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Is Technology Killing Leisure Time?
Americans for centuries have believed that new labor saving devices will free us from the burdens of the workplace and give us more time to ponder philosophy, goof off, explore the arts, and hang around with friends and family.
So here we are at the start of the 21st Century, enjoying one of the greatest technological boom times in human history, and nothing could be further from the truth.
The very tools that were supposed to liberate us have bound us to our work (and schools) in ways that were inconceivable just a few years ago. But technology almost never does what we expect.
Almost all of us -- especially the people reading this -- have less leisure time than ever. We work harder, take fewer vacations for shorter periods of time, report more stress than almost any other demographic group and find the boundaries between work and play increasingly blurred. Computing and communications technologies are destroying the idea of privacy and leisure.
According to a new study reported in the July issue of American Demographics magazine, as the distinctions between home and the workplace fade, more and more of us go online from our offices to buy the things and perform the tasks we used to do when we got home. At first, employers were wary of workers going on the Net. But they've learned to love and encourage it, since it keeps employees chained to their desks for longer hours.
In l999, the researchers report, 19 percent of the total population had Net access at work, compared with just seven percent in l996. Employers, who now expect workers to be available for longer periods, understand that they have to let them to do their chores online. At work, Net surfers go first to news, information and entertainment sites. Then they hit search engines, marketing/corporate sites, sex sites and retailing shopping sites, in that order.
But there's a huge trade off for this convenience. Inforum's l999 Survey from the MEDSTAT group, reports American Demographics, found that adults aged 35 and younger were the most stressed people in the population. Nearly seven in 10 said they were "somewhat" to "extremely" stressed, an astonishing contrast to adults over 65: 31 percent of them said they had almost no stress in their lives at all.
More than a third of adults under the age of 25 say they don't get enough sleep most or all of the time. No wonder. More than half of them report that they didn't have time to take a vacation, according to the Travel Industry Association of America. When younger people do travel, they don't take much of a break: 42 percent of travelers who go away for just a weekend are aged 18 to 34 -- the largest share of any single demographic group. Of course, maybe they have less disposable income or have young children they can't leave for long. But if you think about people you know in this age group, it's also obvious that they have trouble disconnecting from work, thanks mostly to technology, and they're also afraid to show employers that they're not indispensable. It may also be true that openly or not, more employers expect their workers to be around all the time.
Before the Net, cell phones and Palms, the lines between work and leisure time were markedly clearer. People left their offices at a predictable time, were often completely disconnected from and out-of-touch with their jobs as they traveled to and from work, and were off-duty once they were home. That' s no longer true. Even in a competitive job market, employers expect workers to put in longer hours and to be available almost constantly via fax, cell, e-mail or other communications devices. Bosses, colleagues and family members -- lovers, buddies and spouses too -- expect instant responses to voice-and e-mail messages.
Employers have thus begun to pay the small price of allowing their round-the-clock workers to shop and communicate online, found the AD study.
The American Demographic report validates the suspicion that corporatist employers are taking advantage of new technologies and of workers' anxieties to demand longer hours and increased productivity -- the very things new technologies were supposed to liberate people from.
Although there are no known studies relating to college students and their work hours, it seems they are also bound to their desks and dorms by environments in which faculty, friends and other members of the college community increasingly do their work online. Studies of time spent on instant messaging services would probably show staggering use. And research possibilities online are boundless.
Few of us manage to buck this trend, apart from some neo-Luddites. Half of all Americans now own a cell phone, and more than 46 per cent of pleasure travelers take their phones with them when they go away, reports the Travel Industry Association. More than 18 per cent take their pagers and 6 per cent their laptops, while 10 per cent check e-mail on vacation. Younger Americans are living in a hyperactive information culture.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40 per cent of men worked more than 40 hours a week in l998, an increase of 5 percentage points in the last two decades. As for women, 22 per cent worked more than 40 hours aweek, compared with just 14 per cent in 1979.
So it's not surprising that a l998 General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that more than 40 per cent of American workers say they come home from work exhausted, up from 36 per cent in l989. Young married couples report that they work an average 26 per cent more hours each year than they did 30 years ago.
Aside from long hours, the nature of work has changed. Economist and author Richard Sennett (The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism) and Joanne B. Ciulla (The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work), point out changes in the nature of work itself.
"Flexible" work projects, the growing number of part-time workers, and a culture that embraces and even celebrates continuous layoffs, down-sizings and re-engineerings have rendered almost everyone's work life stressful and unstable. Workers work harder and longer, move more often, change their work tasks more frequently, and are nevertheless constantly subject to dismissal or its threat.
This isn't what technology is supposed to be doing for us. New technologies, from genetic research to the Net, offer all sorts of benefits and opportunities. But when new tools make life more difficult and stressful rather than easier and more meaningful -- and we are, as a society, barely conscious of it -- then something has gone seriously awry, both with our expectations for technology and our understanding of how it works.
Is taking a laptop on vacation necessarily a bad thing? Some people enjoy lazing on a beach reading a book. Maybe I'm a geek, but I couldn't think of anything better than lazing on a beach with my day's update from Slashdot.
Technology is certainly bringing employer and employee closer together, but this closeness doesn't have to imply more stress! It's this closeness that should improve the flow of information in an environment, reducing friction ... eh ... stress, and making our lives a little more bearable.
I recommend people to read Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. It's a provocative, thought-provoking book on work, life, money ... too much work, not enough time, not feeling fulfilled at work, what is enough, doing things that are worthwhile, etc ...
By the way, it's not a get-rich scheme book. The authors practiced what they preached and donated all the royalties of their book to charities.
Now, decades later, after the 8 hour day has slipped away, and we are again working 12+ hours a day, with many of us destroying our wrists. And we hear many tech workers saying they are happy because at least they aren't slaving away in a coal mine (ever seen current coal miner working conditions and pay, after they organized and won?). Do we have no self-respect? All this talk about capitalist self-interest, yet in the end it's all just selfless charity for faceless corporations.
Katz, I'm finally in the groove with your megalomonical cosmology. Technology is going to destroy our lives as evidenced by your goodself. Look at your geek inner vessel, Katz baby, and see the geek shackles that bind you to your geek computer, your geek email, the geek book "Geeks" written with your geek computer. Now you're even becoming geek schizophrenic. You used to vehemently espouse geek lifestyle and geek culture. Now you eschew it as ruining the geek leisure geek time. Maybe people like being busy and geek working because geek it's fun to be inspired with challenging geek problems.
Geek Geek Geek
Fuuuuckkk that!
I'm a programmer. I work a strict 40 hour work week. Any more than that and I'm getting paid *a lot*. No PDA. No cell phone. Not even a pager. Free time is a hell of a lot more valuable than cash. You only get to be young for a while, so you better enjoy it. Don't stress yourself over other people's problems. In the big scheme of things, the project plan really isn't all that important.
Live, damnit! Live!
Except in very few situations, this is all by choice. Being in the technology sector, there are more jobs than there are qualified people at the moment. I can choose my jobs carefully. I get 3 weeks of paid vacation (I'm 24 years old), I make almost as much as my mom (she's pissed
If you're being forced into overtime, go work for someplace with a better atmosphere. Work *can* be fun. If you're not, stop bitching, it's your choice.
I work hard at work, but when work is over, *it's over*, and my employer knows that. I can say I'll have no problems taking all of my vacation this year. Perhapse it's time to think about switching jobs if your benefits don't match your new rising stress level.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Or, maybe you're living in the wrong area.
My rent is $600 a month for a huge apartment and gas is about $1.20 (dunno about houses, don't want one). And $1.20 goes a lot further when you're not an idiot paying $50 to fill the tank on an SUV.
I've got a pretty good job doing software development, and I've got so much disposable income I don't know what to do with it.
Yes, $7/hr does not pay the bills, but it's not quite as extreme as you put it everywhere in the country (I can't speak for anywhere other than the U.S.).
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Posted by Charlza:
:p
I'm proud to say that I've been taking more 'me time.' I don't sit around reading email and security logs every night/weekend. I actually take...*gasp* breaks now. I leave me beeper at home when I go out with friends and I COMPLETELY refuse to purchase a PDA. Take your job serious, but life's too short to waste it away on work.
BTW, I was on a break when I typed this
I'm graduating in December, and haven't the foggiest idea how to interview my potential employer.
Ask to go to the restroom. If the restroom is not clean, they do not care about their employees. If the top executives have a separate restroom, they are elitists and will suck to work for. What is the quality of the toilet paper? It matters. You will wipe your butt with this day in and day out. Is there a place to shower? If not, going out running will not be possible.
How about parking places? Are they marked? That's generally a bad sign.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Just say "Sorry, I don't have time". They're adults. They can handle it.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
For most people, the main or the only reason to work is to make money. You make money to be able to buy food, clothes, and leisure items, for yourself and your family.
But what's the point of having money foe leisure if you have no time to spend it. I think 40 hours a week is pushing it. People who work 70 hrs+ are nuts. Spend time with family, friends, or just by yourself doing whatever you like to do. I have a feeling most people on Slashdot are already earning plenty of money. Is it really a good tradeoff use more of your time making money, and having less time to do anything enjoyable with your life?
I'm very tempted to make a rule where all hours spent on company related trips are charged from the time I leave my home till the time I return home
;)
This is how I operate. An extra hour of pay never hurt anyone.
Getting away is still possible, it just requires a little more creativity than before. This year we (the SO and I) went to Death Canyon for a multi-day backpacking trip. Absolutely no cell coverage. And a laptop is not something one takes backpacking! Unbeknowst to me, the network melted while I was away and consultants had to be brought in to fix the mess caused during the ensuing panic. It is nice to be needed.
The real silver bullet to good programs is caffeine; lots and lots of caffeine! *twitch, twitch*
At one time, it was believed that leisure time enable the underclasses to plot against their oppressors. If you worked a man 10-12 hours a day in the mine, he had no time (or energy) that could be diverted into revolutionary thoughts. He was simply "too tired" to throw off the bounds of his oppressors. After all, "idle hands do the devil's work." Leisure time on sundays is most expeditiously removed through long sermons...
Conversely, it was Marcuse's view that the creation of leisure activities does much to stabilize an "advanced capitalist" society. If the working day is reduced to eight hours, but societal pressures are able to fill that void with recreational activities, the worker is satisfied by a marginally better working environment but does not spend the excess time in a politically transormative manner.
(Hey, Marcuse should have at least, if not more credibility than Ayn Rand)
1900 House is a bad example because they were living in Victorian England and the Victorians were, well, retarded. All the women did (pretty much) was clean, and it is not hard to find a society (such as the hunter-gatherer ones) where the women didn't really clean at all (though they often did have to construct and mend clothing and blankets and whatnot).
I'll admit that I'm at my job long past time to go home on quite a few nights. I'll even admit to coming in on my weekends to try the latest bit of technology. There's a reason for it though...I love my job. One thing that is often overlooked when people hear about how I can often put in 60 hour work weeks is the fact that my job is fun.
Working in a start-up Computer Sales and Support company often has us testing new things. A new kernel of Linux comes out and we'll order some chinese and stay till 10pm playing with it. A company asks us to build and install a client/server package and we'll stay from Friday 5pm althe way through to Saturday 10pm, stress testing it (playing Q3A...that's a good system test isn't it?). Later if someone brings in his TV and DVD player.
On the other hand, we do get tired, or just want to head to the beach, visit family, or even just say "Guys, have fun, but I'm crispy...I'm out of here." and the boss accepts that. He knows that if it were truely important, We'd be there. Either that or he knows that we've put in too many hours that week already and just are too burnt out to handle overtime and will let us go and get some decompression time and a straight 8 hours of sleep.
When we do take out time off, we totally cut off from work. Again out boss knows this and will ask if we took a pager. If we did he knows that we are available if really needed. If not he knows not to even trying to call us as we often are not anywhere near a phone (I often hike the Applachain Trail in mid spring.
It works well in small businesses, now if we can get the pointy haired managers in large corporations to do the same, it'll be a much better workforce
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
I'm not sure whether the new or the old system is better...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
AMEN!
All those people who are whining should take a trip to a 2nd or 3rd world country and see how the rest of the world lives!
I never really appreciated my standard of living until I travelled to many Carribean islands and saw a level of poverty that makes our poor look like our middle class in comparison.
You want to bitch about your stress, go live in poverty in a 3rd world country for a year and then come back and tell me about the stress you live with now...I guarantee you won't be able to find anything to bitch about!
I wish. Monitor moves are routine. System moves are less routine, but that's compensation for the extra weight that is involved. This weekend I lifted an 60 pound drive array off of a table, carried it across a room, and placed it on the floor.
True. Especially through the winter. Up here in Ottawa, the only thing colder than the weather outside is the weather inside.
Also true. That smoke that comes out of toasted drive electronics isn't a known carcenogen.
Tell that to the chickenpox re-infection I got last year -- parents with school aged kids are the number one infection vector.
For there to be profits, there first must be sales. For there to be sales, the salesforce must sell the product. For the salesforce to sell the product, the salesforce must know about the product. And the only thing our stock is good for is the entertainment value of watching it tank. Better than a themepark ride -- down 20% today! Down more than 50% since March! Name That Symbol!
The reason for the lack of racism is because the immigrants are usually overwhelmed with the amount of money offered -- they don't realize that $35K just really isn't that much money. Also, most of them don't want to take the risk of asking for more. Supply and demand -- the immigrants charge less than the white man, they get hired in disproportionally higher numbers. Oddly enough, most of the smartest guys in the company (yeah, few gals, so much for equality) are the lowest paid...
Right. That's why I get paid the big bucks. They must be big, there are so damn few of them.
Fortunately, we have a government to do that for the non-existant union.
--
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
I don't bitch about having too many hours. I bitch about not having enough. I am a "consultant" doing sys admin work. I get paid for every quarter-hour I work. If you don't like your salaried job, then leave! There are plenty of companies who are not so greedy as to force you to work and not get paid for it. Offhand, I can think of Taos Mountain and Andersen Consulting, but I'm sure there are plenty more. This is all an issue of complacency. If you just say "No, I will /not/ work for you if you pay me salary.", then, maybe you'll like it more. I love overtime. and, it generally doesn't get too "bad" because they will think hard about making you come in on a weekend, etc, if you get time and a quarter or whatever for it.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
I hear ya on that. I am going to SF next week. My boss just aske me if I could change my schedule b/c our web site launch keeps getting pushed back. Sorry. No can do.
I am not bringing a laptop. I am leaving my cell at HOME. And I won't be checking in with anyone. If it's really urgent, they can call me. The last thing I want to think about on vacation is work...
= )
about the post.industrial economy, plse..You mean we are moving towards it now?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Interesting posts, thank..I wonder exactly what the consequences of unplugging are? Do people lose their jobs? fall behind? Miss lots of important advances?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I did work as a trackman, as it happens, for two summers in New England. Made a ton of money, too, though I made more driving a truck with the Teamsters the next two summers. And no, I'm not a communist. Very repulsive ideology for me. What this has to do with my column is completely beyond me. But yes, absolutely, greed is a very important factor, both from the employee and employer level.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Personally, technology is not killing my leasure time, but helping me kill during my leasure time.
FRAG!
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Jon, I think your statistics and numbers do not reflect a growing trend of technology destroying leisure time, but instead reflect the cultural effect of specialization (I will explain later) and poor business practice.
:)
I could use some of your own stats to refute you, but I'd rather talk about my ideas then disagree with yours.
There has been a strong trend for people to specialize in today's work place - and not in a positive manner. Geek's are told they can't draw or play football, jock's are told they can't paint or use computers, etc. The categorization of youth puts up fence's that do not really exist. When these fenced mind's enter the work force they believe that their job is everything, and that they don't have the ability or time to do anything else (ie leisure activities). Many worker's delude themselves that because this is the *only* thing they are good at (or interested in) that they should spend excessive amounts of time at work. Excessive amounts of anything is just not healthy!
Businesses are not helping matter's either. They know they have a pretty sweet deal, and continue to set standards where employee's are expected to work overtime. What gall's me is that studies and common sense suggest that getting enough rest and leisure time creates more productive workers. If attitudes do not change soon, I would be in support of more strict government legisation of leisure time (eg: 4 day work week).
Anyways - I think that technology can be used as a tool to either increase or decrease your leisure time, but to blame technology is just too simple and reactionary.
Complexity Happens
To me, all of this is a harsh overreaction. Rather than refuse so sternly to be contacted, do one of two things:
1) Get a job somewhere which won't bother you out of work hours anyway. There are many, many such companies.
2) Get a job / business such that you will be compensated appropriately when interrupted off-hours. For example, some consultants have a minimum 2-hour billing for "evening/weekend" emergencies. If a client calls with a problem so urgent they want to pay you 2 hours just to talk for a little while, then heh, it's probably a really important problem, go solve it.
learning Java via computer-based training modules (so I can get a programming job and cause problems rather than have to fix them),
Where can you find such Java training modules? I've been looking; I finally broke down and bought a big honkin' "Learning Java" book -- at least I can take it with me...
Jay (=
Computing and communications technologies are destroying the idea of privacy and leisure.
I dont know where this statement came from - but I would love to see justification. Computing technologies are usually developed in the name of entertainment. As far as privacy goes, technology doesnt "Attack" privacy, it holds people more accountable - since privacy is a legal tenant, not a physical protection, as it used to be.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
What's it like to work for a top technology company that is a clear market leader in several different (but related) fields? How about:
40-hour work weeks, as long as schedules are met
Managers who *understand* software development and developers
Managers who have lives and understand that employees do too
Flexible work hours and casual dress (what's a tie?)
Diverse engineering section with many women and minorities
Interesting work on leading-edge technologies and products
Good pay and benefits
Medium-sized city with a low cost of living
Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too.
Amen, brother. Amen!
I find that it's not work that's taking up my time. My feeling is that if I'm working more than 40 hours a week (crunch time excluded) then my company needs to hire additional engineers. I generally leave on time.
The kids, on the other hand... Oy! I love 'em, and I love being with 'em. But it's work to look after a hyperactive (literally) seven-year-old and an inquisitive two-year-old. Most nights I crash shortly after I get them into bed. Little energy vampires, the lot of 'em!
I occasionally have to go out of town for a week at a time on business. Those days consist of a 12-hour debugging session, dinner, and maybe a little reading or TV. And my wife gripes because I'm getting a vacation!
So no, technology isn't robbing me of my life. Taking care of personal business at work via the web actually frees up my time and lets me spend more of it doing what I want to do.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
I recently took a ten day trip out into the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. Ten Miles away from the nearest dirt road, I spent the time away from telephone, television, computers, and basically modern technology in every form(with the exception of running water and some kitchen appliances).
I'll tell you, I absolutely loved it. Life has since gone back to normal for me, but the time away from the tech was just so invaluable, I'm making it a new policy to stay unplugged whenever I go away.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
exactly. I was lucky enough to, even though I was a wet-behind the ears graduate, define my boundaries very early and very definitively. Enjoying life is first. (example: Sunday night, go dancing. monday morning, catch plane to conference at 8am, wednesday night, return home, go dancing...)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Maybe some of us like getting large raises instead of a 1 or 2% COLA?
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
"that adults aged 35 and younger were the most stressed people in the population. Nearly seven in 10 said they were "somewhat" to "extremely" stressed, an astonishing contrast to adults over 65: 31 percent of them said they had almost no stress in their lives at all. "
Gee, what a useful statistic for katz to quote. retired people have more stress in their lives than those who work. wow. A comparison to say, the 35-50 age group would have been a lot more fair, and probably would have done a better job of making his point.
Other than that, I do agree with most of the article. I often feel like it's tough to escape my work, whether it's (almost) always being reachable via my cell, or bringing work home with me (well, leaving it at work and sshing in)..But that's ok, because I really like what i'm doing. Isn't that what's most important? if you like your work, it ceases to be work..
What is the point of living longer and being more successful if it means more time to be stressed and unhappy. We have bought into the believe that technology will lead to happiness and it is quite clear that it does not. It may lead to greater productivity, but what does that do for us? A paraphrase from "Fight Club." "We spend our whole life working at jobs we hate to earn money to buy things that we don't need." What do we need? I just have this overwhelming feeling that something isn't right with this system.
I tend to think that I have the time to do as I please, and I interact heavily with computers for most of it. My palm pilot is used as an information storage device. I use it to take notes, phone numbers, and e-cards of other palm owners. I don't use it to plan my time, keep work related material or anything of the sort. I take it with me wherever I go because the only numbers I can remember are IP addresses.
My computer is there for me when I get home, and I live in an apartment which leaves me with no yardwork. I enjoy simple meals, which are quick and easy to prepare.
I have no cellphone, because I consider them to be as much use as a land line. They are an intrusion, and any calls I get are some form of sales call. I only speak to three or four people at lengths of more than 3 minutes. The rest of the people I speak to are through IRC, ICQ or *gasp* real life.
My weekends are spent with my family for the most part, and I consider them more important than any technology I own. I don't feel disconnected or antisocial, in fact I dedicate this time because I consider it central in my life.
Still, I can see how technology would affect people to the degree that they have no life or leisure. When I take vacations (rarely) I go to porchville, or take care of things which need to be done. I may take a trip to a state park to relax.
I do not usually take a week off since I would become beyond stir-crazy with cabin fever. I rarely leave the state when I take time off because I've already visited about 19 of them, including the ones surrounding me.
The big problem is that vacations cost money, and I have constraints to that end of investment in my retirement, rent, and car/insurance payments. There is not much left after living bled the life out of you, not to mention taxes.
Am I unhappy? Nope, I'm quite satisfied actually. I think I find my escape on the net in new information, fiction, fact and opinion. I somehow don't feel the need to go to Rennes Le Chateau because I already know my way around town, have seen pictures of almost every square inch of it, and the complete history of the town. Not much more but to see it for myself.
