"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."
-- Buckminster Fuller, 1930
Let's say we all agree that the global amount of resources are enough to support all of us without work, just for simplification.
Then what about distribution of these resources? I feel many people work to fight over that distribution, not just to produce. E.g., there might be no $1000/h lawyer who would think that they produce even $100/h worth of resources. But they might still work 80h/week (or make the impression) to get a bigger share of the pie that is already there.
I don't think that having jobs is the problem. A lot of people can benefit from having jobs. Ideally a workplace should provide a way to develop people, a stable income and clear goals. It is also less risky for the employer (doesn't have to search for someone when a task needs to be done) and the employees (stable income). I personally like to work in an environment where I can decide what has to be done, how to do it, but many people wouldn't want to take this responsibility or would have a far less incentive to work if they don't have to earn a living. In an utopia perhaps we could abolish jobs, if everybody knew what they wanted to do and what they were good at.
We tried this idea, in America, at the Jamestown Colony. They initially established it in a "socialist" vein wherein everyone received an equal share of the proceeds (food, etc) regardless of their contributions to the colony. The colony barely survived because people lacked the incentive to work and produce because there was no advantage to them working more than their peers. Why should I work to produce an excess when Billy Bob sits on the dock all day and receives the same share I do. When they lifted the socialist mandate on redistribution, production at the colony skyrocketed because people were rewarded for their effort.
Everyone has to put a roof over their head and food in their belly. If we create a culture that tells people they don't have to work to receive those benefits, it will disicentivize people to actually work (why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day?) and engage in production activities. Supporting a society necessitates producers create more than what they need, but if you create a system that takes what it deems the excess from the producers without compensation or reward and doles it out, the producers will stop producing and we'll back at Jamestown all over again.
Going back to school and dilly-dallying is mostly only really going to be viable if your parents are the ones who earned a big enough living to support you. I know people like that.
Maybe corporations should adopt poor people or commission huge parties or works of art.
To be honest, people pay me to do a job, but I am a fraud. I don't work for a living. Somewhere on a piece of paper my name is printed and it says that I will receive a sum of money each month in exchange for some effort at programming computers or some such thing, but I never really pay attention to it.
I program computers all day. It is quite an enjoyable pastime and I look forward to it almost all the time. Although it would seem like it is better to selfishly work on my own personal projects all the time, I have found that if I do things that other people like, it makes them very happy. I really enjoy making other people happy. It is fun.
I have not always thought this way. At one time in my life, I tried to limit the amount of things that I did for other people. I wanted to make sure that I always prioritised my goals above theirs. I would feel resentful if I were forced, through the circumstances of living, to do things that were not of my choosing. I demanded compensation. No matter how much compensation I received, though, it never seemed enough. Let's face it, I was giving up my time -- my life -- to further goals that were not my own. How much money should I receive to give up my life? I have never been able to answer that question.
I suppose there must have been a day where I changed. If there was, I can't recall it. Whatever happened, I started to realize that I was enjoying what I was doing. Not all of it, of course, but at least some of it. I went to my boss and I said, "If you have more things like this, can you please let me do it?" He was quite pleased to hear my question and readily agreed. Over time, I asked for more and more things that I enjoyed and my boss gave me more and more of those things. Eventually, virtually everything I was doing were things that I enjoyed.
There have been times where I was stuck in situations that I didn't enjoy. Most of the time it is because I lacked some skill to do a task, or because I lacked the ability to interact gracefully with certain people. These are big challenges for me. I enjoy challenges and I push myself to see if I can overcome them. Some days I give up and sleep, or play video games or cry. The next day I am usually ready to try again. I have crossed some big mountains this way and it is something that makes me very proud.
It has happened to me that I have found myself in situations where I just could not cope with what was going on. In those cases, I have simply gone somewhere else. I'm lucky because I live in a rich and free society where I can do what I please. I admit that I fully utilise this freedom and feel sad for others that can not do as I can do. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty, but should a seed planted in rich soil struggle because other seeds are not so lucky? I think there is no point in making life any harder than it already is. I will take my luck wherever I can get it.
