this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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The wealthiest people that I know (definitely not billionaire range) work a lot more hours compared to me, but most of them consist of consulting, meetings, traveling, and virtual meetings while traveling- it seems like they’re constantly on the phone. They’re happy to interact with lower stature people to get a feel of how people generally feel about the times and politics. They’re also generous, but not too generous- they get anxious around really poor people. They fly A LOT too- if you’re flying a domestic flight between cities you’re probably sharing a cabin with a super rich person. Definitely not a billionaire with a private jet though.
What they don’t tell you is that the scope of failure when your job is “meetings” has a lot more leniency.
If you tell someone to do something, and some other team two levels below that has to do it, you have an incredible amount of buffer for blame. Now, if you’re an Elon telling people to make gullible wing doors or make a truck out of stainless steel or not to use lidar, that’s kind of on you. If you’re telling people to overvalue your real estate to conduct illegal business and enter fraudulently into contracts, that’s also on you.
For the most part, though, there’s so many levels of indirection between the c-suite and what actually gets done that it’s really hard to give credit or blame for anything but “leadership.”
This is I think the case mostly for bad leaders. Good leaders share credit and take the blame. This is why your examples are good ones. Elon isn't responsible for the site instability, that was the old management that allowed bad infrastructure (neverminding Elon firing 80% of the staff, only retaining those held hostage by their H1B, everyone with the slightest clue knowing that was inevitable, and that previous to Elon's management twitter had been rock solid for 5-10 years.) It's not Trump's fault the economy crashed, unemployment went through the roof, supply chains fell apart, that was all COVID! Which of course had nothing to do with his complete and utter mismanagement of it in spite of having a playbook literally written for him. But he will take 100% credit for operation lightspeed, which he apparently came up with all by himself in between genius ideas like shoving a light bulb up your ass, drinking bleach, or just closing your eyes and putting your fingers in your ears and going "la la la" because the real problem was that we testing for COVID, not that COVID existed and was killing people.
It's something I am honestly surprised that people don't see through immediately. I have a massively, and I can't overstate this enough, massively less important role, and this behavior wouldn't be tolerated. If I went to my boss and said something like "I'm sorry we missed the numbers this quarter, Johnson really fucked me" I'd probably be fired right there. Good leaders have to own their decisions. If you empower someone who fucks up, it's still your fuck up. If a toddler shoots someone, you don't go "man that kid really should know gun safety" you say "wow which adult was entirely irresponsible/negligent?"
The only value high level leaders provide is in the decision making, and they own all of them. Like, no one on earth is or ever will be qualified to be president. You have to be an expert in fields it takes people entire lifetimes to be good at. Your job is to assemble a team of experts and smart people, and hopefully when they present you with different options you choose the best one. But you the leader still choose, and that's the whole role. If you also want to abdicate responsibility, literally what is the point of CEOs? Especially ones paid a few bajillion dollars more than the rest of us?
I had a chuckle at “gullible wing doors”.
I think that someone could charge $5 per month for an autocorrect that corrects the default autocorrect and make enough to retire in comfort.
I definitely work more than my employees. I don't allow them to do more than 40 hours a week while I do 55 to 60. I don't crawl on the floor laying cable or lift servers all day but it is still work...
The majority of my bosses worked a lot more than me, to the point where I don't even know how they stayed awake. At my current job, the workplace is falling apart because the upper management refuses to work long hours like that while us lower staff deal with the aftermath. I love bashing on rich people, but a lot of them (semi-rich) worked hard to get where they are and in a way deserve it. You sound like a good boss- I wish more places understood that taking on more responsibility means more dedication and more hours instead of getting to boss people around.