Technology improved and made people efficient but it didn't really make the quality of life any better as a worker bee in the system.
Before AI happened, there were apps that made productivity better than the previous tools. This made people accomplish tasks faster and workload lighter. But companies eventually caught on and decided to move some goal posts.
I'm saying, you can be x times faster than your grandparents were if they did the same task as your age and you still wouldn't be compensated as much as them given how inflation screwed everyone over.
You can do more reports in an hour compared to the average employee? great, here's more work and pick up someone else's slack while you're at it to be a team player. But there's no added pay here just thanks.
Don't like the culture? we'll find a cheaper drone to replace you somewhere in the 3rd world and call it realigning our business strategy or whatever mumbo jumbo corporate calls modern wage slavery politically correct these days.
That's why I stopped bothering with metrics at work if the pay is still the same. I'm not incentivized to do better for money but I like to push some limits as a self challenge. I need to balance it by looking average cause more work stacks on me if I do things faster.
Now imagine the life of an efficient wage slave on some other company. They offer bonuses for good performance but how many people can actually get the carrot dangled in front of them? only 3 people in the office can get this bonus so work work work. And if the entire team managed to raise their performance level overall, it's only top 3 that wins. Of course there are spin offs for these types of corporate treats, I'm just glad I'm out of that system and into the new one.
We want to work, earn more so that we can afford to live and have more time funding the activities we want to do in life. Technology solved the micro problem of trying to save us time working but the inflation happened when companies started pushing the goal posts higher and now you're expected to do more with more tools at your disposal.
So the next time you want to be a good wage slave doing your best for that promotion or whatever carrot is being dangled in front of you, think about how much your quality of life will improve once they figure out you can do more than what you're being paid to do.
Just thinking out loud.
Thanks for your time.