In this way I have found that I can align myself so that people pay me and I do not work. I'm not saying it's easy. It has taken me decades to work out how to do it for myself. I just think that it isn't as hard as many people think it might be.
So basically 9,999 people are completely dependent on the work of one person for them to survive and prosper. Sounds really rosy, for everyone involved.
> We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living
Right, because valuable things don't actually cost anything to produce! That's why they can just be (automatically) handed out by some big Magic Nanny-Fairy Machinery.
We should all just get whatever we want, because we deserve it!
Because if they got their job done and left they would be fired. If they got their job done, they would be given more work. So one takes the maximal amount of time to do a task given the requirement that they be in the office for 8+ hrs a day.
"My only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
Yep this exactly. Do you want to do 10x more work for the exact same amount of pay or do you want to stretch out the work by a half hour here and there, get it done but at a good relaxed pace when your creativity can be brought to full bear on the tasks?
Parkinson's Law, which was a sarcastic joke about bureaucracy, only really happens when employees are not engaged in their work or they're forced to be in the same spot for 8+ hours a day. I have 10 things to do within 2 week "sprints". Should I get everything done in a first week (maybe work a few hours on the weekend if need be) and then be tasked with more tasks and not get rewarded for this at all? Or should I just do 5 things the first week and have fun on the weekend and then finish the other 5 things later?
This is why hourly pay and salaries are crap. You aren't getting paid for value; you're getting paid to sit in a chair (even if you work remotely) and you're getting paid so that the competition doesn't hire you away.
If they have 8 hours of work time and finished their tasks in 6, does that mean they have exhausted their usefulness to the business? Why not spend these 2 hours doing some small miscellaneous tasks?
"And it’s not only at the bottom of the pyramid. There is a dirty secret I have discovered in the fifteen years I have spent consulting and coaching organizational leaders: life at the top of the pyramids isn’t much more fulfilling. Behind the façade and the bravado, the lives of powerful corporate leaders are ones of quiet suffering too. Their frantic activity is often a poor cover up for a deep inner sense of emptiness. The power games, the politics, and the infighting end up taking their toll on everybody. At both the top and bottom, organizations are more often than not playfields for unfulfilling pursuits of our egos, inhospitable to the deeper yearnings of our souls.
This book isn’t a rant about large corporations gone mad with greed. People who work in government agencies or nonprofits are rarely more exuberant about their workplaces. Even professions of calling aren’t immune to organizational disillusionment. Teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their field of vocation in droves. Our schools, unfortunately, are for the most part soulless machines where students and teachers simply go through the motions. We have turned hospitals into cold, bureaucratic institutions that dispossess doctors and nurses of their capacity to care from the heart. "
"The way we try to deal with organizations’ current problems often seems to make things worse, not better. Most organizations have gone through many rounds of change programs, mergers, centralizations and decentralizations, new IT systems, new mission statements, new scorecards, or new incentive systems. It feels like we have stretched the current way we run organizations to its limits, and these traditional recipes often seem part of the problem, not the solution.
We yearn for more, for radically better ways to be in organizations. But is that genuinely possible, or mere wishful thinking? If it turns out that it is possible to create organizations that draw out more of our human potential, then what do such organizations look like? How do we bring them to life? These are the questions at the heart of this book. "
Before we get into a discussion about basic income and drones making us obsolete, can we talk about cutting hours? First, lets get back to the standard 40 hour work week. That'd be a big step. And after that, can some of us work less? Half of my day is spent browsing the internet out of boredom. I'd get more done if the day was shorter. Better yet, let me telecommute and set my own hours. You'll get the same results out of me, if not better, and I'll be a happier fellow.
I totally relate to you. I'd myself personally prefer going half-time (20 hrs/week), with the option of working extra hours. (Perhaps a 5-hours-a-day 4-day work week.)
