In the U.S. we are culturally taught that we are supposed to dislike our work, especially if it isn't prestigious. If you dance around and have fun at work in the U.S. people look at you weird and generally discourage any such thing. But there's no reason not to bother enjoying your time.
This is on top of the various other points they make in the article and related stuff…
In the U.S. we are culturally taught that we are supposed to dislike our work, especially if it isn't prestigious. If you dance around and have fun at work in the U.S. people look at you weird and generally discourage any such thing. But there's no reason not to bother enjoying your time.
I can think of one: the same reason Steve Jobs paid himself $1 a year.
Managing incentives is tough. If you try and reward someone for a task, you may find the incentives at some point misaligned.
Let work be fun, and you open yourself to work being sacrificed to protect the fun.
Therefore: abolish fun.
I haven't made an eloquent case for it, but I think that's the reasoning, and I'm not sure it's wrong, frankly.
The only reason Steve Jobs and any other executive pays themselves $1 on a W4 is because their income from other means of compensation gets taxed less than regular income. They aren't doing it as some sort of show of "look how much I love my job!"
In the U.S. we are culturally taught that we are supposed to dislike our work, especially if it isn't prestigious. If you dance around and have fun at work in the U.S. people look at you weird and generally discourage any such thing. But there's no reason not to bother enjoying your time.
Generalize much? While I don't doubt your experience, I don't think this is a very accurate characterization of the culture distribution across the US.
It's a generalization, yes. It's valid as such. It's comparison to generalizations that are valid for Africa. If this case doesn't apply to your exact experiences, it's because generalizations don't go that far.
Do you have the anomalous U.S. experience of working in a place where people dance around and sing and have fun while working? You could share that with the rest of us who mostly do not have that experience.
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As per the famous Ghana postal workers recording ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=por5SopwHDc and http://faculty.weber.edu/tpriest/FacetsMdl_files/Postal%20Wo... ), it's perfectly possible to enjoy even tedious work if you have a good attitude. It helps to have a healthy culture.
In the U.S. we are culturally taught that we are supposed to dislike our work, especially if it isn't prestigious. If you dance around and have fun at work in the U.S. people look at you weird and generally discourage any such thing. But there's no reason not to bother enjoying your time.
This is on top of the various other points they make in the article and related stuff…
I can think of one: the same reason Steve Jobs paid himself $1 a year.
Managing incentives is tough. If you try and reward someone for a task, you may find the incentives at some point misaligned.
Let work be fun, and you open yourself to work being sacrificed to protect the fun.
Therefore: abolish fun.
I haven't made an eloquent case for it, but I think that's the reasoning, and I'm not sure it's wrong, frankly.
The only reason Steve Jobs and any other executive pays themselves $1 on a W4 is because their income from other means of compensation gets taxed less than regular income. They aren't doing it as some sort of show of "look how much I love my job!"
But the important part of life is the fun. The work is only instrumentally useful to get to the fun, not really valuable in itself.
Generalize much? While I don't doubt your experience, I don't think this is a very accurate characterization of the culture distribution across the US.
It's a generalization, yes. It's valid as such. It's comparison to generalizations that are valid for Africa. If this case doesn't apply to your exact experiences, it's because generalizations don't go that far.
Do you have the anomalous U.S. experience of working in a place where people dance around and sing and have fun while working? You could share that with the rest of us who mostly do not have that experience.