If you like me didn't know what this means: Employee engagement is a subjective measure of how committed Employees feel to their jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_engagement

I work at a multinational mega Corp, but not one you've probably heard of. I am very disengaged.

For one thing, I'm technically a "contractor". I have to go to all the meetings, but I don't technically work for them. They give me the legal minimum of paid time off, but only after I looked up what my rights are and fought them for it. They don't pay for holidays. They say "have a nice Thanksgiving" and then dock me two days pay.

The pay is insulting. I'm making less than I made ten years ago.

There's no technical leadership. These people are supposed to be doing python. They don't know what unit tests are. They barely know how imports work. Trying to change everything is a months long battle and emotion massaging exercise. The people in charge don't understand or care.

They do love AI though. Lots of AI generated code. They don't understand it but it looks so slick. Vomit.

So fuck them. I used to go out of my way to fix problems and promote good practices. Not anymore. I hope the upper management and owners suffer.

They're probably not even renewing contractors past the end of the year anyway.

I was so angry when we were required to use AI as much as possible, that now I don't make a decision, write an email, give an update, or answer a ping without telling AI to do it, waiting for the result, and copy/pasting whatever slop it gives me.

They want the slop? They get only slop.

Yeah, when you have executives boasting about increased production and record profits while employees don’t get any raises/promotions, and then the company has massive layoffs leaving the remaining employees with more work and still no raises, that’s kinda what you get.

42 year old engineer here ... my entire career was disengaged

I know I’m old and everything (42 yrs in the work force), but I never once felt that my employer cared about me. I went into work knowing that I was there to make money for the firm, and that’s it. I spend as much time as it takes getting the job done so I can get my paycheck, and that’s it. If I win the lottery, I'm outta there. I don’t know why people ever think that their boss cares about them..?

The latest decline was sharpest among remote and hybrid employees

They really will do anything they can to try and force RTO.

So great, make people waste fuel and energy to go to a different place where more energy is wasted in a time when AI datacenters are wasting even more energy. In a time when conservation should be key given how far into climate change we've already drifted.

So telling everyone they had to return to the office after COVID actually did jack shit then?

Right, got it.

Alienation from one's work and eventually from society, is an inevitable outcome of capitalism.

Every company I've worked for saw an uptick in productivity moving to remote.

Every company I've worked for saw improvement in morale.

Something doesn't align here.

Sounds about right. Rewards seem to have no relation to contributions in my workplace, and I'm guessing I'm not alone. Might as well try to give them as little as possible of yourself. You've seen so many people work hard and end up looking like fools for it.

We have jobs to survive.

It doesn't necessarily mean we like them.

Hybrid sucks so much. Its like the worst of both worlds.

I wouldn't bother being engaged at work with that shit either.

Remote on the other hand, I am much more likely to be engaged, because if I am forced to be in an office, I am going to be interrupted and made to sit in nonsense meetings most of the time.

As for AI, its a terrific time waster, of course you are even removed father from work.

It's kinda crazy to me that it's this high.

They need to pay more and hire more for the work and give more profits to the workers. Since they won't, have to buy your freedom, learn to spend less, earn more, DIY when possible, eat healthy, etc. is all possible, step by step, with agency and autonomy, knowledge is power! Financial independence is possible check Mr. Money Mustache and livingafi blog, among others, you can do better with some help!