I am happy with the life and leisure I choose
Lowmag.net
I'm one of the lucky few. I work for a boss that is a friend, and was my boss before (to make a long story short, I worked for him on a previous job, and now I'm working for him at a new joint.)
The guy was a tech before going management, so he knows what I have to go through each and every day.
He also can cope with the idea that I'll take a day off now and then, and that a pager is a convenience, and not taken for granted. If I answer it, good, if not, I was "out of area". Luckily enough, I have a spot in the mountains, lakeside where radio wave are all deflected somewhere else. I use this spot a lot.
I'll sometimes work 20-30 hours in a stretch. It keeps me on my toes. I can do the "quality-time" thing, but the fact is: I'm a job junkie. Wasnt it for my wife who gives me the oh-so-needed reality check, I'd barely ever leave work.
This makes me a valuable asset for the company (I dont mind being an asset. Asset dont get downsized.) and I get compensated accordingly.
To me, this new job has given me more "quality of life" and "leisure". Not because I get more free time. All the contrary. I put in longer hour, but after I turn the lights off, I have a warm-fuzzy feeling of a job that I enjoy that was well done.
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
I have a cell phone, but I keep in mind a very important feature of my cell phone called a power button. When I don't want to be bothered, I turn the thing off and let all calls be redirected to voice-jail. (Also great when in restaurants, movie theaters, behind the wheel of a car, etc.) I control my cell phone (also a pager, has voice-mail, etc.) and do not let it control me.
In the same way, I do not let my job control me. I walked off one job when the stress got bad enough to start making me sick, and I refused to accept an offer from another company when I learned they expected 60-80 hour weeks, + 24/7 availability - I called them and told them I wouldn't accept a position with them. In both cases, I had another job with reasonable hours and reduced stress levels in just a few weeks. No job is worth destroying your health.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
If you are not getting paid a lot of money for what you do, you are either:
1. A chump
2. Incompentent
3. Unable to comprehend how well-off you are.
Most folks I know are pulling in an effective annual salary of around $100k (using the metric that a consultant's effective annual salary is the hourly rate divided by three), give or take a few $10K. This is about half of what it takes to buy a good house in San Francisco, and nowhere near what I would call "big Bucks". And nowhere near what I would require to put up with a job I did not love. It's a pity that they are not representative of the normal teacher.
It's interesting that you use teachers as an example. I know several teachers, and any one of them could easily triple their salary by moving to a tech job, and they know it. They stay where they are because they love their jobs and because they know they are making a difference.
I say again, unless you're making Big Bucks - unless you are seeing millions heading your way - if you're not having fun, it's just not worth the effort.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Information is not Knowledge
Scott Adams once defined high tech as stuff that doesn't work. We spend so much time messing with technology because that what it takes to get it to work. One of these days, it'll all come together and start working right. And then the quality of my life, at least, will diminish. I "work" long hours because I love what I do and wouldn't rather be doing anything else. On the other hand, I've long since learned to respect geek fatigue, and to solve problems by sleeping on them.
Anyone who hasn't should read The Soul of a New Machine and take the lessons therein to heart. Nobody is going to be greatful for the hours you put in at work. There will be no reward in the future. Working in high tech is like play professional sports. Unless you're one of the few who make the big bucks, if you're not having fun it just isn't worth the effort. If you don't love what you do, you ought to find something to do that's a whole lot easier.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Information is not Knowledge
Or hunter-gatherers, who have to work maybe four hours per day to ensure their survival.
As society matures I think that more and more people will realize that well frankly, that was a good life =). We have made work almost pointless, we work long hours, let our bosses call us at home for tech support dont get enough sleep then get all uptight when we think that our boss doesn't like us for one reason or another and hope like hell that he won't lay us off because we wouldn't be able to buy that really cool palm pilot case! I'm as guilty of this as the next guy but I'm starting to come to the realization that it doesnt matter. Hell I'm seriously considering going back to cooking in a restaraunt again simply because I had so much free time then, and absolutly no one hounding me day and night! Of course this is a hell of a pay cut but well I am not spending the money I have now (note: I do live in a place with a much lower cost of living then someplace like the valley! But also note there are alot of places all over the world with even lower) Less crap, more fun --fone
"You are only the sum of your thoughts."
Faster, a tremendously good book by James Gleick covers just this topic. There's two really good chapters in the book where he discusses how technology has changed what we do with our time and how we spend it.
One fascinating bit of info was that Americans have the same amount of leisure time now as they did 20 years ago, only we block it up now into little time segments (usually a half hour here or there) which creates the illusion of having no free time.
A half hour here a half hour there and soon you're talking about real time.
Jon Katz, frequently on point, has missed it here. A little perspective is in order:
1) The youngest/newest man in an organization has always had to put in the hours and deal with the shit.
2) Most young people (Hey, I'm only 27. I'm not that far out of it.) don't have a work ethic at all. The attitude seems to be, to paraphrase Janeane Garofolo, "My parents said they worked hard so I wouldn't have to. So I don't."
3) If your skills are so in demand, thumb your nose at your boss at 5:00. If you are so great, you'll either get a new job, or the boss will deal with your quirks.
As far as vacation: I don't take 'em too often. But when I do, the only calls made are to reassure people that I am alive. Other than that, it stays off. If you were given vacation or annual leave time as part of your employment arrangement, do the same. Inform your boss that if you have to be 'on call', you'll also be 'on the clock'. If they don't like it, see above paragraph.
I've read 'No Logo'. I know how lousy it is for people stuck in meaningless jobs. But guess what? Nobody told you to screw around in high school. Nobody told you to get pregnant without a decent support system. Nobody told you to get hooked on aromatics. You've only got yourself to blame. As for the rest: if you've got the skills, shop them around until someone is willing to pay your price, including the price of your freedom.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
If you would like to get statistics how much time the average american spends on which things I can recommend reading "Faster" by James Gleick. This book has been reviewed by slashdot.
... I don't think I will "burn out" soon (hey I'm 21 I do barely know that word ;) - we'll see what happens.
It's an interesting fact that Gleick quotes statistics that say that Americans actually have a whole lot more freetime than they did have in the past...
IMHO this is an issue of what you consider leisure time and what you consider work: As a cs student in Germany I consider my study-stuff to be "work" and stuff related to the company I am running (not THAT big but still about 5k customers) to be "fun". However I do not know what will happen if I will go on with spending every awake minute either on studys or my job
I work from my home and I think that extended hours are worth the ability to telecommute. This means that when I have children, they will never have to come home to an empty house. I feel that is worth losing sleep, and increasing my stress. Its a trade off of one thing for another, and I am willing to make that trade. If someone doesn't want to work more than 40 hours a week, they can get a job that doesn't ask that of them.
Did Katz just see office space for the first time or something?
"You can sleep more when you're dead."
-"You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you're dead."
snip
validates the suspicion that corporatist employers are taking advantage of new technologies and of workers' anxieties to demand longer hours and increased productivity
snip
I wonder if corporatist employers are actively taking advantage of this phenomenon or just rejoicing in the added productivity it gives them??
Predestination was doomed from the start.
I seem to recall that the government of BC wanted to exempt high tech employers in BC from minimum holiday requirements. Never heard if that went through. Now that would bother me.
I'm lucky, I work in a nice environment and am expected to put in my 37.5 per week. The job is still stressfull, tho'.
Just a thought
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
y'know I kinda justify my Net surfing at work with the fact that I am an "information" worker, and thus work best when surrounded by vast amounts of intel. And, uh, I read /. (etc.) to, hmm, stay current with, uhm, new tech trends. And the URLs I forward home to post on my site, well, that's umm, uh, err, personal.
Ah well, off to do more research.
If your average laborer from the last century looked at what I physically did for the day and what my paycheque looked like, he wouldn't have stress, he'd have a heart attack.
--
+&x
if it wasn't for my computer and Diablo II, I'd have a lot more leisure time, so maybe...
--
+&x
You actually quit working to become a student? How's that working out?
Over the past few months I've been considering doing something like this myself. I have been working in the professional IT field since I left high school 10 years ago. I had always intended on going for the degree, but it just never happened. The money was just too good and there always seems to be one more really cool project.
Now I ask myself if I could deal without having a nice income for 4 years. I certainly couldn't sustain the kind of lifestyle I'm used to. Besides the personal growth angle, would a 4 year degree help me much at this point? I've been pretty successfull without it, and my resume looks pretty darn impressive.
Maybe work 10 more years, retire, and then do the personal growth thing?
Any ideas from anyone?
load "linux",8,1
I know an air traffic controller. He loves his job. All day playing giant video games ...
Hey, its not that they steal; its how inefficient they are at using it. (So maybe the government is stealing only the inefficent part. Maybe 70 to 80%, huh?)
Katz has discovered the work of Swedish economist Staffan Linder. Before reading this article, you really should read The Harried Leisure Class which is sadly out of print.
-- The Sage does nothing, and nothing is left undone. --Lao Tzu
I don't understand why Americans aren't screaming for more holidays. I was just working in Sweden were the standard is 6 weeks holiday. That's normal. You work better, you feel better. It's much the same across most of the western world, Australia - 4 weeks, Germany - 5 weeks.
I don't understand why this isn't a major issue. If I stay here I'm going to get 4 weeks at least, if I don't what is the point ?
I don't know, can I join a union and campaign for this ? Also, what about paternity pay, again the standards in Sweden is a month or two. In a country supposedly dedicated to 'family values' why not encourage this too ?
Don't believe? Look at yourself.
//SaVa
Stealing, since when does the government ever steal from you. I have only been working for about 5 years now, and I havent had any of my money stolen by the government.
Now if you are talking about taxes, there is nothing I hate more than when people complain about taxes. With the economy booming and the level of physical security we have now I dont see how anyone could complain. If you dont want to pay them then just leave the country.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Now, I'm working for myself, and I probably work much more, and the boundaries are more or less non-existant, but I feel less stressed because I actually enjoy what I'm doing. And even when it is very stressful, sometimes it feels like playing all day, and sometimes it feels like crashing for a final exam, but I wouldn't even think of going back. I finally got the laptop, the PDA, the cell phone, and as long as I know when to turn it off - always to spend time with friends and family - I wouldn't consider going back.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Ummm...people do have control over their lives. No one forces people to buy expensive houses/cars/toys or to work at the kind of jobs required to sustain that lifestyle. If your job makes you too stressed -- find another one, change your lifestyle. OK, that sounds over-simplified, but I left a career I hated with hours that were making me miserable (professional theatre) so I know it can be done.
Then they came out with web tv and f*cked the whole thing
Now programmers just sit there and write a site 3 times over to make it compatible with ie, nutscrape, and webtv.
Had there been standards we wouldn't be sitting on our ass writing all this g0d damn f*'n javascript over and over again.. thank god for Server Side java huh?
Thanks for your time.. bitterness sourness i say, bitterness and sourness.. thanks for making at least one standard :)
<end/>
Lessee, meeting one's nutritional needs and no more, living in what's likely to be substandard housing, having no savings, and so forth ...
Well, that sure sounds like a life worth living =P
If the point was, you can cut some things out and live more cheaply and thus work less, well, then, sure. But extreme frugality not born of necessity strikes me as ... well, not entirely healthy. Not that I'm saying this guy should be locked up "for his own safety."
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Typical response and also included in the survey. People in your (our!) segment of the demographics also move more than any other because of our ability to "jump ship" any time we want.
Moving and changing jobs are among the most stressful things we humans do these days. They rank up there with death in the family and divorce.
Being stressed at work is only one facet.
I choose to work for smaller firms. I choose to do consultant work for adult websites. I choose to work from home majority of the time.
I choose to work with minimum effort and maximum results. I choose my companies. Companies do not choose me. (Fortune 5000? I will not work for you! Ever!)
I choose to be happy!
I do not feel sorry for anyone who has fell into the trap of American society and feel like the have to compete with their fellow comrade. What kind of shit is that? What kind of life is that?
We are only here on earth for a short amount of time. Please tell me you are not going to work your ass off for the majority of that time?
For what? Material possessions? House? Two cars? Trust funds for the kids?
People, look down inside your soul and ask yourself, "If you did not have to worry about money, what would you do with your life?". Then do that!!!
Me? I want to host a small webhosting company (to help out artists by hosting their sites for a discount) out of my apartment with kick-ass SDSL while working on computer security, websites, photography and art.
I am almost there: DSL is not available in my area. Yet.
ChozSun [e-mail]
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
It isn't always employers who push for the life-destroying schedule. I've been in it a few times myself, sometimes as a result of a deadline crunch, occasionaly as a result of a boss wanting more than I could do in reasonable hours, more often as a result of my own greed or fear of layoffs. My bosses have occasionaly had to tell me not to take the work so seriously or to go home. I currently report to a woman in Canada who constantly encourages me to take vacation time.
We very often do it to ourselves.
And it isn't even good for the employer.
I find that, in my case, I have to cultivate an emotional distance from what I'm working on, to keep my productivity up. I have to remind myself that it's just a corporate web site, important enough to do right, not important enough to break my brain over. And even if it were that important, the stressed-out version would not be as well done.
And when the fear of layoffs hits, I have to remind myself that the quality or sincerity or masochism of my efforts isn't going to be a major factor in the decisions.
For some of us, the stress is warranted. For others, we are doing it to ourselves in an attempt to control things that we can't control.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
i'm going to have to break the ice here and say that maybe the capitalist ideal of exploitation is what is doing this.... In theory, all of this great technology can be used to make out lives easier, harness technologies that would cut down the work day and ultimately create a world where people could live not working constantly. I, however, have not been blessed with the joys of technology and only find myself a student working full time playing with linux so compaines can be more profitable. Isn't all of this free technology supposed to be based on quality and not profit?
It's sad to see the world's smartest group of people turning into the machines that the technology was supposed to replace.
thinkpol
I too would detest the situations I believe you are refering to. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Putting it in that light, I think we're better off in our new cars, with our cell phones, and our laptops.
Stress is a state of mind, even if you have a lot to do, a lot of stress comes from worrying about the little things. Put it all in prespective and relax.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
Even better, 'My job is what I do to finance my life.'.
Take a month off from IRC and watch your RL relationships get back to a normal level.
;-)
Ironically, I use IRC to keep in touch with my RL friends...most live within a 20 mile radius but we have some stragglers in Switzerland and Colorado (I'm on the east coast). We chat in person about as often as we do online.
Back OnT, I HOPE that we're just going through an intense implimentation phase with current technologies, and that once everyone is connected and savvy, we can start to do more telecommuting and work smarter...pipe dream, perhaps, but it's the ethic I share with my friends (who are also my business partners). Generation X is still about slack, right?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Those of us who are building the technology are not building it so that we save ourselves time. We're building it, I believe, out of a desire to make other people's lives easier.
But I'm not convinced that amount of time is really the issue. Working to save time, solely to save time, is pointless if you're not going to do anything worth while with that time. I think that many of us are willing co-conspirators in our time drainage because if we don't make ourselves useful, we'd just go home and watch TV.
What's really entertaining about the whole thing is that this is a viscious cycle. We build things that are faster, and consequently set the expectation that everything should be fast, so that the next, more complex thing that we build, needs more hardware so that it can run faster, so that we can use that thing to build more complex things that run slow... etc, etc. People are becoming lazy, because we (the geeks) put so much emphasis on doing things fast!
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
A person is only required to work 40 hours a week, unless you have a bad contract or something.
;-)
If you choose not to work overtime, there is nothing the company can do about it. If they try to get rid of you because of it... it's time for a lawsuit, that you will easily win.
My father is a mechanic at a factory. For hours he works > 40, he gets 1.5 of his normal pay. That means he makes $30 per hour instead of $20 for any extra time. Heck, he gets double-time on Sundays.
People that are working overtime in a salary position are getting screwed. If you are gonna work overtime, get a new conract that actually rewards you for your extra work.
If that don't work, get the UAW to help you out
"...we are moving toward a Web-centric stage and our dear PC will be one of
EverCode
I make US$23k a year living in Southeastern Michigan, and I qualify for government assisted housing.
I know. I live in West Michigan, where, along with the rest of the state, our taxes provide the financial support that allows Southeastern Michigan to continue to exist...
Sigh. We've even offered y'all to Canada, but they ain't that dumb. :-)
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Being the target of this article. 20 years old, working at dot com startup (http://www.streetsideinvestor.com). Working 14 hours a day, 6 days a week, I don't have time for much of anything except sleep and food (and, um, slashdot).
Snorp
Its hard for geeks to quantify job time, generally. I am a net admin, but spend time on Slashdot, Anandtech,StorageReview, etc. Reading about Adaptec's new UDMA IDE raid card (I like it for our corporate mp3 server and install servers) is both personal and professional.
Invariably, I end up doing company research at home (I am bringing OpenBSD into my company, and we need a 4 port *BSD compatible PCI com card for a multilink PPP hack job til a T1 goes up, so I was looking around last night).
Hell, even this goddamn time sink of a sight gives me a better general idea of programmers' mindsets (I work for a solution provider that does a lotta java and MS solutions), which is good for the job.
So, on the whole, its hard for geeks to slack online, as they invariable are learning something that might be of use at a later date, even if it is a quick "hey, didja ever hear about (insert relevant OSS project here)" into a discussion in the coffee room.
matt
Especially considering that 18-35 year olds are the most likely to have young children, something known to be a little stressful...
Hell, us 18-35 year olds have it easy these days. There was a time (like, most of history) that being 18-35 meant you might possibly be sent to some foreign country to kill, or be killed by, some foreign 18-35 year old. A slightly stressful thing.
So yeah, I'm trying to think of a time where 18-35 year olds weren't the most stressed. I can't think of one.
But anyway, at 34, it seems to me that one of the things you learn during your first decade or two of adulthood is how to deal with real life. The more you learn, the easier it gets, and the less stressful it becomes.
The cake is a pie
I am 35 years old and have been coding professionally since I was 17. For more than 10 years I've been with the same company. I'm in a position of management now, but still code as much as I can.
Things I have noticed through the years...
We all remember the days of pulling long hours coding, however I maintain that the intensity has changed. In the late 80's, lots of time was spent waiting, idle time existed in every aspect of programming. This time would leave room for a quick walk to bug another programmer, play a game, etc... As machines and development tools improved, there is little idle time. Never have I seen people become so totally absorbed and stressed for so many continous hours.
In my company we have forced programmers to cut back hours. With the supply of good programmers so tight, it makes no sense to burn out your most valued resource. It is a proven fact that continous 60+ hour work weeks net you less than if a programmer works 40 hours. Sure you can have a push of maybe 5-10 days working these hours in a pinch and only once in a great while. Continously working long hours yields nothing but badly written code. In the end the bugs fixes far exceed any initial benefits from the long hours.
If a programmer wants a computer at home, the company buys it. However, with a condition. It can't be used to extend work hours, except in a rare emergency. The machine should be a play/learning tool, not another source of stress. Programmers often have a strange sense of play, playing quake XI can be less fun than an hour or 2 at freashmeat.net. I love it when a programmer tells me about some new goofy tool they found somewhere. We have solved many problems from ideas gleamed from this play like exploration.
Vacation is manditory, if the year is up and a programmer needs to roll over vacation, a dam good reason is needed. For one week a year all developers attend a meeting in a resort where the majority of the time is spent hanging out with each other. No programming is allowed.
It's just an aberration, a temporary backslide on the path of Progress. Soon enough our robot masters^W servants will perform all necessary tasks, leaving us humans free to do the one thing we never seem to tire of:
Breed.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I remember reading in an anthropology text once that leisure time is inversely proportional to technological advancement. The cultures with the highest levels of leisure time were hunter-gatherers and that it all pretty much went downhill from there.
The prototypical tribe would try to kill some big game animal and, when they were finally successful, would pretty much just camp out next to the carcass for as long as it lasted. If you are talking about a wooly mammoth, it could have gone on for a while.
Where is there a reasonable comprimise? I like leasure time, but I'm also fond of indoor plumbing and electricity. Technology gives us the means to work more (think electric lighting) so we do work more. Back on the farm 150 years ago, you worked awfully hard during the day when the weather was good, but after the sun went down you had 12 hours of enforced downtime; even more during the winter.
We are also to some extent victims of our own prosperity. Incomes for tech workers have risen to the point where we can think about owning homes, cars, and other goodies. Many of us make long commutes in addition to working long hours.
I guess the real question is: on balance are we better or worse off than we would have been without the technology?
Technology is just the newest in a long line of excuses people use to explain away their own shortcomings. If your overstressed, underpaid, overworked etc its up to you to do something about it. Turn off the pager, drive over your cellphone, improve your education, whatever you need to do to make yourself happier. Just stop blaming your employer, your computer, your cellphone, whatever because your life isn't working the way you want.
Right you are. As a sysadmin for a team of web designers, I get called when the servers act up. I *like* my cellphone waking me up at 8:30am, because it means I didn't get up at 6 to get dressed and shave and put on a suit and tie and drive 25 miles to sit in a cubicle by 7:30am. Yes, I am normally working at 11pm, but that's after spending the evening with the family. And I have a minute to read & respond to this article, too.
:).
On the other hand, I've taken precisely one day of vacation since October, and ended up working christmas, new years, and july 4th. I take lots of little breaks, but almost no long ones. At least I make a point of turning my cellphone *off* during a movie, making some of my associates envious
I've spent 200 hours playing Diablo II already.
At the end of the 19th century, there was a leisure class(sp?). The rest of America was slaving away in company owned towns in lives where they'd never be out of dept to the people they worked for. This gave the employers great latitude in how they chose to treat their workers...
Sound framiliar?
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
Thus if you assume rent at US$300/mo...
