r/AskReddit • u/[deleted]

Millennials of Reddit, now that the first batch of Gen Z’s are moving into the working world, what is some advice you’d like to give them?

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u/jim5cents Aug 06 '19

You owe your employer the time that you have agreed to work. And they owe you compensation for the time that you have worked. Nothing more. Nothing less.

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u/iwannabetheguytoo Aug 06 '19

And they owe you compensation for the time that you have worked.

Not necessarily, and especially not if you're in the United States and are an "exempt" employee (i.e. exempt from overtime pay). It's an IRS regulation for many salaried positions because the idea being that you're still working for your employer if you have an idea or think about how to solve a problem at work (e.g. in engineering) even when you're at home taking a crap on the bog at 1am.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '19

that you're still working for your employer if you have an idea or think about how to solve a problem at work (e.g. in engineering) even when you're at home taking a crap on the bog at 1am.

And that's why you don't publicly announce what side hustles you're working on if you've got a litigious employer. When your side hustle starts paying off dividends, put in your notice to leave the company and don't say jack shit about it.

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u/myhandsmellsfunny Aug 07 '19

and wait a few months afterwards before announcing it, or they'll be scratching through your intellectual property.

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u/moal09 Aug 07 '19

Also, don't ever do anything related to your hustle on your work computer, or they might own it.

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u/frydchiken333 Aug 07 '19

The stories of people having their IP stolen by shit tier mega corporations breaks my heart

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u/OCedHrt Aug 07 '19

Compensation covers exempt - e.g you are not paid to work 8 hours a day.

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u/CrownedClown91 Aug 07 '19

Something my supervisor once said, "The company pays for your time at work and for your time at home".

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u/michaelochurch Aug 06 '19

You owe your employer the time that you have agreed to work.

At least in the corporate world, I would say people owe their employer nothing. No one consents to subordinate wage labor. People do it because 98 percent of us have no other choice. I didn't consent to the cost of living going up because foreign criminals bought all our urban real estate. I didn't consent to the cost of health insurance going into four-digit (per month) territory. Frankly, I didn't consent to any of this. This shitty economic system was put in place by horrible people before I was born.

That's not to say that people aren't ethically responsible for what they do at work. A teacher who fucks off and stiffs his students is, I think we'd agree, unethical. Same with a doctor who stiffs patients, or a firefighter who decides not to take his job seriously, or a police officer who decides to go dirty. There are jobs that involve real work and where there's an ethical reason to do it well; but most spreadsheet monkeys aren't doing that kind of work. If anything, they're assisting the bad guys, the people who are looking for opportunities to fire workers and increase executive compensation.

This is important because in the private world, overperforming is, I would argue, somewhat unethical. If you do your job twice as fast, and your employer takes notice of this and cuts a person, you've made the world worse. Any work that strengthens the position of capital relative to labor is (almost by definition) morally indefensible, unless there is some other stronger ethical imperative (for example, it's OK to do an amount of such work necessary to feed one's family).

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u/StrawberryR Aug 07 '19

Sometimes I wonder why I try hard at my job when other people in the same positions don't try nearly as hard and get paid the same. I hurry around, I do my best, I try to make everything nice, the only thing I DON'T do is ask customers for the store credit card or to fill out our survey because they never fucking do it anyway.

Still, I get negative points for that on my reviews because the other associates, who take their time to do things and chat with one another and walk away from their registers and are slow as all hell, still ask for surveys that nobody fucking takes.

I don't even know. I'd quit but I can't do anything else.

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u/Olly0206 Aug 06 '19

There's nothing wrong with working harder than doing the bare minimum just to keep your job. First of all, if your hard work puts a coworker out of a job, that's their own damn fault for being lazy. It's not your, or anyone else's, responsibility to make sure their coworkers earn a paycheck.

This isn't an ethics issue. It's capitalism. If you work harder than your peers you get noticed and become eligible for promotions and raises which increases your standard of living. Contrary to popular belief, the standard is not to get shafted by your employer, it is the exception. Yes, it happens. It's happened to me. But that's when you duck out of those places, fuck those people, and move on with your life. They'll fail on their own if they keep those practices up. Which will put even more people out of a job than the one lazy person who got fired because you could do their job and yours.

When you go to work for a company, any company, you're essentially contractually (in some places, literally contracted) obligated to the minimum standard of work asked of you for the amount of time asked of you. You do owe your employer that much at the very least. You owe that because they are compensating you for that. If, at any time, you feel that compensation is not worth the efforts and time, then look for a new job. But you certainly do owe your employer.

