I suppose it depends on where they've worked before. There are plenty of places where whether you do the minimum or you work your tail off, you still get paid the same in the end, with none of the intangible benefits you describe here - your boss and colleagues don't notice one way or the other. Or you work your tail off and everybody thinks you're great and you still get laid off. At my last two jobs, my boss didn't even know what I did all day, and wasn't all that interested either, so long as the customer didn't complain.
It's easy to become cynical, especially these days, when it's very rare for someone to stay with the same company for their entire career. A lot of employers don't even make an effort to get their best people to stay.
In this area in particular, money is very important. The starting salaries in the government are kind of low for the skillset required, and in many places (I don't know if this is true at the Patent Office but it's definitely true for DoD and the Intelligence Community), it's extremely difficult to get a raise, and whether you get promoted has a whole lot more to do with how well you write your personal assessment than what you actually do, because the people grading you often don't know you from Adam.
Does this mean you shouldn't work hard? Of course not. There are plenty of places where it does pay off. I'm just saying that if you've never worked in a place where you were valued for your personal contribution, it requires a change in mindset, one that doesn't happen overnight. And people who have been at the same job for decades telling you otherwise often isn't very convincing, since they haven't worked anywhere else recently, and thus have no real frame of reference.
Then again, it might just be that those folks really hate the work and cannot stand the thought of doing more than they absolutely have to. :)
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rosecarmine
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Date: 2016-09-12 11:20 pm (UTC)It's easy to become cynical, especially these days, when it's very rare for someone to stay with the same company for their entire career. A lot of employers don't even make an effort to get their best people to stay.
In this area in particular, money is very important. The starting salaries in the government are kind of low for the skillset required, and in many places (I don't know if this is true at the Patent Office but it's definitely true for DoD and the Intelligence Community), it's extremely difficult to get a raise, and whether you get promoted has a whole lot more to do with how well you write your personal assessment than what you actually do, because the people grading you often don't know you from Adam.
Does this mean you shouldn't work hard? Of course not. There are plenty of places where it does pay off. I'm just saying that if you've never worked in a place where you were valued for your personal contribution, it requires a change in mindset, one that doesn't happen overnight. And people who have been at the same job for decades telling you otherwise often isn't very convincing, since they haven't worked anywhere else recently, and thus have no real frame of reference.
Then again, it might just be that those folks really hate the work and cannot stand the thought of doing more than they absolutely have to. :)