Heh... I wonder how many people in Silly Con Valley are laughing at that... I couldn't find a studio for under $700/month anywhere in area.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
If a survey says all those things this /. article reports, how am I to interpret myself and my surroundings when I don't see any of it? Contrary to immediate thought, I don't "live in a bubble". I work for compaq at the moment on an internship, and I don't see anyone around me who puts in more than 40 hours per week. Few of the people I know anywhere have laptops. Pagers and cell phones are common, but I have noticed only a couple occasions where one or the other interrupted class or a meeting. It may be that there needs to be some sort of employee conspiracy started where the employees all say "we will work this long and no longer." Or it may be that every semblance of work needs to disappear after eight hours. Or . . . but what can *we* do? Each individual ultimately decides how long the work day is, and if that isn't satisfactory, the individual finds a new job or works longer.
-------------
"If only life were easy . . . . . . oh, wait, it IS! Everything is black and white, yes or no! Wait, where'd all the color go?"
Let S_n = {nst+us+vt : s,t in Z \ {0}, u,v in {-1,1}}. For all n in Z where |n| > 2, Z \ S_n is infinite... right?
I don't think it's the rise in technology that's making people perceive less time. It's just increased greediness and competition in this stupid 'new economy' stuff. Everyone else is getting rich (mostly by luck) so others think they have to work hard to keep up.
I for one like using technology. People have to realize it's not a new way of life. They are tools. Use things as you see fit. I like having a pager on me all the time, and a cell phone near by. I just never turn on the phone unless I'm returning a page. And I have the option of returning a page, I don't have to.
For me, it's all a great way to get in touch with friends and put together plans. And it helps increase time having fun. Instead of hanging around a phone waiting for a call, I can be loading kayaks and on the way, and get a page with the latest plan (where to meet, etc).
Portable computers are nice for information on where I'm going. I don't have to use it for business. I can get the latest weather report or surf report and go have fun. Or look up maps to a friend's house when picking them up for the weekend.
So, you have a choice. Think of it as a leash and always be a slave to work, or just use it for what you need/want and ignore the rest.
Jason
...just take the time to relax. Most people who are "stressed" create the stress for themselves. They skip lunch to work, and often eat fast food for dinner. Studies have shown that the quality of work done beyond 40 hours/week is not very high. If people get to work at 8 am, stay till 6 pm, then feel the need watch Letterman and the 1 am airing of SportsCenter, then they shouldn't complain about lack of sleep. It's fairly obvious where they could cut some things out of their schedule.
Few of us manage to buck this trend, apart from some neo-Luddites. Half of all Americans now own a cell phone, and more than 46 per cent of pleasure travelers take their phones with them when they go away, reports the Travel Inustry Association. More than 18 per cent take their pagers and 6 per cent their laptops, while 10 per cent check e-mail on vacation. Younger Americans are living in a hyperactive information culture.
I'm not sure how Katz went from "10 percent can check email on vacation" to "hyperactive information culture" quite so quickly. 90% of Americans can't check email on vacation. The reason that most people take cell phones and whatnot with them everywhere they go - most people, not all - is because it lets them feel important. "I have a cell phone, because people far away might need me." Riiight...
The cell-phone yuppies are the ones who complain of being stressed out. How many of them have tried to cut back on work, and go for a bike ride a few times per week? A few minutes in a quiet wooded area would eliminate most stress for most people.
The challenge might be finding a wooded area, but that's another topic entirely.
Capitalism isn't about lesiure, it is about PROFIT!
Stop complaining, it is what you are voting for!
A capitalistic society will NEVER decrease stress, it will increase until it blows, and then it will begin again.
Only when the goal of society stops being increased profits and becomes increased standard of living, THEN the stress will decrease. Not before.
(What kind of communist homosexual am I? None of them, so don't send spam calling me that.)
Martin Widmark
Everybody knows that we are the evil boys, making noise with deadly toys.
We don't have any problems to survive due to food, housing, health-care. Such things is well built in modern society.
What is happening is that our minds is laid to waste. When the psycological situation is going extreme, bad things happen. We are watching the first surfacing problems right now.
It will only be worse.
Martin Widmark
Everybody knows that we are the evil boys, making noise with deadly toys.
This is the exact essence of a corporation like Microsoft. They make no product. They are free from the material world. They merely brand products created by a contractor, and market their brand. Why is it that you always see children in Microsoft ads? It is a metaphor for freedom; use Microsoft products and your life will be free. Nothing can be further from the truth.
The fact is that technology is intended to benefit the company rather than the employees. When they make the decision to invest in new technology, the question they ask is whether the investment will be profitable, not whether the employees will like it. If the people who work there are more stressed, that is of little concern to the employers as long as they are more productive.
This is just part of an overall trend in big business to have almost no concern for anything but profit. All aspects of this affect workers' stress. If a company thinks that lay-offs will cut down on costs more than their income, they'll lay people off. If they think that requiring employees to be reachable outside of work will make them more productive, they'll require that.
As long as the stress that workers feel isn't more of a hindrance to work than all these excessive requirements on productivity, they have no reason to change them.
"When deep space explorations ramps up, it will be the corporations that name everything."
Sail Away. It doesn't have to be this way. Trust me.
perhaps tech jobs are the meat packers of the 21st century in desguise. bluring the fact to the public through our large(r) paychecks, the abundance of gadgets and ipo's.
the more we get connected, the more we disconnect from real human interaction.
don't get me wrong i am a gadget-techno-info starved individual but i feel that the progress we are making with technology is depersonalizing our interactions. instead of conversations face to face, we have conversations with individuals via e.mail many of which we have never met and never will. with the introduction of electronic means of communication we remove ourselves from real communication. when was the last time you received a letter from a friend? (not that you printed out!) so much emotion and meaning is lost when reading someones thoughts through generic text. digital communication is depressing and leaves much to be desired.
with the increasing plague of plastic interactions, it is no wonder that social disfunction has progressed to the point that it has. while not responsible it does provide bodies for the plague to infect.
next time you want to talk to a friend or loved one (*gasp*) instead of e.mailing them call or write a letter. digital means cannot substitute or simulate emotion.
jean-pierre
Glad to hear I'm not the only one wasting away my hours on the Web. Sure I work 50 hour weeks, but 10+ of that is spent on here, over on my site, or on any of the other half dozen sites I keep current with daily.
I was beginning to think I was the laziest tech worker in the world.
(Hmm, do any of my bosses read slashdot? I guess we'll find out)
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I wake up, usually late, and rush into work. There I do anything from programming to system administrative duties. I get off work at five or so, but rarely leave the office until 7 pm. at the earliest. Often times I will be here till 9 or ten pm. After that I go home. I play with my x10 technology, (I am currently working on getting my network at home to respond to vocal commands. My thought was how cool would it be to walk in and state "lights on." After I fuss with that, or play with my home security (done via web cam technology, and motion sensor's) I play everquest, quake, tribes or some sort of game till 2 am. fall asleep. rinse. repeat.
Last Saturday my friends and I took a spur of the moment trip to vegas, two of us had our palm's, and we all had our cell phone's, but... no laptops. the conversation on the way back, the closer we got to home. the more it turned to computers... and how long we had been away from our computers. (less than 24 hours mind you.) The first thing I did when I got home, wasn't shower. I didnt feed my cat. I flipped on my monitor and looked over network.
I have sat in bed, next to my boyfriend, after a long weekend, and good sex. We both turn on our laptop's and do what we want... it is our quality time together. I enjoy it. Some couples read... we compute.
There is an online comic I read. Mostly because I understand how the character's feel. read this thread...
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/19990202.html
how many of us can grin..and nod. Because we understand...
Instead of buying a new car, my friend spent around 4k on a new monitor. Why? Because she wanted it...she needed it. Technology is a disease. A need we have. A craving in our soul. To learn the newest language. Keep up to date on the latest security issues. Don't get me wrong though. It is a disease I wouldnt give up.
-Geeki
She became a geek by absorption, one day she woke up with a bad taste in her mouth.. and knew how Linux worked
Am I the only one who doesn't seem to be loosing their leisure time? For me, the distinction between work or school, and free/leisure time is very distinct.
When I'm at work, I do whatever I can to get my work done & looking nice (currently a web site design/maint/admin) in an efficient manner. However, I rarely "take any work home to do." By the time I get home, I really don't want to think about work anymore... 8hours of work + 1 hour, 15 min commute there & back... it really doesn't make me feel all that willing to do anything else.
When I'm at school, it's similar, but slightly different. I have my assignments that I have to do at home, but once they're done - or while I'm procrastinating... I do that lots. - my time is my own. I'll do whatever I want.
My biggest problem is that some of my interests that I do during my leisure time relate, if not are exactly the same, as what I do at work/school. As I said, I'm currently working as a web page design/maint/admin, and I also run my own web site for fun (still trying to set it up nicely). At school, I'm in a computers course... and my courses include stuff like learning how to network computers, programming, and using *nix. Lets see, what do I do during my free time at home? I'm in charge of my home network, I occationally make small programs to do simple tasks, and I like experimenting with linux.
One of the few things I like doing during my spare time that doesn't relate to work/school is playing games.
But still, while my leisure activities and school/work activities relate, I'm quite specific on when I'll do my school/work activities. To me, there is a very distinct line between them, and I don't let work/school interfere with it. I just value it too much.
Well that's right you could switch jobs, but uh I haven't made a name for myself yet. I also live in an area where tech jobs are rather rare, I can't move until I know I have a job somewhere else and even after that I wouldn't have the money from the crappy $7/hr tech jobs pull here.
The case is my parents who don't work in the tech industry have been feeling the same thing. IE their jobs are less secure than they used to think. Their is a reason for this: They are. To the companies (at least around here) you are a renweable resource to be used up & thrown away. You don't offer a reliable solution to that because if I switched jobs I would again be in a place that insists I overwork to prove I should keep my job.
AN example is my current job. I should have at least an assistant to help handle service requests and tasks that don't require my attention (like plugging back in a loose power cord). This would give me time to maybe actually improve the network I maintain. I can't even get a replacement monitor when one dies though and aassistant is out of the question, so I put in more hours than I should to try to keep everything working.
Now I've been looking for similair jobs (I'd rather not take a pay cut for instance just to get out of where I work) & I've found more places that expect the same or worse or they pay less. I even came across one network admin job that paid $6/hr USD. WTH is that? I need to move, but I need moeny to move, and at the rate I can aquire money here I'll have goen without a job again which will take away my savings before I accumulate the moeny to do so.
Runnign away isn't always the answer.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I work in the tech field and find that my leisure time is spent often at work. I sometimes get so involved with computer work, I skip breaks take short lunches all off the clock. Although, there are many times that I'm just sitting there browsing the web during work hours. Also, since I'm not married and still live at home, I've found that my father often has decreased leisure time because of technology. As an local administrator for a state department, he often receives calls off the normal work hour from the administrator over the entire state. He also does business on his cell phone while travelling on vacation and other days off. In many cases I can see that technology is providing less leisure time and more work time. I think that as employees we need to be stick up for our leisure time.
Is there a guide for how to do this? A book, or a website, or something? I'm graduating in December, and haven't the foggiest idea how to interview my potential employer.
:)
Sure, I'm good at being interviewed, but not at interviewing. And while it may seem trivial to those of you who have figured out how to do this... it isn't. I need (and others, I'm sure) direction.
If this post sounds stupid, be gentle - I have alot of stuff on my mind with wrapping up school, moving, etc etc. This is one of those big "life changes".
Cheers,
Brian
It's true, but this idea has been around for quite a while now, so I am a bit surprised to see it here as a editorial. I mean, the real issue is whether we regard work the same way our elders did (mostly a way to earn money and make a living), or an activity similar to what you would do on your spare time. Some people (ie. geeks) enjoy doing what they do at work as much as what they do at home, so we shouldn't wonder whether it's the technological tools that make this happen but rather ask : why do we tend to be interested equally (or more) in our work than in our "leisure time" activities ?
Nevertheless, I tend to agree that this has been used as some kind of ideology to get people to work for companies tremendously (even when they get few/no stock options).
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Joe Ganley
Living the IT neophile life does not have to mean working your self to death.
Do what i do.
1. Forget about material wealth, hard for you N.Americans, ill admit, but what good are stock options 6 feet underground?
2. Work 6 months a year in either london, newyork or ex-pat anywhere else (aslong as your getting paid like your in london or newyork.)
3. Spend 3 months backpacking round asia, or working at a ski resort, or as a dive master on a tropical island.
4. Spend 3 months working in a livable city, maybe where you grew up, maybe where your parents live. Make sure its summer. Do Tai Chi.
5. Have 1 75 litre bag of clothes, 1 laptop.
6. Read the Tao Te Ching.
7. Be Happy.
Ive been doing this for the past 4 years and have never been happier.
Official GOD FAQ.
3) always have a functional caller id box setup on your home phone in case your boss tries to call.
I always take the policy of once I've left work, I am not longer working. If they want me to work more than that, damnit they are going to pay me. Of course being a consultant one can demand this a bit more.
Of course this doesn't mean I don't use computers at home, its just that I work on things not related to work, at all.
Also another tip is, when going into a job, remember that *everything* is negotiable, especially if your not in dire need of getting a job immediately. For example, demands things like having an office with a window and not being stuck in a cube etc. If they want you bad enough they'll working with you on your demands.
Of course I am a bit biased growing up in a part of the US where unions are very important to the workers.
: To me, it comes down to choice. If you feel you are free to disconnect at any time without penalty, thereis no issue.
To me, the issue comes down to a choice where I accept more money in exchange for more hours... a trade-off. I am the only programmer in the office, and am often the last to leave along with my manager. Strange how we are the top-paid people in the office.
Sure, I may never see the sun in the winter, but it is sure a nice paycheck. Face it, all of us tech-workers have made this implicit trade-off, otherwise we would be working at burger king by now.
At this rate, I'll be able to take off months at a time between jobs and still come out WAY ahead of the average bear. Come on people...
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Although it is true that people in the technology industry may burnout due to the need for intense concentration for prolonged periods, such focus is more beneficial than destructive IMHO.
BTW, that was really well written, Mr. Katz.
Your interrupted free time won't get interrupted as much if you do your job right!
Gorkman
i took two vacation days recently to prepare for my 2 year old's birthday party. the first day i ended up onsite at a client fixing someone else's mess and by the third conference call i'd been summoned to on the second day my wife was about ready to divorce me.
my boss decided not to count these days against my vacation and to give me two more vacation days as a reward for being so helpful. all i could think of is when you find something wrong with a product (i.e. mouse in a twinkie) and then the company sends you a whole case of to make up for it...as if you'd want the same thing after seeing what it was like that time...
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
Yeah, really. When I was in college, I used to work 40 hours a week at a burger place, on top of going to classes and doing other college stuff. My life in the high-tech industry, where I work 60+ hours per week, on evenings, weekends, from home, etc. is a vacation in comparison. Not just from a work point of view, but I don't have to worry about paying bills, etc. It would be nice if Katz spoke to somebody who actually worked in the industry to ask what they thought it before he started blathering, pretending to be the voice of something he is completely and utterly clueless about.
-- Any comments seen here are not mine, but a mixture of alchohol and lack of sleep.
Unless you are in the deep south (which Washington DC is not), you need to heat that room of yours. And if you ARE in the deep south, you need to cool that room. I assume he does go into public places, thus he needs water for showers. And at $300/month, I doubt your utilities are included (of course, I don't know know where this room is).
And what about clothing? Even cheap clothing can stick it to your wallet (if you choose to BUY a wallet). I mean, you don't have a car, you must walk, and thus wear out tennis shoes quite regularly. And you have to clean those clothes. Are you going to buy a washer/dryer? Perhaps a bucket and a clothesline?
I mean honestly. We're getting into unibomber territory here.
p.s. I know I took this into a bit more detail then necessary, I just don't think it's practical. I make US$23k a year living in Southeastern Michigan, and I qualify for government assisted housing. :P
My time is worth more to me than that.
I'm just glad I have other interests to fall back on if/when I get tired of the masochism that is IT.
Technology has made life easier, I think most people would agree. People choose to work longer, put in more hours, interrupt their vacations with conference calls. Why? Some call it furthering their career or use a number of other terms, but the real reason is money. The problem (if you want to call it a problem) is that most of the time it's not desperately needed money. Instead of making only 70K a year, you'll make 90K if you shave off just a bit more of your free time.
Sure, some of you out there (and I'm critisizing myself when I say this) work extra hours for free. You keep yourself connected on vacation when you may not have factored this into your asking salary when accepting a job offer. You're giving 'one for the team' and all the crap, but who's going to remember you when the venture capital runs out? Oh you're one of those few with a working product? Reading the company pamplets to encourage yourself lately?
Whether these are worthy goals is another story, but these are the real reasons you have less time, so it's stupid to bitch about it. It's funny when you ask some people how their week was invariably you get things, 'oh man, worked 80 hours this week, been really busy, but we're going to get this McDonanld Food Data Queue finished early' that few of these people say 'but boy am I going to make a heap of cash'.
I think even fewer are the people who really care about what they are doing. They want to see something they build be the best it can be for reasons other than money. It's hard to find a job like this. My job is sometimes like this, but sometimes I am working on things where I want to do a good job only because the result reflects on me, not because I like the product or think it's great for mankind. If I was writing the complex programs that queue up orders at McDonalds, I really wouldn't give a damn about it as long as it get the job done (which may include adding functionality beyond explicitly stated or even paid for project parameters), and the client likes it. I'm not going to think about how great it is because it helps some fatass wolf down a burger that much faster. I might think it's cool how my code is running on thousands of fast food joints around the world, but it's not exactly going to further science or end world peace.. or even hunger.
I didn't really self-censor it, at least I didn't mean to. I was just trying to point out my point of view: Technology, to me, is work, play and everything in between. I should never be taken seriously :)
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Intelligence should not be rewarded; ignorance should be punished
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Intelligence should not be rewarded; ignorance should be punished
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This is Slashdot....Technology is liesure time! :)
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Intelligence should not be rewarded; ignorance should be punished
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Intelligence should not be rewarded; ignorance should be punished
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I think the answer is simple...Technology just isn't good enough *yet* for us to turn over all of our work to computers. Instead of having computers that can make decisions for us, we can automate a lot more and require that humans need to make more decisions about more work, but do less of the work for each task. Pump funding into AI research...
quite correct...
/.
But, we don't really know if this was a 3 point rating scale, a 5 point, or a 10 point...(if it was a 3-point scale, then the %s are the same)
That aside, also interesting to note is that, according to what I believe came from the census projection in 1999, 30.4% of Americans are 18-34, while only 16.5% are 65+.
So, even if that was just a 3-point rating scale and the percentages work out to no significant difference, the base for ea. age group is different. There are almost twice as many 18-34 year olds as there are 65+, so even if the % is the same, there are twice as many people "Somewhat to Extremely Stressed".
...and then if we broke it down by gender and by employment status...and maybe even ethnicity...or income, we may even find other interesting facts out. Hell, we may even find that it's not age, but income that makes the real difference...
I knew that career in market research would pay off. It allowed me to write a somewhat-intelligent post to
NPR did a story on this same thing about 2 weeks ago. Check out the Morning Editions web site for the RealAudio versions.
2 F26%2F2000&PrgID=3
F 28%2F2000&PrgID=3
/search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=6%
and
search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=6%2
the crappy URLs are not my fault.
"back to work 'click' work work work..."
-- Hail Eris
What did you expect?
My point is that untill all of us collectively turn our pagers off for the weekend, and start leaving at 5, and taking our lunches, nothing will change.
Americans as consumers and employees have, over the last couple decades, made countless small concessions, and as a result, we now pay for such things as the 'special service' of actually talking to a teller at the bank, and give up our weekends by wearing our beepers. We work longer hours (in addition to such attrocities as the unpaid lunch hour- at my job an 8-hour day is 8 to 5), and we cave in at the threat of loosing our jobs. My mom (who is also a geek in her way) recently received a flyer about a piece of legislation under debate in California that would make tech industry employees exempt from overtime pay.
I know I'm ranting a little, but my point is that getting a new job is a very small price to pay for getting a little of your life back. Ask about overtime policies and average work schedules when you interview, and don't be shy about letting them know that you're not interested in a job if it requires being on call 24/7.
I look at it this way: I'm engaged to be married, and I'll be damned if I let her get away because I couldn't find the balls to say that I was leaving for the day.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40 per cent of men worked more than 40 hours a week in l998, an increase of 5 percentage points in the last two decades. As for women, 22 per cent worked more than 40 hours aweek, compared with just 14 per cent in 1979.
So, is it possible that salary disparities between men and women are due to the fact that men work more hours?
-jimbo
"Hold me Bob!" "I would if I could man!" -Larry and Bob in VeggieTales
What if I do my job so well, that no one else CAN do it?
Sometimes success demands that you give up contiguous time off.
I'm not saying don't take vacations....I'm saying that being COMPLETELY unreachable could be considered irresponsible.
--
This space left intentionally blank.
Has anybody seen the PBS series 1900 House ?
That family lived just like a typical family would in 1900 and they all were very much relieved to be done with it. Especially the women. There is no doubt in my mind that because of technology we lead much more self directed, clean lives. And because of technology the following statement is more true now that it has even been: If we are sleep deprived and stressed it is because we choose to support ourselves in this manner.
Sadly, for some of us it already is. I had a mobile forced on me, have used it once I think, to call out. "Part of your job description" they told me when I complained. I hate the D****d thing.
But I can't stop myself from working more, because I feel like I'll fall behind. It's the internet that pushes me into longer hours -- trying to keep up with all the changing software, so that I'm not taken by surprise by the competition.
I guess at my work I am fortunate enough. They discouage overtime, let us wear clothes that we are comfortable with and we use a great language (PERL).
For me I like it here, the freedom to do my work without being bothered constantly and management that truly wants their employees to be happy.
But just over a month ago I went camping with some friends and actually thought of bringing my laptop with me. I decided against it because we were "Tring to get away from it all."