In my case it's the lack of documentation about a huge system (ecosystem, I'd rather call it), in contrast to an overengineered methodology and process, which involves mandatory code reviews by people unfamiliar with the code and 6 test phases before production.
If I crank 10 lines of code a week I consider myself lucky, and it won't take less than 3 weeks for them to hit production.
The combination of that with long builds and releases (30min minimum) makes me always have something to do, but I'm always waiting for something to be able to move on (build to be finished, answers from experts, validation by QA...). That's where HN and r/programming kick in.
I sincerely hope this (10 lines of code a week) is hyperbole. I would be fine with 3 weeks to hit production - not everybody works on a SaaS, I've had six months release cycles - but... not writing code?
I think this involves setting some clear boundaries and expectations. I learned some things while I was consulting that I've carried into everything since:
- After a certain time each evening (7pm for me), stop sending email. You can still write and respond to it but schedule it to go out the next morning. If people see you respond at 2am, they'll begin to expect it.
- Do the same for weekends. Schedule email for Monday morning. If people see you respond on Saturdays, they'll begin to expect it.
- Only check email every N hours. I've found N=3 or 4 is best. This is the hardest for me. If you respond to every email in minutes, they'll begin to expect it.
- If you're not explicitly on the To line, filter it from your inbox. I have an "other stuff" folder where email goes if I'm not explicitly on the To line. I check this folder 1-2 times/day at most. If something is important to me, address it to me.
- Have a fixed todo list each day. If someone brings you a task, put it at the end of today so it often ends up tomorrow and communicate that. (Obviously, if something is really important, you can shift the order but that should be an exception, not the practice.) If you drop everything every time someone asks, they'll begin to expect it.
- Leave the office at a predictable time each day. I try to leave by 6pm. If you occasionally stay late, they'll begin to expect it.
- Don't answer your phone the first time someone calls. I always wait until their second call or if they email/text/dm too. If you're always-accessible, they'll begin to expect it.
- Don't take your phone into the bedroom at night. I leave mine charging on my desk at the other side of the house. If you answer your phone in the middle of the night, they'll begin to expect it.
Because we are playing the game. Some call it presenteeism, other call it face time, some even view it as the boss owning your ass during the work hours. But basically, we don't really give a fuck for the organisation, for the team, for the project, for the job. We just do enough to keep the gig until something better rolls along.
We know you would have no hesitation to cut jobs and other such when it suits, so don't expect any more from us.
> In this respect, entire occupations might be considered phoney - from life coaches to "atmosphere co-ordinators" (people hired to create a party vibe in bars) to "chief learning officers" in the corporate world.
People hired to create atmosphere in bars might be "phoney" in an object-level sense, but as far as their job goes presumably they do provide an actual service to someone, by causing more people to visit the bar.
I don't think it was ever different. The idea that there should be enough time to sleep and have hobbies, that's the new thing. Just because our parents already experienced these privileges doesn't mean it's an old topic.
And if something like this happens so regularly, so naturally, I think instead of logically arguing about it we should worry more about how to handle that. I'm thinking about that other article were sales people were working together to make it looks like they all would work 80 hour weeks.
Last but not least let's not forget that our bosses also actually don't care abut our work hours. Caring would mean that they would need to look at hour work schedules and time tables, etc, instead of going to the golf club. For them it's more important that they can make a good impression on their bosses and customers as well. As long as we deliver that impression they don't mind that we all act like we are working 80 hour weeks, including them.
As others have mentioned, doing "just enough" work is a by-product of a inefficiencies of the hierarchal approach of managing via command and control. Holacracy instead is network centric.
