[HN Gopher] The hero tax: Why 'selfless' workers are professiona...
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The hero tax: Why 'selfless' workers are professionally exploited
Author : peutetre
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-04-15 12:02 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| tocs3 wrote:
| Nothing new really.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is not the right analogy IMHO
| graemep wrote:
| That is entirely different - neither of the interpretations
| suggested in the wikipedia is similar phenomenon.
|
| What we are talking about here is why people who do things that
| make a particularly important contribution to society get paid
| less than people doing otherwise similar (e.g. in terms of
| skill required etc.) jobs.
|
| Very few things like this are new, but I think it has probably
| become worse in recent times.
| pjerem wrote:
| To me it's simply because those people have no negotiation
| leverage over their employers.
|
| Take nurses, doctors or firefighters, what are they going to
| do if they don't get better working conditions ? Refuse to
| work ? A strike ? That's impossible because they know the
| consequences (or depending the country because they aren't
| even allowed to).
|
| Even in France with our culture of strikes, people working in
| healthcare have poor working conditions because they
| basically can't stop working even if they're unionized.
|
| Same for teachers : for them it's pretty different, they do
| strikes frequently to ask for better conditions but it's
| basically never effective because governments know they'll
| eventually get back to work. And ultimately the only ones to
| suffer from those strikes are the teachers themselves and the
| children they strive for.
|
| Job market just isn't working for people who want their work
| to be meaningful or important to the society.
| graemep wrote:
| I think you are right and it is part of the explanation.
| What this explains is why the public are OK with that and
| these people do not get more widespread support for higher
| pay.
|
| I really do not understand why people think it is fair that
| teachers in the UK get paid about half of what train
| drivers do. The fact that they do is because train drivers
| strikes have more immediate impact than those of teachers,
| but the fact that the public do to realise the problems
| this causes (e.g. a shortage of teachers, overworked
| teachers meaning they do their jobs less well, etc) might
| be explained by the perception that they are adequately
| rewarded by knowing their work matters.
| TylerE wrote:
| When trains crash people die.
|
| A teacher? It takes 20-30 years to know if they've done
| anything.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| That's... not at all what that story was about. You're not even
| supposed to interpret that literally, he was talking about
| converting to Christianity and getting into heaven.
| carbine wrote:
| I'm definitely not comparing people working on a SaaS app to
| emergency docs and nurses, but this dynamic happens a lot in
| startups and it's something to watch as a manager.
|
| People go to the most effective people with their problems and
| high-stakes projects. The reward for good work is more work.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Happens in companies of every size and industry. Colleagues
| quickly figure out who the competent person is on some obscure
| task and repeatedly direct requests specifically to that
| person. And after weeks/months of overwork or overdelivering,
| when they finally say no to something, people get offended,
| call the person rude or a jerk, it sometimes even leads to
| their dismissal.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| On a small team I was doing ~65% of the total number of
| tickets and not just the easy ones.
|
| Then one of the other people on the team, one of the lowest
| performers, got promoted over me and I lost it. Apparently
| the CIO wasn't looking at the metrics.
|
| He made sure I got a raise and got slotted in for the next
| available promotion, which was only a few months away.
|
| Then the company that was contracting us early termed their
| contract, and they only asked me to stay to build a new team,
| based on the CIO's recommendation. Metrics are a pain but
| they can also be a life saver.
| htrp wrote:
| Shouldn't you as the manager be directing traffic here. Product
| shouldn't be going directly to engineers to try and campaign /
| dump workload on people?
| delecti wrote:
| This is occasionally a problem that the specific engineer
| enables. It's normal for an engineer to work directly with
| product, and if they develop a rapport they'll start side-
| stepping management with additional requests. Over-eager
| engineers will then sometimes train PMs that they're a good
| place to make those requests, even if they're big enough that
| they should be prioritized in the normal flow.
| onthecanposting wrote:
| Different people have different motive forces in their lives.
| Some people hate work and would be upset by losing their
| leisure time. Some people love the glory of challenging or
| prestigious projects and would welcome that situation.
|
| A good manager knows the difference.
| abeppu wrote:
| ... but maybe healthy organizations should figure out how to
| let people doing challenging or prestigious projects have
| work-life balance and "leisure time" (or dependent care
| responsibilities, etc), and be appropriately compensated? It
| doesn't have to be one or the other.
