Personally? I think it's lowwww.

Obviously this is anecdotal, but my 20 year time in the workforce has shown me that most people are either lazy or incompetent, or both.

Typically, in my experience it's just been a few Firebrands that backpack the rest of the team across the finish line.

Do we have a bunch of bubble fake jobs in this country?

Very, very few people earn their paycheck. Those that do are usually small business owners.

The rest of us are either paid less than the value we bring (the overachievers), or more than we bring (the lazy/lucky).

Having no idea where you worked or in what sector/industry, my 23+ years in corporate world seemed to give me a different perspective.

Sure, there were always those that could just get by and get a paycheck if they checked the right boxes, played the game well enough, or were protected internally by a friend or associate in some capacity.

But more often than not, in the field I worked in, you were going to pull your weight or eventually you're head was on the block. I spent a decade in a higher management and then executive role with a Swede mega corp that managed in a matrix organization structure. We had operational management and we had line management. I was always on the line management side. One of the key components of my role was organizational wide performance management. I fired or laid off a ton of people in my time there. Same with one of the larger US based telecoms prior to that.

In my experience, in my former line of work, eventually most of those not pulling their weight were shown the door at some point. Of course there were exceptions.

Armand Hammer reportedly said something like "Luck follows those who work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week."

It is the old 20% and 80% rule where 20% of the workforce does 80% of the work.

I worked in government my entire career. There were plenty that would do the bare minimum and knew exactly how to play the game. But there were at least 20% who went above and beyond and were completely dedicated to their cause even though they knew they'd not get one penny more. I suspect it was probably the same in the corporate world.

There are those who work and those who work at not working. Always been that way.

I guess I would need you to define 'earn'.

I have some employees who are worth what I pay them, for skills they have, and for what they produce. But could they work harder, and do I out-work them?...heck yes...it's not even close.

I'd agree with Urban though. Eventually the fat will be trimmed. Just a matter of time.

If you walk around thinking most of your co-workers are arrogant or incompetent then that may simply say something about you.

I appreciate the sentiment, but worth isn't always readily apparent and easily calculated. The opportunity loss of stretching your rock starts too thin to is a valid reason to "overpay" for supporting staff.

Ex: I was assigned physical material audits (overpaid) for a bit and during that time found / set up processes to close a loophole in the logistics processes worth $1M/yr (underpaid). An HR bean counter may have thought me overpaid up until I clearly wasn't. Investing in people is a game that accountants should influence but not direct.

Can't speak for myself as I am self employed. But my wife is in sales for a major corp.

I can't say if the 80/20 rule is applicable for her group (30 ish people). There a few really hard workers like her, but most just do 40-50 hours in her opinion.

The glaring thing is how easy it is for several in her group to hardly work at all. While she and a few others have always been work-from-home due to geography, when the rest went WFH during Covid, it lead to rampant abuses by probably half the group.

My wife maintains that at least 2-3 people likely had a second WFH job. They and many others manipulate their Teams' lights (never available), take excessive time to respond to emails or messages, or just outright say that they were at the park with their kids at 2pm on a workday or other explanations that would make any manager's eyes widen.

Due to time sensitive deals, it made others like her have to work more to move things along. WFH was and still is a major drain for her group.

I work for the Corps of Engineers, federal position obviously. Most weeks I can usually get everything I need done by Tuesday morning at the latest. After that it's pretty much coasting through the week "working from home". Contrary to popular belief I even make more than a private sector equivalent for my job.

Like I've said before: if you have the sort of job where all you do is fart around all day drinking coffee and answering an e-Mail or two and can do your job 100% online without needing any physical presence, you WILL be replaced by AI and probably sooner than you think

AI is going to ravage the white collar make work jobs worse than robotics ravaged blue collar manufacturing

Andrew Dufresne said:

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Personally? I think it's lowwww.

Obviously this is anecdotal, but my 20 year time in the workforce has shown me that most people are either lazy or incompetent, or both.

Typically, in my experience it's just been a few Firebrands that backpack the rest of the team across the finish line.

Do we have a bunch of bubble fake jobs in this country?

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Is this entire thread/post your way of calling yourself a "Firebrand"?

Embarrassing.

Small business owner here and I agree it's probably somewhere around 20% or less. IMO it's even worse though since maybe half of that 20% are highly competent and capable of managing company resources, leading, and other decision making. I sold that business and couldn't be happier now. The difficulty of finding good people cannot be overstated. And no, it's not the paycheck. We tried all sorts of major incentives and big paycheck boosting opportunities. Work effort barely changed at all and I just ended up paying them more for the same work. This is one of the biggest reasons I'm wary of entering the business environment again. One of my criteria for a next business is the need for very few, or preferably, no employees at all.