It was great the first night but the second day was disturbing. I basically went through a kind of tech withdrawl.
I ended up settling in and having a great time but just the thought of being so connected/reliant on tech disturbes me.
What kind of world are we living in right now?
What kind of society are we turning into?
Maybe we all should take a step back like that and see how we fair.
If you truely love the memory, you must set it free().
Half of all Americans now own a cell phone, and more than 46 per cent of pleasure travelers take their phones with them when they go away, reports the Travel Industry Association. More than 18 per cent take their pagers and 6 per cent their laptops, while 10 per cent check e-mail on vacation. Younger Americans are living in a hyperactive information culture.
I want to point out that these statistics could be misleading. You need consider what each persons concept of 'leisure' is, and how information technology helps their leisure experiences.
Perhaps I have a different concept of 'vacation', but when I go away on holiday, I take my PDA and my mobile phone, and I read email every couple of days. But I don't do "work" with them.
The phone gets used to make important calls (book a short trip, find out if a museum is open, organise an outing with a few new people, etc), and as an emergency back up (find a missing partner, call a taxi, check a timetable). The PDA is necessary to store personal information and phone numbers for the previous reason. My email I used to keep in contact with friends and family, and send/recieve electronic post cards, or write a letter from afar -- not very different to old world letter receive/send.
But then perhaps my concept of vacation is different, because I like to go off travelling for a couple of weeks or months at a time. If I go away for a weekend (which I don't call a vacation), then I don't check email, but I still take the phone/PDA. If my concept of a vacation was to 'sit on a beach and do nothing', then I'd take no information devices with me - but my vacations are more adventurous/expeditionary.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
OK, most people over 65 are retired. Memories fade with time. Perhaps they simply don't remember feeling stressed? Or do you really think the WWI, depression, WWII, The Korean War, assasinated Kennedies, etc weren't stressful things to live through?
More than a third of adults under the age of 25 say they don't get enough sleep most or all of the time.
Yeah, my 4-week-old daughter tends to keep me up at nights.
Before the Net, cell phones and Palms, the lines between work and leisure time were markedly clearer.
Pssh! I've got that beat. I work out of my home-office. How's that for blurring lines?
So it's not surprising that a l998 General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that more than 40 per cent of American workers say they come home from work exhausted, up from 36 per cent in l989.
Yeah, and unemployment is also less. Maybe the unemployed are now exhausted since they have jobs?
Even when work is stressful, the challenges can be rewarding. I work out of my home, so I tend to start work earlier and end later (if I ever end), but I can also stop for a break to eat lunch with my family, or take my kids to school.
Honestly, I have to say I enjoy my job. Perhaps I'm fortunate to enjoy programming for leisure as well as for work? Or did the article just miss the mark at understanding what people call their "leisure time"?
Every time I leave town to attend a family event (reunion, wedding, funeral, etc.), I end up performing tech support for every relative in the area. "Oh, I installed Windows 2000 and my scanner doesn't work any more. Can you look at it?", "My ink jet printer doesn't print as well as the laser printer at work!", etc. The worst is when they begin carrying laptops to me, like sick children to a religious shrine...
While I really don't enjoy doing these things, I feel obligated to (and have the guilt/pressure of parents and other relatives bearing down). Any suggestions or similar horror stories out there?
By the way, at one reunion I was shocked and amazed to meet a very distant relative who, in addition to being an 80 year old minister in Texas, is also a UNIX programmer from way back when and has been building his own computers since the late seventies.
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
Huh? You haven't defined "win" and "lose." While it's true that it's hard not to play the employment game (people have to eat, and that means they have to either buy or produce food--something to remember next time you discuss economic theory), there's nothing that says you have to work beyond the point of diminishing utility. It's not like you get an extra life at a million dollars.
Damn those Mongols, invading Beverly Hills... =)
--
Rack and stack, You must do desktop support. Ever tried to move around 21 inch monitors or fill 40 racks with e450's?
> 3. No hazmat conditions
> 4. No serious risk of diesease
Actually I worked at CDC for 6 months, they would argue.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
how the hell did you pay for it? I have been thinking about this and I do make good money for the place I work (read low cost of living rates). Paying for 4 years out of pocket comes to about $60,000, which I don't make in a year. Where did you get all that cash?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
To fail to understand the corporation and its workings is to guarantee that your technology will never succeed -- and I don't care how good it is. Worse, it can put you at the mercy of someone who doesn't share your values.
...-.-
Because if it didn't, most of us wouldn't have jobs! All of the rhetoric about technology and the internet making lives easier and giving us more free time is directed at people whose jobs do not include writing code to make that technology work.
It's just like saying that the widespread use of indoor plumbing dramatically cuts back on everybody's family time and leisure because a few plumbers have to work more.
-j
-sigs of the world unite
I would say that of those remaining 30%, about all of them have some stress and maybe 1% of the total have no stress at all.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Another problem was a feeling of detachment. I was/am a developer, and as we know developer's often end up pulling info from a wide variety of resources to get stuff done. Even though I had full access to the network resources (albeit over a very slow modem link), there always seemed to be a feeling of disconnectedness. I also never really felt like I truely knew what was going on with my group because I'd miss those key conversations you have when everybody's taking a ten minute break and/or lunchtime conversations.
Overall, that experience didn't work well for me, but I'm not turned off to the prospects of telecommuting. I think the key is to have a bit of self discipline, an isolatable work environment at home and a home office setup has as many of the advantages of one's work environment. What I mean by the last comment is that, if I would be doing my job on two 21 in. monitors, high bandwidth, or be running on a real workstation (as opposed to a home PC) one should reproduce that environment as close as possible. Hardware is easy enough in theory for your employer to produce and have them pay for a cable modem, or DSL servic e to connect to the work LAN.
-- A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard
Suits me too. I like feeling the pulse of the machinery. I've always been a stimulus junky and I probably always will be (pager goes off on cue). Never mind, it was just the TV station telling me about a thunderstorm watch. I love what I do. It is fun. It is a blast. It is hard and tiring and exhilarating and makes me smile when I go to work. The cell phone and the pager are tools that I use to be able to increase my face to face interaction, not decrease it. They let swat the little things when they are still little. That helps me have quiet time for the people and places that I love.
I have seen a couple of different sides of this. I have had a factory job that turned into a 100 hour a week nightmare. Yeah, they paid OT. I handed the check to my wife and fell asleep. I find that I have to be awake to enjoy spending money.
I've done the "Office Space" IT gig too. "We'll need you to come in Saturday and Sunday for this important project." I stayed because I was too scared and stupid to stand up for myself and have a life. I got a lucky and got recruited out of there to a place that thought I should have a life.
So now I choose. Sometimes I can still choose poorly. Last year I got into a hell of a place by working 1-2 allnighters a week for a month. It was a nasty reminder that I still have to sleep to function well. If my corporate masters don't want to give me a workload that allows for that, well I have a lot of headhunter's phone numbers. And I'm not afraid to use 'em.
My wife is like Unix. Lots of commands. Lots of arguments.
This reminds me of one of my colleagues. ... ... :-)
He's a top notch programmer & code librarian at our company.
However , he has no computer at home. The place he calls home is a little farm on the country side.
And I was wondering when cable modems will be available in my town
The bottom line is that it's simply our own fault
Anyway , those were my 2 cents
The more you have available, the more you exploit it for work. Let's face it, we live in a capitalistic, somewhat Darwinistic society where any gains in worker efficiency (through technology, for example) are just going to mean that we consequently raise the bar on productivity expectations.
Sig this.
Let's see, 100 years ago most of us worked on the farm, moving rocks with our bare hands and a horse, shovelling and digging and breaking our backs. Now, we sit in air conditioned offices playing with what amounts to a really smart television and make mountains of money to do it. Why are even complaining?
Maybe you want to go back to digging ditches for a living, but I sure don't.
This is my sig.
NPR just did a pretty interesting multi-part series called The Way We Play (Real Audio archive available), all about how technology is eating away at our free time, blah, blah. The issue is not portrayed quite so fatalistically as in Katz's piece.
And in how many articles can he use the word "Neo-Luddites?" sheesh . . .
Speak for yourself. I'm an old coot.
I personaly find the stress easy to manage. I like my job. It provides intresting challenges and when it doesn't keep me busy, I can surf all I want or play Half-Life (I've become a master sniper in TFC), or even hack some programs if I feel like it. Sometimes the workplace politics gets to me, but I'm otherwise happy.
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Not a typewriter
Considering that the government steals a third of what you earn, only two of every three hours you work can go toward survival.
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
If I don't hand the money over "voluntarily" they will come and take it away from me at gunpoint, throw me in jail, and maybe even take more away. That sounds like stealing to me.
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
The only technology that really caused this problem is the light bulb; in the Olden Days people would knock off work much earlier, and even if they stayed "late" it would get too dark to work. Nowadays the problem is businesses who like to pay one employee and get the work of two. They do this by implying that it's how you advance in your career, as well as throwing in a false sense of urgency ("Just this one big project and life will be easier" or "just wait till the IPO and you'll work less"). If anything, technology has made working a little less numbing; no more trips to the fax machine, fewer phone calls, and if things get too stressed you can read slashdot for a bit...
What Katz sees as evidence of Corporatism is nothing more than employee greed.
Bullshit. I work in a job that has me involved in everything from swinging a pick, right up to fault-location on electronic sub-assemblies. My employer expects overtime almost every day, almost every weekend - and when I'm not working overtime, expects me to be on unpaid standby. And when I refuse to do any of this, I'm accused of not being a "team player", with the strongly implied threat that if I don't pick up my act, I'm out. All this causes me to do is start work on the dot, finish work on the dot, and leave my laptop and mobile in the car when I get home.
I don't read /. at work - /. is my leisure time.
Corporate bullying? Yes. Third-world country? No. This is Australia...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
I have my computer at home turned off/unplugged for the summer. I actually did this due to heat (I refuse to run my a/c 24/7). I turn the computer on once per weekend to get my email off of my ISP's server and that is it.
Yes, I miss stuff because of this. Some things I have taken do doing manually instead, such as balancing my checkbook. I might actually get the thing balanced and calculate how much I spend doing it manually! I am using my spare time to read books and actually socialize with people face to face. (Yes, I had sunk the level of emailing my neighbor directly across the hall.)
I use all of my vacation time, too. Took a three week vacation to wander around Europe this past Spring. That was very revitalizing. No cell phone, no laptop, no pager, no PDA.
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One of the reasons I can bear my ridculously stupid job is that I have vents to relax, most of which do not involve a computer at all. I ride my mtn bike, I walk my huskies, I take vacations, twice a year, and the only reason I bring my cell is because it is a convenience, and handy for emergencies.
Don't let work encroach on your personal life, especially when you choose to be doing something else. When I am riding, my boss cant get ahold of me, my WIFE even knows its pretty much futile to try to reach me when I am out. When I am done, thats when I'll be back to deal with all of the s**t of life, and no sooner.
I have to keep an eye on myself, and my s/o does it for me as well, to not let myself get burned out on work. I like what I do for a living, but its not the only thing I want to do in life. Just my 0000 0010 cents worth.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
"One of the biggest problems I see with the tech industry is that way too many employees don't know how to interview their employer to see if it's a place they want to work. "
This is absolute wisdom! I've learned this the hard way. I've had some bad jobs in the last couple of years because I was too eager to impress the people who were interviewing me, and didn't ask enough critical questions of my prospective employers. :-)
Take notice, guys. Especially in today's economy where skilled/experienced tech workers can be somewhat choosy when it comes to choosing an employer... you need to interview THEM as much as they interview YOU!!
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Because of the low cost and accessability of the technology (IT), it is no longer a question of getting ahead of the competition, but more of not being left behind. In fact this has probably always been the case but now the whole survival process goes much faster. Inevitably it is not only the most fit companies which survive, but this also affects the employees. Hence the long hours and stress. And just to cheer you up, it'll get worse before it gets better. Doesn't it always?
Was I more stressed? I'm not sure. My personal take is that it is the employers responsibilities to take stress off of the employees. How can they do this? Simple. Tell your employees to go screw around when they aren't working well. Give them toys. Tell them to stay at home for a day and play. Show them that its ok to play pinball at the next door arcade for an hour if the juices aren't flowing.
Why would this be effective? I think people put stress on themselves unnecessarily because they are conditioned to think they should be working just because they're at their work desk. I'm one of those. If I'm writing /. (as I am currently) I'm also building up some guilt because I feel I should be working. If my employer said & encouraged unscheduled breaks & demanded that I only work when I'm productive, I wouldn't feel guilty. Instead, I will feel like the last 15 minutes were unproductive, feel like I have to work harder to make up for them, and end up doing a worse job than normal because of that little bit of stress I'm putting on myself.
So translating that back to telecommuting. I had those same guilty feelings even though my boss was 2500 miles away. Based on that, I'd have to say that telecommuting didn't alleviate stresses as easily as one might think.
managers...why god invented purgatory
These days, if you want to settle down early, raise a family in a small 2 bedroom house, with only 1 TV, 1 car, and almost never eat out (basically live a 50's life in the 00's), you can have a relatively stress free life. We don't want to do that though.
We choose to push ourselves, mentally, physically, and yes - emotionally, to excel at our jobs. The technology that we use is merely a commodity catalyst, remove it and I can guarantee that we'd find another. I know this because we're not content to work the same job for 30 years, heck most of us move on (and up) before 3 years go by. We (I'm including probably 90% of you reading here) want to be the indespensible prized employee, a fast-burner, top of our game, and highly promotable. If that means working 4 hours after you get home, or taking a laptop with you on vacation, we'll do it. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but that's the path we've chosen.
I don't _need_ a six figure income, nor do I need the Sea-Doo in my garage, or the convertible next to it. Hell, at 24, I don't even _need_ to own my own home, but it's what I chose to do. It really has nothing to do with the technology that we use to achieve our goals, there's just been a fundamental change in those goals. Maybe generation.com is too materialistic, maybe we oughta slow down, smell the roses, crap in the woods - whatever. But maybe, just maybe, we're right!
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
work is cutting into my leisure time. and since i work in technology, i guess your right.
New surveys suggest that ubiquitous technological tools are killing off leisure time, especially for younger workers and students -- that would be you -- who are working longer hours, taking fewer and shorter vacations
This article (link) explains that annual working hours for America are around 2000, whereas "Dutch and Norwegian workers average around 1400 hours per year, or about two-thirds of the US level." The Dutch have cell phones and computers too, so this would seem to indicate that technology does not inevitably lead to more work and less free time. It may have this effect on Americans, though. So what's wrong with us?
I disagree that unplugging is essential. I have been working with computers since I was 5 (I'm 22 now), and I disagree that you need to unplug or cut back on your work with computers and technology. I get paid to do what I love. If I didn't love it, I'd get another job. I get burnt out on things I DONT like. I spend about 8 maybe 9 hours a day at work, as a Network Administrator (tm) and when I go home I play network games on my computer, write web pages, create graphics, chat online, etc... I admit that IRC addiction can cause conflict. I've seen it myself, which is why I quit using IRC. I was so addicted that I would skip dinner, skip chores, and chat from the time I got home to the time I went to bed. Now that's addiction, which is completely different than that which you are describing. The only people who should cut back is those whos social/work/home life is affected negatively by their abuse of technology.
witty sig goes here
I myself quit working and became a student for just the reasons above :)
:)
- too much stress, and it was taking the fun out of my net
Seriously though, I ended up working from wherever the internet was, wherever a box with SSH
could 'jack me in' so to speak, it just all got a bit much - now I try to enjoy my net,
and keep work as seperate as possible (not easy for a CGI/perl coder though eh?)
Coffee GOOD - COFFEE GOOD!
HelpGeeks - don't bother visiting, it's not worth it! Really!
I came up with a (far from rigorous) proof a couple of years ago as to why technological advancement won't (or even can't) lead to increased leisure time. Damned if I can remember it though :)
It was based on the observation that although printing presses, computers, video cameras, nearly instant global communications etc. have increased the productivity of almost all businesses a thousand-fold, most of us work just as many hours per week as our ancestors.
This means most businesses should have been able to reduce their employees' hours a thousand-fold while keeping profits stable. This is obviously unrealistic, but it would surely be possible to reduce hours by a third and still make extra profits. However, businesses have responded to increases in productivity by keeping hours constant so that profits soar vastly (which affects inflation and usury and interest rates, so the employees need higher wages, so the profits don't stretch as far, so the employees have to work harder to stay in the same place but that's for another day...)
Unfortunately, I can't remember where the argument went from here, but it was something to do with new technology also needing more time spent developing/maintaining it by more and more highly skilled techies, who lose even more leisure time. Anyway, back to work....
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Please do not use this document as toilet tissue
It seems to me that many competitive industries (and which ones aren't?) have switched almost entirely to an exempt/salary form of compensation. Since they don't 'pay anymore' for you to work 60 hrs a week (instead of 40) they take this route [carefully disguised as:problems backfilling, waiting for new budgets, re-org].
;-)
It's all BS.
I've been IT contracting since 1986, and I bill for every hour I work. The only area I've seen the salary/bonus thing work out is Wall Street.
and from the "What the hell is this" Dept; I've noticed there is a shift from pensions to stock options - man is that a pile of sh&t or what!
Glad I'm retiring in 20 years
-Reid
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Every useful household or industrial innovation that speeds up the time we take to do something, and also caused us to do more work, (sadly, the una bomber's arguments were also derived from this). Take the dishwasher for example, we don't sit around gardening or playing catch with the kids in the time we would be washing dishes, (as the early dishwasher commercials implied) we do other work. This seems to be a strictly western world thing, because we embrace each wave of new technology with open arms, but compared to other countries, like France, they tend to give each new thing a little time before ever they adopt it as part of they're culture.
Every one hates technology subconciously (yeah, i know both that sentence and the latter word are flamebait, i see you reaching for the dictionary). But when you think about every persons fantasies, (er, clean fantasies), a deserted island, a picnic, or a cabin in the woods, you dont see much technology, until your boss finds out your pager number and your email.
"Sorry, but I don't there's anything charming about ignorance and carelessness." -LordNimon
If you have a job that pays you to do what you would/will do in your free time anyway, you're all set... Not to mention if you can work for anywhere... I got paid to program from a Jazz fest. this weekend.. it was great I kicked back and wrote some PL/SQL and listened to some great live music and drank...and drank... and drank.. life is good.
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
As the sole Network Admin for my company, my employer feels its essential that I stay in contact at all times. Naturally I hate this. So I've found a few ways around it.
I've purposely taken my vacations to places where technology isn't, or at least if it's there, it's not top notch. My last vacation was to the mountains of New Mexico. Sure, they had phones but have you tried getting a clear cell phone connection while you are in a cabin in the mountains? Doesn't work all that well. My next vacation is going to be at Walt Disney World to run the Marathon and visit the parks. Think I'm going to attempt to answer a phone call at mile 17? Or while I'm going down Splash Mountain? My employer knows that as well.
I take no electronic devices outside of a watch and perhaps a cell phone for personal emergancies when I go on vacations. If I want to talk to my company, I'll call them. Otherwise, my leisure time is just that. Mine.
----------------------------------------- Well damn...so that's what that does...
Jon Katz is just the latest of a long line of people who have parroted the argument that labour saving devices will give us vast tracts of leisure time in which we can goof off. But the point that Jon seems to completely miss is that we still need to eat, and all these wonderful devices need power - so who's going to pay the food and electric bills, Jon? *That* is why people still have stressful jobs - to earn money. As long as we still need money, we'll still be doing more and more work to earn as much money as we can. The only way to end this would be to advance to the stage where everyone had enough free power and free goods for their needs. This can't be done today, but once someone develops the nanotech to create food from inanimate matter molecule-by-molecule, and these nanotechs could be powered by solar power or some other power source (direct matter to energy conversion on your household garbage, for instance), then society could move to 100% leisure time. Let's hope it happens soon, it sounds good to me!
HOWEVER! I would say that there is no doubt in my mind that choosing MIS as a career has killed 99% of my leisure computer time... I would love so much to learn more about Macromedia Flash, and Sonic Foundry's Vegas Pro... but when I try to use those tools for enhancing my other interests (music & photography), I just wind up checking stocks, servers, email, web pages, or troubleshooting the system itself's quirks (heh... m$)....
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Anybody familiar with Robert Pirsig's work? He does have quite a lot of interesting thoughts on this topic. Maybe this will help. :-)
Personally, I'm just waiting for my mid-life crisis so that I can start the above-mentioned revolution!
True, but it is still a silly comparison to take the number of highly stressed people in one group and compare it to the "no stress" folks in another group. Why not give us the stat on old folks who are moderately or highly stressed, so that we can accurately compare it to the 7 of 10 in the 18-35 group?
What Would Sutekh Do?
...were just talking about this. I don't like to use my vacation because things change so rapidly in this industry that you can loose a lot of info/oppertunity/momentum just by going away for a week.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
A few quotes:"...At first, employers were wary of workers going on the Net. But they've learned to love and encourage it, since it keeps employees chained to their desks for longer hours." and :
The American Demographic report validates the suspicion that corporatist employers are taking advantage of new technologies and of workers' anxieties to demand longer hours and increased productivity -- the very things new technologies were supposed to liberate people from.
You can't have it both ways. If employers are encouraging workers to surf the net, then shouldn't they also want to be compensated for the time the employees aren't working? If my employer allows, let's say, an hour (apart from lunch) for me to surf to pay bills, order dinner, etc. shouldn't I be required to work that hour to make up for it? Time is, after all, money.
But there is a point were returns begin to diminish. When you work a person too hard, they begin to produce less. Continue to work them too hard and they'll just leave for a better pasture, especially if their skills are in high demand. Technical and professional people are probably the most able to protect themselves. They have transportable skills. I work for an IT company that goes out of its way to make its people comfortable. If the people I work with don't like it, they can (and do) just leave.