I don't know if I completely buy into the effectiveness of Holacracy but I can see how it it is better motivating to Producers. For example, I tend to write better code knowing that it will be peer-reviewed by another dev I respect.
because I pay you for 40h of productivity per week, not a fixed amount of output? for the latter, consulting/freelance exists.
if you get paid for 40h per week, the expectation is to devote those hours to the benefit of the employer. do your tasks, if you have time to spare, think of other benefits - improvements, better ideas, learn, etc.
people that finish a task and then wait to be given another are the bane of the workplace. you never hire them at startups, but at some size they creep in and kill, kill, kill any company. walk into HP, Oracle, IBM today and you'll see them, in droves. that is why you can lay off 30% workforce at that size with no sizeable impact on your customers.
There is likely a certain organization size where many sub organizations or groups exist and work gets to a mode of waiting on so-and-so to do that thing.
Big companies like to organize around what they perceive as efficiency - putting common workers together and having common practices, etc. This leads to a waterfall delivery model where in order to x, y and z you need three different groups and they all have requests coming in all directions.
Small companies, including startups, simply don't have that org structure so you would never see that behavior since it isn't needed.
This isn't a type of person, it is a type of organization structure. That is why you hear it being so common across completely different businesses of similar size.
There is a good model in larger companies where you have entire vertical areas of responsibility as a group or organization. They are held accountable for delivering something in total and don't have many other groups to interact with for delivery. Kind of like a startup or small company inside a company. Many upper management types don't like this because they are seen as something they can't control. I've heard the Virgin companies are organized in this manner.
Are you paying hourly or salary? If salary, you are paying for what should be able to be done in 40 hours a week, but if it takes 45, you expect it to still be done, no? So if one can get it done is 35, why do you expect 5 more hours to given free?
[+] [-] Foomandoonian|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikb|10 years ago|reply
Then what about distribution of these resources? I feel many people work to fight over that distribution, not just to produce. E.g., there might be no $1000/h lawyer who would think that they produce even $100/h worth of resources. But they might still work 80h/week (or make the impression) to get a bigger share of the pie that is already there.
[+] [-] mistaken|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bgilroy26|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylanjermiah|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] floppydisk|10 years ago|reply
Everyone has to put a roof over their head and food in their belly. If we create a culture that tells people they don't have to work to receive those benefits, it will disicentivize people to actually work (why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day?) and engage in production activities. Supporting a society necessitates producers create more than what they need, but if you create a system that takes what it deems the excess from the producers without compensation or reward and doles it out, the producers will stop producing and we'll back at Jamestown all over again.
[+] [-] nathanvanfleet|10 years ago|reply
Maybe corporations should adopt poor people or commission huge parties or works of art.
[+] [-] mikekchar|10 years ago|reply
I program computers all day. It is quite an enjoyable pastime and I look forward to it almost all the time. Although it would seem like it is better to selfishly work on my own personal projects all the time, I have found that if I do things that other people like, it makes them very happy. I really enjoy making other people happy. It is fun.
I have not always thought this way. At one time in my life, I tried to limit the amount of things that I did for other people. I wanted to make sure that I always prioritised my goals above theirs. I would feel resentful if I were forced, through the circumstances of living, to do things that were not of my choosing. I demanded compensation. No matter how much compensation I received, though, it never seemed enough. Let's face it, I was giving up my time -- my life -- to further goals that were not my own. How much money should I receive to give up my life? I have never been able to answer that question.
I suppose there must have been a day where I changed. If there was, I can't recall it. Whatever happened, I started to realize that I was enjoying what I was doing. Not all of it, of course, but at least some of it. I went to my boss and I said, "If you have more things like this, can you please let me do it?" He was quite pleased to hear my question and readily agreed. Over time, I asked for more and more things that I enjoyed and my boss gave me more and more of those things. Eventually, virtually everything I was doing were things that I enjoyed.
There have been times where I was stuck in situations that I didn't enjoy. Most of the time it is because I lacked some skill to do a task, or because I lacked the ability to interact gracefully with certain people. These are big challenges for me. I enjoy challenges and I push myself to see if I can overcome them. Some days I give up and sleep, or play video games or cry. The next day I am usually ready to try again. I have crossed some big mountains this way and it is something that makes me very proud.
