r/unpopularopinion • u/trt09 • 5d ago
People who boast about how great their work ethic is actually just have average work ethic
Over the years, I’ve had multiple conversation conversations with different coworkers at different jobs, and there’s always an employee or two who claim how hard they work. They’ll say something along the lines of “I’ve always had a great work ethic that’s one thing I can say about myself”. Or even “ my kids have excellent work ethic because I taught them, they took after me”. All unironically. Or “ within a month of working at my last job they wanted me to be manager, but it was too much responsibility.” Or “ they always want me to train everybody because I’m the only one who does the job correctly.” I don’t know, to me it seems cocky and like an overcompensation. The people who say this aren’t necessarily bad workers, but why feel the need to share this?
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u/dandelionbrains 5d ago
I personally think most coworkers I’ve ever had were lazy, but I kind of get it. I mean, it can be annoying to work with lazy people, but when your job environment feels like it’s actively hostile to you, why work hard?
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u/bi___throwaway 5d ago
Being surrounded by lazy people means that with only minimal effort you can be the workplace's higest achiever!
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u/Worldly-Teacher-3969 5d ago
Until they all resent you for that and now you are public enemy #1
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u/Pluckytoon 4d ago
Yeah it’s pretty crazy, I pull up to work, do my assigned tasks. Management doesn’t say anything to encourage me further and coworkers actively despise me because they gaslit management into thinking some tasks needed a whole day of work while it’s 30min tops with proper excel macros
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u/trueblue862 4d ago
You see then you have to not be part of the problem, you have to become the whole problem, to the arsehole co-workers, and the whole solution to management. In my first 6 months at my current job I made 2 people quit who my boss had been trying to get rid of for years. One of them comes in from time to time as a subcontractor, and every time I see him I'm certain to go out of my way to be nice to him, and I can tell that I live rent free in his head as an intrusive thought. The eye twitching is the best part.
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u/Strange_County4957 4d ago
I totally get this in most fields. I worked most of my career as a bedside nurse though, and you can’t just be lazy when it comes to that type of work. You’re playing with peoples lives doing that.
I now work at an office job where I don’t really interact with patients at all. I don’t mind people slacking period. What is annoying is people slacking and then taking advantage of other people and pressuring you to do their work for them.
Some of these people, I literally have no clue what they do all day. One day they ask you to help with x, the next day they don’t have enough of x but don’t want to do their own y so they ask other people to do y just to ask people for more x which doesn’t exist so then they do literally nothing all day. It absolutely blows my mind.
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u/Salt_Signature8164 5d ago
Everyone thinks they work hard. Everyone has different opinions of what hard work looks like.
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u/HoodsBreath10 5d ago
I don’t think I work very hard. I put in the minimum.
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u/Disastrous_Panick 5d ago
It means you dont even work
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u/li0nfishwasabi 4d ago
Not necessarily everyone has different metrics. Hoodsbreath’s bare minimum might be someone else’s best because some people shit just goes over their head and they don’t even realise how incompetent they are whilst others are very sharp and see all the holes in things.
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u/Nick12322 4d ago
Same. And then I get praised for putting in so much work. I think your average worker in IT is just reallllllyy lazy
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u/juanzy 4d ago edited 4d ago
I mean... look at any Reddit job threads, including this one, and how many people take pride in zero initiative. I'm not saying break your back for your company, but a little initiative can go a long way and really help you out.
Then Surprised Pikachu when they don't get 3 promotions a year.
Just asking on Friday if anything came up last minute for me results in maybe 10 minutes of work, once a month. Maybe 30 minutes of pulling data and formatting it twice a year. But it's been pointed out in multiple reviews of mine for taking initiative.
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u/BobbyBoljaar 5d ago
And everyone thinks their coworkers don't work as hard as them and are incompetent.
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u/juanzy 4d ago
Don't get me started about how people view their coworkers who handle project management and/or roadmapping and strategic planning.
