Rockhound
Whilst your post is obviously an adroit provocation, it’s worth responding in order to amplify the situation at Singapore Airlines, not in the form of a further rant, but configured in terms of that well known Management dictum, Hertzberg’s Two-Factor Theory of motivation and job satisfaction.
Hertzberg and associates asked their respondents what made them feel both particularly good and particularly bad about their jobs (the two factors). It transpired that what made them feel good about their jobs concerned responsibility and accomplishment and a feeling of growth in job competence. These satisfiers or motivators were clearly related to self actualization needs.
What made the respondents feel bad about their jobs were surrounding or environmental factors, such as inadequate salary, poor working conditions, insufficient job security, poor or over supervision, lack of power in benefit negotiation, exploitation etc. These dissatisfiers relate to Maslow’s (hierarchy of needs) lower level needs and Hertzberg suggests that a preponderance of them would lead to varying levels of dissatisfaction.
Improvements in these would reduce or remove dissatisfaction but no amount of improvement would elicit positive motivation and a feeling of well being. This would only come from accomplishing a meaningful and challenging task.
I would suggest therefore that the job satisfaction which you refer to in your post is something of a continuum in which the individual will find his or her own level of self actualization and as such, the baubles you mention such as “highly professional, operates state-of-the-art equipment, and makes money” may or may not assist the individual in attaining this actualization.
Whereas the current and rising level of SIA dissatisfiers provided either by commission or omission would tend to suggest that any form of job satisfaction, baubles notwithstanding, would be made impossible within SIA, for any but the most self deluding of pilots.
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the matter.