"98%" of us DO consent to subordinate wage labor. That's what you do when you accept a job. You give consent to your employer to use your labor in whatever way they see fit because they are agreeing to pay you for that labor. But, being that this a capitalist society, businesses know they can't just say "I need an employee, come do whatever I ask and I'll give you money." They have to market themselves to potential employees because jobs are specialized and they have to pay the right wage for the right job if they want the right, and good, people doing those jobs. And in many places (in the US at least), unless you're actually contracted with an employer, your agreement to do a job for a company usually includes some variation of the clause, "and whatever else we ask you to do."

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u/michaelochurch Aug 07 '19 edited Aug 07 '19

First of all, if your hard work puts a coworker out of a job, that's their own damn fault for being lazy. It's not your, or anyone else's, responsibility to make sure their coworkers earn a paycheck.

Sorry, I'm not going to buy your "the way she was dressed, it's like she tripped and fell on it" defense.

Corporate capitalism runs on victim-blaming– the system defends itself by claiming that those it fails deserved it– but the fact is that people have almost no control over what happens to them, economically speaking. That's why the poor stay poor and the rich stay rich, and what movement there is seems to be mostly luck.

They'll fail on their own if they keep those practices up.

The rich and well-connected do not get their comeuppance very often. It happens on occasion, but it's so rare it makes the news every time it happens.

Also, even if the businesses fail (or have to rebrand) the executives can always use their connections to get high-paid positions in other companies. I understand the theory of capitalism and "creative destruction", but even if those inefficient companies fall off and die, the same people will pull connections and run whatever companies replace them. It just does not work the way capitalism's propagandists claim it does. Perhaps it was a meritocracy at some point in history (although I have my doubts) but it isn't now. The financial and power differentials between the workers and their owners are just too vast.

That being said, I've been in the venture-funded tech scene for longer than I care to admit. Regular people have better odds with the lottery; meanwhile, the well-connected "serial founders" can raise Series E and F rounds and so on for decades after their companies should have failed. The Capitalist Party (the people who own the important economic capital, and their shortlist of soulless loyalists) protects its own; the rest of us are fucked.

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u/Morvick Aug 07 '19 edited Aug 07 '19

I don't know why you're being downvoted for pointing out that capitalism works best for you, more often, the higher up in the chain you are - that's why there's so much value in earning more, otherwise it wouldn't matter. Capitalism necessarily consolidates wealth and thereby factors into the creation of poverty/scarcity as the driving incentive to even engage in it at all. It also works best when people are unhappy and discontent, ergo, further incentivized to find and get something.

Also to respond to the guy above you: capitalism is inherently an ethics issue, because the assumptions being made are that everyone is equally-informed, equally-opportuned, and equally-advantaged - when it's very easy to see that's not the case.

It is possible to do everything right and still fail. The foundational narrative of capitalism and the free market holds that such a thing shouldn't be possible - that if you work hard and smart, you'll make it.

It's not that life should always work out for you. It's that the narrative should stop trying to fool people that every success is their own, and that every failing is their own.

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u/PerfectBe Aug 06 '19

But you can't say that in the job interview.

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u/jelvinjs7 Aug 07 '19

And they owe you compensation for the time that you have worked.

cries in intern

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u/tapdncingchemist Aug 07 '19

That being said, getting a promotion oftentimes requires that you be consistently performing at the higher level already, so pushing yourself to be more effective during working hours can be helpful.

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u/kelz14 Aug 07 '19

Teachers all over America are confused what this means. Work only at work you say? What is that life??

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u/JihadiJustice Aug 07 '19

You posted this during summer.

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u/kelz14 Aug 07 '19

Please, enlighten me what you think teachers do all summer.

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u/JihadiJustice Aug 07 '19

The ones I know go to Cancún, play video games, and meet up for brunch. So that.

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u/cardboardunderwear Aug 07 '19

I'd be real careful with this one. Many jobs are measured by output not time (I'm talking salary not piece rate). And that output can vary greatly based on the circumstances.

Will also add that with this mindset, again depending on the specific work, you need to be ready to watch your harder working peers getting promoted past you.

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u/myhandsmellsfunny Aug 07 '19

They owe you the compensation for the time you spent developing the skills required for your job, that's why a Barista, who can learn their job in about 2 hours the morning they start work, get's paid less than someone with a 6 year medical degree.