in in return. The answer is to start looking for somewhere better.
It's only wasted years if work is an important part of your character. For most of us, it's an obligation we reluctantly do so we can pay bills and actually live our life.
Shouldn’t it be a part of your character? It’s what you spend most of your waking hours doing.
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Personal attacks are against the site guidelines. Don't post like that here.
Sure, if you consider "work" to be the end-all-be-all. I "phoned it in at work" for a while and it was one of the best things I did for myself. But the reason was mostly that my evenings were spent working on learning data analysis and working on bunches of civics-oriented projects and FOIA litigation. I did eventually leave to find more meaningful work in a different career. But "phoning it in" is what enabled me to eventually leave.
Hopefully AI with enhanced detection will begin offboarding these non-operative resources with more expedience.
Friend, any such resource is already on their off-ramp or preparing one:D I am ok that you think those particular resources are of no use.
...and people like you are exactly the reason why I left the industry. Holy fuck man, it's okay to be something other than a worker bee.
Don't worry, you would be the next on the list to be replaced by the machine, though you might feel the leopard eating your face as it happens.
It's a race to the bottom.
Well, that's not quite how it works, but ok. I can see how you'd think that if you're easily commoditized.
I'm not going to get too much into the discussion of it being directly bad for you, but nothing builds resentment like a coworker making your life harder by not actually doing their own.
If you start phoning it in, don't be surprised if you start becoming isolated. And that can definitely be bad for you in the long term.
> find a way you can do meaningful work at work
This is silly. 90% of corporate work employing millions of ppl is not 'meaningful work'
Yeah. The myth of meaningful work does more harm than good.
Plenty of people find meaning in work. They enjoy it and would do it even if they won the lottery. If that's you, then that's great.
But that will never be the cade for me. I serve organizations with missions I am proud to support. I work with reasonably smart, dedicated people. I am paid a decent amount. The work is sometimes challenging and fun. I am a consultant, so I can set my own hours.
But on any given day, I would rather do anything other than work. Go for a walk. Watch TV. Read a book. See friends.
And that's okay.
There is such a thing as meaningful work. Just, you need to leave the corporate world and accept an 80% paycut.
> Plenty of people find meaning in work.
Even then though, most of that work is objectively not meaningful.
The meaning is not in the work—it's in you. You can always find ways to connect more to things you value while at work. That makes it personally meaningful. If "creativity" is a core value for you, but your job is not "creative" on paper, there are countless ways to pivot toward creativity. You can draw illustrations for a presentation. You can redesign a document template with good typography. You can split a complex spreadsheet into clear tabs. Whatever you do, there's a way to do more of what matters to you.
And if there really isn't, get out.
This. You can have pride in doing things right, but it still won't make it any more meaningful. It will be just you deluding yourself. Some things needs to be done, but I don't think anyone would be surprised how little of it is actually needed.
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Spend your time on things that matter to you, and especially with people that you like and people that you love. All we really have is our memories anyway.
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Some people find hard work intrinsically rewarding and would be unhappy phoning it in, perhaps even more disgruntled, and perhaps spending the same number of hours. This is highly personal and dependent on the job.
I believe part of the message is correct though. Remember that you are an employee doing a job, and nothing more, to any corporation.
What you do under that contract is up to you.
> 37Signals does it too
It has been “basecamp” for a long time. Also they had a pretty big blowup where 1/3 of their employees took a walkout offer.
David went on stage last year and told people he would fire an employee who used their commit signoff process incorrectly. A process entirely designed around reducing CI costs by putting burden on the individual through increased process.
Which is to say that even companies that make a brand out of how well they treat their employees are still companies at the end of the day, and sometimes marketing and PR doesn't align with reality.
Curious if that process has survived in this agentic engineering year
If you want to follow your dream, do that, but don't defraud others by taking money and not fulfilling your obligations. It doesn't mean you owe anyone your life but in most cases it means filling in the cracks, not letting things drop because 'it's not in your job description'. Nobody should suggest you owe them your life or unwavering loyalty. You are mowing a lawn - just make sure the grass is cut responsibly, and the home owner is something near satisfied.