|
| It's also possible to enjoy working for a while at an
| unsustainable pace, but a good manager should often tamp back
| on this b/c:
|
| (a) an IC that burns themselves out and has a long recovery
| period of lower engagement may be less effective than an IC
| with sustained productivity and
|
| (b) the swing between high and low productivity can cause
| issues for the team overall, esp if peers at first try to
| compete on pace and then have to shift to share the weight
| after someone burns out
| commandlinefan wrote:
| and if they thought you _would_ be able to pull it off in a
| couple of days, but it's more complicated than they thought and
| takes a couple of weeks, they'll accuse you of lying and
| pretending it was harder than it was.
| ore0s wrote:
| What's your advice to someone who lives this dynamic? I've
| experienced it, and felt it slowed down my career trajectory. I
| want to make a change in my story and will try my best to
| listen.
| GoToRO wrote:
| I don't know <- this is the advice
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Isn't it in the nature of being 'selfless' to allow yourself to
| be exploited? Otherwise it's not selfless at all
| exe34 wrote:
| They're not really selfless though. They're the work version of
| "nice guys".
| itishappy wrote:
| "Selfless" is society's perception, not their own self-image.
| Nursesare humans who eat and pay bills like the rest of us.
|
| > Stanley's findings chime with the opinions of Nicki Credland,
| a reader in critical care nursing at the University of Hull,
| UK. She argues that the hero narrative can undermine the skill
| and education of her colleagues. "[It suggests] we do our jobs
| because we have a calling and an innate desire to help people -
| but that's no more true of nursing than it is of many other
| professions," she says. "And it has a negative impact when we
| want to be appropriately remunerated for the skills and
| expertise that we have."
|
| A related effect is the US' tendency to pay lip service to
| "support our troops!" while our VA is in shambles.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| A segment of the population pays lip service to "support our
| troops," while another segment is (wrongly) convinced that
| the only people who join are stupid, untalented, and have no
| other options in life, and treat them accordingly.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's not two columns. There's a lot of the latter in the
| former. Louder the cheerleader is, often the more they are
| compensating.
|
| The largest cohort are people who are unaware of what the
| sacrifices of service members are, even in peaceful times,
| more out of ignorance than anything else.
| xcv123 wrote:
| Hence "selfless" in quotes, meaning they are not really
| selfless. They are paid employees doing hard work and they
| deserve fair treatment.
| ore0s wrote:
| I think I found myself in this situation believing it was
| "generally good." Both for me to learn more things, and for the
| company to succeed. Then I would be rewarded with promotions in
| the future. Although I had fun and felt some purpose, the fast
| career growth did not follow.
|
| I was in the mindset to follow Sheryl Sandberg's advice "If
| you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat." But
| what ended up happening was the people who knew how to ask for
| better seats actually got them.
| erikerikson wrote:
| The people that are willing to actually act a bit increase would
| be the most likely to maximize available excess wealth. Yet we
| suppress their access to resources. Seems like the expected
| outcome but reduces expected total prosperity nonetheless. Not
| selfish enough to be self interested.
| resource_waste wrote:
| Weird to see a country talk about their healthcare workers not
| being absurdly overpaid.
|
| In the US, our nurses buy half million dollar homes. The
| physicians have their own little city in the suburbs composed of
| multimillion dollar homes.
|
| (Artificially) high wages are bad for the customer, and we sure
| see the effects.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Well if it's so overpaid why aren't you doing it? Have you ever
| talked to a nurse? The stress they go through is absurd.
| resource_waste wrote:
| There are regulations in-place to limit the supply. If I did
| it, someone else would lose their license.
|
| And yes, I'm considering bumping someone out of med-school
| and residency. I am a 1%er, I'll get in.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Your worldview seems to be very small. I would not count
| your personal experiences with any gravity.
| gruez wrote:
| >In the US, our nurses buy half million dollar homes
|
| Is that supposed to be outrageous? Given how much rise we've
| seen in house prices in the past few years I'm not really sure
| whether that's supposed to mean they're underpaid or overpaid.
| Why not just say their mean annual pay is $94,480 compared to
| $65,470 for all occupations[1]?
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
| pphysch wrote:
| Half million gets you little/nothing in a lot of US metros
| imzadi wrote:
| RNs and MDs might be paid well, but the frontline staff often
| is not. Medical assistants, nursing assistants, paramedics,
| pharmacy technicians, etc. They often have low wages and no
| benefits.
| floor2 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this was just trolling, but, I'm 100% ok with
| nurses buying "half million dollar homes". That's just what a
| house costs in most places a nurse would live.
|
| MDs may be overpaid and there are a lot of problems with how
| residency works in the US (both in terms of too-few residents
| and abusive treatment of the few who get in) but nurses are
| absolutely not overpaid for the work they do.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| > In the US, our nurses buy half million dollar homes.
|
| Dude, half a million for a home ain't what it used to be, it's
| just below average home. Why would a nurse not afford a home?
