Raise your hand if the following is familiar…
Once upon a time, there was a nice little company. In it, there was a nice little department, and inside it there was a nice little team.
The members of that team were competent, and there was work for everyone. They weren’t overworked - they managed to leave at 6 PM every day, with all of the day’s work behind them, and then go home to their families and forget it all until the next day. On the other hand, they weren’t idle either - if one of them got sick, or went on vacations, for instance, the others certainly “felt” the added work, had to leave a little later, and went home tired. But they managed.
One day, one of them left. Nothing special had happened - he simply got a better offer somewhere else, and in a place closer to home. The other workers were a bit troubled by it, but their worries were eased as their boss assured them that they would hire a replacement soon.
Time passed, and no replacement came. It was, in a way, as if one of the team was gone on vacations all the time. The remaining members had to work harder, more time per day, and spent less time with their families. Worse, still, was when one of them did go on vacations - that mean everyone else got really overworked, and had to spend nights at work, and sometimes go there during weekends. Luckily, that didn’t happen during most of the time.
And the boss had an idea…
Sure, he did intend to hire one more worker after the other one left. But then he wondered: aren’t they really handling things well with one less? Maybe the team had been too big before, having more guys than necessary. Why not cut costs, look good in front of the top management, and keep the team as it is?
After a while, he had another idea. Sure, the guys were there more time than they used to, and they looked a little more tired - which just meant that they weren’t giving it all before, right? Why not cut more costs, and look even better, by “letting one of them go” (nobody says “firing” anymore, it’s not PC)?
And so it happened. And happened again. Soon, everyone was working more than 12 hours a day, including weekends. They almost never saw their families anymore, and when they did, they were too stressed out, and too preoccupied with work to enjoy it.
But they kept at it. The team had a great work relationship, and everyone was loyal to the team, so they sacrificed everything - their free time, their health, their social life, their families - for the company, and for their co-workers. All of them felt too guilty to ever go on vacations, now - how could they, when they knew what it meant to their colleagues? Everyone did the work of 2 or 3 people - if not more. Everyone felt that they couldn’t do any less - the company depended on them, the department depended on them, and they had to make do with what they had, instead of using excuses like “too much work” or “not enough people”.
Meanwhile, their boss got a promotion and a huge raise due to his brilliant ability to cut costs, and his amazing leadership, which made the team do the same amount of work with only half the people. He boasted to everyone that he made the team really work, instead of lazing off like they used to.
None of the remaining workers got a raise, of course. They were just doing their duty, after all.
…Anything familiar here?
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Sounds like the game industry. I don’t see how the workers are being harmed though. If they don’t want to take a vacation because it would make them feel guilty for making their co-workers suffer, they value lack of guilt more than vacations. If they endure a bad work environment rather than quitting and finding another job, then they value the security of their job more than the stress and risk of looking for a new job, which might pay less and be equally poor working conditions. If they feel that being loyal and fulfilling their duty is in their best interest, they value that more than what they could get by abandoning their perceived duty. Maybe the company is a charity feeding poor children, and they would rather be overworked than to let them go hungry. Maybe one man’s wife has threatened to divorce him and take the children if he decides to quit.
They are making a rational choice of their available alternatives and picking the one they prefer. The essence of self-sacrifice is that you ignore your short-term needs in favor of long-term rewards. This is what is meant by the greater good. Now, some people may try to cheat you by tricking you into thinking that long-term rewards exist when they don’t, or they themselves might be convinced that those rewards exist, so you are still responsible for verifying the facts. But even if you rely on someone else to make that determination for you, you are making a judgement that they can predict the long-term vs. short-term gain better than you can.
Of particular interest here is the recent research on mirror neurons. Essentially, when you see someone in pain, your brain literally recreates that experience (as best as it can) inside of your own experience. Empathy is created when this happens. Some argue that this is a bad thing, that empathy causes people to ignore their own needs, but this is false. We ignore our own needs because our brain recreates the needs and wants of others, which may be stronger or weaker, but we experience them as our own. If this is true, it makes no sense to make a distinction between needs that are proceed directly from my individual experience and needs that proceed indirectly from someone else’s experience, since I experience these in the same way. This would be like making a distinction between hunger and thirst and saying that one always takes precedence. In practice, whatever is strongest takes precedence, regardless of its source.
Additionally, humans seem to have evolved a heightened sense of empathy, perhaps more so than any other animal. This ability to co-create a shared reality is an evolutionary adaptation that supports much of the success of the species, so its a reasonable to hold a thesis that enhancing and developing our empathetic abilities, rather than shutting them off, could provide still more benefits to an individual who exists within a particular social context. Of course, it is necessary for that social context to be specifically tailored to take advantage of that adaptation, because enhanced empathy can also create vulnerabilities as well. I submit that a social context that discourages empathy because of the vulnerabilities that are created is suboptimal compared to a context that encourages empathy but protects against exploitation of those vulnerabilities.
