While this is obviously true, the long term effects of a positive, growth mindset are more likely to have an effect on your net worth than if you cannot or will not take pride in working hard and doing the best job you possibly can.
Keep in mind that this "positive, growth mindset" means quitting your job for a better one if you're not going to get promoted in the job that you have. That, or starting your own business. Many companies have made it abundantly clear that there's no positive growth inside their company for ordinary workers. Only for the wallets of the managers and shareholders.
This reads like its from a questionable research paper funded by an HR group with the sole aim of gaslighting workers into working harder for less money. I’m not buying it.
It is certainly questionable research, but from the lived experience of a superannuated engineer (me!) not an HR group.
As for gaslighting? Well, my aim is indeed to make you work harder. Not only that, but for you to have more money not less. At all levels — our society, the sector in which we work, our businesses as a whole and each team in those businesses — your success has a positive effect on everyone else as well as on you and part of that success will come as “legal tender”.
The flip side is that if we all drag our heels, everyone is worse off. I have sadly met many people in my life who seem to want everyone else to be as miserable as they are.
(Your comment way up this thread talks about jobs with low wages with no future prospects. You make a good point and those jobs really are different — one is unlikely to innovate oneself to greater wealth as a coal miner. Lots of us here on HN don’t fall into this category of work though, and yet, alas, I see the mindset of the low pay / low prospects worker more and more in the tech sector.)
If your boss or—worse—your shareholders are making significant money from your work, and spending it on furthering the climate disaster (like most bosses of large companies do) then I would argue that, no, your work is actually making the world a worse place.
This wealth gap that keeps increasing is not good for anyone (except for bosses) and it is literally destroying our climate, even if it makes your personal net worth increase, that isn’t good enough if it increases your boss’ net worth 100x that.
Working smarter and for better companies also got me working harder. I simply work harder when I'm working for a company I care about, on a job I care about, when I feel appreciated and have the freedom to contribute in a way that works for me.
If you make me care less about the job and worry more about money, that's not going to help my productivity. If you want passionate and productive workers, you've got to give them something to be passionate about, but you also have to make sure they don't have to worry about money. If they're thinking about how they'll make rent or how they're going to pay for some unavoidable expenses, they're not thinking about how to solve an interesting problem for you.