| astro- wrote:
| In healthcare, the workers are in high-stakes situations with
| personal liability for the care they provide. When you make a
| mistake, your license can be taken away. Licensing is important
| to prevent malpractice, but it does enable a form of worker
| exploitation.
|
| When you're on a severely understaffed ward, you have to get the
| work done whatever it takes. If the next shift fails to turn up,
| you can't just go home. People's lives are at risk. You're
| responsible until you can hand the care over to someone else.
|
| Like this, things can be stretched to unhealthy or even dangerous
| levels for a long time before there's any accountability for the
| management. The front line staff have to get the work done, often
| at great personal expense.
|
| Honestly, I don't know how people do it.
| kimixa wrote:
| I also get somewhat scared when I hear about things like shift
| lengths or "on call" times from my doctor friends, even on
| "well staffed" shifts.
|
| If you're on your feet and working for 14 hours straight with
| no rest, you _will_ make more mistakes. It 's just being human.
| Pretending that isn't the case and punishing those mistakes
| won't reduce them.
| interactivecode wrote:
| Staffing enough people for regular 8 hour work days with
| regular breaks should be the norm. At the lowest bar, any
| mistakes that happen on shifts longer than that should be
| held accountable to any management of the hospital or
| government agencies making policy, not the nurses and
| doctors. These are preventable situations, so the people
| creating the situation in which this occurs should be liable.
| kimixa wrote:
| Plus good time overlap to hand over ongoing issues -
| there's a reason why there's an uptick in deaths at shift
| change time...
| VS1999 wrote:
| At some point it was determined that working longer hours was
| safer than increasing the amount of mistakes caused by
| handoffs where new staff takes over and can make errors,
| miscommunicate, or just lose information. I'm still skeptical
| fatigue is less dangerous than handoffs.
| Teever wrote:
| When you're on a severely understaffed ward...
|
| You're being exploited by someone who should face legal
| repercussions for the situation that they have negligently
| created. But they won't be.
|
| That's the problem. That's all it is. There's no corrective
| mechanism from the legal system in play so the problem festers.
| renewedrebecca wrote:
| blinding flash of the obvious: In "The Falcon and the Winter
| Soldier" series, Sam struggles with not being able to get
| financing for a loan as well as not really getting paid for being
| an Avenger. In hindsight, I wonder if the writers were using that
| as an allegory for "the hero tax".
| tivert wrote:
| This "hero tax" probably dovetails with the effects of "passion"
| professions, where people pursue them for reasons other than
| traditional employment considerations like pay and working
| conditions. One area where I think that probably overlaps are
| teachers: my stereotype of one is someone who really cares about
| educating kids, so they put up with the low pay and other
| bullshit.
|
| And just to illustrate the difference, I think a "passion"
| profession that's not considered heroic is video game developer.
| My vague impression is the pay and working conditions for them
| are much worse than for other kinds of software development work,
| because there a lot of people who are _so_ passionate about video
| games they 'll sacrifice a lot to work on them (until they burn
| out, at least).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| insightful! unfortunately, obsession and addictive behavior
| also factor into a spectrum of committed responses.. loyalty,
| higher vision, deep connection with the activity might extend
| into other directions..
|
| lots of all of this in the world of fine arts, performance and
| literate arts
| VS1999 wrote:
| That's interesting. I have the opposite experience with
| teachers where they wanted to do a real job in their field but
| were stuck babysitting children as a backup plan. What's the
| opposite of passion?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It's always a bad thing when people want to give you praise
| rather than pay and benefits for your work.
|
| If you value their work, you should pay them adequately rather
| than act like they are in it for the good feels.
|
| Also, covid was a huge missed opportunity for creating standards
| for distributing health info and instructions via internet in a
| sensible fashion to prevent the ERs and hospitals from being so
| overwhelmed and thereby actively spreading the infection.
|
| Also a missed opportunity for developing a healthier set of
| social expectations and best practices for how to have reasonable
| and productive discussions of health topics in the face of
| uncertainty and possible death. We really seem to have screwed
| that pooch globally, or at least in English-speaking spaces.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >It's always a bad thing when people want to give you praise
| rather than pay and benefits for your work.
|
| Sure, but even if you pay me a lot you're still expected to be
| nice to me.
|
| >Also, covid was a huge missed opportunity for creating
| standards for distributing health info and instructions via
| internet in a sensible fashion to prevent the ERs and hospitals
| from being so overwhelmed and thereby actively spreading the
| infection.
|
| Was it? Tele-health boomed during the pandemic to the point
| where I've sometimes had trouble getting in-person appointments
| when I felt it was necessary.