Abotu your first 2 paragraphs, I disagree with you - I think they’re not being rational at all. It’s just collectivist ethics in action. People (and I see it around me) have such a sense of loyalty to their co-workers, that they will do anything - including destroying their personal life. Even yesterday, a colleague here told me that she needed a vacation, but wasn’t going to do it until someone else was hired, because she couldn’t leave her team member alone here (it’s a 2-person team, and they were 4 some months ago). Meanwhile, the only one who’s laughing is the boss - you can bet that he’s in no hurry to hire someone else. Why would he, when 2 people are doing the work of 4?
I’ve seen it before, in other companies I’ve worked at, too. Believe me, it’s not a question of “being loyal and fulfilling their duty is in their best interest”. After a while, they don’t think clearly anymore, they simply feel that they can’t do anything about it at all, other than “hope” that things will improve in the future, that someone else will be hired. Of course, the boss has no reason to do so, and will delay it as much as possible - which, in many cases, means “indefinitely”.
Yesterday I asked that colleague of mine (who’s in another team): “why don’t you just do your own work, 8 hours a day, and when people complain that “this isn’t done” or “that is weeks behind schedule”, you tell the truth, that there’s not enough manpower to do it?”. Her reply was that she wasn’t capable of doing that, that she’d feel guilty because the company, and other departments, would be harmed… she felt that it was her “responsibility” to make things work, no matter the cost.
Although I respect the person in question, I believe that this attitude is completely disgusting.
As for the rest, I don’t know - the logical conclusion of the neurological part is that we are “collectivist by nature”. Maybe up to a point, but I don’t agree that being absolutely empathic, and “co-creating a shared reality”, are truly human creatures - or, if they are, they’re from our irrational part.
People… have such a sense of loyalty to their co-workers, that they will do anything - including destroying their personal life.
But they are loyal because they believe its better for them in the long run. They might be mistaken about that, but its still rational. Your coworker doesn’t want to make her coworker suffer because she woud experience that suffering herself, so she’s picking the best option available to her out of two admittedly bad alternatives. You seem to be saying that its not rational to experience and respond to empathy, but that is based on a particular definition of selfhood which is at odds with modern science. The modern (Western, Cartesian) concept of the self is based on an assumption that we experience existence independently of what other people experience, which is completely contrary to what neurological studies show.
Individualism is predicated on this assumption, that it is good for me to respond to my own experience and ignore other people’s experience, but as a practical matter, mirror neurons recreate other people’s experience to a greater or lesser degree that varies from person to person. Its seems likely that this variation extends from extremely sensitive, which is mostly women, to extremely insensitive, which is mostly men, with a large middle ground. Either of those extremes can be very debilitating, from being so sensitive that you are unstable, to being autistic and unable to interpret facial expressions. The majority of sufferers of autism and Asperger’s syndrome are male. By your standards, autistic people are the most rational, since they are capable of living up to the Western ideal of the individual untroubled by other people’s experience. I also observe that in Western society, boys are trained from an early age to shut off and compartmentalize their empathetic abilities, possibly because this made them more effective soldiers and better at fighting wars for their country, which were fought for the greater good. I don’t believe that men ought to be more like women, or vice versa, but there should be no social pressure to shape “male” or “female” characteristics in a person beyond what they naturally possess. Women often experience guilt for acting in their own interests because of this social pressure that they should be subservient, and they are also more sensitive to that pressure. Similarly, men often experience shame for not ignoring their natural empathetic impulses.
I don’t think that the neurological studies show that we are “collectivist by nature,” I think it shows that there is no meaningful difference between being individualistic or collectivist. There’s a continuum of sensitivities to impulses which the brain prioritizes rationally from strongest to weakest. On whether empathy is from the “irrational” part of the brain, I can point you to this book: Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. This book shows that rationality and descision making do not exist without emotions.
In closing, I note that this post is partly motivated by your feelings of empathy for your coworker’s poor working situation.
I’ll be brief:
From what I’ve read, it would seem that company functions on two halves (each from a different model).
We have the “we must strive to keep the company running” aspect of the japanese culture (hope I’m not falling into use of stereotypes, here). And the communist chinese “who cares about the workers?” policy.
I think the “best” way to solve those situations of abuse would be to talk to someone above the department’s section’s supervisor. If possible, take some colleagues with you and look as tired as you honestly can. Of course, you have to choose who you’re gonna talk to before doing so. Who’s to say that the boss’s boss isn’t a bigger jackass?
This sounds like the model that the entire IT industry has decided to run with right now. I have certainly been in similar situations in previous positions where the “downsizing” bug has bitten management.
I have felt that most of these situations are created by the personalities of IT workers who are for the most part introverts. We do not discuss the pain that we feel out of fear. Being introverts I think it would be extremely uncomfortable for most of us to even talk to our boss about this situation let alone the next level.
I can relate to this one. Me and my wife have been there. RIGHT there, when the boss said “I’m going to get rid of this person” and we all thought that there would be a replacement and worked harder, and realized there wouldn’t be.
I’m going to go for broke here, because I lack the inteligence to find a better way to say it but…
EVIL.
It takes an evil mind to say that they are going to sacrifice the well being of others to increase their own. Especially when they make more money in the first place.