Threads like this pop up every so often on here.
It's pathetic really.

Are there people in the workplace who don't pull their weight? Of course. Newsflash! Water is wet.

But these masturbatory "I'm a damn hard worker and one hell of a model American" posts are perplexing.

As someone who has worked in small business since graduating, but also worked with (teamed) large businesses, small business employees on average earn their paycheck and TONS of people at big companies just get paid to do nothing.

There are some piggybackers at small companies but it gets exposed quickly, unfortunately they get let go and take a raise to go to the big firms.

Quote:

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But these masturbatory "I'm a damn hard worker and one hell of a model American" posts are perplexing.

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Yep. I do what I'm asked to do, get paid for it, go home and enjoy my life. Life is too short to not enjoy it.

Pareto distribution. There are actual comprehensive studies on this and that the top 10% of the workforce in many cases does more than 50% of the output.

Teslag said:

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I work for the Corps of Engineers, federal position obviously. Most weeks I can usually get everything I need done by Tuesday morning at the latest. After that it's pretty much coasting through the week "working from home". Contrary to popular belief I even make more than a private sector equivalent for my job.

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Is y'all hiring??

I am with Urban Ag-

in the private sector, especially the defense contracting world where employees are overhead costs-

you better pull your weight.

because 1. these are in demand positions and you can always be replaced by someone who wants the job
2. the bottom line is the only thing that matters and you either perform or you are out.

clearly some of you have never worked for Booz Allen Hamilton before.

they literally put a certain percentage of employees every year

"on the bench" when they do not perform well enough- which gives them a few months to find work and then they are fired.

Check here for your area

www.usajobs.gov

Aggie Infantry said:

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It is the old 20% and 80% rule where 20% of the workforce does 80% of the work.

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And will probably never change.

MouthBQ98 said:

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Pareto distribution. There are actual comprehensive studies on this and that the top 10% of the workforce in many cases does more than 50% of the output.

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…and not all of that output directly correlates to effort. Compensation should be based on the value to the employer. Exertion isn't the best metric. Good on you if you work hard. Good on you if you work smart. Great on you if you do both.

"Nobody gets what they deserve."
Joe Abercrombie

I am talking about production. A small portion of the work force generates most of the productive output, very consistently. The more intellectual the work (as versus labor), the more extreme the distribution, generally.

"Effort" doesn't matter all that much, as many workers are inefficient. It is skill, ability, and self motivation to be productive that seem to matter. Intelligence and conscientiousness correlate highly with the higher productive output.

In my experience there have always been 10% or so of people who are trying to do the bare minimum but most of the people I have worked with have been smart, honest, dedicated.

F*** big corporations, they all push woke liberal garbage and fell in line with president poopy pants's orders to fire employees if they chose to make their own medical decisions and not get the bogus "vaccine".

Even if I was a lazy worker, I do not get paid enough to work at a trashy liberal POS corporation like that. None of us do. if I were dictator, every single executive in America who turned a blind eye to those mandates and let them be enforced would rot in prison, never seeing their families again.

Anyone who scams corporations is good in my book. If you find a way to milk them of their money while doing as little as possible, good on you. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to do so, but I admire people who are able to.

This is all bunk. There was a thread not long ago whether the Gen Zers and millennial toots were saying they should be paid 4x because their laptop, WFH and self-direction makes them 4x more productive than the average worker from the 1970s.

So something is not adding up with all this analysis and projection.

$240 Worth of Pudding said:

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Threads like this pop up every so often on here.
It's pathetic really.

Are there people in the workplace who don't pull their weight? Of course. Newsflash! Water is wet.

But these masturbatory "I'm a damn hard worker and one hell of a model American" posts are perplexing.

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Typed words are vastly perceived.

Once again you perceive them wrong.

Andrew Dufresne said:

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$240 Worth of Pudding said:

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Threads like this pop up every so often on here.
It's pathetic really.

Are there people in the workplace who don't pull their weight? Of course. Newsflash! Water is wet.

But these masturbatory "I'm a damn hard worker and one hell of a model American" posts are perplexing.

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Typed words are vastly perceived.

Once again you perceive them wrong.

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Then make like the illustrious 20% and do a better job of communicating your message.

Adding value and productivity are extremely relative for knowledge work. I've seen some brute force hard workers and I really appreciate them, but often their time is wasted on stuff that could be automated or a task that if the organization just stopped doing it, would barely register. And there are "lazy" employees that have macroed their 40 hour work week into 15 hours, and realized that 2 of the 50 things they are responsible for *REALLY* matter and get an A+ on that, and a C on everything else, and that translates to an A+ grade come bonus time.