Yes - there is a lot of variation in what 'obligation' means - and there are definitely questions about the nature of power in society and how surpluses are distributed, but at the end of the day, beyond very low paying work / unskilled labour, the system is fair by and large, to the extent that reality allows for that.
It's also understandable that people have a hard time finding their place in this system. Sometimes companies demand too much. Sometimes rewards are not commensurate. Sometimes we care too much. Sometimes we are compelled to care (medical services) which takes it's toll.
Some people have a natural affinity for a job, task or team, some want the burden of responsibility. Paradoxically, some don't stress about it.
And no system is ever perfect, not even close, and it will always be thus.
Let this sink in: "The Zen Buddhist way of "being" is an active, non-dual state of presence where ordinary actions—such as sitting, walking, eating, or working—are experienced directly without the barrier of ego, judgment, or conceptual overthinking". Powerful stuff.
About the 'systemic issues' - that's why you stay politically aware, and vote. That's your other 'job'.
> the system is fair by and large, to the extent that reality allows for that.
This point is doing a lot of heavy lifting without evidence. Perhaps, if you are a white middle class European or North American it could be argued to be somewhat fair. "The system" as a whole is grossly unfair if you are born elsewhere, or into a poorer or marginalised family. That's without going into the gender and race pay gaps, the lack of employee protections, rising cost of living etc. etc. that even affect those luckier groups.
I've got a fair number of recently-laid-off friends who are amazingly talented. I don't think the system is "by and large fair." You've just been lucky.
Nobody is entitled to a job because they are 'good at software'.
The implication is that someone else should have to give you money for some kind of performative activity.
That's not how it works, it's a misunderstanding of the 'civil contract'.
If we wanted to Socialize All The Means of Everything, we could definitely have guaranteed work for everyone - it would be extremely inefficient - and you would almost never get to do the work you aspire to do.
You'd have to do the work the inefficient system required you to do.
But really nobody wants that, or almost nobody. Most people prefer some kind of economic dynamism that balances those things.
Being laid off is a bummer, and it 'feels unfair', and those chosen for furlough may not hav been chosen fairly, bit layoffs are not inherently unfair.
Probably in most US states, there could be a few inches more and better social systems to support people, but in some places, it's debatable if those systems are helpful.
In the Global South, this is a big problem.
I think your definition of fair is just different than mine. If you are making an amazing product and do incredible work, you can still get laid off if (say) Microsoft/Sony arbitrarily shuffles the VP deck chairs and the new leader decides to pivot to GaaS, invest in chatbots instead, etc. Is it economic-efficient? Maybe?--honestly I doubt that too. But it's not _fair_.
The system is fair for wealthy white men. Not so much for everyone else.
Unhelpful, generic, low effort bait does not belong on HN. Reconsider your life choices. May lord bless you.
I think if you're saying it's good for one group and no others, "fair" is just categorically the wrong word to use
The system advantages wealthy people, full stop. White people tend to be more wealthy on average, and white men tend to be more wealthy than white women, but let's not confuse things. Wealth is really the biggest dividing line here
For instance, given the choice, would you be have 10 million dollars and be a nonwhite woman, or be an average-wealth white man or even above average wealth white man?
Wealth changes the equation more than other factors
But maybe I'm wrong, I am after all, a pretty thoroughly average white guy
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> Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.
This is not only offensive, but dehumanizing, reductive, and the co-opting of trauma in a hyperbolic way.
No one reading this is a fucking slave to their company. They may very well be in a third world country or a repressive regime; but, let’s be honest: those folks are not the intended audience here.
This is more of the, “quiet quitting trope,” rephrased in an objectively horrendous way.
I would posit that many people working on a sponsored visa may feel differently.
edit: To be clear, when your relationship with work is good and your employer is largely benevolent, it can be fine.
When things go sideways and you're forced to do things that you disagree with (morally/ethically) or risk deportation, it is no longer OK.