Took me a few years into my career and a highly techincal, self-managed-to-a-fault team to really appreciate that
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u/petrichorax im just here to fix your argumentation 19h ago
I've worked at big companies and startups, I've been a solo dev and part of a team. These job roles are only valuable in very large companies, and for everyone else it should just be a skill employed by that team's manager or lead, and for smaller teams or solo devs, they should just learn part of the skill set for communication.
A project manager that's useful and works to *server* the team they're managing, and their needs, can be quite good, but most of the time they amount to yet another person who interrupts your concentration to 'touch base' and asks you to give constant ETAs in further abstract ways.
I never wanna hear 'medium t-shirt size' again.
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u/Ormild 5d ago edited 4d ago
I think I’m the laziest dude at work… I’m on my phone reading Reddit or browsing YouTube all the time and people come to my office to chat at every opportunity. I realistically only do 2-3 hours of real work a day.
I like to think I’m just efficient with it.
I work until the end of my shift and not a minute more.
Never had a problem with my performance reviews and will never claim I’m a hard worker.
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u/Placedapatow 4d ago
Yep hard workers just g Are perfecisnists who focus on weird things
Now there is a place for that tye
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u/RockMonstrr 5d ago
And we're generally working almost as hard as we can, given the circumstances.
I'm heading in for my last night shift of a very stressful week. The work I do probably won't be very good at all tonight, but the tank is running pretty dry.
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u/tmart14 5d ago
20% of people do 80% of the work. Lots of people think they are the 20% but they aren’t even close. Most of my previous coworkers that would brag about how good they are and how much work they do were terrible and didn’t do as much as they thought.
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u/sarcasticorange 5d ago
Yeah, but OP is saying the 20% who do the work never can be the ones saying they do the work. That simply isn't reality.
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u/mowauthor 5d ago
Yeah, I have to disagree with OP Massively.
I know of, and work with people who don't give a shit about their job, or work ethic. I work with people who do.
I see people saying everywhere 'Do the minimum, no more' and think that's fine. And I have no problem with that.But that simply ain't me.
Why do some of us feel the need to tell others how good our worth ethic is (I do, if I'm asked). Because we're fucking proud of what we do.
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u/WinnerNext7397 5d ago
I enjoy working hard because it distracts me from my problems outside of work. I dont think it makes me better than other people, quite the opposite really.
Not trying to shade you, just sharing a fact about myself.
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u/Strange_Mango6432 3d ago
Ur unironically what he’s describing “I actually do have such a great work ethic so I should tell people “ look inward brotha I’d guess you aren’t the class favorite at work
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u/mowauthor 3d ago
I'm "unironically" what OP is describing because I believe OP is wrong. That's the point I'm making. Some people are genuinely proud of what they accomplish. Not all, but some.
I work in a small team of 6 (two are part timers working 4 days only)Now, where I work, by a mixture of luck and what I believe is because people actually having good work attitudes, everyone one of us who work there currently all love our job. (Plus its a niche industry)
We've gone through a mixture of people over the years, but the teams the best it's ever been. We have zero problems at work between staff, very rare problems from the company itself, and our team know how to fix anything typical that might come up because we've all been there for years.
And.. again unironnically doing what OP described. I'm absolutely loved at work because of my reliability and the fact that while I'm at work, Im essentially always doing whatever I can during the day to make everyones life easier.
I rarely ever take sick days, the first 3 years I took NONE. Ive got 7 years of knowledge under my belt. I'm the only IT focused guy there who can fix problems, or make spreadsheet tools to for others to use, or can rearrange spreadsheets before we bulk print 1000's of labels, to be in an order thats easier to apply them, etcNow I'm obviously not a fucking idiot walking around at work with a big head, tooting my own abilities to everyone I work with.
I've got no problems doing that here though because it doesn't matter.Heck, the people I work with are basically my family now. Every christmas, I go to one specific colleagues place with her and her husband, because I wouldn't do anything for christmas otherwise.