There are 2 types of people that work long hours: those "loyal" to the "company family" and those wanting to earn overtime. The first type usually burn out when they realize the motivational awards at the end of the quarter don't translate to cash ("OHMYGOD, I've been used!!!!"). The second type collect the money and search for ways to reduce the stress. They stop the overtime when they stop getting paid for it. Somehow they last longer and have more fun. Guess which group I belong to?
I'm of the mind that we create our own shackles. Life is too short to be jerked around on someone else's chain. If you want freedom, free yourself.
Um, I don't know if this is oT or not, but I kinda like the hum. It's very soothing in a way. I'm in college and interning at an IT Consulting firm, I was raised on TV, Radio, Computer, and now Cell Phone, Laptop and Permanent Internet Connection. I don't think I could drop the hum if I tried. I have fond (but disturbing) memories of being a latchkey kid and coming home to an empty house, and having my fear and loneliness be quieted by the hum of our shitty Sony Trinitron, which I had to keep muted to keep up the pretense that I wasn't just a kid alone in a house. The hum is a security blanket for many in my generation.
And while I wont disagree with any of the points raised about technology increases the work hours, (at work and at home), I will say that teens with cell phones are an insanely well connected force to be reckoned with. Time that used to be spent waiting under the oppressive watch of your parents for someone, ANYone to call and take you out, that time is now spent at cafes chilling out with a cup of coffee with friends, maybe a laptop where your making a site to throw up picks for friends who are away at college. And when the busy classwork needs to get done, its the dead trees that get whipped out, spread like a mealstreom across the floor, and stained with coffee and the wasted hours of youth.
-chorderyou know, i think we (americans that is) should take lesson from Europe. The average vacation time over there is 4 weeks, with many having 6 weeks of vacation, and in italy i know they have up to 8 weeks of vacation!!!! You seem to be lucky in america if you have 3 weeks of vacation! It's totally insane. We weren't put here on earth to WORK ourselves to death!
Huh?
Obviously, this stress measure ran on a scale: highly stressed, moderately stressed, slightly stressed or no stress. That 30% of younger people are not in the highest stress group does not automatically put them in the no stress group, but more likely in the intermediate groupings.
© Copyright 2000 Matthew Yeo
Stress has little to do with the number of hours you work, but is much more dependent upon the type of work one does. Psychologists have found that the events most of us consider highly stressful are either:
Many latter day studies are showing that the largest predictor of stress is how much control one feels and how constantly one is stimulated. Our most stressful jobs (air traffic controllers, retail salesperson) show the two sides. An air traffic controller is bombarded with only slightly predictable stimuli that never end. Retail Salespeople have no control: they beg all day long to customers for sales and then to their bosses for pay; they have zero job security, low pay, part-time and flexible shifts, and sell products that no one needs. Their financial existence is determined by a long chain of tenuous strength.
Most modern citizens have little or no control over their future, and they know it. Their boss controls their job and their income, they rely on someone else to produce the necessities of life (food, clothing, shelter), they are inundated on all sides by unpredictable events (instant deadlines, constant change, constant communication), and their daily visual field is cluttered with things designed from the bottom up to capture attention. Even our mindless entertainment (TV) comes with hooks every 8 minutes or so to ensure that we don't lapse into the coma we almost need to get away from the millions of stressors that make up our lives.
We could escape much of this stress if we had a greater tie to tradition. Then, change would come at a manageable pace for most people and our society would evolve slowly rather than the massive rush we have seen from 1950 on.
So, exalt our lifestyle over that of your great-grandparents, but farming offers a lifestyle that is very predictable (cyclical seasons, never-changing work), bound to tradition, and which offers farmers much control over their destiny. At the very least, the necessities are covered with the labour of their own hands, or at least it was back then when mothers sewed all the clothes, fathers built the houses, and both grew the food. Besides, they had all winter to contemplate existence, to debate politics, to discuss current issues. I assure you that they were better citizens as a result.
In short, we work shorter hours in very stressful work, mostly out of our control, in order to earn money to live, while they worked long hours with little or no stress in order to provide a living directly.
Having been both an air traffic controller and a retail salesperson, I assure you that farming sounds terrific. A recent magazine article I read illustrated how only five acres can feed a family of four, in perpetuity, using the space available for greenhouses, poultry sheds, a cow, etc. Being vegetarian, my wife and I would have extra space. It sounded so good we are looking to buy a plot, build a solar powered house, and farm our lives away feeding our family. I could even run a little dotcom if I wanted, right from my house.
© Copyright 2000 Matthew Yeo
Or hunter-gatherers, who have to work maybe four hours per day to ensure their survival.
www.alarmist.org
Amen, brother. When I leave work, I don't take it home with me. I don't have a cell phone, I don't have a Palm, and I don't have a laptop. OK, so maybe I'm not the go-getter on the fast track to the top, but at least I might be alive in 20 years. :)
All I know is as soon as I get to work, I read all of /. and a majority of the postings looking for a good laugh. So if anything it's killing work time...
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
How much it costs to live entirely depends upon how you want to live. Here in Melbourne, Australia, the household is paying $200/week in rent (close to the Melbourne CBD), and about $150/week in bills and food. I share the house with my girlfriend and her sister, so $AU120/week tides us over very nicely. That's phone, permanent internet connection, electricity, gas, and so forth. Myself and my partner use bicycles to get around (free, except for the odd 20c patch to fix a puncture), and all other expenses are really recreational.
If you're in a badly paid $10/hr job, that's 12 hours a week. It's only 6 hours a week if you're a student tutoring computer science, and it's only about 3 hours a week or less if you're a reasonable IT professional. When you're talking about only $AU6240/yr to live, tax doesn't come into it -- incomes that low are almost entirely tax-free.
I work a lot more than the 3 hrs/week I need to in order to live because I have a few hobbies that require money to maintain. Indoor rockclimbing, the occasional good resturant, and a trip to the pub are the main money-burning pleasures. The extra money is being saved because I would like to retire to a farm and have my youth to enjoy while I'm at it. :)
I know this because when I applied for my current job (just over a year ago) I made it very clear on my CV (or resume if you must) that I was prepared to work 9am-5pm five days a week and that's it. So that filtered out a lot of potential employers even before I got to the stage of being offered interviews: I'm sure plenty of companies looked at my CV and immediately thought, ``that's not the sort of person we want working for us''. But that's OK, because they're not the sort of companies I want to work for either.
The result is that I got a lot fewer offers than I would otherwise have had. I chose my job from a smaller pool. But I'm happy with the hours I'm working, I'm being paid enough (though surely less than I could get if I were prepared to compromise on hours), and my employer's getting what I promised (i.e. expectations were pre-emptively managed!)
Is it worth reducing your choice of employers this much? Depends how much the Rest Of Your Life is worth to you. I'm married with two young children, I'm involved in my church, I like to read, to brew beer, to write free software and lots of other stuff - so for me, the answer was an emphatic yes. For you, it might legitimately be more important to earn an extra 50% - for example, because you're still Young, Free And Single (this forum is full of geeks, right :-) and you want to be in a position to pay off your mortgage early.
I guess the only concrete lesson here is, the earlier in the whole job-search process you say what you really want, the less of your and other people's time you'll waste, looking at jobs whose corporate culture isn't a good match for what you want. There's no point putting on your CV that you're a dynamic, go-getting, motivated, mutual individual when the truth is that you want your evenings and weekends. In other words, Honesty Is The Best Policy. Hmmm. Is that news?
Oh, and the other thing is that for anyone who's not worked this out yet, mobile phones are the instrument of Satan. Just say no.
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What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
I wonder how this compares to statistics of countries that have an even higher density of wireless communication devices, e.g. Finnland, Sweden, Norway?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I predict that unless and until some kind of revolution takes place, workers will continue to see thier leisure time eroded and their freedom dimished.
There's an easy way around all of this. Get paid by the hour instead of being a salary slave. Once you take a salary job you're expected to work whenever needed for however long. However, when you get paid by the hour (magically) you end up working only 40hrs/week. Amazing!
I worked as QA in salaried positions for almost three years and am so much happier now that I'm contracting. I don't mind putting in extra time when it's needed, but now that they have to pay time-and-a-half, it's only requested during emergencies. When salaried, it was requested more often than needed, or I was expected to work the same amount as the guy working 10-12 hour days even though he's doing it by choice, not out of necessity for the company's survival.
I was just thinking about this the other day when I had the desire to do other things besides slog away at my computer all day and night. I would love to have the gumption to give up this 'pipedream' ratrace. It doesn't seem right that we toil away all day (and night) for the profitability of others. I read some mention (above comment) about the necessity of a revolution of workers, but I know in my heart that it is an unlikely end, as people are inherently greedy and stupid. Everybody strives to be rich, famous, or remembered. It is simple human nature. Is it really too much to hope that one day Utopia can exist on earth?
Of course, no laptops, no dsl, no car, and no assurance on getting food the next day...
But the best life, of course, is the life of the no-studying student. an average of 30 hours/year (it may go up a bit if you count all the talking and all the tricks you have to pull to keep yourself in that priviledged but fragile state :P )!
Technology eats leisure time for breakfast. It eats work time too, regurgitating it into a sort of pseudo-leisure time where we are constantly on the border of 'keeping up with the latest technology related to our work' and just plain goofing off. (that would make an interesting poll - in your opinion is responding to posts on Slashdot and checking back fifty times a day to see how many points we got and what people's reactions are work or play?)
I remember when Vectrex, Atari, C64, Nintendo, etc.. came out, and I would sit in front of the TV/monitor playing the shittiest games on earth (ok the action was decent but the graphics were crap) with my eyes and hands sweating profusely as the sun was shining outside or the first snow of the year fell. It's only gotten worse since then.
We don't get enough fresh air and/or exercise. Not enough natural light. It's too easy to sit down in front of the TV/PC and veg out. People are naturally lazy, and technology makes it super easy to be lazy.
Another reason technology eats leisure time is that you either feel guilty for having played all day on the net and want to try and get a bit of work done so you stay late, or you're like me and work best under pressure so you procrastinate all day then have to stay late/work extra high-stress hours to meet a deadline.
Finally! Something to brag about, living here in the middle of nowhere(small town in alabama)!!! Rent goes for $250 to $300 a month for a nice room. :) Not on topic I know but I couldn't resist:)
since when does the government ever steal from you... HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA. Thats funny.
Technology has provided us with the ability to stay in touch if we so choose. As a kid, my dad would always find a Washington Post everyday during vacation. And he NEVER missed the news!
/. after a long weekend!
So technology is just the latest way to keep in touch. We now have access to any information that we want!
As far as taking a PDA on vacation? I'm down with that. I can get a little programming done in the car (if I am not driving, of course) or relax with some GameBoy-esque entertainment.
Although I certainly fit the demographic, I refuse to get a cell phone until absolutely necessary. There are times that I wish I had one, but I just allow myself that minor amount of stress of being out of touch. Stress? As a young person in this market, I am stressed when I get back to work and so many things have happened in technology. It's amazing how much I read on
Madness is only a state of mind
One of the reasons that I like living in my native Australia as opposed to the USA. When I came out of university .. 4 weeks vacation straight of the bat.
It is not the technology that is causing your job stress .. it is the way you society is being run. The USA has had all sorts of issues about how your society doen't believe enjoying life, well before technology became an issue. Just ask anyone who *doesn't* live there.
Another indicator I saw recently was that the USA spends far more of its GDP on health care than Australia .. but guess which countries health system was rated better by the WHO???
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I learned to type on an old typewriter like that one. I'm not sure when it was made, but we called it the Old Grey Mare(she ain't what she used to be). Gawd that thing was awful, but my mom wouldn't let us touch her IBM Selectric III typewriter.(sometimes we'd secretly use it when she wasn't around, but she'd always catch us because we'd do something dumb like forget to turn it off(never had to turn the Old Grey Mare off!) or forget to put the dust cover back on it just the way she did)
I bet she's still got that old piece of shit laying around the garage somewhere. Man my mom was a Nazi about that damn thing. If we jammed the keys or got them bent we'd get it. The worst thing was that she put stickers over all the letters and forced us to look at a chart of the keyboard layout like the one in the previous post so we wouldn't look at our fingers. It taught us to touch-type so I guess it wasn't all that bad.
The really scary thing? I'm going to change out our keyboard at home to Dvorak or another layout, and I'll probably white-out the keyboard so my wife and little ones have to learn to touch type too. I didn't know being a Nazi about your keyboard was heraditery.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Although there are no known studies relating to college students and their work hours, it seems they are also bound to their desks and dorms by environments in which faculty, friends and other members of the college community increasingly do their work online. Studies of time spent on instant messaging services would probably show staggering use. And research possibilities online are boundless.
Man, is that ever true. I'm a computer science student at Virginia Tech, which requires each student to have a computer. Every one of our CS assignments are posted (along with sample data files) on the course's web site and we even submit our programs to an automatic grader over the Internet. Even non-CS courses post MP3s of lectures or homework assignments, supplemental material, recommended readings, contact information, research support, and all that good stuff. Not only does almost every course (except maybe english courses) have a separate web page, but most of the CS courses I've seen let students join up on a massive listserv for discussion of problems and announcements of dates by professors. Some courses are even taught entirely online; the requirement being a quick-test every week or so (self-paced learning at its finest).
Tech's web page (http://www.vt.edu) not only allows prospective students to preview the university (and move around real-time in a sample dorm room) but also lets students check grades, room assignments, get news, check on event information, and register for classes each semester. It's insane how web-centric Tech is, and I'm sure other universities out there are just as dependent on the Internet as we are.
And Katz also makes a good point about instant-messaging services: AIM is a huge time-waster, and you don't feel like that much of a dork because you can IM buddies across campus, so it's not like you have an online-only relationship with these people. And as for the research part, that is also true: last semester I penned (or typed) an 11-page formal research paper on how the use of computers in schools like mine is affecting classroom cheating, and I didn't use a single tangible source - the bibliography was entirely from the Internet (and I got a B, too).
Don't catch me complaining though - I love the adoption and total acceptance of technology by major universities.
-ryry
-ryry
It's completely true. You folks who work 60, 70, 80+ hours a week have built your own cage. You allow yourselves to get stressed, you allow yourselves to work so long.
If you don't like your job, tell you boss. If he doesn't care, get a new job. If no jobs exist that you like -- change careers! There's something wrong if you don't like your job. You can't have everything. A sys admin complaining about phone calls is like a doctor who doesn't want to be beeped. (Get another job!)
We all wish we could have exactly what we wanted, but we're not going to have it.
Now that I work in high tech, I don't check my email when I'm at home. Not at night, not on the weekend. No stress. :)
you're blaming the wrong thing.
Why are people working harder? BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO. Back in the baby boomer days, a house was reasonably priced, credit was easy to get, things didn't cost an arm and a leg, and people were far more interested in "finding themselves", etc.
Nowadays, with credit nigh on impossible to get thanks to decades of fraud, housing prices that basically amount to the highest bidder, rent going through the roof, and even a cup of coffee costing $3, you've got to keep running just to stay in place. Check out the homeless, especially the WORKING homeless (they work hard, but $7 an hour won't pay the rent...)
I never chased the IPO millions because I wanted to live high on the hog - it was so I wouldn't have to stress out and worry and try and make enough money to pay for rent, a car, etc.
It isn't technology - it's housing prices like $275,000 for a two bedroom shoebox with no land. It's gas at 1.90 a gallon. It's rent at $1200 for a 2 bedroom place, if you're lucky to find one.
I could join an ashram, and evade the ratrace, but unless you inherit a pile or get vested stock, you're on the treadmill for life.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Technology does breed advances in productivity - but those advances get fed right back into the technologial loop. Indeed, at this time advances in productivity are not enough at this time to sustain the required exponentail growth curve. W need productivity-enhancing technologies that enable us to increase our prodictivity to the point where we actually work smarter, not harder.
Some of those technologies are appearing today, here and here, but it will take a while before they actually get implemented in the marketplace. In the meantime, expect people to work longer hours trying to sustain the exponential growth curve that is the foundation of our booming economy.
If anybody has a copy of Rhapsody for Intel to give away, drop me an email.
If you are in a market that is in high demand, which is about everyone, you have the power. Tell potential employers what you want. Demand the things that you need to feel comfortable in a new job. Don't sign contracts that severely limit your options because it is "standard for everyone."
When I first moved out of the helpdesk environment to enterprise level technical work, I didn't know how to handle HR people, recruiters and headhunters. I was under the impression that they were in control because they had the jobs. Soon I realized that by bending to their whims that I put myself in a place I didn't want to be.
I soon realized that with patience and the right attitude, I could get the job I wanted, making the money I wanted with the benefits I wanted. I told headhunters/recruiters/HR people I want this much money with this much vacation and these hours. For the people that said no, it is their loss. You know your skills, and you should know how valuable of a resource you are. I didn't always get exactly what I wanted, but with this attitude, I found that negotiations went much better. And when I was able to truly negotiate, I found that it was easier to find a job for me.
And one more thing. Don't be afraid to tell people NO (I like piss off better, but it's not as friendly). When you have it noted that your minimum salary is $85,000 and the same recruiter keeps calling/emailing you for a $8/hr helpdesk job, see the second sentence again.
You are ultimately in control of your free time. Your happiness and well being (watch out, I feel the spirit of Ayn Rand) are the ultimate factors in your life. Kick @$$, take names, and work how, why and where that makes you happy.
Peace!
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
I was suprised to see some facts and statistics in a Jon Katz article...
When reading this article I couldn't help but think about how these people chose these jobs. Any one of these "stressed out" individuals could find a less stressful workplace. It might mean a pay cut... it might mean moving to another part of the country, but if they're concerned enough about working long hours and being on call all the time then it might be worthwhile for them to look into those options.
The area I live in (DC area) is packed full of stressed out people... always on a business call on their cell phones, pagers going off, using a palm pilot or laptop in any spare time they have, and I've always felt that they do this to themselves. I've always managed to find a job that isn't stressful, and I've always managed to come up with vacation time, and I'm sure they could do the same.
I have to agree with Katz's view that "college students and their work hours, it seems they are also bound to their desks and dorms." With the increase in technology it seems that our generation is increasingly becoming the NOW generation. Everything has to be done, right now. Friends wonder why you don't answer your voice mail right away, email needs to be answered upon receipt. If we continue this trend of instant-responses we will become the working generation who does nothing but work.
"its great to be an american geek and somehow make a living at it" - michael stipe
As usual with Katz there are a couple really intelligent lines, then the rest is a bunch of sedititious babble backed by random facts thrown together. I think perhaps he doesn't truly understand the people he is evangelizing.
We bring much of it upon ourselves Mr. Katz. My company, which I won't mention for legal reasons, is rather generous. I'm right out of school, I make 75k/yr, I get, all said and done, about 3-4 weeks of vacation which I *may* use, without any argument from my boss. However, I choose not to use it, or to use only fractions of it. Why? Simple, like anyone else, I want more money and a lower risk for the future. The market is really great right now, but that will not always stay. The US Gov't is ensuring that the "hi-tech" market will get it's salaries under control soon. Personally, i want to get ahead and do my own thing, but I have to prove myself or no one will give me the money I need. I'm young, I'm single (women in an enginering company? please). I'm willing to work hard while I'm young. Most people in my age group did not take jobs based upon vacation time, most in fact told each other they probably weren't going to use any for the first few years. Why? We're not married, we have no family (beyond our parents), we can hang with our friends any time (and we took care of that in school)...it's time to be serious. Our criteria were: Salary, Stocks (and viability thereof), Benefits (financial), Location, Name Brand. Name Brand you say? My only queef about the "real world" is that it's still not what you know, or not what you can do, but where you do it, but I digress. Those were our parameters, we expect to work and we give it freely. My company does ensure that I CAN work long hours, but my boss doesn't watch my hours. I don't know anyone who feels that is the case. They do feel like they better work hard or someone else will get the $$$ but that is the mess WE make for ourselves.
Finally, whoever said that technology should make our work easier OR shorter? I know we like to exist on the idea that the entire world benefits from the life we in technologically advanced countries have, but I'd say the majority of the world population does not. We don't think about this on a daily basis, but much of the world is still in poverty. For the most part, we cannot do a thing about it. Sure we could "fairly" divide resources to split among everyone, and everyone would suffer at the same level. instead we have these "pockets" of wealth, with the idea (perhaps) that these areas will promote the overall well being of the whole faster than by dividing resources evenly. I know this isn't in any textbook, I don't even think it's planned, but this is how it happens by force. Until everyone is "happy" there can not and should not be rest for anyone. We have to work as hard as we can and still produce. Supply/Demand and competition ensures this always happens. If we don't perform our best, someone else will. There are still plenty of people who are willing to work with little to no vacation on a lot less money than I (for example) make. While it's important we have a certain level of happiness or I think we'll notice a drop in productivity, it's also impossible we'll ever see this overall happiness and quality of life until EVERYONE can enjoy it. That's as it should be. Technology should only ensure that we can provide more resources to more people. Not that we can provide more resources to some people. I realize of course things don't always happen this way in the short term, but in the longer term...it's hard to establish a base of comparison, but if you read history books and old novels, how many people enjoyed the "middle class" quality of life then as we do now? Percentage wise I'd say we're only somewhat better, but sheer #'s we've gone up orders of magnitudes. However, there are things we can see as possible on the horizon which promise good things for everyone...but it takes a LOT of work to develop those things (and the stuff we use which supports this system we have, call it overhead if you will).
It's not big brother or the evil corporate "man" it's what we choose to do. Bosses do get spoiled when they get used to people not wanting to use their vacations, but, that says more about the employee's than the boss. Then, always looming in the background, are the people who will gladly take what we feel is pathetic and work well on it, making sure we don't all get together and collectively go to the bahama's for 3 months out of the year.
