The way I explain it is that your company is not your friend, but that doesn’t make them your enemy.
The trap is when they see everything as a false dichotomy between friend and enemy. Enemies are something you avoid or even work against. When someone starts seeing their employer as the enemy and they don’t want to do things that help out their enemy, they trick themselves into poor performance out of spite.
Which leads to performance management and eventually firing if they don’t get a handle on it. This makes them even angrier, confirming their belief that their company is out to get them, leading to deeper spiraling into spite and poor performance.
Breaking someone out of that mentality is hard but everyone is so much happier once you’ve cracked them out of the “friend or enemy” dichotomous thinking.
In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employer?
Something like the analogue to the “Reddit-infused worker” archetype, where leadership is inappropriately cynical about their workers and see them as “the enemy”?
> In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employer?
Of course. If you don’t see that, you’re missing the point.
In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employee? Or do you assume all employees are inherently good and do appropriate work for their pay and don’t need constant performance management to simply do their job?
In my posts I’m not talking about all juniors. I’m talking about a problematic subset. You seem to be assuming I’m generalizing to all of them. I am not. This is a phenomenon specific to a subset of juniors that is unfortunately a repeated pattern where they all share some very common and obvious characteristics. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to break them out of that mindset and have them join their much happier peers, but to be honest once someone is that deep into the cynical mindset it’s hard to wake them out of it.
> In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employee?
Of course — I implied as much via the “inappropriately cynical“ characterization.
The tension between capital and labor is inescapable and ancient.
I didn’t think you were generalizing to all juniors. Rather, what caught my interest was that before this last message I perceived the perspective of capital in your words.
> In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employer?
Yes. My employer has gone all in on the AI bandwagon. To achieve this, they lay off around 10% of the workforce every February to free up capital for whichever AI fad they wish to pursue that FY, all the while spouting the usual bullshit about being a "family".
I could make a lot more money elsewhere working 12 month fixed term contracts, with possible extensions, than I do as a "permanent" employee doing effectively the same thing.
The trap is when they see everything as a false dichotomy between friend and enemy. Enemies are something you avoid or even work against. When someone starts seeing their employer as the enemy and they don’t want to do things that help out their enemy, they trick themselves into poor performance out of spite.
Which leads to performance management and eventually firing if they don’t get a handle on it. This makes them even angrier, confirming their belief that their company is out to get them, leading to deeper spiraling into spite and poor performance.
Breaking someone out of that mentality is hard but everyone is so much happier once you’ve cracked them out of the “friend or enemy” dichotomous thinking.