Wage slavery is a very real thing now and in the past
Comparing a dissafected american programmer to a real slave is just not the right take
Roman Empire slavery is not the slavery of the Americas, your traumas are not everyone’s traumas
if your day isn’t at your discretion you are a slave in that older system, the popularity and normalization of that in our culture doesn’t change this. chattel slavery occurring in your country’s history doesn’t change this. there are many people at all socioeconomic brackets that have addressed it for themselves, based on the starkness of the observation.
> fucking slave to their company.
Are you? You are most likely not a slave to that specific company, but you are definitely slave to the system, you can’t leave your current job without securing another, or in few months you will be literally homeless, and if you have a family, they will leave you too aka your life is over. Even if you have your own business, you are slave to the investors or the ones pay your contracts. Go a little higher in this “food chain” and you are slave to banks, get debanked or sanctioned, and no matter what, most likely you will end up homeless. Hell, even having low credit score “real life good boy score” is enough to prevent from accessing many basic needs from buying/renting houses to new jobs or others.
You are truly free if you are not afraid to lose your basic human needs (shelter, food, security, etc.) if you stop working either voluntarily or lose your job.
None of this meets the definition of ‘slave’ and any claims to the contrary are disingenuous at best.
Is there really such a fine-line between slave or not?
What if the economy gets so bad you have to work 16 hours a day just to afford food? What if you can't afford to have kids? Pets? What if your apartment is 150 square feet?
After a certain point a free person under capitalism has less than certain historical slaves, and has a worse life.
> remote-first, asynchronous AND allowing you to set up your work schedule
The asynchronous part is a major distinction, I have met many companies who claim to be “remote”, but when you look closer, they are basically not. One company wanted to have a certain hours a day with cameras on.. another wanted to lock you in your house during work hours (yes, you can’t do your job say in the library), some other companies say remote within xyz country (or an indirect way by having a specific time zone), list goes on.
I would also add to that sentence: AND objective based, so whatever approach you do as long as you deliver it won’t matter.
sad you talk about work. I thought the article would talk about life in general. even worst if you were at a job where you don’t have any of those fancy things that make you “happier”.
this is the silicon valley forum :(
I was recently complaining to a friend of mine about the stupid stuff going on at work. I’m a corporate executive, he is a factory plant manager.
After letting me vent he took out his phone and showed me pictures of tarps and buckets collecting rain water from the holes in the ceiling the company is too cheap to fix. These are safety issues that literally could hurt someone just doing their job.
It’s helpful to remind ourselves every once in a while that we are a privileged few right now and in the grand scheme of history and there are many who have or had it way way worse. It doesn’t mean we’re not miserable, stuck in our own stress or inequality doesn’t exist. It’s important to understand what makes you fulfilled in life but also getting a reality check every once in a while is helpful too.
Yes, it always has been a forum primarily for SV tech workers. As a tech worker outside of that locale, it's interesting to see the perspectives of people within it.
I think most corporate unhappiness comes from the company’s board pressing down on the execs who in turn press down on the management (A good manager will keep you away from that bs). I have been at least two companies where the board decided to get involved in the day to day and it ends up where every decision must be approved by the board. For example, hiring a designer to design something and then the execs take the design all the way up to the board where they discuss how it should look before passing it back to the designer to change. Just fire your execs if you want to their job of running the company.
I’ve never had a rewarding experience going “above and beyond” at work, its the opposite honestly. If I’m working after hours or pulling teams together that should have already been, its over
I’m a software engineer so the above and beyond tasks involve trying new things out that I want to do for personal fulfillment, experience and learning. I would recommend it always being for those reasons. Don’t worry about or believe the performance goals
You can get thrown money and accolades by simply being visible, and you can synthesize visibility by helping other people even at the expense of your own tasks
I’m fulfilled by my work, I like getting paid to do things I would do anyway, but I don’t tell people about my occupation, I don’t tell people what I do for capitalism only what I do for fun. Yes, even though I’m fulfilled by the work.
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