[minipci1321]

Over here, yes, it has gotten worse since 2001 -- asian shops press much harder now, cheap remote labor really easily available ... competition vent through the roof. Longer hours, guilt feels stronger, sloppier work, inter-team communication destroyed (all-email in some language foreign to everyone), and -- still more lost deals.

This is for everyone, workers and management.

True, people maybe feel more entitled. But I think we also are getting introduced to a phenomenon new since 2001 -- having a solid "living wage" (which Trubune says noting else replaces), but burning out repeatedly, hating the job but being unable to quit, as providing for family takes more now than it used to in 2001, too.

[JackPoach]

Yeah, but how much of that is your current employer fault? Let's take housing costs. Absolutely insane in California, Canada and some other places. Education/student loans - modern day slavery for many. Healthcare costs - seem to grow much faster than inflation or wage increase. The end result - destruction of the middle class as we know it. Or 'shrinking middle class' to put it less dramatically. So, I take it you live in Canada and this is the type of experience you describe. Is there a list of Canadian corporations that are to blame for this? Or is this more of a government fault? Or is this the problem that's not limited to Canada but is a general trend for most western countries because the neoliberal economic model is broken and it's silly to pretend that it's not? Personally, I am hesitant to blame some specific corporation for general economic misery.

[ncphil]

It's your company's fault because their leadership (you know, the one percent) got on the neoliberal, supply-side, tax cutting, privatization train ahead of the rest of the population and then worked like hell to condition everyone below them to believe it was going to be all unicorns and rainbows. Now that the experiment is failing (as evidenced by a renewed interest in Keynes -- at least for the FIRE sector), they're all going around saying, "Not me! Work-life balance! Inclusion! Human capital!" Except that they've spent four decades wasting and destroying the value of that human capital the way they did the rainforests, coral reefs, rivers and lakes, and the climate. Just dealing with all the piles of spent nuclear fuel is going to be a massively expensive, ten millenia project, but these people can't reliably plan out further than a few quarters.

[minipci1321]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I am far from blaming employer on that. Or anyone for that matter (not Canadian, Europe, our govt does what they can ... you cannot break bones to national business culture in one-election-term timeframe).

It is just that it feels hopeless either way: companies who strip it down bare to what the employed work really is -- a wolf-pack hunting together -- don't feel that great, and the opposite, pretending that we all are in the middle of a nice cozy great-place-to-work -- gets down on nerves after some point too.

The only solution, switch jobs regularly by all means. Play the national lottery.