I quack therefore I am.
employers aren't helping, actually encouraging employees to do personal chores on the Net -- from their desks
Since when?
Browser? I barely know her!
I'm not bound to my job or my work. I'm not enslaved by a boss. I'm not shackled down like some caged monkey forced to work.
I am addicted to computers. Its much more than a mere obsession. I was obsessed with Star Wars but you know what, throw in Binks and I walk away. What can you throw at me to make me walk away from computers. Possibly only a Nuke bomb, but you know what, before it hits me I will be wondering how it works.
Since the dawn of my time I've loved computers. I am a product of the Nintendo generation. I pull all nighters all the time. I work on things that nobody is asking me to do. I am an innovator, a creater, a problem solver, but I am not a slave to work.
My soul is already owned by the Silicon gods.
I like bagels
Well, throughout history those who work hard to compete win. What everyone knows, but doesn't really know how to say is that there is no way to choose not to compete. Choosing not to compete is just another way of choosing to lose. So the choices become work hard and long and get ahead, or enjoy yorself and lose. At this point there is way to escape the rat race.
What? - Einstein
Ever since i ditched my cell phone last year, i've felt freedom like i've never felt. it's so great to be able to park on the beach with no phone, no pc, no tv and just relax without anyone being able to get ahold of you, but it's getting harder and harder to do. Some hotels are even offering broadband connections now, which is nice, but it makes you think. ::wipes a tear::
on the other hand, i read slashdot for lesisure at work. it's a nice break :)
-Superb0wl
-Superb0wl
It's not that I'm lazy....it's that I just don't care.
What if I do my job so well, that no one else CAN do it? Then share your knowledge. Otherwise, if you die unexpectedly your company will collapse into a shambles and never recover. Because of this, you will go to HELL and BURN FOREVER! You've obviously missed the point of all this; people in the captalist world are putting money, their job, and all that WAY too far above their own personal well-being. Taking vacations improves you as a person, and makes you more satisfied with your life. Work can do this too, but its not enough to just work, you need to play too.
Sausage King of Chicago
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
when we look to children, we see, that creativity essentially comes from having time to think about 'nothing'. and that time is exactly what we don't have anymore.
This goes back to the:
guns don't kill people, people kill people
argument. The simple solution is to unplug every once in awhile! Another follows the:
I drive truck, but this is my racecar
line of thinking. meaning; DO NOT bring your work home!! Home is for you, it is a place to relax and get away from the stresses of the job. I can confidently state from experience that if your habits at home and at work are the same, you are going to have a burnout. I live in the unfortunate situation where my work is where I live and I am forced to work at home as often as at work (Military college if any are wondering), and I regularly suffer from burnouts, to the order of 2 - 3 per year.
The simple truth is that being in an environment that is incredibly close to that of your work kills productivity and makes stress levels skyrocket.
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
Direct retail has always had different demands from standard industry, the attention to the hours away from 8-5 is crucial in our profit.
Yet, as obvious as that is, I still find it terrible that some of our team members have pagers that are taken home with them nightly. These pagers receive direct support calls from hundreds of stores with minor dink problems, but still wake us up at 2am to fix a broken cash register.
Quite often, people work 8-5, then go home and get paged 5 times during dinner, and 3-4 times during the night. When carrying a pager, you can't leave your house for the weekend. If you're farther than half an hour away from a terminal that you can fix the problem from, you are in violation of the policy.
The question is: Is it right for business to expect this much from their employees? These people are salaried workers who get paid an extra $30 for the entire week that they have this pager. This pager can often deliver 30-40 extra hours of work on its own, breaking spirits ruthlessly of employees who trade the pager faster than Democrats with a poorly rolled joint.
I, for one, wouldn't be caught dead with that pager, and will continue to code and create the problems for these people to fix. Nice to be on this end of the spectrum.
Cash Rules Everything Around Me
It seems sort of ludicrous that so many people are suprised by the state of our information driven society. Granted some individuals created inovated some form technological advance in the attempt to become more efficient thus creating more leisure time for themselves. They also had an alterior motive as did many of the followers that subsequently started utilizing whatever technology it may be: superiority. Life with continuing technological advances is a life of playing catch up. There are the forerunners that want to seperate themselves from the pack and those on their tails trying to keep up in the race for superiority. As the compitition continues escalating the ammount of time consumed to keep up will continue growing as well, as depicted by the last 10 years. This will not keep going on at this rate however. At certain points people will begin deciding that the benifits are outwieghted by the costs of technology and find new ways in new industries to make a living. Industries that don't require so much out time/effort outside of the workplace in what would then be there free time. With the contenders dropping out at various points in time a devision starts to create between the group that has decided they want out and those who still feel it is worth it to stay in the race. Those who are still in the race after time will have succesfully seperated themselves from the crowd and will have the ability, if they chose to/still knew how to, enjoy their free time since the compitition is no longer on their heels. Point in sort: some time in the future we will have more leisure time again, probably not in our measley lives however.
***Yeah, I'm the Million Dollar Man.*** You shot who in the what now?
quote:
:-)
"Although there are no known studies relating to college students and their work hours, it seems they are also bound to their desks and dorms by environments in which faculty, friends and other members of the college community increasingly do their work online. Studies of time spent on instant messaging services would probably show staggering use. And research possibilities online are boundless."
It seems to me that the lines between being stressed, being caught and being addicted are mingling and blurring the vision.
Here the way I explain to myself the things I observe:
Getting caught:
1. You buy into the sales pitch of believing in having "the library of the world" at your fingertips makes you "more informed and will give you an advantage to be more competitive" than your peer.
2. Talking to each other. Thoughts of others you read online involve your mind much more than any person you would talk to in the physical world. Dilemma :
a. You can respond,
b. You can read thousands of thoughts and might think of responses thousands of hours.
3. Being a "smart guy" and becoming a "rich guy" has sooooo much appeal. Some even think it's sexy. (parents also can't help to teach that to their kids...what elso can you offer to give them hope to get going ?)
4. You want to become a guru-geek. Your online reading is now justified and necessary; you do something useful, you even have noble, political or social ideas to go with it. Feels so good...
Getting stressed:
1. technology changes within days and months, you have to keep up to date, you can't quit, if you want to be competitive in the guru-geek world. Scares the hell out of you the other guy could know something you don't. People are on your back online all the time to "suck your brain" for free and take your time away from real work.
2. you need to make money and work for one of the "www.fuckedcompany.com". You give your best, but for whom and for what ?
Getting addicted:
1. the online conversation is more appealing to you than the conversation with your peers in the physical world.
2. outsmarting the others, making your bet and occasionally winning feels good - on the short term. So, you need to repeat it very often to feel good.
Some hope (being an optimist today):
Coders desperately needed to solve the problem of getting disconnected from the dangers of the net.
This is _the_ new technology field with long-term prospectives. You actually can make money with it on an 8am - 5 pm basis, 30 days holidays and longtern job security included.
Demand will be unlimited. Your consultancy start-up business has actually chance to support your family for a whole lifetime.
Happy coding.
>Nearly seven in 10 said they were "somewhat" to >"extremely" stressed, an astonishing contrast to >adults over 65: 31 percent of them said they had >almost no stress in their lives at all. My gosh, 70% of 18-35 year olds report having stress. 30% of 65+ year olds report having no stress. What an astonishing contrast! Hey, wait a second, this means that the breakdown for each age group is exactly identical! Well duh.
Yes that is far too true about that need to be the best worker and that feeling is exploited to such a degree by some employers as to cause people to feel inadequate no matter what they accomplish.
This can totally destroy someone's confidence in their own ability which makes them feel even more stressed and filled with nervous anxiety.
My own personal experience...I was looking for a new gig and I picked CompanyX over CompanyY for less money because I thought CompanyX would be more fun and I would work normal or close to normal hours.
Well that ended up being far from the case instead I was soon working double the amount of hours I thought I would be working and not being compensated for it since I was on salary.
When, in an attempt to draw the line as some people have pointed out, I voiced my disapproval of the situation and was told that they expect long hours and you are either in the boat or not.To make it worse they hired someone new of less skill than me for the position I thought I had.So I quit and decided to develop Ask Pete! and do contract web development work before I ended up completely burned out.I have had repeated run-ins with my "boss". I am a Phd student nearing completion. Throughout my time here, my thesis advisor has tried and tried to convince me that I should be here 7 days a week for as long as it takes...and stay late.
He even once went so far to say that my marriage should be on the verge of trouble - THEN I know I'm here working enough. I'll have none of it. I am among the older grad students in my department. I have already lived a real life before I came to grad school (military with combat experience in Desert Storm). I simply cannot and will not take any job seriously after that. Not so seriously that I would even entertain the idea that I should be working to the point of wrecking my relationship with my wife. He may be able to convince, cajol, threaten younger, fresh, inexperienced, and naive fresh college graduates that that is the way it is supposed to be, but it wont cut it with me. Have some perspective.
NO JOB is so important that you should risk your health, your sanity, your personal relationships to get work done. I ALWAYS relax and do something totally unrelated to my graduate work on my weekends. I have no problem taking a vacation and not thinking about my work.
I frequently disagree with Katz, but he's hit the nail on the head this time.
I work for a great company. Great people, good benefits, good compensation. However, not only do I have a company pager, but I haven't had even one 40 hour week in months. It's not a startup, but we still have to work like it is. I haven't been out of town since New Years. I got paged and tangled up in an hour's worth of work right after sundown on July 4th. You know, right when all the fun happens. I took a day off due to severe burnout at the beginning of May with the understanding that we would finish a project and I could take some more serious time off. Well, the project is done, but we're still "under the gun."
The thing that has started to really bother me about the technology industry is that there is all this brainpower that is essentially going to waste. At most jobs, you put in your time, and go home. There, you can read, write, listen to music, think, or otherwise generally better yourself. But after sane + n hours of work each day in the tech industry, I frequently find myself mentally exhausted. The really frustrating thing is that most web programming related problems are not interesting in any deep way. It's "How do we force the browser and the server to behave the way we want them to?" "Why doesn't this damn library work as advertised?" "What do you mean, that functionality is broken?" Spending all of one's time trying to find workarounds for things doesn't enrich one's inner life, but it takes enough thought that when one finally gets a break, concentrating can be difficult. Meanwhile, time marches on. Every 60 hours you give your employer is 60 hours of YOUR life. You can't get that back. Is it worth it? I guess so; I'm still here, but ever more ambivalent.
heck I to work for the rest. Looking after kids s the hardest bit of my life. Yes its also the most enojoyable, but boy are they tiring.
I would agree if we were whining for things that other people need. But the people complaining about "stress" are about as self-centered as you can get.
"Look at me," they say, "I have got it bad. I am a massive ball of stress."
And when you tell them that what they need to do is work less, spend more time with their family, stay out of debt, and take the time to help those around them, they look at you like you were some kind of bug. The fact of the matter is that the more time you spend worrying about how you feel, and what you want the more stress you are going to feel.
Perhaps you can already see where I am going with this. It isn't the whiners that are improving the lot of people around the world, it's the doers. If the people that are out helping also do a little "evangelizing" for their cause this does not make them "whiners."
What cage?
I am nearly debt free, I have a lifestyle that is not extravagant and could easily be supported by a job with a lower salary. I spend a ton of time with my beautiful wife and my little girl. I have a life outside of work. I volunteer as a Scout Master (meaning I get to go fishing on a regular basis). I have a garden, I am active in my church, and I am on good terms with my neighbors. Hell, I live in Idaho, and contrary to what Mr. Katz thinks it's not such a bad life here.
Just because you are caught up in the rat race doesn't mean that everyone else is. It's my opinion that the biggest cause of stress in Americans is the fact that they are caught up in a world of consumer debt. They can't afford to stop working even for a moment because if they do the bill collectors will take away their house.
If I don't owe "the man" he can't control me, and so I have structured my life in such a way that I live well within my means. This means making sacrifices like not having the newest computer hardware (at home anyway :), and not driving the fanciest car. I don't eat out much, preferring instead to sit down to dinner with my family. It means that I have to save up my money for larger purchases so that I can pay cash instead of using credit, but that guarantees that I stay within my budget.
If you don't like how your life is going, feel free to whine. Just don't expect everyone else to feel sorry for you. I would personally suggest taking some responsibility for your own personal happiness. Instead of complaining about how everyone is under so much stress, why not take an inventory of the things that are causing you stress. Then work out a way to eliminate these stresses from your life. If working long hours is giving you stress, find a job that requires fewer hours. If working fewer hours means making less money, find a way to get by with less.
I use my own personal example because it illustrates the things that I have done to escape from the rat race. Chances are good that your priorities will be different, and so your escape route will also be different, but telling me that I love my cage simply because I refuse to join the chorus of whiners is simply blinding you to the fact that there are people who are successfully dealing with the problem of stress.
In the end, who's the person in the cage? Is it the person who owns little but owes nothing, or the person who has everything but spends every waking minute working to pay his creditors?
1. No hard lifting.
2. Indoor work, air conditioned.
3. No hazmat contact.
4. No serious risk of disease.
5. Equity/profit participation, on top of good pay.
6. Unparalleled tolerance of all matters of race, creed, more holes than God intended your body to have, etc.
7. Workers in very short supply, and can call the tune.
8. No corrupt union taking a cut of your pay to conduct political activities you don't agree with.
Oh for the days when entrepeneurialism meant buying a ship, filling it with a crew (of really swell guys, I'm sure), and sailing forth to rip off the natives of some hell-hole so you can sell their products back home and get rich, or die trying. Right?
I wrote parts of this stuff
I'm in the slightly nutty situation of living out-of-town where I work during the week, then coming home (5 hr drive each way) to spend the weekend. While I'm home, I focus on my wife & little boy, wife's mom, our close friends, church, etc. It's a rare weekend when I bother to check even my personal email. On the other hand, during the week I work late, take stuff home, work at the apartment, studying related to work, etc.
Not exactly the scenario JK has in mind, but it's interesting how my working and personal life is getting redefined by my job -- I've had to rigidly separate the two.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
If you earn little enough, you don't pay taxes. Of course, you'll want to finangle it so that taxes aren't being taken off at source, so that you're not effectively loaning the government your money interest-free for the year.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I forgot telecommuting..but it's a good point. There, the boundaries between work andplay are even tougher, no? Would love to hear from some of you who do it..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I read this post and thought, "gee, this is interesting"...Robokatz..an idea whose time has come
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Yes, it's not just a matter of employees demanding this. We all have new expectations about technology. College kids stay on ICQ for hours because they say they fear their friendw will think somethings wrong if they don't answer instantly. Companies may be exploiting this, but it's much bigger issue than that. It goes to our expectations for technology.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I think you have only to read these posts to see that this is the right place for this article. There is much work and leisure time going on around
jonkatz@slashdot.org
More and more people feel its their duty to be the best worker, lest they should lose their job, and then who would be for their broadband? Its not uncommon to see people with a PDA working when ever the get the chance to, in some cases people enjoy the work and enjoy working on projects. Personally, i'd Telecommute and just live shabbily at my house.
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Insert Witty Sig Here
Ok first and formost, what you call "survival" was really barely subsistence living. Secondly, their survival rates were very low by all accounts. Thirdly, 4 hours a day is way off the mark, most every respected authority points to a dawn to dusk work ritual, with perhaps a few breaks. In addition, beyond what we supposedly "know" about them, just look at the actually documented primitive societies of today and the recent past (i.e., 200 years or so). I assure you, no where will you find any society like what you mention. Unless you assume these societies to be actually less developed, you're simply mistaken. What do you think a society with this much free time would do with themselves? Make art? Where is the evidence? Granted, they didn't have much in the way of tools or metals, but we've found very little, if any, evidence of leisure activity.
If this hunter gather lifestyle is really so easy, why do you see people in India and the like starving in metropolisis when their is all this food abound outside of them? You think you just pick it off the trees? No, sorry. Food is scarce, even with modern technology, it takes farming to even approximate what you see today.
Anyways, the bottom line is that you're way way off the mark. Generally speaking, people are pretty rational beings. If there is a lifestyle that requires less work and yields greater happiness, people would flock to it.
Understand this basic reality, and you might come to further appreciate modern advances.
C'mon, give us some credit.
I work a LOT of hours (although, I've recently cut back to spend time with my kids). Why do I do this? Have I been suckered by my employers? Have I been tempted by technology? Am I some mindless sheep that can't make decisions on my own?
The answer is no. I work the long hours for three reasons. One, job satisfaction. I feel like I'm doing the best job I can when I put in the hours needed to hit a deadline under budget. I feel good about myself when I'm early on a project, exceed expectations, and can report I spent less than predicted. That's just me.
Second, I don't want my wife to have to work. I feel better about the idea that my wife is home raising our children well, not letting some daycare do it. She can enjoy her life (which inevitably makes my life easier) and our kids will be brought up with the values WE want them to have.
The final reason is I want to stop working someday. I watched my grandfather work until he died. I am watching my father do the same. My other grandfather is still working at 70+. They're doing this because they can NOT comfortably retire. That won't be happening to me. I'm busting my ass to put away enough money that, after putting two children through college, I can retire and spend time with my wife living reasonably well. I'm willing to forgoe leisure time now and endure some stress to retire early and enjoy it.
No, I don't think we've been somehow "tricked" into killing ourselves for our job. Many of us conciously make the decision to do so for a variety of reasons. It IS our life to spend.
-Jer
Hell yeah.
My time from M-F 9am to 6pmish comes relatively cheap. time beyond that, expectations that I'll be around to work on the weekends, nope. unpriced. you can't buy that time off me. sorry. My job I enjoy, and it is part of my life. NOT my whole life. gotsta do salsa/merengue dancing, gotsta trek around the hillcountry, gotsta party.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Hi there.
I telecommute from Toronto to work for a group of health professionals based out of San Francisco. Our server is somewhere in Wisconsin, I think.
As for work, I do a 9 to 5 or 10 to 6 day 5 days a week. One hour off for either lunch or taking a bike ride or walk in the middle of the day to get out of the house.
My boss has been getting worried because I've been with the company almost a whole year and haven't taken any time off! Because we're in the health-related business, time off and vacations are mandatory: we are encouraged to take every single day off we have coming to us, and that's very unusual from what I've seen.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The essay makes some good points - we're allowing technology to make our lives more complicated and less relaxing. I know I myself do that way too often.
However, the point is, and always has been technology is going to have results depending on how we use it. So, we've chosen to use it to make life more stressful in many cases. Let's face it, we only have ourselves to blame if we do it to ourselves or let it happen to us.
It's not a "good" versus "bad" technology or the white-hate workers versus the black-hat evil Corporatists. Life's divisions aren't that simple.
Don't like it? Change it. Take that vacation time, put your foot down, don't overtax your employees, find that job that gives you a break, stop using the net to fill up every spare moment, etc.
Our worst problem is somehow the ideal that more "work" is somehow noble, admirable, a sign of superiority. So we let ourselves work harder and longer - but for what result? Doesn't seem worth it to me.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
If CmdrTaco and Hemos would quit publishing such interesting stories, I could actually spend my summer vacation doing something worthwile, rather than reading, posting, and listening to BBC Radio One on the net all day.
But seriously, this trend is only going to get worse, and I'm not happy about it.
Isn't it funny how we keeep hearing the following?
a) technology workers are in demand.
b) Technology workers are overworked.
Folks.. when your trade is in demand, it's an employee's market.. you can CHOOSE where to work, and BARGAIN for the deal you want.
The problem? Simply that a great deal of these workers are TOO YOUNG. Do I mean they have no skill? No.. I Just mean they are inexperienced at life, and don't realize the importance of treating yourself right.
I once asked my guru what it meant to him to be doing his job right.
(this man has more degrees than I can count, and is the best programmer I"ve ever seen. THe things he thinks about for fun boggle my mind.).
His words to me were 'do your job correctly, but do it from 9 - 5.'. In other words.. finishing that piece of code on time for your project is good, but finishing it without dedicating your life to it is better. It's a job.
Don't mess with the batteries, get a PCS phone (I love my Samsung 3500). It comes with free caller ID and free voicemail. I can see immediately if it's my boss or my girlfriend calling. If it's my boss, he goes into voicemail. 60 seconds later, I check my voicemail and see if the office is on fire of if they just decided to move a deadline up. If the office is on fire, I call back with "I just got out of the shower, I'll be there in 5." If they moved my deadline up, I stroll in on Monday and say, "Oh yeah, I was in the country all weekend and I didn't have digital service." Just use the technology for your own purposes.
-B
And on a good day, my wife and I are both awake enough after the kids go to bed that we can talk for a while.
I was following you until that point. You just talk. Well, there goes your credibility.
8*)
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Robert Putnam just wrote Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, addressing this issue. His conclusion, as suggested from the title, is that in fact, we have more leisure time than ever, and that we engage in more leisurely activities than ever before. The wrinkle is, though, that we're no longer doing them in the sorts of social groups we have, historically. People are moving from place to place and no longer making the same sorts of social bonds, and while the internet has allowed for more social interaction, it has encouraged us to stay home and participate alone. We're still bowling, but we're doing it alone.
PS, the amazon.com link is for reference use only. Please continue to boycott them owing to their abuse of software patents.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
"In l999, the researchers report"
:)
"But there's a huge trade off for this convenience. Inforum's l999 Survey"
I've noticed this before in Jon's articles, and while I like his articles sometimes (including this one) I think the use of the lowercase letter "L" for a one in 1999 is somewhat strange. Maybe Jon is working too hard?
Consider this open source editing Jon, check that out, huh?
-- iCEBaLM
I remember 20 years ago my father being stuck at the house, because he couldn't go anywhere in case he got called. Nowadays, he's got a cell phone. This means he can go out without worrying.
Heh heh.
