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the stalin clapping test and your boss

sushi

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I think that today's work and school enviroment is very much like the stalin clapping test in soviet union.

in the soviet era, one person claps, the other person claps harder, than the other person claps harder to get approval, and the whoever stops clapping first gets sent to siberia.

similarly, today in school or work, you try to outperform your peers/collegues in pleasing your teacher/boss and gets his approval, than ther other person tries harder, and the other person tries harder and create better work, and there is no end for hard work and earning your teacher's grades and apporval.

this leads to the dillemma of one person working longer and harder than the rest in some form contest, and the first person to leave and deliver the least has the risk of getting fired.

 

Cognisant

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in the soviet era, one person claps, the other person claps harder, than the other person claps harder to get approval, and the whoever stops clapping first gets sent to siberia.
That sounds like a drinking game and if it's not it should be.

similarly, today in school or work, you try to outperform your peers/collegues in pleasing your teacher/boss and gets his approval, than ther other person tries harder, and the other person tries harder and create better work, and there is no end for hard work and earning your teacher's grades and apporval.

this leads to the dillemma of one person working longer and harder than the rest in some form contest, and the first person to leave and deliver the least has the risk of getting fired.
Swap "approval" for "money" and this is how capitalism is supposed to work.
A market driven meritocracy, instead of a consolidation driven plutocracy.
 

redbaron

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just have sex with the boss

im good at winning capitalism
 

sushi

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http://www.disappearingman.com/communism/men-wouldnt-stop-clapping/

its like working overtime in the office in asia, one employee works longer, the next employee works longer than him and so on, and the first to leave gets punishement and bad disapproval from boss.

"why arent you staying longer at the office"

"why arent you working as hard as your coworker"


also same as earning GPA in school.
 

sushi

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Mertiocracy is different from earning approval and praise from a higher authority to recognize your efforts, although there is an overlap if your boss is a fair person.

a competition to please and satisfy a higher authority is not meritocracy.
 

sushi

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Polaris

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In many Australian work environments, if you have a certain work ethic or even just normal standards, you are considered "anal". "Shoy'll be royte" is the usual mantra (Transl: She will be right = nevermind, it will sort itself out, don't worry, etc). The result is that people can become defensive, arrogant, argumentative or even aggressive if you try to change how the job should be done, or they mock you if you are meticulous and have attention to detail.

Thus, having pride in what you do is not common anymore which I guess is a result of the general suspicion employees is treated with here - and this again probably a reflection of the casual and/or contractual workers system. It is very difficult (unless you are working for the government ((except this is also changing, especially if you are working in natural resource management, academia or anything science related since the government doesn't like science that isn't short-term profitable)) or some large corporation) to get full time or even part time permanent positions. This means a large percentage of Australians are employed on contractual or so-called casual basis which gives no right to paid sick leave (don't get sick), maternity leave (don't fall pregnant), holiday pay (don't take holidays) or even guaranteed hours (don't make a mistake).

People are constantly at the mercy of their employer, with the result that employees often do not respect their employers. It is a terrible system as it breeds distrust, fear and anxiety on both parts. It is a system based on punishment and not reward, often driven by cronyism and favouritism which pitches employees against each other because managers generally tend to focus on mistakes or how fast you can work, which again becomes a card the employer can play against you if the situation presents itself. I have seen it play out countless times in my time here, usually always with terrible results for the employees.

At my current work place (which is probably better than average) every single employee has one or two university degrees, PhD or Master's degree - most of them science related (finding reliable science related work has become very difficult in Australia since the change of government). The managers are all unskilled, uneducated people who have gotten to that position because of their prolonged employment and "product knowledge". Interestingly, and what has been observed by most of us, is that the business runs like a highly efficient and dynamic clockwork when the managers are absent, but slows down and becomes a frustrating ordeal of being "managed" when the managers are there....one of them is ESFP and spends most of the time ranting and gossiping, which is very distracting :facepalm:

I Norway, at least people don't frown upon having standards - it is expected that you perform at least to the minimum standard, and work hard while you are at work. And people in Norway are employed on a fair basis as far as I remember- there is no casuals system. For this reason people hang onto their jobs while here, there is a lot of movement in the employment market as people are constantly upping and leaving.