|
| >Also a missed opportunity for developing a healthier set of
| social expectations and best practices for how to have
| reasonable and productive discussions of health topics in the
| face of uncertainty and possible death. We really seem to have
| screwed that pooch globally, or at least in English-speaking
| spaces.
|
| Also, did it really? I feel like we've made a lot of progress
| against the "go to work even if you're sick" idea being a
| virtue and enabled a lot of people to work from home while a
| little sick and made people considerably more willing to just
| stay home when they were sick.
|
| The CDC and related government entities really fucked up when
| they sent out messaging that cared more about results of the
| message than the truth of the message. They started out by
| discouraging masks and then changed tack. They exaggerated
| advice and never clearly represented uncertainty. The headline
| message was never about the best that was known at the time and
| the confidence in that message to try to empower people to make
| their own decisions. Instead they pretended to certainty that
| was impossible and encouraged pro/anti message moralization so
| that your health choices were supposed to be collective instead
| of individual and aligned with your political affiliation
| instead of your own situation and appetite for risk.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I wasn't talking about telehealth. My most recent experience
| with an organization doing video meetings instead of face to
| face was pretty negative. I felt it seriously impaired
| communication.
|
| I'm someone who hasn't lived "conventionally" in a lot of
| years and I seem to generally be out of step with _popular
| opinion._
|
| I think it was or I wouldn't have said it. Granted, personal
| opinions and individual experiences will vary.
|
| We do a poor job generally of accounting for that online. If
| your experiences fall outside the Overton Window, you may be
| accused of being a liar rather than a statistical outlier.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >but even if you pay me a lot you're still expected to be
| nice to me.
|
| If I pay you 'a lot', get back to work and stop fucking
| moaning.
| colechristensen wrote:
| No. If you pay me a lot it's because I'm not easy to
| replace, but you are. You'll listen and are expected to be
| more responsive or I'll happily leave you in the dust for a
| more respectful competitor.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Praise is nice though. At least they have social status.
|
| The absurd strawman argument would be to make their work day
| worse to increase compensation by decreasing supply of doctors
| and nurses.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| If they praise you _and_ pay you, cool. If they praise you
| _rather than_ pay you, it 's a problem.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Healthcare workers have noone to blame but themselves. Apparently
| every facility is understaffed in the US, so it should be simple
| to form a union: there's nobody to scab for you.
|
| People need to organize.
|
| One link early in the article points to another article about a
| shortage of volunteer firefighters. How can the richest country
| on the planet rely on volunteer firefighters?
| shawn_w wrote:
| Most hospitals are unionized; at least on the West Coast.
|
| Volunteer firefighters: some areas are full of people who don't
| want their taxes to go up to pay for a career department. Many
| areas are so sparsely populated they can't afford one even if
| willing. The amount of training and education required keeps
| going up, and not everyone has a job they can just walk off
| from to respond to calls on no notice. It's harder to
| effectively volunteer as a FF than it was even a few decades
| ago. Sometimes it's addressed by having formerly all volunteer
| or smaller combination career/volley departments be absorbed
| into a neighboring career department that can spread the cost
| out to a larger area. Sometimes egos win out and the ability to
| do the job suffers.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > People largely assume, for instance, that heroes simply don't
| care so much about things like fair compensation for the work
| that they do.
|
| And that assumption is true to some extent. People don't just
| slip and fall into a set of scrubs and become a nurse or medic.
| They choose that path based on an analysis (yes, the average
| person is capable of making reasoned decisions, although that's
| shocking to many). People have other options besides becoming
| "heroes" and yet, they choose it. Why?
|
| > "This is a clear fallacy in inferential reasoning and logic"
|
| This is that thing people do when they want to sound smart.
| Actually two things: (1) Don't address the claim, just call it
| wrong (2) overcomplicate your sentence with obscure words
| crisply5706 wrote:
| At work, I'm a hero. I run by myself what should be two
| departments of at least three people.
|
| Couple of weeks ago, my boss gave me a "promotion". Went on about
| how he had to clear it with the board, etc. It's a title change
| and 0.5% equity on a brand new 45 month vesting schedule with a
| new 12 month cliff. No cash money, I'm still making junior dev
| salary.
|
| CEO tried to talk to me about it, it was the verbal equivalent of
| a pizza party. I just didn't engage at all, and the planned
| announcement to the whole team silently never happened.
|
| Coincidentally, this happened a couple of days after I had
| updated my indeed resume with the same title they later
| "promoted" me to.
|
| Job was fun at first, but the CEO is extremely confidently
| driving the company straight into the ground. Fake monopoly money
| isn't going to keep me on this sinking ship, my guy.
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