I took a month off to go to New Zealand this past winter (well, winter in the US; summer in NZ).
I had no net and or even telephone contact with the rest of the world when I was there (except for a couple phone calls to my family). Once I left the US, my goal was to make it as if I fell off the face of the earth.
It was well worth it. I spent the first week back trying to remember how to type.
I don't think that technology - or more precisely the way businesses expect us to work because of technology - has eliminated leisure. What it has done is profoundly changed the nature of it.
My parents had holiday and two-week vacations every year. I don't, and am amazed that they avoided going crazy under those conditions.
When I'm "on contract" I don't have holidays, evenings, or even many weekends. Even if I'm only working 40 hours "on the clock," I average at least 60 when you include everything I need to do to keep current in this field. But my vacations (every 2-3 years) generally last 2-3 months, with the time evenly split between travel and career "skills sharpening" activities.
My parents think I'm crazy, but a two-week break just isn't long enough for me to recover. At the same time it is so long that it causes major disruptions in the office. (Not because I don't know how to minimize these problems, but businesses have deemphasized these practices.)
The downsides to this approach? It requires much more financial planning to prepare for a three-month period of unemployment than a two-week vacation. Many people can't pull it off, often for reasons beyond their control. Also, if you don't take a long break and hit "burnout" it can take a *long* time to recover - 6-12 months "off contract." That's long enough that it can be harder to reenter the job market.
But the upside is that you can do things that our parents could only dream of. Want to hike the length of the Appl. Trail? No problem. Want to live in Paris all spring, practicing your French? Pack your bags!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Ah, the forty-hour week, a modern middle class myth. The people who believe that we used to have a lot of leisure time are the same people who think that the 50's style non-working housewife was the "normal" way to be.
A hundred years ago, if I lived on a farm, do you think I'd be sitting around with the time to read three books a week? Would I be able to take more than a day or two for "vacation"? Who would watch the kids? the livestock? Do you think I's never pull an all-nighter in the barn for a sick animal?
A hundred years ago, if I lived in the city and didn't have the fortune to be upper or upper middle class, do you think I'd have any leisure? Did the women and children working sixty-plus hours a week sewing in dimly-lit sweatshops with chained doors take vacations? Did they even take sick days?
Don't think the past was such a bed of roses. The freedom technology gives us is what lets us have the leisure to whine about how little leisure we have.
-- I'm not evil, I'm
I'd wager that one of the main culprits for the blurring between work and play for our little subculture is the fact that most of us enjoy our work, and probably have been using computers as a hobby longer than we have been working with them for a living. I know that's the case for me. I spend most of the day as a "swiss army knife" tech doing a little bit of everything from support to web development to playing nursemaid to the servers (we are way underfunded
To keep from burning out I have to disconnect sometimes. For me it means staying away from the computers as much as possible on the weekends and (gasp!) making non-geek friends, so I have social activities that don't even allow me to "talk shop". My geek friends that also do this for a living are pretty much the same way and we make a point to do outside activities as often as possible and actually get exersize. I hate to say it but a few hours of physical exersize a week really burns away the stress. Oddly enough I've also noticed that nearly all of my geeks friends really enjoy shooting as well, must be because being good a shooting requires focus and concentration, something that seems to come natural to geeks. It's also a great way to relieve stress, esp when you take a bunch of crap hardware out to the range with your buddies and execute it.
Anyway, the point is Katz is right, the line between work and leisure is becoming and blurred, and we need to do something about it. Like I said I've found that the best way to do that is develope other interests outside of technology so I can unplug on a regular baisis, exotic vacations help too, I just got back from a week in Nassau, while I admit I did check and send some email I spent less than an hour in front of a computer while I was there compared to the 80 or so I do normally. And you know something, after the break both my work and leisure computer use was fun again.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
A typical day for many people includes one to two hours of checking web sites and answering unimportant email. The result is that they have 25% less time to do their normal work in. ICQ is another intrusion. It makes you feel like you need to interrupt what you're doing and respond. When you come down to it, most ICQ and email intrusions and web sites have no direct value. If you decided to just do your job and not check Slashdot (or whatever) daily, then after a month you'd find that you really didn't miss anything. Somebody posted some misleading benchmarks and there was heated debate. Gnome or KDE or Apache or the kernel had a minor patch that doesn't benefit you. Some new graphics card or CPU got 5% faster, though nobody cares because the price is too high or the drivers are crappy. There were some supposed breakthroughs in genetics or quantum computing or somesuch that doesn't have a relation to anything tangible (i.e. it's vaporware). I bet you get more done during that month than the previous two.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
This show is enlightening because it demonstrates how much additional time we actually do have because of technology. And what the vast majority of us do with that extra time is (drumroll please)... watch TV!
Now, that being said, I don't disagree with the article. Employeers do seem to be demanding more and more of our leisure time. And I don't think some of the demands are justified. But, if you're good at what you do, you are golden. There's a technology labor shortage - a big one. As long as this exists, those who are technically capable can either:
That being said, let's all go out and demand that we only work 60 hour weeks so that we can have some time to catch up on the Simpsons!
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Yes, technology was supposed to unburden us working folk from our jobs. However, in the new hightech world, there have to be those that really do make the world go 'round. These people live for that kind of environment -- I was like that for several years, but it becomes a serious drain on one's life (read: life expectancy.)
Additionally, the problem is multiplied by people not leaving their work at work. The pager, cell phone, and/or laptop are generally accepted without question. People go home and continue to work on their employer's problems.
Welcome to the new "dot com" world...
who are working longer
hours, taking fewer and shorter vacations (when they do go
away, they take their cells, Palms and laptops along) and say they are more
stressed than any other segment of the population.
I only stress out when my cable connection at home goes down. It went off at 9pm one day for maintenence. I honestly didn't know what to do.
Listen, I code for a living, I code for fun. But I also put effort into getting plenty of exercise and sunshine. It's all about finding the balance that works well for you. Find that balance and your stress will go away.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
I also work in High Tech. I'm employed for the summer, and work as a student otherwise =)
But i've got experiences working with Startups. And let me tell you, for our generation of technical geeks, many of us are working LONG hours. Why would we work these long hours, only to stress ourselves?
First, is money. We make lots of money and pay for school, or debts (from school, etc). Secondly, with some, long hours could translate into great rewards. We see the rewards many others are reaping from the windfalls seen at other companies and hope to get the same thing.
The last major factor i would attest to is Knowledge. We strive to learn to give us better leverage in the market place when we are done. Or, if you are already in the marketplace (done school) you are working hard to move up the ladder.
Many people in high tech worked long hours in school and see it natural to carry on the same work habits when they are done.
Now, on the other side of the coin, is the impact of technology on the non-technical people. Take one's parents for example.
Being the tech guy in the family, I introduced many many people to technology and it's wonders.
Now, my parents surf the net, book travel info online, do online banking, communicate via email, and do a host of other things that otherwise take more of their time (driving to the travel agency, making appointments, research travel, etc)
The last thing i'd comment about is the fact that even though we save time here and there, we alwasy find ways to use that saved time. Some use it to surf more, some work more, some people might actually relax more. I'm sure it consists of a myriad of different activities and would be hard to pinpoint to a small handful of activities.
Stress is having deadlines and not having the tools to meet them.
Yes, I have a laptop at work that goes home with me at night. Usually the only reason I fire it up at home is to sync my personal and work calendars and address books. I spend hours of my time at home online. Most of that is corresponding with friends all over the world who I have met online, friends I wouldn't have otherwise.
I do have too many activities competing for my time. Most of them have nothing to do with technology. When I play with my kids, I use Legos, not NICs. I love to read, and I lose sleep staying up to finish a good novel. And on a good day, my wife and I are both awake enough after the kids go to bed that we can talk for a while.
Technology is not morally neutral, but we can choose whether it is a tool for us to get on with our lives, or a tool for other people to intrude on them. I choose the former.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
This is pretty similar to my experience. It's not so much that we have less leisure time but that technology tends to cause leisure and work blend together to a certain extent. I use my Palm Pilot to play chess or read a novel when I take a break then I use it to track software installation when I get back to work. Half the stuff I look at when I surf the web usually comes in handy later on when I'm working on a project. Half the stuff on Slashdot is directly relevant to what I do and the other half is just fun.
I like things this way. I would much rather be in a job where I have the flexibility to do personal chores and relax when I need to than one where I have to be constantly on duty and can't relax for a moment even if that job has better hours.
If I want to cut myself off from work, I do it. I don't carry stuff with me on vacation unless I want to. If I have to interupt a vacation because I'm needed at work then they better have crisis on their hands that only I can solve. Otherwise, I'll see everybody when I get back with my tacky souvenirs!
Does this
My job I enjoy, and it is part of my life. NOT my whole life
Exactly. One of my "mantras" is "My job is not my life. My life is not my job."
It clears up your thought processes, and lets you finish more complex thoughts.
It's been proven that infants and children who listen to classical music can compelte longer, more complex thoughts. This obviously gives them advantages.
It would seem that this constant barrage of information that we're being flailed with (or flailing ourselves with) during all of our waking hours could very well have the opposite effect. I've got 9 desktops on my machine, and I monitor at least 20 other machines at work, plus 4 or 5 at home, plus constant bug reports, security issues, general news....
Welcome to Short Attention Span Theatre. It's no wonder so many people these days have the attention span of a ferret on a double espresso.
Another indicator I saw recently was that the USA spends far more of its GDP on health care than Australia .. but guess which countries health system was rated better by the WHO???
Why is Pete Townshend rating health care systems?
human://billy.j.mabray/
"Every good system has a backup." -- Dale Hanchey
I guess Katz does have a point, though, about the nature of work. I work about 50 hours a week at a techie job that is realtively stressful. I'd be much better off working 60 hours a week in a mine, or maybe working 80+ hours a week trying to make a living on a farm as my great grandparents did at the turn of the century. Now *those* were some healthy, non-stressful jobs compared to sitting in front of a computer 10 hours a day.
Help me, I'm being oppressed by The Man.
Nope, the quote says "somewhat" to "extremely". That would mean what is left is "low to no", which is pretty much the same thing said of the over 65 crowd.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Before, my boss had no problems calling 18/7 (I was once yelled at for not being able to get a FedEx set up on 12/24.), considered a $1K/year raise (one of two raises in 5 years) "huge", and I spent the last two years spending an AWFUL lot of time trying to keep myself employed. No vacation, no benefits because any of those things would eat into the grant money.
Now I work for a .com which expects products to roll-out on rather short time scales, but I am paid about 60% more than I was before, have my own health and dental insurance, and a 401k plan. On average I work about 45-48 hours a week and have 15 vacation days.
Life's too short to waste it on a company that doesn't care about you.
last week, my boyfriend and i took a "vacation". i was fortunate enough to be cut off from work (cheap employer won't pay for pagers that work outside of houston!), but he still had his ball and chain - not me, his pager. he was paged at least five times during the week - "emergencies" where he *had* to take the call.
:(
rediculous!!!
also, when we first started dating, it took us 3 months before we could go on a movie date. between his on-call and mine, there wasn't time!
this is all so sad. when is technology going to give us our lives back? i'm afraid that when i have children, i'll never get to see them
In the days of the Romans, they used "Bread and Circuses" to keep the population stated. Today, bread is not a problem. There is more than enough food for all on Earth, and those who need to be controlled are given the bread. Those who do not are left to starve or are simply shot.
Gladiatorial matches have been replaced with WWF and sitcoms, but technology has offered new challenges to those who rule our lives.
The wealthy and powerful realized long ago that allowing technology to develop and reach the masses would allow them to do the same work in less time, so they filled our minds with visions of a "Jetsons" future with flying cars and 3 day work weeks.
In reality, they were pushing us harder. The changes were small and hard to notice.
The principle was simple. If you put frog in boiling water, it leaps out, but if you put it in cool water and slowly turn up the heat, it remains until cooked.
This is how they have kept us under control. Instead of allowing us to finish our work in less time and thus have the leisure to improve our minds and challenge their power, they have increased our work and demanded that everyone accomplish more.
Work using technology IS more efficient. We accomplish 40% more than our parents did in the same time, but we are asked to do 60% more than they did and are thus destroyed and controlled.
Here endeth the lesson.
Matthew Miller,
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
As a job, being a sysadmin is a lot like being a plumber or electrician. Those guys have work rules and get overtime. This keeps them from being jerked around. Sysadmins need a union too. And there is one.
Click here to organize your workplace.
I think when I work too hard it's not a result of technology as much as it is a result of the combination skills shortage and downsizing trend-- I often find that there just plain old aren't enough resources to do the necessary work.
Of course, perhaps I complain less because I work in Europe-- "short vacations" are relative when you start with 26 paid days vacation. :)
Because the snark was a...
It's unfortunate that the situation that has evolved in this (the USA) and other countries is one wherein the vast majority of individuals view their employment as a burden or as a task which must be performed without much of a sense of enjoyment in order to survive. One sees this sentiment echoed all across popular culture, where the weekend is hailed as a glorious promised land of "free time" and respite from whatever coal mine folks are subjected to during the week. This pair of dichotomies, one temporal (week/weekend) and one personal (work/play), is an entity that I'd call both negative and unnecessary in nearly all cases.
Of course, Jon was likely mentioning this because of his understanding that many of those involved in various tech jobs embody said sentiments. Still...Looked upon with only a slight prismatic twist, this could be seen to be a positive trend as opposed to the converse. If there is indeed a more widespread trend toward blurring between work and play, the available options naturally gravitate further in the direction of two extremes: Either find work which truly fits what you consider something akin to play, and brings you fulfillment and enjoyment, or become further trapped in the sense that one must cling fervently to whatever time one can find to escape from the work that it forced upon them.
I suppose it really boils down to a fairly fundamental part of existence. That is, find something that helps you to learn, grow, and hopefully exist comfortably; Then structure your life so that there need not be a dichotomy which forces you away from that entity on a regular basis. Plenty have solved this particular puzzle, and I doubt one would find many of them viewing a "blurring between work and play" to be anything but a positive change. In fact, such a blurring is probably generally enacted in the first place by the people in question, as opposed to some outside force acting upon them.
What about folks here? Do many of you embrace this dichotomy in your personal life, or do you tend to view your employment as simply an extension of your overall existence? One could naturally follow into a discussion of the myriad dualistic ideas that have found their way into tacit use in Western culture (either explicitly or implicitly), but this particular facet is one which can be both acutely and broadly damaging to those upon whom it is forced and by whom it is accepted.
I think just about everyone here is all too aware of the extremely short leash technology allows. Geeks, more than anyone else, are inclined to cut off all communication when they go on vacation because... hell, even sitting at home with no faxes, cell-phones, e-mail is a vacation!
I'd have been much more fascinated if you'd covered two points.
Now I know, by the time I post this, moderators will have moved on. I just hope I'm not the only here who thought that while yes, valid point jon, the /. crowd already knew that.
Ok, well, maybe we can measure the musician's output by 'volume' ;-)
seanmeister
I have two goals in life:
1) Never own a pager
2) Never own a cell phone that my employer has the number of
These were my dad's goals in life before mine, and I think he was absolutely correct. No, I don't want to be reachable at any time. What's in it for me? Unfortunately, it means that I have to be a little bit pickier when it comes to which job I take, but I think it's worth it not to have to think about work when I'm home.
Be nice to your friends. If it weren't for them, you'd be a complete stranger.
Tech workers
Stock brokers
Marketing researchers
Strippers
Truck drivers
Pizza delivery guys
Bicycle couriers
Even the guy who works at Starbucks can easilly bolt for Caribou if his manager gets on his nerves. When unemployment is under 5%, it means that just about everybody who wants a job has one, and there are lots of companies out there begging for people.
Also, becoming one of the technology priests is very easy... take a temp job on a help desk phone bank and start learning the ropes. In two years your salary demands will double. Eventually, everybody who wants to be a computer geek becomes one.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The M$ track is far easier for a newbie to break into. Land a job on a help desk, take the MCSE tests, and you might eventually get to be an admin or maybe an Exchange Server support guy.
That does not change the fact that an old guru can hit the ground running, doing twice the work of a kid right out of school. The youngsters are generally not trusted to lord over mission-critical systems, and you usually need to invest time and money into getting them up to speed.
A paper MCSE or even *n?x CS grad with no experience will take a couple months to figure out your system, and will get a much higher offer from somebody else within a year or two.
Old-school gurus are already getting near the top range of their salary, so they will stay put until they are ready to be a consultant or retire, as long as you keep them happy. They won't leave a good job for just another couple grand a year. Also, they will have seen it all before and will be able to take control of the project right away.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Katz might feel like an important writer when he paints this picture of The Worker once again being crushed by the boot of Corporate Greed, but the truth is very different.
Tech nerds get huge money for stupid monkey work, and we get even more money for anything that requires us to think. We take that money and drop a good chunk of it into Roth IRA's and 401K's and guess what? We are part of the machine.
We are the Pinball Wizards and we are needed by the corporate world far more than they are needed by us. If you want more free time, quit your job and take one with less hours. There are far more jobs than there are qualified UNIX gurus, even more than enough jobs to go around for all those faceless MCSE's, so we are in the drivers seat at every interview we sit down at.
What Katz fails to realize is that we "drones" are far more free to choose our lifestyle than (for example,) a web journalist.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Jon misses the point, I think.
Computers and technology have reduced our overall workload, enough so that the technically adept have been given all the work while the expendable remainder were laid off and consigned to low-wage, part-time, contract, temp positions making and selling products that really don't matter. Our knowledge purchased high pay, job security and esteem; we were temporary winners in the capitalism survival of the fittest.
So, the blame rests not on technology, which is neutral at any rate, but in the decisions of business owners to use this benefit to shift work from one group to another rather than to reduce the workload for everyone equally.
That the insecure low-wage jobs bring with them stresses of a different sort is just icing on the cake for employers. Not only do they ladle the skilled work onto an overworked minority, but the unskilled work is done by workers so hungry for a decent living that they are willing to work a zillion hours a week in order to compete better with the thousands of other unskilled labourers in the job market.
North America is an employers dream.
© Copyright 2000 Matthew Yeo
I've covered this before, but here it is again:
The United States of America has a strong streak of consumerism at the core of its cultural values. We think that we must buy the latest doodads to keep up with the Joneses. This impulse contributes to our self-esteem and the granting of esteem by our peers.
Look at some of the sociological studies done with regards to clothing and other items with large, obvious logos. Most of them are bought by lower class and lower middle class people to show that they have the money to spend on these things. Those in what is traditionally regarded as the upper class, if they have been raised in that lifestyle, do not buy such things because they and their peers can recognize "quality" when they see it and don't need logos. You can see the same thing in many rural areas--I cannot count the number of times I've passed a trailer home or a little shanty with a satellite dish or an outrageously customized automobile outside.
We are taught that we must buy everything we can. Combine this with a government that takes between twenty and forty percent of the average person's yearly wages (or more), and add in the fact that a quality education (which most parents want for their children) is increasingly expensive and hard to find, and you have the formula that makes both parents work overtime in salary jobs because they can't afford not to.
The American Dream used to be the chance of success. Now the American Dream is two mortgages, heavy credit card bills and functionally illiterate children who refuse to have anything to do with their hapless parents.
What does technology have to do with all of this?
In most cases, technological items are simply more gizmos to be hawked to the unwary. When was the last time you really needed to spend over a thousand dollars on a stereo system? The items we buy are being packaged with more and more "features," each more incomprehensible than the last, in an effort to pander to the lowest common denominator. "Look, honey! It's got 89 settings, it must be better than this one with 32!"
Since companies can charge more for these gizmos, we have to work harder to buy them. We have to buy them to maintain our self-esteem (without which you're in bad shape and, in extreme cases, driven to cull yourself from the gene pool).
Ergo, the corporate and government interests that run significant portions of our society have condemned millions of people to a lifetime of wage slavery. The sad thing is that these people don't always fully realize what is happening until it's too late.
Fight the Power.
www.alarmist.org
You see a guy with his pager, his cell phone, his PDA, his laptop, and now with his groovy net enabled car. Why does he do it? Status. IF you're busy as hell, stressed out, pissed off most of the time, and people see you as such, they will prolly say "hey, he's REALLY busy, I guess he's an important person." Hey gotta go, my cell phones ringing, my pagers going off, and I have 50 people on ICQ I have to talk to. =)
Mysterium tremendum et fascinans
70 percent of respondents were in the 'somewhat' to 'extremely' stressed bracket. It makes no mention of the other brackets but I can make a guess that there were some others in between 'no stress'. I can also guess that very few people aged 35 and younger responded that they have no stress in their lives.
My homephone number forwards to my cellphone for my convenience. I have a cellphone so that I don't have to be any particular place not so that I can be at everyone's beck and call. My friends know that my preferred methods of communication are email and face-to-face gatherings (not necessarily in that order). My employer knows that I consider my primary job to be ensuring that there are no emergencies that require my dropping everything to come in. Most of the problems are self-correcting or can wait until the next morning at 9am.
In general, much of the stress in my life stems from not saying "no" when appropriate, not setting priorities and being too available for ad hoc reactive non-value-added bullsh*t instead of being proactive, strategic and thoughtful.
In short, go home, don't think about work, don't answer the phone when you're eating dinner or engrossed in the latest Harry Potter novel, and use your cellphone to order pizza while at the beach. It will seem strange the first dozen or so times, but its a habit worth cultivating.