It has happened to me that I have found myself in situations where I just could not cope with what was going on. In those cases, I have simply gone somewhere else. I'm lucky because I live in a rich and free society where I can do what I please. I admit that I fully utilise this freedom and feel sad for others that can not do as I can do. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty, but should a seed planted in rich soil struggle because other seeds are not so lucky? I think there is no point in making life any harder than it already is. I will take my luck wherever I can get it.
In this way I have found that I can align myself so that people pay me and I do not work. I'm not saying it's easy. It has taken me decades to work out how to do it for myself. I just think that it isn't as hard as many people think it might be.
[+] [-] jotm|10 years ago|reply
I think everyone should experience that for a few weeks, it changes your perspective on many things.
[+] [-] benihana|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillygoose|10 years ago|reply
Right, because valuable things don't actually cost anything to produce! That's why they can just be (automatically) handed out by some big Magic Nanny-Fairy Machinery.
We should all just get whatever we want, because we deserve it!
[+] [-] sitkack|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diamondback|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omouse|10 years ago|reply
Parkinson's Law, which was a sarcastic joke about bureaucracy, only really happens when employees are not engaged in their work or they're forced to be in the same spot for 8+ hours a day. I have 10 things to do within 2 week "sprints". Should I get everything done in a first week (maybe work a few hours on the weekend if need be) and then be tasked with more tasks and not get rewarded for this at all? Or should I just do 5 things the first week and have fun on the weekend and then finish the other 5 things later?
This is why hourly pay and salaries are crap. You aren't getting paid for value; you're getting paid to sit in a chair (even if you work remotely) and you're getting paid so that the competition doesn't hire you away.
[+] [-] exizt88|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] boothead|10 years ago|reply
http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/
Some extracts from the intro:
"And it’s not only at the bottom of the pyramid. There is a dirty secret I have discovered in the fifteen years I have spent consulting and coaching organizational leaders: life at the top of the pyramids isn’t much more fulfilling. Behind the façade and the bravado, the lives of powerful corporate leaders are ones of quiet suffering too. Their frantic activity is often a poor cover up for a deep inner sense of emptiness. The power games, the politics, and the infighting end up taking their toll on everybody. At both the top and bottom, organizations are more often than not playfields for unfulfilling pursuits of our egos, inhospitable to the deeper yearnings of our souls.
This book isn’t a rant about large corporations gone mad with greed. People who work in government agencies or nonprofits are rarely more exuberant about their workplaces. Even professions of calling aren’t immune to organizational disillusionment. Teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their field of vocation in droves. Our schools, unfortunately, are for the most part soulless machines where students and teachers simply go through the motions. We have turned hospitals into cold, bureaucratic institutions that dispossess doctors and nurses of their capacity to care from the heart. "
"The way we try to deal with organizations’ current problems often seems to make things worse, not better. Most organizations have gone through many rounds of change programs, mergers, centralizations and decentralizations, new IT systems, new mission statements, new scorecards, or new incentive systems. It feels like we have stretched the current way we run organizations to its limits, and these traditional recipes often seem part of the problem, not the solution.
We yearn for more, for radically better ways to be in organizations. But is that genuinely possible, or mere wishful thinking? If it turns out that it is possible to create organizations that draw out more of our human potential, then what do such organizations look like? How do we bring them to life? These are the questions at the heart of this book. "
[+] [-] rorykoehler|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] normloman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] winter_blue|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Uberphallus|10 years ago|reply
If I crank 10 lines of code a week I consider myself lucky, and it won't take less than 3 weeks for them to hit production.
The combination of that with long builds and releases (30min minimum) makes me always have something to do, but I'm always waiting for something to be able to move on (build to be finished, answers from experts, validation by QA...). That's where HN and r/programming kick in.
[+] [-] mdpopescu|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caseysoftware|10 years ago|reply
- After a certain time each evening (7pm for me), stop sending email. You can still write and respond to it but schedule it to go out the next morning. If people see you respond at 2am, they'll begin to expect it.