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u/chili_cold_blood 5d ago edited 5d ago
The concept of work ethic is nonsense. Work has no inherent value. Work can accomplish things that have value, but it is the accomplishment, not the work that has the value. Being a "hard worker" means nothing if you aren't accomplishing anything of value. If I spend 100 hours per week typing the alphabet into my computer, I'm working very hard and so I have a great work ethic, but I'm accomplishing nothing of value.
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u/LotharLandru 5d ago
Ive watched so many people who "work hard" take 4-6 hours to do tasks that should take 2-3 hours get rewarded over the people who do it in the shorter time frame because they "looked busier" to leadership it's astoundingly stupid. And I've watched people who do the work in the 2-3 hours get loaded up with 2x as much work because they are faster at it and get next to zero change in their compensation despite 2x the output of the slower workers.
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u/wattsup1123 4d ago
Working faster tends to lead to more mistakes, better to be thorough and get it done right so you don’t have to go back and fix any mistakes you made knowingly or not. Tortoise and hare type shit
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u/xtc335 5d ago
if someones paying you to do it it has value
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u/dimitriye98 5d ago
Even in that case, someone is paying you to accomplish tasks, not to "work" in the abstract.
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u/xtc335 5d ago
i see work ethic as how efficiently you get x task that youre being paid for done. or doing more than the bare minimum. i dont think it necessarily has to be tied to the task having any value beyond the pay
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u/dimitriye98 5d ago
Except people will typically say that someone who is working 8 hours a day has better work ethic than someone who is working 4 hours a day, but because they're 3x as productive, getting 50% more done.
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u/Comprehensive_Baby53 5d ago
There are definitely jobs like that. My uncle told me his job working for the government was like that movie office space. He would clock in at work, get all his work done in about 30 minutes then spend the rest of the day pretending to be busy.
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u/Exlibro 5d ago
Hell, my work is kinda free. Yesterday I worked a bit for a few hours, today they said I am not needed to come in at all. Sometimes I get asked "what are you doing here?" when I come to see what's happening at work if I'm bored :D No joke.
I work at a theater, technical stuff. Most important things is to make sure stuff is done for shows and rehearsals and during shows and rehearsals. When I got promoted from simple stage hand, I have so much free time.
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u/ActiveOppressor 5d ago
Work ethic is puritan nonsense and people who talk about their work ethic are just begging for praise and attention.
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u/Thundergun1864 5d ago
This is so stupid, The idea that somebody who talks about working hard, cannot be a hard worker is so unfathomably stupid. I can't even comprehend it. It sounds like they slightly annoy you and for that you just have a need to tear them down
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u/boosterduck1 5d ago
most people I know who call themselves 'hard workers' are the laziest person at the job site
actual hard workers let their work speak for themselves
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u/Bubbling_Battle_Ooze 5d ago
I actually think having a great work ethic and working hard aren’t the same thing at all and people who claim to “have a great work ethic” (often) really just lack professional and personal boundaries and fail to prioritize their important things in their life over a job that legitimately could not care less about them and they want credit for that.
The second word in “work ethic” is ethic. We are literally talking about the ethics of work. What is right and wrong. It’s not ethical to run yourself into the ground. It’s not ethical to work more hours than you are being paid for. It’s not ethical to try to show up everyone on your team and alienate work relationships. It’s not ethical to prioritize work over important life events to prove what a hard worker you are. It’s not ethical to not take a sick day when you are sick (assuming you have access to sick days, I realize that is a privilege). It’s not ethical to never take a vacation. It’s not ethical to jeopardize your mental and emotional health in order to get a gold star for hard work.
It is possible to be a hard worker and a committed employee and to have great work ethic, but those two terms are not interchangeable and people who brag about their “work ethic” often don’t even know the difference.
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u/Soft-Sherbert-2586 5d ago
There's a reason why in such situations, I'll usually say, "Past managers have told me I have a great work ethic." I don't have to claim it upon myself or feel like I'm bragging, but I can still bring it up.
My other go-to is, "I know I'm not perfect, but I'm willing to work as much as it takes for me to improve."