That's true, if you happen to have the skills to jump ship at any time. Most don't. You and I are lucky enough to be largely exempted from the situation I described. Most aren't. The economy is more than tech workers (thank god). Be thankful for what you have and realize that most don't have it. Remember it's not just tech workers who are tied to their jobs with these little technological marvels like pagers and cell phones.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
I did quit my job and get one with fewer hours. It's less money too, but I can't tell you what a difference it's made for me in terms of my quality of life. Not everyone has the luxuries that you have attributed to the tech caste though. As tech people, we do enjoy a very privileged spot in the economic system that currently is in place. Don't think that very many others in the workforce share our good fortune. Katz wasn't (only) talking about tech people in his article. It's people in all areas who are now tied even more tightly to their jobs by their cell phones, pagers, and PDAs. And most of them don't possess job skills that enable them to jump ship at will. Katz's point remains: what benefits have individuals gained from the "digital revolution", in terms of leisure time and quality of life?
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
...has some good thinking on the reality of jobs in America.
CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
It wasn't much of a surprise when, several months later, I got a call at 1:30 AM reporting that a different customer was having problems with our product (now released). I dialed into their system and looked around for an hour and a half before finally figuring out that it was a network problem. During these incidents, and many more I don't have room to mention, I was told that I needed to put in a lot of extra effort because it would insure the success of the company. (Or, as my boss put it late one afternoon, "The whole company's falling apart and no one's here.")
The complete surprise came later, when the company (still doing poorly) decided to lay off almost all of its developers and to hire a new staff in another state. The new manager of the development group wrote a document castigating the current developers and managers. His proposal document said, "Our development has been done in an academic manner. We don't have any seasoned commercially qualified developers."
My point: Companies can always ask for a lot from their employees, but they have the power to turn around and kick you in the pants afterward. I hope this was an unusual case, but it could be more common than I think. Life's too short to be a workaholic and to stay chained to a desk, a cell phone, or an E-mail address 24 hours a day. I've changed jobs and I'm feeling much better now.
Though a pretty good article, I think the premise is somewhat flawed. Sure, the dream of technology is that it will free us from grunt work and give us more time to do other things. The way this is supposed to work is that, with the new tech, you do the same amount of work in less time. This means you can get off work earlier and enjoy life, right? No such luck, Skippy. You (and your employer) are used to putting in so many hours. You don't think in terms of tasks to get done, you think in 8-hour blocks of time that you spend at the office. The result? You do more work in the same amount of time. Nothing changes. You make more progress and get to the next task faster than you would have before. The idea of getting more leisure time from increased productivity at work is a myth that IMHO will never be realized. There is always more to get done.
Humans get bored when all they have is leisure time.
It's not built for the benefit of individuals any longer, but for the benefit of corporations.
But who's forcing us to work these jobs? That's right, no body. We choose to. If we decide that the stress or hours are too much, then we should quit. It's all your choice. The corporations don't force us to work these hours. I'm tired of people bitching about their jobs, then doing nothing to better it. I hated my previous job but rather than complain about the hours, I found a new one.
One of the biggest problems I see with the tech industry is that way too many employees don't know how to interview their employer to see if it's a place they want to work. I see this most with just-out-of-school grads (of which I was one not long ago). It's hard to know what questions to ask to see if your potential co-workers are any good at what they do, to see if the project will be interesting for you, etc.
But I digress... If you don't like your job or the way the corporation is treating you, no one makes you stay there. Anyone worth anything in the tech industry could have a new job in a second.
Getting lots of interesting e-mail, one of which is reprinted at the end of this message: To me, it comes down to choice. If you feel you are free to disconnect at any time without penalty, thereis no issue. If you feel you can't without suffering in some way, then there's a problem.As is the case with this e-mailer:
I'm 19, I've been working in IT since I was 16, and been working with
> Linux in specific since I was 13 years old, I've got a mile long list of
> abilities, and I've recently moved from Seattle to Milwaukee to be with my
> girlfriend, and also to evade the work market in Seattle, as it envolves
> lots of 80-90 hour weeks most of the time. Needless to say, in my last
> job in Seattle, I was accually asked to resign because I made absoutley
> sure I was working exactally 40 hours each week, after the first few
> weeks of not getting any compensation for my long hours. (No "number of
> hours considered a work week" was present in my contract, Washington state
> defines a work week as 40 hours.)
>
> When I moved to Milwaukee, I made the explicit declaration in my resume
> that I was seeking a standard 9-5 job, but that I would gladly be on call
> 24/7 for emergencies. I've been told by numerious employers that a 50-60
> hour work week would be required from them for "server maintaince and
> upkeep", which basically envolves setting up a paging system like
> NetSaint, and waiting for trouble to strike. When I inquired further as to
> what kind of compensation would be provided for extra hours, I was
> informed that it would be agreed that 60 hours was a standard work week in
> any potitental contract I may sign with xxx company. In one case, I asked
> what the hours of my possible supervisor were, I was told 40, and that was
> because "he was 35, and had a lots of Linux experience". I've been working
> with Linux for 6 years, I can code C in my sleep, I've even given
> interested employers ideas on things I can do to increase profit with less
> resource and even pointed them to some of the GPL C programs I've written,
> still, this outlandish requirement of too many hours exists.
>
> I've tryed rationally informing employers that a 50-60 hour work week is
> not acceptiable, because I also have a life at home with my girlfriend,
> they seem to feel that's some kind of personality flaw, and quite frankly,
> I'm getting fairly sick of it.
>
> I've just now polished up my resume, removed that request, and am sending
> it back arround, because unfortunatley in this world you can't live too
> long without money, but this is a growing trend I feel ought to be
> scrapped ASAP. As of right now, I've got 3 resumes, one that makes me look
> like a script kiddie (essientally), one that makes me look like I'm still
> learning, and one that's my accuall list of abilities. I'm trying to sort
> through job offers to figure out what one to send xxx company as we speak.
>
> One last thing, if I do find a job that's 40 hours that sounds reasonable,
> I'm informed that they aren't looking for anyone "with as much experience
> as you have", because either "they don't feel they could pay adiquatley",
> or because "we want someone who's still learning to some degree, so we can
> learn as well". I've learned to hate both comments, because no matter how
> many times I say, "the pay scale you have presented to me seems more
> than adiquate", they've still made their decision, and the conversation
> is over.
>
> Just my 2 cents,
>
jonkatz@slashdot.org
But does nobody else use the 'net almost entirely for their leisure? I have a group of friends I hang out with online, I get my jollies from posting to Usenet and mailing lists, and if I'm deprived of contact with my friends for a while, I start feeling anxiety, and that's just no fun.
I would like to think that if I did have an office 'net-connected job, and used Internet access from home, I would do it just for fun stuff, not for job stuff. I know the difference between fun and work, and you won't catch me doing one bit more work than I absolutely have to...unless I should find I love my job, and then the two roll into one.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I would say a LARGE portion of tech workers surf the web for 2+ hours a day. I know I do. Usually, I'm keeping current on news/tech/stuff, but it doesn't really feel like work. I consider that part of my leisure time. Most of my free time in the evenings though lately has been going towards working on freelance projects, and startup-websites (yes, even one on C#, -1 karma pls tks). :)
And I refuse to take my pager/etc when I go on vacation. I don't own a cell, and don't plan on owning one. My vacation time is MINE, and I'm not going to let work interrupt it.
BilldaCat
Technology was supposed to free us from the particular set of shackles that were the affliction of the industrial age. Now that we are moving towards the post-industrial information economy and all that shit, we have a new set of shackles. People are really good at that, making up new ways to be stressed out. I think we'd get bored otherwise...
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Sort of.
The thing is, I'm a hacker. It's creative.
Nobody expects a painter or a musician to punch a clock, or measure the value of his or her output by volume. When the inspiration hits, you work. When you are stuck, you read slashdot, or do the countless other kinds of woolgathering activities that allow your subconscious to reorganize so you can attack the problem fresh. Pleasure vs. work is not the relevant dichotomy -- other kinds of balances have to be struck: social vs. isolated; family vs. clients, physical vs. intellectual.
I'm fortunate, because my boss is pretty well resigned to getting results in irregularly spaced but prodigious bursts. Being a programmer, I'm in an elite class of workers and one that where I work is understood to be creative. Not everyone can do what I do, nor can everyone who can do it as well as I do. But there are lots of folks out there that are exploited. Worse than exploited -- wasted is more like it. The problem is that as information becomes a bigger part of the economy, the problem of measuring a person's contribution becomes bigger. Stupid bosses go for time as the metric. It's about the worst metric there is because all you have to do is to occupy a defined space for a defined period of time to "accomplish" something. In fact I think most folks who push paper could cut their work week down to 25-30 hours and actually get more and better work done. Even hackers should get lots more vacation, IMHO, but spread out through the year.
But... you still have to pull all nighters, not just for deadlines. For truly creative work, there's no substitute for being able to hack until dawn because you've got the bit in your teeth.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I do wish I had a laptop to take with me, for entertainment on the plane and so I could keep hacking on a script I'm writing, but I'm doing that for fun anyway. I won't be checking my work email, I won't be telling them where I am (besides "Denver") or how to reach me (even I don't know that), because I'd rather relax and have fun. No way I'm gonna have any connection to the office for that week.
It's sad that other people don't know how to do the same thing. People have always been "overworked and underpaid," but when you throw in the amount of stress that a lot of people have these days (whether it's their own fault or not), people really need to learn how to take a vacation. It's like the stress is such a part of them that they can't just lay back in the sun for a while and soak up some cancer-causing rays without a death grip on their cell phone, just in case the office needs them.
You need your vacation time more than the office does. Remember that. If you're gonna stay tied to work, what's the point in leaving in the first place?
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
I'm a geek, I love gadgets, I have no problem speaking tekspek with friends and colleagues, I'll be first in line to get the cybernetic skull interface, etc. Yet I'm overly-stressed, and have problems sleeping. Why?
It's the job and its use of technology that gets me down. I work as a Mac tech support person in a largely Windows environment. My employer is less competent than I had hoped when I started, the client company is missing large bits of clue, and the users are, well, users.
Now, I have it relatively easy here; I'm paid well for my high experience/low education level (no degree yet), the Mac calls are far less numerous than the PC ones (despite having a similar number of machines of each platform) my fellow techs have to run, and I don't have to work overtime. Plus, many of the questions are relatively simple ones - password requests and the like. The stress comes from my employer forcing me to become more Windows-savvy (life's too short for that), their disconcerting management practices, the stress of dealing with clients and their frequent lack of understanding, and the knowledge that this isn't what I wanted to be doing with my life when I was younger. My main escape is through technology: blasting away at bots in Unreal Tournament, learning Java via computer-based training modules (so I can get a programming job and cause problems rather than have to fix them), or just generally goofing off on one of the many computers at home.
So, technology is causing my stress on one level, but relieving it on another. I suspect many other readers have a similar love/hate relationship.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I really can't think of an employer who WANTS their employees to look at porn. I mean, really. Yes, I'm sure our employers want us to be at work longer, but what's the point of being at work longer if you're not getting anything done?
Students use instant messaging a lot! God, no! it's some faculty conspiracy?? No! How many times have I messaged my prof's? umm.. let's try zero. I message friends essentially exclusively. I'm not working, when I'm messaging (unless I'm ICQing as I'm coding.. which is possible..). The point is, ICQ detracts from work, it doesn't add to it.
Yes, I'll warrant that we're working longer hours, and we're more available, but I doubt that's part of some evil corporate conspiracy. Yes, I'll warrant that layoff's are up (though I'm not sure of that one.. any stats on that??), but it's not some The Man using technology against us as Jon would apparently have us believe.
also, people 18-35 being more stressed? Aren't these people in the prime of their life? Aren't they trying to find jobs and make some sense of their lives? I bet that this age group has always (well.. for quite some time.. ) been pretty stressed.
gaaaaaaaa
-V
I've been in this industry for almost exactly two years. I had no background in it and have been relying entirely on aptitude to compete with the guys who were coding at birth. I'm now making three times the money I was making when I was busting my ass bartending, welding, or pretending to be a musician.
From my point of view, these technological shackles, have totally changed my life for the better. I have a house, a car that doesn't suck, a lawn that always needs watering, and a family. I have infinite free time compared to the past. If I choose to spend that free time connected to the electronic heroin at Battle.Net, you can hardly blame the laptop.
People may be dragging their cell-phones everywhere they go, but it's because they like looking important. How can we complain about people bringing palm-pilots on vacation? We can finally afford those vacations!
I guess I just don't see the downside...
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
What Katz sees as evidence of Corporatism is nothing more than employee greed. In the get-rich-quick IPO mania of the 90s, people have been willing to sacrifice their lives for a shot at retiring early. Nobody forced you to go to that pre-IPO startup with gobs of options, and you knew full well that it was a craps shoot. Sometimes the gamble pays off, and you'll be able to spend the rest of your life with your family and hobbies.
But if you truly enjoy what you're doing, do you really care? Many of us were out to change the world and make it a better place, and no revolution was ever done 9 to 5.
...-.-
Or hunter-gatherers, who have to work maybe four hours per day to ensure their survival.
How many hours do we have to work to ensure our survival? Hint: Cable TV and Diablo II don't count as necessities for survival.
/bluesninja
i don't notice any lack of leasure time, i still go out, and doing other things, but i also spend my fair share of time playing computer games & chatting on irc. However, for some people who are too stupid to know better, it wouldn't supprise me. The main problem with this is people who don't know how to regulate their use of time with technology, and try to be 'cool' by having their cell phone on in a movie theatre, and getting people to call them. Personally, i find this annoying more than anything. Yes, i have a laptop, and a cell phone, but i don't go around getting people to call me all the time... People need to wise up about this crap, and learn to use it more effectively. -TubaMan
-TubaMan / ThE_DoOmSmItH
My Grandad on my mothers side used to work double and triple shifts in a Scottish coal mine. Often the second or third shift was unpaid. If it was paid, you might get (as he received one time) a cabbage (literally). And my Grandma was glad of getting that!
The Code Mines are a nasty place to work
- RSI, stress, headaches, tendonitis, bad eyes, etc. but the Coal Mines were worse - cave ins, coal dust in your lungs, cancer, naptha fumes, suffocation, never being clean.
And whereas he gets paid in cabbage, I get paid a lot of money to do what I do. I can afford to take a month long LOA. I can afford to take a flight somewhere warm. I can throw the Palm in a drawer, the cell on my dresser, the laptop in my cupboard and bug out.
The modern work world will eat your time IF YOU LET IT. If you decide you are going to work 11 months a year, then you can set that up. Career management. That is the key. Let people know your limits, and live with it. Yes it may impact your success, but that is the decision you have to make. If you feel you need that extra $10K enough to sacrifice your weekends for 5 months, then do it. If family, social life, and health pursuits are more important, then you'll accept that and get on with it.
The old world never was a nice place. Those who think it was wonderful to live in the period of knights and chivalry were idiots. Diseases ran rampant, pogroms massacred minorities, and life expectancy was short. Plumbing was outdoor. Ignorance was the state of affairs.
Similarly, those who cling to the "good old days" like say the 1950's, are clinging to an idea of a period that wasn't. The beginning of the cold war and real nuclear tensions were in existence. People were overconsuming and living in a faux utopia of excess that helped lead us to the sorry state we're in today.
Today isn't the best of times and yesterday wasn't either. Give or take a bit, things are different but pretty much life isn't terribly better or terribly worse. It is different. The threats are different, as are the benefits and boons.
So lets stop crying about the modern world. I have friends who wouldn't be alive without modern medicine. I myself wouldn't be so happy or well employed. And I wouldn't be able to have made so many friends around the world on the Internet.
:) Tomb
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Aris
Separating work and leisure into different activities was only true as a result of the Industrial Revolution.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, if you were a farmer, you worked your farm, no matter how long it took. Ideally you gained satisfaction from what you were doing, seeing how your crops and animals grew, and you didn't mind the extra work.
If you were an artisian, you worked at home doing your crafts, for as long as it took. You were doing something that interested you, and you worked extra hours and didn't complain about it.
Once the Industrial Revolution came, you couldn't take your assembly line home with you. You worked your boring, mind numbing job, then went home.
Today, if you're lucky, you get a job that interests you, and you may even work at it at night. UNIX and computers fascinate me, I would play with them at night even if I didn't have a job that dealt with them. The fact that my job deals with UNIX and computers is only a bonus.
To say that you should be free of your job at 40 hours a week misses the point, after 40 hours a week I'm free of the tedious paperwork, but I still play with technology.
George
Sure, maybe we are "stressed" these days, and feel tied to jobs from which we can't escape -- but think about how great it is that these technologies allow us to have careers where we don't have to shovel coal 22 hours a day. I moan about my job sometimes, but if I had to work in the meat-packing industry in turn of the century Chicago, I would kill to be tied down to a tech job.
www.poak.net
one thing I've noticed when I come across the pond to the US - and especially Silicon Valley - is the Long-Hour culture...and how it is so much a complete lie.
People may well be in the office for 18 hours a day, but how much is actually working? Perhaps the need for change is not for less tech, but more sensible management telling you to just do the job quickly and then GO HOME - placing more emphasis on getting it done and less on being seen taking ages over it.
Why complain about the increase in work hours for women since 1979? I thought the whole point was that it was a Good Thing(TM) for women to have better opportunities in the work place. What's next? Are you going to complain about the evils of child care keeping women from taking care of their children at home, Mr. Katz?
The interesting thing about the increase in work hours is *why* people work longer. Consider, for example, professional people who work more than one job. When you ask them *why* the answer is not "because I need the money, etc." but on average because they want the job to fulfill some personal or professional goal.
STOP READING THIS AND DO SOME F'KNG WORK, DAMN YOU!
-- the most controversial site on the Web
And just exactly who do you think should be more stressed than 18-35 year old workers?
The way this story should have read is, "a report from American Demographics show that work-related stress drops dramatically as you get older. The good news to those under 35 is that there is light at the end of the tunnel."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I couldn't agree more. I think that the only thing that has gone up since 30 years ago is the number of people that are habitual complainers.
My grandfather's generation lived through the depression, went to war in World War II, and basically didn't have a third of the comforts that I take for granted, and yet they somehow managed to be pretty darn optimistic about their lives, their future, and their country. His grandparents hiked clear across the U.S. cooking their meals with Buffalo poop. Compared to my forebears I wouldn't know stress if it smacked me in the face with a tomahawk.
Nowadays Americans don't really have to worry about things like invading tribes of Mongols, or the Black Plague, and so instead we worry about our stress levels. We habitually whine about how hard our life is without even realizing that pretty much the entire world would happily switch places with us.
I went to high school in Lima, Peru and if there is one thing that I learned from my time there it is that I have no room to complain. My life is not that hard, nor do my pitiful little worries amount to a hill of beans. The average American will almost certainly live longer and be more successful than 99% of the people that have ever lived on this planet, and yet all we do is complain.
Everything in moderation, eh? I'm working for a startup, and it has been made abundantly clear that days off, holidays and vacation time means no contact. None.
:]
I've brought a laptop on one vacation so far, and it was just to have something to dump the digital camera into. I allow myself *no* net access on the road.
Who knows how long this tech bonanza is going to continue... It may be 5 years, it may be ten, or it may pay at these ludicrous rates for the rest of our lives, although that's doubtful.
The point is that if you're going to be in this field for a long time, don't burn yourself out. It's bad enough that there are so few people with genuine experience already... If you have people killing themselves 24/7 on tech, in 4 or 5 years they're going to need to do something completely different just to remain sane.
Unplug once in a while. Take a month off from IRC and watch your RL relationships get back to a normal level. Turn off the machines at home and listen to the lack of hum... I'm willing to bet you'll actually physically notice your heart rate slowing. I know mine does.
Your heart has a specific number of beats it's going to complete before you kack. Try to savor a few of them
But there's a huge trade off for this convenience. Inforum's l999 Survey from the MEDSTAT group, reports American Demographics, found that adults aged 35 and younger were the most stressed people in the population. Nearly seven in 10 said they were "somewhat" to "extremely" stressed, an astonishing contrast to adults over 65: 31 percent of them said they had almost no stress in their lives at all.
Huh? 7 in 10 is 70 percent. That would imply that 30 percent had no stress. That's pretty darn similar to the 31 percent of those over 65 who had no stress. What's the point?
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Now for the tips to avoid having your off time fucked up.
(1) Never give your personal cell number to co-workers. If you did, leave the cell phone home on vacation, or change the number or take a different phone (for *your* use on vacation). This advice also applies to personal email.
(2) Tell co workers you're unreachable because yoiu're going on a cruise to Tahiti even if you're just going to work around the house on vacation. This reduces morons trying to **STEAL** your hard earned vacation time from you.
(3) Next, get rid of your answering machine. Once I realized that my answering only serves the caller and not me, I got rid of it. With the Caller ID box, I never answer the phone unless I recognize the number and want to answer it. 999/1000 times if it says "Out of Area"/"Unavailable" it's telemarketing scum. As for everyone else, getting ring... ring... ring... ring... endlessly with no opportunity to leave messages serves them right for bothering you. Works wonders with debt collectors wrongfully trying to collect from you too.
(4) Don't capitulate. Don't listen to office voice mail on vacation. It'll just add stress or worse, may cause you to cave and solve problems.
(5) Don't accept "deals". "Come back a day early and take another day or two later." Contiguous days off is != to the sum of its parts. Work-DayOff-Work-DayOff-Work-DayOff-Work-DayOff-Wo rk (that's 4 days off) is not the same as 3 days off in a row.
Do all of these things and know that it is RIGHT for you to do them. Your hard earned vacation time takes absolute priority over all work related issues. Now quit reading this (you're dangerously close to "doing work") in your hotel room and go back to the beach!
...of the way society has been moving for a long time. It's not built for the benefit of individuals any longer, but for the benefit of corporations. Think about (in the US) the processes of government and economic participation, and ask yourself where the balance of power lies between individuals and corporations. Is it any surprise then that the benefits from technological advance have gone almost exclusively to the corporations rather than the individual workers themselves? I predict that unless and until some kind of revolution takes place, workers will continue to see thier leisure time eroded and their freedom dimished. Until that time, it will not get any better in terms of true quality and meaning of life.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD