Feels like 3 things in our current discourse:
- No feeling of making a difference with your work (pointlessness)
- Disingenuous workplace cultures (wE’Re a fAmiLy)
- Extremely long work hours (WFH is great but “always connected” means you’re always working)
for 3: Please don’t mix up WFH and always connected! I work from home but after my hours my work phone stays at the work desk and that’s it, I’m seeing mails and calls on the next day, that’s soon enough
I’m really not sure how to solve for 1. So much of modern white collar work is patently pointless (or counterproductive). Definitely hard to stay engaged, especially when few of the benefits of increased productivity actually accrue to the folks doing the work. The disingenuous messaging of bullet 2 often highlights the difference in priorities between those who benefit from from increased productivity and those who just, you know, end up having to work more.
To your last point, I have been WFH since 2020 and am now leaving because my company is doing RTO. For many, WFH is a huge benefit.
Kinda hard not to be when most people never expect anything good to ever happen again.
No shit…
This seems like the most obvious headline ever. I have my first retirement coming up in 3.5 years, and I’m holding on by the skin of my teeth. And I’m one of the lucky ones with a job that offers a flat pension at 20 years regardless of age.
Pension after 20 years of work?! That sounds soon and great! Could you maybe explain that a little more?
Join the military! Pay ain’t great, quality of life is sketchy at best, and you’ll retire with plenty of physical and mental health issues, but you’ll be retired at 20 years with the government paying you to go to school for 3 years so that you can start a second career. I guess it’s a mixed bag.
but that’s not “never too work again” retirement, not what I would aim for
Probably wouldn’t be the case if people could actually afford anything with the meager wages allotted.
Yeah, purchasing power is smaller every decade + clickbaity surroundings that make our lifestyle also kind of clickbaity, disengagement from labor fruits, and many more.