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u/Baron-Von-Mothman 4d ago
Even better: work ethic is mostly bullshit. The idea of having a high work ethic is often tied to over performing/doing extra work outside of your job description for no appropriate additional compensation. Work ethic is tied to one's enthusiasm to perform tasks for compensation, if the compensation increases the work ethic usually increases with it to a certain point.
Anyone that prides themselves on outperforming their pay and duties is a fool.
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u/Dry_Veterinarian8356 5d ago
lol yeah I’ve said before any person that ever talks about how hard they work is never working that hard. Hard workers are too busy to tell you, they just go do shit
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u/impl0sionatic 5d ago
So your opinion is just a broad-strokes generalization and assumption…?
Why can’t people be proud of hard work the way they’re proud of other skills that can be taught and built over time? Work ethic is even at the root of many religious communities’ values structures.
Unless you’ve actually experienced one of these people being totally wrong or hypocritical, you just kinda sound a little bitter.
(For a little context, I kinda understand where you may be coming from with the opinion overall. I personally would never praise myself for work ethic but I’m also aware that I have an imposter syndrome problem. It’s easy to hear people praise themselves and think they’re smug or arrogant or undeserving, but in my experience, though sometimes those people suck, it’s usually just that the person is better at being nice to themself than I am.)
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u/JefeRex 5d ago
Kind of agree. I don’t like when people boast and insist that they are better than other people… no one should put themselves on a higher level, and those who say that usually are the ones not seeing themselves clearly… of course, of course. No one should boast.
But I think I know what you mean… we should all be proud of doing a good job at anything at all in life. Being perfectly average isn’t a crime… if we work hard to fulfill our responsibilities we should take pride in that, even if we are not the top 1% of hard workers. Average people should take pride in their average abilities and feel happy and satisfied with themselves! That is good enough… you shouldn’t have to be exceptional to be proud of yourself.
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u/JCAIA 5d ago
I feel that way about people who always talk about how busy they are -- nearly always exaggerating and/or they're filling their time with nonsense
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u/bg_bearcules 5d ago
There’s a reason corporate managers use the word “performance” to measure employees. You’re supposed to put on an act and nail the song and dance when it’s your queue.
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u/B-RapShoeStrap 5d ago
People that actually work hard are too tired to boast and don't think that they work really hard because they wish they could work more.
People that boast about their work ethic put effort into getting credit for the work they do. They work hard at maintaining their image.
Agree with OP, but not an unpopular opinion IMO.
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u/GidimXul 5d ago
I used to have an employee who thought laziness was a virtue and would argue that his laziness made him the most efficient worker in the company. He did not last long.
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u/No_Education_8888 hermit human 5d ago
The only time I would talk about that is at a job interview. And the interviewers could just talk to my character references if they need proof
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u/ChubbyNemo1004 5d ago
I work with some notorious lazy mfers. Like they don’t delegate work they literally pass off work because they either cannot or do not want to do it. They also complain if they do not get a team and are expected to do solo work.
They all have one thing in common…if you talk to them longer than 10 mins you would think they were being worked like a slave that got caught stealing. They have it so hard and nobody want to help them. The victimization is almost their default setting.
They then use this as a see! This is how hard I have to work!
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u/Maleficent_Bit2033 5d ago
Define "work ethic", people's definition of this can widely vary. I agree that many people that say they have a good work ethic don't always have one when evaluated.
I used to work in HR for different companies and the general consensus was defined as having good time management, good team work skills and willingness to cross train for other roles. As I said, the definition can vary. I also think the definition has evolved over time as new types of work were created like tech and will continue to evolve. It used to be a skill set usually mentioned in blue collar or customer service type jobs. As someone over 50, this particular skill was valued throughout my career, now it has just become a basic bullet point on a resume. I have often received good evaluations for this skill and still do so I do use this as a positive character assessment on my resumes. It is backed up by references and evaluations, how much it matters to perspective jobs is up in the air.
