People are supposed to choose their career strategy and on the job behaviour so that their teammates(not friends, teammates) can optimize their own career strategy ?
It's complicated, because by slacking off you're indirectly pulling your teammates down (as explained by the OP), which means less work-related opportunities for them, which can mean lots of not ok things: less money to send their kids to college, less money for retirement, less money for lots of other things.
A similar thing, but with much higher stakes, happens on the front-lines during a war. Confronted with a much superior enemy your individual optimal decision would be to desert, or, at least, to retreat, no matter what the high-command located at the back of the front has to say about it. They're not the ones who are going to die.
But, in doing that, you're weakening the flanks of the other brigades/platoon from your side with which you're sharing the front-line, and in so doing you're drastically decreasing the chances for them to see their kids and their wives back home.
I agree, ideally the entire workforce should "advance" under an united front (for lack of a better metaphor). I guess that's why lots of former military people get lucrative jobs in corporate consulting after they get out of the Armed Forces.
Not even close to what’s being talked about here. Unions allow for collective bargaining they don’t ensure all people are working as one giant team towards the companies goals.
I totally understand the point you're making about team cohesion.
This is the thing about the HN crowd and the remote only dogma that is constantly thrown around that is perplexing. The HN demo loudly proclaims that the workplace is not the place for you to build friendships and personal relationships and to go do it on your own time.
The natural effect of this is ambitious employees are going to min-max their career trajectory for their benefit and maybe the company's.
Why would anyone truly care about faceless Zoom rectangle team members that they're never going to see after x months/years?
In this case, they're not fighting a war, so the stakes are drastically low and payoff substantially better.
And yet HN looks down on this as bad behavior. This is just the emergent property of the current tech culture that we've established.
So replacing “Zoom rectangle team members” with retinal image team members makes that much of a difference? Magically they become actual people once you see them with your own eyes, resulting in increased effectiveness and no resentment from wasted time commuting and forced interpersonal relationships with people they find annoying.
> So replacing “Zoom rectangle team members” with retinal image team members makes that much of a difference?
Are you actually unironically asking this? If so, we have live in very different social spectrum and there's absolutely nothing I can tell you that will convince you otherwise. You should, however, try interacting with everyone in your life (loved ones, family, friends, etc.) via zoom, since it's all the same anyway. Probably saves a lot on commute and travel expenses!
> Magically they become actual people once you see them with your own eyes, resulting in increased effectiveness and no resentment from wasted time commuting and forced interpersonal relationships with people they find annoying.
Commuting, daycare, housing, etc. are side effects of a larger systemic problem that isn't the scope of what is discussed here.
Calling it a “forced interpersonal relationships with people they find annoying” is such an immature take. This is just literally interacting with people in a society. Most people learn how to deal with others in school. The ones who don’t end up socially clueless and wonder why everyone else keeps getting promoted instead of them, the “10x” engineer who totally isn’t the annoying one.
The issue has nothing to do with seeing people as actual people or not. Without a common ground for camaraderie and fellowship, there’s no need to pretend it exists besides being generally a cordial person. Using the OP’s analogy of War, employees are no longer soldier’s fighting for a cause, just mercenaries making sure they’re getting their dues.
It is unkind to slack off if it means your teammate has to swoop in and do more work. Whether or not you care about being kind to your teammates is a personal decision, I suppose, but it is something I would always encourage people do, even if it doesn't make you more money.
People are supposed to choose their career strategy and on the job behaviour so that their teammates(not friends, teammates) can optimize their own career strategy ?