- Do the same for weekends. Schedule email for Monday morning. If people see you respond on Saturdays, they'll begin to expect it.
- Only check email every N hours. I've found N=3 or 4 is best. This is the hardest for me. If you respond to every email in minutes, they'll begin to expect it.
- If you're not explicitly on the To line, filter it from your inbox. I have an "other stuff" folder where email goes if I'm not explicitly on the To line. I check this folder 1-2 times/day at most. If something is important to me, address it to me.
- Have a fixed todo list each day. If someone brings you a task, put it at the end of today so it often ends up tomorrow and communicate that. (Obviously, if something is really important, you can shift the order but that should be an exception, not the practice.) If you drop everything every time someone asks, they'll begin to expect it.
- Leave the office at a predictable time each day. I try to leave by 6pm. If you occasionally stay late, they'll begin to expect it.
- Don't answer your phone the first time someone calls. I always wait until their second call or if they email/text/dm too. If you're always-accessible, they'll begin to expect it.
- Don't take your phone into the bedroom at night. I leave mine charging on my desk at the other side of the house. If you answer your phone in the middle of the night, they'll begin to expect it.
[+] [-] caseysoftware|10 years ago|reply
- many problems often resolve themselves
- those people who would rather ask someone instead of google, tend to learn to google.
[+] [-] webtards|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nshepperd|10 years ago|reply
People hired to create atmosphere in bars might be "phoney" in an object-level sense, but as far as their job goes presumably they do provide an actual service to someone, by causing more people to visit the bar.
[+] [-] davidgerard|10 years ago|reply
The answer to the BBC news story's question is: "because our jobs increasingly have more and more bullshit."
[+] [-] erikb|10 years ago|reply
And if something like this happens so regularly, so naturally, I think instead of logically arguing about it we should worry more about how to handle that. I'm thinking about that other article were sales people were working together to make it looks like they all would work 80 hour weeks.
Last but not least let's not forget that our bosses also actually don't care abut our work hours. Caring would mean that they would need to look at hour work schedules and time tables, etc, instead of going to the golf club. For them it's more important that they can make a good impression on their bosses and customers as well. As long as we deliver that impression they don't mind that we all act like we are working 80 hour weeks, including them.
[+] [-] aapje|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgift|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GBond|10 years ago|reply
As others have mentioned, doing "just enough" work is a by-product of a inefficiencies of the hierarchal approach of managing via command and control. Holacracy instead is network centric.
I don't know if I completely buy into the effectiveness of Holacracy but I can see how it it is better motivating to Producers. For example, I tend to write better code knowing that it will be peer-reviewed by another dev I respect.
[+] [-] izietto|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pinaceae|10 years ago|reply
if you get paid for 40h per week, the expectation is to devote those hours to the benefit of the employer. do your tasks, if you have time to spare, think of other benefits - improvements, better ideas, learn, etc.
people that finish a task and then wait to be given another are the bane of the workplace. you never hire them at startups, but at some size they creep in and kill, kill, kill any company. walk into HP, Oracle, IBM today and you'll see them, in droves. that is why you can lay off 30% workforce at that size with no sizeable impact on your customers.
[+] [-] matt_s|10 years ago|reply
Big companies like to organize around what they perceive as efficiency - putting common workers together and having common practices, etc. This leads to a waterfall delivery model where in order to x, y and z you need three different groups and they all have requests coming in all directions.
Small companies, including startups, simply don't have that org structure so you would never see that behavior since it isn't needed.
This isn't a type of person, it is a type of organization structure. That is why you hear it being so common across completely different businesses of similar size.
There is a good model in larger companies where you have entire vertical areas of responsibility as a group or organization. They are held accountable for delivering something in total and don't have many other groups to interact with for delivery. Kind of like a startup or small company inside a company. Many upper management types don't like this because they are seen as something they can't control. I've heard the Virgin companies are organized in this manner.
[+] [-] digikata|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lawtonfogle|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robg|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]