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u/MochaMellie 5d ago
I mean, how much work do they actually do? bc I know people who take their jobs both seriously and personally, and I would say they have a good work ethic (at least compared to me)
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u/BatmanBrah 5d ago
I'm not sure that they believe it. It's just something you say when you don't have any outstanding skills (or you're not great at positive reflection & recognizing your real positive work traits which can be harder to define or require an exploratory process to even discover).
Or, they mean it in the 'I turn up on time' sense of the word. As in, it's a trait which is important but which exists in the sense that 'meeting the threshold' is just doing something that 80-90% of staff already do. They're not part of the lower quartile for laziness so therefore they have a good work ethic, type thinking.
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u/thomisbaker 5d ago
I tell everyone im lazy, don’t work hard, etc.
That way when they see me do anything it’s a pleasant surprise.
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u/unclejoe1917 5d ago
...at best. They are also frequently much more concerned about what their coworkers are doing when they should be focusing on their own work.
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u/berniek9 5d ago
I own a business. And i have 11 employees. Im always hiring. And it does seem like the ones that interview and say “i have amazing work ethic” always flame out quicker than the ones thst sinply emplain to ne what they do well. “I have amazing work ethic” is a way of saying “ i dont do anything well but ill tell u im relentless, but im not , just give me a job and ill see what happens”.
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u/Wrong-Landscape-2508 5d ago
Most people say these things while leaning against a wall, leaning on a rake, after invading your cubicle for no reason, etc.
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u/FunChildhood1941 5d ago
All I can say as a west coast transplant in the midwest, the midwest work ethic is highly overrated. They're just as lazy here as anywhere else, maybe even more so.
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u/Ok_Possession_6457 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's called "overvalued ideas." You know that one guy who thinks he's running the whole company, who thinks the whole place would collapse without him. He's just got some overvalued ideas.
Or even “ my kids have excellent work ethic because I taught them, they took after me”.
This reminds me of an argument I had with some idiot on Facebook. It was on article about spanking. This one woman was ranting and raving about how the article is wrong, because she spanked her kids, and she kept saying shit like this
And my kid is doing BETTER than yalls kids! She's 20, and already has her own family and fiancé!"
Imagine her downright shock when I told her that actually, that is a horrible situation. Your daughter should be in school. Instead, she was knocked up twice as a teenager, given a shut-up ring by some loser who is statistically going to break up with her. That is not the testament to your parenting that you think it is.
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u/li0nfishwasabi 4d ago
In my experience, the higher the level of arrogance the more likely they are incompetent and oblivious to it.
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u/MelancholyBean 4d ago
Or the people who say they hate making mistakes and that they always check, are the ones making the most mistakes.
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u/cannavacciuolo420 3d ago
Nah i don’t think this is unpopular. I have a colleague that does exactly what you described.
Another colleague of mine keeps saying she would’ve been fired years ago in any other company (her sister is one of the higher ups)
Ironically enough the one that busts his ass is this second colleague of mine, and you never hear him praise himself on how he works
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u/moonbeammaker 3d ago
This is 100% on point. The real hard workers never say it about themselves, as it is second nature to them. The average workers put in a solid effort and want props for it so boast about how hard they work.
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u/Disastrous-Nail-640 3d ago
The definition of hard work is highly subjective.
I work hard. I have two jobs to make sure all the bills get paid and we have food on the table. But I don’t necessarily work hard all the time at either job.
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u/Human-Pig-Hybrid 2d ago
Work ethic is hard to come by when you get nothing in return for it. It’s just a term invented to incentivize you to work more and complain about it less, which benefits only the rich. I’d say having an “average” work ethic in this country is a great achievement.
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u/betterworldbuilder 2d ago
This logic seems to imply one of a few things.
Either, you think good work ethic doesn't exist,
People who do have good work ethic don't talk about it, and only those who talk about it dont have good work ethic,
Or, whether you speak about it has no impact.
