Entitlement is making us all poorer (a pessimistic view of the job market in the future)

Hey guys!

Have you ever felt neglected at work? Or even worse, did you have your boss belittle you or insult you? And did you go to HR? No, only pussies do that... you probably did the only honorable thing : you sat back on your ass and your productivity slowed down to a grind. Or you took an extra handful of whatever it is that you're producing. Whatever it is, as you were doing it, you had a slight pang of guilt, but you told yourself : The bosses make all the money around here. I deserve a little slack!

Let me tell you a little story. A couple of years back I was consulting in an plant that manufactured aircraft engines. I was talking to one of the employees there, a nice 50-year-old lady who worked on her family farm except in summer, where thanks to vacations, she was re-hired each year on the assembly lines to replace the full-time employees.

"So, how's your work pace?", I asked her.
"It's quite easy actually.", she replied. When they give us the assembly manuals, the guys putting it together overestimated the assembly times.
"Overestimated? By how much?"
"It depends. Sometimes by as much as 300%.", she replied, with a sad smile.

Now, I try to see good in people as much as the next guy. Even if I suspected I knew the answer, I asked the question anyway.

"And why is it so overestimated?"
"Because if guys can do a 3-hour job in one hour and get some slack time, they'll take it!", she replied.

She hit the nail right on the head. However, just how many nails she didn't know : in many, many businesses that I went to, I saw the same pathological thinking : people slacking off because they felt that they deserved it. The problem is that ideas, like disease, spread : once your company culture is one way, it's extremely hard to charge., taking up to 10 years.

When I'm with the employees, of course I have to hold back my tongue. But whenever somebody at the aircraft company complained about losing jobs to Eastern European countries, I couldn't help but to think, really, are you going to play the victim card? Because if you worked when you were supposed to, perhaps your bosses would see less reason to export work in another country. Shit, if they can do your job as good as you for less, more power to them.

Now, if the world was perfect, there would be managerial incentives to have employees work their best. I wrote before about how the Chobani Yogourt founder gave 10% of his company away in shares to his employees - they way, they're right in the middle of having the company's best interests at heart. See article here.

Not every company is a Chobani, however.

It's reassuring to know that in the face of an army of slackers, somebody doing his just amount of work will seem like a hero to management, and it might be good for that individual. But like I said, the disease runs deep : this entitlement is widespread on the job market. We're already seeing manufacturing and menial jobs leaving America and Europe. With the advent of the internet, it won't take long that this great equalizer of information and communication will affect typical office jobs also. Tons of qualified software engineers are made in India, offering extremely competitive contracts which certainly don't need to be local.

Americans love to bitch about how immigrants and foreigners to their country are "stealing" jobs. If they're willing to do the jobs you're not for a salary you're not, it's not stealing, it's capitalism in it's purest form.

So please, don't work like you write Steem blog posts : don't go at it half-assed and expect fabulous results, and be disappointed when it doesn't pan out. Until Steem can cover everybody's basic needs, you might want to work to keep your job.

Am I being pessimistic? Yes... but I wish I could write this and for it all to be a lie. If you have a more positive view, I'd be happy to hear it, but from where I'm standing from, it's not looking good.

Vincent