I sometimes wish people explain what they mean by that, because I'm confused by the phrase. I assume it's some Americanism that has a broad range of meanings. Cramming trivia for interviews doesn't sound like the "work ethics" I see when I google the term, but then again, I recently had a German student explain to me that they understand hard (but dumb) work as what this phrase means.
I agree it can be hard to put your finger exactly on what it is.
My best sense of it is that it is something approximating your ability to follow through on some task that a) was never, or has seized to be interesting or otherwise stimulating or b) is sufficiently difficult that many people would allow themselves to quit. Often related to the idea that there is some form of delayed gratification to be had.
Stripped of the religious connotations the phrase as commonly used (eg. "having a good work ethic") essentially means "feeling an obligation to consistently work hard for your employer".
Yes I would take this as behaving ethically at work eg not sexually harassing co-workers, not stealing from the company by abusing the expenses system, hiring hookers on the company amex which happened at one company I worked for in the UK - and so on.
To use an example from the military "officers eat last".
That would be my default interpretation too, but I've seen this phrase used plenty of times to mean "working hard", or "enduring work drudgery" (without any relation to ethical issues you mentioned), so I'm confused about the correct meaning of this term, and every time I see it, I have to infer from context what it is that a commenter is talking about.
The American meanings of work ethic relate to working hard or diligently. They don’t have anything to do with ethics. That would be under “work values” oddly enough.
Maybe I should have put scare quotes around it (work ethic)? It means whatever the hiring company wants it to mean, it isn’t a very well defined concept.
I sometimes wish people explain what they mean by that, because I'm confused by the phrase. I assume it's some Americanism that has a broad range of meanings. Cramming trivia for interviews doesn't sound like the "work ethics" I see when I google the term, but then again, I recently had a German student explain to me that they understand hard (but dumb) work as what this phrase means.