Ibon wrote:Way back in 1978 while in the university I had an internship that lasted 5 months working in The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. There was a study on surveying the status of the salamander population and my job was to visit the different water sheds on the park, collect specimens and record numbers of individuals. At the end of my internship one of the lead researchers came up to me and said that I screwed up completely their data census because every where I went I brought back specimens and recorded numbers of individuals that were far and above what all the previous data collectors had gathered
Some peoples metabolism just burns hotter especially when you have passion.
And that happens a lot with young, healthy, energetic, and idealistic people.
In my summer internship at IBM while in college, my department laughingly showed my manager the file cabinet where the new software was stored.
My set of listings, flow charts, etc. was far bigger than the entire regular staff department's, and there were roughly 12 to 15 people in that department. They did it to make two points -- to put in a good word for my work ethic (which I appreciated, as I was hoping to be offered a job when I graduated), and to show how much meetings and nonsensical paperwork detracted from their ability to DO THEIR JOB -- writing and testing software.
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In my senior year in college, the happiest time of my life was working on my chess program. In 1981, that was still relatively new and largely uncharted territory. I was working about 20 hours a day, and sleeping on a table two hours a night in the computer room (waiting for compiles of 6000ish source lines). Very hard and productive work, and pure bliss as I watched my creation grow in ability.
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If only we stayed under 25 and weren't shown how frequently such hard work is mostly wasted effort re being rewarded by most employers -- maybe there would be far more amazing productivity.
And maybe there is for people who own their own company -- or in the top rungs of a small company where (for awhile) such effort is actually rewarded in rough proportion to productivity.
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Unfortunately, overall, our system doesn't work like that. For example:
I generally kicked ass pretty seriously at IBM the first half of my career. Why not? I was treated with respect, given large and frequent raises, thanked and given tangible awards for my best projects, promoted several times, etc. Oh, and being the curious sort, the intellectual rewards for all the stuff I was learning along the way was a huge motivator in itself.
I generally drifted from that toward being an unproductive employee the last half of my career. Why not? Things moved toward where there were few if any raises, what raises there were were tiny and tended to be all the same. There were few if any promotions. We were treated poorly. Management changed so they had nary a clue what we did, and didn't care. Oh, and I was so busy putting out fires and doing paperwork and attending STUPID meetings that there was very little time to focus and learn anything meaningful -- that was the worst part of all. Huge boredom.
The sad thing is I went from doing something like 5 peoples' work to something like half a person's work over 13 years -- and IBM at the end couldn't seem to tell the difference. It makes you wonder how such organizations survive over the longer term.
I'm betting the second half of my career is by far the most common input people experience in their work. No wonder they're often demotivated.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.