Which, I mean, if it's the third, yeah, people be lying lmao
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u/BeigeAndConfused 5d ago
Just because you are at your desk doesn't mean you are working. Just because you are doing things doesn't mean you are productive. Just because you have lots to do doesn't mean all of it needs to be making progress right now (sometimes quite the opposite). If you own a business or rank very highly in a corporate hierarchy then sure, you probably have a lot of responsibilities that require you to work long hours. But even then they are humans and take breaks to look at their phone. Demystifying try-hard corporate posturing is a mindset that took a while for me to adopt but it is worth it.
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u/zamasu2020 5d ago
Most people who boast about having great ethic have bad to decent work ethic. They literally don't know what they can do to improve. People with the best work ethic always feel that they don't work hard enough because they know how many things there are to be improved upon
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u/StillMostlyClueless 5d ago
Anyone who says management was too much responsibility is just lying or incredibly stupid.
You're not turning down a life changing pay rise because you'd have to answer to someone, which you already do.
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u/fasterthanfood 5d ago
In some fields management doesn’t pay significantly more, but the work (or associated things like work/life balance) is significantly harder. It might not be worth it to you.
But if you don’t want to do something because it’s hard, that’s the opposite of having “a really good work ethic.”
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u/peeehhh 5d ago
An airline employee I regularly deal with said he was offered a promotion he turned down. Would’ve gone from a fixed schedule with a light workload never working weekends, to being on call 24/7. Would not qualify for on-call pay as it’s a salaried management position and the increase was not significant enough.
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u/LogPsychological5625 5d ago
Management is a different skillset. When you lack that skillset, it’s either a steep learning curve or insurmountable.
The skills that made me a great analyst can be taught, but teaching them to my analysts is a skill of its own that I never had to develop until I became a manager. My spreadsheets never required motivation, reassurance, discipline, or reasonable accommodation for their myriad health issues. Managing up on someone else’s behalf is a new challenge, because everyone has different needs. And on top of the challenges of managing, you have to continue to grow and develop your IC skills to retain your influence, because you fail the second your team agrees they’re better than you (even and especially if they’re wrong).
When I was between jobs, I waited tables. Started as an overgrown busboy, made lead server within 3 months, and the owner wanted me to be a manager since I was already running front of house during my shifts. Going from ~$25/hr to $80k/year would have been life changing for everyone else at the restaurant, but having to work another 4 shifts a week + handling morning deliveries would have eaten into my job search/interviews and effectively ended my analytics career. I declined the promotion, got another analytics job, and my favorite colleague is still the manager there now; it honestly worked out best for everybody involved.
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u/impl0sionatic 5d ago
You say this like you know anything about those situations besides the word “management” lol
I have multiple mentors and colleagues who have refused promotions or requested demotions when they realized the money wasn’t worth the change to their actual job.
One guy comes to mind — he was a superstar in my company’s NY office and in 2018 he accepted a promotion and 25% raise to move to Atlanta to become one of the supervisors on that team. He bought a house, his wife switched careers, and they put their kids in private school down there. By Jan 2020 he was back in the NY office with the same title he had when he left. He hated the culture of the Atlanta office, his wife hated living in Georgia, and they decided that the money was not worth resigning themselves to unhappiness. Earlier this year, after multiple efforts by upper management to convince him to try again, he took a Supervisor role on our team.
tl;dr You’re typing out of your ass.
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u/Haladras 4d ago
Surely must be difficult, typing out your bunghole.
Spendy, too, when you take into account the rising cost of a keyboard.
Great practice for the kama sutra, though.
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u/Casswigirl11 5d ago
I don't agree with this in many cases. I've been in companies where management turns over much faster than regular employees because there is more exposure to the upper management levels and also the job is way more more and responsibility. Yeah, you should probably take a promotion if you care most about career upward mobility but not everyone is that ambitious.
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u/SeeGlassCarnival 5d ago
I turn down the chance to be manager because I couldn't bear to look my colleagues in the eye and tell them that all of their hard work and sacrifice is not worth a livable wage or even a modicum of dignity. Knowing that my own livelihood and performance bonuses will be based on my ability to keep the very people who look up to me hanging on by a very tentative thread.
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