I guess Serac is talking about hours worked, but I haven't worked in Norway for many years. Norwegians have short working hours but from what I remember that's because they usually work efficiently when they are at work, and I think this is partially due to the fact that they don't have to constantly live in fear that their hours will get cut short, or worry about being able to pay rent for the next month, or that they are not able to take time off due to the fact that they always have to worry about money. Working hours in Norway are family friendly while generally, Australian empoyers do not respect or rarely even consider the fact that employees have a life outside work and are thus expected to put work before anything else. So people here work long hours and feel stressed which means performance is affected.

The result is that average Australians are not encouraged to have families because they cannot afford to due to the government encouraging more or less unhinged foreign and local speculation in the property market ("the economy, mate - the economy!"), housing and rental has generally become a nightmare with the result that in the cities (where the work is) people pay unreasonably high prices for crappy to terrible living standards. So while the government is encouraging immigration the building market is of course booming to accommodate the population boom while the cities become more and more crowded as the infrastructure doesn't follow suit. The winners are the speculants, real estate agencies and the tradespeople who are lucky to be surfing the building boom wave; the nouveau riche bogans in the over-sized concrete fortress next door.

Note that I am speaking in general terms - there are of course exceptions. I guess compared to some Asian countries, Australian conditions probably seem luxurious.
 

Ex-User (14663)

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I guess Serac is talking about hours worked, but I haven't worked in Norway for many years. Norwegians have short working hours but from what I remember that's because they usually work efficiently when they are at work, and I think this is partially due to the fact that they don't have to constantly live in fear that their hours will get cut short, or worry about being able to pay rent for the next month, or that they are not able to take time off due to the fact that they always have to worry about money. Working hours in Norway are family friendly while generally, Australian empoyers do not respect or rarely even consider the fact that employees have a life outside work and are thus expected to put work before anything else. So people here work long hours and feel stressed which means performance is affected.
yes, people in Norway are extremely family-oriented in their lifestyle, and I guess this is a bigger factor than social norms pertaining to ambition etc.
 

Cognisant

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@Polaris
That's disturbingly accurate.

the nouveau riche bogans in the over-sized concrete fortress next door.
Last weekend I was wondering how such derros were able to live so close to the city as I unfortunately and unwillingly listened in on them yell/talking to each other across their unit as I did my laundry in the adjacent building.

They used the word "hashtag" unironically shudder
 

Minuend

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I've worked in industry and similar, and don't have the experience hard work is frowned upon or others feeling threatened. On the contrary I gained a lot of good will from conservative, rigid workers because of my hard/ efficient work. I was able to communicate and cooparate with even those outlier "difficult" people because they were able to trust me/ my work. Even when I was like 30 years younger and fairly new. Being a small woman doing all the heavy lifting and difficult work kinda made you a part of the group eventually. (But as Polaris said, they were not at the threat of being kicked out randomly/ easily).

The biggest problem with work like that is management and bosses. Those are the shitty people that will smile at you one second and throw you under the bus the next if their ego is threatened. If i went back into industry work today, I'd not work as hard and efficient because you're never really rewarded for it salary or promotion wise, and you very easily become a target for the bosses sour mood.

That being said, obviously it's a problem some people have to work their health to death to live ok or comfortable, and how people are forced into a meaningless hamster wheel lives etc.
 

Damian Doritos

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This is only the case if you are an intern, other interns will be trying to work longer and harder and will be talking bs about you to your bosses or trying to ally in any way they can like by bringing local pastry to them. So on. The rest of the cases I never experienced such thing, everyone leave when they want haha.
 

sushi

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Meritocracy is not earning approval and recongnition from a higher authority for your work, meritocracy is a function of how much output and reward you get from input.
 

ZenRaiden

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The way people talk about work enviroments it seems there is lot of stuff that can go wrong in work enviroments and simply put a lot of stems from the fact people arent always good at cooperation and systemizing work and group work so eventually as the organization gets bigger so the number of possible problems that can arise gets bigger.

Its not a rule that things go wrong in work place, but most people always have one kind of issue at least.
My abition is to work solo and not worry about cooperation and cooworkers. I just hate working with people. Dont have the social skills and dont have the capacity to work with people.
 
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